The Lion and the Lamb

I've never been a hunter, never owned a gun, never shot anything in the wild, never saw the pleasure of killing.  In this day and age with a torrent of controversy about gun control on all levels of society, with gun sales going through the roof and with the majority of Americans opposing any major restrictions on gun sales and use, I found it interesting the other day to read that on a farm in Scotland a herd (flock?) of sheep had enclosed in their numbers a lost or orphaned or abandoned fawn.  As the farmer drove his animals along the road the sheep kept the fawn securely protected in the center of the herd.

I've never been robbed at gunpoint, never had my house robbed at gunpoint, never had my wife or daughter molested by a gun-toting hood. I don't know if my attitude toward guns might have changed if any of that had actually happened. What I do know is that "he that taketh up the sword dies by the sword."  The more guns that are bought, the more guns are bought to protect against the guns that were bought. The more violent games kids buy and play the more violent kids do violent things. Ernest Hemingway who hunted in Africa and shot every animal that was found for him to shoot once famously said, "I never met a gun I didn't like."  Shooting ranges are increasingly being used by women and girls. Yes, there are solutions to the world of guns and gun violence although I'm not the one to offer profound sociological analyses of this or anything related to it. I do think whatever laws or restrictions are to be put in place in gun control have to be underwritten by moms and dads and families and churches and schools and Scouts all coming together to take on the gun lobby and to enact local laws and teach children well about violence and how to deal with it from the time they're two years old. 

A society that takes up the sword as a substitute for more rational and needed measures of controlling violence becomes an armed mob. If we measure it by gun sales we are close to living in that society now. It took American society untold generations to free itself from the violence of slavery and the suppression of women's right to vote, perhaps the time is coming when the lion will lie down with the lamb, when "They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters that cover the sea."

A New Year’s Benedictus

Since light does shine in the darkest night

As moons and stars give off their light

Since peace does thrive in the midst of war

Where hopes endure and spirits soar.

So each New Year brings a dawning day

Of renewing love that comes to stay

A kiss, a touch, to mend our soul

    Is a New Year’s gift that makes us whole.

~ Clarence McConkey

Joy To The World

The question Jesus asked the disciples, “What did you go out to see?,” when they went looking for him, has all the earmarks of the Advent/Christmas season. What is it exactly we go out to see when we talk about, think about, buy for, celebrate, this holy season? Of course the answer to that depends on who we are individually, what our histories are concerning this season, what our traditions are.  Yet there is built into the Advent/Christmas season so many themes that we only have to choose which one we want to give priority to. For myself I opt for memory. By memory I don’t mean memories of eating, drinking, gift-giving, family togetherness and music, music, music. These are all integral parts of our Advent/Christmas celebrations of course and all have meaning for us. 

When I say memory, I mean, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19). The theological/practical impact of this simple sentence is almost beyond our understanding. What I think about for myself when I write about memory is how that statement from 2 Corinthians filters down to us like falling snow. If God is reconciling us to himself, along with all the human race, who are we reconciling ourselves to in response?  Mom reconciling with dad in attitude and inner spirit? Children reconciling with parents, brothers with sisters, former enemies now become friends? What’s the use of a reconciling God if it pays no dividends in the reconciling of God’s children to one another? Ah, the magic and mystery of Christmas: lights, trees, greetings, homecomings! Yes, homecomings, people coming home to God, children coming home to parents, old enemies coming home as new friends.  “God and sinners reconciled/Joyful all ye nations rise/Join the triumph of the skies…..” In reconciliation from God to person and from person to person, we truly join the triumph of the skies.

May God bless us everyone.

Just a Keepin’ on Goin’

In my senior year of high school I went out for football.  I weighed 100 pounds, two pounds more than my football uniform.  I was used as water boy, tackling dummy, on the chain gang and keeper of timeouts.  I played briefly in one game that we lost.  At the sports night banquet I sat while others won their awards.  Nearly everybody who played on the team got some award of higher or lower achievement.  At the end of the presentations, as we were getting ready to be dismissed, Coach Carmichael said, “There is one other award to be given.  Will Clarence come up front, please?”  I was as surprised as the other team members but after I’d gotten up front the coach said, “This award to be given to Clarence is given, not because he started any games or scored touchdowns or made fantastic plays.  He is given this award because out of all the players on this team he is the only one who never missed a practice or a game.  He is my ideal of the true sportsman.”

