9/11 New Memories

I recently visited New York. It was important to me that I return to the site of the Twin Towers tragedy. My colleague Marlene Lund got us the passes. We went though the long and very  thorough inspections of multiple security checks. Then I entered the site looking directly at the two Reflecting Memorial Pools which are exactly in the same footprints of the original two towers.

In that solemn moment I first allowed myself to recall pleasant memories of the scene. I used to love to go to the top floor and dine at the Windows of the World Restaurant, or  sip a glass of red wine in the lounge, preferably with  family members from Texas on their first trip to the Big Apple. I recalled a very special luncheon arranged for New York principals of Lutheran schools, many of whom had never been able to afford a formal luncheon at the exclusive club on the 102 floor.  I loved going to the Twin Towers.

Things got more solemn for I also remembered that I had conducted a workshop for a famous bank on one of the top floors. I recalled my great fear that many who had taken my workshop would undoubtedly have perished on that fateful- day. I learned later that they a had all survived.

I became increasingly meditative and reflective as I looked at the names: nearly 3000 of them, all killed on that dark day. One of the first names to recall was that of Chaplain Mychal F. Judge, the fire chaplain killed by fallen debris even as he was ministering to the wounded. (The firefighters who carried his corpse to St. Paul’s Church that day were doing that when the tower collapsed and their lives were spared.

It got more personal. I had served as the Executive Director of The Lutheran Schools Association of New York and had been succeeded by Marlene Lund. Now she was finding the names of very specific persons. She told me the stories that flowed, together with her tears, as she recalled. We were identifying the names of some 60 victims who were either the parents or grandparents of children enrolled in Lutheran schools at the time of their untimely deaths. Marlene could recall the children and their parents, like the mother who was just back to work for less than a week before the tragedy, feeling she could go back to work knowing her child was safe ion the Lutheran preschool. There was another: he had graduated from the eighth grade of one of our schools. The names and the list went on and on. We walked in silence. We were left alone in our memories, our grief, our anger.

After marveling at the beautiful new structures now rising, feeling the energy as I looked at The Survivor Tree (a small tree that is surviving it all) I continued  my walk among the names of people of every ethnicity, economic level and faith of the world. I confronted my sadness, my anger and my resolve that I would do all I possibly could so that never  again would such a horrible tragedy and damnably evil act committed in the name of God be repeated.

My Favorite Teacher

 My favorite teacher was Hung Chiu Sing. “Hung” is an important name because it traces him back to his ancestor, the famous Master Confucius. Mr. Hung was to teach me Cantonese for I was working in Hong Kong establishing a Lutheran school system for thousands of Chinese students and teachers.

Mr. Hung was determined that I do that in the best possible tradition, characterized by great respect between teacher and student, using appropriate respectful terms of address, greetings, idioms, proverbs and sayings, all accompanied by appropriate body postures.

And teach he did! He came prepared with flash cards, anecdotes, history lessons and a marvelous mix of patience and determination. He drilled me, laughed with me, encouraged me. He stood beside me when I welcomed people into my home, making sure that I greeted them with just the right words.

He taught me much more than language. He conveyed his respect for tradition, stirred me with his love of his motherland, advised me especially how to speak with my staff for I was a very young American principal with a staff of older, highly educated and respected Chinese scholars.

How well he succeeded I leave for others to judge. When my Chinese friends are honest with me they shyly inform me that my wife, also a student of Mr. Hung, spoke Cantonese much more clearly than I.  Yet I revel in recalling my years in Hong Kong made so meaningful by Mr. Hung, the honorable descendent of Master Kung himself.










 

Holy Week Reflections II

I have just returned from Good Friday evening service. Our pastor made the interesting point that in a way we are recalling the burial of Christ, but there was really no funeral. Easter morning the grave was empty. No funeral. I must admit that my mind wandered when he referenced “funerals”. As I have noted in a previous blog, funerals have always been a part of my life.

My father was a teaching minister in a rural Texas community. We lived on the extended church property, which included the church, the parochial school, the parsonage and the “teacherage” for the principal of the school. This extended property also had space to raise cows, chickens and vegetables. 100 yards from my house was the site of the cemetery with its many graves. Whenever there was a death in the church community I could accompany my father to the church where he tolled the bell to announce the death to the community. The next day I would watch the gravediggers work hard to get through the hard soil to prepare the grave. Of course, we went to the home of the deceased and viewed the body displayed there in the parlor. After the church service my father again tolled the bell as the hearse carried the coffin to its near-by final resting place. The ritual there always included the “ashes to ashes” and then I would watch as the gravediggers refilled the grave and the funeral director rolled up and carried away the artificial grass he had brought to surround the grave during the graveside rituals.  I must have observed this ritual well over a hundred times before I was a teen.

