Tag Archives: A License to Preach

Mirror pandiculation

14 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Words

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Some experts were talking on the radio about “mirror pandiculation.” I see a lot of that. In fact most public speakers in warm spaces in the middle of winter do, and at other times of year also. I had a lot of questions to ask, but the experts agreed that not much is known about why people do it, just that they do. Other creatures also pandiculate, but mirror pandiculation seems to be limited to higher primates, and is often observed in people, while other primates may just do it coincidentally. Could this be the meaning of the “image of God,” that theological trait that no one seems to be able to define, except that human beings have it, and other animals don’t?

Mirror pandiculation occurs when you yawn, and then I feel the need to yawn also, although I had not felt that need until your yawn triggered mine. It’s hard to stifle a yawn, so usually we just go ahead and do it. Even in church. When it comes to spontaneity in church, apart from occasional applause and even rarer “Amens,” yawns are the single most frequent spontaneous behavior.

Does God yawn? If our sympathetic yawning reaction to one another is in the image of God, then we must believe that God does yawn, at least in some figurative, transcendent way. When human beings could not care less about some turn of events, and we practice apathy, then perhaps it is a signal to God that patience is in order and this particular matter must wait, at least until someone else is willing to pay attention. On the other hand, when we take up some matter with urgency and intensity, we draw from God’s power and surely do try God’s patience and “wear God out” in another way. Either way, a divine yawn might be in order, and if we are sensitive to fluctuations in God’s power, our yawns may again be triggered in response, leading to the usual chain reaction.

I wish that there were other behaviors that called for such a ready mirrored response. Sympathy and empathy remain in short enough supply that we need to call attention to the need for them to extend farther than they do.  They occur naturally in people but not in sufficient quantities. We never seem to run out of yawns, and as noted before, they are hard to stifle, unlike human caring for people who are outside a defined realm of family or group. But let anyone yawn, anyone from any group, and you feel the need to respond.

So I appreciate the need for mirror pandiculation, and I want to encourage it (as if I didn’t do that enough already). Let it be a symbol, when it occurs, of all the other things that could lead to improvements if we just did them with the same responsiveness to one another.

People on a journey…again.

13 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in People, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

We are away from one home and at another. We have family members and friends far away from us, some in places of danger, and it makes us anxious. What’s all this traveling about?  

What happens when we travel? We spend a lot of time on the road. We get tired. We feel miserable in unfamiliar beds and locations. We can’t wait to get where we’re going. We meet new people or get reacquainted with old friends. We learn how to manage with less than we usually have. We eat too well and too poorly. We try to get some unusual things accomplished and often feel the frustration of too little time and too many expectations. We experience and understand things up close that we see only from a distance at home. We see ourselves differently, feeling strange feelings of discomfort and exhilaration. Why would anyone do such things to themselves when they could be relaxing at home? 

We say “life is a journey” so often it becomes trite. Sometimes our lives are stuck, and getting away becomes a way to obtain that perspective that will move us beyond the sticking points. Sometimes we return with a fresh outlook. Sometimes we never quite go back to where we were. Sometimes we move in an illusion of leaving that brings us right back to where we started because we carry so much baggage with us, although I suspect that getting back to a starting point is harder to do than it appears. Travelers can try to give the impression that nothing has changed and then report years later how much did. 

Of all the trips the one with the most potential for transformation is the inner journey. How can any of our trips reflect so much change in belief and equipment for service to others as the stories of our spiritual forebears?  

Family travels and travails have brought us here, and the mappings of our heritage show that our trips are often short and easy compared to those earlier ones. They remind us that we are not rooted to one place and we must keep moving and growing or we will shrivel and die. Our sojourn may be short or long but we remain sojourners wherever we are. 

When we sing, “We are people on a journey,” it is not just words. Gathering around a praying table we find a resting place along the way and a joyful foretaste of homecoming.

