Memorial Day--A Little Bird Told Me

Back in February, a little bird told me to suggest that Julie Sullivan of The Oregonian newspaper be our featured speaker at the 2010 Memorial Day ceremony at the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Living Memorial. I'm not on the Board but attend the annual dinner just to visit with folks and check in.

Julie turned out to be Plan B. The group had already contacted someone else who ended up with a conflict. VP Ron Cannon took over and contacted our Plan B. Plan B turned out to be a God-send.

About a month ago, the same little bird told me to send Julie an e-mail just to say "Hi!" and to thank her for accepting the invitation. That led to several more e-mails and a couple of phone calls. That led to my invitation to Julie to come up to the annual work day on May 22, a day that was chilly and wet.

She did.

That led her to meet a number of people with significant stories to tell. Stories of blessings and hope. Stories of help and healing. She told them, and now they have life.

Stories of, as she put it, "the gift of Vietnam". I'd never heard anyone call it that before. But Julie brought us many gifts, and there have been innumerable gifts from this traumatic time. Times of great travail do indeed plant great seeds.

We would not always have called them gifts. And we would not have expected to receive gifts from this time.

But gifts they are. And a gift she was, and a gift she has been to countless Oregon military families and their loved ones.

So what a thrill it was to share the microphone with her today. You can share her gift at: http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2010/05/on_this_memorial_day_at_oregon_1.html

And what a joy to know that her gracious words came to us and came into being all through the actions of a little bird.

Now, between you and me, I didn't see or hear any little bird flying around while I was at the computer. But I sure do believe that the Spirit of God was at work in all this.

The same Spirit has care of the souls whose lives we remembered and gave thanks for today.

Thanks again, Julie!

God bless! And God bless all who share the memories of loved ones who gave their all.

Roger


PS. Unless you actually BUY a newspaper, or unless you are willing to actually pay for your ability to view news stories online, true journalists like Julie don't have a revenue source or a job. Think about that. We have a surplus of opinionated bloggers (yes, you can include me) distracting us every which way. Today we have a true shortage of people like Julie who bring us fact-checked stories based on hard-won personal research. There's a difference between story and opinion or hyperbole. Rush Limbaugh, Rachel Maddow and Fox News didn't come up to the Memorial to work and meet people. Julie Sullivan did. All the difference in the world...

From My Cold, Dead Hands

A newspaper.

Something we always took for granted that most Americans now don't. I'm not sure that bodes well for our future as a democracy and a free people, the mountain of the world's computers, "smart" phones and ipads notwithstanding.

The Oregonian's writer Julie Sullivan is telling the story of one of this nation's nearly unknown gems. But it's not just the stone, the landscaping, the expansiveness or the vegetation. It's the people whose stories we are at last beginning to know and treasure.

These are not just the stories of loss in war. They are the stories of people whose lives have been changed and whose lives have been poured out in unimaginable ways in the saving of other lives. They are a gift growing in value.

Read more at: http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2010/05/oregon_vietnam_veterans_livign.html

That's why my newspaper is far more important to me than Charlton Heston's blackpowder muzzleloader. The only way you'll get me to part with my newspaper is to tear it from my cold, dead hands.

Even more and even better to come tomorrow. God bless you, Julie!

And thanks,

Roger

Spare Change?

Spare some change?

Oregon just got word that the state can expect to run $563 million short this year. That requires an immediate 9% budget cut for all state spending. On the school side of things, that could mean (if nothing else changed) the loss of 4,000 teachers next year.

Ouch!

But that's nothing compared to the projected 2011-2013 budget shortfall of $2.7 billion.

That's billion, with a "b". Ditto for much of the decade to follow.

MEGA-OUCH!

Check it out: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf.2010/05/oregon_suddenly_arrives_at_the.html
After clicking on the link, click on "Editorials".

I'm thinking, there goes Jean's job. There goes our health insurance. Same for a lot of other folks. Glad our house is paid for; but now when we should be saving retirement money at the highest rates of our lives, our incomes are the lowest in two decades. And they may go lower. We aren't getting any younger or any healthier.

Across the board, things will feel the fiscal tsunami that's coming. Churches will cut more staff, cut more services, and more will close altogether. Might be a really good time to get very familiar with the model of the house church that ministers in the neighborhood with practically zero overhead. Our neighbors are gonna need it. WE'RE gonna need it--all of us.

And American affluenzics who've never tasted such a time will not cotton to it very well, methinks.

Bricks and mortar operations may have to be severely decreased as overhead becomes unaffordable but the need for us to be the salt, the light and the glue in our communities grows by orders of magnitude.

Change is here. Change is coming. Change is.

There's more than enough of that to spare. We'd better get used to it. Like the megachurch in the area, we're all going to have to "do church different" (sic).


Roger

All The World's A Stage

The young woman in the video was excited. She was leading a quick tour of the church building that a very active and mission minded young congregation will be moving into soon. The younger church is swapping space with an older congregation that no longer fits. A kind of hand-me-up deal.

When she got to the worship space itself, she called the front part of the church, the focal point for all the seats, "the stage". Not the altar platform but the stage. In the full-page newspaper spread for a nearby megachurch, I notice that the focal point of worship looks more like the set or stage for American Idol than the focal point of the floorplan for a Romanesque, Gothic or even a modern church built in the 20th century.

There is no altar. There is no cross. There are video screens, lights and big speakers. There's a clear plexiglass enclosure for the drummer so that he can pound away vigorously without overpowering. What may have in the past functioned as a screen for the actual "sanctuary", the holy of holies in an Orthodox church, the place where the elements of Holy Communion were consecrated in sacred reverence, now functions as a sound deflector. It's transparent so we can see that drummer working his set. We expect to see that, don't we?

