The Red Letters

The very same folks who brought us the red letters also brought us each of the black ones. And the one Great Spirit breathed out into every one of them, red or black.

Word.

Earliest Remembrances

The twenty-something mother sits bedside as she shushes the two-year old on her lap and the baby in a crib beside. A dim, flickering, reddish glow breaks and splays through a balcony and window onto the wall. Ominously quiet, half a dozen friends crowd the small balcony's wrought iron railing overlooking the street below, but not so much as to draw attention. She moves quietly from bed to balcony, and back, hoping the disquieted child would mind to stay on the bed. The baby sleeps, thankfully. But the boy knows a big deal is up. He sees the shifting shadows on familiar big people faces at the balcony. He hears an outside growing rumble of shouts and other cacophonies overwhelming earlier sounds of the evening's silence. (How could you miss it?) He slips between legs and peeks through the railing. Just there to the right, where the road in front of the country house bends a strong left turn -- you see the little shrine sitting in the bend? -- as roaring a bonfire as you would ever want throws masses of sparks into the air to rival stars in the sky opposite. He sees its hot light bouncing off a jostling mass of unknown faces that fade back into the darkness. Torches punctuate the size of the mob, rods and banners wave about in the air. Right over there he sees the statue borne by a now bestilled cart that had led the advance. A figure stands on a makeshift dais, he gesticulates violently, bellows over the shouts of his ad hoc congregation. The big people at the balcony and window agonize. Will they survive a conflagration tonight? The boy's face burns only with the flush of agitation.

The year: 1949/1950. A large two-story country house just outside Rome, Italy, sits off a two lane road. Looking out from the house, following the road along the front to the right, one sees the road make an abrupt left turn directing travelers from the rural outskirts immediately into the Eternal City. As was common throughout Italy, a small shrine figuring Madonna and Child blessed said travelers as they made their way through the countryside. The house served as an unsecured compound for a small band of missionaries with the Churches of Christ who had moved lately from Texas to Italy. Their intent was to bring the gospel of Christ to a war-ravaged land perceived to have lost the essential message. One of the mission members had served in the U.S. army as allied forces in World War II fought Nazi troops occupying Italy. After war's end, and overwhelmed by the despair and devastation he witnessed, that soldier had decided to return to the nation with a message of hope, then under a different command and with vastly different weapons: the kingdom of God and the Spirit's panoply.

Now in the States, he spoke tirelessly among the congregations eventually convicting a team of young men and women to move to Italy to preach Christ. With toddler in tow (the only child to make the inbound journey), his bride traveled with him to the land foreign to her as light to darkness. When one considers present-day Italy (indeed, present-day Europe) as an idyllic tourist destination, one has no notion of that country seventy years ago. The rubble of destroyed civilization behind war's end served as nobody's tourist destination then.

These young people settled in the environs of Rome thinking early on that in a few years, as the wisdom of their simple gospel message should be received well, they would return to their homes in the United States, thence to "regular" life. The scene indicated above, and many others of like portent, gave opportunity for reassessment of early expectations.

In our twenty-first century enlightenment, by which all persons become their own laissez-faire gods (providing lesser gods stay out of the way), their mission seems laughable in its scope and a mild embarrassment to a weak Protestant heritage. Nonetheless, the little mission group created quite a stir among the state-sponsored hierarchy such that various authorities sought to remove them from the country. One of the mission team, eventually designated "persona non grata," had to leave Italy, never to return. Others of them ended up giving a lifetime of ministry in that mission.

Their cause, having developed political overtones related to the exercise of religious freedom, in 1956 occasioned the first case ever heard by the recently established Italian Constitutional Court. The court affirmed the right of persons to disseminate written religious (and other) information without prior governmental approval, in keeping with the new Italian constitution. Even so, the Lateran Pact of 1929, developed by Mussolini and the Roman Catholic Church in fascist Italy, yet dominated to give that religious entity official and privileged status. The Pact held until 1984 when the Italian government and the Roman Church signed a new agreement greatly constraining, but not eliminating altogether, its privilege.

My dad was the soldier mentioned earlier, serving as a ski trooper in the 87th Infantry, 10th Mountain Division. It's interesting how certain seminal events in a person's life can take place, and though the memory of them barely fades, they're never really talked about much, if any, at all. An event becomes integral to life's tapestry without seeming to be part of it. Just so, it was about half a century later that I first asked him what the thing was all about. He explained.

