We Hold These Truths...

...to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

The little document drawn up in that hall in Philadelphia back in '76 could have used a few footnotes.  It would be nice to know who the signers of the document considered "men."

Most likely, they thought the definition itself to be "self-evident."  Men????  Why, people like ourselves, of course!

Certainly not people of color, nor the "merciless Indian Savages" (ref., section 10 of the Declaration), could be considered "men" who had been created equal.  Created?  Sure!  But equal?   Equal to ourselves?  Not this side of Eternity!!!  Or the Atalantic.  

We are not so different from these men of 237 years ago.  We have some grand visions, some very flawed ones.  

But here's an oddity for us to consider.  They had mutually pledged to each other "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." 

They said in higher sounding words: 
This is how we will live as of today. 
This is worth living for. 
This is worth dying for. 
So be it!

Amen.

They did not draw up this declaration after years of war, bloodshed and eventual capitulation by the British.  1776 was years before what we call "The Revolutionary War."  The Declaration was not part of the surrender documents signed by the British, after which the American colonists finally sighed, "At last we can think about being free--because we have won a military victory."

No.  They became free when they had declared themselves to BE free of George III of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. 

 Amen.  

Yet, to die for is the number of times we have failed to embody and insist on the most basic concepts of the Declaration.

Or when we have willingly let go of them because we were honestly afraid of being that free.  Or couldn't be bothered to take the effort.   

It's wonderful at this national holiday celebrating the birth of our nation to remember that it was not a military victory that founded it.  Rather, it was the birth of an idea.  Honor members of our military, veterans for sure.  Always.  

But honor others even more highly:  people not afraid to speak and write and live the highest ideals and vision of which we human beings are capable.  Honor our best thinkers.  Especially the ones who are willing to pledge their lives in the cause of these ideas.

Living here requires more of us than being allegiantly inert, dutifully uniformed, steadfastly inactive, loyally blind, unconvinced of the common good.

Living here requires more than complacently thinking that we are kept "free" by a volunteer military that over 98% of Americans will never participate in. 

Freedom is not the same as safety and security with which it is too commonly conflated and confused.  Safety and security exist in the absence of threats and violence.  Freedom exists in the presence of activity.  Freedom exists not in its having but in its doing.  It must be exercised or it asphyxiates.      

In honor of the visionary forebears who thought their way to freedom before anyone ever fought their way, here's Roger's "Pledge of Performance":

I recognize, and I accept the privileges and the responsibilities of citizenship in these United States of America.  And I pledge my very best efforts in the faithful exercise of both my whole life long.   

May such truths become self-evident.  Soon.  Always. 

Amen.

Paper or Plastic? No problem!

http://www.flixxy.com/convert-plastic-to-oil.htm

This Japanese man supposedly has invented a plastic-to-oil distillery.  Hmmmm? 

Seems simple enough, agreed. Several basic questions that come to mind for me:

1) How much energy input is required to achieve the output?

2) Some plastics are more complex compounds than others. What happens with the residues that surely remain with some? 

3) Some plastics surely give off very noxious gases as they are being heated. I doubt that they simply sit in the retort and quietly transform themselves into gaseous petroleum. Are these gases condensed in the water, or do they escape and themselves become a source of atmospheric pollution?

Best way always to "solve" problems is to make as little of the problem as possible in the first place. Nearly all products we make, sell and purchase here are WAY overpackaged and WAY under-durable. I'd like to know more about the plastics distillery, but don't have time to do any research.

Some years back, I looked into the business of motor oil bottles... ugh!  What do we do with those?  Why the near total absence of recycling available for motor oil bottles?  The brand new, unused motor oil that ends up in landfills every year because people are too impatient to completely drain oil bottles before disposing? It's the equivalent of about 3.5 Exxon Valdez oil tankers.  Every year.  Every...  year.  Why? 

Over a decade ago, the US Department of Energy patented a process for cleaning the excess oil from plastic bottles, even the film residue that remains after thorough draining, using CO2 as the solvent. In the process, the CO2 is captured and recycled, not released. So far as I could tell, only one company in CA was engaging in the process several years ago, operating on state grant money that was probably budget axed after the original 2-year grant.
A friend and I once collected several large cases of plastic oil bottles, flattened them, and shipped them down to CA. Of course, the big question is whether more energy was spent in shipping than retrieved by the recycling process.  We felt good for a few minutes, but solved nothing.    