One could wonder, what god is being worshiped here--if this is about God at all? Is it the god of culture, the god of performance? The god of entertainment? The god of cool light shows and videos? Is what happens here about worship as the activity and participation of the people (the true definition of liturgy), or performance where one can either sing along and emote or just watch and be entertained by it all?

There are so many things that seem to be happening right: discipleship groups, not just outreach to but actual involvement by new ethnic and language groups.

And yet, I wonder. The only symbol in the entire full page ad, other than the logo of the church itself, is for Seattle's Best Coffee. Not the cross of Christ. What is being said between the lines? Has the cross become such a ubiquitous piece of costume jewelry that churches have had to distance themselves from it in order to not be understood? Or not be misunderstood?

Is it Seattle's Best Coffee that "does church" here? Is that what "doing church different" means? Jesus asked us to follow him. Is that different from doing church? How?

How much of what we think worship is about speaks to our culture? How much speaks to Christ? Does the term "corporate worship" mean something very different from what it did even 20 years ago? Do we understand that difference? And where do we go from here?

Is all the world a stage now? Has the church become one, too?

I hope that when we're not doing church we're still being church. With or without the coffee.

My hero, Joseph Sittler, wasn't much for the coffee. But when he'd lead worship, he'd go buy a bottle of good wine, very good wine, to go along with very good bread. He was insistent that like creation itself, holy communion was not an insipid thing to be dutifully trudged through but a marvelous giift to be enjoyed. So the wine and the bread should actually taste like something. Something good. Something very good.

For that, worship really needs an altar, not a stage.

Happy ponderings,

Roger

Mark 5:1-20 The Man Who Has No Home--and Jesus

Pick a title:

1) Jesus Heals The Gerasene Demoniac.

OR

2) The Human Being Story.

I know which one I like better:

http://www.cstonechurchhome.com/Sermons/html

Thanks to all at Cornerstone.

God bless you on your journey.

Roger

Little Blue Tag

Not this little blank card.

The little blue tag I'm thinking of had a hole punched in it. In the hole was a length of white cotton string.

The string attached the tag to the bag collecting my blood platelets. It was my fourth donation of platelets via the two-hour process known as apheresis.

The Red Cross nurse monitoring the donation progress congratulated me. As my platelets were still being collected, our wonderful system had already identified a recipient in Washington. She is a woman for whom my little platelets are a particularly good match. Now, platelets aren't as demanding of a match as whole blood. So that means that the woman is in a particularly compromised state of health. She needs something her body won't have to struggle with but can put to work right away.

She's probably going through surgeries and chemotherapy, perhaps radiation. Her family has drawn tightly around her in this treatment that they pray will save her life.

We take it for granted that when we need medical care everything will be there. We tend to think that cancer will be defeated and sent packing by pharmaceuticals and skillful use of the knife. We tend to think that our healing is in the hands of the surgeon.

Actually, it's up to our bodies. Sometimes it takes more than one body. Sometimes it takes having one body donate something it makes to another body that can't or doesn't make enough. We have more than enough platelets, all of us healthy people do. We have more than enough to go around. All we need to do is take time out to share a few.

I don't know the name of the woman who received my platelets. But God knows her name. I prayed for her to be healed in some small way by the gift that cost me nothing to give. It doesn't even cost me time. I take along something to read and study while I'm there. I donate in the early morning so I don't fall asleep. It's a blessed experience.

Having the gift of life and health, I can think of nothing better to do but to share it.

Thank you, God. Let the healing begin!

Roger

Church on the Side

It kinda turns your concept or definition of "church" on the side.

That's what we do at this little building owned by the folks who own the one with the big steeple. First Presbyterian is one of downtown Portland's gems. The stone work and windows are great. But the gracious curving lines of the woodwork inside simply cannot be described in words. The grand organ is built right into the woodwork behind the altar.

But the organ wasn't new when the First Presbyterian folks bought it. They bought it used in San Francisco and had it shipped up here. Hmmmm...? Why was such a grand instrument on the market in the late 1800's anyway?

Be that as it may, Julia West House becomes church every Sunday evening at Operation Nightwatch worship. For over three years now, it's been church to a little corner of Portland's downtown folks. Folks like Fred (not his real name).

Fred used to live in Section 8 housing right across the street. He often brought his cheery personality and beaming face to our Sunday worship. Although this section of downtown Portland has half-size city blocks, Fred would not go to either corner to use the crosswalks. Instead, he'd step out the door of his building, listen for traffic, then point himself straight ahead and march right across two lanes of parking and two lanes of traffic to reach us at JWH.

I always worried that the driver of some quiet running Toyota Prius would not see Fred's white cane and be the death of him.

Fred suffered grievously from psoriasis. He suffered even more grievously from the bites of the bedbugs that he could not see. Repeated efforts to exterminate them never rid his building of them completely. Fred didn't rejoice in (or because of) his sufferings as Apostle Paul did. But he always found a way to rejoice and be thankful at worship.

Then, we no longer saw him. Weeks went by. Finally, we learned that he had moved (or been moved) to an apartment up in the hills, miles from downtown. I don't know where he is, so I can't go see him. I wonder if Fred has found a community there or if one has opened their eyes enough to find him. Can he step out his door, take a short walk and be greeted by name? Is he surrounded by people who will set down their backpacks to help him with a plate of food and a chair?

We can be surrounded by walls, covered with a roof and for sure not be houseless. But without a community, we can have secure shelter and still be homeless.

If the better definition of church is a community like the one Fred had at Operation Nightwatch, I sure hope he has found an equal or better one. And I pray that he has forever left those insufferable bedbugs behind.

Not that would be cause for rejoicing!

Prayers for Fred,

Roger