An association called the Catholic Action served as a loosely organized political action group. Its composition consisted mostly of lay Roman Catholic people whose agenda promoted the advance and defense of Roman Catholicism. In the early years of that mission of the Churches of Christ, the Catholic Action in the varied communities often opposed evangelistic meetings held in those cities, sometimes with physical violence, but always with verbal abuse and interruptions during the meetings. Sometimes such opposition sought to take legal action against the mission congregations because the mission might have placed a sign over a meeting place without first gaining governmental approval for the sign, or for handing out unapproved informational leaflets and brochures, or for other similar reasons. They sought to discourage the mission and, through the free exercise of intimidation, to stop conversion. (The last notable of violent actions took place in Aprilia, in 1957, on the outskirts of Rome: the Action packed the meeting hall rented by the mission, destroyed the furniture, and drove out native and foreign preachers who feared for their lives.)

On the occasion indicated at the start of this writing, a mob had formed by instigation of Catholic Action, and it had evolved into a procession of sorts. Leading the throng, a cart carried a statue of the Virgin Mary considered to have much mystical power. There had been concern that the roadside shrine of Madonna and Child adjacent to the mission house, though efficacious enough for travelers, remained unequal to her present task. So, delivery of the Virgin Mary statue from its sanctuary in Rome to the roadside shrine, and by means of the throng's special pleadings, cajolings, warnings, imprecations, and intercessions -- the kidnapped statue should impart great power to the besieged shrine. The shrine thus emboldened might then drive out the heretics from the midst.

The families witnessing the events from the balcony learned of these details later. But in the moment, they feared the mob would surround the house and burn them up in it. Prayer came easy, but not the night.

--------------

Other childhood memories of that idyll, distinct from that event, include sun-bathed dalliances in the grassy yard behind the country house, wanderings through flowering, maturing vegetable gardens, chickens pecking at little things on the ground, frightfully toothed geese behind the fence, meanderings by the bench at the side yard gravel path, and Mom, with baby in arms, overseeing each step.

Respect

Want to be old enough.

Turns out my old geezerliness is not old enough.

And here I thought it was.

But the other day heard a poem from a guy that was really old. 80s. He said you're not really old until you get there. Then, in a chance visit only yesterday, another octogenarian said much the same. (Seems to me a pride thing going on here.)

I, a mere septuagenarian ... and didn't even know how to spell it til just now. (You'd think after more than seven decades on the planet you'd have the rudiments of English spelling down - on what forgotten isle was this contrary language invented?!)

You spend your whole life trying to get old enough, and then you discover the centenarian, mid-stride in a vocation, married with kids, 30 years old when your mama was still changing your diapers.

Just never get no respect.

A Thought

Just leaving no thought unpublished.

Fading Flowers

(Note: The reader should feel free to replace all hes with shes, and hims with hers. Not that it will be particularly comforting, but there you have it if it helps bring more inclusive meaning.)

1. "Oh, you didn't know? He passed some time ago."

Passed? Like, what? Passed his exams? A kidney stone? The bus stop? The car in third place? His mentor? The moon? Gas?

He went from here to there -- that's what it sounds like. He went too far down the street but perhaps makes course corrections even now to return. He's just a door or two further down, making his way back. May we yet visit with him soon?

But, No. He died.

He didn't "passed" to anywhere. Well, except to the grave. Or crematorium. His heart stopped. His brain synapses collapsed. His breath returned to the atmosphere. His body rots. The four winds caught his scattered ashes. He is not.

What's with this euphemism thing, "passed"? Afraid to say "die"? Is the word "death" too crass? Too vulgar? Too common? Too final?

Ah, that's it, isn't it? Too ... too ... well, too dead.

2. "He's in a better place."

Oh, really? Says who? What makes it a better place? Who says it's a place at all?

Here's what the ancient Hebrews said about the realm of the dead:
Sheol. The Grave. The Pit. The Abyss. Death.

And, here's what most said about the state of the thing:
-No rising to praise God
-Deep darkness
-No joy
-No hope
-No memory
-No knowledge
-Forgotten by God
- ...
-Silence.

Well. That's pretty depressing.

Don't want to talk about death or dying so will talk about travel from here to ... well, not real sure to where, but travel away from here. A voyage allows the implicit deceit of inferred return.

3. "He's in heaven now."

Now? Ever visited with anybody who died and went to heaven and came back to tell you all about it? The only one I know of who died planning to go there and promising to return - we're still waiting.

