blogspot confessional

Not long after I came to the Rock, someone asked me who Steffi was. Steffi is the girl who watches John and Joe in the early service. I’ve known her since she was about 8, I guess. I jokingly said she was my oldest child. The person took me literally, and I could see them trying to do the math—36 year old pastor, 20 year old girl… We have to keep up the front, otherwise I lose my family discount at Gold Star, where Steffi works… Don’t come between me and my Gold Star…

Anyway, I was in Gold Star, grabbing lunch and working on my sermon. It’s a good, quiet place. Steffi had this book she let me look at, some compendium of postcards people send anonymously and confess secrets, get it off their chest, whatever. Fascinating, moving, funny, tragic.

But it opened a wound-- an odd one, I suppose. That is, I didn’t keep any secrets from Melissa. Like I’ve said, we had an honest relationship. It started because there were a bunch of us who hung out together. I’m pretty transparent most times, and get me around some people I am comfortable with, and there’s no telling what I might say. Well, I never thought Melissa and I would end up going out, getting married, so I said things you’d never say to/around someone you might date. Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. It was a blessing to be able to be honest. Otherwise, you live in a shadowland. Afraid, unable to be yourself. Honestly, I’m surprised she loved me. She knew what she was getting into, that’s all I can say.

How many people can you be honest with? There’s not a lot of value, it doesn’t seem to me, if you’re a hidden figure from the person you should be closest to. What if you can’t speak about crises of conscience, own your hypocrisy, express how you’ve been degraded, or that you have degraded others in truly wretched ways, what if you can’t know and be known? If we’re not careful, and sometimes if we are, God becomes abstract. An idea. You need someone who can be incarnational, to remind you of God’s presence.

Most people see me as a well-spoken, engaging person; a loyal friend; a funny guy; a friend to the broken-hearted; compassionate to the poor. That’s all there, I like to think. But then there’s a dark side; really, a heap of dark things all mashed up. I say this freely because I know you are the same, so it’s not like I’m the freak, here. Ok, I am, but you know what I mean. I was simply able to let it out, she loved me anyway, and all that crap lost its hold and power over me. I had let it go to God, but there was that part of me that said, “well, He’s God, He has to love me.” (I have come to realize that not everyone feels this way. I wish you did. It changes everything if you know beyond needing to know how you know that God loves you) But people are not as loving and forgiving as God, so I wondered. But I don’t wonder anymore. And I am never going back to the shadowlands.

Just got out of the prayer and fasting service

We had a powerful time of prayer and fasting just now. There were 6 men in there. Can we find seven mighty men? And, please, sisters, come too!

We meet for prayer and fasting every Wednesday at 12:15 to 12:45.

Praises were lifted up. And a huge burden was laid down because the Holy Spirit spoke. All we did was simply pray. We came fasting, and you’d think we’d be having a tough time. But no! It was a time full of joy!

Hopefully, our endurance for prayer will grow, and our love of the Lord’s Way (fasting, for example) will grow to fruitfulness.

strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees...

This Rosario diet thing has to go. Well, not really, but when I see a chart that says 3 oz of steak for a meal, I think, “I haven’t settled for 3 oz of steak since I was 3 years old.” I could eat steak even if I had a case of cholera. But, it’s working, so you can’t argue with that. A few years back I had found my way into Olympic weightlifting. It was about the last 8 or 9 months I was in Winchester. Then we got to Louisville, Melissa got sick and I fell out of the habit. It’s a slow process to get anywhere in Olympic weightlifting, but you lose it quick. The moves are complicated, taking in all the joints and needing a fast, coordinated move of major muscles. I had to work a few weeks just to get the ankle flexibility to start the motion. And it’s embarrassing that no matter how strong you are, you have to start with an empty bar. But once I got past that, it brought good results.

I was attracted to for a variety of reasons. The positive reason is that I was interested more in strength than how I look, and the negative was I hate sit ups, any kind of ab work, and preparing for the last part of the clean-and-jerk or squat-snatch works your core like nothing else. Especially when your coach ties huge rubber bands to the ends of the bar, and you have to hold not just the weight, but keep it stable on the way up. So no more sit-ups, crunches, anything, for me. The beautiful thing is that the way you have to attack the work is exactly the way you have to attack the spiritual life. The very words the New Testament uses to describe spiritual discipline is the language of training. It will be good to get back into it.

I still don’t know why I let my no-good brother-in-law talk me into interval training. It will be what kills me. I didn’t like that stuff in soccer practice, and I had a reason to do it, then.

We’re putting a gym downstairs at The Rock. So in addition to starting to get better food into people’s lives, we hope to start people exercising, especially our young people. I’m looking forward to it, as well. We’ll have all the stuff to get back into Olympic weightlifting, which isn’t much. Just lots of space and some weights. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find our way to a Methodist Church—strengthening body and soul to salvation.

strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees...

This Rosario diet thing has to go. Well, not really, but when I see a chart that says 3 oz of steak for a meal, I think, “I haven’t settled for 3 oz of steak since I was 3 years old.” I could eat steak even if I had a case of cholera. But, it’s working, so you can’t argue with that. A few years back I had found my way into Olympic weightlifting. It was about the last 8 or 9 months I was in Winchester. Then we got to Louisville, Melissa got sick and I fell out of the habit. It’s a slow process to get anywhere in Olympic weightlifting, but you lose it quick. The moves are complicated, taking in all the joints and needing a fast, coordinated move of major muscles. I had to work a few weeks just to get the ankle flexibility to start the motion. And it’s embarrassing that no matter how strong you are, you have to start with an empty bar. But once I got past that, it brought good results.

I was attracted to for a variety of reasons. The positive reason is that I was interested more in strength than how I look, and the negative was I hate sit ups, any kind of ab work, and preparing for the last part of the clean-and-jerk or squat-snatch works your core like nothing else. Especially when your coach ties huge rubber bands to the ends of the bar, and you have to hold not just the weight, but keep it stable on the way up. So no more sit-ups, crunches, anything, for me. The beautiful thing is that the way you have to attack the work is exactly the way you have to attack the spiritual life. The very words the New Testament uses to describe spiritual discipline is the language of training. It will be good to get back into it.

I still don’t know why I let my no-good brother-in-law talk me into interval training. It will be what kills me. I didn’t like that stuff in soccer practice, and I had a reason to do it, then.

We’re putting a gym downstairs at The Rock. So in addition to starting to get better food into people’s lives, we hope to start people exercising, especially our young people. I’m looking forward to it, as well. We’ll have all the stuff to get back into Olympic weightlifting, which isn’t much. Just lots of space and some weights. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find our way to a Methodist Church—strengthening body and soul to salvation.