This defies reason, intelligence and civilization, of course. Since motor oil bottles are sold in every community on earth that has motor vehicles, there should be a closed loop system everywhere for the recovery and re-use of these containers. Oil filters, too.  Sure... 
If you want to hear anger and annoyance on the other end of the phone, merely call a local recycling resources hotline and ask the poor person who answers the phone where to recycle oil bottles locally. The usual response is something bordering on "Stop asking me that @#$%^&* question, you *&^% idiot, before I blow my @#$%^&* brains out--or yours if I could just get at you first! I HATE THIS JOB!" 

Should be a local, universal system to do this.  Just as there should be for things like dry cell batteries, compact fluorescent bulbs, shoes and baby diapers for the people who can't or won't wash cloth ones.

Why not?  Simply this. All problems are solvable if we decide we want to. No problems are solvable if we decide that we can't because we have already decided that we won't. Problems aren't problems at all.

People are problems.  Problems go away when our thinking changes.  

Jesus wept...  And I don't think it was over gay marriage.  

R.

Defense of Marriage: A Prescription

I've read comments recently that fear a backlash.  That is, some people fear that the newly empowered supporters of same sex marriage may now unload on portions of the Christian community in the same way they have felt unloaded on in years past.  Maybe.  Mostly, I doubt it.  The tug of war in the legal arena is far from over since same sex marriage is still not permitted in approximtely 3/4 of the states.     

But a little history here, dating back to the civil rights struggles of the 1960's and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  For there to be a backlash, there first has to be a lash. Or, to use a term perhaps coined by President Lyndon Johnson, there has to be a "frontlash." I, too, pray that the backlash to the Court's decisions is not a sequel to the frontlash.

Marriage. Civil union. Life partnership. I hope we all ask ourselves exactly what that means. How do we support and encourage durable, healthy human relationships in any form, marriage specifically?

Since I now have the recognized authority to perform marriages that pass legal muster, I find it a sobering responsibility, given the flawed nature of humanity. I worked long and hard to be recognized and vested with the authority conferred by the ordination by my church. It wasn't a cereal boxtop version or an online instant thing. Worked my butt off for a decade in classes, CPE and internship while working full time. Much to the neglect of home maintenance and retirement savings. All to do legitimate ministry in a position that does not pay.

But I can now marry people legally, and also pronounce the blessing of God on couples who wish to have that. I have married one couple, and I felt good about it. I also just "solemnized before God and witnesses" the marriage of a couple who had already legally been married by a judge some time prior. I don't know for sure how to feel about this couple since they both have personality traits that could be very troubling if they don't manage them; plus, they both have a disastrous previous marriage in their past. My prayer is that the sacred ceremony in which they sought God's blessing serves as a sobering incentive to succeed despite their own human faults.

A local columnist who is herself divorced has written several times about the importance of doing things that support and strengthen marriage. I want to call her to account because she has failed to describe what that would be. Should we enact a marriage "death penalty" by making it illegal for anyone who has ever divorced for any reason to remarry... ever?

Absent the columnist's definition, I offer my own. It's the same prescription I give for eliminating poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, low graduation rates, DWI deaths, drug cartels, sectarian wars, terrorism and world wars: character formation. Better formed, better built, more fully committed human beings. Ultimately, we have no other and no higher calling but to make more of us who better qualify for the humbling, lofty title divinely bestowed on us: God's own handiwork.

Meanwhile, how many married people can recite their marriage vows 90 seconds, 90 minutes or 90 days after the wedding? Or say what that vow actually means? Instead of blowing megabucks hiring wedding planners, people would do much better to spend a few hours actually being marriage planners themselves.

How do we make life together happen for any of us?  How do we make it better than Civil War? 

More on that subject later this week. 

Clothed... and In His Right Mind

They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind...  Mark 5:15

November, 2011.  It was a sunny but chilly day with a stiff east breeze.  In that season of the year, there is nearly always a stiff, chilly wind coming out of the Columbia Gorge when we are fortunate enough to have sun.

I was on the phone with a colleague as I looked out my home office window overlooking the cul-de-sac north of our house.  I blinked, and my eyes confirmed what I had seen first.  Yes, indeed.  The muscular man, appearing to be in his mid-30's, was indeed walking down the street buck naked.

