Monthly Archives: January 2009

As We Age

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Of the four nursing homes in our city, the best is Lenawee Medical Care Facility on Sand Creek Highway.  People in other nursing homes have said to me, “I wanted to go to Lenawee Medical, but they didn’t have any beds available.”  I’ve never heard anyone at Lenawee Medical want to leave — except to go home, of course.  There’s no place like home.

An Eden Tree plaque hangs in the entryway near the receptionist’s desk.  Lenawee Medical is one of 300 registered care facilities that follow the Ten Principles of the Eden Alternative, a movement to make nursing homes humane and habitable.  To combat isolation, for example, Eden Alternative facilities make sure residents have regular contact with plants, animals and children.  Lenawee Medical even has a meditation garden with a walking labyrinth.

I spend a lot of time with elders in the final years of life — in nursing care facilities, assisted living apartments and their own homes.  I love these visits.  I see the joy and contentment, the way they beam with pride over the accomplishments of a grandchild.  I also see the problems:  loneliness, listlessness, a sense that time has left them behind, and the struggles as bones and bodies inevitably break down.

Struggles occur in every season of life, but when elders face them it tugs at the heart.  There is also a voice within that says, “That will be me someday.”

A Brief Review of Doubt

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I didn’t want to see the movie Doubt, but my brother-in-law recommended it.  “It’s not what you think,” he said.  I feared it was another movie attacking religion, along the lines of The Da Vinci Code or The Golden Compass.  But it’s not.

Doubt is a fine film.  Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman shine as masterful actors.  The supporting cast puts in great performances too.  The movie never answers the question, “What happened?”  (Although there are strong suggestions.)  At the end I wondered, What did Father Flynn confess? and What did Sister Aloysius doubt?  The film is as ambiguous and open-ended as life itself.  Neither of the lead characters is wholly good or wholly bad.

It was refreshing to see a movie with clergy and religious shown in their full humanity, not as props to someone else’s story.  The film offers a powerful portrayal of doubt, sin and moral struggle — issues we deal with daily.

In Search of Better Preaching

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I once preached only using a full written manuscript.  I wrote the sermon during the week and read it verbatim during worship on Sunday.  This is a time honored way of preaching.

Our church’s praise service, though, prodded me to find a less formal way of preaching.  Our speech patterns differ depending on whether we’re reading a text aloud or speaking conversationally.  I wanted a more informal, conversational preaching style.

I began preaching sermons from memory, writing a manuscript beforehand but not using it in worship.  This style yielded sermons more lively and interesting than before and greater eye contact with the congregation.

This way of preaching has drawbacks too, I learned.  Preparation, including eight to ten rehearsals of the message, grew difficult to sustain in the long term, particularly in busy weeks.  I noticed more lapses in memory over time, and I found myself so keyed up for the sermon that it was hard to enjoy the worship service.

More recently I’ve experimented with a hybrid style that blends the liveliness of conversational preaching with the security of having something written handy.  The preachers I admire don’t preach wholly from memory — they speak in a free, extemporaneous way, going back to the podium from time to time to consult their notes.  I’ve been practicing this style.  Referring to notes, rather than to a full written text, forces my brain to come up with sentences on the spot and helps create a more natural speaking style.  (I still use manuscript preaching at more formal events like weddings and funerals.)

The process has been less linear than what’s described here, but I see progress.  Sunday sermon preparation now includes only four or five rehearsals of the message, and knowing notes will be at hand enables me to relax and enjoy the praise service.

And that’s the goal, after all, to enjoy God’s praise.

My Dog Taught Me All I Need to Know About God

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In the morning our dog Jazz will stand at our bedroom door and shake her collar.  The metal tags clink together and wake us.  Or she will snort, her other way of getting our attention.

We let her outside into the backyard, today covered with a foot of snow.  When she comes in shortly, Jazz skitters across the kitchen floor toward her kennel, next to which she finds a heaping cup of dry dog food in a brown bowl.

After her breakfast she comes to our room and leaps onto the bed for ‘morning adoration.’  She burrows between us and soaks up all the love and attention she can find.  When I get up to go to work, she quickly moves over to occupy my side of the bed, her head near my pillow.

