Ash Wednesday: Marked by a Cross

photo courtesy of U.S. Pacific Fleet / flickr

It’s cold. South Carolina cold. The temperatures have dipped down several night into the high twenties. More than one night I left the spigots trickling—I am not sure South Carolina houses are built for this cold weather. My daffodils are slowly coming up. Here and there the touch of yellows gives me hope that soon the temperatures will slowly climb upward and flowers will cover the now-parched ground.

And so the Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday. It is getting darker sooner and the wind is strong and some days the promise of a cross and an empty tomb and Easter seem far away. 

 We Christians need to remember who we are and whose we are. And that smudge—on our foreheads marks us once more. Not Republicans, not Democrats—not Americans—not Trumpers and not-ever Trumpers. We are marked by the sign of the cross. 

I admit, like many of you, I have listened to too much news, read too many newspapers and watch too many debates. I am bent low when I think about where we Christians are today—where our country and the world is today. There is this fissure, this great divide that separates us one from another. And if we keep listening to the pundits and all the gloomy fear-soaked news—we are liable to drown in this stuff.

Someone asked me what I am going to give up for Lent. No cookies or candy or shedding a few pounds.This Lent calls us to deeper things. What? A cross on our foreheads. It holds us more than anything else in this world. The old Anglican prayer for this season sets us straight. ”…come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save”.

What will I give up for Lent? All the out-there that widens every day.  No. I will give up, at least for a season all this I-phone, I-pad, Social media, Tweets that continually tell us the sky is falling. I will try to give these all up.

And I will try to remember that long line I stood in today as my turn came to receive the ashes. In front of me was this old man on a walker. There was a man whose face reflects the hardness of his days. There was that couple, holding hands probably college students. The woman behind me kept dabbing her eyes. I know no names here. Just that all of us need what we find at the altar. The reminder that “we are dust and to dust we shall return.” 

So I walk away carrying the burden of the cross. Outside a bird sings. The daffodils are slowly coming up. Here and there I see Lenten roses. Across the street from the church even in this cold—college kids throw frisbees and footballs. All around me I see life. And this is what I will not give up. Hope. Faith and Love. 

Yet Temp Sparkman’s poem gives me hope. He wrote the words after the tragic death of his nine-old daughter. His beautiful poem ends this way:

“Were things really ever green

And will the spring come back again

Yes, yes, as sure as e’re it were here

Yes, yes, as sure as winter’s here

Yes, yes, as sure as God is

The spring will return

And it will be green again.”

   —G. Temp Sparkman

I will do my best to push all the thus-and-so-ness of my life away. I’ll still vote in the Primary this Saturday. I will still pray that this country might just live up to our old-dream: liberty and justice for all. 

But I will remember the life stirring around me I cannot give up. Paul, more strident than Bernie Sanders, wrote in a very hard time:”Nothing will separate us from the love of God.” No thing.

I remember the one who gave us this cross. He said: Watch. Open your eyes. Look around you. Hear. Don’t miss what’s here. Maybe Mary Oliver says it best in her poem, “When  Death Comes”,  “ | don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

So this Ash Wednesday I have once again stood in the line. Remembering that my grieving friend may have said it best: “The spring will return and it will be green again.”

photo by Linda moving ahead / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

The Problem With Living Sacrifices

Coventry Cathedral

You could always count on it at least four or five times a year. We Baptists give an Invitation to join the church after the sermon. On most Sundays we have as many takers as, say the Episcopalians. Often as the Invitation was extended, down the aisle Mabel would come. She would always hug me, wipe away the tears and whisper that she wanted to rededicate her life. She had messed up and wanted to start all over again. Choir members would roll their eyes, some in the audience would whisper to one another. Bouffant hairdo, gravelly voice from too many cigarettes and booze, she seemed to live from crisis to crisis. Either her marriage or her job or the kids were giving her trouble. Again and again she would march down to the front and members would think, “Well, there she goes again.”

That happened a long time ago and yet I wonder where Mabel is and how she is doing. I wonder if she is still striding down that aisle again and again and asking forgiveness and wanting to start over again. Maybe that’s what Lent is all about. Like Mabel all we poor little sheep have lost our way and need some beginning again. Mabel kept hoping that maybe, just maybe she might begin to get it right. Her job, her kids, her marriage—her broken life.

Elizabeth Elliot said one time that the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar. Lent pulls me back to the painful mirror of realism. I read the old words like: “Rend your hearts and not your garments…” “Have mercy upon me O God…” “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves…” And I remember that this particular sacrifice—me—has crawled off the altar more often than I like to admit.

So this Lenten season I remember Mabel and I remember my own life. We aren’t that far apart really. Just poor little sheep who can’t seem as much as we try to stay on that altar. But I keep opening the book and bowing my head and hoping that God will, as the book says, “bring his work to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Maybe Yogi Berra was right: “it ain’t over ‘till it’s over.” I am betting my life that it may just be true.

