Tag Archives: Serendipity

The Dog Who Drove

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Faith, Gullibility, Travel, Vehicles

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Needels Highway   In our first trip through the Black Hills back in 1976, Jan decided to take the wheel, since it was nerve-wracking for her when I tried to drive through the mountains and sightsee at the same time. I took the passenger seat where I could look to my heart’s content and take all the photographs that I wanted. The evidence shows up in our photo album from that year.
There in that album is the picture that I had taken of a dog happily driving a convertible down a mountain highway. I took it while we passed this car that had no passengers except the dog who was driving. The dog seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. His paws were on the steering wheel. His mouth was open in a wide grin, his tongue hanging out. His head was swaying in the wind that was also whipping his long hair. All the dog needed was a pair of goggles.
I wanted to stop our cars and ask to see his driver’s license. But he was a large unidentifiable mixed breed, probably weighing as much as I did, and I knew I was no match for him.
Not seen in the picture was the large motor home which preceded the car and to which the car was firmly attached. I wondered how the drivers of the motor home had discovered how much their dog enjoyed the experience of driving the car. Perhaps the car was pushing the RV instead of the other way around? The dog did look like he knew what he was doing. As we passed the RV, I wasn’t so sure about the person in the driver’s seat of that vehicle. I could not actually see anyone there.
It is a matter of faith I suppose. There are a lot of unseen connections, a lot more unseen controls than we are aware of as we travel along. There are more actors that are not obvious to our eyes, and our eyes are often tricked or misled by the way things appear. There is intelligence and compassion in charge, even beyond what we contain in our canine skins, isn’t there? Isn’t there? We just about have to assume so and believe so if we are going to enjoy the ride.

The Deafening Silence

05 Sunday Nov 2017

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Nathan, Sullivan and Tulip May 2017 (2)   Midsummer, Jan and I were at the farm with Nathan’s two Golden Retrievers, Sullivan and Tulip, while Nathan was attending a reading conference. This was their first visit to the farm, and the open space and new surroundings obviously stimulated their already super-energized spirits. Sullivan at two and a half years has just begun to settle down into his young adulthood; Tulip at one year is nowhere close to settling down. Jan regards her as a classic case of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

They seemed to enjoy their first experience of the farm. At home in Burlington they have a good-sized yard to romp in, and are surrounded by the noises of the neighborhood, the street traffic of busy Agency Street and the nearby HyVee grocery and shopping areas. They rarely see such wide-open spaces.

I tried to keep their routines as typical as possible. In Nathan’s absence I knew that they were missing him, and this was the first time that they had spent a significant length of time with me. Knowing that they usually stayed the night with Nathan in his bedroom, I brought them into our bedroom, instead of shutting them in their kennels. No surprise then that in the middle of the night I was awakened by Tulip actively nuzzling me, whining, and wanting to go outside for her usual duties.

I put her and Sully on their long leashes and headed them downstairs and outside through the south porch, out onto the lawn, expecting them to act as usual, randomly running and tugging in all directions. At first they did as I expected. Then they both slowed down and came back to my side, sidling close to my legs, still as can be, and looking up past me toward the sky, where the stars were shining on a clear moonless night.

This was the time of night, or very early morning, when the crickets, katydids, and locusts are silent, no toads are croaking, and the birds have not yet begun to herald the dawn. Perhaps the dogs could hear something. I could not. I listened for the sound of coyotes or racoons or the smaller creatures of the night, but I could not hear any rustling of any kind. Ordinarily the wind makes noises in the trees on that rise on which the house sits, but on this night the wind was still.

I cannot read the canine mind, and should leave that to our granddaughter Symphony, who seems to have the knack. But, to all appearances, both Sully and Tulip were in awe of the silence and the sky, and not a little afraid of this new and unfamiliar world that is so deeply silent, so unfathomably infinite. Smart dogs.

