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.”