He seemed to be conversing with, or responding to, things I could not see.  At one point, he stopped as he entered the alley between the fence of my yard and the chain link fence around the school athletic field.  Then he walked to the school fence and began to climb it, fingers and toes gripping the diamond-shaped holes in the fence.  He was as agile and strong as a chimp on his play structure.

When he reached the top rail of the fence, the man squatted and rested up there a bit before he leaped down into the schoolyard.  I cringed.  The soles of his feet had been resting atop these sharp, twisted wires supporting the man's full weight...  but he appeared to feel no pain at all. 

Next, he walked in a circle.  Then he returned to the fence, climbed back over and came walking down the street in front of my house.  He came down my driveway, stood in my open garage for a few minutes, before returning to the street, going back to the schoolyard and climbing the fence for yet a third time. 

Oblivious of pain...  oblivious of the chilly wind...  oblivious of all that most of us are attuned to in our daily relationship with the world. 

I had been on the phone to the police dispatcher minutes before, and at last a police cruiser sped across the athletic field and stopped.  The officers kept their distance, not threatening the man, thankfully.  They engaged him in conversation before finally convincing him to enter the warmth of the back seat of the patrol car. 

The man of Gerasa (Mark 5, Luke 8) was clearly in another world from most folks, an alien to them.  Jesus apparently engaged him in another way from most people in the man's life.  The results are stunning.  And I have no doubt that the encounter also changed and informed the way Jesus and his students engaged and related to people after that.

What if we did the same?

Sarah Thebarge did.  It changed her.  It changed a family.  It changed the world.  For good.  For goodness.    http://sarahthebarge.com/theinvisiblegirls/

The divides of culture, class, language and life experience can be every bit as formidable as the divides of mental health and mental illness.  Likewise, the divide of mental illness can be as formidable as all of those other things that clearly exist but are not seen as being so formidable as mental illness. 

Jesus paid attention.  He engaged the person first, always before the labels. 

Sarah paid attention to the invisible girls she met.

What if we did the same?  How much more of the world would be clothed and in its right mind?

A Few Good Men

Kevin's Dad, Delmar, whom we all knew as "Del" when he also worked at AAR Western Skyways, had been a U. S. Marine.  USMC.  At Kevin's memorial service, Del talked about teaching his two children, Kevin and his sister Jerilyn, how to shoot and handle firearms. 

Del had taught them well, at least Kevin.  Del told us how Kevin and young buddies decided to go deer hunting, armed only with Kevin's .22 caliber rifle.  Kevin was too young to get a hunting license at the time--which he hadn't bothered to consider.  Nevertheless, Kevin bagged a deer on his first time out...  with a .22 rifle. 

So much for the argument that you need an AR-15 with 30-round clip for deer hunting.  When I was young, a high school classmate went hunting for the first time with Dad and carried a .270 Winchester.  The kid had such buck fever that his shots were poorly placed and didn't kill the deer until he had fired nine times.  Nine rounds...  Sounds like a local police shooting.  Yet in his first time out, Kevin was able to bring down a deer with the lowly .22.  Go figure.  Clearly a difference in training.    

The .22 is so small and low powered that it's barely useful for more than plinking at cans and taking out small rodents.  To be sure, the .22 can kill you.  When I was a boy, a second cousin of mine, Alan, accidentally shot himself with a .22 when he was shooting sparrows around the barn.  I once scared myself half to death when the single-shot .22 I was carrying discharged a few inches from my left ear. 

I had a cartridge in the chamber, but the hammer wasn't cocked.  But I was foolishly using the butt of the stock to hammer through some ice so I could check a trap I had set under the ice on the Bell Creek.  The jarring was enough to nudge the hammer against the firing pin causing the cartridge to fire. 

I thank God I survived that excursion into stupidity and lack of judgment.  It's not the only time God has spared my life. 

But Del and Kevin's mother had done much more than teach their kids about guns.  They taught them responsibility, judgment, committment, and steadfast relationships.  In a word, adulthood. 

As I read about crime, violence and shootings; as I hear the stories of the lives of young children and their home life that Jean tells me when she comes home from school; as I learn of yet more city, state or federal officials whose conduct is anything but mature and responsible, I come back to Kevin and where he came from. 