(At the beginning of the Lenten season 2010 I wrote this blog piece. Moving back again down memory lane I  still 

remember Mabel who kept coming down the aisle taking my preacher's hand and saying: "Preacher I need to start over gain. I have failed so much." And as I move down the aisle to receive the ashes on my forehead this Lenten season it is my own failures that I remember.)

photo by Tim / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Zelma: A Tribute

One little girl was overheard praying, "Dear God, are boys better than girls? I know you are one, but try to be fair."

God was fair and is fair. And God must have chuckled at that little girl saying: God was a He. Zelma would have loved that story because she was a geat laugh-ter.

Today at 2:00 her service will be held at the Wise Baptist Church, Wise, Virginia.  I wish I could have been there just to see the place that shaped much of who she was. I would have liked to meet her family--a least those that are left. Sitting on those front pews will be her children and then two sisters and three brothers. Zelma was the 13th of fourteen children.

I knew her when her life was in full bloom. Married to Pat, she was  a Hospice Chaplain in  Birmingham for eighteen years. I wonder how many families she touched. If anybody ever doubted the gifts of women preachers--they had not met Zelma Pattillo. After her retirement she and Pat  settled in Birmingham and joined our church. This is when I really got to know Zelma. The few times I heard her preach she opened up her heart and told us stories of who had helped shape her life. My, my she could preach! I told her once that I wanted her to speak at my funeral. But that was not to be. We talked often and emailed much. She struggled with should she move back to Wise or stay in Birmingham. Wise won out. So her life had come full circle she came home to where she started--surrounded by those she loved overlooking mountains, tall trees and she added: "a few nuts."

After she left Wise the door opened and the doors just kept opening. Wherever she went she made her mark at a time when opportunities for women were often meagre. From that school in Wise where she sat in a class with grades one to five, she finished the University with a triple major: math and physics and history. She was offered a full scholarship to work on a PHD but she was not altogether sure that was the path she wanted to take. Her journey reminds me of those wonderful words of Robert Frost: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.""

And what a difference that road made. After several jobs she found her way to the Baptist Seminary in Louisville. When she graduated she was offered a job in Clemson by Charles Arrington the warm and wise Pastor of the First Baptist Church. But she heard another voice and it led her back to Louisville Seminary and a guy named Pat. They were married for 48 years. They had two children whom they dearly loved: Stephen and Laura.

She was ordained to the ministry at the Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville. Few women were ordained in that day. She served on the staff of several distinguished churches but her great work began in 1988 when she became a Hospice Chaplain in Birmingham. For eighteen years she ministered to countless numbers of families and before she retired she was Coordinator of a team of 12 chaplains. 

To understand a person the facts do not tell much of the story--but underneath the facts where the heartbeat truly resides she really discovered that God really is fair--even with girls. And so did we.

Thank God for giving us Zelma. If I was standing at that graveside this afternoon in Wise,Virginia this is the blessaing I would give her:

"Into paradise may the angels lead dear Zelma, at her coming may the martyrs take her up into eternal rest, and may the chorus of angels lead her to that holy city, and the place of perpetual light. Amen."

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Romney and Jones: Profiles in Courage

--Photo by open minded in Alabama

"One day posterity will remember these strange

times, when ordinary common honesty was called courage"

    
 --Yevgeny Youtushenko --His defiant verse inspired a whole generation of young Russians in their fight against Stalinism in the Cold war.

--Roger Lovette--rogerlovette.blogspot.com

It's Anniversary Time!

     

We were married January 28, 1961. One of our first dates started under a harvest moon in Louisville. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen---still feel that way. The night we were married there were ten inches of snow on the ground. Still out there in the semi-darkness more people came than I thought could  possbly get there. After the reception we got into my old green Plyouth and headed for  a three- honeymoon at French Lick, Indiana. But the roads were terrible and we had to stop somewhere. So across the river from Louisville we stopped at the first motel we saw. Not exactly a honeymoon suite, but we were desperate. My wife still remembers the hole in the bedspread on our bed. She laughed many times and said, "Was this a foretaste of things to come?" The next day we found our way to French Lick. An old beautiful inn. Looking back I think our room and board for those two nights and three days was less than sixty dollars.

Three days later we came back to reality. I had one semester of Seminary to  finish--she had one semester of  college left. We did not know what the future would hold. First church smack dab in Western Kentucky tobacco country. Two city slickers didn't know what we had gotten ourselves into. Newither did they. But there in that hard internship I don't know if I taught them much--but I learned a lot about church and preaching. We had a little red-headed girl born while were there. Not long after that I took a church in Southside, Virginia. where our red-headed son was born. And from there we moved to Georgetown, Kentucky one of our Camelots. And then to Clemson and after thirteen years to Memphis and finally ended my full-time ministry in Birmingham, Alabama.  

Gayle was a trooper even though some of those places she had to leave friends anmd places she loved.  She is a great musician--some years she taught 40 piano students And cooked supper every night--and kept two kids our of prison. And kept her husband from going completely crazy. No wonder her kids still love her fiercely.