Well, I’d like to say I got a full scholarship to college or was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys or made the cover of Sports Illustrated.  I didn’t get anything like that.  But I’ll tell you something I did get.  I got the reward of a lesson about determination, about not giving up (you should have seen the way those 220-pound Kansas farm boys tackled a 100-pound scared-out-of-his-wits kid who liked reading books a lot more than he did chasing footballs.) In my family life, my professional life as a minister, the hard rocky road of hard times and of failure and mistakes, I’ve kept alive the value of what my mother called, “Just a keepin’ on goin’.”  Now that I’ve lived long enough to gain enough weight to hold my pants up, I may just go back to my high school for a Friday night football game and get the coach to let me suit up.  About half way through the third quarter I’ll run out onto the field and hit one of those Kansas Jayhawking football players right in some tender place until he sees stars.  I’ll go back to the bench and say to myself, “Good goin’, Mom, you taught me how to do it.”

Do you have to be CRAZY to run for President?

When William Henry Harrison was President of the United States he famously said, "Any man who wants to be president of the United States has to be out of his mind." There is some evidence of the truth of this quote. My memory of presidents only goes back to FDR who crazily tried to pack the Supreme Court with 16 judges, all his cronies, when the law only allowed 10. Nixon lied, stole, cheated and authorized the break in at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. Kennedy had sex with a woman he took along on his flights in his private quarters. She has written a book about it. Clinton did something akin to that with an intern while Hillary napped or something. George W. Bush refused to land in New Orleans to view the disaster of Katrina stating, "It just didn't feel right." So far, after four years, Obama seems to be the least of church goers and the best at living a high moral life with his family.

So - why the despicable behaviors of so many presidents? Here's a possible clue: in Harpers, Vol. 325, No. 1950, p. 96, it is suggested that psychopathic traits may make for better presidents. Harrison was right!  Ya gotta be nuts to want to be President. A psychopath, among other things, is defined as having maladaptive behavior ("Let's go to war with somebody!"), difficulty in knowing the difference between truth and untruth, "I never had sex with that woman!", Reagan before the Iran-Contra Investigating Committee, "I had no knowledge of, or information about, that operation," (later witnesses testified he lied), and presidential aspirant Barry Goldwater, "...extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! ...moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." In other words, Nuke 'em.

I don't know, maybe a president does have to be loony to want to be president and to endure four years of it. My hat is off to anybody who has been, is now, or ever will be, president. Maybe what we really ought to do is pick a candidate from one of the wards at Bellevue Hospital and elect him or her on the slogan, "He kept us out of war with Bermuda." Then he or she wouldn't have to go crazy in office, he's already got it made. I'll vote for him, her, on the slogan "ON TO THE WHITE HOUSE ALL YOU CRAZIES."  Can't hurt, and maybe we’d see a better outcome than from some of the former occupants of that lunatic asylum.

What My Friends Have Done Lately

Computers have an important function called Messenger. By way of this function we're able to keep in contact with friends by exchanging emails, keeping up on what people are doing, letting off steam, asking advice, giving advice, ad infinitum. Down at the bottom of some lines this is the notice, YOUR FRIENDS HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING LATELY. I think, what? Any computer that doesn't know what my friends have done lately ought to have its head examined. OK, I'm stretching here but there's a message, not about this computer that I have social issues with, but about our friends.

Robert Louis Stevenson in his poem, THE CELESTIAL SURGEON, reminds us "If I have faltered more or less in my great task of happiness, if I have moved among my race and shown no glorious morning face..." Whether I look or whether I listen I see friends of mine moving among our race and making the faces of others look up in hope and gratitude and appreciation for the gifts of others. I see my friend who is a nurse bringing a healing touch to every patient she touches. I see my friend the auto mechanic fixing cars so we can do things and go places. I see my friend the fireman risking his life every day in his service to the community. I see my friend the teacher bringing knowledge to her students and challenging them to a higher life. I see my little friend Aaron taking his even smaller sister Ellie to the ice cream shop for a cone. I see my artist friend bringing to life with ink and brush the whole panorama of the world. I see friends who, with the smile Robert Louis Stevenson describes, light up the whole environment.

So, here on this glorious morning with cooler weather and the singing of the birds in the trees out in the yard, I say, Get lost, computer, with your unsmiling face and heartless screen. Get it?

