Vancouver, Canada

Hi, Americans!

We just returned last night from four nights and days in Vancouver, BC. Chinatown was on our list of places to visit. We had been there briefly in 2006, and we returned to spend more time this year. It was my first visit to another major city (Vancouver is Canada's third largest and North America's second most densely populated city) since beginning the worship ministry through Operation Nightwatch in downtown Portland.

I saw Vancouver and Chinatown through new eyes, through the lives and condition of some of the folks on the street. This and upcoming posts will highlight some of the quirks and contrasts of street scenes in another city.

The Potter's Place Mission is on Hastings Street, just on the edge of Chinatown. The folks above are waiting for the mission to open to get coffee and perhaps a meal. It is 2-3 blocks from the heart of the hard-core drug and mental illness population's hangout. One door, three crosses. The folks on the street here are the ones in better shape, of course. Some can't get that far--or stay that focused.

One mile to the west is the financial capital of western Canada--and more tourists from more countries than most Americans know about. But the cross is here at the Potter's Place Mission serving the few.

But He answered them, "You give them something to eat." (Mark 6:34a)

In upcoming posts I'll be doing a daily series of reports and reflections from the Vancouver trip. Stay tuned.

Shalom,

Pastor Roger

Puppeteer. Or...?

So what do you think, King (or Queen) Solomons out there? Are the parents innocent or guilty? If guilty, of what?

I'm talking about the Worthingtons who are on trial in Oregon City following the death of their toddler who had a large cyst on her neck. The cyst was benign and could easily have been drained and treated. Instead, it swelled when the child developed a cold. It closed off the airway and she essentially died of suffocation. The parents and family prayed and laid hands on the girl. They say in court that they did all they could. They don't believe in doctors or medicine. They believe that their only recourse in the face of illness and disease is prayer.

And if the child dies (doctors say she could easily have been saved, even on the day of her death), it must be God's will.

But if it's God's will--and the faith and earnest prayers of loving family who have thrown all other sources of help overboard can't or won't change God's will--then why pray?

Is God the great puppeteer? Is it all predetermined, choreographed, cast in something harder than diamonds, more durable than titanium, more eternal than gravity? Or does God give us prayer and then some? Does God give us the tools of healing to free us to serve other people? Or does God only tell us to pray faithfully while perpetually taunting us with random answers? Is God the Great Physician and Healer or the Great Arbitrary Manipulator?

Does God give some people insight and make other people blind? Is God constantly playing games with us, constantly changing the rules and the scores, so that even when we think we have enough faith we end up hearing God push the buzzer and chant, "Ennnhhh! Sorry! You lose. Shoulda prayed HARDER and it might have worked out. Your fault."

Or does God want us to get off our buns and use every tool and opportunity for healing to the max? What does it mean to pray, "Thy kingdom come; they will be done?"

Last October we took Jean up to OHSU to have her head taken apart and put back together. We prayed for healing before, during and after the surgery. We prayed for the team while the work was going on. We used every tool God gave us. I don't trust or love God less because we had one of the very best neurosurgeons in the country working inside her skull. I thank God for the abundance of the gifts we were given.

I think God has cut the marionette strings and wants us to stand on our legs like the people he made us to be.

Shalom,

Pastor Roger

Golden Calf

Worship fest. That's what we're having at the Staples Center in LA today.

We scoff at the biblical story of the golden calf built by Moses' brother Aaron when Moses was presumed KIA on the mountain top in prayer and receiving the Decalogue from God. God shoulda seriously gone for a higher baud rate in his analog data transmission system back then. The current fourth grader blindfolded could out-text God today a zillion to one. And then there was the painfully slow backup process when the first Decalogue was destroyed by Moses' temper. Wow! All over what the people were worshiping when Moses got back to town.

Yeah, it's about what we worship.

Years ago when I was working long hours and driving home in my little 1971 Honda 600 sedan I kept the radio on to stay awake. The only station my bad antenna would pick up on the AM radio was a station that broadcast Bruce Williams' three-hour nightly calli-in show about money, small business and entrepreneurship. Ol' Bruce won my heart. He had learned so much the hard way: by experience. And he was willing to share it all. He always advised people to learn a business by working for someone else already in the business and to invest in themselves through education and training. Timeless, sound advice.

I also liked Bruce because he was a (former) pilot. Nearly killed himself in the crash of his Cessna 182. Like many people who get overcommitted and overstressed, he thought he was God and could/should do it all. Had to get somewhere as though the world depended on him. Nearly died and learned the world did not depend on him. Turned his life around and instead of doing it all helped as many other people as he could.

