I entered Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, in the fall of 1958. It was culture shock from day one. I don't think I fully understood anyone until halfway through that first year. For example, my roommate, a gifted pianist named Rex Wilson, told me he was from Snashional. Only later that year did I realize he was saying San Angelo. One day we walked across the campus, and he introduced me to three different people in three different locations on the campus. To the first one he said, "This is Bob, my roommate. He is from Iowa (pronounced with a long a). To the second he introduced me as Bob, from Idaho. To the third he introduced me as Bob, from Ohio. To Rex, people from all three of those states were just "yankees" anyway, so what difference did it make?
It was love at first sight when I started attending the University Baptist Church. I could not believe the joyous singing. I was baptized and later became President of the Baptist Student Union. But, all was not right. Here I was at Hardin-Simmons University. Sammy Baugh was the football coach. Were there any black athletes on scholarship? No! Why? I started asking questions, but I was not getting answers that I liked. Why were there no blacks in the churches? I traveled with either the basketball team or the golf team to east Texas, and saw ridiculous separate drinking fountains. I watched television news and saw what was happening across America. My second job after graduation was as a child welfare worker. My supervisors did not like the fact that I watched the Huntley-Brinkley Report every night and then talked about what I saw the next day at work. My supervisors called it The Frontley-Pinkly Report (front for Communist front, and pink for Commies).
Then, John F. Kennedy came to Dallas. Although he was assassinated by a leftist Communist, there were people the next day quoted in the Dallas Morning News who were happy to see him killed. I left Texas in 1964 to go to graduate school in social work at the University of Kansas, and I was ready to get radicalized.
But wait, I'm going too fast. After graduation with a major in psychology and a minor in history, I married Lillian Pattillo, the prettiest girl at Hardin-Simmons. I was 22, and she was two years younger, and had just graduated from a certified Registered Nurse program in Abilene. Her father was a Baptist big shot from California. After a wonderful courtship, we embarked upon our honeymoon at Lake Murray in Oklahoma. It did not go well. Just like that, overnight, we went from romantic lovestruck kids to a couple who fought about everything, even on our honeymoon! Too damn young, too damn immature. We moved to Topeka, Kansas, where I began my first year of graduate school at The University of Kansas in Lawrence and Lil got a job as a nurse.
My "field placement" that year was at the V.A. Hospital in Topeka. Every Saturday I attended a seminar taught by none other than Dr. Karl Menninger, probably the foremost psychiatrist of his day. Psychiatrists from all over the world came to Topeka to study under him. I was assigned to work with alcoholic veterans and their families. Do you know what the fad treatment was in those days? Does the name Timothy Leary mean anything to you? That's right, a doctor would sit with a patient and put the patient on a LSD acid trip. Most of the veterans liked it better than alcohol!
The second year I was assigned to an elementary school in the "low income" area of Topeka. I worked with kids who were on the verge of being kicked out of school. I worked with them in a group, and tried to develop relationships with their parents, in order to encourage the parents to get involved with the school. Near the end of the school year two things happened that brought me great joy. One of my group members, the baddest, biggest black boy in the school, beat out a brainy diminutive blonde girl for the school spelling bee championship. Our group put on a play on Abraham Lincoln's birthday. The heretofore "worst behavior problem" in the school played the part of Abe. It changed the image of the group members significantly.
Dr. Roy Menninger, son of Karl, was the consultant to the Head Start program that started up the next summer after I graduated with my Masters degree in Social Work (M.S.W.), and I signed on. Never one to keep my thoughts to myself, one day I asked "Dr. Roy," "How is it helpful for us to sit here each week celebrating our superiority over the families who are sending children to this Head Start program (one of the first Head Start programs in America). He did not like the question. Luckily, I was saved from any further confrontations with "Dr. Roy" when an unlucky event occurred in June in Topeka. A tornado hit the ground and plowed its way across Topeka from southwest to northeast, liftng only at the state capitol, but still taking off some of the gold dome on its way back down to resume its destruction across town. I spent the summer helping families apply for emergency assistance to rebuild their homes and neighborhoods.
Lil gave birth to our first child, Laurie, shortly after the tornado came within one block of our modest house. We doted over Laurie as much as any parents ever doted over a child. She was my pride and joy. Two years later Marisa, our second child, was born, and we were just as proud of her as we had been of Laurie.
That fall I became Director of the Northeast Neighborhood Counseling Center in the Kansas City, Kansas ghetto. We counseled families and fought for innovations in education and hiring programs. A couple of years later I became a community organizer ala Saul Alinsky! My job was to organize poor people of all races to stand up for themselves and join together to help each other.
One night Lil and I were out to dinner together in Kansas City, Missouri. About ten p.m. a cop flashed his lights at me. I pulled over, the cop asked for my license and returned to his car. We waited for what seemed like a half hour. When the cop came up to me, he said he was taking me down to the station because I had a slew of unpaid parking tickets. I was indignant, and protested that i had no unpaid anything. It turned out that I had cosigned for a teen boy to buy a car. Since my name was on the title to his car, the tickets were traced back to my license. nevertheless, I was "booked," and once again, there I was, back in the pokey! This time it was not a fun experience. I was put in a bullpen with quite a few other law-breakers. A drunk black man was brought in to the bullpen. The cop wound up and slugged the man in the stomach. Alinsky had been organizing the community to put a stop to police brutality. Now I had seen it up close and personal. I knew the Methodist minister that was working with Alinsky and actually counseling Chief Clarence Kelly on eliminating police brutality. I made my one phone call. I got out in the wee hours of the morning, and we got the cop fired a few days later.
That organizing job expanded into a ten state program where I was a regional director of the National Self Help Corporation. Our objective was to organize people enrolled in the federal government's WIN program, short for Work Incentive Program, in order to ensure that job opportunities were real and relevant. That job brought me to Colorado, as well as to Indian reservations in the West.
Things were not any better between Lil and me. I engaged in an extramarital affair. Where was that guy who had been baptized in the church as a born again follower of Jesus Christ? I had a new religion: the left wing "change the world" religion of Saul Alinsky. We did get back together, and moved to Denver, where I took a job training caseworkers all around Colorado. Three years later, I took a job as Director of Human Services in La Plata and San Juan Counties in beautiful southwestern Colorado. Our marriage lasted only a few more years. The saddest day of my life was when she was awarded full custody of our daughters.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Golf, basketball, track and street-fighting
Okay, on to high school. Only two things mattered to me as I entered Central High in September of 1955: Judy and basketball. Our team (the junior varsity) went undefeated. The varsity had a different coach, and was lousy. A movement got underway in the community to demand the ouster of the varsity coach, who was best friends with Judy's father.
Fearing we were getting "too serious," Judy's father had forbidden her to continue her relationship with me. Nevertheless, I would wait on summer nights for her phone call, then sneak out of the house to meet her in exciting forbidden rendezvous. Apparently, people were writing the varsity coach cards and letters demanding that he quit. One of the letter-writers made his cursive "n"s similar to the way I wrote my letter "n"s. The coach accused me of being the letter-writer, which was absurdly incorrect. He forbade me from being on the basketball team. i was absolutely crushed.
