Anger

My pastor took a well-deserved week of vacation the week after Easter and asked me to fill in for him while he was gone. As soon as I arrived at the church office on Monday morning a gentleman was waiting for me. He wanted my help. His brother had just called that he was being denied help at the local Vets Hospital. The gentlemen wanted my assistance for his deeply in need brother.

The story: This Afghanistan War vet was having terrible headaches. He could not keep food down. He was disorientated. He could not get assistance at the Vet Hospital. “Go to the local emergency room!” he was told by the admissions staff. There was very little that I could do for him, but the good news is that the vet was finally admitted.

After those processes were completed and his record pulled up more of the story emerged. He had indeed needed treatment for a brain injury. A doctor had made a previous recommendation for treatment, but then “the system somehow lost the diagnosis and he had never been treated.”

I get angry when I continue to hear stories about our vets who do not get appropriate treatment, especially for post traumatic stress syndrome. The soldier in this case was next to his best friend when that friend took a bullet and was killed. He filed a report and was immediately sent back on duty. No one ever offered him any counseling. Now he is finding it very difficult to cope and even more difficult to get assistance for his own wounds, physical and psychological.

This afternoon I called on the eldest member of our congregation, one of the most gentle of men that I have ever met. But he was agitated. He had just learned of one of his friends (also an Afghanistan vet) who had given up on getting medical treatment due him as a vet. He’d had to finally secure his own private health insurance in an effort to get the assistance he needs and deserves.

That’s why I am angry. We ask our young military people to make incredible sacrifices for us and then, when they need our assistance to get back to some kind of a normal life, we fail them.

This brings me to Wheat Ridge Ministries, which provides resources particularly to churches who want to support returning service personnel. Especially helpful are the recommendations in the book “Welcome Them Home Help Them Heal”. If more individuals and organizations will follow the great processes outlined in this booklet it will do much more than reduce my anger. It will give those who need and deserve our support both assistance and healing.

Holy Thursday: Communing With the Saints

Communing PLACES: This Holy Thursday marks exactly 70 years since I had my first holy communion. It was around the simple wooden altar of Zion Lutheran Church, Walburg Texas. In the years that followed I repeated the experience thousands of times at hundreds of other holy places. From cathedrals in New York and Helsinki to store front chapels in Hong Kong. From quiet secluded sanctuaries to the floors of bustling hotel meeting rooms. From among the olive trees of the Garden of Gethsemane to a rustic chapel at Yosemite National Park. From places of somber meditation to arenas filled with the jubilant sound of a thousand hymn singers. From places with names like Zion, St. Paul, Good Shepherd, and St. Thomas to Calvary. Always the PLACE in that moment was holy ground.

Communing PEOPLE : I recall those 12 nervous teenagers with whom I first communed and wonder where they now are, here or in heaven. I recall the multitudes of others who shared with me those precious elements: my sainted parents, my children now scattered around the world, the black saints who welcomed me as the only white in the assembly, those with whom we now share full communion in denominations with names like Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Moravian. I recall people next to me at the rail who exuded the scent of exquisite and expensive perfume and those who came in their sweat-filled work clothes. I recall an ancient Chinese grandmother and the tense bodies of GI’s on R&R from Viet Nam. Always with those PEOPLE we heard the words “For You.”

Communing PRESENCE : Today I recall that every place with whatever people there was always bread and wine. There were always words. But there was more. There was the PRESENCE. Yes, it was the PRESENCE of mystery, of prayer, confession, reflection and resolve. But beyond it all was a greater Presence. For in with and under the forms of bread and wine was the very REAL PRESENCE of the One who said “This is My body; This is My blood.”

Prayer:Dear Lord, as I commune in this holy season make the place holy, the people blessed and your presence experienced. Amen

A Quiet Little Boy from a Quiet Little Texas Town

I may have reached my 83rd birthday, but in my heart I still see myself as a quiet little boy from a quiet little Texas town. The town, in fact, is Walburg,
Texas. The sign near it reads “87 Friendly People and 1 Old Grouch”. I actually was born and lived in a simple house about a mile from the general store and where the saloon used to be. In the nineteenth century the community was populated by immigrants from the Czech/German border. Half of us spoke German and were Lutherans. The other half spoke Czech and went to the Catholic Church. We seldom interacted and intermarriage was a major challenge to our long held traditions. The tradition served us well. Church on Sunday, chicken salad sandwiches and homemade ice cream for birthdays, shivarees at weddings, and bar-b-que and beer for every important occasion. Quiet enough - and I was just another quiet boy in the community, at least that was my remembrance of it all until I did a bit more reflecting on my morning walk today.