Later I served in Glendale CA near the massive Forest Lawn Cemetery. Everything there related to death has been sanitized. The grounds are meticulously manicured. The area around the graves is made to “look natural”: There are only discrete grave markers, not distinctive headstones. The organists and solo singers and even the presiding ministers are all professionals who preside at countless funerals. Any covering of the grave is done when the bereaved are nowhere around and they  “come back later” when all is neatly in place.

From there I went to Hong Kong. I learned to go to the street side shops and negotiate hard for the price of a made-to-order wooden casket. Then I negotiated with the coffin bearers to take the deceased to the gravesite. Once we stopped in the middle of the burial area when the bearers just set the coffin down in protest because the gravesite was farther up the hill than they had anticipated. They proceeded only after I had renegotiated the price and paid them their extra fee. I can assure you there was no artificial grass around.

And now I live in Southern California and among those with whom I interact there is almost never a funeral and certainly no open-casket viewing”. The accepted ritual is that there is a Memorial Service at which there is often present the urn containing the ashes of the deceased.  Or, as has been my recent experience, we board a boat and proceed to an appropriate site in the Pacific for an appropriate scattering of ashes into the sea.

 In due time during the service this evening my mind came back to the point, which the pastor made. We affirm that the death of Jesus was very real and the resurrection equally true, so that in the final reckoning it won’t really be that important what the details of our funerals looked like.

Holy Week Reflections I

This week I join millions of Christians in observing what is known as Holy Week, the week before Easter. It is the week Christians pause to recall especially the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus. It focuses on the events in the life of Christ from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Sunday, through the agony of scourging and finally crucifixion on Friday. As I write this, I reflect specifically on Maundy Thursday. That strange and uncommon word “Maundy” is based on the Latin verb for  ‘mandate ‘ and recalls Jesus’ new  “mandate” the commandment that we love others as He loved us.  

In the Lutheran tradition in which I was raised Maundy Thursday was the time we young people received our First Communion. It was a big event. In addition to all its spiritual meaning it was for us a rite of passage. It marked our moving from childhood into adolescence. It meant that we were now officially allowed to become members of the church youth group called Junior Walther League. It also meant that for the first time we could participate in the youth sponsored Easter egg hunt, an interesting event enjoyed at that time by all of us who were 13 years of age up into the 20’s. On top of that confirmation meant gifts from our godparents whom we always called baptismal sponsors. Seventy years later I still have that now well-worn King James version of the Bible with its leather cover being twice replaced by craftsmen in Hong Kong!

Since that first time the dozen or so of us nervous teenagers first knelt around that altar in rural Texas I have received Communion (or celebrated the Eucharist or the Mass or The Lord’s Supper) in many places around the world, in magnificent cathedrals, around a cross on a hill overlooking China, in the Garden of Gethsemane, at a memorable New Year’s Eve in Karachi, with US Air Force chaplains and with people in their hospital deathbeds. All of these brought me great blessings at that time and memories which sustain me to this day.

However, as I reflect I also do so with a tinge of regret. When I was first taught about this holy ritual I was taught that very few were eligible to receive it. Only those who possessed the Word in ALL its truth and purity, only those who shared adherence to rather narrowly defined doctrinal principals were deemed appropriate to share this table. This Maundy Thursday I am grateful for the many people and all the meaningful events which have helped me to come ro what I believe to be closer to Christ’s original vision, a vision encompassing a vast array of many tongues, backgrounds, insights and religious labels whom Jesus must have envisioned when He said, “ Eat this bread, drink this wine, all of you. Do this to remember me.”

Attention

The noted French mystic Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Recently that struck me dramatically. In the first instance it was actually I who acted generously even though it didn’t seem like much at the time. It was casual enough. I spoke with a person who had been sitting alone at the complimentary breakfast counter of the chain motel at which we both stayed while we attended a conference. All I really did was listen as she responded to my “How are things going?”. It turned out that she was anxiously awaiting word as to whether or not her application for a PhD scholarship at Harvard had been accepted. It was easy to empathize with her. She was honest about her emotions. I too have spent time waiting for responses to proposals. Basically I just attended because I did care.

A couple weeks later she sent me an email. She didn’t get the scholarship. Yet she focused on how important it was to her to have had those minutes together with me. She felt someone had paid attention, had listened, and it was appreciated.

