Past and Future

In today’s Sunday School class that I taught, we were talking about the importance of ancestry and where we came from. The topic was timely because we are studying some of the names for Jesus of Nazareth and today we were talking about Jesus the Son of David and what that meant.

The Jewish people spent a lot of time and energy making sure they knew first that they were descendents of Abraham, and second, which of Jacob’s sons they came from. They also were interested in whether or not they were descended from Royalty (the lineage of David the King, or some other person in their history.

One of the people in the class, during the initial minutes of the class when I was introducing the topic of ancestry, talked of her grandmother, who lived to age 109 and never liked to talk about the past, but look forward to the future. That is a noble thing, to be sure, but I wonder if there was something lost there.

No, we can’t live in the past, but we can learn from the past. To know what happened years ago…how people lived, the conditions of society, etc…is to be able to better understand the world today and how to survive and navigate within it. To hear of the struggles and trials of those in the Great Depression, one of the Great Wars, or some other major time is to better appreciate what we have now and to determine that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past.

I told the class that I marvel even now at my grandfather, who died when I was 16 years old. He was 96. Born in the mid to late 1800’s, he was witness to Reconstruction following the Civil War, the addition of all of the states from Colorado on, the founding of the WCTU (Womens Christian Temperance Union) and the Suffrage amendment to the US Constitution, five wars, the defeat of Custer, the Kodak camera, alternating current (forerunner of modern electrical systems) the light bulb, the machine gun, the x ray, the airplane, the vacuum tube, Prohibition, the Cyclotron, the Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, the advent of plastics, Social Security (he was already eligible for Social Security when it went into effect), radio, television, the transistor, UNIVAC, nuclear submarines, the integrated circuit, Bob Dylan, the computer mouse, and space flight (Gemini XII).

He especially marveled at television and how those pictures and sounds could be transmitted through thin air, picked up by aluminum tubes (antennas), and converted by a box in his living room to picture and sound. I really think that if he thought he could have done it at his age, he would have gone to school to learn how television worked.

I had the privilege, three years after he died, to go to school and learn how television works (the new digital television is a whole ‘nuther animal). I marveled then at how it works and still am amazed that anyone could have thought up all of the intricate interplay and delicate balancing acts that have to occur in the circuitry and the concept for television to be reality.

Had he not experienced the coming of the light bulb, would he have marveled so at television? Had he not witnessed reconstruction, would the nuclear submarine have meant anything to him? Do you get my point? The past helps to drive who and what we are today and who and what we will be in the future. The past isn’t our roadmap to the future, but the past helps us choose the path we will take.

The Unwashed

At our Wednesday Bible class this evening, the leader was talking about the time in Matthew when Jesus ate “with the tax collectors and sinners.” The leader was saying that we are much more comfortable in our own circle of church people than we are when outside that circle. He also said that some people have great difficulty naming even one friend that is not a church friend or someone outside of our comfort circle.

I have had the opportunity over the years to make friends with several people outside of my circle of church friends and family. I don’t feel that uncomfortable around people like that; I used to be one of them. However, I’m not sure that my witness of the Good News has been at all stellar during the times I've been with my “unwashed” friends. Oh, I don’t get in the mud with them, necessarily; I just may not always be as overt in the teaching part of it as I could be.

I could tell you some stories here, but I prefer that most of the details stay with me for the time being. Some of you may have heard me talk of my friendship with local media personality Kevin Craig, who tragically took his life a couple of years ago here in Wichita, and how I had intended to contact him again after moving here…but didn’t.

Some of you may have heard of some other story, such as the time the CEO of Maude Carpenter Children’s Home and I went to a nightclub in Old Town over a Christmas holiday because they were doing a fundraiser for the home and we needed to be there. I was chosen to go because I was the only one on staff who was not uncomfortable with the smoke, booze, loud music, and drunks. Shellee went because she had to. The live music was pretty good. I rather enjoyed the night. I don’t think she did.

I'm not necessarily proud of my prior "unwashed" life. I'm not particularly thrilled that I once picked up a girl in a bar in St. Paul, Minnesota, or that I frequented the 13th and North Hydraulic area in Wichita with friends (and a girl friend), or that I walked the streets and alleys of downtown Wichita at night back in the late '60's, or that I had a four year relationship with a woman that, to put it delicately, was not in my best interests.

