Dithyramb

Well, we’re all pretty excited for Melissa to come home. Hopefully Monday is the day. She probably could have come home yesterday, but the doctors want to be careful and sure to send her home well. It has been a long year so far.

But sometimes the weather cooperates. That is, Melissa went into the hospital for bone marrow transplant a year ago this coming Wednesday. The cancer had spread to many, many places in her body. There was even some discussion about whether to go on because it was in the brain. Cancer-free since August, and we are blessed. But back to the weather. She went in in spring, stayed thru almost to the beginning of summer—all those days when it seems right and perfect to be in Kentucky—warm and sunny. The heat is ok; things are growing all over the place. It did not seem that good weather could help our mood much!

But now, the days are bright and warm.

I have always liked my outside jobs best—winery, helping out at my grandfather’s ranch, construction, landscaping. There’s a special time in the morning if you’re outside and there are plants growing. There’s a certain smell, a smell I have imagined is the scent of Eden, of creation. It’s not just ozone or dew or dust. Maybe it’s all of them and who knows what else. But for a few minutes early in the morning, it’s a perfect smell: muted, subtle, everywhere.

It’s also the smell of boys. There is no better smell than dusty, sweaty little boys. It’s a shame to give them a bath! It’s a moment of recognition: we smell like each other when we’re sweating. The sun, fresh air, and life combine. You hold their heads and breathe in deeply, to catch the dull smell.

I suppose that part of what makes being a child such a wonderful time is that it’s ok to not be clean, to smell like life.

Right now, Joseph is playing with the red Radio Flyer wagon my mom got John for Christmas 4 or 5 years ago. What a memorable wagon—putting the boys in it and carting them around the church in Winchester; using it to go to the garden, and watching the boys loading it up with vegetables. In the garden, you invariably get dusty.

John has got some crazy putty on his hands, and he has stretched it across his fingers like a glove. “Look! A frog foot!” Yes, the days when you can be anything, and not worry if you smell like fresh air! Wild days! I had a friend in college named “Hair.” He was a stout fellow, reddish hair, down past his shoulders. One Christmas break, he didn’t go back home. He packed some gear and camped in the De Soto National Forest in South Mississippi. Some people can hold on to being boys longer. Some days you wonder if it’s worth growing up, or if you had to.

Walking Around Money, part 3

The Sunday School Class that is providing me with Wlaking Around Money is also doing something else crazy. First Church has some property on hte outskirts of Lexington where they will be starting some new services. It's on 11 acres and they're lettign the Sunday School use some of it to grow a garden, with the food to be coming down here! Amen!

Dulaney Wood, the guy dreaming it up said, "I know this is crazy..."

My motto is: "This is so crazy it just might work." Or sometimes I say, "This is so weird, it has to be from God."

Friends, how wonderful will it be when God's bounty, His wonderful provision fills the stomach and the heart?

Aaron

Big Doug

I was walking around, loosely headed to see Big Doug and his cousin, to touch base about their house that burned down and see what progress there is in finding living arrangements. As I was headed down the street where he is staying with his younger cousin’s family, I saw him ambling down the road. So I walked with him to the bus stop.

“Where you headed?” I asked.

“Ah, nowhere, I just ride the buses.”

“Just all over town?”

“Yeah. I don’t mind talking to you now, tho, as long as the bus ain’t here.”

All I could think of was John Prine’s “Sins of Memphisto:”

The hands on his watch spin slowly around

With his mind on a bus that goes all over town

Looking at the babies in the factories

Listening to the music of Mr. Squeeze

As if by magic or remote control

He finds a piece of a puzzle

He missed in his soul

This is the Gospel Of Doug, as best I can tell:

He was born in the house that burned down. From our vantage point as the bus stop, he tells me where the grocery store used to be. Well, as an infant, he suffered greatly. His mother was mentally ill, and she purposefully starved him. So, he never really developed normally. Even tho he is 20 or so years older than his younger cousins, he always hung out with them and played with them, as if he were a kid, too.