 

Like Catnip

02 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in Church, Faith, Garden, Nature

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catnip-plant  Catnip is one of those weeds that I enjoy having around. I planted some in the herb garden that I established in my yard. When I lived in Minonk and on the farm catnip grew abundantly all over the place. Once before when I lived at Tilton, I started an herb garden and tried to grow catnip. The same thing happened.
It got a good start and was growing beautifully. Then one morning I looked out and the catnip had totally disappeared. In its place was a well-satisfied tabby, new to the neighborhood. She had eaten every particle of the catnip.
Some things are just too good to pass up. Some things attract would-be connoisseurs from quite a distance. Sometimes I dreamed about being the kind of preacher and leading the kind of congregation that would be one of those things. Some characteristic would simply attract without people having to reach out and do the work of listening to other people and interpreting the living power of the Gospel. Like catnip.
The fact is that we must sow seeds with such abandon that there will be plenty of love shared and plenty of the knowledge of God available to people. We cannot hope to grow it in one small space and have it flourish.
I could grow catnip if I fenced it in, protected it, and really tried to preserve it from the cats who seem to need it. I have decided that catnip does better as a weed growing all over the place than as a protected herb, confined to one small garden spot. Even so, the Christian way of life.

My Friend Philip

28 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by in Caring, Church, Faith, Growing up, Learning from mistakes, Words

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3 Owls  Was it an accident or part of a larger plan that gave me Philip as my first “college roommate?” The college was Local Preacher’s Licensing School at Illinois Wesleyan University in the summer of 1963. At the ripe old age of 29, Philip was among the older students. I was the youngest, perhaps in the history of the program, at age 16.
Philip was a musician, an organist, who had completed a fine arts degree at Illinois Wesleyan nine years earlier. As a prodigy he had played the organ for his hometown skating rink and theater from the age of 8, and his home church soon after that. After years of playing for other people’s worship services, he had the justified impression that he could lead worship as well or better than many of those whom he had served.
I had read all of the recommended texts for the school, which gave me an advantage over some of the students who hadn’t yet cracked a book. Philip had probably devoured the whole reading list in a couple of hours. He could have been arrogant and condescending. In reality he was encouraging and solicitous. He read my assignment papers and offered good advice, respecting my motives and ambitions at face value, and seeming to value my participation in the school as the equal of the older and more experienced men (There were no women in the clergy licensing schools in those years.).
One of the professors, Dr. Richard Stegner, recommended my theological position paper to the class, saying it was the best of the lot, but I knew that it was the product of many of the conversations between Philip and me, and his helpful editing. We talked at length during those days and began a correspondence that lasted for several years.
While I went on to college, Philip began to serve congregations as both pastor and musician. I visited his parishes at Humboldt and Greenup during the five years that followed the Local Preacher’s School. I admired his skill in leading congregations, in youth programs, adult studies, choirs, counseling, pastoral visiting, and administrative boards.
In the many hours that we spent alone together, sharing personal experiences and private thoughts, I never had a feeling of jeopardy or improper approach from him. He had many opportunities to take advantage of my innocence and vulnerability. It never crossed my mind to question his status as an unmarried man who seemed to take no romantic interest in the opposite sex.
I was not prepared for his reaction when I used the word ‘perverse’ to describe the homosexuality of another friend of mine. He said that I was wrong to judge a loving homosexual relationship with such a word, as if the love that people shared was false or their attraction to each other was not real. I realized that he was personally offended. We shared a deep friendship and caring for each other, although it was not sexual in any overt way, and I had demeaned a part of his identity with my disparagement of another person, just because of their sexual orientation.
As I examined my own words and feelings I found that I had uncritically accepted common prejudices. My own affection and respect for both Phillip and the other friend were violated by my careless language about perversity.
Philip was not able to accept my request to play at Jan’s and my wedding a few years later, just before I went on to graduate school. We lost track of each other in the busy years that followed. I often thought of him though and wondered how he was doing, hoping someday to find him again.

July 13, 2017, Tornado Warning!