Lunchtime Meditation

It seems to me that lately John Donne is more my master than John Wesley. That is, for whatever reason, I find myself now reading Donne where I was always reading Wesley.

John Donne is one of the greatest poets in English. When I was in 7^th grade I had a great English teacher, Mr. Jourdain. He was an old school bodybuilder. That is, he was in his 50s in the early 80s, and was absolutely jacked, and had been for years. It took three of us at once, hanging off his forearm, to even challenge him arm-wrestling. He convinced us that poetry was for men, not for wimps. Especially men like John Donne—intelligent, funny, war-like, crude, kind. Everyone needs a teacher like Mr. Jourdain.

Donne was also a powerful Christian, perhaps the greatest preacher in English. He was the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London the last 10 or 11 years of his life.

Some of you know how I am prone to daydream. One day, in a Renaissance literature seminar, I was paying no attention to what was going on. Well, I was paying attention, but not like a normal person. I had only been a Christian for two years, and I still had lots of questions. We were reading Donne’s poem, “Air and Angels.” (It’s tied with his “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” for my favorite.) But for a few days, I had been wondering about circumcision in the Bible. I had lots of questions.

First, why?

How come it’s something for men, and there isn’t something for women?

And then, why?

Isn’t this a little strange—mutilation, and there of all places?

And, of course, why?

Now, I am working on a sermon on Romans 2:28-29, “Circumcision of the Heart,” so I can’t give it all away here. But I can say that reading “Air and Angels,” at a particular moment in class, I suddenly got it: why circumcision. Like I said, I won’t give away the reason, but I can show you the seed.

Donne, like no other poet, mixes the sacred and profane. That is, he quickly moves between the sexual and the holy, in imagery, in parallels, and sometimes in one word. But you don’t feel like he has insulted anyone or anything. Most of his works were never published in his lifetime. He wrote them first for his wife, Anne, and then would occasionally read them for his friends, such as Ben Jonson.

Even in those days, I knew I wanted holiness, “without which no one will see the Lord.” But what is it? Is it a set of rules? Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t cuss, don’t go to R-rated movies? Be kind, visit the sick, take care of the poor, go to church? Sure, but holiness is fire. You can’t come too close to it for very long without being burned down. And that’s what has to happen. It refines and purifies. Can there be any doubt as to how and why so many of the deepest love songs could replace a human name or face with God’s, and still keep their integrity?

But then, holiness is also real. So real that the simplest things in life become sacraments: bread and wine, water. Animals were sacrificed in the Old Testament, and that work of slaughtering was something they did every day, as a mater of course; God came to them in precisely the things they knew about, every day.

So there I was, thunderstruck in the class by a line in the poem where it hit me: God is so real, He won’t shirk away from any part of us. I don’t recall anyone wondering what happened to me, so I guess I kept the intensity of what I was feeling under wraps. This relationship with God that we have through Jesus, this Holiness, it is unutterably real, showing up in strange places, sanctifying things we gloss over or want to put away.

Well, that’s all I can give you now, except for the poem.

AIR AND ANGELS.

TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name ;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too ;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught ;
Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought ;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere ;
Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere ;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air's and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

Because I am feeling generous, here is “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” in case you don’t keep your copy of Donne handy… Peace, Aaron

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.

Saturday

A day of different directions. Joe went with Brandon, Melissa’s brother, to check out rvs and go to the Bass Pro Shop. John went with me, to the Zoo. We got to see the baby elephant. Mostly it was an excuse to walk around and hold hands. I wonder how much longer he’ll do that?

Later in the day, we went up to the school to ride bikes. It strikes me that the past week or so has been pretty good, maybe even really good. The boys’ counselor is very pleased with how they are handling things. She has been working with them for about 7 months, and so she knew them pretty well before Melissa died. We learned early on you have to be honest with them about all that is going, and pay attention to what they can understand.

Today marks the first week of clean eating. One of the things we were going to do was eat better. (Please, not that!) The Roz set me up with a plan for weight loss and muscle gain. Ack, more work. And today was the first day of interval training. I have always loved soccer (in Germany, there was no choice about that), but I hated running even in a game. Give me a ball to chase, and I’ll manage; running was a necessary evil if you wanted to score goals.

The Lord has given us such peace. I wish I knew how to describe it, this confidence in pressing forward, this sense that I will be ok, and more importantly, the boys will be, too. It’s hard to pin down, the way this peace comes; it’s more than prayer and fasting, scripture study, worship. It has just shown up. Part of it is conversations with friends who know me deeply, and remind me of who I am. I know that so many people are praying for us, and all along that is what we asked for, and continue to ask for. Lesser things have threatened to undo me, but in those times, I did not have near as many people praying for me. So keep us in your hearts. The biggest part of this peace is simply faith. I can’t even say how it is that I have it, because it is not so much stubbornness, although it sometimes seems like that.

My Wingman

We were at a restaurant and Joe needed to go to the bathroom. When we got there, he says, “let’s go in the girls’ bathroom.”

“No,” I said, “we’ll get in trouble.”

“But we might see some pretty girls, Daddy!”

Ohio

A few days ago in the car, me and the boys were talking about different languages, who speaks what, etc. John asked, “What do they speak in Ohio?” He thinks Ohio is some far-off exotic land. I was about to say “English,” but then I thought, I’ll have some fun at the expense of buckeyes and hoosiers. I said, “there’s no telling, really. You cross that river and there’s just no telling what will happen, or how weird it can get.”

Eyes got bigger in the mirror. I said, “you see this mirror? Well, we call it a mirror. But in Indiana, it’s their compass… you look in it and it tells you who’s lost.” They looked at me, wondering what is wrong with those people across the river.

I did finally tell them they speak English over there… but it doesn’t sound right.

They See Me Rollin'

So I get this call from Pedal Power, a bike store downtown. “Pastor Mansfield, we have a bike waiting for you that someone has purchased on your behalf.” No way!

The Rozilhoffer and Dingo took me to get it, and I started worrying. They are always ruining me with practical jokes. Like just this morning, Dingo says, “hey, come look at this cute little box turtle. It’s right under that box.” I knew enough to know it was probably a snake, so I made him get it. Ended up being a loggerhead snapping turtle that could take your finger clean off. So I was convinced that this bike was going to be pink with flowers and a plastic horn. You just never know. You see how much I have been traumatized.

Anyhoo, I get there and meet the young salesman who handled everything. The donor wants to remain anonymous. Please accept my thanks, whoever you are! I love bikes, the idea of bikes, and just their elegance. This one is pretty nice—it has fat tires that roll easy and can hit dirt if you have to. The seat is back and low and the handlebars are higher than normal, so it rides really comfortable. Looks like a chopper. I guess I’ll call it my Harley Softail… The salesman, a young guy with dread locks said it was one of his favorite sales to handle.

