Lent

 We are about to once again enter the season of Lent. My memories of observing Lent while growing up are very strong. We had worship services every Friday night during Lent. They were always in German. A key feature of every Friday night service was a reading of the events in the life of Jesus beginning with His instituting The Lord’s Supper up to Christ’s death on the cross. The reading of a segment of this each week from a harmony of the Gospels lies deep in my heart. The sermons preached at those services always related specifically to the events we had had just heard read. I remember especially one series related to questions asked during those fateful 24 hours and at my suggestion this year at my church we are following that pattern for our weekly Sunday Bible classes during Lent.) Once we started having Lenten services in English it seemed to be mandatory that we sing “Go To Dark Gethsemane “ every week.

Lent culminated in Holy week. There was always the ritual of youth “confirmation” on Palm Sunday and first Holy Communion on Maunday Thursday. As the years have passed so have the rituals related to Lent. I always regret that I never made it to New Orleans to observe Mardi Gras, specially also the revelry related to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.

At my current church the formal observation of Lent is quite different. We begin with some version of Shrove Tuesday observed by eating pancakes on Pancake Tuesday. We then have the deeply reflective practice of “imposition of ashes” on Ash Wednesday. However at the weekly services we do not focus specifically on the last days of the suffering Christ and I miss that. To indicate how different our rituals of today are from some 90 years ago I mention that to begin Lent at my church this year we are all watching the movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”. At our weekly events we will reflect upon lessons learned from Mr. Rogers. Of course we will read some scriptures and have reflections and it will be a very different experience. If we tried to repeat what we did in my youth I suspect that the only two people who would show up would be my wife and I.

So I look forward to this Lenten season. I no longer “give up” something for lent. Jane and I do read special Lenten reflections and prayers in our morning devotions at hiome and this year will use resources provided by Bread for the World. I know we will not be singing “Go to Dark Gethsemane”. I am determined to remember the past, be open to the present, and look forward to the future. Thus Lent will become for me a time to repent, reflect and recommit.

Arithmetic

Of course, we were taught arithmetic already in the first grade at Zion Lutheran School in Walburg, Texas. It was all pretty straight adding, subtracting and multiplying. We were taught the processes but none of the” theory”. I make the sad confession that I had no idea of the decimal system with its ones, ten and hundreds. I am embarrassed to say that when I did a year as a “supply teacher” of grades one to four I told the students to ignore all that stuff about ones and tens. When a bright student even asked me about it I told her to just forget about all that. It was only when I later took a course on Teaching Math that I caught on to that primary (even kindergarten) concept. 

I was spared learning much about math throughout my education. I took one course in algebra. I have no idea how I made it through high school and college without ever taking geometry, trig, or calculus. When I got to graduate school at the University of Pacific I was fortunate to have an outstanding professor of statistics. He was a genius at making complex math concepts understandable. He even had me do correlation coefficient numbers relating to exams I gave to my students in elementary school. And then he served on my thesis exam committee and I looked good because of all that he had taught me.

By coincidence I just yesterday listened to a fascinating NPR program on math and numbers. The speaker urged us to think of the importance of numbers in our everyday life. He directed us to reflect on what it would be like if we did not numbers to identify our age, phone number, mailing address, money, car speed, etc. etc. So I am grateful for all who really “get’ numbers and for all who have gone before me and put into place number systems which make life possible and more enjoyable.

Writing

Writing has been an important part of my life, both personally and professionally. As I reflect upon the training I received to be a writer the first thing that hits me is how this was taught me, especially in elementary and high school. Three components were stressed very early: penmanship, spelling and grammar.

Penmanship was a special subject and each week a period was set aside during which we were supposed to learn “the Palmer Method”. We had very specific instructions on how to hold our pencils and how to move our wrists. It was all wasted on me. My penmanship was and is very poor. This was in contrast to my Mother who had beautiful handwriting. She went only to the 6th grade yet her letters to me were always in beautiful handwriting. When I later tried to write Chinese characters I found that my handwriting in Chinese was even worse than in English or German. 

Spelling was also a separate subject all the way through to the eighth grade. Each week we had a list of words to learn to spell. The teacher called out the words and we had to write them out, hopefully with the correct spelling. I did okay in the class exercise, but when I (up to this day) write in paragraphs my spelling always needs lots of corrections.

Grammar was very important. Early on we had to learn the parts of speech and proper rules of grammar. Already at the 4th grade level we had to diagram sentences. This was a method of charting subjects, predicates, direct and indirect objects, adjectival and adverbial clauses, prepositional phrases etc. etc. I always enjoyed it up to the time in Zion Lutheran School when we were challenged to diagram the longest sentence with which we were familiar. That was Martin Luther’s 17-word explanation of the Second Article (about Jesus). 

Writing essays, compositions, narratives or poetry was simply not stressed at any level of my schooling. In grad school the emphasis went to documentation and bibliographical notations. My master’s thesis was written well before computers and my wife Jane who did the typing on an old non-electric typewriter reminds me that no erasures or corrections were allowed and foot-noting sources was a major challenge.

Most of my professional career gave me the opportunity and responsibility to write material for publication. I wrote devotional, educational, and motivational materials. As I recall publishing more than 200 articles, two books and hundreds of blogs I am grateful for the lessons learned in handwriting, spelling and grammar that sent me on the road to writing.

Reading

Reading has always been and continues to be very important to me. In a way this is surprising. I do not recall even one children’s book in my home as I was growing up. We were too poor to purchase them. I do not recall my father being a reader. Mother read to me-but only Bible stories. The elementary school I attended had no library. When I was in the 7t grade by some miracle Zion Lutheran School suddenly acquired some 70 books. Each was a 32-page condensation of a classic. Within three weeks of their arrival I had read them all.

I recall very clearly learning to read in the first grade. We used the famous series which featured The Gingerbread Man. I vividly recall those first few pages which read “I am a gingerbread man. I am, I am.” Then “I can run from you. I can, I can”. This was the basis of a long chart teaching us phonics. The top word was “man”. Underneath it (one word to each row) were words that sounded with a different  first letter e.g. can, fan, ran, tan, van. Phonics was drilled into us and it served me well.   

High school English emphasized grammar and not much literature, though we did have some assignment of novels. In college I became a voracious reader which I have continued to be throughout my life. It was through my reading, for example, that I found a spiritual and religious world of opinion far broader and challenging than what was taught in the very narrow prescribed texts of our Lutheran theological courses. Especially helpful in my years in Hong Kong the Monday night discussion session with fellow missionaries every Friday night. Most of us gathered with our colleagues and spouses. We spent an hour in Bible study and then another hour discussing a different book we had all read the previous seven days. Even though I was working some 60 hours each week I made it a point to read those books and then be challenged to reflect more deeply upon contents when we discussed them in the group.

I have now lived in retirement for more than 27 years and one of the great blessings of that is the opportunity to do much more reading. Daily newspapers (yes, I still read the hard copy) many magazines and tons of books (rarely fiction ), including many on that wonderful invention called Kindle keep me stimulated.

I reflect sadly upon millions in the world today who either have no access to books or who are permitted only to read highly censored state-controlled material. And I pray that my eyes and my mind will permit me to continue to have that simple yet profound pleasure of reading which all began with “I am a gingerbread man. I am. I am.”