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Events, Faith, Farm, Miracles, Nature, Prayer

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funnel cloud photo
Two previous storms did significant damage to our Chapman farm near Paxton. The first came from the southwest, around 2000, and ripped a roof off a lean-to shed on the west side of the corn crib, and laid that roof on the ground next to the then-new machine shed. That wind also toppled half of the concrete block south wall of the three-car garage. Brother David and I spent a week dismantling the rest of that lean-to, learning how our father had built it with heavy timbers and 7-inch nails, and making ourselves more tired than we could remember. We hired the repair of the garage.
The second storm, five years later, brought a straight-line wind from the north, that blew a window out of the master bedroom, irreparably damaged the vinyl siding on the north side of the house, blew down the large hackberry tree between the house and the old shed, which our father had built out of full-dimension lumber from the original 1860 farmhouse. That shed stood undamaged, but the power lines supplying it came down with the tree. The wind also toppled half of the north wall of the three-car garage. I cut up the tree, except for the massive four-foot diameter trunk. For the rest of the work I hired the Sutton brothers.
Since last October Jan and I have worked regularly to clean, fix, rehabilitate, and refurnish the 1915 foursquare house. It’s been a lot of work, and much remains to be done before we call it finished. This July we looked across the broad river valley west of the house and saw a dark wall cloud coming ten miles away that the weather radio warned us about—a tornado was coming, located between Elliot and Melvin, headed our way. We saw it at a distance as it formed a perfect funnel and began to raise a debris cloud from the ground. The next twenty minutes passed like lava, as the storm clouds seemed to stand still. Jan and I headed for the basement, taking our warning radio and cell phones with us. While Jan took a seat in a camp chair in the inside corner of one basement room, I watched the storm approach through a ground-level window in another basement room. I watched the tornado coming and a second funnel forming alongside the first.
Of course I prayed, thanking God for the relative safety of a full basement with thick brick walls that had withstood storms on this “hilltop” for a hundred and two years. If the rest of the house would be removed, and Jan and I could survive, then I would be even more thankful! In the face of that tornado, we could willingly say goodbye to the house even with the precious memories it contained. There was nothing between us and the two funnels, as they appeared to be missing our neighbor’s farmstead by a few hundred yards, still heading straight toward us.
Wall clouds and funnels are extremely interesting to watch, as well as terrifying. My heart was pounding and my excitement level jumping as I watched the bases of the two funnels dance, away from each other and toward each other, in a powerful tango. When they were about a quarter mile away, still coming slowly, and I was ready to abandon my post by the window for the safety of the other room with Jan, I saw the two tornado funnels move into each other and lift off the ground. As if one funnel canceled the other, within seconds they lifted from the ground and disappeared into the black cloud above. The house was peppered with dime-sized hail, small branches, dirt, and light field debris.
A few minutes later, as the rain continued but the winds began to subside, we moved upstairs and watched the darkest clouds move farther to the east. The tornado warning continued over the radio, but, to my knowledge, no significant damage was done. We looked around the house and the yard, and there was still work to be done, but it was not the work of picking up the pieces.

“Here I Stand”

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Luther at Worms   “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.” So spoke Martin Luther in 1521 at his fateful trial in Worms (pronounce that ‘Voorms’). His words during that formative period of the German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church signaled an emphasis on individual conscience that has remained a part of our identity to this day.
We visited Worms in 1987. My family indulged my appetite for places and events that heretofore had meant little to them. We found a clean little pension house (cheap family rooms) underneath the great tower of the Dom of Worms (the cathedral). All night long the deep reverberating tones of the huge bells awakened us marking each hour. Allied bombs had demolished the immense cathedral during World War II. The painstaking reconstruction was displayed in many photographs along the walls of the nave, like stations of the cross.
The same thing happened to Luther Memorial Church two blocks away. It also was rebuilt in detail from the ruins. Significant words from Luther are inscribed on the walls of that church, and in the small chapel a crucifix depicts Jesus reaching down from the cross to embrace both a German civilian and a German soldier prostrate on the ground. The bulletin boards of both churches stressed Catholic-Protestant cooperative activities ongoing in their current lives.
A few blocks away on the Judenstrasse (Jewish Street) is the ancient synagogue of Worms, home of one of the first Hebrew congregations in Northern Europe, where Rashi, one of the greatest interpreters of the Hebrew scriptures of all time, studied as a child. Nazi thugs burned the synagogue on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938. Members salvaged what they could and sent sacred articles as far away as California to preserve them against the Holocaust that was coming. Now the synagogue building is fully restored, although it serves mostly as a memorial to the hundreds of its members killed in the Holocaust.
Still a few more blocks away is the church of Martin of Tours, on the site where, according to local belief, the fourth century saint was imprisoned for a time after his conversion to Christianity and his leaving his youthful occupation as a Roman soldier.
We visited and meditated on these landmarks of human conscience. We sat in the town square by the fountain with its fanciful sculpture in honor of another local product—the smooth German wine called Liebfraumilch, “Mother’s Milk.” Indeed as we rested, a woman strolled past, nursing her baby.
The best and the worst of human behavior is represented there. Intolerance and steadfast conscience exist side by side. Can we tolerate the differences of opinion and attitude that make life difficult? Like mother’s milk, may the wine of tolerance, kindness, mutual acceptance, assent, and dissent flow.