Make Way Now

There is a provocative saying about marriage to the effect that men, who say they will change, never do, and that women, who say they will never change, always do. In the 1700's in the Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada desert country the coming of the Spanish conquistadores from the south and Anglos from the east brought both in conflict with Native Americans who had been there for centuries. The Apaches were one of the most tragic tribes who suffered from this conquest. As it was the intention of both Spanish and Americans to take Apache territory, over a century of conflict ensued between these groups.
Among the many families, tribes and related groups of the Apache, especially the Nnee, there was a mythical spiritual figure know as Changing Woman. This figure was important in Apache symbolism and especially so in the midst of the destruction of Apache life. In this time of troubles the Apache were able to draw inspiration from Changing Woman because their lives and culture were being changed continually.

I like to think the so-called unpredictable nature of women, if there is such a thing, is a blessing both to men and to women. To be able to adapt to changing circumstances, to see the good in the bad, the possible in the impossible, to build on the good and put away the bad, to embrace rather than reject, is to be the leavening, the healer, the mediator, the listener, the forgiver in marriage and family life and in community life. It's what helps tide us over. As it was said of Florence Nightengale as she visited the sick, the wounded and dying during the Civil War, "Make way now for your angel is coming to bless you."

A friendly piece of pastoral advice: Next time there is a disagreement, a conflict, a moment of violence by word and deed in your family life or marriage or between parent and child, or between you and AN ENEMY! put your hand on the face of the other and say, "Make way now for the coming of your angel to bless you."

It works and it doesn't cost a thing, just courage. Respond and I'll tell you how I know.

And What Is So Rare As……

Yes, it’s a comin’ on, June, weddings, showers, receptions. I love these rituals, these gatherings, the fun and romance. In that regard I read now that the average American wedding costs $25,632 exclusive of a wedding planner and other incidentals (from The Wedding Report.) Wedding planners are up 40% from last year. Well, jeepers, I like weddings as much as anyone – I’ve done literally hundreds of them on two continents. I love the rituals, the music, the laughter, the children, the drama, the mishaps, the beauty and pageantry. IF IT JUST WASN’T THAT SO MANY OF THEM ARE DEB AUCHERIES OF EXHORIBANT COSTS, RECKLESS BEHAVIOR, DRUNKENESS AND OBSCENE STUPIDITY. Why can’t a wedding with its profound traditions and ancient symbols, Christian, Jewish or otherwise, be a joining together of that which asks God’s blessings rather than the Devil’s bacchanal? It’s so easy to do it the right way. The wedding planner I talked to for this blog told me she can do a perfectly beautiful, complete wedding with reception for somewhere around $ 5,000. I happen to believe weddings are supposed to be a “mystical union” as the ritual says, rather than a circus spectacle.

I know all the pressures on couples and families to have weddings that “keep up with the Joneses.” Honestly, I’d like to meet the Joneses we’re supposed to keep up with. I suspect they’re probably trying to keep up with us. We know weddings are to honor our children, to given them this special gift, to send them into marriage with many blessings. When I perform weddings, I see things from the front looking out. I am often disheartened from this view when I think I see “the things” of a wedding being substituted for “the spirit” of it.

“And what is so rare as a day in June,
Then, if ever, come perfect days………
Whether we look or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur and see it glisten.”

So, you know what, friends and neighbors? A lawn is a perfect place to hold a wedding. Neither the grass nor the sun nor the breeze nor the smell of the earth charges us a thing for their use. I’ve always thought a lawn was just begging us to use it. And (you can write this down), I’ll even come and do it for you for nothing, just for the joy of it.

WALKING ON WATER

Recently in our newspaper that covers the middle section of our state I noticed this headline: PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR TO SPEAK ON WATER. Well, I thought, maybe that means he/she will stand on a bridge and speak to people in the water. Maybe it means the speaker will stand in shallow water and speak to people on the shore. I could see several possibilities to this event of a water speaking author. If there was any possibility the speaker was actually going to stand on top of the water I definitely wanted to be there. I've never seen anyone walk on water in the Galilean sense, I never did it myself and I don't think I'd actually want to be there if I tried, I don't really trust my butterfly stroke. I swim through the water, I stand under the water while showering, and I fly over the water while in an airplane. Walking on water has just never been my thing. Actually doing it in the Galilean sense is called a miracle as in Matthew 14.