Jazz is a Katrina survivor.  Picked up on the streets of New Orleans after the storm, she was taken to an animal shelter in Georgetown, Texas.  Doctors there examined her and concluded she’d been a homeless street dog.  She moved through a series of temporary placements before we adopted her and brought her home the last week of April 2006.

Some of her street dog habits remain.  On our nightly walks she scrounges constantly for food, and she shies away from anyone with a broom or cane.  But mostly she has settled into a comfortable life on the couch or in her kennel, which has layers of cushioning.  She’s the only dog I’ve ever had that can flirt and cringe at the same time.  I worry sometimes she’ll get out and not find her way back, though not so much as at first.

In nearly three years this little black and white dog has burrowed her way into our hearts.  My wife says I’m so foolish over Jazz I’ve spoiled her, and it’s true.  We’d be heartbroken without her.

Jesus likened God to a shepherd who rejoices in finding a lost sheep.  The love a human being has for an animal mirrors God’s love for us.  When I think of the love that’s risen in me for Jazz, a ‘how much more’ argument comes to life.  How much more must God love me, vagrant soul that I am.

Deus caritas est.  God is love.  If I learn nothing else of God in my lifetime, to know this is enough.

Someone Else’s King

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Ernest Withers, a photographer during the Civil Rights movement, took this striking picture of Martin Luther King Jr.  A crowd presses in on King as he glances to his right, his face framed by the backs of men’s heads.  He looks like a man under pressure, deciding what to do next.  The art of Ernest Withers impresses me. 

King himself puzzles me.  Churches revere him as a saint and a latter-day Jesus, but I’ve never figured out how to approach him.  I read through his speeches and writings years ago, and his beliefs appeared more Gandhian than Christian.  But that does depend on how someone defines Christian.  My beliefs resonate more with Martin Luther than Martin Luther King.  At the Henry Ford Museum I sat on the very bus that started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and it didn’t move me – beyond wondering what man would get on a bus and expect a woman to move to accommodate him. 

King was courageous, and he lost his life in a cause above self – that deserves respect.  Still, I feel an ambivalence about him, and it’s hard to imagine I’m alone in that.  When he’s being praised I nod quietly, mindful that he’s someone else’s hero.

41 Things Ministers Ought to Know

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Jim Martin at A Place For the God-Hungry recently concluded a series on ’41 Things Ministers Ought to Know.’  He published them in four installments.

A gentle wisdom born of prayer and experience informs his reflections.  For clergy who follow the liturgical calender, meditating on one each day of Lent would offer a simple, practical spiritual exercise.

Alzheimer’s and Capax Dei

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The Coalition for Older Adults meets every other month at the Human Services Building on Winter Street.  Forty representatives from an array of agencies, mostly women, sit at long brown tables in the River Raisin Room to network, share ideas and hear presentations.

Attending these meetings helps me stay in contact with resources that may benefit seniors in my congregation.

The last included a talk from the education coordinator at the Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in Ann Arbor.  Their work, she said, includes brain imaging, clinical drug trials and observational studies.  She offered to come to any of our organizations for a ‘brain health seminar.’

Her presentation made me think of people I know with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia.  Their minds slip away bit by bit as their families struggle to care for them.  To lose a limb or an eye must be hard enough, but to lose the use of one’s mind is a scary thought.

As she spoke I remembered a cryptic saying of Jesus:

To all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.  (Mt 25.29 NRSV)

These words occur in the Parable of the Talents — those who use what they have receive more, and those who don’t lose even the little they have.

Spiritual writers speak of a capax dei, a capacity for God within each human person.  Developing this spiritual capacity requires attention and labor in response to the divine initiative toward us in Christ.  The Alzheimer’s talk made me wonder if in addition to the possibility of losing one’s cognitive capacity, as in dementia, a person may also lose their spiritual capacity.

In mainline Protestant churches, universalism reigns as open belief or tacit assumption.  Divine love will save everyone, with no one lost — this in spite of Christ’s warning about ‘perishing’ in John 3.16, the very verse that speaks with such beauty about divine love. But unless I allow love to take root in me, it yields nothing.  I become like the hardened path Christ spoke of, impenetrable to the seed of divine love.  Perish, then, is a figurative way of saying one’s capax dei has closed down.

