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Dad’s wallet reveals a life

normanjameson 5 Comments

My Norwegian bachelor farmer uncle Donnie treated his wallet like a filing cabinet. He collected each year’s expense receipts in his wallet, which grew fatter with each passing week. 

Each tax season, he emptied the wallet for his tax man who sorted the receipts and paperwork to file Donnie’s taxes. Then, the wallet would slowly fill again during the year, making a continually widening bulge in his pocket. 

One summer – meaning the wallet would be about half full – Don lost it. While climbing a fence, or crawling under a farm implement, or sitting on a jouncing tractor seat, it somehow fell out of his overalls. 

Whatever money was in the wallet was an afterthought. He was distraught about all the records, receipts, his license and the agony of retracing all the lost transactions. His distress was well known to all the family, repeated over each Sunday meal and birthday cake.

Dad’s wallet was a pocket portfolio of his life, including pictures of his grandchildren and his Selective Service card from 1948.

About two months later, my cousin Dickie and I drove the pickup down to the furthest pasture to chase the cows back up to the barn for milking. All of 13-14 years old we parked the truck, climbed the fence into the field of alfalfa – a thick, leafy forage crop about knee high. Mutually lamenting poor Uncle Donnie’s lost wallet and the resulting decrease in the “wages” he generously bestowed on his nephews, I said to Dickie, “Wouldn’t it be something if we found Donnie’s wallet?”

At that moment, as if a star ripped a seam into the heavens to beam a shaft of light at our feet, we looked down and there was the wallet, seemingly set there atop the ground with a careful hand, with the long tendrils of alfalfa pressed aside. We looked at each other and screamed, jumped up and down, picked up the wallet and headed for the pickup. 

Now, as I said, we were several years too young to be legally driving a truck, but that’s the way it was on the farm. Don taught us how to drive because he needed the help. We relished the privilege and were always very careful drivers.

But now, I possessed not only Don’s long-lost wallet, but also what I knew was a get-out-of-jail pass to drive like a bat outta hell back to the barn. No matter how mad Uncle Donnie would be to see us bouncing and spinning up the dirt track like that, I knew that when I flashed the wallet, everything would be all right. 

And that’s exactly how it turned out. 

With credit cards and electronic records kept online and on cell phones, modern wallets don’t always carry the same identifying history they once did. I mean, goodness, some guys actually carry their wallet in the FRONT pocket now. My dad was more careful with his records than his brother, Donnie. But his wallet still was a valuable filing cabinet for him, and a treasure box of memories. 

My sister Linda sent me dad’s wallet last week. Dad died three years ago, after a fall on ice in Wisconsin, in the town where he was as much a fixture as Main Street. The town where I grew up and graduated from high school, in the same building in which I started first grade.

I was hesitant to delve into that historical trove at first. Going through dad’s wallet was sure to carry me back. How far, I had no idea until I dove in. 

Every part of the wallet’s contents prompted memories. Some items were much older than I would have anticipated. Of course, I was gratified to find pictures of my children, one taken when the youngest could barely sit up straight. Today he’s 36. 

My high school graduation picture was there, as well as an earlier picture of me and two siblings. So much of the content consisted of business cards for his various doctors and insurance carriers. In fact, those were the majority of the items in his pocket filing cabinet. 

Others included a driver’s license, good through 2018. It’s expiration date outlasted his own. 

Maybe most surprising was the presence of dad’s Selective Service registration card, dated Sept. 18, 1948. Maybe he kept it because a line on the bottom of the frayed card says, “The law requires you to have this card in your possession at all times for identification and to advise your Local Board of change of address.” Dad was a stickler for the rules. 

It helps me understand a little better his lack of understanding when I registered as a conscientious objector with my own draft board in 1971. 

Another card dated August 1949 declares dad’s draft status as 3-A – a hardship deferment from being called to service, “because service would cause hardship upon his family.” His first child was born the next month, when dad was 19 and mom was 18.

And then there was the final draft board classification card dated Aug. 24, 1965 that said his draft status was 5-A – over the age of liability for service. That’s a card worth keeping. 

Dad had in his wallet his Social Security card, and cards both for membership in the Teamsters Union and honorary withdrawal from the teamsters seven years later when he was no longer driving milk truck for Bancroft Dairy in Wisconsin. 

Dad’s wallet was a pocket portfolio of a life lived both honorably and dutifully. Thank you, Dad.