What happened in that little exchange and what doesn’t happen in a million situations similar to that every day is simply the matter of attention. It is difficult to be in a room or situation where absolutely no one pays attention to you. It is disconcerting (to say the least) to be at a dinner with a couple, to ask them about their lives etc., to listen empathically to that and to then never hear in response anything close to “And how about you?”

I admire Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and their incredibly wonderful generosity. It touches millions. And I contemplate on how millions of others could be blessed if every day every person just decided to perform their own single act of that rarest and purest form of charity, to just pay attention to another person.

Foot Washing & Stacking Chairs

Christians around the world are preparing to observe what is known as Holy Week, the week of recalling Jesus ‘ crucifixion. Together with many other Christians I have this week been reflecting upon another ritual of this week:  Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. In remembering that event I recall an experience of some 50 years ago that still sticks in my mind. It involves the simple act of stacking chairs.

I was principal of Concordia Lutheran School in Hong Kong. At the end of the high school assembly we were getting ready to repeat that assembly for the primary grades. This required a bit of chair rearrangement. So I began doing that. Immediately my two assistant principals (both respected Chinese scholars) ran up to me. “Principal Kieschnick, don’t you move those chairs! That is not a job for a principa,. We will call the janitor who’ll immediately take care of it.!”

Now this was a new experience for me. One of the jobs I always felt went with being principal was  doing the little stuff like moving chairs. Now I was told to not do that. I had been in that Chinese society long enough to stop and reflect. My two colleagues were speaking out of a long tradition. They felt that moving chairs was below the dignity of a school principal. If he did that the entire office of the principal would lose some respect. I had to take that point of view seriously. After all, if the office of principal was lowered in the eyes of the students that would also affect their view of his assistants.

Yet my mind had other thoughts. “I do not find this demeaning. The elementary school kids are about to arrive, I have a few minutes, I can get the chairs set up and be ready to go almost by the time the custodian would get here.” And I must admit I also had a slight feeling of  being called to “wash feet”-that is to humble one’s self.

About that time the janitor arrived and set up the chairs. But those conflicting impulses still prevail. Respect the traditions of those among whom you serve. On the other hand don’t let tradition n keep you from doing what your more sanctified impulse is urging you to do.

What would you have done?

Barefoot

It may have been a case of  neglect, laziness or maybe even memory loss. But a while ago I found myself busy at my computer, sitting here in my bare feet. It felt so very good. My mind pondered, “Why is it feeling so good to sit here in my bare feet?” I got theoretical. Maybe it’s because that’s how we first entered this world and we humans have an innate urge to get back to nature. Maybe it was just because it felt good to have one’s feet not restricted in any way. And any kind of freedom feels good. Maybe it was an act of asserting myself and I was saying to myself “ If I feel like going barefoot today, I will just do that, regardless of what anyone else may think or say.’

Upon deeper reflection on this earth-shaking question I came to another conclusion. And it’s one I will stick with. It felt good to be barefooted because it brought back all kinds of memories of my youth. I grew up in Texas. Part of that Texas rural and family freedom meant we did not have to wear shoes. We went barefooted at home, when we played, when we went to school, when we “went to town”. Only going to church on Sunday demanded shoes. Even then I didn’t like it and always had my shoes off even before we sat down for Sunday dinner.

Going barefooted did have its down-sides. One is that we were constantly stepping on stickers, burrs, glass, screws, nails and even needles. When I broke my ankle playing college football the x-ray technicians were more concerned about that needle embedded in my heel than with my ankle. I remember how that diagnosis frightened my mom who feared it would migrate to my heart and prove fatal. The Drs. assured us it was firmly embedded in tissue. A few years later after playing basketball with my pupils at St. Paul’s school in Tracy, CA I was again at the x--ray lab. So again the question: “What is the world is that needle doing in your heel?” I explained it was just another reminder of those wonderful days of going barefoot in my youth.

Going barefoot in the cotton fields of a Texas summer also proved a bit of a challenge. When the temperature hit the near hundreds the unshod soles of one’s feet got really challenged. I remember how I tried to find the shade of the cotton plants to protect them but it never got so bad that I wanted to wear shoes. One result is that tremendous calluses were formed on the bottom of my feet, a remnant of which stays with me to this day.

Of course, I could get even more philosophical and reflect upon poor kids whose feet are cold in winter because they have no shoes, or poor children who face bites and diseases because of their bare feet. But sitting here at my computer in my bare feet I will just revel in the moment and let my mind have the joy of remembering the marvelous carefree, barefooted days of my youth!