Yet the thing is, I've actually seen miracles. Webster defines miracle as, "An extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment." OK, I've never seen anybody walk on the water but I've seen a teenager suddenly, unexpectedly, against the odds, go into remission. That hospital room rose up in one united shout of joy when the news was delivered to the family. Know how many miracles take place every day when someone is cured of alcoholism or drug addiction? IT'S LIKE WALKING ON WATER! I've seen a 3 day old baby undergo surgery for cornea cancer and given sight. I've seen a distraught mother pulled back from the brink of a bridge when overwhelmed with despair, saved by love no less. I've seen a young doctor who might earn $ 400,000 a year in a lucrative practice give his whole life to the poor in the slums of La Paz, Bolivia, his name is Charles Peterson. Whenever I hear someone call it a miracle when Jesus walked on the water I respond, "Absolutely!" When I see or hear of a child being delivered safely in childbirth I say, "A miracle, absolutely!" Jesus affirmed in Matthew 14 that believers can walk on the water. Yes, and when that water is the water of Easter newness, of cleansing, renewing, rising up, overcoming, seizing hope, we truly, honestly, victoriously, walk out into the light of the Easter hope. "Come to me," Jesus said to Peter, "Walk with me here where it’s deep and uncertain." No, not to a rose garden, just a daily walk to life's beauty in the Easter Promise.

LEARNING TO BE HAPPY

One of the most moving and heartbreaking/heartwarming films I know of is the 1996 French film, "Ponette." The role of Ponette is played by 4 year old Victorie Thivisol. Her role in the 96 minute film is almost entirely unscripted, nearly extemporaneous. Ponette has recently lost her mother in a car accident and because her father travels for a living he sends Ponette to live with relatives. Ponette searches desperately for her mother wherever she thinks her mother might be and wondering all the while why her mother doesn't come to get her. The child's playmates at school play tricks on her claiming the tricks will bring back her mother. There are also playmates who befriend her as best they can. Near the end of the film Ponette, in a desperate search for her mother, leaves her school room, goes to the burial ground, and begins to dig into the grave of her mother. Exhausted, crying in grief and despair, Ponette suddenly sees her mother. Child and mother embrace, crying in happiness. There are consolations, kisses, mother and child becoming one in true mother-daughter spirit. Of course the mother is a fantasy, a chimera, a need fulfilled for the child. The mother says all the right things to her child, always being with her in spirit, always seeing, always understanding, always knowing, always loving. When Ponette walks away from her mother's grave to return to the classroom she is satisfied that her mother is still with her and that she, Ponette, will never be truly alone again. Ponette narrates the ending of the film by saying, "She told me to learn to be happy."
   
I love that line. It tells me we aren't born happy which is the reason 85% of people will answer, "Just to be happy," when asked what they would like to have more than anything else in the world.

Yet we know that nothing exterior to us can make us happy. No person can make us happy. Happiness, as Ponette says, is something that is learned from life's experiences. We are happy as we learn to incorporate life's unhappiness, its sorrows, its grief, loss, disappointment, loneliness, into a broadening of our interests, our friendships, our intimacies, our time, our cultivation of life's ready-to-go gifts, our challenges and even life's dangers, to plunge into the wealth and riches of daily life as it comes to us. We can learn to be happy. It comes when, above all else, we have learned not to be unhappy.

I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord

     Sometime in the 1960's while my family and I were serving a church adjacent to Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, a newly married couple, Dan and Sarah, came to visit the church one Sunday morning. Dan was a newly-commissioned lieutenant in the Air Force and Sarah was busy with her new role as homemaker. They served at Offutt until Dan left the Air Force so that he and Sarah could return to their family in Atlanta. Paul began a new career there. Over the years they established their family and career and lived a life of devotion to their church, family and community.


     In the mail recently I received a letter from Dan and Sarah. It was a letter of greeting and kind thoughts. Included in the letter was a single page from a small devotional booklet which this couple obviously used in their personal and family devotions. In the center of the small page, which Sarah had marked for emphasis, were the printed words, from Luke 12:32, "Fear not little flock for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you his Kingdom." Sarah remembered!