Clinically dead isn't dead. That's why it's called "clinically dead." Dead dead is dead. Nobody's been "clinically dead" longer than a few hours without becoming dead dead. Near death experience is almost (but not quite) dying, and then reviving. The reviving part is critical for the notion, otherwise it's no longer near death experience, but is just death.

A few folks with near-death experiences report the warm glow where everything was peace and love. Others didn't feel the love, they report terrors never felt before. Most who "die clinically" when revived have no particular memory to tell.

And nobody, nobody, who stayed dead ever told anybody anything about it.

4. "He's cryogenically preserved."

Oh, yeah. Right. Sure.

He is dead.

Not preserved. Is not near death. Is not clinically dead. Is dead dead.

So for those of us who say here is all there is, that there is no there ... what, pray tell, are we talking about to say he passed? There's no there there to pass to! There's just here. And he's not here. He's dead.

He will fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Like the flower in scorching heat.

It's just what happens at the end.

5. Resurrection.

Resurrection happens when you're dead dead and something outside nature vivifies inorganic matter, the atoms reconnect just so, and you come back to life, body and consciousness and memories and experiences and life systems intact. And you are here once again.

It happens after the end. After the end end.

Still waiting for it.

They Keep Leaving

People keep going away.

They're here for a while, and then they leave. Usually they're old.

But sometimes they're moms or dads.

And sometimes they're kids.

But they keep on leaving, never to be seen again. If we didn't know them, it wouldn't be such a deal.

But we do.

And it is.

And I don't like it.

I guess I will leave some day.

I don't like that either.

Psalm 88

Silence.

The Right Way To Answer

"Are you for or against innigeration?" asked Junior. A cold autumn in '59 wasn't it, overnighting at my friend's in rural Texas?

Junior's parents worked as tenant cotton farmers, some called them poor white trash. They lived in an uninsulated house on the farm for nominal rent, got shares from the sale of cotton. The rest of the shares went to the land owner.

Stepping onto a weather-worn front porch, you watched for missing planks. No plumbing, you got water from an outside well, and used an outhouse. The kitchen stove doubled as heater. On waking up you dreaded putting on frozen jeans. Stove-heated water sufficed for weekly baths for two girls and two boys, one at a time in a "number 3 tub." Somebody held a towel strategically when it was your turn. A low watt bulb cast dim shadows from the rafters.

It was classic Alaskan bush life-style ... except for electricity and cotton farming.

Junior had a TV (we did not). He got to watch Gunsmoke and 77 Sunset Strip, he was up on the news, too. The perennial clash of American racial cultures featured occasionally.

Now, I was a preacher kid. We lived in a cottage in town and, upscale to Junior, lived lower middle class. My folks both had enrolled in graduate school, commuting distantly from where dad preached. After their masters', they planned to enter foreign missions to open a school.

This night they went to college, farming out their kids among families in the congregation. After a day of Grade 8 schooling, afternoon farm chores, and playing kick-the-can following supper, Junior and I bedded down talking until sleep won.

He was pretty smart in math; a big kid, too, good at football. I, however, youngest in the class and third smallest, did average work, and did OK enough in baseball for peer acceptance. We talked about cars and sports, and lately, girls. Well, he did. Mostly I listened.

Things got quiet. That's when he posed the question.

Not understanding, I responded, "Am I for what?"

"Are you for innigeration?" As though I were slow of understanding (indeed!), "You know," he emphasized, "innigeration?"

Oh! Did I mention that if you went to that town, you'd find rigidly partitioned zones, one where black people lived and went to school, and the other where whites lived and went to school? Racial segregation held in schools and living arrangements: separate but equal education was the idea. And separate most everything else, too. But virtually nothing equal.

Anyway, no idea what Junior was talking about. Racked the old brain. Nothing.

You know when somebody asks and you just know from the posing what the right way to answer is? Whatever "innigeration" was, clearly, I shouldn't favor it. Besides, any human being with half a lick of sense ought to know what he was talking about. Thus, no call for elucidation.

So I didn't. Astutely I said, "Against."

He said, "Good."

Then he added skeptically, "But, you know, your parents are for it; are you sure you're against it?"

My heart froze. I did not know they were for it. I did not know they worked against the prevailing order and for the integration of all the kids. (I learned that much later.)

Betrayer of family honor, dignity, and reputation, I felt Judas' remorse … still conflicted unwittingly by this mystery. Didn't know why they should be for it and didn't know why I should be against it, just knowing the right way to answer.

