Tag Archives: Synchronicity

Living in an Ecumenical Family

22 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Caring, Faith, Growing up, People

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Bridge in Autumn

Many years ago, when I learned that my first cousin had become a Muslim, I was surprised. Central Illinois is not the environment in which I expected Muslim conversion to occur. My cousin, however, met her husband at the University of Illinois, where many students and teachers represent the wider world. He was from Iraq, and they fell in love. She found enough affirmation of her Christian beliefs within Islam to convert, which was easier for her than for him, considering his strong Muslim family ties. Their marriage occurred in the years in which Saddam Hussein and the United States’ administration were on friendly terms, and she went with him to live in Iraq for several years, while his work in agriculture—teaching and government administration—proved rewarding. Then life began to change for everyone concerned, and they found their way back to Illinois and the university. Meanwhile their family grew, and soon I had many Muslim cousins. We were an ecumenical family, with Jews, Christians—both Catholic and Protestant, Muslims, and Buddhists, all related to one another by close family ties.

By the time I had learned of her conversion, I had read a few books on Islam and its practices and history, as well as other faiths. That was an interest of mine, which I pursued in college as well, majoring in philosophy and religion at Illinois Wesleyan University. My instructors were not advocates of Islam; most of them were professing Christians, but they were for the most part fair in their presentations of other faiths, and they encouraged our open-minded communication and visits to the worship and study centers of other faiths, which I did enthusiastically.

Although I was secure in my own faith traditions, aspects of Judaism and of Islam were still attractive enough for me to develop both sympathy and admiration for the faithful people I met from those backgrounds. Clearly a spectrum of beliefs, from hardline and literalistic to permeable and metaphoric, existed in the three branches of the children of Abraham. We were cousins, both in fact and in faith, not always friendly and loving cousins, but potentially so.

A biography of Moses ben Maimon—Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher—fascinated me. Like many of our ancestors of all three faiths he had to flee Spain at one of the historic points of intolerance and expulsion. His refugee journey ended in Egypt under Islamic rule, and he soon found his way into the medical service for the ruling family. His dilemma was whether he could declare himself a Muslim. It would ease his entrance into Egyptian society. Was there a sense in which he could accept the faith of Islam?

As far as the meaning of the word ‘Islam’ was concerned, there was no problem. Being subservient or obedient to the One God was what their faith was about, and so was his faith. That they called him Allah presented no problem, for he understood that ‘Allah” was an Arabic word for God, much as the English people had adopted the old English word ‘God.’ Hebrew had adopted many Semitic words from their cultural environment as names for ‘YHWH’ as well. The practices of Islam—profession of faith, daily prayer, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Medina and Mecca—presented no insurmountable obstacles; those practices were familiar and admirable.

The main question for Maimonides was whether he could affirm that Mohammed was a prophet of God. He didn’t have to declare that Mohammed was the only prophet, since their writings affirmed the prophetic gifts in Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, and even Jesus and his mother Mary. Certainly in practice Islamic attention was fixed on Mohammed, but they accepted the prophetic roles of the others as well. Finally, after much thought, Maimonides decided that Mohammed had at least as much prophetic spirit as some of the earlier prophets of Israel. Mohammed had repudiated and replaced the idolatry and polytheism of Arabia with a clear monotheism, he had accepted the validity of the faith of other People of the Book (Jews and Christians), and he had stressed the many attributes of God that Maimonides praised as well—mercy, justice, wisdom, compassion, and patience, among others. Therefore he could affirm the name of Muslim as long as he could continue to practice his Jewish faith as well. That seemed to me a fair and understandable position for a wise man to take.

If I were to live in a world where we were required to affirm a single faith in order to be accepted, I wondered and still wonder what I would do. If the required faith was a form of literalistic and fundamentalist Christianity, I would be as hard-pressed to affirm it as I would be to affirm the same kind of Islam, or Mormonism, or Lutheranism for that matter. As long as our attention is fixed on God and human need, whether I try to live under the title of Jew, Christian, or Muslim, I still have a long way to go to learn how to do it well.