What part of our one body are refugees?

normanjameson 2 Comments

“The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.” – Burley Coulter in The Wild Birds, by Wendell Berry

Across the globe two waves of people ebb and flow, washing up, then back into each other like waves at the beach, roiling where the water that rushed to the sand loses momentum and falls back toward the ocean, just as the next wave pushes past it. Water lemmings rushing to their own demise. 

These are the human tides rushing to get out of somewhere, and the waves of people rushing to get into somewhere else. 

According to the UN Refugee Agency almost 70 million refugees wander the world, including 41 million displaced in their own countries,  fleeing turmoil, famine, war, drought, disease. The very uncivil war in Syria spiked a large increase since 2011. 

Refugees may live in squalor for years, hoping for a new home that never materializes. (Getty image)

You’ve seen the images of frightened families lugging everything they can carry, dragging their chins and bins down dusty roads in a long stream, desperate to leave behind whatever demon is tearing up their lives. Where are they going? Away. Just, away. 

They’ve cast their lot on their god and on their hopes that the milk of human kindness will somehow give them succor in whatever crowded, dirty, hungry, dangerous camp they land in next week or next month when they “arrive” at this safe haven. 

That human teat is drying up. 

Witness the wave of wanderers who washed up on the beach of the Mexico-American border and are now hunkered down waiting for a chance to present their plea for asylum to a skeleton crew of U.S. judges, operating under a “first, deny” mandate. Or the governments – and citizens – of Greece and Turkey who are saying “no more.” Stemming the easy movement of refugees from any European Union nation to another is a significant – if unspoken – element of the vote for Britain to leave the EU. 

Post-racist societies? I think not.

In October, for the first time in years, an entire month passed with no refugees officially resettled in the United States. None. The U.S. has been generous in the past with refugee resettlement, although not as generous per capita as some other nations. Under the current administration, the cap is 18,000 per year, a historic low at a time when the number of refugees is at a historic high.

This, as thousands wait for their applications to be considered. Many are huddled in squalid camps in the shadow of ports of entry, wondering where their children are, from whom they’ve been separated. Others wait in camps on the other side of the world, victims of conflicts in which we meddle – to keep the oil safe, and our access to it, secure.

Resettlement agencies, funded per capita by the number of refugees they resettle, are laying off workers and some are closing altogether. If/when our country is more open to welcoming “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses” whose industry has helped to make this country strong, resettlement agencies may not be well positioned to gear up smoothly to start again conducting their business. 

Veteran’s Day prompts such thoughts. I’m one of America’s last draftees, destined for the Army in September 1972 when my draft lottery number came up one. First. Uno. Clarity. 

America has been involved in global conflict for my entire life. Every day, if you count the unresolved status of the Koreas. “All we are saying, is give peace a chance,” we sang as students, marching Easter morning while Viet Nam still raged. 

Of the 195 countries in the world, we have troops in 177.  Some would say the presence of American troops IS giving peace a chance. Others would say the presence of our troops in other countries is the seed that grows the tree of resentment, whose fruit is conflict.

Geography is a wicked stepmother.  I’ve stood with my foot on the spot where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. An inch or two either way and I’m in another state. 

A baby born on the south side of the river is Mexican; born on the north side is American. The pregnant wife of a Russian oligarch flies to Miami to have her baby and suddenly an americantsky grows up in Moscow.   

As Wendell Berry’s character Burley Coulter says, “We are members of each other,” whether we know it or not.  

Somehow the attitude that “I’ve got mine, too bad about you,” seeped into the mantra of humanity. Freedom isn’t a pie, where there is less for me if I give you a slice.

When we close our arms, our doors, our hearts the body suffers. How many of the 5,000 children in American custody – separated from their parents in a misguided and cruel effort to discourage people from South America from trying to come to the U.S. – will never be reunited with their families? Some are too young to remember their own names, to say nothing of their parents’ names, or from what town and fear they fled.

            We are members of each other. As the Bible says, we are members of the same body. (Romans 12:4-5) 

            Today, my heart part hurts. 

Lonely at the Lake

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A dip in Hyco Lake saved the day.

Deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to rescue. – John Eldredge

Of all the great memories from my cross-state bike adventure with my friend Mark,  the most lasting image came from a moment off the bike. 

It was our second day, and hottest. The bank sign said 96 degrees when we rode past. It seemed we climbed all morning and early afternoon as we left the NC mountains and navigated around bodies of water, racing down to them, then slogging back up to level ground. Now, we were crossing Hyco Lake on a short, flat bridge when we looked longingly at the dark, calm water. 

