Tag Archives: Serendipity

“I know you believe in some kind of god.”

17 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by in Faith, Growing up, Gullibility, Learning from mistakes, People

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.com

The boyfriend, about to become an ex-boyfriend, said it. He had not broached the topic before. It was clear that he did not want to now. His own faith was complete, as his minister told him so. He belonged to a true church, unlike so many around us in the world today. He liked his girlfriend, but she belonged to one of those other pseudo-churches, and one that was so liberal that it no longer preached The Bible, or at least that is what his church said.

He doesn’t know what made him say it. Maybe he could begin to change her step by step until finally she would be completely acceptable. Maybe he could win her over. You can do that sometimes, his minister had said. You can pave the way for an unbeliever by showing them the right way, but you must beware of being yoked to one who will draw you away.

The words clarified the situation for her. She had thought long and hard about her faith, and she knew she was not done thinking or believing. The God she would trust was not just “some kind of God” but one who encouraged such pondering and wondering, one who did not provide just a set of simple answers, and one who did not reside in a few authoritarian leaders or absolute positions.

He didn’t know how much he had blown it until he saw her face. She was hurt and disappointed that he thought so little of her, that she might be satisfied with just “some kind of god,” as if she were as pagan as the polytheists in the ancient world. As if she would settle for something less than he would, and he had to take her by the hand and lead her. As if he thought he knew something special but could not trust himself to share it. She would never be his equal, and she would defend herself and “her kind of god” against him. Her resistance showed in her stubborn, hardening expression.

He wished he hadn’t said it. He could have let things go on as they had been, going their own way, each to the church of their choice. They wouldn’t have to talk about it for a long time. He could have been comfortable with that, because they enjoyed each other when they were together, which was not all of the time.

Where the chickens cross the road

12 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by in Farm, Nature, Travel

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.com

Staying close to the Wildlife Loop at Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota, we frequently went to see particular animals—the elk that roam the southeastern part of the park, the prairie dogs research area in the south, the wild turkeys and horses in the Bluebell area, the pronghorn, deer and bison wherever they happened to roam, the mountain goats and bighorn sheep in the steep mountains, and, of course, the burros in the southeast. We didn’t always want to travel the whole loop, so we found the shortcuts that took us in and out of the park. Our most frequent visit was to the southeast section, and Lame Johnny Road provided the seven mile shortcut.

Lame Johnny was a former sheriff who wound up hanging from a nearby tree. His road provided more than a shortcut and a sad story. Along its winding way a half mile from the park, it intersects a barnyard with a house and a couple of outbuildings on one side, and a barn and chicken house on the other. On our luckier evenings we got to see a sight that is among the rarest. Not only did we see a chicken cross the road, but we saw a flock of chickens cross the road, in single file, followed by the farmer. We did not think to ask him why the chickens were crossing the road, because we were so amazed to see him herding his chickens. On some occasions the farmer did not appear, but his chickens still crossed the road in single file.

On one occasion a guinea hen and cock provided an additional entertainment, chasing each other in loops around and under the car we were driving. We came to a quick stop, of course, but the guineas continued their chase for several minutes. It was a hold-up. We could have used Lame Johnny’s help in his sheriffing days.

I’m trying to do my best.

08 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Caring, Death, People

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dock at sunset

“Use your hands!” . . . “Use your hands!” . . . “Use your hands!” . . . the therapist said. (He wanted her to stretch out behind her and grab the arms of the chair before sitting down, but he did not say that.)

I am using my hands. I’m holding onto my walker to steady myself. What do you mean? What are you telling me to do? See my hands. Let me show them to you. You can see I’m used to using my hands. See how the fingers are misshapen. The ends of my fingers go every which way. I played the piano and organ for years and years. I took care of children, hundreds of children in the country school, and then first grade at South Grade, then North Grade School. Do you think I’m stupid? I’m using my hands, a lot longer than you’ve used yours.

If I could stretch out my hands and grab your neck, I’d do it! Don’t think I wouldn’t.

Last night I went to see Mama and Daddy. They said things had changed, just as a matter of fact. They didn’t say how they felt about it. Things have changed. I can’t figure out why. What has happened to me? I don’t like it. I saw the baby you would have had if he had lived. He had to grow up there when he couldn’t live here. He said he liked it there. (I think—Jan did have a miscarriage at three months, but Mother can’t be talking about that.)

My souls have tried to fly away. One is staying there with Mama. She died when I was 33, just when I needed her most, trying to raise four children; my husband not staying by my side. Daddy knew what I needed. His mama died when he was four, but then he had his grandma. I never got to know my grandma. Then she died when he was seven, but he had his older sister, then she died of typhoid. Daddy had to stay with neighbors, Bill and Bess Wireman, who were good people. His daddy had to work the mail route around New Salem, and he couldn’t watch the two little ones all day. Then he married Mary Jane Seaborn, and they all got to live together. My happy soul is there with him, my stubborn soul stays in my body, and my cranky soul goes wandering around this place, wherever this is.