The Miracle of the Broken-down Weed Chopper

25 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in Events, Farm, Forest, Seasons, Yard

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redwood treesI was ready to start the weed chopper and mow the strip at the sides of the Shepherd’s Gate house and driveway. Two or three mowings a season is enough to keep new trees and plants from encroaching “my” space, which is fifteen to twenty feet around the perimeter of the house. The rest of the surrounding acres remain wild woodland and take care of themselves. The engine started well, but the mounted mower whiplines did not engage. Turning off the engine I found the belt had slipped off its pulley. If I had not already been thinking about my father, this could easily have reminded me of the many times some piece of equipment broke down and delayed the work of planting or harvest or general farm maintenance.

When it came to tools my father was not the most organized. Keeping the right tool in the right location was a challenge, and as a result there were usually a dozen places where that tool might be. The tool house was well-organized, thanks to the my older brother’s intervention, but tools tended to migrate from there to every tractor, barn, crib and shed which had its own specialized tool collection. It was always frustrating to run into a task that required the tool that was somewhere on the other side of the farm. In my case on this day, the small tool box I had with me held only  pliers, inadequate to the task of removing the cover to reinstall the belt. The plumbing kit, ready for the bathroom fixture installation tasks that I had planned for this trip,  had wrenches that were much too large to reach the bolts I had to loosen.

Then I thought of the small toolbox Dad gave me to use at Shepherd’s Gate. It had a few well-worn basic tools. Did I remember that it had a driver and socket set? I looked and it had only two sockets, but what were the chances that these were the ones that would fit? I took them out to the chopper, and one fit the larger bolts, and the other one fit the smaller bolts perfectly! Thereafter the job was a snap. Thanks, Dad.

This is hardly evidence convincing to anyone of a surrounding cloud of witnesses or an angelic host. Plenty of times I have had to learn from my oversights, go out and buy or borrow the necessary tool, or take that extraordinary amount of time to complete the simplest task. But this time Dad was definitely present, patiently gazing over my shoulder, and chuckling, so I add it to the list of revealing moments when I speak my grateful dues and recognize the continuing influence of the unseen. Thank you, Abba!

Accepting calls…and divine signs?

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

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self-portrait

Soon after accepting a call to serve Zion United Church of Christ in Burlington, Iowa, I looked at the church’s address—412 North Fifth Street. At the time I was serving St. Paul’s UCC at 236 West Fifth Street in Minonk, Illinois, after serving the United Church of Tilton, Illinois, at 520 West Fifth Street. Excluding all of my short-term and temporary church-related jobs, every full-time church I served had a Fifth Street address. Purely a coincidence, I’m sure.

A first parish surely always makes a deep impression on a minister, for good or ill, but often in deep and tender impressions. The morning  I announced my resignation from the United Church of Tilton, I tearfully expressed my gratitude to the congregation for its loving support over the ten years I had  known them. I spoke of the major changes we had gone through and predicted the obvious—that more changes would come. At that moment lightning struck the church, creating an impressive flash in the air above the area where the congregation sat. It didn’t do any damage, but it sure emphasized my point.

Over a career I have interviewed with many congregations and organizations for different positions, especially in those years when I was just getting started and had little experience. For a while I thought I was getting enough background with interviews that I was learning how to do it, but then came three interviews in which I fell one vote short of having the unanimous vote that those committees required. The most disappointing decision came from South Haven, Michigan. The whole situation seemed too good to be true. The congregation’s program and its needs appeared to be a perfect fit, the church building and its parsonage were in good condition, the committee was responsive and cordial, and South Haven sat on the shore of our beloved Lake Michigan, not far from where we vacationed for many years. It was perfect. The one vote against me came from the woman who provided our overnight accommodations in her home. I never was a morning person, but I was on my best behavior. I was severely disappointed when I learned the outcome.

When I accepted the call to go to St. Paul’s in Minonk a short time later, and we looked at the parsonage once again, I looked across the street and saw the new senior citizen apartment complex. Its name was South Haven. Sometimes God’s sense of humor is just too much.

Because of a car with an eagle on the hood…

28 Thursday May 2015

Posted by in Caring, Death, Events, Learning from mistakes, Racial Prejudice, Small town life

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3 Owls

The young man was two years out of high school, making a high wage as he worked in construction on the Clinton nuclear power plant, and proud of his shiny new black Trans-Am with the large eagle design on the hood. He was a brash and mouthy country boy, which was understandable. He was young, energetic, with pockets full of cash, and he came from a small town not noted for open attitudes.