“Every time we cross a lake on a hot day, I want to jump in,” Mark said. I shared the sentiment and when I saw a cabin with a “For Sale” sign on it at the far end of the bridge, I rode into the short driveway, intending to walk unnoticed to the end of its dock and jump in. But, as we rode into the cabin site, the owner came out to attend to something on his deck. 

Unthwarted, I rode up and asked if we could take a dip into the lake from his dock. Skeptical at first, he said, “Go ahead.” 

Mark, hoping tryouts are still open for Olympic underwater dancing team.

Mark stripped to his bike shorts and jumped in. I didn’t want to ride the rest of the day in wet shorts, so I got nakie and jumped. Oh my goodness. Given the day, the ride, the heat, the perfect water temp, the freedom, it was heavenly. 

After we’d gotten refreshed, we air dried a bit. I wiped myself down with my sweaty jersey, put on my dry shorts and walked back up to the cabin. Mark squished his way up to where the owner was back out on the deck. We chatted long enough to learn that he was from Massachusetts and had bought the cabin three years ago to be near his son and grandchildren, who lived about an hour from there. 

“That must have been great,” I said. “Lake house, grandkids, lots of fun.” 

“They only came twice in three years,” he said. “And my relatives from Massachusetts never came.” So, he’s selling the place and moving in with his sister back home. 

I can’t get the image out of my mind. He’s not a rich man, he said. The lake home wasn’t a vacation spot. He planted his life there so he could be near his son and grandchildren – an hour away. They came only twice in three years. 

No one visited from Massachusetts. Not once. It costs 80 bucks to get the yard mowed, and his boat looked like something you’d put your supervisor in, hoping to create a sudden job opening. He couldn’t stay. No reason to.

He was a lonely man, lonely enough to leave his grandchildren and move in with his sister back home. We thanked him, wished him well, and took off – up the hill away from the lake and on to Roxboro. 

I don’t know the family dynamics. Maybe he was hard to get along with, maybe he mistreated his son’s mother. But to uproot your life in your retirement years, move 700 miles to be close to your grandchildren, and then be ignored – that just struck me as too, too sad.

There are lots of lonely people out there. For lots of reasons. Don’t let some of them be your grandparents. And, don’t be afraid to say hello to strangers.

The wisdom of Bill

normanjameson 3 Comments

I was facing a big life decision recently so I went again to talk with my friend Bill. He’s the strong, silent type and a great listener but when he speaks, his voice always slices like a knife of insight through the goop clouding my thinking.

Bill’s place is very comfortable; shady with a great view of nature from where he rests – woodlands, pastures and now a large stand of loblolly pines that one day will be harvested. I laugh with him to think that when those trees are cut, people that have been driving by them for a generation are going to gripe and complain that the forest was cut down in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

They won’t remember the trees were planted 20 years earlier specifically as a cash crop to benefit the work of Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina, where Bill grew up, and lived and worked most of his career.

I can hear him chuckling and shaking his big ol’ head, rubbing the bald pate once forested with hair. The more time I’ve spent with Bill the more I realize he’s always understood people at a level much deeper than his easy-going nature typically revealed. He’s not snowed by the self-important preening of others who gathered around his table, even when it looks on the surface like he takes their words at face value.

I tell Bill how much I appreciate him, how he and his wife, Louise, took us in and showed us the ropes when I started working where he worked. I was a generation younger, in a higher “position” on the organizational chart and from another part of the country. None of that mattered, only that we respected each other, each worked hard and we all loved our children.

Bill doesn’t say much, but I know he cares. But, I digress.

I told Bill about the decision I faced. Comfort is cool; change is hard. His expression was stone cold, waiting for me to continue. The more I told him, the more I heard myself talking it through, the more it became clear which direction I should take.

I just chuckled. He’s always like that now, waiting for me to talk it through between us, without saying anything, knowing that eventually I’ll make the right decision.

With that out of the way, I tell him I know that he and Louise are enjoying their time back together again after several years apart, due to circumstances beyond their control. I catch him up on the kids, and sense his pride in them, as he’s proud of every kid who grew up at Baptist Children’s Homes, also due to circumstances beyond their control.

Bill acts as if he has all the time in the world, and I’m reluctant to leave him, but…life goes on. I thank Bill for his time and wisdom, rise to my feet, brush the fallen oak leaves from his headstone, and close the gate to God’s Acre behind me.

Thanks again, Bill. You’re always there for me.

