Bind Us Together, Lord

In my most recent BLOG I focused on the pain and sorrow of being bound together by one’s feet, one’s house or one’s conscience. Even as I was writing that another refrain kept running through my mind. It was deep request, not for relief from being bound, but for being bound. 

 

    Bind us together, Lord,

    Bind us together with cords that cannot be broken.

     Bind us together, Lord.

     Bind us together in love.

In contrast to imposed restrictive ties created by humans this hymn is a plea for the Lord to bind us in love. The hymn specifically prays for this union with God-and then also with one another. That which  binds is divine love made most evident in the life and sacrifice of Jesus and then also love between humans.

The first of such human bindings that comes to my mind is “mother’s love.” I never cease to marvel at that incredible characteristic. This struck me very hard recently when I witnessed a mother who could not feel and did not demonstrate any special feeling for her own young child. I watched that interaction with deep sadness. I am so grateful that this is a rare psychological ailment. Much more common is seeing  how a mother pushes one baby in a stroller, tries too keep an eye on another and  is speaking to a to a third. I recall how my wife and my mother spent countless hours just showing unbridled love for their offspring. Of course one also sees this in fathers and yet I believe the binding between child and mother is a unique and wonderful gift from God, a unique binding together in love.

Another cherished binding experienced by many is the powerful binding together in love between married spouses. (I am not sure if it is the same with two “partners” who have chosen to live together-but have not married. I think married love is unique.) I just think of Jane’s love for me. It is still there and maybe even growing as we approach our 70tht wedding anniversary . This love, too, is unique and for those who have it, it is a gift to be thankful for and to be celebrated 24 hours a day.

So, being bound by forces outside of one’s self can be  one of the greatest burdens of life and being bound in love freely chosen  and then returned is indeed “the greatest of all”.

My Kids Encounter with Police: Tim

Tim’s encounters with police began when he was still in high school. He and his good friend (and future lead drummer for Jimmy Buffet ) Pete Mayer worked at the famous St. Louis Drews Ice Cream Store. They closed it down at the end of the day and so it was often well after 10:00 pm when they were driving back to their home in the suburb of Crestwood It was there that they were repeatedly pulled over by the police. They had proper I.Ds. They had no evidence of liquor. They carried no weapons. They never once got a ticket, yet their being stopped became common. Once they were stopped right in front of Peter’s home. Another time they were on their way to church for a Lenten worship service at which they were to play their instruments.

It was only in retrospect that Tim figured out what was going on. He had a major afro hair style. He thinks that in the dark he was mistaken for being black, A black person driving after 10:00 p.m. in Crestwood got the attention of police and hence the frequent stops. Of course, it was terrible racial profiling.

He was in college when we got the call  (from his sister Peggy ) that Tim was in jail in Valparaiso, IN. He was there because he acted foolishly and suffered the consequences. He lived with his buddies in a music fraternity house. Just a few hundred yards down from them the University had closed down a facility as it was to be demolished and replaced. Looking through one of the basement windows the students had noticed that a pretty good looking piano was visible . Curiosity about the condition of that piano led Tim to investigate. He did it at night. He did it by crawling through a partially open window which he broke as he climbed through. The police arrived. Stupidly Tim hid in a closet. The  police found him. They  made a great deal of  what in my opinion was a rather minor mistake and handcuffed him. And the next thing I knew his fellow-student and sister Peggy was on the phone “Hey, dad. Tim is in jail! What do we do next?” He actually had to go before a judge and did some community service. I have no idea whether or not that piano ever made it to the fraternity house.

Later Tim got very involved in protests against both the Viet Nam War and the proliferation of atomic weapons. He was arrested more than once in more than one state.

He is still active in both music and civil rights activities so I guess his encounters with police have not diminished his commitment.  Now in retirement he chooses to do it in ways that do not result in confrontation with the police.

My Kids' Encounters With Police: John

My youngest son John  had his first encounter with the police while he was  in junior high. Technically it was not the police but the security guards at Disney World. He was excited to be there for his first visit. Two of the three friends with him were visitors from Sweden. The mother of one of his companions was along as their chaperone. The four boys had just enjoyed a ride on one of the big Ferris wheels and were looking for their next ride when they were stopped by Disney police. One of the officers grabbed John, held him firmly and said, “Young man, we are arresting you for throwing pyrotechnics.” John expressed his innocence and amazement and told them he didn’t even know what pyrotechnics were. His three friends all vouched for his innocence. Then one of the officers had a near-by  teenager identify John  saying, “That’s the guy, I guess he threw away the cap he was wearing.”   