You’re supposed know about these things. Who are you? Why don’t you do something? (I’m your son-in-law. You know me. I’m Gary. You’ve known me for 48 years, over half your life.)

I’m not where I’m supposed to be. You can do something. Take care of it. Or are you still a turtle? Slow to move. (I am a turtle. You are a wolf, and we’re both a little crazy.)

Our souls are flying all over the place.

The springs that fed the villages

30 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Farm, Growing up

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cornfields

I was one of those boys who spent a lot of my time roaming around the farm. When I wasn’t in school or doing chores, I was usually in the woods or along (or in) the streams, or examining the earth to see what I could find. Since there was evidence of the human occupation of that land for at least 3,000 years or so, there was plenty to find. Rocks of all kinds sat in the landscape, many on the surface, especially around the streams, mostly because the land had been covered by glaciers that had deposited that variety of rocks from a vast distance.

Rocks with special shapes captured my attention. From sandstone to granite, heavy large rocks that had bowls shaped into their surface often served as grinding stones for grains and nuts that were gathered or grown. Hand-sized round rocks with grooves or indentations had a useful life as anything from hammers to shaft-sharpeners. Worked flint came in the form of knives, projectile points, and hide scrapers. Broken shards of pottery showed the workmanship that had once shaped a vessel or an ornament. Rarely did I walk across the land and not find something that had been used by someone long ago.

Where clusters of tools showed up in one place the earth itself often showed the marks of human occupation with berms of soil shaped into circles and rectangles where lodgings had once stood. These remains clustered in three areas, each where a spring still kept the soil moist through summer seasons, even though farmers had for eighty years stripped the land of trees, cultivated, and shaped grass waterways into the middle of those fields, where once those springs had bubbled to the surface.

It impressed me that where my parents, two brothers, and I lived, many hundreds of people had lived for uncounted generations, leaving their marks. Where had they all gone? For only a few years heavy machinery had plowed and prepared those fields, and large barns, cribs, and a house or two had stood, providing a livelihood for a handful of people. For hundreds of years that same land had fed, sheltered, and provided for hundreds, using only what they found there, living simply “off the land.” They had to understand a lot in order to accomplish what they did.

Modern civilization depends on a complexity of specialized and diversified tasks, with a comparatively small number of people providing food for a multitude. Living off the land now means leaving the land behind, but by doing that, we know less and less about what sustains our lives, and more and more about the tiny components of our own specializations. Where is the progress in that?

Driving Robert Mann

29 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Events, Growing up, People

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Chicago skyline 1970

Returning to Chicago in the fall of 1970, after a year-long internship in Danville, Illinois, I concentrated my attention on my studies, my fellowship (which involved organizing the church-related archives of the seminary), and the immediate neighborhood of the south side. State Representative Robert Mann shocked the democratic machine by declaring his political independence and refusing machine support. They promptly selected a black candidate from the largely black district, but one who promised to be more amenable to party direction. Mann’s record was irreproachable from a liberal reformer perspective, and I decided to spend some of my “free” time volunteering for this new Independent.

We had replaced our 1960 Ford Falcon with a brand new Plymouth Valiant during my internship. When Mann’s campaign team asked for volunteer drivers, who could also provide a car, I volunteered. By that time I knew the south side streets well. I cleared a week of evenings and signed up to drive Representative Mann.

On our first evening Mann noted that their wasn’t quite as much room in the back seat of a Valiant as there was in a Checker Marathon, a first taste of his droll sense of humor. We paid a visit to a meeting of the United Steelworkers on the far south side, and Mann let me listen to a private conversation with Edward `Sadlowski (“oil can Eddie”). Sadlowski eventually led the union to a more active advocacy role during the massive layoffs and transition to overseas manufacturing during the 1980’s and 90’s. Mann, himself an attorney, reminded me that ministers must learn how to keep confidences and I should do that here. I was impressed that they were talking about a future ten to twenty years ahead of events, and how unions should try to prepare for the transition that was coming as major corporations were making plans for replacing and avoiding union contracts.

Small group gatherings in churches, civic organizations, and homes filled the next few nights. Sometimes I had to double park on the street waiting for Mann to finish and move on to the next location. When I found a convenient close parking place, I got to observe Mann’s careful handling of the issues, including facing an opponent whose racial identity matched the majority of the district, but whose political positions did not necessarily match their interests.