However, that is who I am and that is my history. I believe that even in all of that, my God can take those times and circumstances and make something good come of them. If that something good happens to be a level of comfort with the unwashed and their culture, so be it.

I don’t know that it’s just “eating with the tax collectors and sinners” that’s required. I think it’s having some of who I am wash off on those I eat with. That can be a horse of another color. There can be a fine line between enjoying the company of such people and immersing oneself into the culture as one of them. Not all of us may be capable of discerning the difference, but for those who can, perhaps is also given a responsibility to use it wisely.

Gritty Living

I am from the Anabaptist tradition. Both sides of my family were (are) firmly set in that tradition both by heritage as well as practice. One component of that tradition is that of being “a people of peace”. The practical effect of that is that those who subscribe to the Anabaptist philosophy do not serve as police officers, military, or other vocations of that kind and type. They also affirmatively champion the cause of peace (not just absence of war, but real, lasting peace) and work toward that end.

One thing I never heard much about when I was growing up was the effect that WWII had on those who were Anabaptist. My uncle, in his blog, gave some insight into that time recently. He did a series of blogs on the topic and admirably provided a good apologetic for his belief. His blog can be found at http://kings-continuingthejourney.blogspot.com/

The church we attend has no position on serving in the military or in law enforcement. That is left up to the individual to make that choice. It has been an effort, at times, for me to meld my Anabaptist upbringing with (for example) the sight of a uniformed police officer on duty on Sunday mornings (member of the church) stopping by for services. That happened regularly in Oakley, KS where we lived for several years, as Chuck and his family would meet for worship with the congregation. Sometimes he would have to leave during services to go to a call. Other times, he could be there the whole time.

I must admit I'm in the great gray middle on this issue. I like to hear both sides of any issue, and certainly appreciate and honor my uncle’s series of blogs as well as him for writing them.

The older I get, the more I have concluded that life isn't always the black and white that we sometimes have thought. The ideal is not always the reality, nor can it be in a fallen world. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should discard the ideal in favor of wallowing around in the reality without hope of something better. It does mean that sometimes we find ourselves in a position we’d rather not be in, but have no practical way to escape.

Jesus Christ and His example to us is the ideal. Just because we will never meet that ideal doesn’t mean we don’t continue to scratch and claw (that phrase doesn’t sound very peace-like, does it), giving all we have, pursuing it with every fiber of who we are.

On the contrary, as Christians we are called to do just that, while at the same time living, working, coping, and dealing with the imperfect and the effects of it. Loving one’s neighbor and doing unto others sometimes means being gritty and grimy. It sometimes means getting out of our comfort zone. It sometimes means sacrificial giving. It sometimes means disrespect and contempt. And it sometimes means giving the ultimate gift…life itself.

Not Me, Man

The last several days have been days of emotional ups and downs for me. I know I don’t often display emotions as some do, but I can certainly feel them inside. One such time happened today as I heard some beautiful music.

Sis came by the home today and serenaded the residents and staff with some selections on the baby grand we have there. As soon as she started playing, I was struck with emotions that I cannot describe several hours after the fact.

The music was beautiful, but that wasn’t the reason for my feeling. Instead, there was something about the relationship I have with the one doing the playing that made the whole afternoon. I looked forward so to her coming so my friends at the home could meet her, and look forward to her coming back. I was proud of her and her accomplishments in life and wanted others to know about her. And I was grateful and proud for her service and willingness to volunteer an hour or so doing what she does so well.

I also had a good evening at our Wednesday Bible classes. Our class is viewing a video on the life of Jesus. We are watching the book of Matthew portrayed as it is translated in the New International Version. I can’t think of the video series right now…some of you would know about it if I could remember it.

In this video, Jesus is portrayed as a man who has a sense of humor, shows emotion, and seems to sincerely enjoy his ministry and being with people. I understand the producers of the video have taken some license with it in order to produce something that has some attraction to those who would watch.

However, I cannot abide by the old notions that Jesus went around with a frown on his face all the time, used “thee” and “thou”, and had not a bit of fun in his life. He was fully human, according to the Scriptures, and that means he ran the full gamut of emotion including humor, sarcasm, wit, and others.