It makes even a stoic cry

normanjameson 3 Comments

I handle bad news relatively well. My exuberance over good things isn’t excessive – unless of course, you’re talking about the winning shot hit by my child or grandchild. Those who know me might call me stoic.

But, sometimes, I find belly laugh humor in the simplest things like word play and irony. And then, out of the blue, an item will reach out from a page or conversation, or television commercial with such poignancy it strikes every raw nerve in me and makes me blubber like a baby denied its lolly. Such as, a McDonald’s commercial around Olympics time, showing a dad teaching a little girl to swim, then showing that same dad cheering on his grown daughter in the Olympic pool.

The tear trigger probably depends on an aggregation of what I’ve been doing and reading and experiencing and all the right elements coalesce to strike an emotional nerve. It happened today at lunch.

Reading in the September Reader’s Digest about teachers who changed lives, I came upon a story reprinted from 1991 about a sweet natured, but very talkative boy named Mark Eklund and his teacher who was struggling to get across a tough math concept to her junior high class. When students wouldn’t settle down, she had them write on a sheet of paper every class member’s name. Then, they were to write the nicest thing they could think of about that student – for every student – and pass the list back to her.

On Monday, she distributed their classmates’ comments to each student and heard them murmuring as they read what others said about them: “I didn’t know others liked me so much,” or “I never knew that I meant anything to anyone.”

The boy grew up, as boys do, and one day the teacher’s father said, “The Eklunds called last night.” She immediately recalled the talkative bright, polite boy and asked how he is.

“Mark was killed in Vietnam,” the father said. “The funeral is tomorrow and his parents would like it if you could attend.”

At this point, I had to pause reading because all the pain, disgust, frustration and rage I generally keep tamped down relating to America’s gross, blind, selfish, lying, cruel relationship with Vietnam burbled to the top and leaked out my eyes.

Resuming the story, teacher Helen Mrosla stood at the coffin when a pallbearer asked her if she was Mark’s math teacher. When she nodded, he said, “Mark talked about you a lot.”

After the funeral Mark’s mother pulled a piece of paper out of the wallet that was on Mark when he was killed. “I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark’s classmates had said about him,” Mrosla wrote.

One by one, each of Mark’s classmates from that year showed their former and favorite teacher the paper she had returned to them, folded and creased from many readings. When she finally sat down and cried, it was both in appreciation for finally knowing what that little gesture had meant to so many so long ago, and in frustration and anguish over Mark’s totally unnecessary death.

And I cried reading it, for the utterly wasted life of Mark Eklund and the other 58,208 American soldiers who died there, and the 2 million others on both sides. Youcan say these “lives”weren’t wastedbecause these men and women accomplished other things with their lives, made babies,influenced siblings and friends, bought carsto keep the wheels of American industry turning. But their lives were wasted because the war was a hopeless exercise in political overreach that never had a chance to achieve its stated purpose.

And what made my tears well up and wash down my faceand my guts clenchwasrememberingthat the politicians who prolonged the war KNEW it. They knew it for years. President Johnson couldn’t withdraw troops or he’d lose the election in 1964; Nixon sabotaged peace talks in 1968 so he could beat Hubert Humphrey.

According to a story by Bob Fitrakis in Common Dreams, Henry Kissinger, then Johnson’s adviser on Vietnam peace talks, secretly alerted Nixon’s staff that a truce was imminent.

Nixon calculated that peace in Vietnam just prior to the election would put Johnson’s VP Humphrey in the White House, instead of him. Revelations from President Nixon’s papers showed that he dispatched Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to convince the South Vietnamese to back away from the peace talks, promising a better deal when he was elected president.

Chennault was successful. South Vietnamese’s corrupt leadership backed away from the peace talks and we spent another 20,000-plus American lives and 100,000 wounded in the next five years. And in 1973, Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the same settlement he helped sabotage in 1968.

And I weep.

I weep to think of the promises, shenanigans, falsehoods and power of the military industrial complex that keeps America engaged in conflicts around the world. We are the most war mongering nation on earth. In the 243 years of our history, we’ve only been at peace for 21 years. We’ve been at war for 93 percent of our history.

It’s so common we don’t even think about it, unless you’re a parent, child or spouse of a soldier deployed.

When dealing with other nations who we perceive to be acting in a way contrary to our best interests, we rattle our sabers and say “every option is on the table,” meaning that we’re not above or beyond engaging our belts of military might to spank you into submission.

Depending on which source you quote, the U.S. spends more on its military than the next 7-12 nations combined. Yes, that includes Russia and China.