It’s perfect, exactly what I was looking for. The bike was designed specifically for cruising around comfortably. I am looking to use it for making visits to far flung parts of the hood. I like to walk, to keep an eyeball on things, and you just can’t do it in a car, but the rubber on the wheels will take you farther than the rubber on the heels, as Muddy Waters says…

Also, I am going to get some baskets put on it so when the vegetables come in, I can carry lots of those around to the people I visit. I am really touched. Some pastors get a town car; don’t want one! I’m like a kid on Christmas, and I am very touched that someone thought enough of me to seriously help my ministry! God bless you, whoever you are.

Walking Around

Prayer and Fasting Service was awesome today. Incense, psalms, 5 men in deep prayer. Not to slight my sisters, but we need more and more men to be strong and be strengthened.

Rosario and I went out to do some visiting, looking for families with kids to invite to our Family Fun Night this Friday. I had a particular house in mind, but then turned down the wrong street. Saw a house I had wanted to get back to and Roz said taking the wrong street was providential.

The fellow in the house is a guy I have talked to before. He said he doesn’t like church because there is so much evil in the world, and the church doesn’t really help. This guy is young, and he just had a defibrillator put in. “My lifestyle caught up with me, dude.” We talked about breaking past addictions, etc. Then I said something like, “well, it’s good that you are getting your body straightened out, but you need to take care of your soul. The body is only temporary, but the soul lives forever.”

“One thing at a time,” he said.

“That’s fine, but you have another heart attack and you’re not right with God, things will be hard.”

We got to talking about his issue with there being so much suffering. It’s the suffering of kids that gets him, apparently. “They’re too young to know anything, to have done anything.” We prayed for him to be healthy and to receive Christ. And then I challenged him to join us in good works, even if he doesn’t believe. I promised to pester him again. Maybe he will work with us and learn to love our Jesus.

One of the blessings of being at The Rock La Roca is that I get to walk all over the place when I do visits. I have taken to having meetings with people while we walk. We’re not going anywhere in particular; we have the meeting while we walk and we keep an eyeball on the neighborhood. We see streets, people and their lives that won’t get seen if we sit in our offices, or just keep driving down Limestone Street to the church.

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do

Today is going to be a rough day. It’s a day of fasting, and everything is conspiring against me. There’s a luncheon at church. And then, Chance comes in and offers me an oatmeal cream pie, and man do I love an oatmeal cream pie. But that’s not the half of it.

A few weeks ago, Joe was having some trouble in a swimming pool at a friend’s house and I had to jump in after him, clothes and all. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, and Joe got right back in. Anyhoo, my cell phone was drenched.

I have a potentially worse cell phone problem now. We had cheesecake at Lead Team last night, and generally I was a good boy, ate my piece and left it at that. But on the way out, Lacy offered me another piece and what could I do?

I put it on the seat next to me for the ride home. I had a few calls to make and then put the phone down. Had another call to make, and realized my cell phone had stuff all over it. Cheesecake, with chocolate sauce. I cut my lip trying to get it all off.

So, please, no one call me; I’m fasting and my cell-phone smells like cheesecake.

Job Site Blues

I called Steve McKinney on Monday. I worked for him one summer, and I well remember hard work on hot days. I knew he and the boys were going to be up on a roof, and Monday was looking to be hot. I left him a message that said something like this: "Hey Steve, I know it's a hot day, and you're on the roof, to boot. I just wanted to call and say I appreciate how much you do, and the hard work. So I am going to go into a nice air-conditioned room, to keep cool for you guys. I just wanted to let you know that someone is thinking about you and appreciating you guys..."

He called back and he wasn't too happy. All I could say was sometimes you gotta bow up and take one for the team, and I was just the man to do it. I don't think I'll be invited to the Christmas party this year...

Lord of The Rings

Back in the day, Melissa and I spent a lot of time on a small section of Elkhorn Creek. The land fronting it was owned by a guy named Joe Hieronymus. I met him by accident and he told us we could go wherever we wanted. We had a lot of fun fishing there. Actually, Melissa did the fishing. I mostly got my line caught in the trees. I used to deny that, but it’s true! Thankfully, Jesus instituted that whole fishers of men thing…

Anyway, the spot was nice, not quite secluded, but quiet. A small riffle from a deep pool led to water that shoaled across some gravel and water plants. It was a good place to fish. You could cast up into the pool, hoping to catch a small mouth that had no clue you were there. Or you could cast just below the riffle, or along the bank where the water got deeper. We spent so much time there that we didn’t always go to fish. We just traipsed around. We used to catch crawfish for bait. Man, those suckers were big. Not quite Louisiana big, but I was surprised the crawdads were as big as they are. Scientists say that crawfish come from the Cumberland River drainage, which is hard to imagine, but there you have it. Raccoons have a field day with the mussels—nothing but cracked shells. And then there are bits of crawfish strewn on the rocks, so I guess they’re going to town on them, too.

I had this plan to take Melissa back there on her birthday last year, but she was in too much pain in advance of the bone marrow transplant. And this year, well, she was in the hospital and way too weak to hike down the hill if she had been out.

I had a weird impulse these past few days and I was not sure what to do with it. I spent some time praying. This morning, on the way in, I decided I just needed to go with my gut. I took a turn off 64 and headed over to the Elkhorn. Hadn’t been in a few years, not since we were in Winchester. They fixed the bridge, and the access is not the same. So I clambered down the bank, almost slipped and thought it would not be good to be laying on the rip-rap with a broken leg and the cell phone in the car…

Got down to the creek and ran across the riffle to get to the big clump of water plants and their pretty white flowers. The impulse. I had a piece of wire and I tied my wedding ring to the ring Sissy had got for me, the one with the Hebrew on it. Said a few words about always wanting to get back here, and it felt like we had, and I’ll leave it at that. I tossed them into the pool below the riffle. I have no clue what it’s all about. Maybe in a thousand years, some Hobbit will find it... I got back into the car, took off. Turned on the radio and had to laugh: “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” came on. I hated that song, loved to hate it, but Sissy liked it. A dominant image of medieval courtly poetry is the time when “the rose was without thorn;” before the Fall of Man. There was a hope that when Jesus returned to make all things new that the rose would again be without thorn. The medieval mind was also captivated by the principle of mutability. That is, things that change. If they change, they are not permanent, and are subject to decay and death. The great hope was that the eternal, unchangeable God would hurry up. We think those times were the Dark Ages, but having studied them for 20 years now, I think they knew more than we will. I wrote a series of poems for Sissy, called “The Sublunary Anniversaries—“ “sublunary” because we are under the moon, the universe’s constant reminder of mutability. I had no clue that once you begin to play with the image, you will be taken along with it, that there is much more to it than my optimistic idea that in love, we would “Wax to generosity of intent.” Oh, sure that’s there. But there comes a time when you have to face mutability squarely. Heraclitus said you can’t stand in the same stream twice. I’m not sure you can do it once.

