Lessons from Rocks, Water, and People: The Holy Land

It was a trip of a lifetime.   I’m glad I did it.  I’m not sure I’ll go back.  After a week and a half of recovering from the red eye flights to Israel and back, plus nine full days of visiting sites,  I’ll try to assess my gleanings: 

1.       I learned that you can take 454 photos of all the sites in the Holy Land, and when you return home to look over them they all look like pictures of rocks in 454 varied arrangements.  Some of the rocks have people posing in front of them.

2.      I learned to go easy on the Israeli breakfast.  Diving into assorted salads and smoked fish, especially the whole sardines, at 6:30 a.m. on your first day may not be the best idea, especially when traveling on a bus over the hills and valleys of Galilee.

3.      I learned that drinking from Jacob’s well, dipping my hands into the Jordan River, and drinking tap water in Bethlehem might have contributed to something which feels like little giardia now poking around in my gut.

4.      I learned something about trust.   Our bus was an Arab owned bus, driven by Mohammed,  an Arab Muslim, and guided by Samuel, an Arab Christian whose parents are of Egyptian Coptic and Greek Orthodox backgrounds. Not only did Mohammed drive us through some pretty secondary winding roads up and down the Golan Heights, he and our guide took us into Palestinian West Bank territories. Here was an Arab Muslim who cared for the safety of his passengers.  If we ever thought that all Arab Muslims were terrorists or suicide bombers (and I hope none in our group did), Mohammed helped dispel that fear.  He could have done us in with one wrong turn of the steering wheel.

5.       I learned the plight of so many Palestinians who are without a homeland and who feel trapped and hopeless.  We entered West Bank areas where only a Palestinian Arab bus and driver could go, and where the Israeli government prohibits its own citizens from entering due to danger and the fact that it is against their own law.   We saw Palestinian refugee areas and felt the hopelessness of so many in Bethlehem who are weary of the captivity and isolation of living within the walls and barbed wire fences which surround their city. 

6.      While I loved the pilgrimage aspect of our trip, including the singing of hymns and reading of Scripture at the many holy sites, I realized that what makes a place, person, or thing “holy” is not the location, or the proximity to where Jesus or the disciples walked, but how God chooses to utilize people and places for God’s unique purposes wherever they are.  So while I enjoyed, appreciated, and felt inspired by these Holy sites, I kept finding the “holy” in the faces of the children, both Israeli and Arab, Muslim,  Christian, and Jew, who await a better and more hopeful future for this problematic area of the world.

7.      I learned that visiting the Holy Land does not in itself make me more holy.   I become more “holy”  (i.e. utilized by God) when I realize that the land on which I stand, wherever that is, can be holy ground where I open myself to God’s good purposes. 

I suppose I learned that I am more an anthropologist that archaeologist.   I looked for hope in the faces and personalities of the people I met, trying to see the “holy” possibilities  in each of them, then looking deeper into my own soul for the “holy” in me.

 

Meghan Bunn--A Starbust of Hope

   

“Starburst—Something that looks like rays of light streaming out from the center.”—Miriam Webster definition.

When I first met Meghan Bunn, then age ten, she was awaiting surgery to remove what would later be diagnosed as medulloblastoma.   That brain tumor, plus other spots on her spine, would qualify her for numerous rounds of some pretty potent chemotherapy over the coming year.

On that pre-surgical visit I asked her what her favorite candy was.   In no time, I was in the gift shop hunting for and finding Starburst candies.  I rushed back to her room saying, “If it’s o.k. with your parents, you can have one now, but save the rest for when you are able to eat after the surgery.”

An experienced chaplain had once told me that one way to communicate hope to a child facing surgery is to say, with confidence, “the candy will be here waiting for you.”

What I never expected was how this child would become a “starburst” of hope for a church, a community, and for other children and families experiencing illnesses like hers.

It has been about a year and a half since that surgery.  I have had the joy of seeing Meghan return to Church, sometimes with casts from broken bones weakened from the chemo, a scarf for her bald head, and a smile broad as a shooting star!

She has been featured on numerous television and radio programs, in newspapers, at community events, and honored by her favorite team, the N.C. State Wolfpack

She has so impacted her friends that one friend asked that in lieu of gifts for her birthday party, that donations be made to Meghan’s medical fund.

Church members prayerfully followed every one of her crises and recoveries, crying with her pain, then celebrating her recovery.

