Wish I'd Said This

Don't know if you saw Nicholas Kristof's piece in Sunday's New York Times. He writes about the human face of this health care crisis. He tells the story of John, a sawmill worker in Yamhill County, Oregon. And the terrible time that the unemployed and the uninsured have. This story could be repeated 46 million times in this country.

I also can't help but mention E.J. Dionne's great article, "Obama's Thankless Thanksgiving" which was written November 25. It seems that the Obama critics cannot even let the President's Thanksgiving proclamation go un-attacked. He quotes: "The Gawker Web site called it an 'uninspiring first effort from our most literary president' and expressed hope that he would spend 'a lttle more time on it next year.' Politico damned it with faint analysis--it was 'basic' an 'brief' and 'tread lightly' to avoid controversy." No comment necessary--read for yourself and weep.

One of the best pulse-understanding articles on where our culture is that I have read lately I discovered in Chris Hedges' "Addicted to Nonsense". He talks about the chatter that inundates our lives. Who will replace Oprah? Will Levi Johnson appear fully nude in his magazine spread? What's wrongt with Tiger? Who are those people who crashed President Obama's first state dinner? With the problems of the world swirling around all of us--it looks like we would have more on our minds that trivial pursuit. Great read.

The Dark Season

Advent begins in the dark. When the ground is frozen and the days are short. The church year begins when the trees are bare and the wind blows until the windows rattle.

The pastor, desperate for a word for these dark days, turns to the lectionary. As she reads the text she rubs her eyes. Surely, she murmurs, there is some mistake. Maybe, she thinks, I have the wrong year. But it doesn’t matter—whether the lectionary cycle is A, B, or C. Each gospel text is essentially the same. The second coming of Christ. Apocalyptic literature. Old Noah and his family and the waters that swept everything away. Christmas, where is Christmas? She reads on: sun darkened, moon turning to blood, family members turning against family members. The preacher has suddenly stumbled on another world: the end of time, earthquakes and famine, wars and rumors of wars, people’s hearts failing them for fear. And, in the middle of it all, Jesus coming in the clouds with judgment. What, she wonders, does all of this have to do with Christmas?

As a little boy I found this talk of second coming scary. I remember the preacher saying that two would be in the field; one would be taken and one left. I always knew who would be left. The Evangelist would whisper: “What will you be doing when Jesus comes back? Do you want to be caught…?” and then it was left to our imaginations to fill in the blanks. And fill them I did.

Later, much later I discovered that the early church included apocalyptic literature like Mark 13 as a catechism for new converts. This doctrine, they felt was basic to understanding the faith journey. He who once came will come again. The Lord they served really was the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The trouble with this doctrine of the second coming is that the church often confused the underlying theme with the window dressing. In hard, hard times the believers would mutter: “Surely he will come soon!” But the Lord did not come back in their lifetime and this became the first great crisis in the church. People fell away in droves disenchanted with disappointment.

Why do we keep reading these gloomy words like: “The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the heavens…?” (Mark 13.25) Maybe they kept the second coming stories for the same reason they kept those dream-like words of that first coming: angels, a mad King, shepherds tearing through the fields with joy, a tiny king born in the unlikeliest of places. Maybe first and second coming may have the same purpose. Underneath the words they try to explain the unexplainable. Both accounts may be the church’s way to try to touch a mystery that is always hard to comprehend. How does one put the glorious impossible into words?

And so the church kept these words and has tried as best they could to interpret them for their particular age. Buried underneath all the rhetoric is the admonition to watch, to wait, to keep your eyes open lest we miss the bridegroom when he comes.

So year after year, like our forebears, we light a candle when the days are shortest and darkness comes too quickly. We open the book again to pages we scarcely read any other time. Toppling kingdoms, rivers of blood, clouds and angels. We hear again the admonition to watch, to wait, to listen—to keep our lamps filled with oil, never knowing when the great Lord of glory might just walk down our street and stop at our door.

Gravy Time

(Last Sunday, on the eve of Thanksgiving this gorgeous horn of plenty covered our altar at church. I couldn't take my eyes off the lushness, the beauty and the floral piece reminded me all over again of the beauty of this thing we call life. I didn't have a camera but my friend Dr. Tom Vetter did and captured this moment beautifully. The arrangement was made by one of our members, Buddy Robbins for Southside Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL.)