Two young men, about the same age, drove down from Chicago, looking for work, but not finding. They filled out applications, but knew they were filed away at best, often just tossed into the waste can. They had more wishes than experience, and their references were not spectacular. Their car was an old beater, barely held together by Bondo and wire. They were as brash and mouthy as the first young man.

They were on a collision course, randomly, to all appearances, not by clear intent, and they had more in common than they knew, except that one had a good paying job and the other two did not. No one witnessed the event itself. We could only imagine what was said, by whom. It was in Champaign, Illinois, outside a bar. None of the three was operating with his best behavior. Prejudices and resentments fueled their encounter.

A telephone call came to me soon afterward. Would I officiate at the funeral of a young man, killed in an angry altercation, his “pride and joy” car stolen? They didn’t know who had done it, but they had ideas. A neighbor had recommended that they call me. I didn’t know any of them, but I said “yes.” They needed someone.

There was a mob at the funeral, filling the mortuary chapel and its overflow spaces. The directors had “never seen such a crowd,” they said. The young man was well-known, if not always well-loved. Grief held center stage, but it was surrounded by a cast of anger, hatred, and fear.

After conversations with his family, I had plenty to say that appreciated his life and work. I noted the absurdity of dying because of one’s proudest possession, and I named the encounter as a tragic and devastating loss for everyone concerned. I represented a “Savior who died for all,” who loved each person, understanding the mixture of guilt and good that is in each one, and who can be trusted to take what we are and to shape it for  a better world to come. It was too early to expect anyone to understand a call for forgiveness. What did they need to forgive in the young man who was murdered? How could anyone ever forgive the murderers? Mostly the crowd was silent afterward. A few made the special effort to say that they heard what I was saying. Much later, a man said that it was the one sermon that he remembered and pondered.

Old Man Hide and Seek

20 Wednesday May 2015

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Bridge in AutumnWhere, but in the ministry, would you find a 50-something old man sitting in the dark under a table in the anteroom behind the chancel, playing a game of hide and seek with young teens at midnight? Yet there I was at a youth lock-in, listening to the amusing echoes of youngsters and adults at play in a cavernous church.  

The room was pitch black, and I found my way into a space whose form I had memorized from previous visits. It was true and remained so—no one would find me there. I was safe. I could even take a nap if I wanted. 

As I sat there, holding knees folded to chest, a single thread of light found its way from the sanctuary through the doorway, and spread its thin light in a cruciform shape along the tile floor, and shot its way unfailingly to my eye. My place in the utter darkness was illuminated with a steady and incredibly bright light, considering that it came from a dim emergency exit lamp a hundred feet away. I was astonished. 

God does not usually find anyone at youth lock-ins. Things that are sublime and ineffable flee from such events. The most that one hopes for are fun and good fellowship, and these often come in full measure. But not revelation. 

There I was, discovered by a cross-shaped light in my utter darkness, with the young people who were “it” not far off breaking the silence with their name-game, “Who are you? Tell us who you are, and we won’t catch you… this time. I don’t know who this is, but I know someone is there. Is it the red-haired girl? What’s her name? Who is it? Tell us and we won’t give you away.” (It was in actuality another fifty-something minister who remained anonymous until he could no longer restrain his laughter.) 

It was a revelation. Not communicable on that night when minds glass over with sheets of youthful energy impenetrable by thought. Barely expressible even now, when I still wonder at the mystery of that moment. We can try, but we never can hide from the mystery.

Odd Things @ Death: The Happy Birthday Rotating Cake Plate

14 Thursday May 2015

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Luna moth

Alice Haskell was quite a lady—vocal, dignified, competent, self-possessed. I met her when the senior pastor assigned her Senior Women’s Sunday School classroom to serve as my office, a dual purpose. She was indignant that her space had to be shared; whether she was totally serious or not, which I never knew, we made our accommodations with each other, which included several lunches and suppers together over the months to come, and much sharing of experiences. She extorted a promise that was against my better judgment, that I would not leave her town until I had firmly planted her underground. That promise was sealed with an exchange of tokens, like any sincere covenant. She gave me a metal cake plate that one wound up and it rotated and played ‘Happy Birthday.’ Of course, it had a chocolate cake on it to seal the deal. I planted bedding flowers in her garden by her house. In due course, Alice died. I officiated at her funeral. Within a year I moved on.