I decided to get serious about golf. I soon became the second best junior golfer in the state. I qualified for the National Junior Championship in Maryland. I played a practice round of 27 holes on the day before the tournament was to begin. My playing partner was the number one player in Iowa. I beat him that day, only because he was not playing well. The best player in the world at that time was another teenager named Jack Nicklaus. Jack knew my playing partner. He spotted us drinking lemonades in the clubhouse and asked if we wanted to play 18 holes with him, since he had just arrived and did not know the course. My friend said sure, but I begged off. I knew my shaky confidence would be destroyed. A large gallery quickly developed. Jack drove his drive into a sand trap next to the green, some 350 yards away from the tee. (I would have been lucky to hit it 250 yards). Nicklaus proceeded to set a new course record that afternoon, on his first trip around the course! I did well enough in golf to win a scholarship to a school in Texas, which I will write about in a later installment.
One day Mohammed Sadden, a six-foot-three inch athlete who was our best high jumper in track came up to me at the beginning of a school day in front of the principal's office. "Your friend Judy is a slut," proclaimed Mr. Sadden loudly. Even though he was six-foot-three and I was five-foot-ten, I wound up and threw a leaping punch at his face. Someone broke up the fight, but we agreed to meet after school on the lawn of the Lutheran Church across the street. I swear the whole school turned out for this event. Mohammed wanted the rules to include only boxing. I quickly realized that would favor him, with his long arms, so I said "No, anything goes!" And so it did, for what seemed like a half hour, before the police car arrived to take us both down to the pokey. We were put in separate cells, but I was released right away to my parents, while Mohammed continued to smart off to the cops and sing jailbird songs. By the way, I think he is now a lawyer back in Sioux City! We became friends after I realized he was right about Judy (just kidding, if you're reading this, Judy).
My best friend in high school by far was Tom Rivers. I admired him so much, and enjoyed his family so much. If I was not home watching Johnny Carson or George Gobel or Perry Como at night with my Dad, I was at Tom's house. Tom became the best long distance runner in the state. He won a scholarship to Drake University in Des Moines.
Fearing we were getting "too serious," Judy's father had forbidden her to continue her relationship with me. Nevertheless, I would wait on summer nights for her phone call, then sneak out of the house to meet her in exciting forbidden rendezvous. Apparently, people were writing the varsity coach cards and letters demanding that he quit. One of the letter-writers made his cursive "n"s similar to the way I wrote my letter "n"s. The coach accused me of being the letter-writer, which was absurdly incorrect. He forbade me from being on the basketball team. i was absolutely crushed.
I decided to get serious about golf. I soon became the second best junior golfer in the state. I qualified for the National Junior Championship in Maryland. I played a practice round of 27 holes on the day before the tournament was to begin. My playing partner was the number one player in Iowa. I beat him that day, only because he was not playing well. The best player in the world at that time was another teenager named Jack Nicklaus. Jack knew my playing partner. He spotted us drinking lemonades in the clubhouse and asked if we wanted to play 18 holes with him, since he had just arrived and did not know the course. My friend said sure, but I begged off. I knew my shaky confidence would be destroyed. A large gallery quickly developed. Jack drove his drive into a sand trap next to the green, some 350 yards away from the tee. (I would have been lucky to hit it 250 yards). Nicklaus proceeded to set a new course record that afternoon, on his first trip around the course! I did well enough in golf to win a scholarship to a school in Texas, which I will write about in a later installment.
One day Mohammed Sadden, a six-foot-three inch athlete who was our best high jumper in track came up to me at the beginning of a school day in front of the principal's office. "Your friend Judy is a slut," proclaimed Mr. Sadden loudly. Even though he was six-foot-three and I was five-foot-ten, I wound up and threw a leaping punch at his face. Someone broke up the fight, but we agreed to meet after school on the lawn of the Lutheran Church across the street. I swear the whole school turned out for this event. Mohammed wanted the rules to include only boxing. I quickly realized that would favor him, with his long arms, so I said "No, anything goes!" And so it did, for what seemed like a half hour, before the police car arrived to take us both down to the pokey. We were put in separate cells, but I was released right away to my parents, while Mohammed continued to smart off to the cops and sing jailbird songs. By the way, I think he is now a lawyer back in Sioux City! We became friends after I realized he was right about Judy (just kidding, if you're reading this, Judy).
My best friend in high school by far was Tom Rivers. I admired him so much, and enjoyed his family so much. If I was not home watching Johnny Carson or George Gobel or Perry Como at night with my Dad, I was at Tom's house. Tom became the best long distance runner in the state. He won a scholarship to Drake University in Des Moines.
A 1940s early childhood
For the first fifteen years of my life, my family lived in a modest two story gray stucco house. I have mentioned a couple of times the alley that ran adjacent to the house. The bedroom I shared with my sister was on the second floor above that alley. On the other side of the alley lived a family whose adult son did not like his mother. When he drank too much alcohol, which seemed to occur daily, he could be heard saying to his mother "Ahhhh, Shaddup!" He would drag out those two words. I would be the chorus, repeating those two words until I cracked up my sister.
My own father would often get similarly frustrated at my mother, although alcohol was never a factor. His nickname for her was "Bump." When "Bump" would become unreasonable or selfish, one could hear my father exclaim, "Goddamn it, Bump, just stop it!" Dad, like my sister and I, found Mom's behavior maddening at times. For example, I loved to read. If it was a sunny day, and I was using a lamp to read, Mom would come over and turn off the light and move my chair across the room to "God's light." This was a vestige of her experience growing up during the Great Depression, I am sure. "Waste not, want not," was a motto she lived by. By the way, to this day, when I see one of my kids reading in poor light, I urge them to turn on a light.
Mom had several sisters. The ones I knew best were Aunts Dorothy, Midge, and Harriet.
Midge was like Mom in never wanting to throw anything away. She lived in Washington D.C., and had an important job as Executive Secretary to the Secretary of the Army. I remember once going out to a restaurant with Midge and her husband Walter. Walter was very smart, but very annoying. He invented many items for the corporation he worked for, proudly wearing his photo badge that evening at dinner. He would never think of demanding to be compensated for his inventions. I did not like the way he treated Aunt Midge. He belittled her. Then, when we arrived at their house, he went straight to the family organ and played love songs throughout the evening! The house was jammed waist high with newspapers, with a narrow passage to traverse the pathways.
Aunt Dorothy also had a prestigious job as Executive Secretary to Nevada's U.S. Senator McCarron. She arranged for me to attend a Senate debate on civil rights between Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Senator William Knowland of California. Midge arranged for me to have a tour of the White House. They were redecorating, and I got to sit in the chair formerly used by President Harry Truman, in the room where things were being stored.
Aunt Harriet? Well, I remember two things. One, after her husband died, she gave me his used hair brush as a Christmas present. Two, I remember her stripping naked in our car to change clothes for wherever it was we were going.
My own father would often get similarly frustrated at my mother, although alcohol was never a factor. His nickname for her was "Bump." When "Bump" would become unreasonable or selfish, one could hear my father exclaim, "Goddamn it, Bump, just stop it!" Dad, like my sister and I, found Mom's behavior maddening at times. For example, I loved to read. If it was a sunny day, and I was using a lamp to read, Mom would come over and turn off the light and move my chair across the room to "God's light." This was a vestige of her experience growing up during the Great Depression, I am sure. "Waste not, want not," was a motto she lived by. By the way, to this day, when I see one of my kids reading in poor light, I urge them to turn on a light.
Mom had several sisters. The ones I knew best were Aunts Dorothy, Midge, and Harriet.
Midge was like Mom in never wanting to throw anything away. She lived in Washington D.C., and had an important job as Executive Secretary to the Secretary of the Army. I remember once going out to a restaurant with Midge and her husband Walter. Walter was very smart, but very annoying. He invented many items for the corporation he worked for, proudly wearing his photo badge that evening at dinner. He would never think of demanding to be compensated for his inventions. I did not like the way he treated Aunt Midge. He belittled her. Then, when we arrived at their house, he went straight to the family organ and played love songs throughout the evening! The house was jammed waist high with newspapers, with a narrow passage to traverse the pathways.