In the incredibly illuminating HBO special Chernobyl, radiation was so high that no machinery could operate to clear debris.Radiation killed operating systems within moments. So, the Russians used “bio-bots” and shovels. Yes, bio-bots – humans who were not told of the danger into which they were thrusting themselves.

Despite all the pseudo patriotic jibberish slobbering from elected officials, they see our soldiers as bio-bots. Don’t like Saddam Hussein? Make up a justification to send our bio-bots to Iraq and take him out. But don’t touch Saudi Arabia, the hot house from which 9/11 was hatched, because they buy billions of dollars in weapons.

We know that no matter when we leave Afghanistan, things will return to the tribal antagonisms and violence that have been a way of life there for centuries. The “peace” our bio-bots enforce is temporary and fragile and will never be permanent. The administration knows it but hey, there’s always another election around the corner.

We treat the sale of weapons as if they were tractors, or computers or cars. Just another manufacturing product, when in fact, weapons produced in the U.S. supply antagonists in conflicts raging around the world. Our bio-bots are being shot at by guns made in the good old U.S. of A.

“Quite frankly,” says Danny Sjursen, US Army strategist and historian, in a story in The Big Think, “Selling arms is one of the last American industries that’s left. It’s one of the last things the United States does well, that we’re still No. 1 at — No. 1 at dealing arms in the world.”

Military gets big increases in the budget while education and innovation get slashed. The biggest “welfare queens” are corporations that make billions and pay no taxes. We’re lobotomized by daily news’ fascination with sexploits, celebrity and kittens. And somehow a prominent pastor in Dallas says the president would have biblical backing to launch a nuclear war.

Dear God, on what planet am I living? Hand me a handkerchief.

Mother’s Day 2019

normanjameson 4 Comments

HS graduation

Mom, left, at my high school graduation. Sisters Denise, and Linda, and Dad.

I know special remembrance holidays are fabrications woven to sell cards, flowers and candy. But this Mother’s Day is Sunday and something today about the beautiful weather and lunch with the mother of my children made me pause and remember my own mother, Barbara, who died at age 64 in 1996.

She was a lovely woman and a wonderful hostess, always ready for company no matter how late or how unexpected. I realize now we didn’t talk a lot, but she was always ready if I wanted to open up, not that she ever did. I never knew how ill she was until 19 days before she died.

Our night time ritual was for me to give her a kiss when I headed upstairs to bed. She was usually reading on the sofa and had a toothpick between her lips. She’d somehow make it disappear into her mouth while we exchanged a quick peck on the lips and then it would reappear.

I can still remember the night – and the look on her face – when I decided I was too old for that ritual. I had thought about it for a while and I agonized all day. Somehow, I knew what it meant. When I headed toward her, I saw her pop the toothpick into her mouth.

But, then I turned to go upstairs. Surprised, she said, “No kiss?”

“Ummm, no,” I said. She never mentioned it again but I think dad caught her eye and nodded, acknowledging silently that I’d climbed another rung on the ladder toward adulthood.

Mom was very prudish, embarrassed if anyone talked about body parts and she certainly didn’t tolerate her kids walking around in any state of dress that would not be considered “fully clothed.” On the day of my wedding she took me aside and confessed she probably ought to tell me about the birds and bees, “but you probably know more about it than I do, anyway.”

That, in its entirety, was her version of, “the talk.”

So, it was quite surprising when eight months later I brought my new bride home from Oklahoma to Wisconsin to meet the extended family. On the first night in my childhood home as a married man I found an apple on the bedside table. I picked it up, looked it over, shrugged, and put it back.

The next morning, I asked mom why she’d put an apple by the bed.

“It’s a contraceptive,” she said.

I laughed. “Was I supposed to eat it before…or after?”

“You were supposed to eat it instead,” she said.

I told that story in her eulogy. At the Lutheran Church in Rio, WI where we all grew up, population 788. My dad told me the population stayed at 788 because “every time a young lady has a baby, an older man leaves town.”

I delivered dad’s eulogy in the same room, 21 years later. It was the room where I preached the youth sermon – from the wrong pulpit, I learned later. In our divided chancel, only an ordained minister got to preach from the big, ornate pulpit that was high and lifted up. I could use that one legitimately now, if I ever get invited to preach there.

It’s the same room where I acted in Christmas plays – vying to be a speaking star, or an announcing angel and not just a silent, costumed figure filling out the scriptural cast. It was the room where I wore the costumes mom made, and later the coat and tie she picked out.