I come back to Kevin and who he came from.  I come back to Kevin and who he knew he needed to be:  a good man.  I had a Dad who was a good man.  And a Mom who was the equal of that as a Mom.

A number of years ago, I was in class with a female colleague who was pastor of a small Lutheran church in Omaha, Nebraska.  The majority of her congregation was female.  Over 90%, according to this pastor, had experienced sexual violence, domestic violence, or both.  After listening to her grief and the challenge it presented--for not only her congregation but society at large--I responded, "We could fix most of what's wrong with society by fixing a few things wrong with our men."

That pastor calmly and quickly replied, "You got that right."

Like the USMC, I think we're all looking for a few good men. 

I wouldn't mind if a couple million of 'em were named Kevin.  Or Del.  Or Oswald.  Good men can be named anything.  But they need to be good men first, every one of them. 

Happy Father's Day!

Amen. 

Roger

Somebody Named Kevin...

"Somebody should DO something!" 

People often say that.  But who is "somebody?"  Kevin always understood that he was somebody...

Sunday morning I received some of the most painful news of my adult life. A good friend, Kevin Hamann, was killed Saturday in a motocross race in Spokane. Kevin was 51 and became a grandpa for the first time in February.

I've known Kevin for over 30 years, beginning when he came to work for AAR Western Skyways located at Troutdale Airport, my place of employment for many years and the reason that Jean and I moved to Oregon in 1978. The photo of Kevin at the Stewart-Warner model 2000 balancer, taken circa 30 years ago, is from a Western Skyways Gold Seal engine sales brochure of that era.  Talk about a handsome guy! 

Kevin was a somewhat unsettled youngster barely out of high school when he came to work in the machine shop I supervised.  He had tremendous energy, a sharp mind that wanted to be challenged.  Kevin became one of the best machinist apprentices I ever had--and I had some VERY good ones.

This early experience eventually led to work at Boeing out on NE Sandy Blvd, where Kevin was most recently a supervisor in charge of complex hard metal machining of parts used on Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Between stints at Boeing, he also manufactured replacement hip and knee joints that many people walk around on today. Everything he made, he made better--including our ministry.

As a young man, Kevin had many questions about faith, life and God. On a number of occasions out in that shop at Troutdale, we would wait until the end of the day when most folks had gone home. Then, I would quietly go over to the door, lock it, and we would talk.

After I left the company in Troutdale in 1987, I didn't have much contact with Kevin until about four years ago. One Monday morning, after a particularly unsettled Sunday evening at Operation Nightwatch Worship in the old Julia West House in downtown Portland, Kevin sent me an e-mail completely out of the blue. "We need to get together," he said. Indeed.

I was about ready to pull the plug on worship unless we had someone else to help us mind the guests and the front door. I never expected Kevin to do that. But when he heard what we were doing, he said, "I want to help." For more than a year, Kevin was there most Sunday evenings supporting us in countless ways.  He helped calm things down a great deal. 

One evening after worship, a homeless guest asked if we had a belt to help him keep his baggy pants up around his waist.  Belts in our clothes closet were more scarce than hen's teeth.  "Sorry," I said.  "We have none."  Kevin overheard.  "He needs a belt?  Here, he can have mine.  I've got more."  Without hesitating, Kevin pulled off his own belt and handed it over. 

He'd have given the shirt off his back.  No.  He gave more...

For the past three years, or so, Kevin and his wife Jackie have been faithful food providers every 4-6 weeks, but they have done SO much more...  Clothing. Shoes. Blankets. Gift cards to McDonald's at Christmas time for our guests.  Hundred-dollar WinCo gift cards for us to buy food and serving supplies when Jean and I provide the meal.

One winter evening, Kevin brought an entire 3/4-ton pickup load of coats and sleeping bags collected from his church. Kevin has provided the cell phone I have in my pocket and paid the monthly bill. He gave me the digital camera that has been an invaluable tool for both my worship ministry and my aviation work.

Kevin also provided the cell phone that enabled a man named Rick to eventually contact family in Michigan and end 25 years of homelessness.

For several years, Kevin and Jackie have provided us a modest monthly stipend to help offset the cost of our non-salaried ministry. All while living under the cloud of uncertainty about staying in their their home due to the recession's effect on Kevin's motorcycle business. Still, Kevin was one of Nightwatch's most ardent supporters.  Few knew what Kevin did for us and for God's people.  But God does.