” I haven’t been wearing a cap. I threw  nothing,” John insisted..

Then Mrs. Blackistone arrived She explained she was with the boys, asked about the exact time the incident supposedly occurred and then verified that the boys were with her getting a soft drink at the exact time of the alleged incident.  Their protestations did not prevail. John was held for an hour in isolation and then they were kicked out of the park. Our two Swedish young friends could not believe this could happen in the USA. When I wrote a letter of protest to the Disney authorities, they never even responded

It was only a year later when John was stopped again. This time John was not only confronted but actually had handcuffs placed on him and was  forced into a police car. This was all a couple blocks from Redeemer Lutheran Church in San Diego at the very time I was preaching for the second service. That morning. John had gone with me, worshipped at the early service and then while waiting for me to preach at the second service had decided to just walk  around the neighborhood. The  police had stopped John, put handcuffs on him, brought him to the church property. A member of the congregation had called the police and now identified John as the person  he’d seen earlier enter a car in the church parking lot and take something from  that car.

While all this was going on a member of Redeemer arrived back at his car and asked what the police action was all about. He then explained that he earlier had forgotten something he wanted to take into the church with him and so he was the one who had taken something from his own car. Then the “accuser” recognized his error. He admitted it, apologized to John and then looked for me so he could also explain to me all that had happened.

After that John chose not to go with me when I preached at Redeemer.

My Kids Encounters With The Police: Peggy

Daughter Peggy’s encounters with the police were professional. She had just graduated from Valparaiso University. Her very first job was with an organization  called The Bradely Half Way House. It  was a project where prisoners spent a bit of time just prior to their official release from prison. Some were long time prisoners, others very short term. The goal was for the prisoners to live in the House, get some time on the street during the day, return at night and make plans for their release. Unacceptable behavior resulted in a delay of the official release and a return to prison.

Several factors exacerbated the challenges Peggy faced in dealing with the prisoners, some of whom were quite long term. Peggy was very young, only 20 years old. She was a slim, attractive blonde. She was white. She was idealistic.

With great support from her superiors, she did her job well. By combining empathic listening with strong confrontation skills and much consultation with her boss, she with both police and prisoners worked together to get the prisoners released, to enter society and not to return to incarceration.

My Kids' Encounters With The Police: David

Every parent who has an adult child can probably remember two specific experiences during their children’s teen years: Their first automobile accident and their first encounter with the police. I have decided to share a bit about the latter. 

Son David’s encounters seem to have been quite mutually helpful. This is surprising as he was in his teens during the late 60”s and early 70’s and he had very long hair, was part of several “movements” and lived and worked in Ann Arbor, MI and Chicago, IL. His primary encounter first came while he worked in the upper middle-class Chicago suburb of Glen Ellen. He worked with street kids. And he knew how to deal with them with, his response being appropriately related to each specific case. He spoke of some kids who got into trouble and the police actually called him because the kids may have come from influential families. Sometimes David would be the one who negotiated between the family and the police. 

In other cases he might say, “This kid might learn from an overnight stay in prison”. When the city “fathers” decided to stop David’s job, the local newspaper had quite a barrage of letters protesting his termination. These letters cane from both the young people and their parents. 

Later it was David and his friends who needed police protection. Dave and his partner Doug often hosted a Sunday night “house church” worship in their home in Chicago. Among the attendees were gay couples. When the worship was over these couples had to walk through the neighborhood to reach the elevated to get home. On the street they were seriously harassed, sometimes even physically attacked. David knew he had to call for police protection and once they got to trusting David they came and did exactly that!

Unique Experiences

Every person who has ever lived is, of course, unique. So also his or her life experiences will be unique for them. Recently a couple of friends who have read my Mel’s M&M’s have commented that my life seemed to have an unusual number of unique experiences. So I decided to select 15 of them and post them here.

1. As a male teacher of students in grades 1-4 all in the same classroom, every two weeks I went to the public library and checked out 25 children’s books for those students. The school in which I was teaching had no money in its budget for kids’ literature, so I borrowed books from the public library.

2. I taught classes on how to be effective parents in the U.S.A., Pakistan, Australia, Finland and many other countries.

3. I negotiated for the construction and purchase of a coffin on the streets of Hong Kong.

4. As a Lutheran educator I threw out the first pitch of a nationally televised baseball game between the New York Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

5. I had a personal appointment to meet with the president of the USA in the White House.

6. I was the only Lutheran missionary to be a member of the Royal Hong Kong Golf Club and to play the following courses which are sites of PGA tourneys: Pebble Beach, Mission Hills, New York Bethpage, San Diego Torrey Pines.