Sunday Evening on the Road Home, October 22, 2017

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

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sunset 2
We were driving through rain, rain that had filled two hours of the afternoon, on I-74 toward Galesburg, when we began to see the bright band of open sky on the western horizon. The contrast with the blue and gray bands of the sky above was stark. We welcomed the prospect of turning west toward Burlington. As sunset was approaching and the sun would soon be edging into that bright space, the open sky brightened into solid yellow, then startling gold. Soon the sun spread its blinding light under the blue clouds, sending golden rays shimmering across the whole landscape, highlighting the deeply scalloped row of clouds above the horizon, and fanning the bands of light in angles against the varying blue and gray tones of the clouds above.
I thought, “God’s grandeur…while all other arguments for God fail or come up short, the beauty of the earth still makes the case.”
The intensity of the gold light against the blue bands of sky increased, far surpassing any goldsmith’s skill, on a scale of magnitude infinitely greater in the whole gold bowl of the firmament. Then it grew even brighter. Our eyes had been fully occupied with the drama in the west. We were turning east into the cloverleaf onto US 34 when we saw the full rainbow spread across the eastern sky against a dark blue background. Before a moment’s thought I heard myself ask, “Who needs a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow when we have a sky full of it?”
It had been years since I had remembered that favorite poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness….”

We faced the western sunset, as the top edge of the sun slipped below the horizon, and the fan of colors shining across the clouds out of that white blue band of open sky on the horizon began to soften gradually from blinding gold into yellow, pink, mauve, red, and burgundy against the cloud ridges of blues, purples and grays. A bright reflection of the sun’s orb appeared on the western sky above the point where the sun itself had disappeared, and remained for several minutes mirrored on the distant clouds. While the ceiling of clouds darkened overhead, the silhouettes of trees and land stood black against the western brightness.
As the colors in that band of light shaded into intensely deep yellow and red, the sky appeared to flame behind the sharp silhouettes, as if the fires on the Californian coast had finally reached and filled our midwestern skies, yet they did not alarm. They impressed with overpowering awe.
Gradually, as we approached Gladstone and Burlington, the lights above dimmed into the blackness of clouds. The clouds were still overhead, no stars could shine through, and the bright band of light blue still appeared distant, although it stretched across the whole length of the western horizon as we took in the steepled lights of Burlington’s downtown.
“And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast with ah! bright wings”

The Play Preacher

28 Friday Apr 2017

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Scott and Tammy were a couple of twenty-year-olds living together in a small apartment near Lincoln United Methodist Church when I came there to serve as their first Intern Pastor in 1970. They were a local version of the “flower children” of the Sixties, smoking weed, sitting on pillows on the floor since they had no chairs, and working for just enough to get by. They were also expecting their first child, so their lives were about to change, and they were giving some thought to getting married when I knocked on their door and introduced myself as a neighbor, working at the church.

“Strange you should come,” they said, “We were just thinking we might go knock on your door, and see if someone at your church could help us get married.”