On Thursday evening we were driving through a Woodlawn neighborhood, not more than a mile from my apartment when a loud bang and hit to the rear of the car alarmed us both. I just kept driving. When we reached a lighted area a few blocks away, we checked and found a bullet dent in the rear panel. That evening Mann thanked me for the week of transportation, but thought he might need a heavier vehicle in the future, maybe with some bullet-proof glass.

I didn’t drive for him again, but I did vote for him, and he did win the election. Eventually he yielded his position to another independent and African-American candidate.

Growing Catnip

22 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Church, Faith, Garden, Yard

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park bench in spring

Catnip is one of those weeds that I enjoy having around. I planted some in my herb harden. At former homes in Paxton and Minonk, catnip grew all over the place, and I pulled it out except where I wanted it to grow. Once before, when I lived at Tilton, and tried to grow catnip, the same thing happened. It got a good start and was growing beautifully. One morning I looked out and it had 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 a distance. I have dreamt about being that kind of preacher and leading the kind of congregation that would be one of those attractive entities. Some characteristics of ours would simply attract without our having to do the work of listening, relating, interpreting, and living out the faith. Like catnip.

In the real world we must sow seeds with such abandon and in such abundance that there will be plenty to take hold, survive, and grow regardless of who shows up to take voracious advantage of the crop. We cannot hope to grow it in one small space and have it flourish.

I know I could have catnip if I fenced it in, protected it, and really tried to preserve it from contact with the cats who really seemed to need it. Instead 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, most things faithful.

Lake Michigan dunes reverie

21 Friday Aug 2015

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lakeshore

The forecast called for rain for most of the six days we stayed in the Michiana dunes along the southeast shore of Lake Michigan, but rain only fell during the first night, and the next morning dawned fresh and breezy. When we arrived on the shore that first morning the waves that greeted us the previous afternoon continued to crash against the shore loudly and strongly, enough for some body surfing for those not minding the chill. Every day afterward the wind slowed, the waves calmed, the water warmed, the sky cleared, until the last two days provided a lake so still that the lapping against the shore made barely a whisper. The temperatures every day were warm enough for a first week in August not to need a shirt or wrap, and cool enough in the reflected sunrays against the white sand never to feel oppressively hot. Out of twenty-five years of spending a week or two on the dune area beaches, I do not remember such a stretch of opportunities for beachcombing, resting, reading, swimming, sunbathing, or anything else we were prepared to do in or near the water.

Not a trace of alewives showed up on the beach, which in the early years of our visits met us in smelly die-off by the thousands. They hadn’t invaded the Great Lakes until the St. Lawrence Seaway made their incursion from the Atlantic possible in the 1950’s, when I paid my first visit, but the lake trout had also disappeared through over-fishing, so the alewives didn’t have any predators until Coho and Chinook salmon were brought into Lake Michigan. As those game fish became established, the alewife die-off slowly subsided, and the beaches depended on the cleanliness of their human occupants. Apart from an occasional piece of trash arriving with the waves, the Michiana shores were clean, and the users kept them so. An active storm season had left evidence along the tide zone, where a strip of heavier rocks interrupted the smooth sand of the beach. That rocky border, from two to ten feet wide, made the approach to the water a little painful for those of us with tender feet. We either walked gingerly through that zone, or we wore our sandals and beach slippers into the water. Either way the journey was worth it, as the lake water became unusually clear and warm during those days.

Even in such mild weather, every day proved different for those of us living on the beach. From noisy to nearly silent, from heavy waves to barely a ripple, from cloudy to clear skies, from cold water to warm, each day brought its variations. Never was it easy to leave the beach on the last day of our scheduled time. This year brought no difference at all in that respect.

Persistent Welcomers

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Farm, Growing up, House, Seasons

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Burlington house in fall

They welcomed us in great numbers when we arrived in August, 1988. Throughout the fall they kept coming, sometimes pestering us to the point that we wondered whether we would ever be rid of their nuisance. Even in January they kept moving, popping up at odd times and places, such as on my collar during a children’s sermon at a Sunday morning service. If I had been quick-witted, I would have turned that moment into an object lesson on persistence. When winter came in its fullness of ice and snow, they still persisted, although I saw only one every day or so. Boxelder bugs.

As a child I became acquainted with them. They were more numerous and lasted longer than lightning bugs, so when it was no longer possible to collect the more illuminating lightning bugs, I turned my acquisitive attention to boxelders, seemingly harmless, and only slightly stinky, but certainly persistent and ubiquitous. The worst weather in heat and dryness brought out the best in them, but they made themselves known even in cold and icy times in the warm comfort of the house. In Burlington the bugs had occupied the soft maple trees that grew along the berm immediately north of our house. On the farm they had occupied the namesake boxelder trees that grew along the river bank not far from the house. In both cases they moved inside when they decided the conditions were better there. For whatever reason the bugs left our Burlington house the next spring and have never returned.