     After every sermon I ever preached beginning in seminary and continuing throughout my more than 40 years of pastoral work I have used those words as a blessing at the close of the sermon. It is a Promise to be shared. Reading Sarah's greeting was a reminder to me that whether a 'flock' be a congregation or a family or a single person, the gift of the Kingdom has been promised. This kingdom is always the possibility of love in the midst of hate. It is a kingdom of peace in the midst of conflict. It is healing in the midst of sickness, faith in the midst of doubt, eternity in the midst of what is temporary, a meaningful life in the midst of so much that is meaningless around us, hope in the midst of despair, renewal in the midst of all that is old, gain in the midst of loss.


     Thank you, Sarah, from across the years, for expressing in your own life, and for each of us, how God, the Eternal Spirit, hovers over us in our own personal kingdom which is, as the rest of the title line says, "...the house of thine abode."

Stop Pulling the Covers, Billy

As a child living in a dilapidated old frame house with a coal burning stove in the center of the living room with no indoor plumbing, no running water, with two bedrooms for six children and two, sometimes three adults, with the outside temperature during the winter sometimes -15 degrees, with snow, fueled by a howling north wind blowing it through the loose window frames, my brothers and sisters and I had the time of our lives.  This was never more true than at Christmastime.

I sometimes wonder today if children in America could ever possibly visualize what it was like to play guessing games or read the Sunday “funny papers” under a mountain of covers on Christmas Eve in a freezing bedroom.  Never mind there was little prospect of any Chirstmas gifts except for the school classroom exchange (local merchants anticipated these exchanges with a good supply of sacks of marbles, dainty handkerchiefs, Big Chief writing tablets and boxes of crayolas.)  I was astonished not long ago to learn Big Chief writing tablets were no longer being made, alas, alas!  There was of course the Christmas Eve church service with children receiving sacks of candy with an apple or orange in the sack.  Later, under our mountain of covers we laughed, imagined, created wonders of our minds, thought of the unfortunate children in India and Africa, told stories, ghost and otherwise to brighten our lives with magic and wonder.  When we would finally settle down for the night it was in anticipation of knowing we had hardly begun to explore all that magic and wonder.  A whole world awaited us.

Most modern families give the best they can for one another in the family at Christmas.  There will be a young person who will receive the gift of a new car perhaps and mom or dad may find a new expensive watch under the tree.  Children will give and receive from the abundance of all the good in the stores of America. We will each celebrate Christmas as we are wont to do, sometimes frugally, sometimes excessively.  This is Christmas as we’ve learned to express it.  But for me, one of the greatest of all Christmases would be if I could have my three-year old brother back, he of the fatally ruptured appendix.  What he and I would do would be this:  He and I would turn down the heat in the house until it was freezing.  We would jump into our bed with a mountain of clothes on and a mountain of covers over us.  We would make a tent of the covers and we would tell stories, ghost or otherwise.  We would play “Three sailors went to sea, sea, sea to see what they could see, see, see.” We would laugh and be merry and would know of a certainty that to be a child in Kansas, in the winter, was the greatest of all blessings.  I like to think, my imagination is at work here, that just before we snuggled down to sleep I would say to Billy, “Merry Christmas, little brother” and he would repeat it back to me.

Such a time that was, so much laughter, so much happiness, so much pleasure, so much joy.  And here is where my spirit soars to the starry sky.  Just before sleep, from under the covers, out of the great winter night, my brother and I might hear, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, to people of goodwill.”

MAY GOD BLESS US EVERYONE.

The Christmas Laundry

Sometime near the end of the year l980 it was my unchosen duty to help watch over the long decline of seven year old Lizabeth Sterling during her unstoppable Hodgins Disease. As children are, by nature, optimistic and hopeful, she was surrounded daily by her family, her friends and the medical staff. She was encouraged by all these in her upward tending spirit. Children are also, by nature, clairvoyant in a way not open sometimes to adult sensibilities. She knew! No one told her, no one attempted to prepare her, she simply knew she was dying. It was she, seven years old, who brought me into the world of her dying. One day, without warning or hesitation, she asked me what it would be like to die. Her asking wasn't shaded by fear, she simply wanted to know what lay ahead. So we talked about those things that come naturally in such a conversation, God, family, joy, life, and going on to a new life. I held her hand, she watched me to be sure I was being honest with her, and she asked, "Do you think they will have clean sheets for me there?" The question obviously came from the daily condition of her bed with IV's, blood, catheter and more. I said, "Lizabeth, the sheets done in the laundry of heaven are always white as snow." On the day of her death her family asked if new linen could be placed on her bed before she was taken up from it.