Psalm 119

I have been looking through Melissa’s Bible. She has different passages marked, different pieces of paper or bookmarks or what-not. She had a bookmark of her favorite piece of artwork, that part of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel where God’s hand is stretched as afar as possible, reaching for humanity, but the human hand is languidly offered.

Melissa had her transplant on May 5, 2006. She was in the hospital on May 5, 2007. I took the calendar sheet for that day from the hospital wall, and wrote “Happy Birthday, Sissy” on it. She placed it in her Bible at a part of Psalm 119. Psalm 119 has a lot of highlighted verses, verses that were touching her heart, being her prayers.

“Do good to your servant, and I will live” (119:17)

“I am laid low in the dust; preserve my life according to your Word” (119:25)

“Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your Word” (119:37)

“Preserve my life in your righteousness” (119:37).

“My comfort in my suffering is this: your promise preserves my life” (119:50)

“You are my portion, Lord” (119:57)

“It was good for me to be afflicted that I might learn your decrees” (119:71)

“May your unfailing love be my comfort…. Let your compassion come to me that I may live” (119:76-77)

“My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word” (119:81)

“Preserve my life according to your love, and I will obey the statutes of your mouth” (119:88)

“If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have preserved my life. Save me, for I am yours” (119: 92-94)

“I have suffered much; preserve my life O Lord, according to your word” (119:107)

“You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word” (119:114)

“Sustain me according to your promise, and I will live; do not let my hopes be dashed. Uphold me, and I will be delivered” (119:116-117)

“My flesh trembles in fear of you” (119:120)

“Your statutes are forever right; give me understanding that I may live” (119:144)

“I will call with all my heart; answer me O Lord, and I will obey your decrees. I call out to you, save me and I will keep your statutes. I rise before dawn and cry for help. I have put my hope in your Word…. Hear my voice in accordance with your love; preserve my life according to your laws…. Yet you are near O Lord, and all your commands are true” (119:145-151)

“Look upon my suffering and deliver me” (119:153)

“Defend my cause and redeem me; preserve my life according to your promise” (119:154)

“Your compassion is great, O Lord; preserve my life according to your laws” (119:156).

“See how I love your precepts; preserve my life, O Lord, according to your love” (119:159)

“I rejoice in your promise” (119: 162)

“Great peace have they who love your law” (119:165)

“May my cry come before you, O Lord; give me understanding according to your Word. May my supplication come before you; deliver me according to your promise. May my lips overflow with praise, for you teach me your decrees. May my tongue sing of your Word, for all your commands are righteous. May your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen your precepts. I long for your salvation, Lord, and your law is my delight. Let me live that I may praise you, and may your laws sustain me. Ihave strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for Ihave not forgotten your commands” (119:169-176)

Viewed from one angle, such verses are an embarrassment. Clearly, the words and the prayer behind them failed. The point behind the verses she marked were prayers for healing and life, according to the goodness and riches of God. It’s not just that we face the mystery of why God, who can heal, did not. Or, I suppose we could deny healing at all, and then be done with all this superstition. And it’s too simple to say she was healed, her life has been preserved. While that is true, it doesn’t seem to answer the question here and now. What are all these words about?

Maybe we should look at it from Melissa’s perspective. It’s a perspective I am calling, “somethings you don’t know until you know.” That is, until you have the wisdom or experience that particular verses talk about, the meaning will be veiled. But then when you come up against the kinds of issues the Bible talks about, you have a clearer insight. A little bit before she went in for the transplant, Melissa met with Tim Jones at Barnes and Noble. They were there for a few hours. Tim has talked to me here and there about things they talked about. Melissa reiterated to him what she had said from the beginning: she wanted to give God glory. If that glory was a testimony of healing, good. If it was by dying, good. It’s like grasping fog right now, trying to figure out where the glory is. I know it is there, feel it in wisps (like my time with Foti). Sometimes I think, “well clearly it would be better if she were alive, and all those who remember her fondly would have her. Or maybe we would take it for granted that people will always be with us. We don’t experience them and then we kick ourselves when they’re gone. But their special, unique life touches us. I guess depending on how we let her touch us will determine an amount of the glory God receives; “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Psalm 116:15).

Thursday

Thursday was one of those days that started out tough. Nothing was right as far as John was concerned. He didn’t like the clothes he was wearing, didn’t like his shoes, did not want to go to day care. Somehow, we worked our way through it. We prayed, and that helps.

But he was not real happy the rest of the day and I went to get him early. He was having a hard time at school, and had been asking for me to come get him from about 11 that morning. And Conference was tough, so I was glad to go. I saw some cronies and that was a blessing. Did not see everyone I wanted to. Bishop King’s wife, Rose, had a sweet and profound blessing for me that threw me for a loop, and I wasn’t really the same after talking to her. It hit me, too, that now I am appointed, not us.

In the evening, we were in the pool, and Joe said he wanted to go to the cemetery. I have been asking them if they want to do that, and they always say no. So when Joe asked, I jumped on it. Put some shirts and flip flops on and headed out before they could change their minds.

They put some flowers on the grave. We had a talk about how the body is in the ground, but the soul, who she is, is in heaven. Man, that is hard enough to explain to adults! But somehow it sank in, so much so that I think Joe finally gets that she is not coming back. It’s not like before, 4 or 6 weeks in the hospital and she comes home somehow, someway.

And the day changed for John. Something about being there, talking frankly. I could see something pass out of him or drain out of him.

They’re so cute. I woke up early and went to watch them sleeping, spend some time in prayer for them. They’re so precious, so special, so dear; I can’t understand how it is that in my dealings with them I find myself as impatient and downright mean as I am. But prayer works. That is a fact; start the day with prayer and it’s not so much a guarantee as a primer of conscience. Forget to pray and you’re hosed. It’ll all depend on your good nature then, and if you’re like me, that’s slim pickens.

More Random Notes

Everyone has someone famous in their family. We have two country music stars in ours. First, Paul Overstreet is a distant cousin thru some California relations. He wrote the song that Alison Krauss made so famous, “When You Say Nothing At All,” which is either one of the all-time greatest love songs, or the sweetest way to tell someone to be quiet… The other music star is Gretchen Wilson. She’s my aunt, and I guess she won’t care if I tell you her real name is Melinda Stewart. She thought Gretchen Wilson was a name that matched her hard-living style a little better.

John and Joseph told me I had to go back to Daddy School. They say that when I ask them if a treat was good or not. That is, I don’t need to ask if a blizzard or a doughnut is good. The answer is obvious, and I should have learned that in Daddy School. Today they told me that another thing they should teach in Daddy School is that “babies are supposed to have fun, not Daddies.” I asked them what I was supposed to do. “Take us places to have fun!”