The Bible says that “the life” was in him. The Bible also says that Jesus came to earth to give us all life, and to give it abundantly. Jesus is The Life. To me, that means that He embodies all that is good about life and living, including humor and emotion.

I am grateful that I am receiving another perspective on the life of this God-Man, the Eternal Son. I am humbled and awed by the possibility that Jesus may well have lived and worked much as he is portrayed in this video. Why else would the crowds respond to him as they did? Would you want to follow someone who frowned, had no fun, and spoke in the king’s English (so to speak) all day? Not me, man. Jesus came to give me life…the abundant life…eternal life. And that means (at least to me) that I have some abundant living to do.

We had some friends over this evening for a hamburger cookout on the back patio. We were talking about some of the wildlife we could see behind our home when Eric brought up the fact that an owl had made an appearance at their place (which backs up to the Little Arkansas River).

I immediately thought of times past and gone when I would hear a hoot owl (great horned owl) in the hackberry tree just outside my bedroom at home where we grew up. I was a teenager then, and the sound of the owl in the middle of the night brought shivers to me as well as a comfort in knowing that I was safe and warm. I usually went right to sleep again for the rest of the night.

Later in life, when I moved our family to that same place, owls once again would roost in the hackberry tree and hoot during the night. I felt that same strange combination of spine-tingles and comfort that carried me through those teen years. And in Oakley when we lived in our first house there, an owl would sometimes hoot during the night in the large tree out front. I’m not sure what it is about the sound of the horned owl that brings those powerful feelings to me. However, as I live and work in the Wichita area, I long for that sound to manifest and bring back the flood of memories and simpler times and lives.

As I write this, I am reminded of several sounds in that old house where I grew up. The great horned owl was one. Trains passing through town at night are another. We lived about ¾ mile away from the BNSF main line from Chicago to Los Angeles. Over 80 trains a day go through there at 70 miles an hour. The sounds carried far and wide. We could easily hear the trains.

Back when there was a switching yard at the railroad, sometimes locomotives would rumble as they started and stopped while switching at night. That low frequency rumble was sufficient to rattle a spring inside one of the windows in my bedroom. I got to where I listened specifically for that sound whenever I heard a loco in the distance. I loved that sound.

Our furnace made a peculiar sound just a few seconds after the blower came on. I could count on it and that sound, again, was comforting to me as I lay in bed.

Finally, probably the sound I miss most is the sound of our large black Labrador as she would come onto the front porch and plop down against the screen door in the middle of the night. I always knew when Dynamite (my son named her) was back from her nightly rounds of the neighborhood, and there was a certain comfort there, too, as I knew she kept a watchful eye out for unusual things. There is still, 15 years later, a worn place on the screen door where she lay.

The saddest sound of all was that same sound of Dynamite plopping up against the screen door one Sunday evening some 15 years ago. I knew it would be the last time I heard that sound, because the next day I knew I would put her down as she was full of cancer and was suffering too much. She’d already been to the vet. I already had made arrangements for him to come to the house and put her down rather than my hauling her there. Besides, I could bury her out back and come to the reconciliation that she was no longer with us much better that way.

I can remember that sound like it happened five minutes ago….

Some things that seem at first somewhat incongruous, or at least a little different from what I would have always thought (these in no specific order):

• The young nurse aide this morning who said she will really miss Tim Russert because she watches mostly the news channels and his program.
• The City of Harper, KS charges a minimum of $33 per month water bill, even if no water is used during the entire month.
• Goldfish can be purchased at Wal Mart, dumped in an outdoor backyard pond, and will live for a good long time.
• Jesus makes the statement, “Before Abraham was, I am.”
• A plant can grow out of a rock.
• When I get a hair cut, the barber actually cuts many, many hairs.
• Circuit breakers for Federal Pacific brand circuit boxes cost upwards of $60 each while other breakers for other brands can be purchased for as little as $5.
• People drive fast, jump start, tailgate, weave in traffic, and use their brakes too much even though gasoline is $4.00 per gallon.
• At my age, I should be smelling the roses instead of plowing up weeds.

Saturday Morning TV

I was watching TV this morning (Saturday). I know, I know, that’s many times a waste of time, especially on Saturday. Nevertheless, I was taking in I Love Lucy and a commercial came on. Normally, I don’t watch them to a great extent as I have what I need, and if I don’t, I go down to the local store and get it. This commercial, however, caught my eye.