Aunt Dorothy also had a prestigious job as Executive Secretary to Nevada's U.S. Senator McCarron. She arranged for me to attend a Senate debate on civil rights between Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Senator William Knowland of California. Midge arranged for me to have a tour of the White House. They were redecorating, and I got to sit in the chair formerly used by President Harry Truman, in the room where things were being stored.
Aunt Harriet? Well, I remember two things. One, after her husband died, she gave me his used hair brush as a Christmas present. Two, I remember her stripping naked in our car to change clothes for wherever it was we were going.
Take me out to the ball games.
As a young boy, I played outside every day until darkness befell the neighborhood. Were there fewer pedophiles then? I know of no such evidence. The difference is primarily the news media. Today's news media loves to focus on the sinsational. In the 1940s, the news was rosie and upbeat. America was a place where anyone with a dream could make it big.
And, dream I did. If you were looking for me back then, the first place to look would have been one-half block down the alley, shooting hoops behind Gary Asmussen's garage. Actually, it was much more than shooting hoops. I was the offense, defense, play-by-play announcer, and I drew up the brackets for the games that would lead to the championship. Most of the time I was the only player one could physically see, but to hear me (the play-by-play announcer), you'd think there were full teams and a crowd at each game.
I was also captain and founder of the "Northside Sparrows" baseball team. This was back way before Little League Baseball was invented by some parent trying to live vicariously through his son.
If the weather did not permit outside games, (I do not miss Iowa's winters) I wandered over to Tom Graham's house for a game of pool. Tom's dad was a doctor, and thus could afford to purchase a pool table. Mr. Graham was very kind. He would take us to football games in the fall, and to the fountain at Toller Drug Store for milkshakes after the games.
And, dream I did. If you were looking for me back then, the first place to look would have been one-half block down the alley, shooting hoops behind Gary Asmussen's garage. Actually, it was much more than shooting hoops. I was the offense, defense, play-by-play announcer, and I drew up the brackets for the games that would lead to the championship. Most of the time I was the only player one could physically see, but to hear me (the play-by-play announcer), you'd think there were full teams and a crowd at each game.
I was also captain and founder of the "Northside Sparrows" baseball team. This was back way before Little League Baseball was invented by some parent trying to live vicariously through his son.
If the weather did not permit outside games, (I do not miss Iowa's winters) I wandered over to Tom Graham's house for a game of pool. Tom's dad was a doctor, and thus could afford to purchase a pool table. Mr. Graham was very kind. He would take us to football games in the fall, and to the fountain at Toller Drug Store for milkshakes after the games.
"Tell Me a Story"
When I was a boy growing up in Iowa, we did go to church every Sunday, the First Methodist Church in Sioux City. I loved the hymns. This one kinda reminds me of a typical Sunday hymn there.
Dad served as an usher. I did not realize how boring the actual church service was until I went to college in Abilene, Texas and started attending Baptist churches. There will be much more on that in later installments. What made me think about this aspect of my childhood was this post I read today at Julie's Work in Progress blog.
Dad served as an usher. I did not realize how boring the actual church service was until I went to college in Abilene, Texas and started attending Baptist churches. There will be much more on that in later installments. What made me think about this aspect of my childhood was this post I read today at Julie's Work in Progress blog.
Fall photos of my home
Fall is definitely in the air here. It won't be long now until we get our first frost. With that in mind, I took a few pictures this morning.
On the sunny south side of the house, a tomato plant continues to produce delicious tomatoes above the trailing petunias. Farther in the background are the bamboo plants that seem to have no limit to their growth, even though I never water them. That is a peach tree on the right. It bore no fruit this year, because of the long, cold Spring.
The marigolds and petunias and a few cosmos are hanging on along side the garage. Yes, that is a punching bag hanging in the background.
To make sure an unexpected frost doesn't get them, I dug up my impatiens plants, put them in pots, and placed them inside in my bedroom.
In case you didn't know that about me, I like flowers. This planter with petunias and a dracena are on the back deck looking eastward.
On the sunny south side of the house, a tomato plant continues to produce delicious tomatoes above the trailing petunias. Farther in the background are the bamboo plants that seem to have no limit to their growth, even though I never water them. That is a peach tree on the right. It bore no fruit this year, because of the long, cold Spring.
The marigolds and petunias and a few cosmos are hanging on along side the garage. Yes, that is a punching bag hanging in the background.
To make sure an unexpected frost doesn't get them, I dug up my impatiens plants, put them in pots, and placed them inside in my bedroom.
In case you didn't know that about me, I like flowers. This planter with petunias and a dracena are on the back deck looking eastward.
Questions of God: Experiences lead to questions
There are those in the “Christian” world that would say that a search for God is one of intellectual pursuit. that the quest to know God is a logical, progressive search for facts and truth with a capital “T.” They site proofs of the resurrection, the fine tuning of the universe, inerrancy of the Bible, and lots of very useful philosophical and theological arguments for the existence of God and the importance of a relationship with God. These things are all very good and useful, but I think they miss an important point for most people on a quest for a more meaningful spiritual life, that this search is usually one of the heart. It is more of a calling from beyond, a haunting, a beckoning to a place we’ve never been, even a place of madness, and loss of control, a feeling that we are walking off of our map to a place we’re not even sure exists.
I was coming home from school, carrying my gear in from the car. I was just in that place mentally where I was doing something so totally routine that I was able to let my mind wander while my body did the necessary things that need to be done. And then it happened, I looked down at my hand as it reached to unlock the door of the house, and for the first time ever I saw my hand, and by extension my whole body, as a physical thing that had a spiritual dimension, a soul. At that moment I realized I was a spiritual being inside of a physical thing. It was simply a moment of heart insight, a realization. And by the time I had reached the end of the hallway and turned to open the door of my room, I just “knew” there was a God.
Then the questions came. What am I? What does it mean to be alive? Why am I here? Why am I what I am, and not something else? How did I get here? Is there a purpose for my being here? Is this life I have just an accident?
I began to read on the subject of the soul. I read psychology, philosophy, and anything else I could get my hands on at the time. But I had a problem. My heart had already figured out what my mind could not comprehend. I had gone as far as I could logically. Yes, there is a God. Yes, it’s a He and not an It. And so, at the end of the hallway, I asked my first question to God: Are you there?
(from JavaJazzJesus)
(from JavaJazzJesus)
Truman, Korea, and Eisenhower
I think I zipped through my account of my pre-teen years a little too fast in yesterday's Remembering. Let's talk a little more about those pre-teen years today, before getting to the teen angst.
When I was growing up, the news media consisted of radio and print. The people of our nation had just fought and won a World War. News coverage was ultra-patriotic; exactly the opposite of what we get nowadays. My parents did not much like Harry Truman. They did not like the liberal Ronald Reagan, either. Check out this video of Reagan campaigning for Truman and Hubert Humphrey in 1948! It just goes to prove once again that if you are not a liberal when you are a young adult, you have no heart; if you are not a conservative when you are fifty, you have no brains! Reagan showed himself to be a fearless fighter for the people he loved: the American people.
After having endured two World Wars, my parents and many other Americans did not want to get bogged down in another World War. They sided with the insubordinate General MacArthur. They did not believe in just containing Communism. They wanted victory. They liked Ike. I remember going to see and hear Ike and Tricky Dick Nixon at the Sioux City auditorium.