7. As a Lutheran school principal I played on a city league basketball team sponsored by the local pool hall.

8. In Montgomery Alabama I stayed as a private guest in the hotel suite reserved for the lieutenant governor.

9. I attended a celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s birthday at the Governor’s Mansion in Hong Kong.

10. I was in Tienanman Square in 1989 during the massacre.

11. I checked a big bag of Texas homegrown potatoes on a train for serving at my wedding reception.

12. I was sternly criticized for wearing the wrong-colored shoes while attending the installation of the President (Bishop ) of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

13. I drank beer with a Catholic sister while overlooking the Kyber Pass.

14. I was the only Lutheran invited to a national meeting of the USA National Council of Catholic Bishops.

15. I was the only non-ordained person ever invited to preach from the pulpit of historic St. Lorenz Lutheran Church in Frankenmuth, Mchigan. 

Water

I write this BLOG on February 25, 2021. The impetus for reflecting on the topic of water takes me to Texas. My relatives living there are struggling to have water to drink, to wash dishes or clothes. This is \ a result of the Texas Big Freeze of 2 weeks ago. Water pipes froze so there was no running water. Then the ice melted and the water came seeping from pipes all over the place, flooding walls, houses. etc. More than 10 days after the Big Freeze people still need to boil their drinking water.

All of this brings me back to the Walburg of the 1930”s when I was growing up as a young lad in Texas. Our water came from two wells. The one nearest to our house, just 12 feet from our back door, was shallow and the water was not considered very good for drinking. The well did serve as a kind of ice box before we got one of those. When the weather got really hot Mother would put our butter and milk into a bucket and lower it to just above the water level in the well. There it stayed at a reasonable temperature.

The well farther from our home supplied the water for our house, for chicken and cattle and for the parsonage, some 200 yards away. The water was pumped via windmill to an elevated large tank and then flowed via gravity to its ultimate destinations.

(As an aside to that windmill. I still marvel that when my Uncle Walter Jacob would come on occasion to repair the top part of that windmill. He did not hesitate to ask me ( at some 8 years of age) to climb up there with him to bring up and then hand him some of the tools he needed. I do remember that I was scared and did not dare to even give a hint of that!)

Water was central to our life when I took my first job in Tracy, California. The farmers were completely dependent upon water from the Sacramento River and all the various open canals which brought the water to their fields. The importance of this whole system was immediately apparent when I first arrived because on the day after I arrived we all went to a big celebration  noting the opening of a new dam, the California Central Valley Water Project

Nowhere was the critical importance of daily water made more apparent than in our years in Hong Kong. At that time Hong Kong’s dependence on water from China made it  very vulnerable to whims of decisions those Chinese authorities made regarding how much water might be allowed to flow from the mainland to Hong Kong. We never had water 24 hours a day. At its worst we had water for 3 hours every 4thth day. Under no circumstances were we to drink that water unboiled. I remember that when I was on home leave after 5 years in Hong Kong,  I just could not get myself to brush my teeth with tap water.

A recent development I would never have dreamed of earlier in my life is the current practice of many people buying their drinking water small botte by  small bottle.

Just two more reflections on water: I drink almost no water. Most days I may drink 4 ounces at most. This dismays my medical doctors . But it seems to have no bad effect on my health. My  last little water story relates to my cousin Elmo who accompanied me on a trip to China. I told my fellow-travelers that they were not to drink tap water. Boiled water was available for purchase in every hotel room. The second day Elmo came with an important discovery and he proudly announced “ Hey, folks, don’t buy that bottled water. I discovered that the bourbon for sale in our minibars is cheaper than the water. Brush your teeth with that!”

Bad Dreams

 

I dream every night. I regret to say that my dreams are seldom satisfying. In fact they are often bad dreams. The dominant theme in those bad dreams is golf. I calculate that I I have had more than 500 dreams about me playing golf-and 500 of them have been bad !  Examples: I am at the tee and the fairway is 325 years away, all over a water-filled hazard. Or I am trying to drive off the first tee while confined to the front seat of my car. I have lost my golf bag or clubs in my dreams many, many times. And now something is strange. About a   month ago I planned to write this BLOG about dreams. I have not had a single dream with a golf theme now for  that whole period.

