I ate a whole can of olives the other day. Is
that bad? It doesn’t seem bad. They’re fruit, right? I’ve never heard anyone
refer to olives as fruit, but they're plants and plants are generally good for
you. They are very salty, which I think might not be good. Salt is one of those
things they used to say was good for you and they even handed out salt tablets
to athletes. But then I think they said it was bad for you and everyone was
trying to cut down on salt. But now I don’t hear so much about salt anymore. I
think its maybe bad but not as bad as, say, eating nothing but fast-food all the
time. Compared to that, eating a can of olives might even be kind of good for
you.
One would think so anyway.
I can’t keep up with this stuff, to tell you
the truth. When I eat I have to look over at my wife and say, “Is this bad for
me?” She seems to know about these things.
Take bread for example. Years ago bread was
fattening and a thing you had to watch out for. But then everyone said it was
red meat you had to avoid. Red meat would clog up your arteries. So bread wasn’t
that bad. But then suddenly they said meat was okay as long as you avoided bread
completely. And there were those diets where you ate no bread at all or anything
even remotely resembling bread.
So bread has been sometimes good and sometimes
bad for us. I don’t mean white bread, of course. I think white bread became bad
for us sometime back in the 70s and has remained bad ever since. I think it has
stayed bad the whole time. That’s okay because Jeanene got me used to wheat
bread years ago, and now white bread gives me the creeps. The way you can roll
it into little balls and it turns a kind of gray if your hands weren’t all that
clean. I never liked that about white bread, even when I was a kid, even before
it was bad for us.
Anyway, it seems to me that a guy ought to be
able to eat a can of olives and it not be all that bad for him. Not with all the
white bread and fast food and sweat shops overseas and the horrible stuff
they’re putting all over the internet.
But none of this really matters because when I
ate that can of olives, it wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it was going to
be, so I probably won’t do that again anyway.
When it comes to food, I should probably just
move my fork slowly toward things and watch Jeanene for cues. She could give me
a nod or or a wince or a strong, stern shaking of the head. Then I would know
what things are currently bad for me because, like I said, somehow she just
seems to know this stuff.
I’ll tell you another thing I can’t keep
straight is the Church. And I went to seminary and even graduated from it. I
don’t know how you non-seminary folks are keeping up with what’s good and bad in
church.
I remember when I was a kid and taking care of
your Bible was a good thing. You got a Bible for a present or something and you
wrote your name in it. And you never put things on top of it because that didn’t
show respect. And you kept that Bible for a long time because that was YOUR
Bible. You kept it for years and it would get all worn and everything, which you
were sort of proud of because it showed you were reading it.
But then there were new translations coming out
every month or so, and Bibles got cheap to buy and you can even get them in
grocery stores now. And also some people said that if you were too devoted to
one copy of the Bible it was its own kind of weird idolatry. So now people can
pretty much do whatever they want to their Bibles. Toss them around. Lose them
and just buy a new Bible. Whatever.
And I remember when all we sang in church were
hymns, except at church camp where you could sing all these other cool songs
with guitars around the campfire. And then some people started singing some of
the campfire songs right in church, which seemed okay. But then others said it
wasn’t good because those camp songs supposedly aren't as theological deep and
sound as the old hymns. But then the people who liked the camp songs said that
they are mostly made of words right out of the Bible, so you can’t exactly say
they shouldn’t be sung in church. And then the hymn people grumbled, and the
campfire people grumbled, and this is the truth - I don’t know what we should or
shouldn’t be singing in church if anything.
To be honest, I don’t think anyone knows quite
what to do in church anymore. For years church people told us that homosexuality
was evil and not just a sin but a very bad sin. They had us all scared of
homosexuals, that we might even become one or something if we were around them.
And you just assumed that the Bible was chock-full of commandments about
homosexuals and them even going to hell for being that. I mean, you just assumed
that because the church people were so sure of themselves and talked about it
like it was a fact.
But then some people started reading the Bible
very carefully, all the parts people said were about homosexuality. And some of
them said, “Oh shit! The Bible hardly says anything about homosexuality at all.
And what it does say is pretty hard to understand.” So those people said we
should just leave homosexuals alone and let them come to church and let their
relationships be between them and God, like all relationships are.
But now, see, the ones who thought
homosexuality was a really bad thing were getting tired of the changes. It
seemed like you hardly heard a hymn in church anymore, and people were dressing
sloppy on Sundays, and women were preaching, and you could hardly find a King
James Bible anywhere. So I think they just decided to dig their heels in on this
whole homosexuality thing. And it became like a religious war, and it’s
gotten so bad that even the Episcopalians are fighting over it. And that’s scary
because you expect the Baptists will make fools of themselves over stuff like
this, but we’ve always counted on the Episcopalians to keep their wits about
them and be careful and never ever allow themselves to get so divided over
something that they might actually split their church in two.
I mean, the Episcopalians can be kind of stuffy
and all, and who knows what the hell they’re doing with all the chants and
walking up and down the aisles before church and what with the banners and all
the different colors all the time. But my goodness, they’re the smartest ones of
all of us, and if they can’t figure this homosexual thing out, what hope is
there for the rest of us?
And all the while people who aren’t in the
Church are just standing there watching it all, and they have no idea what all
the fuss is about and neither do a lot of us who’ve been in the Church all of
our lives. We don’t know either.
Maybe in a few years the Church will be all
busted up and the only thing left will be people gathering in small groups here
and there, and it might not be anything like it is now.
That’s what Jesus was saying with that stuff he
said about the wineskins. How the truth about God cannot be held in old
wineskins because they will just burst. And sometimes that’s what happens with
the Church. It bursts like a dried-out wineskin and you have to find a new
wineskin.
And it’s always hard for the church people who
live in a time when the wineskins are bursting. It’s hard on that generation,
but there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing at all but just wait and try to
be as true as you can and keep your eyes open for what comes next.
rlp
Mark 2.22 - And no one puts new
wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine
is lost, and so are the skins; but new wine is for fresh skins."
There were two great, abiding
mysteries in my life when I was a young boy; mysteries that I puzzled over for
years but never solved. I discovered them while lying in bed trying to fall
asleep. Bedtimes are convenient for adults but they may or may not align
themselves with the sleep patterns of a child. I was an overactive boy who had a
hard time convincing his cerebral cortex to shut down after a day of
full-throttled activity.
Many nights I lay in bed, watching
the shadows deepen on the walls and listening to Bible stories or music on a
record player. Waiting for sleep was grueling work. Minutes slowly ticked away,
and a single hour was an eternity. It was in these mysterious hours of waiting
that I discovered two mysteries which I could not explain or understand.
Just a quick note. Our family chose not to exchange presents
this year. Instead we're taking a trip together. We'll be back January
4th. I'm not planning on doing any serious writing while we are gone,
though I might post something here or there. Christian Century
has two of my essays. I put a lot of time into them, and I'm anxious to
post them here. But I'm waiting for them. One of them has to go in the
magazine before I can put it online. The other is waiting for final
edits. If one goes online, I'll post a link to it.
One of the nice things that happens if you are the pastor of a
church for a long time is you get to watch children grow up. One
family came to our church in 1990 with a 10th grader, an 8th grader,
and a 5th grader. I have now married all three of them, and been there
for the birth of three grandchildren. This is the kind of stuff you
miss with the giant, "come and try us and if you don't like it try
somewhere else" churches. They miss real intimacy. But real intimacy is
hard, and it hurts when people leave. Maybe most people don't want that.
Chloe has been going to our church since before she was in
school. She's like another daughter to me. She's kind of quirky and
interesting and I love that about her. I've written about Chloe once
seriously, and mentioned her
in a few other
posts.
Here's what Chloe and I look like now. We rang Salvation Army
bells together this year at our local Walmart. She's growing so tall. I
can't believe how she has grown
She's gotten big, our little Chloe. Hard to believe. Here's
what I'm hoping for Chloe and all of the kids who grow up at our
church. They know what it is like to be loved. Not just by their
parents, but by a community of people who know them by name and let
them have their own personality and ways. Chloe prays out loud for
Gypsies every Sunday. That's her thing to do, and we take it seriously.
And it has led to our children sending money off to India on a regular
basis.
So Merry Christmas Chloe. You and your sister Brittney are
like sisters 4 and 5. We love you both.
Last night around 10pm I posted an update about
various things. Among them the fact that I had found myself suddenly in need of
$950 in order to go on my January trip to the Dominican Republic to help install
a water purification system. I really didn't know what was going to happen. I
was pretty uncomfortable asking, but I didn't have much choice, and it seemed
right to me. So I asked. I thought there was a pretty good chance enough of you
would want to be a part of this project that I might be able to raise the entire
amount by early January. I thought, "Well, even if I get close, that would help.