Television was a new thing then. Howdy Doody was the most popular show. Here was Ike's campaign commercial:
Simple as that, folks! Nothing complicated: Ike was the guy who engineered victory over Germany and Japan. He'll do the same in Korea. Let's quit pussy-footing around!
When I was growing up, the news media consisted of radio and print. The people of our nation had just fought and won a World War. News coverage was ultra-patriotic; exactly the opposite of what we get nowadays. My parents did not much like Harry Truman. They did not like the liberal Ronald Reagan, either. Check out this video of Reagan campaigning for Truman and Hubert Humphrey in 1948! It just goes to prove once again that if you are not a liberal when you are a young adult, you have no heart; if you are not a conservative when you are fifty, you have no brains! Reagan showed himself to be a fearless fighter for the people he loved: the American people.
After having endured two World Wars, my parents and many other Americans did not want to get bogged down in another World War. They sided with the insubordinate General MacArthur. They did not believe in just containing Communism. They wanted victory. They liked Ike. I remember going to see and hear Ike and Tricky Dick Nixon at the Sioux City auditorium.
Television was a new thing then. Howdy Doody was the most popular show. Here was Ike's campaign commercial:
Simple as that, folks! Nothing complicated: Ike was the guy who engineered victory over Germany and Japan. He'll do the same in Korea. Let's quit pussy-footing around!
We're Democrats!
I saw an interesting article recently that California Democrats were going to try and "bring out the vote" by pushing for the legalization of marijuana. I saw today that Colorado was going to put this issue on the ballot for 2012. This got me to thinking about bumper stickers and Tshirts that pretty much put the current Democratic party platform in a succinct form. It goes like this:
We're Democrats! We'll make you feel so good
You won't know how bad it really is!
We're Democrats! We'll make you feel so good
You won't know how bad it really is!
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Remembering
It all started on August 13, 1940. I was born in Sioux City, Iowa, a city of 80,000 people on the cliffs above the Missouri River on the west side of the state. By the way, Gene Autry was one of the heroes I worshiped as a boy growing up in Sioux City. The others were Tom Mix, The Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, and, of course, Roy Rogers. Roy and his horse, Trigger, actually came to the Orpheum Theater, and I got to shake hands with Roy and pet Trigger, or, was it the other way around...I can't remember.
Our family consisted of my sister Ruth, 6 years older than I, and Mom and Dad. Mom was a stay-at-home Mom, while Dad was at the time of my birth trying to learn how to be the manager of a local office of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. He worked long hours at that task, and was often not home until late at night in those early years. It was stressing him to the max. A few years later he gave up trying to manage people, and became a very successful life insurance salesman, working mainly with rural Iowa clients, who bought life insurance from him, because they realized he sincerely cared about them and their families. He was 37 when he became the father of me, his only son. I believe he was five years older than Mom.
Dad's mom was "Grandma Alice." She lived alone in Goldfield, Iowa, near the center of the state. Alice had at least one sister, my Aunt Nell, living in that same town. The sisters lived well into their eighties. I remember Grandma Alice as a sweet, smiling person. We got together with them several times a year, along with an assortment of my aunts and uncles and their kids. My Aunt Nell used to tell me there was a birdie in the house. She would whistle like a bird, then ask me to find the bird. I would look everywhere, while all the adults laughed, thinking this stupid kid had been bamboozled by the clever Aunt Nell.
I never knew Grandma Alice's husband. When I was a teen, Mom explained to me that he had committed suicide by shooting himself. Dad was the one to find him in a river bed, when Dad was a teen. Mom made me promise not to ever talk about this with Dad, but she did want me to understand that this event was the reason Dad was often sad. Alice raised three boys and two girls.
I did know both of Mom's parents. "Grandma Davis" was what I called Mom's mother. We never visited her house, but she often visited ours. I don't even know what town she lived in, although I think it was Davenport, Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi River on the east side of the state. She was of German heritage, and had a tougher exterior than Grandma Alice. She had raised five daughters during the depression, while her husband, Fred, roamed the countryside looking for card games. He did show up at Lake Okoboji whenever our family went there for a few days of fun in the summertime. I guess Okoboji was just about the "coolest" place in Iowa, a pretty lake with an amusement park.
My parents neither drank nor smoked. Dad had a sister, Bess, who lived in Seattle. One summer we visited Bess out there. There was a regatta on the Puget Sound. Bess had a doctor friend who owned a yacht, and invited us all out on his boat with other friends during the regatta. Dad nudged me and told me to watch him put one over on all the drinkers on the boat. I sat next to him, while he was served drink after drink, pretending to drink the alcohol, but actually pouring it into the Puget Sound when no one but I was looking. He had more fun that day than any of the people who were using alcohol to have fun, a lesson not lost on his son.
Do you notice that I am writing more about my Dad than my Mom? That is because he was the one I felt closer to. He was the one who put up a basketball hoop in our tiny basement, and encouraged me, a third-grader, to dream of one day playing for the University of Iowa, where he had been a track star. He could beat the guy over the first two hurdles who won the Olympic Gold medal (the guy was portrayed in the movie Chariots of Fire). Unfortunately, sadness again entered Dad's life when someone ratted on him, and he lost his amateur status and eligibility to compete in track. You see, to help his mother feed her large family, Dad played semi-pro baseball in the summers.
I experienced Dad's speed first-hand, when I, a sixth-grader, was walking with a friend through the alley next to our house. Dad reminded me that I had an unfinished chore, and I stupidly showed off for my friend by giving Dad the middle finger. He chased me one block down the alley, a half-block down the hill, and one-half block around the corner to a parked car. He would have caught me much sooner, but he had stopped to look for just the right piece of wood for my well-earned consequence. We ran around and around the parked car until justice reached my rear end. I never again disrespected him.
Being a fast runner was the most important thing in the world to me, as I entered kindergarten at Hunt Elementary School. Only Joanie Burroughs could beat me in a race. I loved my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Green, whose son played for the Iowa Hawkeyes basketball team. By third grade, I was already a basketball fanatic.
By fifth grade, in Miss Zerbe's class, I had added baseball to my obsessions. That year I had a traumatic experience while attending a "softball" game. I put softball in quotes, because that dang thing was not very soft, when I was innocently walking back to my seat with a freshly purchased bag of popcorn, and the center fielder's throw to the plate was wildly errant enough to bean me on my noggin! I suffered "dizzy spells" for some time after that and missed a lot of school that year. I was home listening on the radio when Bobby Thomson hit "The Shot Heard 'Round the World." The Giants were my favorite team, and Leo Durocher my favorite manager. Once when Dad had a sales convention in Chicago, Leo Durocher was on the same elevator with me and Dad. Durocher graciously took me around the hotel lobby asking players to give me their autographs, before they left on the team bus for their game with the Cubs!
Another kind of obsession had hit me in the fourth grade, when I found myself becoming attracted to members of the opposite sex. That Spring I left May baskets at the front doors of both Mary Knoll and Judy Hamilton. If the girls could catch you, you had to let them kiss you. Somehow I lost my vaunted reputation for speed on that wonderful day.
In sixth grade cocky Bob met his match: Miss Bingamon. Miss Bingamon put up with no crap. If us guys were fooling around in the boys bathroom, that was no barrier to Miss Bingamon. She would come right on in and bang whomever she adjudged guilty against the bathroom wall. Thus, her well-earned nickname: Miss Bingbang! I was afraid of her, and that fear manifested itself most embarrassingly one day when I was giving a book report before the class. Yes, I peed my pants.