Her family welcomed the birth of another sister during the course of her chemo (Meghan now is older sister to three beautiful girls).  Those little sisters certainly have a star to look up to.

And most people in Granville County now know Meghan’s name and when they speak it, they speak with more hope and with a lot of pride.

I don’t see Meghan and her family since I no longer am their interim pastor.  But it delights me to see her smiling face on Facebook, and to read about her from time to time in the media. I always feel more hopeful when I see her photo.

I think I now know why Meghan’s favorite candy is Starburst!   That’s pretty much who she is, “something that looks like rays of light streaming out from the center”!

 

 

Questioning an Attack on Syria

As the last of four children I had to learn early in life that pacifism was not always a bad thing.  As the skinniest kid in my class, I also learned that it might be wiser and safer to outsmart my opponents, make friends with bullies, and sometimes walk the other way when I saw danger. I am aware, also, that sometimes bullies do need confrontation and sometimes I might have to defend myself physically. 

At Sunday School, I learned about some sayings of Jesus.  I knew that turning the other cheek was a virtue, that loving my enemies was not an option, and that going the extra mile was something I ought to be willing to do when necessary.

My understanding of the ways of Jesus confound me today.

Atrocities of war are all around us.  Today I see images of children suffering and dying in Syria from chemical warfare.  As gruesome and revolting as these are, I still have to wonder if bombing  Syria would only add to the misery. I wonder who to trust in deciding who had these weapons.  I  also wonder where the concern is for children who are starving, who are homeless here and around the world, or who are victims of domestic violence and abuse in many places.   Where is the outrage about how violence affects children in the streets of Kiev, or the homeless boys and girls in Ecuador, or the girls and boys who are trafficked for illicit sex to our own country?

Yes, I am outraged by the exploitation of innocent victims, many of them children, in Syria, and Afghanistan, and Iraq, and wherever there is violence.   But I cannot for the life of me see how bombing more sites and the “collateral” damage, i.e. death of innocent children (which we may not hear reported in our news media for some time) will help bring about the peace and safety we seek for all our children.

The bombing and airstrikes may occur soon.  And perhaps there will be some positive result that I cannot imagine.  I will happily eat my words and change my opinion.   I know the arguments:  “Someone had to stand up to Hitler and force his hand….someone had to put Idi Amin out of power…someone had to stand up to slavery in the U.S. and stop it…” And those arguments are just.  And I am glad for the final results of all those noble efforts to confront evil, tragic as the loss of innocent life may have been in most of those cases.

John F. Kennedy’s undelivered speech in Dallas, Texas, contained these words: “We are the watchmen on the walls of freedom.  We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility; that we may achieve in our time and for all time, the ancient vision of peace on earth, good will to men.   That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength.”

It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to be the watchmen on the walls of freedom in every corner of the world.   We should expose every crack in that wall and every damage to it.  The question is how do we restore every wall?  And how do we enable others to do that when we cannot?   Can we be the watchmen, but not always the repairmen?

Is the attack on Syria really a punishment of another dictator, or an introduction of more troubles for innocent citizens?  Is this the way toward peace, or an ill fated trip to save the reputation of the United States?       

 

 

           

 

Out of the Balcony; Back in the Pulpit (for a while)

August 26, 2013

At Church yesterday several people asked me if I would give up my “Balcony” blog now that I am an interim pastor again.   I’ve thought about it, but decided I would continue blogging, knowing that I will rejoin the balcony gang again in a few months.

Besides, there are a few things I am resolved to speak about which I have learned in the balcony of Church:

1.       There are hungry people around us.  I have just written my councilman, mayor, and chief of police noting that I disagree with the city ordinance in Raleigh which requires a permit to feed the hungry.   That’s right!   My councilman wrote back that he has asked the city manager for a report on this ordinance .  Also, WRAL is giving coverage to an attempt by Raleigh Police to prevent  LOVE WINS MINISTRIES from distributing biscuits to hungry people in Moore Square last Saturday.   As a balcony person at FBC Raleigh, I had the opportunity some time ago to distribute  biscuits at the same place, but didn’t realize I could be arrested for it!  Sometimes you need to get out of the balcony and talk to your mayor and councilman, maybe just invite them to come with you to distribute biscuits to the hungry.