It was the room where she sat as the bride’s mom when my sister married, and as a grieving daughter-in-law when my grandparents were buried.

When I was a high school junior, I came home from a dance after the football game and woke my parents up to tell them, “I’ve committed the ultimate sin.”

They shot straight up out of bed and took a second to compose themselves before mom – who gave birth to my sister before age 18 – asked me tentatively, “Um, and what was that?”

“I asked a freshman to the homecoming dance,” I said, not understanding until later their audible expulsion of relief.

I know special holidays like Mother’s Day are made up. But, at least it’s a reminder to do or say something special to your mom at least once a year. Take advantage of it.

By the way, kids, Father’s Day is June 16.

Play the music, not the notes

normanjameson 3 Comments

classical-music-1838390_960_720 (2)We enjoyed an orchestra at church Sunday, to accompany our choir and lift our spirits with the resounding crescendo that instruments provide. I noticed that orchestra members get involved with the music at different levels.

The first chair violinist sat on the edge of his seat, one foot behind him, leaning toward the music stand. Every stroke of his bow pulled his body left and right. His head moved up and down, his mouth close to the instrument as if whispering, coaxing it to produce glory like a jockey leaning over a horse’s neck, urging it to go faster, harder.

Fingers on his left hand pressed the strings in various combinations against the instrument’s neck and his hand shimmied to draw forth a plaintive vibrato.

Two rows behind him another violinist played, a young man not yet as accomplished, not yet as sure. He sat stiffly in his chair, leaning toward the music stand as if he couldn’t quite make out the notes. The bow was more an implement in his hand, rather than an extension of his own fingers. Nothing moved as he played except his arm and the bow.

He was just playing the notes. The first violinist played the music.

When I played baritone in the high school band I practiced hard for the annual competition at which a judge would listen, grade us and grant an appropriately colored ribbon – blue for A, red for B, white for C. White was kind of a “thanks for coming” award.

Eager and ready when my time came to play, I pressed the mouthpiece to my lips and ran through those notes perfectly. Didn’t skip or misplay a single note. Hit them all in tune and on time. And got a white ribbon for the effort.

Shocked, I looked at the judge, my face begging a reason. “Anyone who practices can play the notes,” she said. “I’m looking for someone to interpret the music.”

I just played the notes. I missed the music.

An old story tells of a curious lad coming to the site of an enormous construction project in his medieval village. He wandered from workman to workman, each busy with his various tasks, and asked them what they were doing.

The first wiped his brow, grunted impatiently and said, “I’m sawing timbers for cross beams.”

The second didn’t pause from his work pouring mud into forms, scraping off the excess and lifting heavy weights onto a trailer. “I’m making bricks,” he said with a scowl.

The third, when asked, paused, looked over the construction site with exposed beams and holes for windows and the nascent beginnings of a spire reaching into the sky and told the boy, “I’m building a cathedral.”

Our Bible study class was in Romans 7. There, the Apostle Paul encourages the new church in Rome to realize the law is no longer their standard for living. They have died to the law, as Jesus died to free them from it. Instead, they are to live in freedom, under grace.

That is our charge, to live under grace. To live in freedom. Ours is not a check box religion: Don’t smoke. Check. Don’t lust. Check. Don’t cheat on your taxes. Check. And on and on and on, each box a note, each check mark a note played.

The goal of Christian living is not to check the boxes, to just play the notes.

To live under grace is to play the music.

 

 

 

 

Evangelicals sell authority for a pot of stew and a photo op

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On the night of my deepest misery eight weeks after I’d been conscripted as one of America’s last draftees, I walked through Fort Sam Houston to a bank of phones and called my dad, 1,300 miles away. I tried to relate to him how miserable I was – a conscientious objector in medic training with a whole platoon of men fresh out of basic, fired up and ready to go “kill some Charlie Cong.”

I related this as well as I could to dad, who never understood my stance against war, but nothing helped. I hung up the phone and started walking back toward another toss-and-turn night in the barracks, when I passed a post chapel. There was nothing special about the modest, white, steepled box, except on this night it was lit up and pulsing with happy sounds. Drawn by the light and the sound, I walked in.

On the platform was a group of bright, attractive young people presenting some kind of musical. I was enchanted. The music was good and the girls were pretty. Afterwards they invited us to church – Baptist Temple in San Antonio. They offered to come get us in a bus.