When I first came to the church as Pastor a friend brought me a large manila file folder one day. "Have you ever had a gravy file?" She went on to explain, "Years ago when I taught school somebody gave me a manila envelope which she called a ‘Gravy File.’ When good things happened--notes, cards, letters--photographs or funny cartoons--you put them in your gravy file. From time to time you pull out the file, spread out the contents and remember.”

I put my new gravy file in a hanging drawer next to my desk. Through the years when I would receive something that lifted me up and make my heart sing--I would place it in the file.

The dictionary says that gravy is the juice that flows from the meat. It's the overflow that comes from the cooking. It's the succulence that adds spice and richness to the meal. No good Thanksgiving dinner would be really complete without the gravy. And no real Thanksgiving holiday will be complete unless we spend some time spreading out before us the faces and events and mementos that keep us going this year.

Most of us have a gravy file whether we call it that or not. Locked in our hearts or buried deep in some drawer or cedar chest are the symbols of the things we hold dear in our lives. The problem is that in the rush of so much, we often fail to remember these special things.

Open up your gravy file this week and so many things that you have forgotten may just come tumbling out. I found a birthday card from my ninety-three old adopted mother who was in my church years ago. There is an old fading piece of paper with the childish scrawl which reads: "Tell everybody I love you, Daddy." He left it on the pulpit one Sunday and wanted me to make that announcement over our public address system. There is a Christmas card with a whole cover filled with Santa Clauses. Opening it up there is nothing but an "X." She couldn't write but she remembered the help the church gave her all year long. Looking at her card I remember she gave me more than I ever gave her. Among that stack of treasures I pulled out a letter-sized drawing from little Callie in which she included a Poam (poem). "Roses and red, Violets are blue, You are so spechul, And your wife loves you." One of the funniest things I have kept is the Christmas card my little girl gave me one year. It said: "Happy Birthday to My Godfather." She couldn't read but she thought that card was cool. There is a photograph of the summer we spent in England before the kids left home. There is the yellowing obituary announcement of my mother's death. There is the quote somebody gave me when I left a church in her handwriting. It was a quote from Katherine Mansfield, "How hard it is to leave places, however carefully one goes. You leave bits and pieces of yourself fluttering on the fences, little rags and shreds of your very life." And those words sent me back to other places and other times.

Don't let this Thanksgiving slip by without you spending some time remembering. Turn off the television. Do not answer the phone. Sit in silence and open up your own gravy file. Let the memories wash over you.

The world seems hell-bent on crowding out all the special things that us make us healthy and keep us going. This constant barrage of terrorist warning, war talk, up and down economy and trouble everywhere makes it hard to keep our bearings .Robin Williams calls all of these: the weapons of personal destruction. Let us pause and remember that first Thanksgiving. It has been a hard year. Many of the pilgrims had lost family members and friends. They were far away from home. The crop that year was barely enough to keep them going. And they paused one day to remember the blessings of their lives. They looked back on the long hard road they had traveled. They gave a thanks that even though things had been difficult life was precious and special and never to be taken for granted.

Those first Thanksgiving kept them going through the long hard winter that lay ahead. May our own remembering fill us with courage for our own journeys.

Wish I'd Said That...

Every once in a while we all read something and wish we had written it. I feel that way a lot about the writings of Anne Lamott. Her book, Traveling Mercies just blew me away. But her last year's Thanksgiving piece is worth reading. Let me just whet your interest with her first paragraph:

"I watched 'Mississippi Burning' tonight to honor the election, the miracle. I use the word 'miracle,' because you cannot get from the South in 1964 to where we are, Thanksgiving 2008. The grace of this is amazing. Grace is when God makes way out of No Way, and it feels like that is what happened. Eugene O'Neill wrote that we are born broken, and that the Grace of God is glue. That's how it feels, this miracle--and I was for Hillary in the primaries..." Read for yourself.

Alabama's Ragtime Band

It’s that time of the year. In Alabama gubernatorial candidates are lining up at the stalls. The horse race will soon be on. Roy Moore, banished Alabama Supreme Court Justice will be dragging those poor old tattered Ten Commandments back in to the campaign. They’ve been around a long time and I didn’t know they still needed defending. Am I missing something? State Treasurer Kay Ivey intones: “We welcome people of all faiths…but only Jewish and Christian religious displays should be allowed on government property.” Even Ex-Judge Moore says that goes too far. Other candidates favored prayer in public schools, chose creationism over evolution and most proclaim that the Bible is literally true.