Pants also figured large in my seventh grade, which was the first year in junior high school. Because I had a reputation for being cocky, especially when I had a basketball in my hand, some guys from the "other side of town" bragged that they were going to "pants" me after school. "Pantsing" was when guys would take off your pants and hang them on the flag pole at school, or so I was told. My house was a long way from North Junior High, and I took a different route home every afternoon after school, until the threats died down and I became good friends with some very tough hombres on the basketball team.
Eighth grade was notable for my first love affair. I fell head over heals in love with Judy Kyle, who had long legs that she loved to cross and uncross whenever my eyes were turned in her direction. In ninth grade Judy became the lifeguard at the pool at the Boat Club, where my parents joined in order for my mother to play golf and my father to meet clients, while flailing away at the little white ball. I took up the game, and got pretty good at it.
In tenth grade we made the big transition to Central High School, "The Castle on the Hill." I'll pick up there in my next installment.
Our family consisted of my sister Ruth, 6 years older than I, and Mom and Dad. Mom was a stay-at-home Mom, while Dad was at the time of my birth trying to learn how to be the manager of a local office of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. He worked long hours at that task, and was often not home until late at night in those early years. It was stressing him to the max. A few years later he gave up trying to manage people, and became a very successful life insurance salesman, working mainly with rural Iowa clients, who bought life insurance from him, because they realized he sincerely cared about them and their families. He was 37 when he became the father of me, his only son. I believe he was five years older than Mom.
Dad's mom was "Grandma Alice." She lived alone in Goldfield, Iowa, near the center of the state. Alice had at least one sister, my Aunt Nell, living in that same town. The sisters lived well into their eighties. I remember Grandma Alice as a sweet, smiling person. We got together with them several times a year, along with an assortment of my aunts and uncles and their kids. My Aunt Nell used to tell me there was a birdie in the house. She would whistle like a bird, then ask me to find the bird. I would look everywhere, while all the adults laughed, thinking this stupid kid had been bamboozled by the clever Aunt Nell.
I never knew Grandma Alice's husband. When I was a teen, Mom explained to me that he had committed suicide by shooting himself. Dad was the one to find him in a river bed, when Dad was a teen. Mom made me promise not to ever talk about this with Dad, but she did want me to understand that this event was the reason Dad was often sad. Alice raised three boys and two girls.
I did know both of Mom's parents. "Grandma Davis" was what I called Mom's mother. We never visited her house, but she often visited ours. I don't even know what town she lived in, although I think it was Davenport, Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi River on the east side of the state. She was of German heritage, and had a tougher exterior than Grandma Alice. She had raised five daughters during the depression, while her husband, Fred, roamed the countryside looking for card games. He did show up at Lake Okoboji whenever our family went there for a few days of fun in the summertime. I guess Okoboji was just about the "coolest" place in Iowa, a pretty lake with an amusement park.
My parents neither drank nor smoked. Dad had a sister, Bess, who lived in Seattle. One summer we visited Bess out there. There was a regatta on the Puget Sound. Bess had a doctor friend who owned a yacht, and invited us all out on his boat with other friends during the regatta. Dad nudged me and told me to watch him put one over on all the drinkers on the boat. I sat next to him, while he was served drink after drink, pretending to drink the alcohol, but actually pouring it into the Puget Sound when no one but I was looking. He had more fun that day than any of the people who were using alcohol to have fun, a lesson not lost on his son.
Do you notice that I am writing more about my Dad than my Mom? That is because he was the one I felt closer to. He was the one who put up a basketball hoop in our tiny basement, and encouraged me, a third-grader, to dream of one day playing for the University of Iowa, where he had been a track star. He could beat the guy over the first two hurdles who won the Olympic Gold medal (the guy was portrayed in the movie Chariots of Fire). Unfortunately, sadness again entered Dad's life when someone ratted on him, and he lost his amateur status and eligibility to compete in track. You see, to help his mother feed her large family, Dad played semi-pro baseball in the summers.
I experienced Dad's speed first-hand, when I, a sixth-grader, was walking with a friend through the alley next to our house. Dad reminded me that I had an unfinished chore, and I stupidly showed off for my friend by giving Dad the middle finger. He chased me one block down the alley, a half-block down the hill, and one-half block around the corner to a parked car. He would have caught me much sooner, but he had stopped to look for just the right piece of wood for my well-earned consequence. We ran around and around the parked car until justice reached my rear end. I never again disrespected him.
Being a fast runner was the most important thing in the world to me, as I entered kindergarten at Hunt Elementary School. Only Joanie Burroughs could beat me in a race. I loved my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Green, whose son played for the Iowa Hawkeyes basketball team. By third grade, I was already a basketball fanatic.
By fifth grade, in Miss Zerbe's class, I had added baseball to my obsessions. That year I had a traumatic experience while attending a "softball" game. I put softball in quotes, because that dang thing was not very soft, when I was innocently walking back to my seat with a freshly purchased bag of popcorn, and the center fielder's throw to the plate was wildly errant enough to bean me on my noggin! I suffered "dizzy spells" for some time after that and missed a lot of school that year. I was home listening on the radio when Bobby Thomson hit "The Shot Heard 'Round the World." The Giants were my favorite team, and Leo Durocher my favorite manager. Once when Dad had a sales convention in Chicago, Leo Durocher was on the same elevator with me and Dad. Durocher graciously took me around the hotel lobby asking players to give me their autographs, before they left on the team bus for their game with the Cubs!
Another kind of obsession had hit me in the fourth grade, when I found myself becoming attracted to members of the opposite sex. That Spring I left May baskets at the front doors of both Mary Knoll and Judy Hamilton. If the girls could catch you, you had to let them kiss you. Somehow I lost my vaunted reputation for speed on that wonderful day.
In sixth grade cocky Bob met his match: Miss Bingamon. Miss Bingamon put up with no crap. If us guys were fooling around in the boys bathroom, that was no barrier to Miss Bingamon. She would come right on in and bang whomever she adjudged guilty against the bathroom wall. Thus, her well-earned nickname: Miss Bingbang! I was afraid of her, and that fear manifested itself most embarrassingly one day when I was giving a book report before the class. Yes, I peed my pants.
Pants also figured large in my seventh grade, which was the first year in junior high school. Because I had a reputation for being cocky, especially when I had a basketball in my hand, some guys from the "other side of town" bragged that they were going to "pants" me after school. "Pantsing" was when guys would take off your pants and hang them on the flag pole at school, or so I was told. My house was a long way from North Junior High, and I took a different route home every afternoon after school, until the threats died down and I became good friends with some very tough hombres on the basketball team.
Eighth grade was notable for my first love affair. I fell head over heals in love with Judy Kyle, who had long legs that she loved to cross and uncross whenever my eyes were turned in her direction. In ninth grade Judy became the lifeguard at the pool at the Boat Club, where my parents joined in order for my mother to play golf and my father to meet clients, while flailing away at the little white ball. I took up the game, and got pretty good at it.
In tenth grade we made the big transition to Central High School, "The Castle on the Hill." I'll pick up there in my next installment.
Green Smiley Faces
Today Sara proudly showed me the green smiley faces she has earned at school. Colors change if behavior isn't good. Green means you get "beach bucks" to use when shopping at school (monopoly money). She has earned nothing but green all school year so far.
Red means you sit out ten minutes and get zero beach bucks. You get it if you are "snotty, mean, or pull someone's hair." Yellow isn't as bad as red, because you do not have to sit out for ten minutes. Interrupting teacher aides can get you a yellow smiley face. The worst is black. You don't even get a smiley face if your color is black. No one has yet gotten a black, which means "you're out of here!"