Such is the form and nature of our human community. It is always the wanting of newness, the release from oldness that permeates all of Christmas. There is a cleanness somehow buried in the carols and readings and prayers of the Christmas season and we are eager to have our children, our husbands and wives, our family and friends, experience this. I would like to feel no one is excluded by their own inflexibility from what is offered by all the season's presents. The thing about wanting life to be good and hopeful and renewing is that it's always, forever, already good and hopeful and renewing. To feel all this in our spirits we may sometimes need to change the linen. Christmas is not only a season, a holiday, a date on the calendar, it is real when we recognize what is already good and hopeful. No, I can't come and do your laundry. I can do the next best thing. I can point you to a laundromat. For all appearances you might mistake it for a manger.

SMALL TRACES

In my home library of films I have one called PAN'S LABYRINTH. This movie, made in Spain, is a fairy tale/fantasy/life imitating art/real life story of a girl who in the midst of the cruelty of the Spanish Civil War (1936-40) saves her infant brother's life by sacrificing her own (the Christ theme). Her death is the occasion for her to be reborn to a new life of peace and eternal life (The Salvation theme). At the end of the movie there appears on the screen these words: "She left small traces of her time on earth visible only to those wise enough to look for them."

To some extent the world we live in, and the world that has always been as far back as the one we see in the movie 1,000,000 B.C., has been a world where the traces of our having lived in that world are sometimes hard to find. Who in this year 2011 can tell us who Amico Bignami was or Elijah Lovejoy or Vaclav Havel or Lucretia Mott or Leonidas La Pucelle D'Orleans or Hugh Latimer or William Rontgen or Charles Dodgen are or were? The perplexing thing about these persons is, they made the world healthier or richer or more beautiful or more liveable because of their small traces. Yet in this age of our knowledge of nuclear power and complicated mathematics and science that boggles our mind these living souls are unknown to most of us even though their traces leaves to us more than any science will ever do.

Well, lest we find it difficult in our busy lives to look up Lucretia Mott or Vaclav Havel to see the effects of their footprints in our lives and our world perhaps we can take one moment each day to be wise enough to look for traces within our own households. To look is to see the traces left by our own children, traces we seldom acknowledge or even recognize, the traces of our husband or wife which are left in our lives every day, the signs of our parents which we sometimes eulogize at their funerals but seldom during their life's journey with us, a neighbor perhaps, or someone in our community, that person who has touched our lives, or perhaps tried to, while they and we were still living. How many times have we said to ourselves, "O, I wish I would have told her (grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, cousin, brother, sister), how much I loved them? The fact that we feel this debt to someone from our past is witness to our sometimes delayed acknowledgement of the traces they left in our lives.

Today, perhaps, or tomorrow at the latest, we may leave off the TV, the newspaper, a few minutes from our job, and create a few traces of our own in the sands of this human community. Then, perhaps sometime in the future, others will be wise enough to look for the traces of love and patience and courage and kindness and forgiveness and generosity which we have planted in and for them.

Why Tooth Fairy Must Thrive

I've been reading in Harper's Index that according to surveys taken by VISA, the average donation to Tooth Fairy in 2010 was $3 and has declined so far in 2011 to $2.60. What? What has happened to human decency anyway? What's a respectable Tooth Fairy to do these days, go on welfare? Tooth Fairy is an American invention and institution. Can any of us imagine what our lives would be like if Tooth Fairy emigrated to Monaco? Where will the hopes of children with their precarious front teeth find a new source of inspiration by which to endure the pain and humiliation of a jack-o-lantern face? What will happen to the factories that make the little white boxes in which Tooth Fairy hides extracted teeth until morning? In fact, will there even be a morning for millions of children who know they will wake up to a Tooth Fairyless world? How can this present civilization survive with such hopelessness among our children when the main gift of those children to us has been hope itself? Never ask me to live in a world where an empty gum socket is symbolic of the cruelty and dishonorable penury of the Tooth Rich.

The times call us to arms! Ring the bells, sound the tocsin, cry out a new world crusade for the restoration of benevolence and empathy from those of us who have reaped the joyfulness of Tooth Fairy's gifts and have sown nothing but childhood despair in its place. To arms, all who love children! Let your own memory of 'The Morning After' $3 in the little white box be your guide to a new economic age of Tooth Fairy.

We shall overcome!