 

Filling time and space

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in Events

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

I was a young pastor with a wife and two small children, full of myself as much as the gospel, and eager to do everything I could to fill time and space. Especially in a season like Advent, my schedule filled to overflowing. Preparations for services, extra services, hospital and home and nursing home visits, church meetings, decorating, gift-purchasing and wrapping, bible studies, prayer groups, youth and senior groups, caroling, community board meetings, police chaplaincy emergencies, preparing food baskets, volunteer hospital chaplaincy hours, volunteer fire and rescue department emergency calls—who could make this up and find such a schedule believable?

And so we came to the second Christmas Eve service, running from 11 PM to Midnight, with communion and candlelight. At the end of the service, the car being loaded, I would drive the family one hundred fifty miles, three hours, to my in-laws’ house for a gathering on Christmas Day. Exhausted. Every tiny bit of available energy spent. How could I drive? I had worn out my wife and kids with my busy-ness, too. No one should drive in that condition, as dangerous as being drunk. The one saving grace was that the highways were nearly empty.

About the time that I realized I was falling asleep at the wheel, another saving grace appeared. The northern sky filled with the aurora borealis. I stopped the car, stood outside in the brisk air, and witnessed another way to fill time and space. Magnificent colors and curtains danced in the heavens. My exhaustion turned to tears and joy. Glory in the Highest, quite apart from anything I had done or could do. I woke my wife and children, though I’m not sure that they could see and appreciate everything I saw and felt at that hour. Then we finished that trip in the refreshing company of the heavenly host.

Cancer for the Holidays…1978

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Caring, Events, Seasons

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Hanukkah menora 1Mom called me on Tuesday, December 12, 1978. I had taken my family to Paxton to visit with them the previous Friday. She sounded a bit weaker than usual. First, she reported that Dad had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but not to worry, his doctor was very encouraging. No surgery, just hormone treatments.

Then she dropped the bombshell. She was in Burnham City Hospital, recovering from a complete hysterectomy. Her doctor had found cancer in her as well, and they had scheduled the surgery immediately. “I am fine,” she said.

“Why didn’t you tell me Friday?” I wanted to ask, but knew better than to say it.

She continued anyway, “I knew you were busy getting everything ready for services and lots of people needing you. I wanted to be able to tell you about this when everything was settled. The doctor gave me the good news—he thinks they took care of it with the surgery.”

“That’s good to hear. I’ll be there in two hours,” I said.

“You don’t need…” she started.

“I’ll be there in two hours. I love you,” I said, firmly. The conversation went on for a few more moments, but apart from her “I love you, too” response, and her apology for not being able to gather the family for the holidays, I do not remember more.

When we met in her hospital room, she still wanted to talk about the family gathering. “I was ready for everyone to come. Maybe we can get together later, maybe in March.”

I tried to reassure her that March would be fine. Jesus was born in the spring or summer anyway, when the shepherds were in the fields with the sheep. We prayed together for her and Dad’s healing and for some of the other people who always were her concern. I saw her again before her discharge, and everything was going well, except for her sadness about the family get-together. On the next Friday, the 22nd, we went to Paxton again, carrying a small Christmas tree and a small Hanukkah menorah. We started lighting the candles. “A great miracle happened here,” we said on the first candle, “You both found the cancer early and have done quickly what you needed to do to treat it.”

The family gathered around the tree in March and celebrated Christmas. For the next Christmas Eve, their 45th Wedding Anniversary, we celebrated with a surprise reception in their honor, with many friends and family members coming together. Mother lived twelve more years, Dad another twenty-seven, in relatively good health.

A knock at the door…on Christmas Eve

14 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Events, Seasons, Small town life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

US 51 bypassed Minonk many years before we moved there, so not many travelers stopped at the church for assistance, and fewer came to the parsonage, which was a nondescript ranch-style house several blocks south of the church. That may explain why I chose the meditation topic for Christmas Eve 1986 without a second thought—finding room for strangers. The town had not had much practice with that theme, though the rough area economy, and the deteriorating and vacant housing in the rural community were preparing the ground for some changes. I preached it, a safe distance away from Bethlehem two thousand years ago. The late candlelight communion service was beautiful, of course. Families packed the pews and shared customary greetings at the benediction.