Several of us went. There, I heard probably my first “come to Jesus” sermon, outside of a televised Billy Graham crusade. It was convicting and I was almost persuaded. They served us lunch after church and I tasted my first iced tea. We drank milk in Wisconsin. They embraced us, welcomed us, served us. Made us feel at home.

That was my introduction to evangelicals.

I learned that “evangelical” referred to a Christian who felt strongly enough about Jesus declaring the kingdom of God was at hand, and that Jesus holds the key to that kingdom, that he or she felt compelled to tell others about it. You know, to “evangelize,” like the young people from Baptist Temple had done for me. An evangelical took Jesus’ example to heart, reached out and served “the least of these” through selfless acts.

An evangelical took seriously biblical truths as guidelines for living so that to an evangelical, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28). By definition evangelicals loved their enemies, spoke truth to power, were slow to rush to judgement and willingly accepted slights rather than instigate fights…or war.

Evangelical was a theological term that described a body of Good News telling believers.

Today “evangelical” is a political term that describes a voting block who want government to legislate their spiritual worldview. And sadly, that worldview has somehow dropped over a horizon that does not reflect Jesus’ character.

Rather than loving the foreigner among us, “the other” is demonized, drawn as a caricature we then are to fear – or to deport.

Political evangelicals appear to love guns more than children; privilege for their own, more than opportunity for all; unborn children more than desperate mothers; their narrow perspective more than tolerance that facilitates a peaceful society.

Rather than an aura of love there seems to be a halo of hate in the way “evangelicals” rejoice in the dismantling of environmental protections; the rejection of science; deification of business; deportation of ethnics who have lived in this country for decades and who are parents and spouses of American citizens, and in how they resist the idea of health care access for all, as if someone has to earn the right to see a doctor.

These political evangelicals shout obscenities at news media covering public events. They succumb to manufactured displays of patriotism and denigrate others who don’t. Their leaders don formal dress for a state dinner at the White House, sacrificing their prophetic voice to rub shoulders with empire.

One of the earliest biblical stories explains that Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of red stew. (Genesis 25:33) It seemed logical at the time, Esau was desperately hungry and what good was his birthright if he starved to death?

Voting block evangelicals today sell their prophetic birthright to Caesar, for the tinsel and spice of the arm of empire draped over their shoulder in a photo op – a photo that cost $10,000 at a Charlotte fundraiser Aug. 30, by the way.

In Second Samuel in the Old Testament, the prophet Nathan set forth a scenario before King David to secure David’s ruling. In the scenario, a very rich man took the only lamb of his poor neighbor to feed a traveler. David “burned with anger” and told Nathan “the man who did this must die!”

“You are the man,” Nathan told David in no uncertain terms. Because of his courage, and because he did not keep house in the court of David, Nathan was positioned to speak truth to power, and power repented.

Evangelicals today have sold that position for a cot in the court, and a photo op.

 

Is your trust mechanism trustworthy?

normanjameson Leave a comment

Any call from the “fraud department” of anything will make your stomach clench.

When my credit card company said my account showed unusual charges, and went through them one by one, I knew immediately they were right.

I didn’t buy those things. And I never was at the place where someone else bought them…with my card. I also knew my card was in my wallet and not lost.

I’ve lost my card before, left it in a gas pump. Some trustworthy soul got it back to me. But I hadn’t lost it this time. It was never out of my sight. Or was it?

Dealing as a victim with credit card fraud helps me understand how much of our society functions on trust. And how much trust we’ve lost.

Sitting in a restaurant, we casually drop our credit card onto the little folio that contains our bill. The wait staff takes the card out of our sight, debits our account for the agreed upon amount, and returns the card to us. Right? With no shenanigans while it was out of our sight?

We trust that is so.

We trust a car zooming toward us at 60 miles per hour on a two-lane road, separated from us by only the width of a painted line, to stay in its lane.

As a cyclist, I trust cars and trucks zooming up from behind to see me and wait for an opening to pass without running me off the road.

We trust our produce in the grocery store – laying shiny and naked under bright lights and a misting spray – to be clean and pesticide residue free.

We trust the preacher to interpret the Word correctly when s/he admonishes us and encourages us righteous living. We trust that no one will burst into the service with a gun and kill us en masse.

We trust our spouse to be faithful to his/her vows; our children to tell us the truth; our boss to be fair; our car not to break down; our gauges to tell us how many miles we have left until empty; youth ministers not to molest teenagers; doctors to know what they’re talking about; the gas line into our house not to leak; our politicians not to lie. Oh, wait…

In 1992, we hosted some new Brazilian friends during a professional exchange relating to residential child care. These were worldly wise, educated people from a modern society so this country did not present for them some marvelous revelation of a splendiferous world to which they could only aspire.