John and Joe both want a little sister. They make out like they want one to be nice to, but I really think they want someone to experiment on. Anyway, they started bugging me about that in the pool a few nights ago. I told them that I didn’t see it happening. I didn’t give a reason, but Joe said, “because Mommy is with Jesus, right?” Then John piped up with an idea. “Maybe Mammaw can ask God for a baby sister, and then we’ll take her after that…”

John had a really hard time this morning. Nothing was right. I keep trying to talk to him about making good choices in the morning, at the beginning of the day. Don’t freak out if something bad happens. Or don’t make negative comments about every thing. If you start out with a negative attitude, the rest of the day will be bad. Almost always, it’s about good choices in the morning. Today, I had to practice what I preach! It was very tempting, was at the point where it would have been very easy to add to the problem by getting angry. I’d be letting something negative drag me down. We stopped and prayed, and ha! it actually worked! If I can’t show how to do it by example, I can at least make sure I don’t add to his difficulty. After a while, things calmed down. It doesn’t always go that way. Doesn’t mostly, because I’ll get frustrated and I have places to go, etc… I think we all have these kinds of days, and I hope that we can make better choices at the moment, discipline ourselves to not react.

I have been lamenting how gray my hair is getting. This past month, my moustache is being infiltrated. Oh well. It doesn’t really bother me, I laugh about it and complain mostly to laugh about it. But Guy Moyer, a good friend, was worried about me and gave me his advice, what has been working for him. He says if you use Grecian Formula on your hair, it only works halfway. That is, it just colors the hair. The trick, he says, is to drink it as well. That way, the hair that grows out, grows out dark.

Random Notes

I am sitting in the Starbuck’s on Fourth Street in the Ville. You know how I have been hollering that we need to pay attention to our immigrant populations? I mean that we need to be serious about developing ministries to them and among them. Well, two tables away, a young Russian couple are chattering away. Who is going to win them to Christ? Don’t forget the lesson of Pentecost: Jerusalem was filled to bursting with people from all over the world. The first century was a time of unbelievable prosperity and ferment. Rome reigned supreme, so there was relative peace and great opportunities for people from all over to travel freely. And travel they did. Some for business, but some also wondering if they might find meaning in the multitude of religions. They were drawn to Jesrusalem, wondering if the central ritual of Judaism, Passover, would help them find meaning.

So it should be no surprise that when the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, the disciples were given the ability to speak languages unknown to them. Not only was that a miracle, but the content of the miraculous communication was precisely what the travelers were looking for: salvation, not in a ritual or religion, but in the person and life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

These travelers, when they went home, what a story they had to tell! “First off, these Galilean fisherman, real rough types started speaking our language! And more than that, everyone from all kinds of places heard their own languages! But that’s not the cool part! They told us that there is forgiveness of sins, that there is a God who holds the world in His hands…”

The lesson of Pentecost: when God brings you people from all over the world, you are supposed to reach them in their own language so that they can go back home and tell their people. Or they can call back home. Or email back home. No matter how it works out, they spread the message of the Good News of Jesus Christ! Or don’t you believe in the Holy Spirit?

If this young couple doesn’t stop kissing and feeding each other fruit, I am going to puke. No matter what language you speak, love is the same. I am tempted to say something about the gift of tongues, but I would never do that on my blog.

Highlights of Annual Conference so far: making dinner plans with DG and Tiffany Hollums and Ken Klemme, doing my best Austin Powers imitation” “Viva Louisville, baby! We’re going out for a night on the town!” Burt Bachrach—the soundtrack of our lives… DG and Ken want to eat bait (sushi), but me and Tiffany have them talked into Q.

Ate lunch at the Delta, a place I really like and can’t say why. And, of course, I saw Turney Berry there. He has his own table there, with his name and everything.

I have discovered this thing called youtube. There is a great video of Ryan Ellis from the Rock singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” It takes a big man to sing that, and an even bigger man to laugh at him… google “YYZ drum solo.” If you like weird time signatures and want to see the most vulgar display of power on a drum set, that’s the one for you.

I am reminded of how much Melissa loved Annual Conference, if only to mess with Ken Klemme. They had this feud going. One time, he ate all the candy in her gift bag and left her nothing but wrappers. You don’t mess with her Reese’s cups. So she changed the combination on his brief case… Things got ugly after that.

Bishop King had an illustration in his sermon that Melissa would have loved. Her idol was Susannah Wesley. Bishop King said that John Wesley learned everything he needed to know from her, down to organizing Methodism based on small cell groups: “Susannah Wesley would not quit having kids. She wanted John to be in a small group from the get-go.”

The Russian couple left, thankfully. I was about to have to turn around in the interest of modesty. They are from Kazakhstan, but happy to be here. There wasn’t time for a lot of questions—dude, they’re in love. In their place has come a guy wearing a Yankees cap. I’m telling you, I’d pull for the Al-Qaida All Stars before I root for the Yankees. As one comedian said, rooting for the Yankees is like going to a casino and pulling for the House. Bold Prediction no. 238: The Dodgers win it all this year.

While I am sitting here, the Ballesteros family comes in—they are in ministry to Hispanic populations in Kentucky, and Marco, Sr. coordinates church planting in Mexico. It so happens that I am sitting under a picture, they tell me, of Cordoba, near where they have planted a church. They did it by connecting with a family who came to the US and then went back and helped start a church. Pentecost, y’all.

Noella, from Congo, Melissa's friend, had her baby. Named Melissa Deborah. Deborah, the most powerful woman in the Old Testament. And Melissa, "honey bee." Can't do much better than that. What love from this family! And it proves the point: you'd don't have to do much except be friends.

Wednesday

Wednesday—who knew it was going to be such a day?

After I took care of some piddly stuff early in the morning, I had an appointment with Patrick Lukonga, on of the young men from Congo. We had a long talk, a long prayer, about prayer, about working with the refugee community. It only confirmed me in my fear that goads me to push discipleship harder: African Christians come here with a vibrant faith, but it is very hard to infect the weak American church with their intensity. It is much easier for our weakness to drag them down to our complacency. You always have to worry about a meeting with Africans, because it’s going to be filled with Scripture and challenge to a deeper spiritual life. Later in the afternoon, I met with Cedrick, Patrick’s brother and our translator. More of the same, deep discussion of prayer, seeking God’s calling in his life, plans for evangelism. They want to have long prayer retreats—start with a few hours on a Saturday and then have everyone come live and sleep at the church for a couple days. I’m telling you, if we listen to these Africans, we’ll get down to business!