I thought when I retired in 2000 this was over.  My wife could finally breathe a sigh of relief--we were finished. Well, not exactly. This was followed by eight churches as Interim. Most lasted a year. But standing with me at every juncture--sometimes very hard places--sometimes wonderful--was the girl that said yes that snowy night in Louisville. No one could be a better partner. She has been the best Pastor's wife I know because she was just herself always. And if some church member did not think she lived up to their job description--too bad.

And so here we are some 59 years later. Looking back I say: "Whew." One day Gayle said:"I am tired of living in a condo or an apartment or some church's empty parsonage. I got the message. So we moved back to Clermson about seven years ago surrounded by memories and friends that we have loved for years.

Music sometimes says it better than any words can. And if I could sing--this is what I would sing today:

"I'll be loving you Always

With a love that's true Always...

Days might not be fair Always

That's when I'll be there Always

Not for just an hour

Not for just a day

Not for just a year

But Always."

Always...

Always...

Always...    

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Dr. King: Second Stanza

photo courtesy United States Mission Geneva / flickr

E.J. Dionne, wise columnist writes on the eve of Dr. King's birthday these words. "We can't give up on  King's promised land." And we can't. Dr. King surely must have read the Book again and again. Moses, flawed as we are, left Egypt and led a very reluctant little band. Some days those stragglers  did not have a shred of hope There were revolts, fights and the longing to go back to the safety of terrible Egypt. But Moses kept at it even those days when he wondered too.But God bless him Moses dragged them along. It was a long and circutuous journey. Somebody has said, "Why did it take them so long to get there? It was only 400 miles and it took them forty years?"

It isn't only black folk that still ask that question. But here and there are those who keep the flame of hope still burning. I am deeply troubled as many people are at the climate of cruelty and hate that seems to settle over us all. But deep in his heart Dr. King believed that one day we really would overcome. So we have to do what little band of the scary and frightful did? They just kept going. And so must we.

Someone asked Dick Gregory who marched in countless civil rights marched why he did that. He was beaten up, life threatened, thrown into many Southern jails. Perople would ask: Why in the world did you do this? And he answered, "When my little granddaughter comes and sits on my lap and watches on TV the old tapes of the abuse of Rosa Parks in Montgomery and the hatred spewed when little black children had to march through screaming adults just to go to school in Little Rock" Dick Gregory told her Honey,  I did what I could."

And in this strange time of families living in cages and racism on the rise ad such a toxic climate I think we all have to answer this hard question" What did we do." I wonder what I will say and what you will say?

And so on Dr. King's birthday it would be good to think of our answer to this question.

"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand 

And cast a wishful eye 

To Canaan's fair and happy land,

Where my possessions lie.

I am bound for the promised land,

 I am bound for the promised land;

O who will come and go with me?

I am bound for the promised land."

There is one thing we know we can't make the journey alone- We have to go with a whole lot of others--Even with some people we do not know.

photo by Mobilus in Mobile  / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

We have overcome...some

Next Monday is the Birthday of Martin Luther King. Many will go on their way as usual going to work, doing laundry, wondering what they will have for supper, half-listening to the droning on the TV: Impeachment. When will the trial begin?  Good or rigged?And across this United States the divide worsens. Why so much hatred between Democrats ansd Republicans?And the middle of it all the calendar says it is Martin Luther King's birthday.

The great King caused quite a stir. He had this dream "that one day my four little children will one day live on a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."

 He had a dream...and after all these years the dream is still with us. I see its evidence in my health club where African Americans work out in safety. And tonight our team plays for the National Foorball Championship. Take the black players off any team. Why we'd have to shut down college football and the NFL. We cheer like crazy when our team runs down the field. It doesn't matter what color the players are. Dr. King surely must smile. In our South Carolina Wal Mart and in other stores color does not seen to matter.And through the doors come black and white couples who feel no fear or abuse because they are shopping. Of course, a few folks still look at themour brotherd and sisters with displeasure but not many. We have black professors teaching at our schools--not because they are black but because they are good. Who would have believed that this country would elect a black man as President twice. And we are told that his beautiful wife is one of the most admired women in the world.

We have overcome some...but we still have a long way to go. Racism we thought was long dead rears its urgly head today. White supremacists murder worshippers in their pews. Confederate flags wave from trucks and cars. Almost every church, synagogue and mosque has someone standing at the door making sure that those who comer will be safe. And we built walls and close our entrance doors to all those desperate hurting people who leave terror and fear only to be turned away at the country they thought they could count on. White supremacists fill important positions and flood Twitter, and Facebook and biased journalism and many unthinking Christians ignore the hatred so near.

We have overcome...some. And we should be proud. And hopefully we will pause tomorrow  and remember that dream is not dead. And we will not turn the clock back for long. We will commit ourselves where we are to make sure the dream continues in our hearts. The Statue of Liberty stil burns as a promise to all those out there that need a home and safety. Long ago it was Micah's dream:  "Where all shall sit under own vines and under our own fig trees, and no one shall make any  (of us) afraid..." We have overcome...some.

So let us stop tomorrow and thank God for his lovingkindness over us all...and for those like Dr. King and so many others who remind us of the dream that is at the heart of our faith and the bedrock of this nation. Maybe we will do more than overcome just some.

photo courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / flickr

Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com