After the lights were out and the church doors locked, on that cold icy night, we drove home with our  teenage children and prepared for bed, when the knock came at the door. I pulled my pants over my pajama bottoms, and went to answer, with some trepidation. There stood a man in dirty, disheveled clothing, with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, asking if I could help him find a room for the night. He introduced himself as Goodman.

“Well, Mr. Goodman,” I answered without much enthusiasm, “You’ve come to the right place. I don’t know how you found me, and I can’t promise much, but we’ll find you a room.” I invited him inside, thinking of all those times I remembered when such an invitation did not turn out well. We had a sleeper sofa. The nearest motel was fifteen miles away. As Jan gave him something to drink and eat,  I called that motel and found that they still had a room available for the night. At Midnight I found myself driving Mr. Goodman south to El Paso, listening to a hard-luck story, and trying to encourage a man to hold onto hope that things would get better for him.  And wondering about the mysterious ways….

That was the only night that we had such a visitor knock on our door seeking shelter, in the eight years we lived at Minonk, and it was on Christmas Eve, when I preached about welcoming strangers.

a Christmas angel…named Debbie

14 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Caring, People, Seasons

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Once in a while on vacation we see something that reminds us of people back home, and if it would make a nice gift and we can afford it we buy it for them. This was the case when we saw the pottery angel oil lamps, about 250 of them, arranged layer by layer in a Christmas tree-shaped display at Otis Zark’s (O.Zark, get it?) down in Arkansas. Our friend Debbie collects angels. Not only that, she has frequently been an angel, and quite generous with us, so Jan and I said to each other, “Let’s get one of those for Debbie. She needs another angel.” (Need is relative, isn’t it? Probably Debbie has enough angels to supply all of us, but this was, well, a different kind.)

So we examined the angels for the prettiest and the sweetest looking one to match our friend. We narrowed it down to five, then made our decision, picked it up, bought it, put it in an official O. Zark box, and carried it home. Later we passed it on to our friend Debbie, who was suitably appreciative. Only later did we learn a bit more about the gift.

Debbie took the boxed angel home, of course. She read on the box how each angel had a different name, and you could find the name of your angel inscribed on the back of its neck. She found the name of her angel. It was “Debbie.”

Debbie mentioned to us when we next saw her that she appreciated the “fact” that we had searched for an angel that had her name. But we didn’t, we said. We only looked for the prettiest and sweetest one that we could find. “You mean you didn’t know that the angel you gave me was named Debbie?”

No, we didn’t know. But obviously someone did. Someone does keep track of such things. Not me. And this time it wasn’t Jan either.

The End to the War on Christmas

12 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by in Seasons, Words

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A long time ago there was a “War on Christmas.”  I am thankful that the war ended and people arrived at a compromise. People used to complain about how the Christmas season began in the stores in September, and everyone had capitulated to the commercialization of Christmas and lost the spirit of Christmas.  Then the Great Compromise was reached and the last five weeks of the year were devoted entirely to Thanksgiving. People agreed that, whether one celebrated Christmas, Winter Solstice, Hanukkah,  Kwanzaa, The Holiday Season, New Year’s, or Epiphany, whether one gave gifts or enjoyed special food or fasted from both, we all had reasons to be thankful, and that one day a year for Thanksgiving was much too little. So the Season of Thanksgiving was born. What better way to end one year and begin another than to give thanks?

To whom? Most people give thanks to God, but the spill-over into giving thanks to one another and the ability to be gracious even to those we disagree with, when we are truly grateful, are reasons enough to be tolerant of those who can’t agree about how to give thanks to God.