He worked one time, had a job at some kind of plant where he swept up in the boiler room. He liked it. It was suited to him. He got a uniform… and some steel-toed boots. Some guys decided to play a trick on him and threw his shoes in the boiler. Then when the boss was upset about Doug not having his shoes, they told Doug to say he didn’t like them, they hurt his feet and he wanted some new ones. He did that, and got fired. He knew enough to know he was being pushed around, but did not have the wherewithal to stand up to them. How often is that kind of story told about fellows who are developmentally disabled?

So he has kind of ambled on in life, taken care of by his cousins, to better or worse degrees, each generation of cousins seeming to know that it would fall to them to take care of him as older ones passed on or were unable to do so.

When Doug’s house burned down, he lost a lot. It was in bad shape—no heat this winter, but by cobbling together different places to stay, he kept warm. But that was where he was born, where he’s lived his whole life, where his grandmother lived. It’s home in a way that many of us may not be able to understand.

Each year, Doug buys himself a new set of steel-toed boots. He is very proud of them, and will show them off when he gets them. And now I know a little more of why he gets steel-toes, like what he had that was taken away… and burned. No wonder it meant so much for Doug to tell me that firemen were able to get three things out for him: his wallet, his boots, and his Bible. The boots that were taken from him got burned up. These ones did not. And when he got his Bible, he said he was reminded that heaven and earth will pass away, but Jesus’ words will never pass away.

I have been so blessed by those words, from this man. It’s like my friend Buddy Pittman. He was developmentally disabled and worked with me at USM’s Physical Plant. We were planting trees and shrubs one day, sweating like dancing mules, and I asked him a question. I was wondering about the part in Genesis where God kicks them out and says Adam will have to work hard to even eat and women will have pain in childbirth. So I got to wondering why do we have AC or pain-killing drugs. Weren’t we cursed? Pitt said unforgettable words: “I don’t live under the curse. I live under the blessing.”

Blew me away. This is the egalitarian libertarian force of the Gospel, that a man like Buddy Pittman, who could never teach a class at USM gave me more wisdom than I had ever received in all my years of schooling. And he was entirely humble and straightforward about it. That’ what the Truth will do, I guess.

How much time I spent (spend) trying to be wise or strong! “But God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so no one may boast before Him” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).

People like Doug—whether poor or developmentally disabled or both—aren’t going to tithe much. And so, frankly, many pastors and churches avoid them. They’re ok as mascots, but hear me: we will put up with any trouble, division, dissension, insults and problems from the rich, because we think our churches are built on them and by them. No, our churches are built on the deposit of the Holy Spirit. And His gifts and utterances are given to any who will receive them, in and by faith. “Aaron, you are naïve.” Yes. But if I am wrong, do you want to be right?

Strangelove,

Aaron

Walking Around Money, part 2

A few friends and some folks who will be friends read something I wrote back in January, “Walking Around Money.” They have been thinking for some time how it is that they can go deeper in their faith. One of the things that they have considered is partnering with The Rock La Roca. There are lots of needs here in the community, and it will take some time of prayer and spending time together to know how best to proceed. What we need is the human capital in other churches—people who can bring their expertise to the life of the community.

But we also have pressing material needs, and as the witness of the Early Church is that you should not go to the poor empty-handed, I try to have something available for the people I minister to.

Well, these friends in The Bible Learning and Teaching (BLT) Class at First United Methodist in Lexington blew me away today. They have decided that one Sunday a month, they are going to eat a lunch at various members’ houses and take the money they would have paid at a restaurant and give it to The Rock La Roca, for my “walking around money.”

They gave me $600. That will go a long way to minister to the needs in the community. I am so grateful and blessed that people’s hearts are moved! And I so look forward to being back around some of my old First Church buddies. They knew me when! They helped me come in to ministry. They welcomed Melissa into my life. And they keep up with us and pray for us. And because we Methodists love connection, we can work together for the glory of God in our town!

Elegy

It’s one of those days where Melissa senses that she is closer to getting out than she was yesterday, that each day she is getting stronger.

On those kinds of days, one of the things that happens is we start to talking about the little things she wants to do, the little things we used to; the things that really aren’t so little. She’ll say things like she can’t wait to be able to drop the boys off at school, make a grocery list, do the shopping.