2.      I am resolved to let everyone know, on this first day and each day of the school year, that we need to support our public schools, teachers, and students.  North Carolina ranks 48^th in per student spending and 48^th in average teacher pay.   The Governor has signed legislation to cut the budget for education resulting in fewer teachers.  Our children and their education are important enough for us to do something.  I can’t stay in the balcony on this one. Ignorance is a moral issue.   And there appears to be plenty of that in our state legislature and governor’s mansion right now.  We don’t need more ignorance in our schools.

3.      Finally, I guess I feel I need to say something about what the Church is and what it needs to be doing.   Perhaps we need to open the doors wider and raise our voices louder in defiance of a culture which tells us that Church and Christians, specifically, are the problem.   We can be the problem in so much as we don’t speak to the problems of injustice, basic rights, and unless we follow the example of Jesus who fed the poor, reached out to include the social outcasts, and confronted the establishment when they were hurting people rather than helping people.

Well, I’ve gone to preaching.   Good-bye balcony for a while.  Hello pulpit.

           

 

 

 

Back Porch Winners and Losers

I am still sore about losing the Back Porch of the Year Award three years ago.  The local newspaper asked for photos of our back porches.  Their leisure section editors would select the best back porch and feature it in the newspaper.

I had sent in my photo of my porch highlighting an old oak rocking chair I had refinished sitting next to a milk can from my in-laws’ dairy farm.  All of it was against a Carolina blue porch wall that coordinated with a floral print rocker cushion that Aunt Cille had made decades ago.  For good measure I had placed a glass of iced tea on the table next to my rocker.   Who could resist such a beautiful back porch setting?

Evidently the editors, whom I deducted by the photo of the winning entry, were looking for something of a New York City Fifth Avenue terrace rather than a Raleigh back porch.   They rejected my down home porch with its screen door that I had carefully designed to be like that of my youth, i.e. banging as the rusted spring pulled it closed after a squeaky opening. Perhaps they didn’t like my naturally aged wooden floor or the table scavenged from an old church Sunday School room  and painted blue by my daughter when she was fourteen and enduring a summer of discontent at having to move to a new city and state .

 Or perhaps they didn’t like the natural clay pots of shamrock and Jerusalem cactus, or the fact that I had painted the milk can the color of a ripe August plum, or that I displayed the sea shells my grandkids and I found at Oak Island the summer before.

As I said, I’m still sore about losing the contest.  I really think the winner was a never-at-home traveling executive who took a photo of his air conditioned, enclosed porch (from what I could tell of the photo in the paper.)  With its vases and crystal it looked like a living room to me! I suppose I should be more gracious about losing.  I should give the editors/judges some slack.   How could someone born in New York City as recently as a couple decades ago really appreciate a back porch?   Can they hear the crickets chirping at night on that winning porch?   Can they catch a glimpse of the curious raccoon come up to investigate on their high rise terrace?  Can they allow their grandkids to drip homemade ice cream all over the Italian marble floor?  Can they let a screen door bang closed and evoke the feeling of 1955 in North Carolina?  They can’t help it, I suppose.  They just aren’t old enough to know better.

I’ve decided not to feel bad about losing the contest.  My back porch is a winner and no Better Living -House and Garden- Southern Living- News and Observer editors from NYC can convince me otherwise. 

And if they ever visit my porch and don’t like it… well… “ just don’t let the screen door hit y’all on the way out, please.”

Retire the Green Weenie

It’s time to retire the Green Weenie.  I’m not talking about the New York mayoral campaign, but about the use of old and dangerous church vans and buses.

I was in the balcony yesterday when the minister reminded the congregation to pray for the associate pastor for youth and the senior class youth who were on a trip. 

This morning I heard of a Church van accident in Indiana which claimed the lives of several people.  Such news seems to happen more frequently these days, or perhaps my years in church work have taught me to be more attentive when such accidents occur.

As a youth minister decades ago, I drove a church bus called the Green Weenie.   It was old, badly maintained, yet we would pack on thirty teens for a trip of two hundred miles to the youth camp at the beach.  Traffic was not as bad then, still the old bus did not need lots of traffic or speed to pose a danger.  With a youth minister (me) who had hurriedly studied for a chauffeur’s license, we would take off with a prayer and few worries about the dangers involved in driving a bus badly maintained and with an inexperienced driver.

As pastor over many years since driving the Green Weenie, I have encouraged churches to get rid of old vans and buses, even new ones, which usually sit in a church parking lot for months at a time.  Some are used for local trips, but the long trips on interstate highways once or twice a year test the limits of a church committee’s ability to adequately maintain a safe vehicle.