Sara told me, "I'm never going to be a bad kid at school, because if I am, they'll kick me out, then you'll home school me and make me do 25 lessons a day." She knows we would not "kick her out" of our home, so her incentive to "be a good kid" at home is not as strong. Colleen and I will have to put our heads together to figure out how to rectify that situation.
By the way, why do we use the color black to denote something bad?
Red means you sit out ten minutes and get zero beach bucks. You get it if you are "snotty, mean, or pull someone's hair." Yellow isn't as bad as red, because you do not have to sit out for ten minutes. Interrupting teacher aides can get you a yellow smiley face. The worst is black. You don't even get a smiley face if your color is black. No one has yet gotten a black, which means "you're out of here!"
Sara told me, "I'm never going to be a bad kid at school, because if I am, they'll kick me out, then you'll home school me and make me do 25 lessons a day." She knows we would not "kick her out" of our home, so her incentive to "be a good kid" at home is not as strong. Colleen and I will have to put our heads together to figure out how to rectify that situation.
By the way, why do we use the color black to denote something bad?
Questions of God: About questions
Questions gnaw at us. They prod and poke us. They inspire our imaginations. They cause us to relive painful things from the past. Sometimes they come as friends, agents of change and discovery. Above all, questions are important, the real ones anyway. I’m not talking about “how-are-you-fine.” I’m talking about “why am I here on this planet?” “What am I here to do, if anything?”
Real questions rarely get asked out loud these days, because everybody is supposed to just already know their answers. Real questions are big. Real questions upset the apple cart and make people uncomfortable.
Why did thirteen people, mostly just kids, get gunned down at Columbine High School that April day?
How can a guy like Jim Jones lead so many people to take their own lives?
Does what I do on a daily basis make a difference to anyone at all other than me?
Will we ever be free of the images of hate and fear we hold on to from past events, like the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 or hurricane Katrina?
Is it possible for people to put aside their prejudices and love one another?
Is there a purpose to our lives or are all of these things we occupy ourselves with just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?
I once read a book that said the answer to life, the universe and everything is forty-two. But, the problem was that the question was so incredibly complex that, in order for the great computer made to calculate the problem to come up with an answer, it had to erase the original question. And so it goes. I think they call that an infinite regress.
The first question in the Bible, remember it? It is very famous, unforgettable, actually.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The New Testament identifies the serpent as the Devil and Satan, or Adversary.
And all he really did was make Eve, and Adam, look to their own interpretation of what God had said, and make them wonder, “What was it He said again?” And since then, the Devil has not changed his strategy one bit. So he doesn’t show up in your bedroom in a red suit wielding a pitchfork saying, “Hey there, I’m the Devil, let’s go do some bad stuff!” He just comes to you and says, “Did God really say?…” And the questions come.
(from JavaJazzJesus)
(from JavaJazzJesus)
Monday, October 4, 2010
Over 500 posts, and still going!
We have hit the over 500 mark for posts on the Triangle! Congratulations to us! I'm sure we'll get to the quality thing some time, but right now it feels good to have the quantity. Yea!
Meet the Barbarians - Saint Francis of Assisi
Feastday: October 4
Founder of the Franciscan Order, born at Assisi in Umbria, in 1181.
In 1182, Pietro Bernardone returned from a trip to France to find out his wife had given birth to a son. Far from being excited or apologetic because he'd been gone, Pietro was furious because she'd had his new son baptized Giovanni after John the Baptist. The last thing Pietro wanted in his son was a man of God -- he wanted a man of business, a cloth merchant like he was, and he especially wanted a son who would reflect his infatuation with France. So he renamed his son Francesco -- which is the equivalent of calling him Frenchman.
Francis enjoyed a very rich easy life growing up because of his father's wealth and the permissiveness of the times. From the beginning everyone -- and I mean everyone -- loved Francis. He was constantly happy, charming, and a born leader. If he was picky, people excused him. If he was ill, people took care of him. If he was so much of a dreamer he did poorly in school, no one minded. In many ways he was too easy to like for his own good. No one tried to control him or teach him.
As he grew up, Francis became the leader of a crowd of young people who spent their nights in wild parties. Thomas of Celano, his biographer who knew him well, said, "In other respects an exquisite youth, he attracted to himself a whole retinue of young people addicted to evil and accustomed to vice." Francis himself said, "I lived in sin" during that time.
Francis fulfilled every hope of Pietro's -- even falling in love with France. He loved the songs of France, the romance of France, and especially the free adventurous troubadours of France who wandered through Europe. And despite his dreaming, Francis was also good at business. But Francis wanted more..more than wealth. But not holiness! Francis wanted to be a noble, a knight. Battle was the best place to win the glory and prestige he longed for. He got his first chance when Assisi declared war on their longtime enemy, the nearby town of Perugia.
Most of the troops from Assisi were butchered in the fight. Only those wealthy enough to expect to be ransomed were taken prisoner. At last Francis was among the nobility like he always wanted to be...but chained in a harsh, dark dungeon. All accounts say that he never lost his happy manner in that horrible place. Finally, after a year in the dungeon, he was ransomed. Strangely, the experience didn't seem to change him. He gave himself to partying with as much joy and abandon as he had before the battle.
The experience didn't change what he wanted from life either: Glory. Finally a call for knights for the Fourth Crusade gave him a chance for his dream. But before he left Francis had to have a suit of armor and a horse -- no problem for the son of a wealthy father. And not just any suit of armor would do but one decorated with gold with a magnificent cloak. Any relief we feel in hearing that Francis gave the cloak to a poor knight will be destroyed by the boasts that Francis left behind that he would return a prince.
But Francis never got farther than one day's ride from Assisi. There he had a dream in which God told him he had it all wrong and told him to return home. And return home he did. What must it have been like to return without ever making it to battle -- the boy who wanted nothing more than to be liked was humiliated, laughed at, called a coward by the village and raged at by his father for the money wasted on armor.
Francis' conversion did not happen over night. God had waited for him for twenty-five years and now it was Francis' turn to wait. Francis started to spend more time in prayer. He went off to a cave and wept for his sins. Sometimes God's grace overwhelmed him with joy. But life couldn't just stop for God. There was a business to run, customers to wait on.
One day while riding through the countryside, Francis, the man who loved beauty, who was so picky about food, who hated deformity, came face to face with a leper. Repelled by the appearance and the smell of the leper, Francis nevertheless jumped down from his horse and kissed the hand of the leper. When his kiss of peace was returned, Francis was filled with joy. As he rode off, he turned around for a last wave, and saw that the leper had disappeared. He always looked upon it as a test from God...that he had passed.
His search for conversion led him to the ancient church at San Damiano. While he was praying there, he heard Christ on the crucifix speak to him, "Francis, repair my church." Francis assumed this meant church with a small c -- the crumbling building he was in. Acting again in his impetuous way, he took fabric from his father's shop and sold it to get money to repair the church. His father saw this as an act of theft -- and put together with Francis' cowardice, waste of money, and his growing disinterest in money made Francis seem more like a madman than his son. Pietro dragged Francis before the bishop and in front of the whole town demanded that Francis return the money and renounce all rights as his heir.
The bishop was very kind to Francis; he told him to return the money and said God would provide. That was all Francis needed to hear. He not only gave back the money but stripped off all his clothes -- the clothes his father had given him -- until he was wearing only a hair shirt. In front of the crowd that had gathered he said, "Pietro Bernardone is no longer my father. From now on I can say with complete freedom, 'Our Father who art in heaven.'" Wearing nothing but castoff rags, he went off into the freezing woods -- singing. And when robbers beat him later and took his clothes, he climbed out of the ditch and went off singing again. From then on Francis had nothing...and everything.