If I get close I can surely scrape together a few hundred dollars between now
and then."
One hour after I posted, I checked the donation
page, just out of curiosity. I was hoping there might be a few dollars in there.
You know, it was so soon. It was really more a compulsive thing. I didn't really
expect there to be anything in there.
$650 had been donated. In one hour. By the time
I went to bed it was close to $800. This morning when I woke it was exactly
$950. Obviously the last person donated just the right amount at that point.
$950 in 9 hours. I was absolutely speechless and filled with awe. I have no idea
how many people read this blog. I know several thousand come each day. I try not
to think about that when I write. As I've said before, I like to think of you as
roughly 50 people. But however many of you there are, some of you have come to
care for me even though we have never met in person. Your generosity is a
powerful affirmation of this one act of goodness that is happening in January.
Most of you don't know each other, of course,
though I'm aware of a number of friendships and even a romance or two that has
happened between people "talking" in the comments and chatroom. But doesn't it
feel like we're in this together? It does to me. I don't know. Do you think we
have something going on here? Something we might call a community of some kind?
What do I know? But I do know that the total is $1310 at the time of this
posting and rising. Whatever I think is happening here, some proper stewardship
on my part is in order. I've spent the night thinking about this. I feel like
you're telling me this project is important to you, and you'd like to be a part
of it.
I talked with the folks at Edge today. Here's
what you and I can do with any additional funds we raise. Our team
will be staying at the headquarters of Youth With A Mission in Santo Domingo.
This particular YWAM group is also involved in water projects around the world.
In fact, YWAM in Santo Domingo has a team in the Sahara right now installing
purifiers. The guy leading that project was in training with me in October.
But they don't have clean water even in their own headquarters in Santo
Domingo. They have to drink bottled water.
That's pretty stunning. They are in the
Sahara installing a better water system than they have in their own
headquarters.
So if we get
enough money together - you and I - then when I go to the Dominican Republic in
January, the team I'm on will also install a purifying system at the YWAM
headquarters. That way they will have clean water and so will teams like mine
that are staying there for various service projects. AND (this is the cool part) Edge can use that place
as a training center to teach local groups about water purification and health
issues. You need a purification system in place if you are going to teach people
how to install and use them.
So if you can get the big picture - this trip
could make possible local efforts in Santo Domingo to bring clean water to this
part of the world. And local efforts are always the best kind of efforts. It's
the whole "teaching a man to fish" thing.* The total cost of a basic system is
$3500. What's nice is, there would be no extra travel expenses since we'll
already be there.
I don't know if there are enough of us to put
together another $3500. That doesn't really matter right now. You can't see this
as me asking for more money. This is me trying to figure out a way to bless and
affirm the money you are giving without me asking. If we come up short, I
promise the money will be used in some way to bring fresh, clean water to people
who need it. The simplest human need beyond air. Clean water. But if we get
$3500 by early January, then Real Live Preacher readers will officially have
sponsored our own act of goodness in the world.
Of course I will blog about the trip as it
is happening. Which will be very cool since you'll be able to see it.
Let's just see what happens. This isn't
something to worry about or stress over or wish about or even try to control.
This is one of those things that are bigger than any of us. We simply respond as
things unfold.
Everyone makes mistakes now and again. Mostly
you hope that your mistakes will be little and not cost money and not put people
out or hurt them in any way. But yeah, we all make mistakes.
Historically, our church has a number of rather
famous mistakes. The first of these was dubbed "Main's Folly." I wrote about
that one a long time ago,
back when I was anonymous and had to change people's names. This was in the days when we were clearing the land
for the building. Michael Main had the brilliant idea of dumping a huge pile of
cedar and debris on top of a cactus patch before we burned it. His thinking was,
"why not get rid of the cactus while we're at it?" Unfortunately, the water
content of prickly pear cactus is so high that we couldn't get the thing to
burn. Nor could we retrieve the wood since it was, well, right in the middle of
a cactus patch.
It sat there for about 4 years until it finally
decayed enough to sink into the cactus patch. I suppose I could still find the
remnants of it if I was of a mind to try. In all fairness, I was right there with him and
went along with the plan enthusiastically. But I've been happy to allow his name
to be attached to the big rotting woodpile at the back of the property.
There have been other public and lasting
mistakes, some of them I mentioned in that previous piece.
The mistake I recently made might well go down
in our church's history as the most expensive and, frankly, dumbest mistake ever
made. Someone will have to work hard to beat it. I can tell you that.
Now this here story I'm about to unfold for you
started back in the year 2000.* Back then we had just put up our new building.
In those days I had a computer and the right software, so I generally laid out
and designed anything we printed. It seemed sort of natural for me to design the
sign, so I did. After it was done, the church had to approve it, of course. But
this was an easy bunch of folks. They had kind of a "whatever you think"
approach to stuff like this.
Note: I doubt anyone in our church has a
"whatever you think" approach to church signs now. Keep reading...
So I contacted the city to find out what the
sign regulations were. I created a sign in Microsoft Publisher at a scale of one
inch to the foot. I took my design to a sign company, and they put it on a sign.
This is what it looks like:
That's been our sign for 8 years now. But the
sign has a couple of problems.
First, it's getting a little worn. You
can see the blue vinyl border has torn away a bit at the top. And it's hard to
see in this picture, but the board has warped and now the sign has fallen out of
it's track and is resting at a slight angle. I keep thinking a gust of wind will
knock it down, but so far it hasn't.
Second, over the years we've noticed a
little problem with the wording on the sign. It clearly says, "Covenant Baptist
Church." And we are a Baptist church. But we're far from your average Baptist
church. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that we aren't like any other
Baptist church most people have ever experienced. Our theology is more
progressive. We use worship styles from many traditions. And our approach is
sort of quiet and unhurried. Contemplative, we like to say. I mean, this is a
Baptist church that has Franciscan retreats from time to time. We put our church
building back in the woods where you can't see it from the road, not caring a
whit that "church marketing" people said it was a bad idea. We've always felt
that those who need to find us generally do. And those that don't find us will
find someone else if they are serious about looking.
So what's the problem with that? No problem,
except people see our sign and show up looking for your average Baptist church.
We get a lot of one-time visitors. One or two took off running, apparently
fearing lightening might strike them. And for years I've wondered if people who
might appreciate and need our approach to church have driven past us because
they aren't about to visit a Baptist church.
A year or two ago, we started talking about
making a new sign that would more accurately describe the personality of our
community. So I designed a new sign. This time it had the same nurturing figure
I use at the top of this blog and said, "Covenant - a Contemplative Christian
Community." Our web address is still
CovenantBaptist.org, so it's not
like we're trying to fool anyone about being Baptist. We're just trying to
accurately describe our church for the benefit of those people who see the sign.
Here's where things started going wrong. I
distinctly remembered that the original sign was made of a standard 4' x 8'
piece of marine-quality plywood. So I made a graphic of the new sign that was 4"
x 8" and took it to the sign company. It cost $500 to make the new sign. I
remember how happy I was when I picked it up in my mini-van and drove it to the
church. But the moment I pulled into the parking lot I could see that the new
sign was too wide. It was WAY too wide to fit between the sign posts.
I was rather distraught, both because we
weren't going to have our sign and because I had just wasted $500 of the
church's money by not taking the time to measure the sign before I ordered it.
Yeah, I didn't measure it. Pretty dumb huh?
Yeah, well hang on. I get dumber.
On reflection, I remembered that the sign was
actually 4' x 6'. I remembered that I had been irritated that the sign ordinance
DIDN'T allow the use of a standard 4' x 8' piece of plywood, causing us to have
to cut the plywood. I called the sign company, and they kindly offered to remake
the sign for $250. They would cut two feet off the existing sign, peel of the
vinyl wording, and redo it.
About that time,
Paul Soupiset and family began attending our church. Paul is an
artist and a professional graphic designer. He looked at my new design and could
tell it was done by an amateur. He kindly agreed to redo the design of the new
sign. He made it to scale for a 4' by 6' sign. Paul's sign design was nicer,
having an interesting shape and a separate piece that was to hang below the main
sign. It was an extra $100 to get it cut, but here is Paul's sign, which I just
got back from the sign company on Wednesday:
Nice sign, huh? Oh yeah, it's a real nice sign.
Tim Heavin (our other minister) and I were thrilled when we went to pull out the
old sign and drop this one in the slots between the posts. I wish you could have
seen my face when we held up the sign and discovered that it was about a foot
short of fitting between the posts. A foot short.
To answer your question. No, I didn't measure
it. Why? Because I remembered so clearly that it was 4' x 6'. Never mind
that I had also remembered clearly that it was 4' by 8'. This is where I don't
really understand my own mind. I never even occurred to me that I should measure
it, just to make sure.