"Yep, against," said I, remorse redoubling against my weak soul.

Some six decades since passed, the justice of integration long recognized. No lofty ideal: it's just plain human decency - liberty, an unalienable right with which their Creator endowed humans.

Then I look to Jesus: betrayed by weaklings, outcast by insiders, sacrificed by the powerful. Through these insults he builds a forever community of deep integration, a mending of all things in heaven and on earth, to the glory of God, Creator of it all.

(Published elsewhere, July, 2018)

Time's Short

"Churches that pray publicly for individual persons don't grow to be big churches." That's the way I took the line to say, anyway. I guess the idea is that if you take the time, in the general assembly, to pray for everybody requesting it, you spend way more time in prayer than we have time for.

Rather, pray for specific persons during small group meeting times.

Good idea.

It's like the trolley operator who drove past several stops, though riders were wanting off. "Because," said the operator, "I couldn't keep the schedule if I had to make all the stops."

Time's short so we'll sing only one verse of "Take Time To Be Holy."

So, Where Exactly Is The Church Headed?

"The church is going to hell in a handbasket." That's what he said some three or more decades ago, right here in our Juneau home town. No atheist he, no agnostic, no sloppy liberal religionist, no militant weird faith follower; rather, a dyed-in-the-wool Bible believer, a Bible thumper indeed, by some reckoning. (Well, could be a weird faith follower, I suppose.)

His point ... maybe ... that certain practices he deplored in churchly affairs were bringing it to utter, certain, and quick ruination. Still, it seems such a curious turn of phrase, doesn't it?

Curious, especially when the reported words on its founder's lips had been, "I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." So odd to assert the community that Jesus, its founder, promised to save from hell was itself the very entity that nonetheless was bound for it. So to speak.

I guess we like to speak in hyperbole. Or at any rate we like to exaggerate so as to emphasize the passion felt about the topic at hand. So, we're really talking about the depth of feeling and not really about the outcome of the subject matter itself. Even so, we suspect both the extent of emotion and risked outcome hold inexorable links.

And then.

Another saying has these words from Jesus, "I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent" - the metaphorical lampstand to be the church, and its metaphorical place to shine victoriously in the presence of the Risen Christ. This does sound somewhat sobering, not quite the church militant let alone triumphant, instead, potentially doomed.

Repentance conditions Jesus' removal of the church from his presence in the heavens to the abyss. It seems Jesus expects the community called by his name to reflect something of his character. And if it does not, then it stands to lose his endorsement. It may be a church, but not his.

So Jesus calls for repentance, that is, for a change of mind, heart, and action. And to repent toward what end? He expects his people to love and do acts of love.

And in this love the church triumphs: God raised the Lord Jesus; and God, by his power alone, will also raise the church with Jesus and bring the whole into his glorious presence.

Our Country, 'Tis Of Thee

(A brief note to Christ-followers)

After the flood
Before the fire
You'll find me in time
And you might find me tired
I've been on the move
I'm just passing through
To a city that's fairer
And I mean to get there
Someday
-Jesus Music, Dogwood (1975)-

So, here's the deal.

You know that long list of names that opens up the New Testament? The begats one? The one that starts with Abraham and ends with Jesus? Yeah, that one.

Abraham, father of all the faithful, Sarah, mother of nations: Wanderers and nomads all over the Fertile Crescent of four thousand years ago. (Where portions of modern Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gaza strip, Egypt sit.) Of whom the world was not worthy.

In the middle of the list see David, King of Israel? In the strength of youth hiding in the back country and in foreign territories, running from oppressive despots. And again, as an old man on the run from a rebel king.

At list's end, Jesus ... born to migrants, no room at the inn in which to deliver a baby. Then on the run to Egypt, refugees in a foreign land. Foxes have dens, birds have nests, said Jesus, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.

Displaced people. Wanderers. Sojourners. Exiles. Aliens. Migrants. Foreigners. Refugees. And when at home, not really home.

I mean, here's the deal.

Our father in faith, Abraham, with bride Sarah, sets our agenda: They sought a homeland, they acknowledged to be strangers and exiles on the earth. For this reason God is not ashamed to be called their God. Indeed, he builds for them a city in the sky.

And thus we: Strangers and exiles in this world. This country. This land. Seeking a city made without hands, in a set beyond this land that was not made for you and me.