Francis went back to what he considered God's call. He begged for stones and rebuilt the San Damiano church with his own hands, not realizing that it was the Church with a capital C that God wanted repaired. Scandal and avarice were working on the Church from the inside while outside heresies flourished by appealing to those longing for something different or adventurous.
Soon Francis started to preach. (He was never a priest, though he was later ordained a deacon under his protest.) Francis was not a reformer; he preached about returning to God and obedience to the Church. Francis must have known about the decay in the Church, but he always showed the Church and its people his utmost respect. When someone told him of a priest living openly with a woman and asked him if that meant the Mass was polluted, Francis went to the priest, knelt before him, and kissed his hands -- because those hands had held God.
Slowly companions came to Francis, people who wanted to follow his life of sleeping in the open, begging for garbage to eat...and loving God. With companions, Francis knew he now had to have some kind of direction to this life so he opened the Bible in three places. He read the command to the rich young man to sell all his good and give to the poor, the order to the apostles to take nothing on their journey, and the demand to take up the cross daily. "Here is our rule," Francis said -- as simple, and as seemingly impossible, as that. He was going to do what no one thought possible any more -- live by the Gospel. Francis took these commands so literally that he made one brother run after the thief who stole his hood and offer him his robe!
Francis never wanted to found a religious order -- this former knight thought that sounded too military. He thought of what he was doing as expressing God's brotherhood. His companions came from all walks of life, from fields and towns, nobility and common people, universities, the Church, and the merchant class. Francis practiced true equality by showing honor, respect, and love to every person whether they were beggar or pope.
Francis' brotherhood included all of God's creation. Much has been written about Francis' love of nature but his relationship was deeper than that. We call someone a lover of nature if they spend their free time in the woods or admire its beauty. But Francis really felt that nature, all God's creations, were part of his brotherhood. The sparrow was as much his brother as the pope.
In one famous story, Francis preached to hundreds of birds about being thankful to God for their wonderful clothes, for their independence, and for God's care. The story tells us the birds stood still as he walked among him, only flying off when he said they could leave.
Another famous story involves a wolf that had been eating human beings. Francis intervened when the town wanted to kill the wolf and talked the wolf into never killing again. The wolf became a pet of the townspeople who made sure that he always had plenty to eat.
Following the Gospel literally, Francis and his companions went out to preach two by two. At first, listeners were understandably hostile to these men in rags trying to talk about God's love. People even ran from them for fear they'd catch this strange madness! And they were right. Because soon these same people noticed that these barefoot beggars wearing sacks seemed filled with constant joy. They celebrated life. And people had to ask themselves: Could one own nothing and be happy? Soon those who had met them with mud and rocks, greeted them with bells and smiles.
Francis did not try to abolish poverty, he tried to make it holy. When his friars met someone poorer than they, they would eagerly rip off the sleeve of their habit to give to the person. They worked for all necessities and only begged if they had to. But Francis would not let them accept any money. He told them to treat coins as if they were pebbles in the road. When the bishop showed horror at the friars' hard life, Francis said, "If we had any possessions we should need weapons and laws to defend them." Possessing something was the death of love for Francis. Also, Francis reasoned, what could you do to a man who owns nothing? You can't starve a fasting man, you can't steal from someone who has no money, you can't ruin someone who hates prestige. They were truly free.
Francis was a man of action. His simplicity of life extended to ideas and deeds. If there was a simple way, no matter how impossible it seemed, Francis would take it. So when Francis wanted approval for his brotherhood, he went straight to Rome to see Pope Innocent III. You can imagine what the pope thought when this beggar approached him! As a matter of fact he threw Francis out. But when he had a dream that this tiny man in rags held up the tilting Lateran basilica, he quickly called Francis back and gave him permission to preach.
Sometimes this direct approach led to mistakes that he corrected with the same spontaneity that he made them. Once he ordered a brother who hesitated to speak because he stuttered to go preach half-naked. When Francis realized how he had hurt someone he loved he ran to town, stopped the brother, took off his own clothes, and preached instead.
Francis acted quickly because he acted from the heart; he didn't have time to put on a role. Once he was so sick and exhausted, his companions borrowed a mule for him to ride. When the man who owned the mule recognized Francis he said, "Try to be as virtuous as everyone thinks you are because many have a lot of confidence in you." Francis dropped off the mule and knelt before the man to thank him for his advice.
Another example of his directness came when he decided to go to Syria to convert the Moslems while the Fifth Crusade was being fought. In the middle of a battle, Francis decided to do the simplest thing and go straight to the sultan to make peace. When he and his companion were captured, the real miracle was that they weren't killed. Instead Francis was taken to the sultan who was charmed by Francis and his preaching. He told Francis, "I would convert to your religion which is a beautiful one -- but both of us would be murdered."
Francis did find persecution and martyrdom of a kind -- not among the Moslems, but among his own brothers. When he returned to Italy, he came back to a brotherhood that had grown to 5000 in ten years. Pressure came from outside to control this great movement, to make them conform to the standards of others. His dream of radical poverty was too harsh, people said. Francis responded, "Lord, didn't I tell you they wouldn't trust you?"
He finally gave up authority in his order -- but he probably wasn't too upset about it. Now he was just another brother, like he'd always wanted.
Francis' final years were filled with suffering as well as humiliation. Praying to share in Christ's passion he had a vision received the stigmata, the marks of the nails and the lance wound that Christ suffered, in his own body.
Years of poverty and wandering had made Francis ill. When he began to go blind, the pope ordered that his eyes be operated on. This meant cauterizing his face with a hot iron. Francis spoke to "Brother Fire": "Brother Fire, the Most High has made you strong and beautiful and useful. Be courteous to me now in this hour, for I have always loved you, and temper your heat so that I can endure it." And Francis reported that Brother Fire had been so kind that he felt nothing at all.
How did Francis respond to blindness and suffering? That was when he wrote his beautiful Canticle of the Sun that expresses his brotherhood with creation in praising God.
Francis never recovered from this illness. He died on October 4, 1226 at the age of 45. Francis is considered the founder of all Franciscan orders and the patron saint of ecologists and merchants.
Copyright 1996-2000 by Terry Matz. All Rights Reserved.
The way things were; the way things are.
Picture found at Infidel Bloggers Alliance
Let this photo be a fair warning. I am thinking about writing about my life. I need to examine my past in order to figure out why my present is bringing me such sadness. I'll probably start writing tomorrow.
Franklin Graham: "Islam wicked and evil"
Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, called Islam “wicked” and “evil” on Sunday during a televised town hall-style discussion about American’s feelings about the religion.
“They want to build as many mosques and cultural centers as they possibly can so they can convert as many Americans as they can to Islam,” Graham said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Graham went on to profess his love for “the Muslim people,” but said he has “great difficulty with the religion.”
“Especially with Sharia law and what it does for women – toward women, toward non-believers, the violence that is given in – under Sharia law,” Graham said.
Graham also said the Islamic center near ground zero should not be built, although he said Muslims “absolutely have the right to build a mosque or cultural center in this country.”
Graham made his remarks as part of a discussion led by Christine Amanpour that included Islamic activist Daisy Khan, former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, two 9/11 families, and various figures with a range of views on Islam and its role in the United States.
From Politico
“They want to build as many mosques and cultural centers as they possibly can so they can convert as many Americans as they can to Islam,” Graham said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Graham went on to profess his love for “the Muslim people,” but said he has “great difficulty with the religion.”