Many churches think it is a bargain when Aunt Lucille gives the Church money designated for a van, or when another Church hands over their Green Weenie to a smaller church.   Fact is, these are not bargains.   A reliable rental agency can provide the buses or vans with insurance and safety features which could save lives. In most cases rentals save money in the long run.

Yes, I’ll pray for the church youth who go on trips on the church vans emblazoned with the name of the Church and often with a message like “Go with God.” Too often, that’s exactly what can happen.  Just like our bodies that we can tattoo with “Jesus loves me,” we must realize we are not immune to illness or accidents because of our faith.  What we can do is sell the Green Weenie and be responsible in how we send our kids to summer camps and retreats.  It’s just the right thing to do.

 

Remember But Move On

My  brother is the genius of my family of origin.  He retired early after a successful business career and has used his retirement years, now a decade long, in publishing four books, learning to paint, and visiting with and enjoying his children and grandchildren.  

All four of his books, two of them novels and two family histories, reflect upon times past.  In one he says he has discovered “time travel,” that ability we all have to look back and remember events of the past, bringing them to life again in writing, story- telling,  and even painting.

What I appreciate about my brother is that he visits the past, but does not get stuck there.  He continues to enjoy the present, spending time with family and enjoying the gifts of today.  If he worries about tomorrow he doesn’t tell me (although knowing our family genes I suspect he is prone to worry). If he regrets the past, it is not obvious in his writings which delight in the wit and laughter at growing up and growing older.

I thought of my brother as I was out of the balcony of First Baptist Raleigh on Sunday.  I did some time traveling back with a visit to two churches where I was pastor.  The first visit was a day trip to Roanoke where Betsy and I visited with the current pastor at Calvary Baptist Church and sat in her office which still looked so much the way it did when I was there.  Old memories came to mind and I was tempted to tell stories of the past, but disciplined myself to focus on the present and enjoy the conversation about what’s happening now with her and with the Church.

On Sunday morning Betsy and I worshiped at Greystone Church in Raleigh, seeing old and dear friends and remembering good times past.  At the same time, the sermon reminded us of today’s pressing issues and challenges.  I “time traveled” to the past as I studied each stone in the building and little architectural details, all of which had stories where I could get stuck.  My remembrances kept being interrupted by the fine sermon which called us to relevance in sharing hospitality and understanding its implications now.  Then, on Sunday evening we attended a youth concert where we saw members of  Oxford Baptist Church where I recently completed an interim.  It was good to remember our wonderful times together, but to realize, as I chatted with their new pastor, that times are changing.  He’s the same age as my son!

Tonight I’ll travel back to Raleigh First Baptist Church.   There I will stay all night, not in the balcony, but as host to families who are without homes.   FBC Raleigh hosts the Interfaith Hospitality Network one week a year.  They need persons to practice hospitality with these families who are in hard times.   I am glad I did not spend all my time just remembering the past yesterday at Greystone Church.  The pastor reminded me of the precious value of practicing radical hospitality.  Tonight I’ll get to do that from six in the evening until six in the morning, in the present reality of persons who are homeless and need to remember their stories and find reason to hope for better stories in the future. 

 

 

 

Words to Regret: "Honey, Let's Go See the Lone Ranger"

When my wife and I go a movie, it’s usually a true blockbuster.  After several months anticipation, we went to see “The Lone Ranger” last night.  I had read no reviews but felt this was going to be the movie of the year.  “Let’s get there early, honey, since I don’t want to fight the mob and sit on the front row, or even worse miss the seven o’clock showing.”

We arrived at the parking lot fifteen minutes early, still later than I had wished.  Amazingly, there were only three other cars in the theater lot.  I wondered if there had been a power outage from the thunderstorms in the area.  We paid for our tickets, senior discount duly given, and proceeded to our theater.  Preparing for the two hour and twenty minute film, I had stuffed the pockets of my cargo pants with granola bars, crackers, and some candies (who can afford concession prices on a retiree’s budget?).   I guess that’s why I felt my cargo pants slipping downward, requiring me to stop and ponder the situation.  Meanwhile, my wife talked the concessionaire into two, four ounce complementary waters while I carefully cinched in my belt to correct the cargo pant malfunction.

For ten minutes we sat alone in the theater awaiting the movie of the year.   Soon we were joined by three other couples, all who appeared our age or even old enough to remember The Lone Ranger’s 1932 radio debut.