One night somebody asked Bruce if he didn't want to leave the small potatoes of radio and take his show on TV instead. "No way!" Bruce replied. "I get three hours. Three hours every night on radio. That would be impossible on TV. On TV, the Second Coming of Christ would only get 15 seconds--45 seconds max on a slow news day."

So when a dead pop star or a dead president gets a whole day's worth of coverage on TV, radio, the Internet and via global hookup in movie theaters it tells us the Golden Calf is alive and well. The calf has turned into a bull that has bulldozed his corral to smitherines.

Yes, Michael Jackson could sing. Yes, he could dance. That's not gone. We can hear it all, see it all endlessly on CD, DVD, etc. It is immortal for as much as we want to wallow in it.

But the accolades will ignore the man's disfunctionality and his abuse of children. The accolades will be about self-pity, how much we miss him, how badly we hurt now. Oh, poor fame and dzzle-deprived us! Wah, wah, wah.

Gimme a break.

Black Elk had a definition for gold which was of no value to the Lakotas because it did not promote or sustain life or teach wisdom. But to the Wasichus (white people), gold was "the yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy", as Black Elk put it. Yeah, see who ended up owning the Balck Hills?

Find someone every day who needs your help. They are as close as your street and your block. Don't blink or succumb to idol worship. Or you might miss the Christ walking among you. After all, you might have spent more than the necessary 15 seconds texting, Facebooking and idol worshiping and not noticed His arrival.

On a slow news day, you might even get 45 seconds. Can't even order a latte in that time.

Sahlom,

Pastor Roger

PS The "American Idol" road show starts in Portland. Good grief!

That Declaration of Independence

It wasn't the first or only such document, the one signed and adopted in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776. But it's the one we know and hang our hats on today. And don't forget that the name of that city means "friends/lovers of brothers".

So read it at: http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm

Don't just focus on the unalienable rights. Read the whole thing. Does it make assumptions and judgments about people that stick in your throat or conscience today? I hope so. In the same way that once having had a car crash as a result of carelessness or recklesness can make one a better driver, I'd hope that a fresh reading of the full text of the Declaration would make us alert to avoid the same kind of oversights and misjudgments of people today.

The ninth chapter of the Gospel According to John is aobut seeing and blindness, both the physical and the intellectual/spiritual kinds. And there is a difference between being unable to see and refusing to see.

Self-check questions for the day: What have I ever refused to see? What have I refused to see lately?

God, give us vision. Amen.

Pastor Roger

Find The Cost of Freedom

"Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground.
Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down..."

The words above are from a Crosby, Stills and Nash song. Another day, another time. And before them, Janis Joplin had sung that "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose..."

Freedom is a dangerous word. It's what your adolescent dreams of and what your teenager asserts by violating your rules, common sense, wisdom and domestic tranquility. They are certain that (their) best parents in the world are oppressors who need to be fought with guerilla tactics. Sometimes gorilla tactics.

Ever thought about how the word freedom gets used? Between '03 and '08, it was often used like a spear to impale an enemy we did not really know as well as our own citizens who wondered if we as a nation were doing the right thing. Or doing the right thing all wrong.

How free are you? How'd you get that way? When 90% of the people under the age of 35 have decided to tatoo themselves, did they freely make that choice? Wasn't it those who didn't tatoo who really expressed freedom, the freedom to not follow the crowd?

Independence Hall, Philadelphia, PA. July 4, 1776: white men met for several days and compiled their lists of grievances against King George III of England. They actually had little to say about their vision for a new country except to emphasize their "unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." They asserted that any legitimate government shoudl derive its authority from the consent of the governed.

For all their visionary wisdom, the Colonies' brightest and best could not have conceived that these rights should apply to people of color--any color but white. Oh, and how about the consent of the governed? Slaves were more than governed by the ruling authority. When had they given their consent? What were any such persons to make of the writers' "firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence?"

And how about the charge that King George had endeavored to incite "the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions?" Did they just think that--or did they know that. Wounded Knee hadn't happened yet. But a thousand little ones already had.

A grievance against King George was that "he has endeavored to prevent the population of these States" and that he wouldn't open more land to appropraiton for settlement. As if the land had ever been ol' George's to give away in the first place.

I guess the people already living here weren't people. And neither were the African slaves brought in to do the work of the tobacco, cotton, sugar and rum trade.

When it's good for the economy of the wealthy, all manner of ideas about humanity can be invented. And the people who did so in our Declaration of Independence weren't a bunch of pagans or atheist God-deniers. They were either deists or Christians. We use God to back up our perverted ideas about humanity all the time. But are they the truth?

Jesus said knowing the truth would make us free.

Were the representatives in congress in Philadelphia free? Were they already free in their minds, thus enabling them to declare themselves free on paper? The Continental Army did not yet exist. No formal battles had been fought. And when they were fought, they were usually not very favorable to the Continentals. Lord Cornwallis surrendered to an insurgency that had become more touble than it was worth to the Crown. But that was years away.