“I’m your guy,” I said, explaining that I was there for a year to serve as an intern. To their follow-up questions I answered that, as an intern, I would be visiting people, helping with the church school and adult study groups, filling in for the regular pastor from time to time, working with students at the community college, and helping a church in Tilton get reorganized. (I didn’t say that I would also be writing verbatims of many counseling sessions and visits, providing copies and recordings of sermons and worship services, meeting agendas and notes, evaluations of projects, and meeting with my seminary supervisor.) “And I can marry and bury or get you in touch with the regular pastor to do it.”

“So there’s a regular preacher and you’re the play preacher,” Scott said.

I admitted that I hadn’t heard that job title yet, but it fit. So began my first wedding counseling session on my own, since the regular pastor, my on-site supervisor, didn’t like to spend much time doing jobs that wouldn’t “build the church.” He was on a fast track to becoming one of the youngest bishops in the history of the church, or so it seemed in his own mind. In reality, he was on track to burn out before he made it to forty-five.

Scott and Tammy offered me a cup of some odd tasting herbal concoction, and we proceeded to talk about their thoughts on getting married and having a baby and life in general. As the plans progressed in the next few weeks, they were simple and easy, but they also wanted to talk about faith and God and finding meaning in life, so our get-togethers continued through the year past the date of their simple wedding ceremony by the lake with a few friends and family attending.

At the end of the year they both thanked me for coming to see them regularly, and told me they would miss our get-togethers. I told them I enjoyed our talks, too, and wished them well for a long life together with their beautiful baby and each other. I don’t know what became of them later, but I am confident that they had as many or more chances for that wish being fulfilled as any of the over five hundred couples that I have counseled since.

“You’re not just a play preacher,” Scott said. “You’re the first real preacher that I’ve ever known.”

“Thanks, but don’t rush me,” I said. “I’ve got a lot more to learn and I’m beginning to feel like ‘play preacher’ will suit me just fine.”

Seeing Jesus

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Church, Death, Faith, People, Prayer, Suffering

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Lillian lived a rough life. She had been married a short time, but she got out of it because she saw quickly that it had been a mistake. She made a living as a secretary, in an assembly line, and finally as a clerk in a package liquor store. She was a chain smoker for many years, so it was not a surprise when Chronic Pulmonary Disease took over her final years.

Her older sister, Margaret, on the other hand, lived a comfortable life, married to Bob for over fifty years, mother of two daughters, who were also married and raising families. With her husband, Margaret was active in her church and as a volunteer in the community, but she never had to earn a living outside of the home. Margaret always worried about her little sister, and when Lillian became sick and lived by herself, she made sure that her sister had a comfortable home near her own, had help when she needed it, and that her pastor would visit Lillian and, with the Elders, offer her communion as they did for other shut-ins in the community.

That is how I met Lillian. She didn’t resemble her sister, until she shared a picture of them together as young women. When I met her, Lillian was extremely thin, wrinkled, and leathery, while Margaret was plump, relatively youthful-looking, and often smiling. They were a study in contrasts in appearance, temperament, and life histories.

Underneath the obvious differences, they did share not only their childhood history, but other characteristics as well. They both had worked hard in their own ways and neither took an easy route when the harder route appeared better. Both were questioners and somewhat skeptical, not accepting a superficial answer, but digging deeper. In spite of the different paths their lives had taken, they shared many values underneath the surface.

Lillian did not respond immediately when I first visited her. She seemed a little irked that her sister had asked me to come. She was distant and unresponsive, but I persisted, saying that I liked to keep in touch with the people of our village, whether they were church members or not, just to see if there were needs that we could fill, which was part of our purpose as a church, and Margaret was one of those who made sure that we served that purpose. It was my usual spiel when talking to our non-member and indifferent neighbors. She allowed me to come and eventually to bring the communion elements that she had not received since she was a young woman.

Eventually her health deteriorated to the point that she no longer could stay at home and use oxygen there. She made several trips back and forth to the hospital and spent her final year in a nursing home, where I continued to see her about once a month. It was likely in her last trip to the hospital that she would not be discharged back to the nursing home. She seemed to be slipping deeper into unresponsiveness every day.