The 1960's and 1970's were years of great change in America especially in the area of race and social change.  In some of those years I worked as pastor in the Inner City of Omaha, Nebraska.  In those days the Inner City anywhere in America was a place of danger and violence.  Parts of Omaha were burned down following the assassination of Martin Luther King.  Those years were also years

of challenge for people everywhere in America who ventured out into society with words and actions of reconciliation and creative relationships across racial lines.

A week ago I watched and listened on PBS an entire program, rich in memory for me, of nearly all the folk singing groups that flourished during those years.  Peter, Paul and Mary, The Limelighters, The Kingston Trio, Pete Seegar, The New Christy Minstrels, so many others.  Their music enriched and encouraged, challenged the status quo in America.  Last evening, also on PBS, I watched a program of some of these musical prophets.  There was Peter, Paul and Mary again, and my mind went back to those times in the Inner City when, with others in different forms of ministry, we gathered in churches, community halls, back rooms and even vacant buildings, talked together, prayed together, and above all sang together the songs of faith, protest, affirmation and hope. There were times when these small clusters of workers with their prayer and song, were about the only voice of hope there was to be found.

So, in letting these two programs wash over my spirit with their memories, I sang the songs as they were being sung by the groups. I sang the song which was really the theme song of the whole protest movement in those years, "We Shall Overcome".  I can never forget in those halls and churches and community buildings standing in a circle, holding hands, often with tears on our faces, letting the world know of our hope:

We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome some day,

O, deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.

So much of what was believed in that time has come to pass.  But the message remains.  There is still much to overcome in our society and of course always in our personal lives.  Singing and believing, and acting on that singing and believing with creative and courageous action, is an everyday event in lives everywhere.  In the midst of fractured families, breaking or broken marriages, children losing their way, dealing with our own personal demons,

We'll walk hand in hand, we'll walk hand in hand, we'll walk in hand some day,

O, deep in my heart, I do believe, we'll walk hand in hand some day.

When that walk is one of freedom from bitterness, freedom from strife, freedom from selfishness and hardheartedness, we can come to that freedom and let it wash over us like the Balm of Gilead.  O, deep in my heart, I do believe!

The Law of (Endless) Probability

In a blog I wrote that appeared on 12-17-09, I told the true story of a little boy who once rang my doorbell. He had a ball and mitt. On my answering the doorbell he asked, "Can you come out and play?" I answered, "Absolutely!" Yesterday, I answered the doorbell to a little boy about the size and age of the first one who, holding a smaller boy by one hand and a soccer ball in the other, asked me, "Can you come out and play?"

What are the odds for such a thing as this happening twice? They are astronomical at best. Yet in the world of Mathematics there is something called the Law of Probability. By virtue of this law one can predict the odds of such and such happening. One uses ratios, accumulated data, time factors, then poses a hypothesis as to an event occurring or reoccurring. I am confident in utilizing the Law of Probability in making the following predictions:

God will be good
A mother will be cured of breast cancer
An alcoholic will find new and sober life
An errant child will rediscover his or her family
A husband/wife will forgive his/her husband/wife
Someone will find laughter after a season of grief
The sun will shine
God will be good

O, and lest I forget, sometime another little boy will come and ask me if I can come out and play. I count on it. It's the Law of Probability.

AS THE WORLD TURNS

I don't know if the daily soap opera "As The World Turns" is still running on television.  My mother heard (on radio) then watched (on television) that program while she did the ironing and rocked her babies.  But there is a real life world that turns and it turns every day, every hour of the day and every minute of every hour of every day.  I can see this world turn from my study window, from my living room windows, from long walks through the community, from the newspaper and radio and television, from hospital visits and conversations with friends and strangers.  As the world turns on its daily appointed rounds it exposes to us the violence, the sorrows, the greeds, failures and grinding pains of daily life.  The daily turning of the world in which we live, the ambitions, the emptiness which pervades so many lives, is shown to us as clearly as if we were watching it in 3-D.

But 3-D of course is an illusion, it enables us to see what isn't there.  So, I say, off with the 3-D glasses!  Only then can we see the beauty of the trees along those walks, parents loving their children, people doing impossible things and overcoming improbable odds.  In looking at life as it turns we know the blind "see," the deaf "hear" and the beauty of things that so boggles our minds we want to break out in some Te Deum of praise.   Just now the world is turning and so can we.  So, excuse me now, I've got to go sing a duet with Luciano Pavarotti from the DVD "Rigoletto."  He needs me to sing the bass part.  Besides that, before the world turns too far today, I'll go say "Good Morning" to the priest across the way who lives with an oxygen tank. So many blessings, so little time to be blessed, how fast the world turns.