Some people continued to give thanks for the birth of Jesus as part of the general thanksgiving, and sang carols in the same ways and words they always had sung. A minority moved Christmas into springtime, and connected it with Easter, since the story of Jesus’ birth belonged in the springtime, when the shepherds were actually in the fields taking care of their sheep, and Easter and Christmas did logically belong together, they said, with “new birth” and incarnation themes. That meant a lot of familiar carols were sung to new words. “In the Bleak Midwinter” became “In the Blessed Springtime” and  “Greensleeves” came to be called “Greengrasses,” which made more sense anyway, since no one knew what green sleeves was about. Other people gave thanks with the Santa Claus custom and continued the gift-giving traditions that came with it. Lots of things gradually changed.

“Seasons Greetings” was always too generic, while “Merry Christmas” was too specific, so “Be Grateful” came to dominate. Partly a happy wish and partly a serious recommendation, there was no room for a Grinch to be a grouch anymore. People agreed that everyone surely had something to be grateful for, and, if they didn’t, there was even more reason to spread good cheer by sharing in the spirit of Thanksgiving by giving to those who had little.

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” became the “The Six weeks of Thanksgiving,” and lots more verse were added to the song, since there were now forty-two days for “my true love’s” gifts. The single day of feasting that recalled the Pilgrims at Plymouth gave way for some folks to continuous feasting during the six weeks so that all of those end-of-the-year family eating traditions could take their rightful place as part of Thanksgiving. Of course that didn’t really change from the way the end of the year had been observed for those folks anyway.

Wars need to come to an end, and the spirit of Christmas predominated finally over those who were resentful and jealous of the many customs that encroached upon Christmas. They understood that resentment and jealousy had no part in Christmas, and so they led the way toward a truce that captured the best of all the competing factions. And nowadays when we sing “Silent night, holy night,” it really is calm and peaceful. Thank God! Be Grateful!

oodles of noodles

11 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in House, Seasons

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Oodles of noodles covered the beds, the tables, and every available flat space in the house. This is how our house looked as my mother prepared for the annual church holiday bazaar. After a few days and the noodles were dry she would package them in appropriate quantities, dozens of large bags for the chicken and noodle supper at the bazaar, and scores of small packages for direct sale at the bazaar tables. Hundreds of thousands of noodles prepared my mind to receive “string theory” as the ultimate building block in the construction of the universe; only to me it will always be “noodle theory.”

Those noodles were delicious, and the bazaar always was an outrageous success, leaving the women’s organizations that sponsored it with the problem of what to do with all their money. During the noodle days in later years I had to be careful about inviting ourselves, with our children, to come home for a visit, if it was noodle time. All of those beds, that she made sure were available the rest of the year for our visits, would be full in those days.

A house filled with noodles is one of my images of abundance. I lived with them when I was growing up. I saw them in return visits. I still have pictures of them. The world is chock full of noodles.

Thanksgiving and Christmas together illuminate the exceptional abundance available to us in this world. The tables overflow with enough for everyone, including those who are poor, if we make some effort to allow access to the tables for them and to them.

In all the world there is excess—in its immensity and in the extraordinary patterns in even the smallest things we find. When we make the effort to duplicate them, we see that inherent intricacies far outstrip our creative abilities. Instead we must simplify and summarize, missing most of what exists. There is an elegance in things that speaks to us of profound generosity and attention to details. There is excess that allows us second chances, and third and fourth, and ninth if we are cats, and more if we are people. Whether we examine the microcosm or the macrocosm the universe is excessively generous.

So our making of noodles can go on and on, without approximating the slightest part of divine benevolence. In God’s magnanimity our little repetitions and duplications are honored, even when God makes everything new and unique. We will gladly taste them again, and fill ourselves up with the same thing, even though there is something slightly different every time, as the excellent cook tries to improve upon the best recipe, and as the tiny noodles in all creation align themselves in new and not exactly predictable patterns.

the welcomers

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by in Caring, People, Small town life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

“Eldon and I are your neighbors– a block north of your home. We’d be glad for you to stop in anytime. You are always welcome for tea.” What was left unsaid, but became clear later was the rest of the invitation, “We will be glad to adopt you as our own children, and your children as our grandchildren, for as long as you are here, and in our hearts forever.” The Johnsons were like that. They had welcomed the previous ministers at their church, and they would welcome succeeding ones.  