Last night at our weekly church meal, it was my
lot to endure the laughter and the kidding. People coming up and saying, "Hey
Gordon! They have these new things now. They're called TAPE MEASURES."
Yeah, yeah, yuck it up. I suppose there will
need to be another round of this on Sunday, when those who weren't there
Wednesday get a crack at me. I can't say I don't deserve it. The community does
have $850 sunk into a sign that seemed useless.
Sigh.
I'll tell you something nice, though. These
people love me. Not one person griped about the lost money or in any way was
mean about it. It was all good-natured laughing. And I could tell how much they
do love me, in spite of the fact that I'm always messing up things like
measurements and calendar dates and other things like that. I suppose the sign
will now be called, "Gordon's Folly." And that's okay, because I don't have to
get everything right for these people. The church pays me, but somehow I don't
feel like an employee. I feel like a man among dear friends and fellow pilgrims.
And I'm quite happy to be the quirky, flawed pastor of a quirky, flawed bunch of
seekers who love each other and are learning what it means to love God.
POSTSCRIPT:
There is good news to this story. Do you
remember Reggie Regan? Reggie, the
bat-house building, life-flight nurse and corrupter of ministers?
Reggie who
sold my belly-button lint on ebay for $200?
Reggie who gives the pastor a beer every single time I visit him and asks if I
want another? Reggie who introduced me to the joy of an authentic Cuban cigar?
Reggie who helped me take the transmission out of my
daughters car. Reggie who keeps bailing me
out of various problems? I haven't even told you the story of how I bought the
wrong hymnals on ebay and how Reggie is selling them on ebay so the church can
get the right hymnals without losing that much money.
Yeah, that Reggie. So Reggie came to the church
Wednesday and took the sign to his house. Apparently, he's rigged some kind of
wooden border thing that will make the sign fit between our poles. I haven't
seen it yet, but I don't even need to see it. It's Reggie. Reggie freakin Regan,
miracle worker, corrupter AND saver of wayward ministers. Reggie is handling it.
Reggie makes all things right.
Seriously - this guy is like the superhero of our
church
I'll post a picture of Reggie's handiwork when
the sign is finally up.
When we built our church facility back in 1999,
our general contractor installed industrial-quality, Corbin Russwin automatic
door closers on every door in the place. These things are fascinating. When you
push on a door to open it, there is resistance because that action is forcing a
plunger into a cylinder, compressing the air inside it. Energy from your body is
being transferred in some mysterious way to the cylinder, which then holds that
energy in a potential form. When you let go of the door, the plunger is forced
out of the cylinder, which then closes the door by means of a system of
connected rods.
Here’s another way to think about it: because
the cylinder makes the door harder to open, you are forced to use additional
energy to open it, but that energy is then stored and used to close the door
automatically when you let go of it.
The whole thing is quite clever.
These heavy-duty, door closing units are pretty
sophisticated and cost about $100 each. We have 20 doors in our building, so we
have about $2000 invested in automatic door closing, which is a pity since as it
turns out, only the external doors and the restroom doors have any need for this
luxury. In fact, a door that always closes automatically can be a
pain-in-the-ass. I got tired of trying to hold doors open with my rear end when
my hands were full of boxes or books or whatever.
So a few months after we moved into our
building, I arrived one morning with 20 door-holding-open machines, commonly
known as stoppers. These particular stoppers are metal pegs with rubber feet.
You attach them to the bottom of the door. Then you can flip the peg down with
your foot when you want to prop the door open. They were $11 a piece.
As I understand it, the stoppers increase the
inertia of the door to a point where the air pressure in the cylinder is not
sufficient to close it. But that’s just fancy talk. They keep the doors open;
that’s the important thing.
And so it was that we came to this ridiculous
place: on the top of each door is a $100 machine that converts human energy into
potential energy that is constantly pushing against the door, wanting to close
it. At the bottom of each door is a simpler, but no less effective, $11 machine
that makes the door so hard to close that the top machine is unable to do the
job it was designed for and for which we paid good money for it to do.
It was four years before I saw this absurdity
for what it was. It hit me like a flash of enlightenment one summer day while I
was looking at one of the doors. Suddenly the scales fell from my eyes and I saw
things as they were. I laughed out loud at the sight of a $100 door closer
straining as hard as it could to close a door held open by an $11 stopper.
“This is insane,” I said to myself. “All of
this work, worry, and energy serves to create a state of affairs that we could
have had if we had never installed closers or stoppers at all. We have set
energy against inertia, all to maintain a kind of doorway deadlock. We could
have had immobility if we had done nothing at all.”
I got up from my chair and wandered around the
church, looking at all the door closers and their corresponding stoppers. One of
these doors, the door to the kitchen, had been held open since the previous
summer. I think I was the last one to open it, which means that energy from the
breakfast taco I had that morning ended up being stored inside this cylinder for
more than a year.
I reached up and touched the cylinder. For some
reason I expected it to be warm. Warm from the exertion of pushing against a
door for a solid year. But of course the energy inside is potential. It’s
somehow real but not real until the door is released. Don’t you think that when
the air whooshed out of the cylinder, it should have smelled like tacos?
It didn’t, but that would have been cool,
right?
I decided to do something about
this situation. I brought my drill to church along with a set of screwdriver
bits. I removed 6 or 7 screws and took down the Corbin Russwin door closing
machine. Then I knelt and removed the four screws holding the door stopper in
place. Once liberated from these opposing forces, the kitchen door swung easily
on its hinges. I can now open the door with one finger. I can move it to any
position between open and closed and there it sits happily until someone moves
it. I’m working with inertia now, instead of fighting against it.
It’s an amazingly efficient way to do things.
The only thing more absurd than the whole
situation was how excited I was about the newly liberated door. I had to tell
the very next person who came down the hall.
“Hey, check this out.”
I swung the door open and shut.
“Open, shut, or anywhere in between. The door
does whatever I want. Isn’t that cool?”
I don’t remember who it was, but she was
understandably perplexed by my enthusiasm. Come to think of it, she might have
been this woman who left the church around that time. She probably had the idea
that the pastor should be working on sermons or visiting the sick or something
like that instead of doing junior physics experiments with the door hardware.
And I must admit, she’s probably right. Thank goodness I’m alone at the church
most of the time so nobody knows what the hell I’m up to.
Anyway, this whole thing with doors got me
thinking that deadlock is such a tiring way to stand still and do nothing. All
of that straining and grunting. Losing a little ground, then gritting your teeth
and pushing harder against whatever force is opposing you.
But we humans love to grapple. We like to lock
arms and growl and push each other around. We like the feeling of one force
moving another. We like power, and we like to use power. And if you look around
the world, a lot of things that appear to be stationary are not moving because
they are pushing hard against something that is immovable. You see this all the
time. Especially at family reunions.
We set power against power and force against
inertia. It’s what we like to do. We move things around our world and it makes
us so happy. And there are times when force and power and moving things around
is the right thing. There are times for that.
But there are also times when it is so much
better to stop pushing against things and let them be. There are times when the
doors should swing freely. Let them be open or closed. Just let them be. There
are times to walk gently on our planet and see if it is possible that you pass
on your way and leave not one stone overturned or one tender branch bent.
There are times.
Times to get out of the way and let people
or plants grow as they will.
Times to let go of someone and allow them
to live their life for better or for worse.
Times to sit quietly around the fire with
mother myth and all the other earth children. Just listen to the story,
child. Let it be.
Times to let the children eat when they are
hungry and go to bed when they are sleepy. Perhaps not every night, but
there are times.
There are these times. And if you can learn
to see them and embrace them, you will begin to develop the soul of an
artist and a saint.
Maybe you noticed I was gone for a few days.
I had some pretty important stuff going on, and I just didn’t have any energy to
write. I’m going to tell you what happened to us. I could have written this
without so much detail, but I think the details might be important for someone
who is in the same situation.
Four days ago Jeanene and I were looking at the
real possibility of our entire family being medically uninsured. No insurance of
any kind for us or our children.
Jeanene quit her job, as I’ve mentioned. After
20 years of chaplaincy, 20 years of being on-call for emergencies, she was
through. I could see it in her eyes. Some essential part of Jeanene was gone.
Used up. And our children, particularly our middle daughter, really need a
parent at home right now.
She had to stop. An opportunity for me to do
some blogging work with The Christian Century and The High Calling gave us a
chance to let her retire from being a chaplain. We're taking a
significant pay cut, so it's risky. And there is no guarantee the blog networks
I work with will continue. This was an important decision for us and we agonized
over it. But sometimes in life you take a leap of faith. The faith we have is
not a faith that God will rescue us physically and make sure that everything is
okay. The Creator of the Universe has obviously made peace with the idea of
mostly letting things unfold here according to our choices and the natural
movement of the planet.