Wednesday is the day of fasting, so we had prayer in the chapel. Hopefully more and more people will come to know fasting as a vital part of their prayer lives. There were four of us in the chapel at lunch, wearing it out. Me, Roz, a fellow getting past addiction and a guy 2 days out of detox at UK. He just found his way in with us. We cried out to God that He would increase our endurance for prayer, for staying on our knees so that we could always pray thru every temptation. We blessed each other.

Skye and I went to the garden to set up next steps, stake some tomatoes, hang out with a neighbor boy, and talk about the kinds of ministry she can take on at the church. While we were walking there, we were on a mission, working out the details of watering. We walked by a woman sitting on the steps behind the school.

Prayer meeting was good, has been for a few weeks. I have been preaching out of Leviticus—this obscure book has so much to say RIGHT NOW. Skye brought the woman on the steps to the meeting, and we prayed hard for her serious needs. I had to go up to her and repent for walking by her… so focused on a task, I missed a person. Alice wasn’t holding back and started talking about the Good Samaritan and I realized was I ever the Levite that afternoon—too busy with good works to do a good work…

Once the prayer meeting, youth and children’s programs were over, we kept cranking. Earlier in the day, me and Dingo visited a family that just moved in on 12^th Street. Two families, nine kids in a house. 4 belong to one mother who is just visiting. Such sweet kids. Anyhoo, one of the boys tells us it’s his birthday. Of course we have to get a cake. We get a cake, and get some plates and ice cream together for later. After the evening activities, a few of us headed up to the house. All the kids in the house and a number of people from the church piled into the house and we had a party for Austin, 7 years old. Rebecca baked a cake earlier in the day, so we had two cakes and all got big pieces!

I am not sure I can explain the energy in the house. I looked around and it wasn’t so much that we were all there—everybody had kind of settled in, talking to the moms or kids, it was that micro-fellowship David Singleton talks about.

Austin came by me in the hall and said, “This is the best day ever!” After things wound down, Jessica took a few of the boys to a ball game a neighbor boy was playing in.

12^th Street is being made holy by the presence of some godly young women—Meg, Jessica, Laura, MJ, Christy, I know I am leaving someone out--sorry. Peter and Jackie will be back from honeymoon in Greece soon, and they will add their love to 12^th Street in a new home.

Some of you know my fascination with www.chucknorrisfacts.com the website with crazy things about Chuck. My favorite: “Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.” I guess another favorite is, “Chuck Norris doesn’t read a book, he just stares at it until the information he wants comes out.” Or, “The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.” Alright, one more, I promise that’s it: “Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch. He decides what time it is.” Tuesday evening, the family thought they heard someone in their upstairs. They were freaked out, don’t have a phone yet, so they ran to Jessica and Laura’s. They were shocked that Laura just went over to the house, started walking around and looking for whoever it was. A bunch of us laughed because she does crazy stuff like that, walking late at night, kicking drunks out of people’s yards, whatever. I said, “No one will mess with her, she’s too mean.” John C said, “yeah, Chuck Norris answers to Laura…”

The Fundamental Elements of North Side

North Lime is the protean spine of our side

of town; starts out all business and like guts,

ends that way; creeps along to quaint houses,

then bars and shotguns; three schools

that might as well be on different planets;

churches that no one knows are there.

Its side-streets peel off like nerves

a few of them straight and clean,

gay dudes and their elaborately painted doors;

others flagellate in stink and weeds, people

who don’t even wonder how it got this way.

Savages

One day week before last, the boys were as usual down at the creek. It was pretty quiet down there, which means there was some plotting going on. I walked down there to dog-eye the situation, keeping back to observe unobserved. What a beautiful sight! Both boys were covered in mud. And since it’s mostly clay down there, they looked like little savages, which is what every little boy should look like! They had their little trailer in the water (it goes to a John Deere bicycle/tractor), hoping it would float so they could sail away. It’s that kind of imagination that you rue losing.

2 weeks ago, my father-in-law opened the pool and so they are in it constantly. They don’t care how long they stay in. Nothing can tempt them out. Eating is a nuisance to them at this point. All they want to do is swim.

This week, Melissa’s cousin Casey is staying with us while the rest of the family is in Washington, D.C., where my brother-in-law graduates from an FBI training course. They are loving life, but I think Casey may be traumatized, as they try take every advantage of her that they can.

There’s a lot of work to do in comforting them in small things, things that are probably not directly related to Melissa’s passing. And then there is paying attention to the sources of anxiety—reminding them that I am going to work, but will be back at such and such a time. Sad thing is, a distance can grow as I wonder how to handle things for myself.

Many, many people have been praying for us for so long. I would ask that those prayers continue, especially for the boys. I am not sure what the path ahead looks like, and so we will desperately need God to guide, and to listen to His guidance.

Most days, tho, they are busy being the little savages I love so much!

Witness in Death

Dear Sissy,

You won’t believe this. Ok, you will. You remember Forti, the Greek guy? Well anyways his name is Foti, but he tells people it’s Forti because it’s easier to pronounce. “Like the number,” he’ll say. Well, I asked him what it meant—“the one who gives light,” he says. So I tell him that’s what my name means. Aaron means something like “enlightener.” Or so I have been told. Or maybe I made it up. Even if it’s not true, it’s still a good story…

ANYWAY. Back in the summer, Foti and got into it when he said the whole church and God thing was ridiculous. Well, you know me, I won’t take that and so I said something like, “The ‘whole’ thing? Please. I can buy that half of it is ridiculous. But the whole thing?” We went back and forth and I was working him over about choice and consciousness. We parted and I knew he’s one of those guys you can argue with heatedly and he’ll be ok.

So, for the next few months, he’d stare at me from the porch. He’d tilt his head back and take a drag on his Marlboro, thinking I was perverting the neighborhood. Then Big Doug’s house burned down, and he was blown away that we were helping them the way we were. After that, he’d wave at me when he drove down the road. And we even talked in his house, when he needed to ask someone about an ethical question. He asks me, the man who believes in totally ridiculous things!!! Then when we were putting in the garden, he was freaked out. He really got on a tear about the cost of produce and I think he was happy that we are going to make kids eat their vegetables…

[Sissy already knows all this story, but she’d listen anyway, because early in our relationship, she’d say, “you already told me that,” but then she realized that I always start at the beginning every time, working it over in my mind…]

Well, Foti was in Greece visiting family for a month and now he’s back. He was there when AC Milan beat Liverpool in Athens. Dog. So, we were on his porch, just talking and he asked me where I live. I said Shelbyville and he wondered why. I told him you had been sick and needed treatment at UL. He asked what was wrong. It was that awkward moment (for him, not so much for me) when I said you had been dead for three weeks.