I suppose you can tell that a movie is really long, or the viewers really old,  when fifty percent of the audience have to leave for a bathroom break during the viewing.  I’m not saying which of us had to make the trek to the bathroom, but my wife did fill me in on the part I missed:  “,…three train wrecks, a mine explosion, and a cannibalistic scene of some kind.”   But that’s o.k.  What I did not want to miss was the Lone Ranger on Silver shouting “Hi-YO Silver Away!” as the horse reared up.   It finally happened about four or five hours into the film (O.K. it just seemed like that).  Then came the only memorable line of the movie as Tonto exhorts his masked companion (Spoiler alert):  “Don’t ever say that again!”

Betsy and I laughed at ourselves.  O.K., actually my wife laughed at me.  But in the midst of a miserable movie, we had a pretty good time.  We remembered times past, we cringed at the horror scenes, we marveled at the animation, we chuckled at the sight of four baby boomer couples immersed in the nostalgia of the Lone Ranger altered by the age of computer technology, and we celebrated the fact that we didn’t have to sit on the front row to watch the film.

This morning I picked up the News and Observer to read a review entitled:  “Ranger Flop Likely to Make Disney More Cautious.” I wished I had read the review before going to the movie, but then I would have missed the great evening we spent together laughing and conversing while waiting to hear the Lone Ranger shout “Hi-YO Silver Away”!

 

 

You Are What You Eat--Pass the Donuts, Please!

After doing pretty well on my vegetarian, low fat, high fiber, healthy living diet, I fell off the wagon this morning.    I bought a dozen donuts—six glazed and six chocolate covered.  I kept thinking my previous night’s dinner of cracked wheat stuffed cabbage leaves and the lunch of tabouli salad and hummus would absolve me from the sin of a dozen fresh, warm donuts from the shop on the corner.  I am sure that donut shop was a factor in our finding a house in the “right” section of town!

Actually, I did not eat the entire box of donuts.  I took them with me to an early morning didactic I was leading for chaplain interns at the hospital where I work part-time . Had I known that such a small thing as sharing a dozen fresh donuts with a group of chaplains would give me such immediate esteem, I would have done so months ago.  There is something that a donut does that a cabbage roll never can.   Just try leading a session of exhausted chaplain interns, some of whom have been on call all week-end in crisis events, and offering them a tofu on whole wheat or sunflower seeds before you begin your  lecture.  Donuts are much more hospitable, if also loaded with all the toxic stuff that will clog your arteries and send you into a diabetic coma. 

I know I must have sinned by furnishing such terrible food to young chaplains and partaking of it with them.  May God and my wife forgive me.  I have confessed to God, but don’t have the courage to let my wife, the guru of good food, know of the donut indulgence.   But I hope my sin will be assuaged somewhat by the fact that one chaplain observed, after experiencing the miracle of a warm, morning donut, that the word “hospital” and “hospitality” have the same roots.   She had never noticed that what we do in the hospital and what we do in offering hospitality might be related.  

Yes, I know there are ways to be hospitable and eat healthy food at the same time.   But somehow, donuts at an eight a.m. didactic with fatigued interns just seemed to be the loving and hospitable thing to do.   I hope my wife buys that line when I tell her about the donuts.

 

Rainy Days and Monday...Grieving the Firefighters

Rainy days and Mondays don’t always get me down, contrary to the song’s true lyrics.   As I write this, it is more than raining, it is “monsooning.”   Raleigh is not usually like the rain forests of Ecuador this time of year. This day reminds me of Ecuador.  I remember staying at a grass roofed hostel in Santa Domingo de los Colorados, a city in the rain forest of Ecuador.   It rained there about every hour, in  downpours.  It was a relaxing rain, replenishing the lush forest and quenching the thirst  of the equatorial earth. It was welcomed and expected.

 Today I sit captive on my back porch, listening to the rhythm of the falling rains.  It is relaxing for a while, then disturbing as I realize there are flash flood warnings all around us.  People’s lives will be affected.  Farmers will have fields flooded and crops lost.  Lives may be lost as rivers and creeks flood their banks.