The faith we have comes with believing that it
was the right thing for her to leave. The right thing for her health and our
family. We felt peace about it. So we held hands and jumped.
---
About 6 years ago, when Jeanene was laid off
for a period of two years, we called Blue Cross Blue Shield and had health
insurance for our entire family in a matter of days. We thought we’d be able to
do that again.
We were wrong.
Our middle daughter has had some emotional
traumas in the last couple of years. She’s told me that I could write about our
journey through all of that, but it hasn’t felt right yet so I haven’t. With a
lot of help and with two serious medications, she’s doing well. She’s been doing
very well since the Spring.
Unfortunately, those two drugs and something
she went through in January make her untouchable. There isn’t an insurance
company in America that will take her. Even if we release the insurance company
from all mental health benefit obligations. Even if, like Blue Cross Blue
Shield, they don’t cover any mental health benefits anyway. Even so, no one
will take her. She’s tainted because of something that happened to her. It’s
strictly an emotional thing. She has no physical problems.
As it turns out, no one will take me either.
Why? Because I’ve been taking Wellbutrin for 2 years. It works beautifully.
It’s given me back my life. If you read my pieces on
depression you know how much I HATED to admit that I needed help
with a drug. But I obviously did.
But that’s it for me. I was turned down by Blue
Cross Blue Shield even though they don’t pay for any mental heath issues anyway.
I was even turned down by the insurance provider for Texas Baptist ministers who
serve small churches without benefits. I thought they would listen and give us a
chance. Nope.
I’m a bad risk now. That’s the thing. Good
heart. No cancer. No high blood pressure. Low cholesterol. I’ve never even had
surgery. I don’t smoke. I’ve only missed two Sundays in 17 years as a pastor for
illness. I’m a healthy guy, and I’m used to being treated like a healthy guy.
But I take Wellbutrin, so there must be
something wrong with me, right?
Actually, it’s not quite as personal as someone
looking you in the eye and saying, “You're a bad risk.” The health insurance
industry is too big for that. They have computer-generated statistics that tell
them people who take drugs for mental health reasons are bad risks - period. I
am a clear exception to that rule, but that’s the rule.
Congress passed a law called COBRA in 1986 that
requires employers to allow you to keep your insurance if you leave their
company. They don't have to help you pay for it anymore, but they have to carry
you - at your own expense - for at least 18 months. We went online and
discovered that it was going to cost us $1600 a month to keep our insurance. And
of course, that's only for 18 months. 18 Months from now we would be in the same
position.
We can’t afford that, so it’s really no option
for us. Please! That’s more than our house payment. Technically the hospital has
fulfilled the obligation of the law, but I don’t know too many families who can
afford $1600 a month for health insurance.
Texas has a state-subsidized health insurance
pool for people who can’t get health insurance. Shelby and I could go into the
state pool, leaving Jeanene and the other two girls to get their insurance in a
more traditional way. But now COBRA really comes back to bite you. The State
insurance pool won’t take you if you have any other options. Even if your only
option isn’t really an option because you don’t have $1600 a month.
We were falling into a crack in the system. We
can’t afford what the insurance company grudgingly offers ex-employees at an
insane price. And we don’t quality for the State insurance pool because they did
offer us something.
By Tuesday we had admitted defeat.
---
I’m going to tell you right now that this story
has a happy ending. But it could have gone the other way. Very easily could have
gone the other way.
We found a man in town who is a kind of
independent health insurance broker. He knows the system, and he can figure out
ways for you to get insurance. It’s not always great insurance, but he can find
something. He’s really good at what he does. I wouldn’t assume that many people
can find someone like him.
What if we hadn’t found out about him? Or what
if we lived in some other city and couldn't find someone like this? I keep
thinking about that. What if?
But we did find him. He came to our house on
Wednesday and got right to work. He pulled Shelby out of our family, as far as
insurance is concerned. Jeanene’s company has to cover her for 18 months because
of the COBRA law. If it is just her, the cost of COBRA drops to $300 a month. In
18 months that benefit will run out and she can go into the Texas pool for the
uninsured. Even this specialist admits that no one will ever cover Shelby for
anything as long as she is on the medication that is making her well and
keeping her from harming herself. Ironic, huh?
He knew of an insurance company - a good one -
that will take someone like me, someone who takes Wellbutrin or some other drug
for depression. They won’t cover me for mental health benefits - that’s over for
me - but they will at least cover me for regular medical coverage. And it’s
affordable.
You put the whole thing together and it comes
out to about $900 a month. That figure includes my medication, which I will have
to pay for myself from now on. That’s double what we were paying through
Jeanene’s work, but we can swing that. It’s going to be hard but we can do it.
So the story has a happy ending. Or at least a tolerable one.
So why am I telling you all of this? Because
this is what people are going through in our country. Jeanene and I work hard.
We’ve never been unemployed. In fact, for the last decade, we’ve had three jobs
between us. We don’t smoke and we don’t take risks. We’ve never had a single
major medical incident. You’d think a company would want to insure us.
No. And we came just that close to being
uninsured.
For many people this is never an issue because
they work for companies with insurance plans. If our church were large enough to
have a plan, we could have moved from Jeanene’s plan to my church’s plan. With
group insurance they have to take you if you currently have coverage.
That’s great for families with that option. But
what about families that only have one person working for a company with
insurance? If that person loses their job or can no longer work for any reason,
you have to get individual coverage. And with individual coverage, they can turn
you down for any reason they want.
You want to know something else? If you apply for
insurance and get turned down two or three times, that goes on your record.
Every time you get denied, other companies become even more unwilling to
consider you. With two or three rejections in your history (for any reason), you
can become uninsurable pretty quickly.
What I’m saying to you is, hard-working people
who are physically healthy sometimes can’t get health insurance. It almost
happened to us. If we hadn’t found this man and our insurance had lapsed for
more than 60 days, then we would really have been in trouble. Because being
uninsured is yet another big mark against you in the system.
People - it’s time we admit that the system
isn’t working. We are going to have to have some kind of a national health care
program. It won’t be perfect, but it will be better than what we have now. We
need it, and we need it quickly.
The first pastor of our church left rather
suddenly in 1992, five years after the church was formed. I was 31 years old,
and when the church asked if I would take his place I was happy to do so, though
I did not anticipate the troubles that would come with that transition. It's
always hard when a beloved pastor leaves a church. There is the grief that comes
from the loss of that relationship. And everyone knows that things will likely
change with a new minister. It’s a hard time for a church, a time of
uncertainty.
When our first
pastor left, a number of families left with him. I think we lost about a third
of our church in a matter of weeks. That was not a good sign, and I knew it. It
was a sign that we had been too dependent on his personality for our identity. I
tried not to take the people leaving personally, but I was young and took
everything personally. I wondered if their departure might be a sign that they
were uncertain about me. I was worried and for good reason. New churches are
fragile things. If a new church begins a downward spiral, things can fall apart
rather quickly. Some new churches don’t survive because they couldn’t weather
their first major crisis. I became anxious and found myself trying hard to keep
the remaining families happy so they wouldn’t leave as well.
In truth we were
in a difficult spot, but giving in to that kind of anxiety is always a bad move
for a minister. However, I was young and doing the best that I could at the
time.
All of this
happened about the same time that I met rabbi Jonah and his friend Robert in a
computer store. I overheard Jonah talking about some kind of Hebrew program. I
was interested and asked some questions about it myself. Before I knew it the
three of us were having coffee together.
Jonah and Robert
were both bound to wheelchairs, Jonah because of polio and Robert because of
muscular dystrophy. For the next year or so, I would go to visit them, load them
into their van – which was equipped with a wheelchair lift – and drive them
around town. We talked about theology, the scriptures, and the relationship
between our respective faith traditions. I liked them. Jonah could be a bit
overbearing at times, and he was certainly manipulative. I was aware of how he
always managed to talk me into doing things for them even as I was letting him
get away with it. I had never had friends in wheelchairs before, and I was
rather over-anxious to please them and be nice. And, as I said before, I was
young and fairly naïve about a number of things.
That Spring I thought it would be nice for our
church to have a Passover Seder together. The Passover meal is strictly a Jewish
observance, but many Christian churches - recognizing our obvious historical and
theological dependency on Judaism - will sometimes have a Seder meal as a kind
of religious education exercise.
And, I thought, who better to lead us in this
sacred meal than my own rabbi friend, Jonah? When I asked him, Jonah was
obviously pleased and readily agreed. At the time Jonah was not serving a
congregation, so I thought this would be nice for him. And I thought our church
would benefit from the cultural and spiritual exchange. I admit that I was also
hoping something like this would help solidify our sense of community as we
continued to adjust to the loss of our pastor and the families who left with
him. It was all good in my mind. There were no downsides that I could see.