See, there was this time when how we thought of ourselves was that we were at work in the fields of the Lord. We have simply always wanted to live on a small piece of land, have a big garden. Like the John Prine song says, “Blow up your t.v., throw away your paper/move to the country, build you a home./ Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches/Try and find Jesus on your own.”

But since we were going to be a family in Methodist ministry, maybe we needed to refine our vision of the garden, or the farm. We began to see the lives that God had given us to care for, especially the lives of people who did not yet know they belonged to God, as our fields.

And in that time, we were in a church where the parsonage was right next door, and there was a big garden out back, and John and Joe helped me load veggies into their wagon. And up and down the roads I went, preaching and praying. John and Joseph were at home, with Melissa like as not playing with them, teaching them. And sometimes they would come with me to visit some of the older parishioners who loved to see the little boys.

Then came cancer and all of this idyll came to a screeching stop. So when we think of what do we want to do, I guess it comes down to getting back to normal, whatever that is. Not just the simple, normal things, but getting back to that work that we are called to as a family. In the end, that was a pretty simple, normal thing. One day, I think it will be there again. I think we’ll get back to the life we had, in whatever new and surprising ways that God has for us. The Little Seminary will be in full effect. It’s already good to take the boys places, visiting in the neighborhood. It’ll be a dream to have Melissa in town, in the church with us.

Yesterday at The Rock La Roca

Yesterday in church was a powerful day. There were probably 60 people at the altar between the two morning services. In the second service, there was no room at the altar, so people were spread out on the floor. I had asked us simply to pray that our hearts would be broken for the people in our community who don’t know Jesus.

I have to be clear: this is in no way a response to me, nor does it rely on me. It is a response based on the Word, prayer, and the Holy Spirit. The Word is true, but people don’t always respond. The Holy Spirit draws people to come close to God, but they do not always listen. But if people listen, if they respond, it is because of the Truth of the Word and the action of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer is the tool or weapon that is in our hands. For people to respond, for hearts and minds to be open, there must be much prayer, and much praying done by people other than the preacher. I do not know all or even most of the people who are praying for the church, for me, but I know there are many. Things like there never being a Sunday when there is not at least one person who responds to an altar call—this does not happen unless there is prayer.

To all those who are praying, much thanks. In every way it is what not only keeps me and my family going, it is what keeps the church going.

Can We Listen to Martin?

Chip has let me borrow an interesting book on tape: A Knock at Midnight, sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. Audiotapes of his sermons—unbelievable. In school you read his letter from the Birmingham Jail, you learned about his role in the Civil Rights Movement. But we never listened to his sermons! They are definitely too dangerous for a society that wants to forget about God. You can’t understand what he was about without knowing what God meant to him, and these sermons are hard-core gospel sermons.

Well, I listen to these in the car, and even the boys are getting into it. John, especially, wants to know more. The boys studied about him in school during African-American history month.

John will say, “Can we listen to Martin?” He has drawn a few pictures of him, and they show the innocence of childhood—“Martin is a brown man.” A few days ago, John said, “I am going to preach like Martin.” All of a sudden, he started a sermon, but done in his imitation of Martin Luther King. The interesting thing was, it was John’s own sermon, about Zaccheus, about how happy Zaccheus was that Jesus was going to stay at his house.

My Boys

No one can ever know what a joy my boys are. They are a handful. Lots of times they don’t listen, do the very thing you ask them not to, sometimes the very thing you told them not to do because it will hurt them. But there’s nothing but love from them. And more than that: joy.

Some thing that I am not sure that many people are aware of is how discouraging a pastor’s life is. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, or look for sympathy. Not at all. But a point of fact is that no good deed goes unpunished; people you spend a lot of time in helping will turn on you precisely because you’ve helped them; everyone has their own agenda about what church should be like and God forbid you think it should go another direction—you’re only the pastor, after all. And then there is, for me, the relentless misery of so many people, especially children. When I realize how little of my time gets spent in the actual ministry of the Word, it is depressing. People are dying, but the comfortable elements of the church—people on something of an even keel, administration, any number of things—sap your time and attention. Next thing you know, you’re a manager, a fund-raiser, a chaplain, anything but the pastor the community needs.