They were selling ped-eggs. Now, if you have never seen one, just think for a minute what these gadgets might be good for, knowing only the name of the product. OK, I’ll just tell you. These little marvels somehow scrape off the dead skin from the bottom of your feet in order to make them “smooth and silky”. Now, before you tell me that I’m “tetched in the head”, let me finish.

The commercial was a classic. One young woman raved on and on about these things and closed out by saying, “I’ve just got to have one!” One scene showed five people of various genders and ages all sitting in the same room shaving off the bottom of their feet, then opening up these egg gadgets and dumping out all the dead skin in piles, evidently showing the usefulness of the thing. And, of course, there was the proverbial “But Wait!! That’s not all!!” phrase following the announcement that one of these cost only $10. Turns out that you can obtain two at that price (one for each hand…foot...) and some kind of cream that is supposed to make your feet more attractive.

OK. I have a couple of questions. Why would anyone be that interested in dead skin on the soles of one’s feet? If there is a legitimate answer to that question, why would anyone want to engage in that kind of personal care in a room with four or five other people? And why, for heaven’s sake, would those people dump their dead skin in piles in order to compare success? Of course, the greatest question is why anyone would think that they just had to have something like this?

Am I wrong, or are there more important things in this world that we need to be thinking about, working on, and spending our money on? Am I being too serious here, or is there a case to be made that some folks are just so full of themselves that they have to have the silkiest foot soles in town?

This is making me more nauseated the more I think about it. What started off as being something funny and asinine has become, in my mind, something that has grown into a “This is what’s wrong with this world,” kind of thing. But that isn’t even right. What’s wrong with the world isn’t the fact that someone somewhere knows there are people gullible enough to send him $10 (plus shipping and handling) and their name and address for a plastic egg-like thingy that shaves off dead skin. (By the way, the names and addresses are sold on mailing lists many, many times over, making more money for the shysters than the profits from the sale of the product.)

No, what’s wrong with the world happened in a certain Garden over in the East many, many centuries ago. The human race has futilely trying to cope with that ever since. One of these days, we’ll all know that only One Man has ever successfully won that battle. And He won it for us all.

What God is Doing

I’m working on a theory. OK, I’m not a scientist, nor am I a learned scholar. Nevertheless, I have a theory. I think the writers of old who penned the works known collectively as the Bible knew what they were talking about when they wrote about God being involved in literally the routine and mundane things in our lives.

David wrote about it. Daniel did, too. Many of the writers of old talked glowingly and waxed eloquent regarding God’s provision for His creation in even those things that we might otherwise take for granted.

In today’s world we tend to dismiss such thoughts. We say that the writers of old didn’t know about scientific theory, the solar system or the water cycle. We say that they attributed to God things that they could not otherwise explain, and that because we are an advanced people, we have explanations for such things that do not involve the intervention of a deity.

I’m not so sure. I was prompted to think, following yesterday’s evening lesson at church, that perhaps there are a couple of reasons why we tend to poo poo such ideas. One, perhaps we like to think of ourselves as intelligent and advanced…too “smart” to fall for such explanations. Two, could it be possible that God’s work in our routine lives is so pervasive that we don’t know what it’s like to be without that work…therefore, we don’t appreciate and “see” what He truly does?

Think for a moment what might be different about your life right now if God, just for today, did not work in your sphere of consciousness. How would things be different? Would you have food to eat? Would you have shelter? What about a job? Maybe your spouse, children, or relatives might not exist or be different. Would you have gasoline to power your car? Would you have a car? Would you be healthy? Would you even be alive?

We have not a clue how much of what we ate today was due to the work of God in our lives. Nor do we have a clue whether or not we would even be alive today if God didn’t work on our behalf.

I suspect we would be a lot like the servant of Elisha who, when confronted with Aram and his army (II Kings 6), wrung his hands and wondered what they were going to do. We don’t see the work of God or the hand of God in anything. We are too cynical, too logical for that. You may know the rest of the story: Elisha prayed that God would allow the servant to see what was really happening, and the servant then saw God’s army surrounding everything.

What would happen to us if we really saw what God was doing right around us?