 I reflect on the fickleness of the weather this summer.  I remember the lyrics to another song, “listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, telling me just what a fool I’ve been.”  I can go that way with introspection and self-absorption if I want. But today I wonder about the foolishness of Mother Nature.  I refuse to attribute floods and droughts to God.  That’s not my theology. If it were, I’d be pretty angry with God today.  Yesterday, it was 117 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona.  Nineteen firefighters lost their lives in a raging wildfire there.   The copious rains today feel more like tears of the grieving , loud, persistent showers lamenting the cruelty of the world, but also proclaiming its awesomeness.  I can imagine the rains as God’s tears for all the grieving.

I wish God, or Mother Nature, or technology could have sent these summer monsoons westward yesterday to pour upon the fires of Arizona and save the lives of the nineteen valiant firefighters who perished there.  No words or reflections can soothe the grief of those families who have lost loved ones.  The rhythm of the falling rain reminds me that we live in a natural world of monsoons and wildfires, of sunshine and rain, all of which fall in all their fickleness upon us all. Sometimes, before I can respond or know how to respond, I just have to sit and listen to the falling rains and wonder a bit.

My Life, So Far So Good...

A friend of mine who is taking chemotherapy commented about her treatments:  “Well, I feel like the guy who fell off the twenty story building.   Around the eleventh floor he shouted,  Well, so far so good.” That is a comment I often repeat when someone asks, “How’s retirement going?”    Sometimes, I feel they could just as well ask, “How’s it feel being old enough to remember meeting a veteran of the War Between the States?”  Or, “did you really have something called telephone party lines that had to be shared with neighbors?”

Maybe I like the Church balcony because it makes me feel younger.  That is where the youth hang out.    Last Sunday, I made a bold move from the center section of the balcony to the side  section. For those in the center section of the balcony, it’s not that I don’t like you, but  I can hear better on the side and it is also close to the exit, just in case.  Even though I feel younger being near those balcony youth, the reality is I select my pew based upon  its proximity to the nearest bathroom.

To be honest, I suppose I must confess that I am struggling a bit with being retired.  I miss coming back from vacation and not having an office where I can rest and recover from all the fatigue of our family vacation, fun as it was.  I miss not having office colleagues to remind me when it’s time to leave for lunch, or who can fix the computer malfunctions while I have a jelly filled donut, compliments of the local funeral home,  in the work room .  I miss having someone to screen the calls and say “Dr. Herman is not available right now.  Would you like to leave a message?”  I suppose I could do that on my recording machine at home, but  it’s somehow not the same. 

I really hope my wife does not read this blog, because if she does she’ll think of a hundred things for me to do, assuming I am bored.  Actually, I do have a part time job at the hospital.  I sub for the director of chaplaincy and assist on occasion with a clinical education didactic for seminary students.  My boss, the director of the department, is younger than my first born son.   When I appeared at our morning department meeting dressed in my blue shirt, tie, and kaki slacks just like two other students  he asked, “Is this bring your grand kids to work day?”   Some of the seminary students appear to be born during the Bush II era, and may have come from some other planet that speaks a language ladened with words like megabytes, microchips, and gigawhatevers.  In their world of virtual reality, I attempt to ask them to listen to the real stories of hurting patients and struggling, overworked hospital staff, and reflect upon their own narratives that shape their world view.

The retired life is offering lots of opportunities and challenges.  I suppose I’m doing O.K. and am grateful I don’t have to rush off to work most mornings.   But sometimes I feel that I  might just be passing the eleventh floor of the retirement leap right now. I will not complain because so far, so good. 

 

  

 

“On Getting the Butt off the Balcony…”

Family vacation 2013 is now history, documented in dozens of photos filed away electronically where generations hence will discover them and wonder,  “who are these ugly people and where are they and why didn’t  Great Granddad  label all these?”  They will not understand that I am from the post card generation where we sent and received beach photos and marveled, in our mostly black and white world,  at the natural looking colors of those doctored photos of girls in their one piece swimsuits  under palmetto trees.

They will wonder also why most of my 2013 photos show folks sitting on the balcony of the beach house rather than frolicking in the surf and sand.  I’ve noticed that as we get older, we tend to take more pictures sitting in the porch swing, or rocking in those big white rocking chairs. Our sags and bulges are less obvious with  balcony clothes rather than beach clothing, or lack thereof.