As the time for
the Seder grew close, Jonah provided us with a list of supplies and detailed
recipes for the various dishes involved in the ceremony. A number of women in
our church took the recipes and prepared the food according to his instructions.
We had about 30 people planning to attend, which was roughly half of our church
at the time. The afternoon before the meal, we setup tables in a church member’s
home and made ready for Jonah and Robert’s arrival.
When I got to
their house, Jonah and Robert were dressed in their finest clothes and were both
wearing ceremonial yarmulkes. We chatted excitedly on the way, and when we
arrived everyone crowded around them both, making them feel welcome. The people
of our church sort of felt like they knew Jonah because I had mentioned him and
the things he had taught me about Judaism in several sermons.
The meal began and
Jonah carefully explained the meaning behind all of the symbols and dishes. The
Passover Seder is an allegorical meal that commemorates God leading the children
of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Each dish has a specific meaning. The whole
thing was fascinating for about 45 minutes. Then the food was gone and Jonah
began speaking on a variety of topics, apparently whatever was coming to his
mind. Things began to drag a bit. Jonah kept talking. He got lost in what he was
saying and wasn’t paying attention to what was happening around him. I noticed
people reaching the limits of their attention spans and disconnecting. Children
were getting fussy and fidgety. People began to rest their heads in their hands
and look around the room. Being ultimately responsible for what happens at
church events like this, I began to be very uncomfortable about the
deterioration of interest in the room.
Jonah, on the
other hand, seemed to have no awareness whatsoever of the feedback their body
language was giving him. He was lost in the beauty of his tradition and spoke on
and on, his eyes partially closed and his voice a grinding monotone. Twenty
minutes turned into thirty minutes and then to forty-five. I kept looking for an
opening so that I could break in and draw this thing to a close, but there were
no pauses and I couldn’t catch Jonah’s eye.
Finally, just when
I thought the people in the room couldn’t stand it any longer, Jonah paused and
took a deep breath. Apparently he had reached the end of his long discourse.
When everyone sensed he was coming to a close, they reconnected with him. There
was no ill will in the group. After all, he was rather elderly and our guest.
But still, I could tell that everyone was happy this was finally coming to an
end. And so was I.
Jonah looked
around the room very deliberately, as if taking measure of the people. Then -
and I will never forget this moment if I live to be a hundred - he carefully
pressed the fingertips of his two hands together in front of him, and said, “Now,
let me explain to you why it is simply not possible that Jesus could be the
messiah.”
Having relaxed a
bit as he seemed to be coming to a close, these words hit me like a
sledgehammer. I felt a rush of panic. I looked around the room to see mouths
dropping open. Children were looking curiously at their parents. “Mommy, what’s
that man saying about Jesus?” One or two people looked a little angry. A man
named Steve, one of our few new members, crossed his arms and looked like
someone had suggested to him that our church take up communism and maybe devil
worship while we were at it.
If this happened
now, I would have stopped him. I would have simply stood up and said, “Jonah,
thank you for coming. Time is late and we’d better bring this to a close. Blah
blah blah.” No problem. But I was young and nice and anxious, and I had not
imagined myself in this position. So Jonah spoke for five or six minutes and
explained to us all the reasons why a central truth of Christianity simply could
not be true.
I really don’t
remember anything that he said. I was too busy looking at the faces of the
people and wondering how many of them might not come back. It was one of the
most awkward and uncomfortable things I’ve ever sat through. When Jonah finished
his diatribe, the evening was over. I felt absolutely miserable. I was the new
pastor of this small, still-grieving church, supposedly a gatekeeper of the
content of our worship, and I had set this whole thing up. I wondered if there
might be an emergency business meeting later that night which would result in me
being asked to leave.
I loaded the two of them into their van in the
darkness. I didn’t know what to say. I was hurt and angry that he would put me
in such an awkward position. I stared straight ahead as I pulled the lever that
lifted their chairs up into the van. As I pulled out of the driveway, Jonah
said, “Well, I think that went pretty well, don’t you?” I said nothing. I just
drove them home.
Apparently it never occurred to Jonah that it
might be somewhat offensive to show up as a guest at a Christian church, be
given a platform, then say such difficult and frightening things in a group of
families with children. I really don't think he had any idea that what he had
said was painful for the group. He was lost in the beauty of his tradition and
blundered clumsily through ours without thinking much about it.
As it turned out, almost everyone thought it
was rather funny. Some saw how bad I felt about the whole thing and felt badly
for me. Nothing came of it. Well, Steve and his family left the church, but they
were probably going to leave anyway. And honestly, I really didn't mind seeing
them go. Steve was a pretty angry guy. Something or other would have eventually
pissed him off anyway.
Nothing like that ever happened again with
Jonah. He and Robert and I remained friends. I never said anything to him about
the event. Maybe I should have, but I don't know what that conversation would
have done for anyone.
And maybe it was a good thing for us to have
experienced after all. Because Christianity is the dominant religious expression
in our culture, Christians are usually on the other side of these situations. We
are often the ones who pray at gatherings of Christians, Jews, and others and
use the name of Jesus in ways that must make our friends uncomfortable. At every
turn, the words and symbols of Christianity blare out of radios and shout from
the street corners. Secular people and those of other faiths are often left to
stand in silence while our words of faith swirl uncomfortably around them.
Having once been on the painful side of a
collision between religious traditions, my suggestion is for all of us is to
cultivate a healthy sense of humor and a deliberate tolerance in mixed
companies. Our philosophies, theologies, and religious practices are bound to
collide sometimes. It's going to happen. And sometimes when it happens, no one
meant any harm. Most of us are guilty of mental lapses now and then. Our
continued good will and the cultivating of cooperation between religions is far
more important than any theological point you might want to make.
And if perchance someone from another tradition
says something that rubs you the wrong way, remember that they have no power
over you and your faith. Let the event be something that we learn from and not
something that tears us apart.
rlp
Note: I first wrote about
Jonah and Robert in this story.
Later I wrote this.
When Jonah died, I wrote about that too.
So we've all been hearing about Web 2.0. It's sort of like the word
postmodern. People say it - you even say it - but the meaning behind it is
slippery.
I've had an intuitive "feel" for Web 2.0 for a
long time. That's what brought me to blogging, strangely enough. I wanted to
write and "felt" that this was a good way to do it. I'm rather stuck between
traditional media and social media. I did write a book, but it didn't sell that
well, and I don't care enough to try to do anything about that. I do write for a
magazine, but I send them traffic with my blog. Where do I fit in all this?
Once traditional media sources were the
gatekeepers, the lords of information. And we needed these experts. We still
need them, but we need them in different ways. In the new world of information,
millions of people write and tag information either formally with tagging
systems, or informally by linking to something they like. Good, reliable
information rises to the top through a fascinating system of trust and
reputation. Break that trust and you'll find your links disappearing quickly and
your traffic dwindling.
We need experts to help tag information and
create the links and the networks. You won't be as much of a star as a columnist or
anchor-person, but you will be in the game. You probably won't be in the game if
you can't let go of traditional media ideas.
Write well. Write about true things. Write
responsibly and use the best information you can gather. People will read you and tag you and link
to you. Good information has a way of rising to the top. Not all good
information rises to the top, but that's always been the case. Not every good
writer was published in the old system either. Occasionally some junk gets
through, but that's always been the case as well. Trust me on this: if you are a
writer, you have a
better chance in this new world. More good writers will be read in our new world
of networked information.
If these changes threaten or anger you, join in
the conversation. But PLEASE resist the juvenile urge to find some single perceived flaw
with the Internet and trumpet it loudly and with glee. e.g. the
Wikipedia critics who keep telling us that bad
information could get in. GASP! REALLY? I'll keep that in mind as I weigh the
benefits of this massive and constantly updating information network against my
2001 Encyclopedia Britannica.
This developing information system isn't perfect.
No system is. Would you like us to list the flaws inherent in newspapers and
television news? Do you really want to compare the amount and quality of
information that a motivated person could gather 25 years ago with the information an experienced internet
veteran can gather in 20 minutes today?
Check out this video. It tells the story pretty
well.
What if you and I could sit across the table
from each other tonight, under the stars? What would you say to me? Some people
say, “I’ve read a lot of your writing, you know?”
“Yeah?” I say.
There’s not much to say after that. “Thanks”
doesn’t seem to work. “That’s cool” sounds arrogant, like it’s somehow cool to
have read things that I wrote. Mostly I just hold still until the moment passes.
“Is that weird?” people sometimes ask. “Is it
weird to suddenly find out that some stranger knows a lot of personal stuff
about you, and you don’t know anything about them?”
This really does happen to me. It happened to
me last week, as a matter of fact. A guy named Gary at a coffee shop. Really
great guy. English accent. We ended up talking for about two hours.