Kevin is survived by his wife Jackie, his parents, a sister and brother-in-law, a grown daughter and son, and one grandson. Please give thanks for them and pray God's peace and grace in coming days.

"Very truly, I tell you," Jesus said, "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."  (John 12:24 NRSV)

Kevin's life bore much fruit.  And it's easy for the rest of us to say, "He's in a better place."  He is.  But for his family, there was no better place than here among them for a good, LONG while yet. 

For us at Operation Nightwatch, the blessings Kevin gave us are beyond words and description.  And surely, there would have been no better place for Kevin than here among us for a good, LONG while yet. 

I'm not here to explain God.  Or rationalize God.  Most days, not even to make sense of God.  I trust God to make sense of what I can't and to be faithful to Jesus' promises.  Jesus promised to be always with us, that he would be there when the stuff hits the fan.  It has.  Now the ball is in the court of Faithful God's Faithful Son.  That's all I need to know.

Because I've already seen what happens when God's Son is in somebody's heart.  It's why Kevin understood that he was somebody... 

Thanks be to God!  Amen.     

Kevin's memorial service will be Saturday, June 8, 2 PM, at Grace Community Church, 800 SE Hogan Road in Gresham. Jackie and the family request that memorial gifts be directed to Operation Nightwatch, P.O. Box 4005, Portland, OR 97208; www.operationnightwatch.org.  

Thank you!
Pastor Roger

45 Years of Music in My Head

Perhaps it was the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater, Jackie DeShannon.  Even the Monkees.  Maybe the Mamas and the Papas.  Could be Beethoven.  Or that Bach guy.  Crosby, Stills and Nash.  Blood, Sweat and Tears...

BST.  You know, musical groups don't name themselves with titles like that anymore.  It was a title that may have reflected the time a bit too accurately.  In the late 1960's, lot of blood was being spilled.  In some parts of SE Asia, over 3 million mostly young Americans would sweat great drops of blood.  And there were tears.  In Asia.  In households and graveyards across America.  In the souls and wounded places of people for decades to come. 

The time was infused with music. 

Music still rings in my head.  It still rings true.  One little masterpiece movement of a classical orchestral work by Bizet will always suffuse an episode as I neared the end of college and would then go off to military service a year later. 

I cannot hear the piece of music without having all the memories come in a vivid rush.  Because the music seemed to transcend the fractious world of human events with a divine mystery of beauty.  Or a beauty of divine mystery. 

It was early June 1968. On one momentous day, I had left Omaha on a United Boeing 727--my very first airplane flight--landed in Des Moines, gone on to Chicago, thence to Newark, NJ. From Newark, I'd made my way by buses to JFK Airport. Finally by evening, I had boarded the queen of the skies, an Air France Boeing 707 Intercontinental bound for Paris. After a tired day in Paris, I would board a train for a 17-hour ride to Vienna, Austria, which was to be my home for a summer study of German language and literature and the culture, cuisine and art of Europe.

I would live with a host family, visit countless museums, concert halls and churches. I would venture behind the Iron Curtain three times, encounter the sobering reality of the grounds of a Nazi death camp only 23 years liberated, still see the damage of Allied bombing in Munich, visit with men who had been POW's in the USA and the USSR. All with the memory of a friend KIA in Kontum a few weeks before, and with the memory of JFK, MLK and RFK still in the forefront of my mind. All this while never having been east of the Mississippi River, west of the Rockies, or south of Kansas in my life.

With all that awaiting me, the big 707 flew over the North Atlantic overnight, occasionally tipping a wing slightly for a course correction. One of the tracks of recorded music that I listened to over and over on that trans-Atlantic flight included a memorable

movement from Carmen. To my dying day, the flutes and strings and harp in this work of Bizet will soar in my mind as a metaphor for the grace of flight and the grace of God in which such stunning heights of creativity and art soar over the equally stunning depths of destruction that is also within human capability and human history.

Whose loving hands could possibly span that gulf but God's? And whose mind and eternal Spirit could possibly envision a universe in which the simplest vibrations of air could so clearly embody pure joy?

We hear only the smallest portions of it, and it is more than enough. The music says more than we can ever know.