So it is that I did most of my vacation, and photos, on the beach house balcony.  It was there that I thought, ever so briefly, of those years where I could hardly rest on vacation knowing  I needed to deliver a sermon on the next Sunday.  I thought of all those commitments I used to have waiting for me upon my return:   counseling; weddings; funerals; administrative meetings; hospital visits.  And then those crucial issues like where to place the  water cooler; the color of the new carpet; and the potential church split predicated on whether to charge fifty cents extra for those wanting dessert at Wednesday night Church meals.  I breathed a sigh of relief at not having to care so much for anyone but myself.  I was feeling absolutely selfish, and was loving every moment of it.

Then I saw Dot, the neighbor across the way. We had gotten to know  Dot over the years of  using my sister and brother-in-law’s beach house.   Dot’s husband had died a few months ago.  I had yet to see her to acknowledge the loss.   I knew it would be a conversation of listening to her grief and struggles of saying goodbye to her husband of sixty-seven years.  “I could rush inside and be out of sight,” I thought.  “After all, I am a retired minister.  Retired ministers, especially those on vacation,  should not be expected to get involved in someone’s grief.”   I yielded to another voice which said something like, “Get your butt off the balcony, Son, and get down there where your years of listening skills might do someone some good, you lazy ….”   Well, you get the idea!  That voice inside me can be pretty rough sometimes.  Guess that’s part of being raised a Baptist in the South.  Sometimes I wish I had been raised a Unitarian in New Hampshire, but perhaps they, too, have that same voice,  only I can imagine it with a friendlier tone than the Baptist one!

I went down from my balcony refuge, greeted Dot, and  listened to her grief .  It was a familiar sound, but fresh with hurt and pain which I felt as she narrated the story of Ed’s last days.  We conversed long enough that my back began to ache and I began to perspire from the relentless sun.  My momentary discomfort was nothing in comparison to the immensity of Dot’s grief. 

When someone asks me what I did on my summer vacation, I will probably answer “ not much.”  I just sat on the balcony of the beach house looking over life and wondering about the past and the future.   On yes, and I heard a voice.  The urgency of the present broke in and I realized that there are no vacations from caring, or being a good neighbor, or offering a simple listening ear to someone who needs it.   

Forgive Me My Fish…

Retirement is like looking at life from a balcony.  Below are all the many memories of events, for better or worse, which make us laugh, cry, cringe with regret, or long to repeat.   I look today from my balcony view at my first years in South America as I struggled to learn Spanish.

Do you know how humiliating it is to go into a restaurant and confidently ask the waitress (translating from Spanish here) “Where is the horse’s bathroom?”   Those who know Spanish will recognize the resemblance between the words caballero(gentleman) and caballo (horse).   After a rather puzzling look on the face of the waitress, and recognizing I may have used the wrong word,  I then asked for the directions to the restroom for cabellos (hair).  This, I suppose, is not as blatant an error as complimenting a dear Colombian church member on her newborn’s lovely hair, ie. “your daughter has a beautiful head of dark  horse.”

It should be a sin that some Spanish words are just too similar to each other.   Speaking of sin, pecado (sin) and pescado (fish) sound amazingly similar, especially in Barranquilla, Colombia where I served as a hospital chaplain years ago. Folks on the Coast are notorious for dropping the “s” in words.   How many people  you know have the experience of praying in Spanish and asking God to forgive us our fish as we forgive those who fish against us?  Two other sinfully similar words are vesicula (gall bladder) and versiculo (bible verse).  Can you imagine the confusion of the patient who tried to answer my question, “How are you feeling after your bible verse surgery?”  Or the congregation who faithfully tried to find the text for the sermon that day as I urged them to turn to gall bladder number three of the book of James , chapter two ?

 The view from my present retirement balcony brings other memories not so amusing.  I can choose to dwell on those stories of failure or misfortune or embarrassment, or I can begin to reframe them in light of the unfolding grace being poured out upon me as I age. Part of that grace may be the ability not to remember accurately (my wife calls this “preacher hyperbole”), or even the gained wisdom that no story remembered is absolutely true.  Perhaps part of grace is finding an alternative narrative to the unfortunate, sad, or painful stories of the past.  Maybe, I think, God laughs at some of our learning, growing, and missteps along the way, just as I now laugh at the errors I made in learning another language.  Or perhaps there is the grace of another narrative of past events still waiting to be discovered and claimed.

On those days when I feel too tempted to listen too intently to sad stories of the past, maybe I will merely look from my present balcony to a higher one and ask God to forgive me my fish as I forgive the fishes of others.