“No,” I say. “It’s not weird because I don’t
think about it. It’s like it’s not happening.”
That’s the truth. It’s as if someone said, “I
saw you naked two weeks ago.” Yeah? Well, you’re not seeing me naked now, so I
guess it doesn’t bother me too much unless we keep talking about it.
Now if I could ask you something – anything – I
would say, “Do you believe in things that we might want to be true, but for
which there isn’t a lot of hard evidence, maybe no hard evidence at all?”
I’d be trying to ask if you are a faith person.
Any kind of faith person. Maybe you believe in Buddha, or Jesus, or God, or
Allah, or any number of other ideas about an eternal being or beings. And if it
turned out you were a faith person, I’d like a follow-up question.
What kind of faith do you have?
Is it frightened faith? You need the comfort of
believing in the stuff your parents taught you about God, and you’re scared
shitless that someone is going to talk you out of it? That’s okay. I've been
there myself. I’m just trying to figure you out.
Or is yours that kind of arrogant faith that
says, “Everyone else must be a complete idiot not to have faith and believe what
I believe.” I hope not, because you seem so nice. Plus, I probably don't believe
what you believe, so now I'm stupid and how are we going to have a decent
conversation once that's established?
Is it desperate faith? Are you trying to hold
onto meaning in a world in which meaning is increasingly hard to find? Yeah, I
get that. I feel you.
Is it stubborn faith, like mine? Are you just
ornery enough to stare down an empty universe and say, “I DEMAND that
there be meaning in these skies.” And then you stare real hard and angry right
into the Milky Way. Then you laugh because of how small and silly you are. You
laugh at yourself, but you keep staring. You ARE going to stare down the
universe.
You know, I’d just kind of like to know what
kind of faith is keeping you in the game these days.
Or.
If you’re really not a faith person – at least
not so much in the obvious and traditional ways – then I’d be REALLY fascinated
and want to know the whole story.
Are you the sort who has always seen the
default human position as NOT believing in magic or gods or any of that stuff?
In your mind the evidence would have to be pretty strong to push you away from
your default position of unbelief. Maybe you’ve never been able to understand
why so many see it the opposite way. Like believing in God is the default, and
you’d better have a damn good reason for not believing.
See I would get that. I would so get that about
you. Because I seem to see just about everything in ways that are the exact
opposite of most people. I know what that’s like.
Are you a kind of arrogant, angry, “only idiots
believe in God” sort of person? I hope not. Because if you are, then I’m stupid,
and how are we going to have a conversation now that my stupidity is out on the
table for everyone to see.
Ooh, are you one of those dreamy and courageous
scientist types, who has such a rigorous epistemology that you just can’t
violate it for mythic reality, no matter how beautiful the myth and no matter
how old it is?
Yeah, see I find that to be romantic. I was
almost you. Just…almost. Sometimes I fantasize about being you.
So when the conversation dies down and we are
both left looking at the stars, wouldn’t it seem like there would be no way we
could remain unchanged? For one thing it would be just the two of us sitting at
our little table beneath an infinite dome of starry mystery. We’d be talking
about all the possibilities of what might be. It seems like there would be no
way we could avoid feeling like brothers or brother and sister, right? Two
humans, pitting their minds, hearts, and souls against the sky and against the
unfolding drama of knowledge and mystery?
It would be sad when we had to part ways, and I
would probably say, “But we can still be friends, right?"
Note: this is rather lengthy and it is an
update about things that are happening in my life. If you are interested in that
sort of thing, read on.
Life doesn't change in gentle curves. What
usually happens is that you move along in one direction, thinking things are
going smoothly, then some event occurs that throws you off-course. Sometimes
these events are things we choose. Sometimes not. There is grief and stress as
you adjust, but soon things smooth out and it feels like your life is "on
track." again.
Jeanene and I have experienced a fair amount of
significant changes in our lives over the last half decade or so. And we're
about to experience another major change. This one is pretty big. It has to do
with that elusive but important thing which all adults must do. We call it,
"Making a living."
A brief history of how we have made our living
so far:
Jeanene and I came to San Antonio in the fall
of 1989, fresh out of seminary. We went to seminary together, both receiving the
standard seminary degree (Master of Divinity) in 1987. We spent about 18 months
doing Clinical Pastoral Education, she at one hospital and me at another. We
came to San Antonio because the Baptist Healthy Care System was hiring a woman
chaplain. They chose Jeanene. I, on the
other hand, had no job at all. Our only daughter was 7 months old, so I was a
stay-at-home daddy for a time. Jeanene worked and made the money. I stayed home,
vacuumed, changed diapers, and took care of Reiley.
It was the hardest job I've ever had. Hands
down, nothing else comes close. Perhaps I'll write about that someday.
After some months, I got a part-time job at
this new and very unusual (and in our minds very attractive) little church.
Covenant Baptist Church was what they were calling it. This was sometime in
1990. Jeanene went to work at 6am and came home at 3pm. I did my work mostly
after 3:00. We did a kind of tag-team thing with Reiley for a time. Another
child came in 1992, and then a third in 1996. We both worked at jobs and at
children. We got by - sometimes barely.
In the early 90s, having sold a G.I. Joe
collection to buy my first computer, I became something of a computer geek. In
1995 I began fooling around on the Internet, which led to designing websites. To
make a long story short, I ended up with a small web design business from 1996
until 2006. During those years I made half of my living from the church and half
doing web design and hosting websites.
Real Live Preacher caught us both by surprise.
I began my blog on a lark, as most of us bloggers do. I did not anticipate how
important writing was going to become to me. Nor could I have possibly
anticipated the popularity of this blog or that it would lead to other writing
opportunities. There was an awkward two or three years where I had three jobs -
minister, web designer, and writer. Of the three, writing did not pay. But I was
unable not to write. I can't explain it beyond that. Once I started writing,
there was no question of stopping.
I somehow managed a complex and difficult
transition away from web designing and into professional writing. That
transition would not have been possible without the help of dear friends. I'm
still working that out, as most of you know. It is VERY hard to make a living as
a writer. Indeed, I haven't yet figured out how to do that. But with a few
people subscribing to Real Live Preacher and with writing relationships with the
Christian Century and The High Calling, I manage.
And it was looking like that was going to be
our lives for some time. Jeanene a chaplain. I a pastor and writer. We were okay
with that life.
But some things have happened. Now everything
is going to change.
Jeanene's hospital was purchased by a for
profit corporation. I have nothing bad at all to say about them, but
administrative requirements began to pile up. Jeanene has been a chaplain for
many years, longer than any other chaplain in the system. She is an amazing
professional, competent, knowledgeable about many facets of health care, and
somehow she has retained a deep compassion for people. Truly, I'm in awe of the
way she continues to walk right into the lives of traumatized people without
fear. Even after 20 years, she cares deeply for them. But in recent years, her
life has begun to look more like the life of a corporate executive and less like
the life of a minister. She has stuck it out and tried heroically to find
meaning in this new world of health care, but doing so has taken a toll on her
soul. I've seen the light go out of her eyes over the last few years, and that
is a terribly sad thing to see.
Around the same time, I began to think about
the idea that a network of branded blogs could be of value to organizations,
particularly organizations that increasingly depend on Internet traffic. I spoke
about this concept to a number of organizations. Christian Century and The High
Calling were both interested and ended up hiring me to oversee this kind of blog
network for their organization.
This new possibility allows Jeanene to do
something that she needs to do. She needs to leave the hospital. She announced
her resignation on November 1st. Her last day is next week.
In the meantime, yours truly is now a
professional blogger. That's fine, but I've been trying to pastor, write, and
setup two networks of blogs. I was doing pretty well until the whole thing with
my book hit. So now I've been a pastor, a writer, a professional blogger, and a
shipping clerk. Did I mention that I'm the one who gets our kids off to school
and gets them home in the afternoon? Well, I do.
It's been an impossible situation, and my
writing has suffered terribly. You can't do everything. I ought to know because
I've tried many times. It doesn't work.
But next week everything changes. Jeanene will
be at home and have primary care responsibilities for the children. Our oldest
is now in college, but the other two are still in school and require all the
things that school children must have. Jeanene is going to resume making her
beautiful prayer beads and take some time to figure out what she will be doing
with the second half of her life. She has worked hard for many years. This
sabbatical time is needed, and she's going to take it slowly, I hope.
And what of me, dear readers? I will be set
free to work. I don't ask much of life - I want to work and I want to write. And
I want ample time to do a good job at both. With my schedule liberated (imagine
a day expanding from 6 productive hours to as many as 12 if needed) I will have
no problem being a pastor, running a couple of blog networks, and writing to my
heart's content.
I doubt I'll get much writing done until next
week. But after that, get out of my way, because rlp is going to explode!
