Sign of the Times

In another state I found this sign. I'm glad they are a church that cares. I hope it doesn't mean that other churches don't care. I also hope that it's a way of life, not just a sign on a nice green lawn.

I asked a local what she thought they cared about. She replied, "They care that you know that there is a God."

"Fair enough," I said. "But if I've just been laid off, have lost my health insurance and can't come up with the money for next month's rent and utility bills, do they care about that?"

She offered a general reply that church was not really about those things.

I have a former seminary classmate who is pastor of The Church of Hope in Canyon Country, CA. They have a little church building where they hold worship. But they also worship at another location: their Monday-Saturday thrift store and food pantry set in a strip mall between a liquor store and a pawn shop. On Sunday, they push the tables aside, set up chairs, pray and sing praises among the donated goods.

In the community, this church is not known as The Church of Hope. It is known as "the church that cares". It's not a name or a slogan adopted by a congregational vote after a yearlong study by committee who made a recommendation to the church council.

How wonderful when the community gives us our real name because of who we are, not what we say or think we are. If that's not Christ at work, I'm not sure what could be. May we all be so led. May all the names our community might give us be so reflective of Him.

Pax,
Roger

Changing Landscape

There was once a lean-to with roof beams anchored into the wall of the one-time blacksmith shop. An auto repair business is now in the building where the blacksmith shop was once located. I remember the inside of the blaksmith shop. It had overhead line shafts that ran everything: the metal shear, trip hammer press, drill press, grinding wheels, buffing wheels, metal saw, even the fan for the forge.

The blacksmith did big business welding beads of stellite onto plowshares and cultivator shovels, then shaping and polishing the weld deposit. The dust containing metal particles and polishing fibers went everywhere and settled on everything. Surely in the blacksmith's lungs that must have been blacker than those of a coal miner.

I think the blacksmith who worked in the shop before Harry Teebken was a World War II vet. For some years he had a monkey living out back. He probably had gotten accustomed to being around them in the South Pacific.

Now the lean-to is gone. As is blacksmith work.

Across the street is a portion of sidewalk that once ran in front of a pharmacy. For all of my life, the building in this block was never a pharmacy. It was a feed and produce store where you could buy feed supplements and salt blocks and sell your eggs, cream and butter. That was before dairies became big comercial operations.

Interesting how the Leo Schneider sidewalk reads, though. Sorta looks like a gravestone for the pharmacy. Did it die in 1907 at the age of 16?

Or was the store opened in 1891 and the sidewalk first laid in 1907? Now there isn't even a building behind this section of walkway. There is the city clerk's office and the small USPS buidling. There's a big vacant Marshall's Nursery warehouse, a defunct Conoco gas station and a vacant lot. No pharmacy.

My Mom was born in 1907 and is still going. Leo Schneider Pharmacy is long gone. Changing landscape. Life in small Midwestern towns overtaken by strip malls and Wal-Mart.

R.

Jesus Next Door

Mark 9:38-50. Jesus cautions us about the seriousness of offending children, causing them to stumble.

The JESUS sign on the porch caught my eye. It's on a little house right on U.S. Highway 30 in Arlington, Nebraska. I grew up on a farm 3.8 miles from this house.


In high school, I worked a couple of times for Don who lived in an identical house just to the left of the photo. Don had a Ford C750 cabover truck. On Saturday nights, we would drive to the Omaha World Herald newspaper publishing company in downtown Omaha. There we would pick up bundles of Sunday newspapers and drive them to route distributors in SE Nebraska. Towns like Beatrice, Roca and Wymore--almost to the Kansas border. It would be light before we arrived back in Arlington.

Don and his young wife Carolyn had a bunch of little kids. They had married early. They seemed to be an OK, happy family--although a little too open about some things in front of the kids.

Years later, things went very wrong. Don shot Carolyn, then himself. What a burden to lay on your own children.

I was glad to see the Jesus sign on the house next door. I hope Jesus has moved into the house where the sign is. I hope Jesus has moved into the house where Don and Carolyn once lived. I hope Jesus moves into every house. I pray He never leaves. Pray for the kids.

Pax,
Roger

Homecoming

9/26: Sort of a homecoming at the University of Nebraska campus in Lincoln. Last night I was in Nebraska's capital to see some college fraternity brothers, some of whom I hadn't seen in 20 or 40 years. Most are at the Husker football game today in Lincoln. Now I'm enroute to Portland via Denver.

My arriving flight in Omaha brought together the family members of Spc Don Grella accompanied by the U.S. Army Honor Guard and the Patriot Guard Riders. They will accompany Don's remains home to Laurel, Nebraska. Until recently, Spc Don Grella was listed as MIA. Now that remains have been identified, the status can be changed. It's now official: KIA 28 December 1965.

My Nebraska homecoming was a very fitting day for the return of a fallen soldier who had been missing for nearly 44 years.

Homecoming. Pray for the continued healing of the family and our nation.