His eyes welled up with tears and he said, “I am so sorry, my friend.” I told him I appreciated that. We were quiet a few moments. Then he said, “My mother died of cancer. She was 48, but still too young.” He asked if I wanted coffee. No thanks, not a coffee drinker. Tea? he asks. Sure. So his wife, Rebecca, from India, makes me Indian tea—like chai, but Starbucks are a bunch of losers compared to this stuff she gave me.

Foti says, “Speaking freely—after your wife’s death, and you still believe in God?”

“Absolutely.”

“How? How do you believe in a God who takes such a young woman, when so many others really deserve to die?”

“ah, that’s a big question…”

“I know,” he said with a laugh, as if maybe he were proving his point.

“I’d have to believe He took her, to go where you are.” There was some silence. Then I said, “There is evil, sickness and death in this world. Only a fool would deny it. And I suppose it’s strange that I have spent so much of my life thinking about this very issue. For a long time, I believed there was no god, there could not be, if people dear to me might die. I can’t explain what changed other than that first, I came to understand that logically, there is no escape from the existence of God. And then, I had a personal experience of Jesus’ presence. And all I can say is that I am painfully aware of evil, but my life with Jesus is good.”

Some more silence. Then he said, “When my mother died, it was all hill-down for me.”

“How old were you?”

“13. I had to move to Germany because that’s where my dad was.” Ah, a bit of the story is revealed. Germany was not a good place for him. At least not going there. What a huge change, to go from Greece where you are known, to the latent racism of Germany against its “guest workers.” You remember how when I was a kid, some folks would think I was a Turk or Greek, and more than once I had to run like hell to get away.

“So, was your mother’s death the thing that turned you against God, or was it a long process.”

“A process, yes, but that was pretty big. And then, the final straw was Akhilleos.” Akhilleos is his son. Achilles in our language, and I know how much you love Achilles. And I always liked Odysseus. Wanted to name John or Joe Telemakhos, after Odysseus’ boy.

Akhilleos is a beautiful boy, almost 3. He had a port-wine stain birthmark that was removed a few months ago, and his left eye is cloudy. Foti told me he was born with too high blood pressure in that eye. “It’s almost gone. Why would God do that?” Rebecca is a Christian, and Foti told me she wonders why this happened.

I did not presume to tell Foti that Akhilleos is fine.

“It doesn’t make sense. I see all these drug abusers, drug dealers, and they are doing fine.”

“Yes, that’s true. It’s a big mystery. But we believe that God is good.”

“Well, sure that’s what you believe.”

“We’re up front about that. The Psalms talk continually of how the wicked ‘strut freely about’ while the righteous are oppressed.”

Around this time, Rebecca came out and I thanked her for the good tea. Here’s another person you would have loved to know, Sissy. You and your tea. Erin won’t get out her tea pot because she says it’s still too soon after you died, and she wishes you had taught her more how to use it. She says she remembers you told her that “life is too short to re-use tea bags.”

I asked Rebecca about where she was from in India. Hyderabad. Know the name, no clue where it is. She says it’s easy enough to be a Christian in India, if you are just a common person living your life. But if you are a preacher, there is persecution because they don’t want anyone converting from Hinduism

Foti said, “If I ever become religious, I will be a Hindu.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it is man-made and convenient,” Rebecca said.

Foti was displeased. “No, because they accept everything.”

“Sure enough,” I said. “I hear they have shrines to the Virgin Mary there, anything that could be an appearance of the Divine. They’ll accept anything about Jesus except His claim to be the only way.”

“All religions say it’s us or nobody,” he said.

“Even Hindus? Yes, even them,” I answered my own question. “it’s a matter of truth. Things are true or not. There’s no neutral ground on the truth.” Foti once told me he preferred neutrality to good and evil.

I asked Rebecca if she had a church. She goes to a church a little ways out. “But I don’t really know anyone there.” I invited her to walk down the street to our church. “You’ll meet people from right here.”

I had been there a while, and things were winding down. Foti, for all of his skepticism, tells me that a family has moved in next door with three kids, and maybe I should see them…

So, Sissy, I remember your sang froid when you were diagnosed with acute lymphocytic lymphoma, and you said that all you wanted was to be a witness for Jesus. As you went through treatment you wanted to strengthen others. If you were healed, what a great testimony. If you were not healed in this world ( John an Theo are working me over because I said you lost your fight with leukemia. They say you conquered death, and they are right) then you went on to be with Jesus. And so you were a great witness to so many who encountered you—through what you believed, but also in how you persevered.

And then this morning. I was up at the garden to see what kind of rain we got. Foti was on the porch, waving at me. I went over, welcoming him back again, talking about soccer. We get to talking about you. And he and I are getting close enough for him to feel for me, to remember his own sorrow, and to think about your boys. He is one of those boys who lost a mom. And then, he was honest enough, wondering enough to ask if I still believe in God. Wow. If he never comes to Christ under my ministry, I will still say that this is the most powerful evangelistic conversation I have ever had.

I wanted so much to say to Foti, but how could he hear it, “We have this moment, where we have become much deeper friends through our sharing, because my wife died. You will know that I do not believe out of stubbornness or a need to cope, but because of an experience with the Risen Jesus. All my wife wanted was to be a witness for Jesus. She has died, but has given us this very moment. Jesus said, ‘Unless a seed of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’”

One day, we’ll hear about Foti coming to Christ. He will find peace about his mom not in spite of evil, but because of God. And he will find that Akhilleos is fine, in spite of his problems. Steve always said I was lucky when I found you, and Howard always said you would be a great help to me in ministry. None of us had this in mind, but how powerful is it that you were there on Foti’s porch?

thinning beans

My mom says that the smell of her childhood is oranges. Her grandfather and great-grandfather planted citrus orchards in Southern California, and she says she always liked it that she and her cousins all smelled like oranges. She missed that when my grandfather moved to a farm farther north, leaving orchards behind in favor of produce.

The sense of smell is very powerful, evoking memories more viscerally than the other senses.

I got to the church a little before 8 today and went up to the garden. We had maybe a ¼ inch of rain, and I hear that fell in about 10 minutes. But it was enough to do a better job than all our watering. No matter how much we watered, the peppers drooped a little. Now they are standing tall.

The beans and my request, cowpeas, came up pretty good, but thick. So I went out and thinned them a bit. That brought back a flood of memories. The dominant smells of my childhood are in California, the smells of the harvest—carrots, garlic, tomatoes, and beans. Many thousands of acres of each would be harvested and processed, and the air for miles would fill with the smell of whatever was being picked.

The beans fill the air with a complex smell, sweet and dull at the same time.