And as exercising our minds now may mitigate the effects of Alzheimer’s, so using what the spiritual tradition calls ‘means of grace’ — like prayer or the sacraments — may preserve and deepen the capacity for God in us.

The difference is I have no control over whether my mind disappears due to Alzheimer’s, but in the spiritual realm we have Christ’s promise that all those who seek God will find their reward.

Neuhaus the Liberal

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In 1990 The Christian Century published a series of articles on the theme, ‘How My Mind Has Changed.’  Conservative commentator Richard John Neuhaus contributed an essay.  His sharp mind and pen impressed me.

As did these words on abortion:  “To be pro-life is the liberal position,” he said.  “For the meaning of liberalism is an ever-expanding definition of the community, for which we take common responsibility.”  He put the unborn child along with the disabled, the aged, and anyone else invisible to society.  I lived in Georgia on an internship then, and his sentiments stayed with me long after the red clay disappeared from my shoes.

In my college speech class 25 years ago, a student gave a presentation on why human life begins at conception.  The other students grilled her afterward, but her arguments convinced me.  Coming across Neuhaus’s quote a few years later confirmed things.

My mind has changed on many things.  My wife says I’ve grown more liberal in our years of marriage.  I support gay unions, for example — that wasn’t the case in earlier versions of me.  But one thing my mind hasn’t changed on is abortion.  Although I don’t condone all of their tactics, the pro-life side has the higher ground on this.

As a chaplain at a Philadelphia hospital, I once saw a fetus that had died in the womb.  Small enough to fit in a hand, it lay on a metal tray in a room with gray walls and a tile floor, its tired mother in a bed nearby.  I don’t recall if I baptized it or not, but I remember the little eyes — it looked like a tiny human person.  “In darkness its name is covered,” says Qoheleth.  I wish its eyes had had a chance to see light.

At the Saddleback Civic Forum, Rick Warren asked the candidates, “When do human rights begin?”  All our experiences blend together when we answer a question like that.  I’d say human rights begin when human life begins.  Since we run into trouble when we try to limit who receives human rights, it’s best to err on the side of largeness on this issue.

Acting on such a conviction, though, would bring seismic changes to our society.  So this is where I lapse back into political agnosticism.  It’s safer ground there.  I dislike conflict, and this isn’t a small one.  But I think about the tiny human person in the gray room, and when he died last week I recalled the quote from Neuhaus the liberal as well.

Baptism Was Once a Wild Thing

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In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.  (Mk 1.9-10)

Baptism was once a wild thing, performed near a tangle of brush at the edge of a river or in the surging waters of the sea.  But the church took the rite out of its original setting in nature, put it inside a stone building and gave it a set place in a liturgy.  We’ve tamed the wildness out of baptism and made it safe and acceptable. 

My mother used to say, “You were christened Methodist.”  The word christen makes a baby sound like a ship.  Mine took place at a church in Washington DC, when my mom was a single parent struggling to raise a child alone.  I’m grateful she sought out the ritual and promised to raise me in the faith. 

But as a young adult this story of being christened was no longer enough.  I wanted to know the experience for myself.  I asked the man who had mentored me in college to baptize me in the ocean.  We took a trip to Bodega Bay, north of San Francisco, and he baptized me in the chilly waters of the Pacific. 

We walked out into the surf and turned around to face the shore, the smell of salt water and sound of gulls in the air.  I heard him say, “I baptize you in the name of…” and then the waters engulfed me as he lowered me backward into the ocean.  When I came up out of the water, I didn’t see the sky ‘torn apart’ as Jesus did — a strange image of wildness — but I saw my friends waiting for me on shore.  The experience was now mine to cherish and remember. 

Years later, when telling this story, I got a lecture from a fellow student at seminary, pointing out that a rebaptism is theologically incorrect.  “We are not Anabaptists,” she said.  True, but I needed to remember my own baptism, and someone can only do that when it happens as an adult. 