I'm sorry for the delay in reporting back to
you about the final day of training. I got home Monday and was faced with a
number of things that had to be done by Tuesday at lunch. And then I had to fly
to Dallas for a 24 hour board meeting for the High Calling, a nonprofit
organization in San Antonio. I write for them and do some Internet consultation.
I'm now involved in setting up a network of blogs, as I mentioned
a few days ago.
So, what happened on the final day of water
purification training? First of all, the centerpieces were all clean, which I
thought was pretty cute. Seeing them filled with dirty water and then fresh,
clean water is an image that speaks at a gut-level.
We had a worship service on Sunday morning. A
pastor from Costa Rica preached with an interpreter. Edge Outreach is a
Christian organization, but what I like about them is that they are dedicated to
their humanitarian efforts, and not in any way involved in evangelism. As a
Christian, I think we have reached a time where the Church must prove her love
for people. We must help people with NO STRINGS ATTACHED. Then, if someone wants
to engage us with questions about our spiritual tradition, we would of course be
happy to talk. That's the kind of thing that Edge does. I am confident that an
atheist or agnostic person could have joined us this weekend and not been uncomfortable. That person could have attended the worship
service, out of respect, or not.
Afterwards, our final session involved seeing a
kind of "super purification unit" down by the lake. This system involves both
types of purification. Filtering and chlorination. There is some debate among
advocates of each system. Advocates of filtration systems point out that their
systems are extremely simple and easy to use. Chlorination advocates note that the very
specialized and high-tech filters can't be purchased by people in 3rd world
countries. The chlorination system, on the other hand, works as long as a person
can get their hands on a car battery and some salt.
The truth is, different systems work in
different settings. You have to be flexible and bring a system that best helps
the people you are serving. The system in the suitcase by the man in
blue filters the water down to a half a micron. That's a pretty serious
filtering job. The smallest bacteria are about a micron in size. A micron is
millionth of a meter. A human hair is about 100 microns in diameter. The man
in the black shirt is holding one of the ceramic filters.
After filtration, the lake water goes through
the McGuire system and comes out cleaner than any municipal water system.
CLEANER. You really don't need both of them, but this was kind of a super
system.
After that the conference was over and everyone
went home. I spent another night with Darrell and Alice Adams and went out for
fancy beers with a couple of friends of theirs. To my surprise, both of them had
read Real Live Preacher before. One man - Brent - had even sent me an email some
years ago. I was glad that I had answered it. In the last couple of years I
haven't been able to answer them all.
Then I flew home. That's it. I'll brush up on
my knowledge over Christmas and begin getting ready to go to the Dominican
Republic in January. We'll be installing a massive, 8-tank system in a hospital.
I will take photos and blog my way through that trip. I hope you'll tune in
then.
The setting for our training is certainly
lovely. We're here in Louisville as Fall sets in. There are 84 of us at a
retreat center learning how to setup water purifiers.
The centerpieces on the tables at dinner last
night were interesting. Unappetizing, but interesting and appropriate, I guess.
Dirty water in a glass bowl
I've finished the second day of training.
Yesterday we focused on education and preparation. We began this morning with a
visit to a mock village where we had to interview the "local people" in
preparation for a purification installation. In this particular village there
was a chieftain who did not like the suggestion that the water from their lake was
unclean. We had to offer a bribe to get him to agree to let us test the water.
Apparently you run into that sort of thing in some places in the world.
The rest of the day was spent in training on
the portable purification units. Edge Outreach uses the McGuire
Purification system. It's portable, cheap, and it runs on table
salt and a 12-volt battery. These items are easily obtained in almost every part
of the world. Duvon McGuire, the inventor, was at the conference. He's a
fascinating guy. His parents were missionaries, and as a child he caught a
terrible disease from polluted water. He never forgot the experience, and as an
adult he invented this very simple and affordable way of treating water. He
hooked up with the Edge folks fairly soon after he came up with this idea, and
they've put his purification units into action all over the world.
Duvon McGuire at the tent where I was being
trained.
The system is pretty simple. The water is
chlorinated to kill bacteria. The chlorine gas comes from table salt through the
process of electrolysis. The idea is simple, but there is a fair amount of
knowledge needed to set it all up. You have to be able to put together a system
of PVC pipes and valves. The purification unit itself is pretty small; it fits
into a plastic tub. Generally you bring this unit with you and buy the barrels,
pipes, salt, and battery on location. Training a local person to run and maintain the equipment
is the most important part of this whole thing.
Okay so tonight I saw Duvon sitting on a couch,
and I asked him something I'd been wondering about? "Why go to all this trouble
to create chlorine gas and infuse it into the water? Why not just drop in a few
chlorine tablets, like you do in swimming pools?" Thirty minutes later I
retreated from the conversation, my head reeling from the chemistry and physics
in his answer. I'm so tired that I can hardly remember any of it. It comes down
to this: his method is cheaper, better, cleaner, and it doesn't require anything
that people can't get anywhere in the world. It's not easy to supply chlorine
tablets to 3rd world countries. With the McGuire system, they just need table
salt and a battery. As an interesting side note, one of the byproducts of the
process is bleach, which can be used for further disinfecting needs. Very handy
and nothing goes to waste.
Here's an astonishing thing: This
same system that we setup today can handle a tank the size of a small house. It
purifies water at a speed of about 55 gallons a minute. This simple thing can
provide water for up to 10,000 people a day! The Edge Outreach people fly in and
install this thing in a few days at no cost to the people. And all this is done
with no tax money of any kind. Just people helping people.
Putting the pipe system together.
Installing the McGuire Purifier.
Checking chlorine levels.
And here is the machine my group assembled. It
sets at an angle, but that's intentional. The angle helps the gas move through a
permeable membrane of some kind. I've decided not to ask Duvon for a more
detailed explanation.
They don't give out certification certificates,
but I actually know how to install a McGuire Purifier in a 3rd world country,
using local supplies. I'm pretty pumped about that. Tomorrow we finish up with
some presentations on pumps and filtration.
Putting all the equipment and technology aside,
I must say that it's pretty energizing to be around so many people who are
passionate about the idea of going out into the world and helping others. And I
mean helping them in a way that makes a huge impact in their lives almost
immediately. Clean water is such a basic, human need. And if you don't have it,
you suffer immediate and terrible consequences. As always, children in poor
nations suffer the most and the worst.
These are good people. They give me hope, and
just being around them is tonic for my own soul.
Due to weather problems, I arrived in
Louisville KY at about 2:30am this morning instead of 8:45pm last night. I got
about 3 hours sleep after spending 8 hours in the Chicago airport. The good
news is I got to spend some serious time with my email inbox, reducing it from
180 emails down to 4.
Darrell had to be here early, so we left about
6:30 am this morning, arriving at the Edge Water Purification Training in time
for him to help set up some things. It took me a good hour to finally come
awake.
Of course I'm new to this whole "Let's bring
fresh water to the world" movement. And like many people new to anything, I want
to get right down to business. Show me these water purifiers, then send me out
into the world to install them. I'll bring my own socket set.
Well, it turns out there is a little more to
it. Showing up in technologically inexperienced cultures and dropping off
machinery is not a good idea. We learned a lot about the cultures we will work
with. We received a lot of basic nutrition information that we can pass on to
the people who will have the water purifiers. The Edge folks have experience,
and they have found that preparation and education are even more important than
the technology. An advance team goes out (if possible) and does a lot of
education about water issues and health. Sometimes the people don't even know
that the water is the problem. Individuals from the area are recruited to receive special
training to run the machinery. It's easy to run, but then again we are used to
running all sorts of machines.
Sometimes a powerful person in a village might
be tempted to take over the machine and try to sell water. In order to head-off
this possibility, the leaders are told that the water must be free, but they can
make ice, snowcones, and similar things which can be sold.
Only when they are ready will we actually
install the water purifiers.
The first step is an evaluation of the existing
water supply. Edge uses inexpensive bacterial water testers.
Fill the bag half full with water. Mix in one of
the silver bags and seal it. If the water turns dark immediately, that's bad
JuJu. If it turns dark overnight, that's still not good. Clean water will stay
clear.
So all had to go out and test water that we
found around the facility. Most people went straight to the pond.
I know what it looks like, but I got it out of the
pond!
All the bags waiting overnight. We'll know how
dangerous the water is tomorrow. Interestingly, the color is not that important.
Some colored water might just have a little dirt in it. Dangerous water can be
as clear as the water coming out of your sink. The bad little bugs are too small
to be seen.
At lunch we heard from a man who
is from Sierra Leon. He has been in the United States for about a decade. He
went back recently, and he ran out of bottled water. He was forced to drink from
a local hand-dug well that made him very sick. He will be leading a team going
back to give the local people a water purification unit.