I want such long-lasting determination, such unexpected perseverance, for my faith. When I am caught in mundane, day-to-day tasks that seem to drag on endlessly, I need the unexpected reappearances of joy and surprise that persist in spite of all I do to suppress them or tame them or forget about them. When I am overcome by the scale of problems that seem insurmountable, I need the confident will to see a victory that gives meaning to my feeble and uncertain movements. Sometimes such faith does appear in solitary heroic figures battling all odds. Sometimes such faith comes in masses of individuals filling every corner and space with their relentless march of life conquering death. Even such lowly creatures as the boxelder bug encourage us by the nuisance of their example.

You have to be “on the inside”

18 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Caring, Church, House, Learning from mistakes

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Burlington house in fall

We moved into our old house in Burlington in August of 1988, twenty-seven years ago. Friends helped us to move from Minonk, Illinois, and we sat together on folding picnic chairs on the back porch and had lunch. They noticed that there was a doorbell on the back porch, just outside the kitchen. It worked well, making a “dong” sound, and when the front doorbell sounded it made a “ding-dong” sound.

The doorbell location presented a problem. You had to go through the rear door of the house to get to the doorbell. By the time you made it to the kitchen door, you were already inside the house, and since the kitchen was usually the center of activity in the house, most of the time you could just say hello to anyone who was working or sitting around the kitchen table. You wouldn’t need to use the doorbell.

Like many old farmhouses, most people who know us come to the back door anyway, but the fact is that, unlike when we lived in the country, we usually lock the back door, so getting to the doorbell presented a challenge. You would have to knock on the door in order to get us to let you in so that you could press the doorbell.

Many years ago the back porch was really an open porch. There was no door because there were no walls. The kitchen door was the back door. Sometime in the 1960’s, the Nelsons hired a young Jim Wilson to enclose the back porch, build walls, and put in a row of casement windows to make a three season unheated room. (We liked it so much that we added insulation and a heating vent and made it into an all-season room.) But no one bothered to move the doorbell.

Maybe the previous residents were so friendly that people could just open the door and walk in. Ideally we would like to live that way, but we tend to live a bit more privately, even though the large windows on all sides of the house make it a see-through first floor when the curtains are pulled to the side.

We don’t always make it easy for people to get inside. With the door locked, you had to raise a ruckus to get our attention. It would be a lot more welcoming to place a doorbell in a convenient location, so that is what I did, among one of the top items on my “to do” list.

We don’t always make it easy for people to get inside other things either, but hospitality means making the changes that make it easier to get in.

Loads in Need of Redistribution

17 Monday Aug 2015

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Burlington house in fall

My house in Burlington is now 115 years old, but I installed a new 200 amp circuit box several years ago, and the panel of circuit breakers was impressive—23 circuits with room for 28. Only one circuit kept blowing, and when it blew just about everything went with it. The television, the dishwasher, the electric heater, lights and outlets all over the place—all went out. Since something was amiss, I put on my electrician’s sleuthing hat.

The air conditioner, refrigerator, freezer, furnace, clothes dryer, electric range, hot tub, and the clothes washing machine each had its own own circuit. They were dedicated circuits serving major appliances and ones that had enough of a load to justify their single purpose and that was appropriate. They kept doing their own jobs even when the other circuit blew. That totaled eight dedicated workhouse circuits—four of which were double or 220 circuits, so those and the one that blew accounted for thirteen spaces in the box. What about the other ten?

One took care of the outlets and lights in three rooms upstairs. We didn’t use them a lot, but there were times when the whole family came to visit, and then they got put to use. They were there, ready to serve, even when the rest of the house shut down. Then there was one circuit serving one outlet in the half-bath downstairs, and one serving an outlet in the kitchen corner, and another serving another outlet behind the antique Hoosier in the kitchen, and another serving one outlet in a corner of the basement. They seldom served any purpose, so it was plain that they were far from being overloaded. They were seriously underloaded. There was one serving a small fluorescent light fixture above the kitchen sink, which explained why it continued to shine when everything else went dark, but in spite of its perpetual and faithful shining, it was definitely an underused circuit. There were two circuits available for the garage, which took a few years to put into service. Then there was one that went upstairs to the master bedroom where a window air conditioner used to sit. Every one of these circuits was added when someone wanted to add one more light or outlet or appliance to the house. The tenth one served the lights, ventilating fan, and outlets in a new addition that was added several years ago.

Yes, something was amiss when over half of the available circuits were completely idle most of the time, and when one—obviously the original house circuit—was trying to carry too much of the load. I had to spread the load around so that the underused circuits could carry their share, before the breakdown of the one circuit led to more disastrous results.

It made me wonder how much of the power distribution in the organizations and churches in which I have taken part resembled my old house. Perhaps some load redistribution has been in order in other places too?