There is a whole lot of salivating over gay rights, illegal immigration, abortion and other hot button issues. James Potts another candidate has been quoted as saying that displays from all faiths should be allowed on government property—except, of course, if they’re Muslim. He said, “Either you accept our way of life or you go back to another country that is Muslim.” One state representative hoping to be part of the horse race. said that public school teachers should be allowed to teach the Bible. Potts said, ‘I believe in the literal interpretation, that the holy Bible is the inspired word of God. Period.”

In Alabama Jesus is high up on our list. So is the Bible. Church going is still more popular than McDonalds. Only football is still number one. The problem is that all these candidates holding up the Bible and hoping some public school teacher will teach the Holy Scriptures just like Sunday School—never do clarify what kind of Bible teaching? Mormon? Jehovah’s Witnesses? Snake Handlers? Catholic or Protestant? Unitarian or born-againers.

I remember hearing Jim Wallis of Sojourners say one time that he took a Bible and cut out all the references to the poor and disenfranchised. And he said the book was a lot smaller and had holes in it everywhere. When he spoke he would hold that book up and say: “This is the American Bible.”

Candidates—you are not running for Pastor. You are running as a leader of this State. What about our old thread-bare 1901 Constitution that was written for privileged white folks and forced on all our citizenry in a rigged election. Will any of these candidates have the guts to even suggest we ask the people of Alabama in an election if they want a new Constitution?

What about the fact that Alabama’s income tax on the poor is the harshest in the nation? We are number one in levying income taxes on single-parent family of three earning at the federal povery line of $17,165.00 I do believe Jesus talked about “the least of these.”

What about health care and the millions in this state that have no safety net? Candidates will you stick your neck out for your citizenry—especially the voiceless our there. Who stands up for the little people?

We know that Jesus and the Bible makes people feel warm and squishy. But if all this prayer-in-schools-literal-belief-in-the-Bible-send-the-Muslims-back-from-where-they-came-from is all these candidates have to offer let’s just call off the election and just have a Revival meeting. And maybe just hire some trucks and haul all the illegals back to wherever they came from so that nobody will cut our grass, hang our sheetrock, work in the back of our restaurants or pick up after us at the Y. After all we born-againers can do it all ourselves.

Remembering the Fallen

This Thanksgiving there will be empty places in many homes in this country and around the world. And other homes men and women will hobbble up to the table, if they are able and bow their heads and ponder the silence. But the war goes on...remember those that we have lost.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of is scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." --Dwight D. Eisenhower

Spc. Christopher J. Coffland / age 43 / Baltimore, MD / Died of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with a roadside bomb in Wardak Province, Afghanistan / November 13, 2009.

Lance Cpl. Shawn P. Hefner / age 22 / Hico, TX / Died while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan,/ November 13, 2009.

Sgt. Benjamin W. Sherman / age 21 / Plymouth, Mass. / Sherman was one of two soldiers that went mission during a mission to recover airdropped supplies from a river in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan on November 4, 2009. On November 10 divers recovered his body from the Morghab River near Afghanistan' s border with Turkmenistan. Family members said he jumped into the river to help a fellow soldier who was struggling in the water.

Staff Sgt. Stephen L. Murphy / age 36 / Jaffery, NH / Died as a result of a non-hostile incident in Anbar province, Iraq / November 9, 2009.

Chief Warrant Officer Mathew C. Heffelfinger / age 29 / One of two soldiers killed when their helicopter experienced a hard landing in Tikrit, Iraq / November 8, 2009.

Chief Warrant Officer Earl R. Scott III / age 24 / Jacksonville, FL / The other soldiers killed in that same helicopter's hard landing in Tikrit, Iraq / November 8, 2009.

Someone's hurting Lord...

As the debate on health care rages on in Washington--people everywhere continue to fall through the cracks. How long will those that supposedly represent us stand up for the people? Saturday another free clinic for those in desperate need of health care was held in New Orleans. Over 1,000 people were treated that day. Keith Oberman reported tonight that 700,000 people in Louisiana have no health care. Read some of the hard facts about those who stood in that long, long to receive some help for their ailing lives. Find out more about the Free clinic movement by checking out their web site.

Wish I'd said this. Nicholas Kristof reports in The Times that it costs 1 million dollars to keep one of our soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan for a year. Is there some connection between the aching needs at home and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Hmm.