To be a part of that insurgency, people were willing to die and did so. Did their death make them free? Or were they already free, thus willing to die? When they were ultimately successful, most of the colonies had absolutely no idea what to do next or how to form and be a nation. It came close to ending very badly.

How many Americans did the Vietnam War free? And from what? By the time that conflict in SE Asia came about, the United States of America had become a big, ponderous political system, though still a relative lightweight by comparison to today. Such systems are like a monstrous machine with exposed chains, sprockets and gear trains. People get caught in them all the time. Does getting caught in the system make anyone thus caught up free? Whom does it free? Leaders from responsibility and accountability? Citizens from responsibility to learn, think and act? Have we actually made Janis Joplin's words come true?

What truth do you know today makes you free? And do you just think that truth, or do you know it? Has it been tested in the face of someone you regard as unhuman? Does it stand up to the humility test?

Humility is always a mandatory safeguard when national pride is on display. It's like the fire extinguishers and buckets of water I hope people have for their fireworks tonight. It's like a seat belt in your car. If you aren't wearing it, it's far too late to put it on when you really need it.

Have a humble American birthday today. Find a humble truth that frees you. And hang on for dear life.

Shalom,

Pastor Roger

54-40 or Fight!

James Polk campaigned for president on the slogan. Extending the boundary of the Oregon Territory to 54 degrees, 40 minutes north latitude--well into what we today know as Canada--was the goal.

Didn't happen. As President, Polk negotiated a boundary with the British at 49 degrees north latitude via the Oregon Treaty of 1846. That's where it still is today.

54. 40. 49. 46. Similar numbers have been in the news lately. After revising methods to be more accurate, the state has finally come up with high school graduation and dropout rates that echo some of the above numbers. In the Portland Public Schools, 54% of students graduate. That means 46% don't. Out here where we live in the Reynolds District, 51% graduate. 49% don't.
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2009/06/high_school_dropout_rates.html

So where's the fight?

Hint: the fight is not about dollars for education, although that wouldn't hurt. In the Reynolds District, class sizes will be going into astronomical numbers in the high 30's. Those class size numbers might have worked OK with the more collected and disciplined kids of the 40's and 50's. With today's attention deficit, overstimulated, fragmented and displaced kids and teachers whose disiplinary hands are tied, they are a disaster. Complete, total disaster.

But more importantly, where are the parents? Who is bringing into this world children that are not disciplined, loved, motivated, held accountable and socialized enough to finish high school in four years? High school, for God's sake! It ain't that hard!

Our daughter who attended a private Catholic high school worked her butt off and learned to write. At Portland State University, she spent half her time helping friends who came out of public school--some of them on scholarships--write papers.

Where's the fight? And where are the churches in this fight? Still wasting time trying to defend marriage from gay people's assault when the assault is and always has come from married heterosexuals?

Churches, and anybody we can join forces with, need to be about helping students graduate. But even more urgently, we need to be about Remedial Parenthood 101, Remedial Adulthood 101, Remedial Responsibility 101.

Remedial Love Your Neighbor As Your Own Family 101.

Where's the fight?

Shalom,

Pastor Roger

Stranger on the Shore

Eons ago, clarinetist Acker Bilk had that marvelous instrumental hit record, "Stranger on the Shore." So different from pumped lyrics and overstuffed electronic sound of many current recordings.

Mark 5:1-20. Jesus comes ashore after weathering and calming the storm in a voyage across the Sea of Galilee. Biggest storm he has to calm is the fears in his young follwers' hearts. But as Mark will show us, it's less dangerous in the middle of a storm at sea when Jesus is aboard than safe on the shore without him.

Jesus is met by the demoniac of Gerasa (probably Gergesa in reality; texts aren't always consistent on their geography). This case of severe mental illness recognizes Jesus and calls him by name--even when the other people in the area don't. Mentally ill people have faith. Too.

How do we respond to them? Fear. How do we respond to the healing when that happens? Oft-times with fear as well. We say it's bad for the economy, coming at the price of 2,000 pigs. "Leave us," Jesus of Nazareth, "the devil we know is less threatening to us than the one we don't. It's the economy, stupid!"

Mentally ill people sometimes focus on the apocalyptic imagery of the Bible. It seems to harmonize with their overly vivid view of reality. For that, we can and must forgive them. It's when so-called sane people do the same--to the exclusion of recognizing the kingdom of God among them--that we have to step back and ask what the real definition of mental illness is.

Is it failure to recognize Jesus in the boat? Failure to recognize the stranger on the shore?

Shalom,

Pastor Roger