Balcony Backslider…

I  was absent from the balcony, row 2, center section last Sunday.   Instead,  Betsy and I slept in, then went to meet our daughter and her friend for a brunch in Carrboro.  For  those outside the area, Carrboro is the “hippie” village at the outskirts of Chapel Hill, N.C.   As a friend of mine says, “you know you are in Chapel Hill on a Sunday morning if everyone is out mowing their lawn.”    In Carrboro, you know you are there on a Sunday morning if everyone is under the big shade tree in front of Carrboro Mill Mall jiving to a jazz band.

Kids were dancing, led by a bearded man with flowers in his hair.  He reminded me of the professional dancer I met while I lived in Barranquilla, Colombia.  The dancer had returned from New York for his Uncle Clarence’s funeral.  Uncle Clarence’s ashes had been kept on a shelf for a year or two awaiting the day when the nephew could return to pay homage and dance for his uncle.   Having been Uncle Clarence’s chaplain during his hospitalization, I was invited to be the presiding minister at the funeral service, or funeral dance, as it turned out.   It seems the nephew had prepared not just one dance, but had choreographed Uncle Clarence’s entire life.   Uncle Clarence lived  ninety years  and  I feel certain that the dancer did not leave out a single month of his long, eventful life.   By the time the choreographed life of Uncle Clarence concluded, the nephew appeared close to exhaustion.  Automated electronic defibrillators had not been invented, else I would have gone for one .  The crowd  appeared to need an AED as well, but showed signs of  life as they began drooling at the sight of sandwiches and cold drinks that had been brought to the table in the adjoining room.   I took their glances away from me and toward the food as an indication that enough homage had been paid Uncle Clarence and it was time to move on in life.  Forget the sermon!

I missed the beautiful and inspiring worship and my balcony seat under the rose window at First Baptist Church last Sunday.  It was communion Sunday which I love.   But I have to confess that my spirits were lifted as I communed under the shade tree with the jazz band, my family, the dancing stranger, and the memories of  Uncle Clarence’s funeral dance.  Even though I was balcony backsliding, it really felt a lot like worship to me as the practices of music, dance, community, memory, and a concluding trip to the ice cream parlor lifted my heart and made me glad.

A View from the Balcony Resumes...

After an absence of two years I find myself again in the church balcony.  I placed a notice in June of 2011 that I would be on "vacation" from the church balcony as I had accepted an interim pastorate.  That interim has stretched for most of two years and I am once again retired and relegated to the second row, center section of the Raleigh First Baptist Church balcony.  I like sitting there because the beautiful rose window that faces the State Capitol creates this phenomenal halo around the back of my head, I am told by those folks on the chancel, and besides it makes me feel angelic or  messianic, a feeling that preaching behind the pulpit never gave to me.   Also, the antiphonal organ pipes of the balcony surround me and wake me if I have snoozed my way into the postlude.  It's nicer being on the balcony side of the snooze experience.   The pulpit side of the snooze experience is another thing altogether. I was always forgiving of my listeners who snoozed during my sermons as I have actually been known to yawn in the middle of my own sermons!  I need to write Miss Manners and ask her if that is bad etiquette to yawn while delivering one's own sermon, and if a preacher should say "excuse me" or just ignore the whole thing and talk on, and on, and on...

To all my faithful blog followers (both of you), please know I have made several editorial changes in the 2013 edition of balcony blogs:

1.   I will be brief (something I did not practice from the pulpit side of the sanctuary).
2.   I will not bore you with theology.   Instead, I will just talk about God and people, but mostly myself (I fall into the latter category in case you need to know).
3.  I will not embarrass my wife or family too much as I write these blog entries.  They will just continue to ignore me if I do.
4.  I will try not to fly paper airplanes from the balcony of the Church, nor will I drop hymnals off the balcony rail (unless the sermon is unbearably boring) just to write about it in my blog.  I know how folks like to read about irreverence.
5. Nor will I report that I raised my voice (unless it is part of a congregational hymn), nor if I shout (not even an "Amen" or "Preach on") unless there is a fire (in which case I shall probably entitle my blog "Hell Fire in the Church" or "Hell, fire in the Church"). 
6. I shall conclude each blog entry as soon as I have said what I needed to say, which corresponds to point #1 on this list, and one which I should have followed in my active preaching ministry, in which case most sermons would have ended with the announcement of the sermon title.   Once when my daughter was small she criticized one of my long sermons.  "So what would you have told them?" I asked.  Her reply: "You can all go home now!"