 Night before last I had a dream about a former co-worker. She is Linda Adams, the widow of my former boss, Dr. Thomas Gordon. I dreamt that I went to her office here in Solana Beach, CA. In my dream she showed me that she had developed the open space behind the offices, had planted trees, a fine-looking young man had assisted her. His name was Brad and he encouraged me to  join him in some physical exercises. All in all, a pretty good dream. I told Linda about my surprising dream. Then I was really surprised to hear that, In fact, there were some new offices on the back part of her lot and one of the renters of that property is a gentleman named Brad! (and she has NO intentions of being married to him.).

In high school I learned that many psychologists believe that dreams are the expressions of unrealized or deep fears. If that is true for me those hopes and fears must remain very deeply embedded.

My daughter Elizabeth is a professional therapist. She broke her usual custom of never offering psychological advice to a family member and talked with me about my bad dreams. She urged me to write down my dreams each morning. She suggested that be very careful in what I read or watch on television just before I go to bed. She encouraged that just before I go to sleep I should image beautiful nature scenes in bright technicolor. The few times that I have actually followed  advice I  find that she is right, my dreams are more pleasant. 

So, I have already acted against my better instincts which tell me that no one is interested in another person’s dreams. I hastily close this BLOG with this hope for you: Sweet Dreams!

Where There Is No Vision

The old proverb “Where There Is No Vision The People Perish” hit it right on the head. One of the lessons about organizations that I learned early in my career is that no organization will ever rise above the vision of its principal leader. This first became apparent to me as I worked with Lutheran elementary schools. Whenever I visited one that made me feel proud to be a part of that system. I soon learned that the school had a principal who was clear in his or her vision. Tragically I also worked with teachers who became very frustrated in what their school looked like. In every situation I had to tell the classroom teachers to do the very best they could in their own classroom-and no matter how well they performed the overall culture and achievement would not rise above that of their principal.

What I first observed in schools became even more clear when I looked at Christian congregations. For better or worse, how a congregation performs and what its culture is, it is clearly dependent upon the vision of its senior pastor. This can lead to deep frustration when members are clear of what the preferred future looks like and their senior pastor does not share that perspective. On the other hand, when the pastor has a clear and inspiring vision, consistently lays that before the members and mobilizes them to move toward that vision the entire organization is energized and wants to get involved.

In recent years all management consultants who work with organizations (religious or secular ) take this reality very seriously. By now some of us are almost bored when working with these consultants because we know that we will all have to go through the process of identifying our vision, our mission, our core values. Boring it may be-but vital nonetheless.

What is true of school and churches is also very true at the national societal level. As anAmerican I look closely at what our presidents say about their vision of America. What is the vision of America’s role in the world? What is the vision of a more equitable American society?What is the vision of the role of the individual citizen, of the military, the police, Wall Street?

I am writing this BLOG the day before the inauguration of President Biden. So, my head and heart are very involved in wrestling with what the vision is for my country. I am pretty clear about what President Trump’s vision was and I pray that President Biden has a vision which will lead us to an era in which our highest values of freedom, mutual respect, equality and prosperity

for all the people of the world will be expressed-and then pursued and made real.

Old Dreams New Visions

For some reason or other I have been thinking a lot about dreams and visions lately. Some of the thoughts and memories are very good. I think about all the dreams I have had for my life that have come true.

Family visions are central. I have been so blessed Jane and I have been married for nearly 70 years (certainly longer than I dreamed of so many years ago). The relationship still feels so good and seems to deepen with the years. While our eldest son David entered eternal peace 6 years ago, the other 4 children have good marriages and are financially comfortable. Most importantly, they have values that I strongly affirm and they act on those values with integrity and faithfulness.

I had a very satisfying career and still find ways to make small differences. I recently published my BLOGS in paperback format and quite a few colleagues from years past have read them, contacted me and stirred afresh memories of past successful collaborations.

One of my early dreams had been to see the world and to eat different foods. That dream came true well beyond my expectations as I visited at least 36 countries. My food options have ranged from fried chicken in Texas to steamed frogs inChina.

My spiritual dream of having a relationship with God became realized as my life experiences and wide reading made me examine and reevaluate many concepts. I remain grateful for a faith that provides hope and purposes within an ever-changing system of religious insights and convictions based on the surety that God is good.

I have to actually stop for a while to recall visions that did not come true. Visions I had of making a difference in some organizations were not fulfilled. My dream of what the Christian church could look like and my role in that too often has not come true. My dream of a society free of racism and vast differences in the quality of day-to-day life is still too often a dream and not a reality.

So I think about what visions remain and I rest comfortable and grateful that so many of my visions have in the past and continue in the present to come true..

Mel's Blog Posts Now in Paperback