They gave an open invitation, which they always accommodated, with a few understandable exceptions when they were gone on a trip or in the midst of a project, from which they could always take a hospitality break. Retired from managing the local grocery business Eldon made time for fishing trips with the children, along with his other grandchildren, and games of pool in the den of their little house. They taught them to “chicken dance” and pick strawberries and other things that parents may not have remembered to teach. Eldon and Louise also seldom missed a worship service, taking their position in the front under the high pulpit. He had missed enough, he said, in the working years when the grocery required his attention.  

When many others did not invite visits and seemed to resent my effort to make a home appointment as too much of an intrusion on a busy schedule, the Johnsons were always true to their word. The teapot was always on. They had their own opinions about matters being discussed, which they expressed in considerate, thoughtful ways whether they were in disagreement or support. It was clear from the first that their mission was to make loving relationships. They also cooperated with the church’s decisions once made, and were usually available to help, even with hard projects like putting a new acoustical ceiling in the Fellowship Hall, or tearing out the wood floor to lay concrete. If there had not been another person in that community of such character (and there certainly were others), the time there would still have been wonderful. 

Louise gradually lost her vision, and Eldon became her caretaker as other health problems accumulated. She still wrote a note stating that they were enjoying their private “nursing home” and still kept us in their prayers. Eldon died suddenly. Louise lived out her final stage of hospitality in a nearby nursing home.  

As we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas we remember Eldon and Louise putting out the lights around their house, and a constant buffet spread of desserts and delicacies for all their guests. Like their Savior they will live forever, and not only in our “hearts.”

evidence of the multiverse

17 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Caring, People, Words

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Many memorable and, I hope, equally forgettable statements filled the airwaves this past election season (2014). Among them this comment by Joni Ernst stands out, “We have lost a reliance on not only our own families, but so much of what our churches and private organizations used to do. They used to have wonderful food pantries. They used to provide clothing for those that really needed it, but we have gotten away from that.”

In my study of string theory, I have pondered what kind of evidence would provide verification that we exist, not in a universe, as traditional physics has assumed, but in a multiverse in which an infinite number of universes coexist, as string theory posits. The evidence requires some kind of incursion of an anomalous alternative reality into the regularly observable reality of this universe. Soon-to-be-Senator Ernst’s statement provides that kind of incursive evidence, although it may fit better into a theoretical construct known as shoestring theory.

Truth to be told, I have spent more time studying history, and church history particularly, than I have spent on theoretical physics. We now live in an era in which more food and more clothing comes from voluntary and nonprofit organizations than ever before in history. This, today, is the era of wonderful food pantries provided by churches and private organizations, as well as meal services, overnight lodging and shelters, clothing distributions, funding for transportation, medical care, education, rental assistance, and utility payments. Altogether, this total of private assistance to the indigent, the working poor, the elderly and disabled amounts to a fraction of what our own and other governments provide for their citizens, but it still often means survival for many people. If the food pantries do not look wonderful, it is because their shelves empty so quickly.

During seven decades of life, I have seen, assisted, and started several programs of such assistance for people who needed them. I have examined the evidence of such programs in many eras of history from the earliest church through the Great Depression. No era has seen more concerted and voluntary action to provide benefits to others than our own era.

At the same time, the accumulation of wealth has also reached a pinnacle. The odd thing in this universe is that extremes can coexist without mutual recognition. Only when people do live in a different world can they assert that we once had wonderful food pantries and clothing depots and we have gotten away from that, therefore, the government must do less, and voluntary organizations and churches must step up in doing more, like they used to do. There never was a time in which they used to do more. There never was a time in which help for the poor—working or not able to work or not ready to work—was more needed than now, nor more need for governments to step up and assist their populations to secure their livelihoods. Wealth is present, but the wealth and the power that controls it are not distributed fairly. The era of fair and equitable distribution lies ahead of us, not behind us.