Whatever Happened To Christmas?

Mark Twain, especially in the later years of his life, became increasingly disillusioned about American politics. Once, when he was writing about such things as political parties and political figures, he wished them all to the Devil. Being in Tucson, Arizona, during the week of the recent shooting there, listening, watching and reading the editorials, speeches and interviews with all kinds of prominent Americans, I found myself asking: whatever happened to Christmas? Whatever happened to all that peace and goodwill to men (and to women) (and to children such as Cristina Taylor Green)? Whatever happened to angels singing sweetly o’er the plain, to joy to the world, to love that came down at Christmas? Didn’t we listen for the Child who shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace? One of the starkest symbols of all that was lost from the Christmas Promise was putting the district of Congresswoman Giffords in crosshairs as a potential target. Whatever happened to Isaiah’s prophecy that in the spirit of the Lord’s Day we would beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks?

Christmas is still here of course and will likely come again. But as I watched and listened and read the deluge of animosity, diatribe and accusation from all along the political spectrum, I thought: at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield in 1863, the orator Edward Everett spoke for two hours; he spoke of conflict. Abraham Lincoln spoke for seven minutes; he spoke of reconciliation. Who remembers Edward Everett? Abraham Lincoln is immortal.

My unasked for advice to politicians, and to myself, comes from the first two words of one of Theodore Roosevelt’s most famous lines, “Speak softly……” As far as the next five words are concerned, “…..and carry a big stick,” we would do well to wish those five words to the Devil in American life.

BRINGING DOWN HEAVEN

For many past years my daughter, Anne, and I, have created the Christmas cards that have gone out to friends and family.  She does the art work, I do the words.  

This year we have collaborated on our 2010 Christmas card and they have been mailed out.  

Both the art work and the messages on these cards are at least in part devised to appeal to children who, as we know, seldom receive cards which speak to them.  Here for this year-ending blog is the message on this year's card, unfortunately without the dazzling art work of Anne:

"Once upon a time in a faraway country there lived a boy by the name of Eli.

Every day he tended the sheep on his father's farm.

Because Eli had a very active imagination he sometimes imagined flying through the air visiting all the exciting places he read about but knew he would never see.

One day while tending the sheep a man appeared to Eli asking him if he would like to visit those exciting places.

"Yes, yes," said Eli, "but I can't leave the sheep."
"The sheep will be just fine until we get back," the man replied. "Now hang on because here we go!"

In a moment Eli found himself soaring high above the earth, through the air, past the heavens, through the clouds, far beyond all the stars and planets.

As they soared high above the heavens Eli said, "Nobody will ever believe me when I tell them where I've been and what I've seen."

The man who was guiding him said, "Just take this little piece of heaven
in your hand, hang on to it, and when people ask where you've been just show them this piece of heaven."

When Eli looked at what he had in his hand he was amazed at what he saw.

The piece of heaven looked like the hugs his father and mother gave him every day.  It looked like the neighbors who picked him up when he fell on the rocks while he was playing.

It looked like his own friends who sometimes on Saturday's visited the children who were patients in the Children's Hospital.

What he held in his hand was very light so he held onto it very tightly.

Once back home he thought he ought to quit imagining things like having a cloud in his hands.

But when he went to bed that night just before he dropped off to sleep, he took the piece of heaven out of his hand and looked at it.

To his astonishment he saw in the cloud the man who had taken him on his journey.  

And as he went to sleep he thought how beautiful it is that a person, even a child, could make a heaven out of ordinary things...

        Like hugs

             And neighbors

                 And children who care for other children

                       In this world."

I personally like the thought of Rev. 13:13, ..."come down from heaven to earth."  What this speaks to me is that the lofty themes of heaven can so easily be translated into the mundane, daily, things of earth. "I saw a new heaven and a new earth," is the way heaven, a theme so prominent at Christmas, is translated into human love, forgiveness, patience, kindness and so much else.  So, at this year's ending, with so much to gratify and please, my blessing to all, and I know Anne joins me in this, "May God give you the dew of heaven."  Gen. 27:28                                    

AND MAY GOD BLESS US EVERYONE!