Then one day it was different, and she seemed to be unusually bright and alert. After a few light comments, she announced that she had a wonderful experience the night before. Jesus had come to visit her. She saw that I was taken aback, for she continued, “No, really. I know that you were here earlier, even though I didn’t feel like talking. And I know what you’re thinking—that I mistook you with your beard for him, but it really was him. I know the difference between you and Jesus! Don’t think I don’t!”

By this time we both were smiling, for this was the old plain-spoken Lillian that I hadn’t seen for a while. “Well, then, what did Jesus say to you, that made such a difference in you?”

 “He said, not to worry, that I would be coming home with him tomorrow night, and I would be able to breathe again. We had a wonderful talk, and then I relaxed and fell asleep. When I awoke he was gone.”

I don’t know what else we said about that visit with Jesus, but soon I was praying a thank you prayer with Lillian, and telling her that, one way or another, I expected to see her again. That night she fell asleep for the last time.

Churches Against Torture and Impoverishment

06 Thursday Apr 2017

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Reaching a sabbatical year in 1987, while serving St Paul UCC in Minonk, Jan and I planned a trip to Europe that coincided with our daughter Alicia’s Spanish Club trip. Jan, Nathan, and I flew to London for a week, traveled to Amsterdam by train and ferry, and then met Alicia in Paris on Bastille Day, while she came from Madrid; we stayed in Paris for a week, traveled to Geneva for a few days and then to Frankfurt—these destinations by train. We rented an automobile for the two weeks in Germany, beginning and ending in Frankfurt. All in all it was a month, using $25 a day tour guides and a tight budget.

Western Illinois University provided a course adaptable to my sabbatical plan, which was to study church-state relationships, with a faculty consultation in Paris and Frankfurt. I made contacts for interviews in the cities we visited, mostly making appointments after arriving in the cities. My family were good sports as we moved from church to church, office to office, and museum to museum.  I surrendered a few times to their desire for McDonalds, KFC, and pizza, but we did find that the definition of pizza was often as adventurous as other local cuisine, as peas, broccoli, tuna, and squid found their way onto our pizza orders.

The vitality of churches and the means of support for church budgets and buildings varied substantially. We found worshiping groups in all sizes, in traditional and non-traditional settings, and enjoyed facilities that were as new as a Methodist Church in Chelsea that finally rebuilt and opened in 1986 after being destroyed by bombs in the Second World War, and as old as the EKU (United Protestant Church) in Trier that met in a Fourth Century Roman basilica.

Some congregations derived much of their support from state church tax formulas, that for the most part maintained traditional buildings—great cathedrals such as St. Paul’s in London and Notre Dame in Paris, and historic buildings such as Calvin’s church in Geneva. The Kirchentag met in Frankfurt and hundreds of young people from across Germany and many international guests gathered, mostly paying their own way, for a week of worship, lectures, workshops, and service opportunities. Some buildings were supported by international contributions, such as the Synagogue at Worms, where a small Hebrew congregation gathered in honor and memory of the centuries of congregational life before the Holocaust. Some places seemed to be full of worshipers every day, such as Sacre-Coeur in Paris, and others closed even on Sunday, such as the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. Some congregations were entirely self-supporting, refusing even the offers of voluntary tax-channeled donations, in their traditions of independence.

Often we were noticed as guests and invited to join in meals, as was customary at the Third Order of Saint Francis Hospitality House and the “Pilgrim Church” in Amsterdam, and in many of the places that we visited.

Another thing that we noticed everywhere, whether it was in the active announcements in the services or the bulletin boards of buildings that we visited, even when we were not there during events, was common support for organizations and movements that oppose torture. Also, there were humanitarian efforts for community and international development, food, and disaster relief that we occasionally saw in the United States, but the opposition to torture and political imprisonment worldwide was remarkable, since at the time there was so little evidence of that kind of involvement in American churches. The support was evident in Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish congregations, in settings that otherwise appeared apolitical, conservative and liberal in their creeds.

Far from finding a lifeless church uninvolved in the issues facing people in the world, we found faithful communities actively concerned about the well-being of people throughout the world. If this was the evidence of the “post-Christian era” in Europe, then it held some lessons for self-congratulating religious life in the United States.