By witness of the New Testament, the Lord Jesus, the Christ of God, lays it out clearly: My kingdom is not of this world. I go to prepare a place for you. In my father's home is plenty of space. And I will come back and bring you with me.

And so we: Seekers of the land that indeed was made for you and me. The homeland of our God, in the skies. Our country, 'tis of thee, O God.

But what to do in the meantime?

By further witnesses of the New Testament:

Honor everyone.
Love the brotherhood.
Respect God.
Honor the emperor.

And by witness of the Hebrew Bible:

You shall treat the
stranger who
sojourns with you as the
native among you, and you shall
love him as yourself, for you were
strangers in the
land of Egypt:
I am Jehovah, your God.

So as strangers in the land, we join with all the alien wanderers on a planet overwhelmed with labor pains, recognizing in each other respectively the yearning for communion with the Great Spirit, with God and his Christ.

This world is not my home

I'm just a-passing through

My treasures are laid up

Somewhere beyond the blue
The angels beckon me from
   heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in
   this world anymore

-Gospel Hymn (1939)-

Increasing Clarity

Memory of earlier mental acuity is sharper than it was.

The Hard, Hard Work

Fifty years ago this spring, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered. A jury convicted a white racist of the crime. Almost a year later, in late winter of 1969, a white, shotgun-wielding campus security guard shot and killed a black teenager at a small college where I studied. Though most of its students were white, the college campus sat as an island in an extensive, black community surrounding the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Racial tensions, already sensitized by King’s assassination and by riots of four years earlier, arose immediately among students and faculty, and in the neighborhood beyond. The college shut down for several days. Media outlets from all over the city detailed the event and carried the subsequent stories of the teen’s funeral and security guard’s trial.

Racial recriminations, demands for justice and recompense drew lines among students, families, and the college administration. The administration responded with what seemed to be, if not the right things, surely expedient things with a view to reduce tensions in the tragedy. Students eventually filtered back to complete semester classes, somewhat warier of the larger community among whom they lived.

Now, the liberal arts college’s financial support found its base in philanthropic endeavors and in student tuitions, but not in the Christian church. That said, almost all faculty and a great minority of students easily defined themselves followers of Christ.

Some such Christian students, black and white, with occasional Asians and Latinos, started evening meet-and-talk events in a nearby basement where a local church of Christ met. A few older leaders from faculty and congregation also participated. For a goodly number it was the first time to have had a meaningful conversation outside one’s own race identity. Some told, others heard, stories of crass, racist meanness perpetrated by “Christians” of opposing races toward each other. As conversations continued, students began talking about ways to tear down prejudices and misconceptions once for all, and about means to affirm the way of Christ as incompatible with rank bigotry and racism.

Indeed, a spirit of deeper fellowship developed in the group. A sense of unity and joy prevailed, despite tears and hardship. Another spirit also developed incipiently: self-righteousness and, ironically, exclusivity. The sense presented that people who claimed Christianity, but who did racist actions, were not, in fact, Christians, worthless infidels, perhaps.

One evening, a teacher at the college and elder of the local congregation, a gentle, middle aged man, stood and told his story.

American born and bred, he lived in California. At the onset of World War II, government authorities rounded up the 18-year-old, his brother, and his parents with countless others and summarily dispatched them to internment camp in Colorado. There they remained imprisoned till war’s end. They lost home, business, and possessions. Michio Nagai, as one might suspect, was Nisei, a first-generation American born to Japanese immigrants. They were Christians.

In due course, Mr. Nagai entered Christian college. The dean of students instructed him not to date white girls. He confessed to the group that evening, but not to the dean, that he had no intention of doing so – his mother had warned him sternly not to stoop below his station. He further confessed: he had held great anger against America and against God.

Having established “credentials” with the gathered crew, he moved to his point.

Here, the hard, hard work: The way of love, a no-matter-what love, a fiery love of Christ, undoes racism and its vile actions. Christ’s way of love recognizes and confesses bigotry within one’s own self first, a bigotry exempting no human heart. Christ’s way of love recognizes and welcomes in every human being a measureless, God-emplaced, inherent value. And Christ’s way of love generously extends and receives forgiveness.

And lastly. He noted that the only foundation on which Christians correct each other in love requires recognizing in them all a common ground of faith, the common ground of the Word of God; it requires recognition that the other person who claims Christ remains worthy thereby of the correction arising from the truth in that common faith. Else, nothing remains to say.

(Published elsewhere, April, 2018)