Then there are the unexpected blows that threaten the delicate life of a congregation.

It was one of those days, really a series of those kinds of days, when all such things were hitting home that my two little prophets spoke up. First was Joseph. He drew me a picture of himself. He said, “Daddy I made you a picture. See, it’s me. Daddy, you were lonely and Joseph is coming to see you.” I am glad he knows that there is not much more in life that I want than to see him.

And on a Sunday morning, as we were driving in, and all kinds of thoughts were running through my head, when I was suffering discouragement and thinking about all the things that are not going right, and how I am not fully at The Rock as much as I would like, as much as it needs, John says out of nowhere, from his back seat, “Daddy, I am glad you are a pastor.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you are a good pastor and you teach me and Joe about Jesus. And sometimes I can hear your sermons in children’s church, when you get loud.”

And sometimes the sweetness is silly, and all the more sweet for that. Their favorite t.v. show is Jakers, the Adventures of Piggly Winks, an animated program about some Irish farm animals. John likes the young bull Fernie who sings off-key. On Melissa’s birthday, he sang her a song he made up, just like Fernie would sing it. No one has ever had such a raucous and loving birthday song. There was a lot of love and laughter on both ends of the phone.

Joseph’s favorite character is Finnegan, the donkey. So much so that Joseph communicates in brays. You ask him what kind of cereal he wants, and you get a bray. I guess it’s a good thing Cheerios are made of oats… Joe can’t quite pronounce the name. It sounds like he’s saying Fillagain. One day we were in bed, taking a nap and Joe said, “Daddy, I am a baby Fillagain, and you are a daddy Fillagain, and Mommy is a mommy Fillagain and John is a big brother Fillagain.” That got John started braying, and it was another 15 minutes before we got calmed down for a nap.

John said to me, “Daddy, you should preach like Martin.” If only! Then he said, “If we were in a brown church, it wouldn’t be so quiet, and I could hear you more when I am in children’s church.” [I get a lot of help from Butch. He knows there’s a black preacher in me struggling to get out, so he hollers and claps.] How is it that John, a 6-year old, sees where we need to head? That is, we have opened up to at least calling ourselves multi-cultural. And then because we were willing to say it, we went past Anglos and Hispanics to Africans. But our community has a large African American population. Will we reach there, too? Will we be intentional? Will we reach the white folks in our community, who are culturally very different from the white folks who currently attend? These are questions not of intention, or words, or mission statements, but of guts.

And what kind of little seminary will we be? There are hearts full of joy, waiting.

Good Friday

A couple weeks ago, Joe fell off his slide, from about 5 feet up. He landed like a cat, on all fours and then he kind of crumpled, and I thought for sure he had broken his arm. But it turned out that as he came down, he grazed the edge of the sand box and cut his hip. He cried for a bit and I held him and we started laughing after a little bit. He got right back to playing. I told him he had a new nickname, “Chuck Norris.”

Chip “Norris” Guyton gave me Chuck Norris’ autobiography Against All Odds. A good read. I know, I know. People have told me for years something like this: you were a student of serious literature. Why do you like “Walker, Texas Ranger?”

What you have to know is that one of my professors told me that I was single-handedly starting a new school of literary criticism he called “Philistinism.” This was, presumably, in response to my statement that I am not into the “whole ambiguity thing.” Ambiguity, uncertainty, “complicating the issues” are all cardinal virtues of the modern world. Not for me.

Melissa is still in the hospital. Getting stronger, it seems. She is cutting up, wanting to sing hymns. Starr and Randy Clay gave me a hymnal when I left First Church in Lexington. I keep their note at the hymn that seems to sum up First Church’s impact on me, #163, “Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know.” We have been using the hymnal as a prayer book.

This will be the third Easter Melissa has not been at church. In 2005, she was too sick to come. 2006 too much pain just before the transplant. And now, it looks like she is in here for the weekend and longer.

Weird connections. Frank Woggon is the chaplain here. He was at Baptist East for some time. I met him at a chaplain training event at Earlham College almost 7 years ago. Frank is from Germany, and he talked about Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his presentation. Anyway, I had not seen him for years and then he was in the lobby. We talked and it was good to have him pray for and support Melissa.