I’ve performed many infant baptisms.  I use a sea shell to hold the water and give it to the parents as a momento of the event.  But there’s always a twinge of unease for me.  The chief argument against infant baptism is not its slim biblical support but its result:  the baptized cannot remember their baptism. 

The churches are better, I think, that practice infant dedication and reserve baptism for later.  But even then the ritual usually happens indoors in a tank.  The original wildness has still drained away.

Not Like Jesus

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Ed Dobson, former pastor at Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, spent last year trying to live like Jesus.  He read the four Gospels each week, gleaning them for daily direction.  His efforts at imitation led in two directions:  he followed Jewish ways of eating, living and worship; and he showed attention to the poor and the outcast.  The quest also nudged him to vote for Obama.

Dobson’s project brings up a question:  must Christians always practice the ethics of Jesus and follow his example in every respect? At one time I’d have answered an unequivocal ‘yes,’ but my thinking has evolved on this.  I now see three pitfalls in this endeavor.

1.  Realism.  Jesus’ ethics and example were peculiar to his context and may not thrive outside of it.  A gulf separates his time from our own.  A police officer today may need to use deadly force to save the lives of innocent people — the officer violates the ethics of Jesus on nonviolence, but it’s necessary.  How can someone save for retirement when Jesus prohibited storing up wealth?  How can someone leave an abusive marriage when Jesus condemned divorce?  On many issues, strict adherence to the way of Jesus can be unrealistic.

2.  Legalism.  The example of Jesus taken as the basis of one’s religion becomes a form of salvation by works.  People seek to be justified by a system of ethics rather than through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, his obedient life lived on their behalf (Gal. 2.16).  Legalism in myriad forms plagues the church today, but our faith does not rest on our proficiency in doing things.

3.  Exclusivism.  Setting the model of Jesus, or an imitator like Gandhi, as the sole pattern of human action excludes other legitimate examples, particularly from the Hebrew scriptures.  David took up arms in just causes, but Jesus did not.  Ruth sought out a spouse and family, but Jesus did not.  Each received divine commendation, and their lives offer rich images and insights for our own.  The Bible presents multiple examples of faithful living.

In The Crucifixion of Ministry, pastoral theologian Andrew Purves argues a life based on trying to imitate Jesus ultimately leads to burn out.  What’s needed, he says, is the capacity to discern where the risen Christ is active in the world now and to participate in that activity.

None of this is to say we shouldn’t emulate Jesus at all.  The key words in the original question are always and every.  Christians can imitate the example of Jesus to the extent their circumstances allow, but more critical, as Purves notes, is their ability to follow the Spirit of Jesus in daily life.

The Beauty of Being a Political Agnostic

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I’m a classic independent voter.  In presidential elections I’ve cast ballots for Democrats, Republicans and third party candidates.  In the latest election, I didn’t decide until the day itself.  This will seem strange to true believers on either side, but many of us are not hard-core about these things.  We listen, we waver, and we see truth in many corners.

A friend in college told me she was an agnostic on matters of religion.  She was quick to distance herself from an atheist.  “An agnostic doesn’t believe there is no god,” she said.  “An agnostic doesn’t know.”

I’m a political agnostic.  I don’t know who is right.  The issues are so complex I must depend on ‘experts’ whose reliability I cannot verify.  It’s freeing simply to say, “I don’t know.”  I don’t know the answer to the Palestine/Israel conflict or the best way to eliminate poverty.  It amazes me when religious people express ambivalence about traditional doctrines of the faith and in the next moment voice political opinions with the certainty of concrete.

Prime ministers and presidents deserve prayers, not condemnation.  They face pressures and conflicting expectations those of us not behind their desks cannot understand.

A woman I know was once the Director of Worship for the Adrian Dominican Sisters.  She tells of a morning right before chapel when two sisters were arguing over who would sit in a certain chair.  My friend strode over to the bickerers, took the chair firmly in hand and said, “Excuse me, sisters, but I’m going to remove this chair because it’s causing you to sin.”

Fueled by a 24-hour news industry, people bicker over politics constantly.  Grace recedes.  Politics is a chair that causes people to sin.  The beauty of being a political agnostic is that I can look for a seat elsewhere.