So, I think this will be a good day, the kind of day in ministry I like: varied. Thin out some beans while praying. Or pray while thinning out beans, as the case may be. Hang out with some kids eating lunch at the church. Meet with a student about ministry she wants to pursue here. Sit down with Hugues, a refugee from Congo, to translate some documents related to getting his wife and son over here. Visit in the neighborhood. Foti is back from his trip to Greece and it was good to sit with the fellow who thought the “whole idea” of church was ridiculous, but we win him over by good works in the community…

The garden is making progress more than we expected. It’s not just that stuff is growing. Rather, relationships are growing. Ron and David, who do the watering, have noticed this, have helped the relationships grow. David called it “microfellowship.” The planting and the on-going care of watering and weeding has brought different groups together—mostly people who don’t normally get together. That is, there were people in the church who came together to work who may not normally be together. And then there are people from the community who come out and wonder what’s going on. That’s what we really want to happen. The last thing we’re doing is growing tomatoes. They’ll be a nice bonus to the work of being together, and getting to know our neighbors.

The Heavenly Let-Down

So in the second service today we sang “Sweet Hour of Prayer.” I like the hymn, but it really hit me hard today.

“This robe of flesh I’ll drop and rise

To seize the everlasting prize

And shout while passing through the air,

Farewell, farewell sweet hour of prayer!”

Those lines put into form something I have been meditating on. Viewed from one angle, there is a “heavenly let-down.” That is, from the this-world perspective, heaven is a mixed bag. On the one hand, we’re out of the struggle of life, no more sorrow, suffering or death—the old order of things passes away. But then there is the part of us that thinks that heaven means a restoration of all things here, all the pleasant stuff we knew.

It’s the old joke. Two guys spent a long life loving baseball. They made a deal with each other that whoever died first would tell the other if there was baseball in heaven. So one of them dies. He comes to visit the other a few days later and his friend says, “Well?” The dead guy says, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is, there is baseball in heaven. The bad news is, you’re pitching tonight…”

I don’t think there is baseball in heaven. Soccer, probably. Much of what we know and value here is not there. That is, we tend to think of heaven as an expansion or perfection of all that is good here.

I am fumbling, so let me get to the example. I was looking at Melissa’s Bible, looking at a new but worn book, full of some bookmarks and notes here and there. I was thinking, boy she really would have enjoyed hanging out here and studying the Bible. But then I thought, “How foolish! What does she need with the written Word when she is in the presence of the eternally-living Word?” I mean, we really can’t comprehend it. We see only dimly thru the glass…

And then, those lines from the hymn—“farewell, farewell sweet hour of prayer.” Yikes. She loved her prayer time. She was fond of reminding me and I guess everyone that Susannah Wesley had 19 kids, 17 survived, and when she needed a break, she would sit down and place her apron over her head and the kids knew not to disturb her. Or she would recall how Ann Goolman would go sit on the rock by the barn and everyone knew to stay clear. Melissa made those times for herself, often telling me she needed it and that meant, “Keep the boys occupied.”

I was thinking as we sang, she loved her time of prayer, vaguely thinking, I bet she misses it. Will we really say “farewell” to something so dear and powerful as our hour of prayer? See, if you are tied to this world, even the righteous things of this world, heaven won’t seem like much. But if you recognize what Paul was trying to tell us in 1 Corinthians 13, you’ll be quivering until you get there: everything is going to pass away. Even the good things like prophecies and miracles. Gone. No more. No need. Because God’s love—His very presence is the order of the day, all day, forever.

In 1 Corinthians 15, the Bible teaches us that the resurrection body will be nothing like our present bodies. That is, the analogy is to a seed—the wheat plant looks nothing like a wheat seed. So the perishable thing—the seed that dies (see John 12)—is raised in imperishability, becoming whatever it was that planted it, a spiritual body totally unlike the seed. I am not sure what will be like it is here.

That gets me—even the righteous things of this world, the things that bring spiritual growth—we’ll say good-bye to, because we’ll be where we are supposed to be. At least that’s what strikes me today.

The Creed

I love the Apostle’s Creed. Some of that love is theological; it is the summation of the faith, accessible to and for all people. But part of the love is personal. When I was making my way to faith, I was in the Methodist Church in Greensboro, AL. I had been hunting with a friend, and when you were at his house, you went to church. Well, there in the sanctuary, behind the choir loft, was the Apostles Creed, carved into wood. From the Catholic services I attended as a child, I could remember the words of the Nicene Creed, similar to the Apostle’s Creed. So there was a point of connection. Maybe it’s part of why I became a Methodist?

And now there is something else: Melissa was adamant that her funeral would be a worship service, and that specifically the Apostles’ Creed had to be part of it. And now, the Creed rolls around in our worship service, and I think of Melissa. Not a bad thing, because the Creed remembers Jesus’ life and death. There is an element of spiritual growth in this; Can I mourn for Jesus’ death, and think joyfully of His Resurrection, and be continually convinced of that in Him for Melissa? What I feel for her is as properly referred to Him—what I feel for her is because of Him.

And then there is this humorous moment. Melissa McDonald was telling me that a fellow known to the church came in, “maybe 6 hours sober,” Melissa said. When it came to the Creed where we confess faith in the “holy catholic church,” he couldn’t quite get his mind around it and said, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy METHODIST Church…” For a few weeks there were a few people adding this in.

Before you worry too much about such a change to the ancient formula, let’s all remember that the word Methodist comes from two Greek words, “meta” and “hodos,” meaning something like “having a way.” We do have a way, the Way, the Truth and the Life! So our confused brother was not too far off the mark…

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Stations of the Cross

Back in the summer, I had a post about the Stations of the Cross at St. Martin’s Catholic Church in Louisville. The gist of it was that I was spending some time in the church, meditating (as much as is prudent for a Protestant…) on the Stations. It was a huge time, really, of digging into the suffering of Christ. Melissa was in the throes of transplant, and she was holding on to the holding cross Sharon Perkins gave her day and night.

When she went in for the transplant, the cancer had spread extensively. There were a few places she said she could feel with her hands. I was too chicken. I wouldn’t touch where she showed me. I wonder about that. Would it have helped or hurt if I had? Somehow, I see it as a failing, a moment of selfishness, like all cowardice. Anyway, the worst was in her lower back. It was just a lot of pain. When she went for the radiation, she had to lay flat on a hard table, and it was the worst pain she said she had ever felt. “But,” she said, “I kept thinking about Jesus on the Cross, and how He has gone everywhere ahead of me.”

So there I was in the church, trying to get my mind around that, around the Cross, around the suffering of Jesus. Each of the stations seemed to flow to me, they began to make sense. You can go back and look at the post if you want to, but there’s one that hits me right now. I wrote down the ideas that were coming to me in the back of a nice Bible Sissy gave me. The last station: “Jesus is laid in the tomb.” After each station, I wrote a “reason.” There, “because we think death is the end.”

When I was sharing that with Sissy right after I came back, she said, “HA!”