Pax,
Roger

Another Country

I'm in another country: My birthplace. The State of Nebraska. It's almost harvest time for the soybeans and corn. Things only need to dry a bit more and the combines will be working overtime.

It's another country. Not because they fly a red flag here with a big white "N" but because many folks see the world differently from where I live.

We are all one country here, but residents of 50 states, several territories and thousands of miles between us.

I listen when I'm here and people speak. That's what we should do.

But if I spoke, I wonder if anyone would listen to me, a man born here but now from another country? I'm not sure I could be heard.

Pray for our country, our leaders and one another. Especially for one another. It's not that I think our country is coming apart. I think it's a lot farther apart than any of us realize.

Meanwhile, the crickets sing their early autumn songs along the quiet roads. And the soybean leaves silently fall while breezes rustle those on the corn. And football is in the air.

Pray for the USA.

Pax,

Roger

Peter, Paul and Mary

Peter, Paul and Mary burst into music all over the airwaves when I was just starting high school. PPM seemed a permanent fixture in American culture.

The album "Ten Years Together" was released in 1970. I never owned the vinyl LP, but I inherited the CD from our daughter Hilary while she was still in college. Hilary has always had a broad range of muscial tastes. I salute her for that.


Back when "Ten Years" came out, ten years seemed a long time to me. After all, my life at that time was only 2.4 times as long. Ten years took forever to pass. So it seemed. The four years of my life owed to the U.S. Air Force were an eternity for a young man to give up.

So, at the time, ten years . . . Wow! That was huge! When PPM disbanded in 1971, well . . . What more could we expect? They'd already been together forever.

1970. That was the year I met Jean. After a LONG and COLD winter in Syracuse, New York, the spring and summer of 1970 were such a God-send of change. Warmth. Green leaves. Love. And tension in the air. Campus unrest. National Guard troops enforcing martial law. Shootings at Kent State University. Four dead in Ohio. Marches and rallies in Washington, DC.

PPM would sing before many gatherings of Americans seeking an end to war or simply looking for an evening of peace. Music--and the lyric of the song--were our national dialogue on subjects we could not discuss with our leaders or our elders or, too often, with our own parents.

I remember one PPM performance at the Onondaga County War Memorial auditorium in Syracuse. The trio had barely made it to Syracuse after one of those Washington, DC gatherings. They were physically exhausted but inspired by the energy of the movement and the overwhelming sense of importance that they and we continue to seek an end to war and a way to build peace.

That was 39 years ago, 3.9 times the duration of ten years together. "Who knows where the time goes?" Judy Collins used to sing. Indeed.

Thank you, Mary, for all you gave us over all those years. God rest you now and always.

Pax,
Pastor Roger

Same-Same

Same-same. I was so surprised to see this title on a children's book cover last week. It was an expression that many of our neighbors often used oh so many years ago in Yalova, Turkey. It could mean, "I get it. I understand. We do things that way too." Same-same.

A new front has opened in the war we seem to be waging against one another as fellow Americans. Last week, Rush Limbaugh said, "This administration is not your average presidential administration. This is not a garden party. This is not a lecture at Harvard or any other university. We are in the process, we are in the midst of an administration that is trying to totally tear down the institutions and traditions that have made this country great."

Really? Totally? Even a half percentage of hyperbole there?

A few days ago, there were Tea Party demonstrations around the country. Hey, I guess you could call me a liberal; but I've been for fiscal responsibility since long before conservatives seemed to adopt it--and then abandon it. But the Tea Party folks had more on the table. One man across the river in Vancouver said, "Our freedoms are under attack."

If either of the above quotes are true, or even partially true, then let me be the first Minuteman taking to the streets to cry, "Not on my watch!"

But what institutions and traditions, specifically? What freedoms are under attack? Substantively how and by whom? If those questions don't have specific answers are are not supported by hard evidence rather than opinion, are they helpful? Isn't that how Germany ended up with the Holocaust of 11 million people (6M Jews, 5M non-Jews)?

"Demand to be shown," said a card included with the first life insurance policy I ever bought back in college. If somebody told me they had something better, or that what I had was no good, I shouldn't just believe their words. I should demand to be shown. Sage advice in any age.

It was once a tradition in our country that women could not vote or own property. Once we had an institution known as slavery. At the time, many folks would have said those two things supported our economy and made our country great. But if instuitutions are not working, are actually keeping us from being what we are to be, shouldn't those be torn down? Shouldn't a new tradition replace an obsolete or destructive one?

Are there times when we can't afford to be real same-same? Is our current struggle over the cost of health care in the U.S. precisely one of those times?

There are a couple of "freedoms" that I hope actually are under attack in our country because they don't work in a free and modern republic like ours:

1. The freedom to be ignorant and uninformed.

2. The freedom to act on opinion and suspicion rather that solid information.

3. The freedom to let fear keep us from actually taking a hard look at new ideas.

4. The freedom to refuse to hear and respect each other.

5. The freedom to be dishonest.

These "freedoms" aren't in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. I hope they never are. On that score, I hope we're always real same-same.

Pax,

Roger