But one thing really amazed them: self-serve gas stations. That would never work in Brazil, they said, because people would just drive off. Here, we trusted people to pump their gas, return the hose to its position, walk into the station and pay for the gas they just pumped into their vehicle.

This was before the ubiquitous use of credit cards to “pay at the pump.” We don’t trust people not to drive off anymore. If you’re not paying with a credit card, you have to pay before you pump.

While we lament the departure of trust in our society, we’ve earned its loss. Spouses aren’t faithful, corporations don’t care about their employees, ministers do shatter lives, unlocked cars are victimized, politicians remain politicians.

As trust erodes, we shrink. We stay inside, we hover, we watch and worry, we grow callous and cynical. When we can’t trust the world, we avoid it, rather than explore and embrace it.

And yet, think about how much we actually depend on trust for our society to continue to run smoothly.

We stay in our lanes, put letters into a mailbox, loan a neighbor a tool, send our kids to camp, swim in a community pool, proceed on a green light, flip on the switch, gather in crowds, eat food we didn’t prepare, purchase online, believe what we’re told.

We’re still naïve enough to be shattered when someone abuses our trust. Except, it’s becoming so common we’re getting hardened to it. We avoid disappointment by lowering our expectations. Rather than trusting them, when those persons who command the daily headlines declare – with aplomb and bombast – that they alone hold our best interests at heart, it’s time to lock your doors, hold onto your wallets, and huddle the children beneath your arms.

Trust me.

My not good, very bad, horrible day

normanjameson 2 Comments

Last week I had a not good, very bad, horrible day.

Driving on my way to see a donor, from whom I was expecting a significant commitment, I phoned a pastor friend to catch up. We exchanged the usual professional and family information that makes men feel they are staying in rhythm with the heartbeat of their buddies. And I learned that his wife had left him. I’ve not been so shocked in a long time. They seemed to be thriving.

Fortunately, he handled the situation immediately and professionally with his church, and they demonstrated the love and commitment that he has earned there. The leadership unanimously wants him to stay.

Later, while waiting in the lobby of my donor friend, I received a phone call from the son-in-law of my high school buddy from Wisconsin who for the past several years has lived within 80 miles of me. I knew Don’s cancer was back, and he likely wouldn’t make it through the summer.

In fact, I had just checked the map to learn where his house was in relation to my meeting to see if I could run over there that day. I was still wavering between going that day, or waiting until next week when the son-in-law called. Next week would be too late, Chris said. In fact, that afternoon might be too late, as Don was leaving us today, he said in a broken voice. Could I come?

I promised him I would come as soon as I finished my meeting.

Over lunch with my donor prospect I learned his business was off by 35 percent and he would not be able to do for the foundation for which I work what he had hoped and planned to do. He’s a fine man, supportive, and encouraged me to stay in touch.

Pulling away, I called Chris from my car and said I’d be there to see Don in an hour. “Don has passed,” Chris said through his tears. I went anyway to be with the family. We shared hugs, tears, coffee and cookies and some laughs and memories.

The body that once held Don remained in the recliner, dogs in his lap. It would remain there until his son in California and daughter from Seattle arrived and said their farewells.

No matter how much time you have to prepare for a loved one’s passing, you’re never ready when that final breath rattles through the pipes and then falls silent. Don’s illness was terminal and this moment was inevitable. Just, as always, too soon.

That night my friend Steve in Omaha texted that he’d lost control when his bike hit a bump, and he’d broken six ribs and partially deflated a lung.

It was overwhelming really, this day of bad news, and I felt like a patch of dry grass in the path of the lava flowing down from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.

I was overwhelmed and yet strangely detached. Is it because these tragedies happened to someone else and I remained untouched? Or is it because I’m basically a stoic and consider these events – as painful as they were to those to dear to me – as merely ebbs and flows of the human experience?

Stuff happens. Nobody promised us a rose garden, yadda yadda.

I’d hate to think that absorbing the stings and arrows of those who sought my undoing in past days hardened my heart to such an extent that I had no soft spot left from which to squeeze a tear.

Or is it because the faith in God’s providence to which I cling truly is sufficient? I’ve often said during difficult periods, “These are not the times that try our faith. These are the times that prove our faith.”

Unfortunately, the opportunity for proving presents itself in trial.

Fortunately, faith is sufficient and trials prove it.