“Especially with Sharia law and what it does for women – toward women, toward non-believers, the violence that is given in – under Sharia law,” Graham said.
Graham also said the Islamic center near ground zero should not be built, although he said Muslims “absolutely have the right to build a mosque or cultural center in this country.”
Graham made his remarks as part of a discussion led by Christine Amanpour that included Islamic activist Daisy Khan, former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, two 9/11 families, and various figures with a range of views on Islam and its role in the United States.
From Politico
Questions of God: When God asks a question
I was leading a small group in worship, and in the middle of all that goes on in the fray of this, I began to be flooded with several scriptures that were all times when God spoke in the form of a question:
Isaiah 6:8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
Isaiah. 46:5 “To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal
And compare Me, that we should be alike?
Matthew 16:13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
Genesis 3:9 Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, “Where areyou?”
John 14:9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Isaiah 45:9-10 “Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands’? Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What have you begotten?’ or to his mother, ‘What have you brought to birth?’
Luke 18:8 …when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?
Ezekiel 18:25 “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not fair.’ Hear now, O house of Israel, is it not My way which is fair, and your ways which are not fair?
My mind was flooded with all of these questions, and even more, times when God asked questions of men, of us. I have often said that it is a sad time when a person has no questions in their heart, no things they are seeking to know at a greater depth. To have questions is to be alive to new possibilities, to be in a state of growth in grace. It is a dangerous space to be in where all questions are quelled, a place of spiritual internment, a concentration camp of the soul. Which reminds me…
One day I was sitting down to a wonderful dinner of ham and cheese hot pockets and a Dr. Pepper, when I decided to turn on the tube and catch an episode of the Simpsons. Being a fan, I always like to pay attention to the opening montage, because there is always something different in each episode. So, in this particular episode, you can see inside the window of the classroom where Bart is being kept after school in detention, and on the chalkboard he is writing “I have neither been there nor done that,” over and over again as punishment. As soon as I saw that phrase, “I have neither been there nor done that,” I felt God give me one of those jolts of insight He is famous for. I heard Him say “It is a dangerous state of mind to be in to have the idea that you have somehow arrived and have “been there and done that.” People with this heart attitude have not arrived, they have missed the train altogether. Always be open to more experience in Me, more wisdom, more strength, more love, more grace, more power, more fun. There is always more in Me. You will never be able to say, “been there, done that.” There is always more in Me.
Many feel a great weight upon them of questions they feel must be answered before they can trust God, or move to the next level in their own lives. Somewhere in their heart is a demand for an answer, a demand for accountability, a desire to see justice, to understand the “why” of life, existence, and pain. These questions are real, they are filled with deep existential angst, and they drive many of us to a search for meaning beyond the day to day search for the fulfillment of our mere immediate needs. The search is a real one, filled with questions.
Could it be that God has questions of us? Could it be that the real great question isn’t “Do you believe in God? ” but rather, does God believe in you?
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Hitchens on Long -
God's Bigmouths
Men like Bishop Eddie Long are fouling the legacy of the civil rights movement.
Posted Monday, Sept. 27, 2010, at 11:10 AM ET
Passing through Union Station in Washington, D.C., last week, I made my usual nod to the statue of A. Phillip Randolph. You can miss it if you are not looking for it, and it has been allowed to suffer defacement. (The sculpted pair of reading glasses held in the great man's hand was snapped off some years ago and was never replaced.) Randolph built a powerful trade union for black railroad workers and proposed the first march on Washington when Franklin Roosevelt was president. His role in the later civil rights movement was germinal and dynamic. But you never hear his name anymore, and it is not taught to schoolchildren. Nor is the name of Bayard Rustin, a charismatic black intellectual and pioneer of gay rights, who organized the March on Washington in 1963. Along with many other secular democratic heroes, Randolph and Rustin have been airbrushed from history. The easiest way to gain instant acceptance as a black "leader" these days is to shove the word Reverend in front of your name. One of his alleged partners in depravity may have been on the borderline of the age of consent, but otherwise I can't make myself care about whether the self-anointed Bish was rogering his flock. What concerns me isn't even the laughable obviousness of his cupidity: the jewels and gold chains and limos and bodyguards. This is all a familiar part of the tawdry business of "Churchianity" now finding loopholes for the rich and venal at a well-upholstered religious establishment somewhere near you. No, what offends me is that Long was able to getfour presidents of the United States to attend his opulent circus for the funeral of Coretta Scott King in 2006. What a steep and awful decline from the mule cart that carried her husband's coffin in 1968. And the decline can be measured out in dog collars, from the Rev. Jesse Jackson all the way down to the Rev. Al Sharpton and the venomous Rev. Jeremiah Wright.Or, if you are really greedy and ambitious, the word Bishop. Bishop Eddie Long of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia preaches that Bayard Rustin was a vile sinner who suffered from the curable "disease" of homosexuality. I have a rule of thumb for such clerics and have never known it to fail: Set your watch and sit back, and pretty soon they will be found sprawling lustily on the floor of the men's room. It may be a bit early to claim the scalp of Eddie Long for this collection, but I doubt I shall have to withdraw. Here, after all, is what his friend the Rev. Timothy McDonald III, of the First Iconium Baptist Church (no less!), has to say: "This is the issue: how can you be against homosexuality and you are allegedly participating in it? That is the epitome of hypocrisy." Cynicism and naivete seem to coexist happily in this statement. The Rev. McDonald does not quite seem to believe the rather unimpressive denials issued by his richly draped brother in Christ. And he talks as if fevered denunciation of homosexuality has never before been an early warning of repressed desire.Advertisement
Many other charlatans have benefited from the clerical racket, and the most notorious of them—Jerry Falwell, Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart—have been white. But there is something especially horrible about the way in which the black pulpit gets a sort of free pass, almost as if white society has assured itself that black Americans just love them some preaching. In this fog of ethnic condescension, it is much easier for mountebanks and demagogues to get away with it.
It is not amazing to me that the Bish is still standing and getting moist applause from the pews after the testimony of his boys brigade of LongFellows. (What the hell is that name, if not a giveaway?) It is amazing that he is still around after the ceaseless exposure of his personal finances. What I should like to know is this: How much of that funding and expenditure has been tax-deductible or written off as "charitable"? In a time of widespread discussion of the spread of the tax burden, why is it never proposed that the vast sums raised by the churches be subject to the scrutiny of the IRS? And still another question: In 2006, Long's church received about $1 million of U.S. taxpayers' money from the "faith-based initiative" of the George W. Bush administration. It was suggested at the time that this might be a quid pro quo for the Bish's militant stand against gay marriage and other homosexual abominations. If so, it would make my follow-up question even more amusing: How did Long and his young friends, "bonded" as they were in strong male "covenants," actually spend our cash?
To those young friends, then, "Thank you all very much for coming out"—as Sen. Larry Craig actually did say at the opening of his own post-men's-room press conference. The day can't be far off when Long follows the traditional script and starts to yowl for prayer and repentance. And this would all be the greatest fun if it didn't also involve the degradation of the King family and the steady erosion of the real memory of the civil rights movement, which is not safe when left in the keeping of God's bigmouths and tree-shakers.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Proactive response to repeated trauma
How does one avoid being psychologically or emotionally traumatized when experiencing frequent traumatizing events? From what I have been reading about trauma, a person experiencing trauma can react in one of three ways: proactive, reactive, or passive. Proactive would seem like the way to go. What would that look like? For the Christian, it would surely mean constant prayer, seeking God's guidance prior to, during, and after taking a proactive action step.
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