Jog My Memory

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I was mindful of God with all my heart.  (Tobit 1.12)

In his essay The Light Within, Quaker Thomas Kelly urges readers to live in two dimensions at once.  At one level they inhabit the world of human activity and interaction, and at a deeper level they keep in contact with the “fresh upspringings” of divine life and revelation within us.  They stay mindful of God in a manner that continuously replenishes itself.  It takes practice to live this way, he says, but the rewards are immense.

For beginners in this way of living, he advocates a technique other spiritual writers counsel:  the repetition of a word or phrase to bring the wandering attention back to God.  I might spend the day, for example, breathing the phrase ‘God is love’ as a way of keeping mindful of the divine presence.

An object may also promote mindfulness.  I once served on a presbytery committee with a professor of pharmacology.  A deeply spiritual man, he kept a little cross in his pocket, and when he pulled it out with his change or keys, it reminded him of his faith and kept him mindful of God.

Many people wear a wedding band as a daily reminder of the commitments of marriage and family, or a wristwatch to stay mindful of the obligations of time.  (Often the ring and the watch vie with one another for supremacy.)  Some people wear a colored ribbon or a bracelet to promote a cause.  All are methods of mindfulness.

A picture of Jesus keeps believers mindful of the Savior and helps them sense the presence of the risen Christ with them.  Sallman’s Jesus performed this function for an earlier generation, as other versions do now.

A lack of mindfulness can create problems in everyday life.  In the eighth grade I took second lunch on Tuesdays, and first lunch the rest of the week.  Often I forgot, took first lunch on a Tuesday and walked into art class a half an hour late.  One day the teacher, disgusted with my forgetfulness, said to another student as I walked in, “As far as I’m concerned, he’s not here.”  My lack of mindfulness made me invisible.

It’s tempting to blame my lunch error on a sleep deprived brain — school always began too early for my body clock — or on the byzantine schedule I received, but in the end the responsibility to be attentive lay with me alone.  Eventually I wrote in huge letters on my notebook “SECOND LUNCH” to jog my memory and keep me mindful of the lunch schedule.

It wouldn’t be a great stretch to say that our life revolves around this kind of mindfulness, whatever techniques we use to achieve it.

PDAs and the Ancient of Days

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When you’ve lived a day, you’ve seen everything.  ~ Montaigne

I use a Palm Z22 for a calendar, to do list, address book and photo album.  Mine also holds two Bibles and a Bible dictionary.  Upgrading to the Centro is appealing, combining phone and PDA in one, but the keyboard is too small for my fingers.

At times, though, I miss writing things down in the old way.  I bought a $6 calendar at Wal-Mart, thinking to switch back, but filling in January’s events reminded me how laborious the process is.  And I’d miss all the other things stored in my PDA.  My Palm looked at me with sad eyes and said, “You don’t want to give me up, do you?”  No, I don’t.

The word calendar comes from the Latin Kalends, referring to the first day of a month.  Nones designated the fifth or seventh day, and Ides the thirteenth or fifteenth, depending on the month.  The Romans used the terms to conduct business and plan schedules.

A new year is an artificial thing.  2009 corresponds to a Christian calendar, beginning at the birth of Christ, but Muslim and Jewish calendars use other starting points.  Calendars in other cultures differ too.  The Romans dated events from the mythical founding of their city by Romulus and Remus.

In personal terms, it feels more natural to measure time by the seasons we’ve seen.  I am moving through my 46th winter.  Twenty more and I will reach the age at which my father died.

Shakespeare identified seven ages in a man’s life.  The first five he called the infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier and the justice.  The sixth we might label the retiree, and the seventh the invalid — ‘second childishness and mere oblivion.’  There must be analogous ages in a woman’s life.

The quote from Montaigne that heads this post intrigues me.  On most days I see people do things and talk about doing things; I see trees, earth and sky; and I see the faces of those who love me.  So I’ve seen everything.

The makers of ‘news’ package it in bright colors and language to make things seem exciting, but go to the library and read a newspaper from the 1950s and the old will sound just like the new.

The only genuinely new thing is the seed of life God plants in us, yet even this comes from the one called ‘Ancient of Days,’ whose years have no end.