We arrived in our new house, ready to unpack boxes upon boxes, on my birthday. Sitting on the couch we were looking at the job we hated to begin when one of the boxes, that was sitting on the kitchen counter around the corner, began to play “Happy Birthday.” We got up, went into the kitchen, opened the box and, of course, it was the cake plate, but how it managed to rotate and play its tune, packed as it was, inside the box, left us puzzled. “Thank you, Alice,” was the only response that seemed appropriate.

Odd Things @ Death: The Dove that Didn’t Know Where to Go, or Did It?

14 Thursday May 2015

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Luna mothAs a participant in church youth activities and outings, Cary was one of those young men who was always athletic, good-natured, cooperative, and congenial. When he graduated from high school and enlisted in the Army, following in the military footsteps of his relatives, we sent him off with every expectation that he would succeed and serve admirably. Toward the end of his basic training we received the terrible news that he had killed himself, alone in his barracks, when everyone else was away on leave.  Family and friends were devastated. As his pastor officiating at his funeral I also was at a loss to speak much more than our affection and appreciation for the Cary we knew and to pray that God heal his and our broken hearts.

People took part in the funeral with the open emotions and incredulity that come with a largely young adult crowd. Even those of us who were much older could only register our questions and grief. Tears and comforting hugs passed abundantly. The crowd moved to the cemetery in old Aspen Grove, where the trees provided graveside shade on a sunny afternoon, on the edge of a slope into a sheltered valley.

The family had chosen a symbol that seemed fitting of the idea of the spirit’s release into the heavens—a white dove, actually a homing pigeon, freed at the end of the graveside committal service to fly away. Only the bird, once freed, made a circle and came right back to the casket to perch. A little polite waving had no effect on the bird. We proceeded, of course, to complete the actions at the cemetery, accommodating the presence of the white dove.

Family and friends returned to the grave in the following days, only to find the dove nearby or at the marker. “What does this mean?” they asked each other, until presumably the owner of the pigeon came to claim his bird and take him home. Not believing that everything necessarily has a meaning, I deferred to others’ answers. Still, I heard people say often enough that Cary did not really want to leave us and needed to find a way to let us know.

Starting a list of the odd things that happen around death

05 Tuesday May 2015

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Luna mothA colleague told me about his uncle who was killed in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. He went to visit the military cemetery in Belgium where his uncle’s body was buried along with thousands of other casualties from that battle. He entered the memorial chapel where the book is kept that records the names of all the soldiers buried there, with the locations of the graves. He approached the book. It was already open to the page with the name of his uncle, out of thousands of names, and no one there to open the book for him.

A friend’s grandfather died at the ripe age of 95. He had lived at his own home and tended his own garden until a short final hospitalization. She had lived nearby and helped him in his garden. The day of the funeral they went back to his house for a family gathering, and near the front door there was a fresh rose blooming on an old plant, but the rose showed a new combination of red and white, his favorite rose colors, on a plant that before had only produced reds.

I had spent several hours of the day at the bedside of a dear and faithful member of the church, knowing that her time was growing short. She had no family left, and her aged peers could not remain at her side. I also needed a break and took a few minutes for something to eat, and returned as quickly as I could. When I approached the door to her room, I heard lovely symphonic music coming from inside. At least I thought it was coming from inside, though no player or radio had been there before. I supposed a thoughtful nurse had brought one in, to provide the soothing sounds that sometimes calm the sufferer. When I opened the door, walked into the room and stood at her bedside, I saw that she had died, her face finally serene after her struggles with pain. Then I noted that the music had stopped; the room was utterly quiet. There was no player or radio there, and there was no music coming from outside either.

The Consolation of Being Lost in the Right Place

23 Thursday Apr 2015

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Luna moth

Out of the Streator hospital with the newest calcium channel blocker, I was on my way to see a cardiologist in Pekin. No cardiologist was serving at Streator at the time, and my GP, Dr. John, referred me to Dr. Riaz Akhtar at Pekin, 45 minutes in the opposite direction. I hadn’t been to Pekin in many years and never knew my way around the city, so I got lost. (This was many years before Garmin and GPS, but I did have a little Pekin map.) Jan was not with me on this first visit, she was in school, and, after having survived three events in which I expected to die, another stress treadmill and echocardiogram sounded easy enough to do by myself.