I found that
almost 2 million people (95% children) will die this year from simple diarrhea.
Nothing more than our children get, but they have no means to keep them
hydrated, so they just die. So I'm wondering if when we install one of these, we
can look at the children playing and say to ourselves, "Those children have a
chance now."
To close the day we had a
demonstration of the purifying units. We looked at the parts, the operation, and the
assembly. The unit itself fits into a small box. You buy plastic tanks and pvc
pipes in country. It's easier than shipping, and you support the local economy.
The system works by creating Chlorine out of salt. More about that tomorrow.
The purifying unit simply hangs on a plastic drum
with a spigot at the bottom.
Tomorrow: We go outside and have
to put some of these bad boys together ourselves. Then they break them and we
have to identify the problem and be able to fix them. Should be interesting!
I saw him hitchhiking on the shoulder of I-35
the other day. He was walking with his back to the traffic and with his left
thumb stuck out. This was just north of San Antonio, right near the town of
Selma where the old city hall is now a Hooters restaurant, and the only
remaining residential street was cut in half rudely by the interstate in the
late 60s, leaving a string of tattered houses on either side.
He was wearing black, of course. So
melodramatic. I had to laugh.
I pulled onto the shoulder, driving slowly
alongside him. He refused to acknowledge me. I stretched over as far as I could,
with my left hand still on the wheel, and rolled down the passenger-side window.
“I know you see me. Why don’t you go ahead and
get in. I’ll give you a ride to wherever the hell it is you think you’re going.”
He kept walking. I kept the car moving right
alongside him. Finally he stopped, exhaled dramatically, and looked at me over
the top of his glasses.
“You haven’t been returning my calls.”
I wasn’t much in the mood to take his shit.
“Yeah, well I’m the one who has three kids and
a couple of REAL jobs. It’s not like I can just jump out of bed whenever you
call and sit up all night writing everything down. I mean, we have to sleep. You
people don’t seem to understand that.”
He stuck out his lower lip in an exaggerated
pout and mimed playing a violin while making a whiny noise. “Mi mi mi mi mi mi
mi.”
I tried not to laugh, but I couldn’t help
myself.
“So are you gonna get in or what?”
He looked far up the road, as if he was
weighing his options. I groaned and laid my head back on the headrest, looking
up at the headliner. He has no options. He has to get in the car. I know that.
He knows that. Always with the drama, this guy.
“Okay, but I want French toast.”
He climbed into the car before I could reply.
“French toast? It’s like 1:30. I just ate
lunch.”
“I have two words for you. French. Toast.”
I paused for a few moments, looking at him. He
looked back, very confident. He knows I’m going to take him wherever he wants to
go.
“Yeah, all right.”
“Go to Jim’s,” he said. “They have the good
diet cokes in those classic coke-shaped glasses. And they have limes.”
I took the next exit and made a U-turn, heading
back to town. We drove in silence for a bit. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be
the first to speak. That’s his job. Finally he said something.
“Do you even remember any of them?”
“Sure, of course. Listen, I totally respect
your work, man. It’s just I’m so tired. Seriously, sometimes I just can’t bring
myself to get out of bed and get my notebook. But lately, you’ve done some
amazing stuff.”
He smiled and fiddled with the radio knobs.
“Did you like Wednesday night’s?”
“Um, was that the one with the llama from
Napoleon Dynamite, and I was like a sheriff or something?”
“No, that was last week. I’ll give you a hint.
Waterrrrrr….”
“Oh yeah, the island dream!”
“Bingo. What did you think?”
“Oh, I loved it. That was nice. Very cool
images. The island, that was from Perelandra, right? That’s how I pictured it
while I was reading.”
“Yes.”
“I knew it. And that little city with the
winding, medieval streets. That was from Matt’s book, Midwinter, right? The
floating city.”
He nodded.
“Okay, so who is that woman anyway?”
“You know her. She’s your muse, your other
voice, your anima, your inspiration, your…”
“Yeah, fine, right. I read Jung.”
“You really should listen to her, you know.”
“Well, she’s pretty pushy and…” I paused.
“Between you and me, she can be pretty racy. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me. I wrote,
produced, and directed all of them. Listen, we’re not held back by your prudish,
Judeo-Christian so-called ethics. Paganism still rules on the dark side, my
friend. Old school.”
“Whatever.”
I pulled into the Jim’s parking lot and we got
out. My door slammed just a second before his. I held open the door for him and
we sat across from each other in a booth. He picked up a menu and didn’t look up
when the waitress arrived. She looked at him, then at me.
“He’ll have an order of French toast. No
powdered sugar, but bring extra syrup. Link sausages and a diet coke with a lime
in it.”
The waitress scribbled on her pad. “And for
you?”
“I already ate. Just give me a diet coke. Also
with a lime.”
She returned with our diet cokes a minute or
two later. He peeled off the end of the paper wrapper on his straw, put the open
end in his mouth, and shot the wrapper at me across the table. He always does
that, and I never acknowledge it. I just close my eyes when it hits me in the
face, then open them and go right on with the conversation.
He took a long pull from his straw and got
right to it.
“Listen, who do you think you are?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said. Just who do you
think you are?”
“I don’t know how to answer that question.”
“Exactly! And that’s why I’m here today. Listen
to me. I’m serious now. Listen.”
He leaned forward and motioned with his hand
for me to lean forward as well. When he spoke, it was in a whisper.
“Your whole life has become like a house of
cards. All masks. All roles, do you get me? Husband, father, preacher, pastor,
writer, good Christian boy, friend to the needy, everything that everyone who
meets you needs you to be. You can’t keep it up. Do you understand me? You’re
going to get yourself into some serious trouble.”
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t stop being
any of those things.”
“I know, that’s why I’m here. Just listen to
me.”
“Okay, I’m listening.”
“Look, I’m all for your doctor and the little
white pills. That’s fine, but that’s not the only thing that’s going on, okay?
Don’t buy into that chemical, pharmacological, bullshit worldview. That stuff
helps, but it’s not the only thing. Do you get what I’m saying?”
I nodded.
“Listen to her. Don’t disrespect her.”
“Ugh, I hate that.”
“What?”
“When people use disrespect as a verb. It’s
like fingernails on a chalkboard.”
He sighed and looked up at the ceiling, then
back at me.
“Fine, don’t be disrespectful to her. I don’t
care how you want to say it, but she’s speaking to you right now like never
before. Every night. When you drive around and think about all that stuff and
talk to yourself, that’s her speaking. You listen. And I don’t care about your
sleep or any of that. Just listen to her.”
“Okay, but then what do I do?”
“You don’t need to know any of that. You just
listen.”
The waitress returned with two fresh cokes and
his French toast. She laid the plate in front of him and he dug right in. I
caught her eye and said, “Thank you very much.”
He flooded his French toast with syrup. I
winced. He picked up one of the link sausages with his left hand and took a bite
out of it. While he chewed he swabbed a piece of toast around in the syrup with
his fork, then popped it neatly into his mouth between chews. He spoke with his
mouth full of food.
Zuh Thying is, Sees got you, gyot a hode of
you.”
He swallowed, pointed his fork at me, and
continued.
“You gotta remember that all of us down below,
we never lie. We tell the truth. It’s all we know how to do. You people up
here...” He waved his fork around, sending drops of syrup flying.
“You people are all liars. You can’t help it, poor saps, but you lie to
yourselves all the time.”
“So once again I’m to believe that you came all
the way out here for my own good. Just because you care about me or love me or
whatever.”
We stared at each other for a moment while he
chewed and swallowed a massive bite. His head tilted a little to one side, then
he reached out his hand and gently pressed his palm to my cheek.
“Of course I love you. Of all the loves you
will experience in this life, mine is the most true. Because I know you inside
and out, all the way to the bottom and back up. In and out, up and down, light
and dark. You’re a little too preoccupied with yourself sometimes, but you’re
precious. I adore you.”
I stared into the top of my diet coke, stirring
the soggy lime wedge with my straw. I nodded.
“Okay, tell her I’m trying to listen. I am. I
mean, I will."
"Good!" he said, snapping his head down quickly
in one sharp nod before turning his full attention back to the French toast.
"That's all we ask of you."
I love looking at old photographs;
it's the closest thing to time travel that I know. I find myself staring at
century-old black and white photos taken on the streets of large cities. I look
at the people. I search their faces, wondering what was going on in their minds.
Often they are turning toward the camera—an item that was much less common
then—with a shocked expression. They seem as fascinated to be a part of the
captured moment as I am to witness it.
Here's an odd question: How much
time is captured in a still image? The shutter speeds of the earliest cameras
were so slow that in some old photos you see the ghostly, blurred images of
people who were walking by while the shutter was open. It's as if the camera was
trying to show a full second of reality in a single image...