Finding my way around Pekin was not easy, though, and I pulled into the cemetery along the main highway, to look again at the map. There was no parking along the busy highway, and the cemetery provided no traffic and easy parking. I scanned the cemetery, and was surprised to see a familiar name, Glen Sims.

The Sims family was my prior connection to Pekin, and I had visited them there twenty years previously. Before going to Pekin, Glen Sims had been my pastor, and he continued to be my mentor through my years of college and first year of seminary, until a malignant brain tumor suddenly ended his life fifteen years before. That was when I had last been there, in that spot, though I had no memory of where it was. I had just came upon the place when I was lost. Beyond my parents and wife, no one had influenced my life more. I missed no one more. Since events had brought me unexpectedly to this place, and I still had enough time to make my appointment, it seemed a propitious time for him and me to have a conversation, tearful and refreshing. He always had that effect on me, a mixture of tenderness and joy.

Afterward I drove straight to Dr. Akhtar’s office. After the tests, and at a later appointment, Dr. Akhtar gave his advice. He was a no-nonsense cardiologist. My moderate exercise and diet and propensity to let events control my schedule, instead of my doing so, must change. I must gradually build up my heart like any muscle, since it was woefully inefficient as it was.  I must live on a low fat, low carbohydrate diet, no caffeine, no alcohol, and I must run or swim, not walk, six days out of seven, for at least forty-five minutes, or else. Or else, what? They could put in a new heart valve, but he wouldn’t recommend it, since they would have to do it again within a few years, and life would not improve without these other changes anyway. Fortunately he didn’t expect me to jump into running immediately. He advised that I enter into that exercise slowly and steadily, under Dr. John’s care, since he happened to be a runner also. And the other “or else?” A rule of thumb, he said—seven years of experiences like yours and you can expect to be dead, if you’re lucky.

I was very glad to have had that conversation with Glen Sims.

The unnatural event of resurrection

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Seasons

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purple butterfly

“The first fruits of those who have died” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Even the metaphors of resurrection connect us to nature. In our area the serviceberry, also called the shadblow, is among the first bloomers and the first fruits of spring. We rejoice in the renewal of natural life that spring provides. Easter fits right into nature’s course. Even the name Easter brings to mind the ancient religions of natural renewal. Every Christian festival makes a connection to some phase of the agricultural cycle, just as the Jewish festivals that preceded them made those connections between God’s great historical actions and the natural cycles of life.

But resurrection is not nature in any typical observation. We do not ordinarily see resurrections. We see metaphors for rebirth in butterflies and seemingly dead plants and seeds springing to life. We see deserts blossom in the rare showers that fall. We see the persistence of life in extremely frigid and extraordinarily super-heated conditions, and the superabundance of life in most places on earth. But we also see extinctions, endangered species, the alarming die-offs of chunks of this interdependent environment of the earth, which we know will never be duplicated or replaced. We see deaths without visible resurrections.

Thanks to Jesus and his early followers we have our imaginations inspired by events with a claim to history, if not to nature. It was not a natural phenomenon that they proclaimed, although before them many had dreamed of resurrections of the dead. There was no divorce from the body in their thoughts, though other peoples had dreamed of a soul separating from the body at death. This was not the Hebrew dream; they were people tied to the goodness of the earth and physical life. They dreamed of a bodily resurrection, where the goodness of the body could provide a vessel for the spirit that God shared with people, and to an invisible extent God shared that spirit with all the rest of creation, as it “groaned in travail.”

Jesus was no resuscitated corpse, no ghost, nothing like anything imagined, a surprise when he came. But he and they gave us a hope that takes us beyond nature as we know it and beyond history as we know it most of the time, and we are thankful for that hope every time we say farewell to someone or something we have loved. We want more life, and not just any life, life in this specific form of this person, this animal, this place. Our faith anchors that hope in Jesus, in heaven, in God’s infinitely loving and seemingly impossible promises.

Nature takes us to near-death experiences, but no farther. Nature revives hearts that are not beating and lungs that have stopped inflating, but not if too much time has passed, and not without help. Does God have another nature in store for us, rearranged atoms, other dimensions, realms of spirit with a different nature than we have yet imagined? These are tantalizing questions for those of us who want explanations and hard evidence.

For now we must settle for the reality of first fruits, in various degrees of deliciousness. Metaphors feed our stomachs, while our eyes try to see beneath and behind, what Jesus would have us see.