I remember the excitement back in the 40’s. It was in the days of the famous outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. I shiver in remembering the story of how some one close to me was walking along the country road. A car with two strangers in it (a man with a distinctive hat and a girl) had stopped and asked for directions. Upon reflection we all knew it was Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker and we waited in dread for the day they would come rob the Walburg State Bank!

They didn’t survive a shoot-out with the law shortly after this. But some years later there was a tragic disruption to the still quietness of Walburg and its sleepy bank. A couple of armed robbers did indeed rob the Walburg State bank one quiet Saturday morning. They were serious. My uncle Reinhold who ran the bank did all the robbers asked for. Yet they shot at him with the bullet just grazing his head. Closer to home - my sister Mimi had entered the bank for a simple Saturday morning transaction. When ordered to lie face down on the floor she complied. Yet as one of the robbers was leaving the bank he stood over her and fired directly into the back of her head. By the grace of God she survived. The cops said that the ammunition seems to have been old. Today almost 40 years later she has occasional seizures and the doctors tell her that they are the result of that terrible incident in that quiet little town. And when a highway patrolman stopped the robbers’ car down the road a ways they fatally murdered him.

In my morning walk reverie today I also recalled a little encounter that I would never have expected, growing up in Walburg. In the mid 1950’s I found myself being an educator in Hong Kong. I had been there only a few weeks when on a Wednesday night I was walking home from teaching a class. Even though I was a newcomer it seemed to me that there was extra excitement in the air. The streets were crowded, the tension palpable. When a gentleman made a threatening move toward me with a brown bottle he held in his hand I wondered if he had been drinking. I soon learned that that bottle was filled with explosives and he was threatening me. The building I had just exited had been in the middle of a street riot. Some in my class never left the building. Bullets streamed through the window. Tragically the wife of the Swiss Council General who just happened to be driving through the area was shot and killed. When the police rounded up the rioters they marched them to the police compound a block from our apartment. When they were just below our windows the police forced rioters to run quickly because in the process they all lost their wooden clogs, one less weapon to take with them. Within a day things had settled back down and Hong Kong had rest until the Red Guard movement in the 60’s - but that is another story.

Another story far from quiet Walburg found me in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4,1989. My two sons and I left the square just as the army moved in and the tanks were still a few blocks away. Hours later we stood with weeping students on the Beijing University Campus as they returned from the morgue with the names of their slain friends. A hastily painted sign over the university proclaimed “Tiananmen Bathed in Blood. The Whole World Weeps.”

And so the memories wash over me. It has been and continues to be a blessed and full life, especially in the context of a quiet little boy who grew up in a quiet little Texas town.

Diversity, Rigidity, Opportunity

Attending a national conference of colleagues is not necessarily highly inspiring. However, the one I attended last week was stimulating, affirming and thought provoking. More than 2,300 teachers and administrators in Lutheran schools from around the world were in attendance. It began with a day-long consultation of global leaders. It was great to hear reports from schools in Canada, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Hanoi, New Guinea, India, Australia, So. Africa and Palestine. That is where the variety came in. Hong Kong International School has nearly 3,000 students with another thousand on the waiting list even with an annual tuition of some $25,000. At the other end of financial spectrum are the Lutheran schools of India which serve the still discriminated against lower caste families (even though the caste system is supposed to be a thing of the past.). These students often do not even have a desk for each student. Then there was the report of emerging Lutheran colleges from the highland of New Guinea to the concrete wall-enclosed containment of Bethlehem, Palestine where the Lutheran university there is the largest building project in Bethlehem since the days of Herod the King. An added bonus was to listen to the various dialects in which the reports were given, from Australian English to the heavily German-accented English of South Africa. Even a sometimes jaded old teacher like me could not help but feel admiration, gratitude and enthusiasm for the many ways in which the Lutheran church’s traditional commitment to education and schools at all levels is manifested in wondrous new venues and contexts.

It was not all good news. Lutheran schools in the major cities of America are becoming an extinct species. While there used to be hundreds of them from the Atlantic to the Pacific now they are missing from the city limits of even major cities like Los Angles and Detroit. One reason for their demise is the inability of some of those urban folks and other leaders to image new models for emerging contexts. When Marlene Lund of the Center for Urban Education Ministries gave a detailed list of options for faith-based American urban schools there was almost no-one there to listen. Some stayed away because they simply did not want to consider any option not based on a 19th century model. Rigidity is leading to rigor mortis.

It was then that I saw an opportunity. Many Lutheran jurisdictions are selling off Lutheran schools properties in the city, often generating millions in revenue. I challenge the leaders involved in these transactions to invest the money from the sale of any urban church properties back into a Lutheran neighborhood school operated on any one the models presented by Lund. Hope could be be made available for many city kids and their families for whom a good education today is a denied reality.

What is required is a movement from rigidity to a grasping of the opportunity to an inspired new vision, a vision which is now being brought from outside the borders of the USA to the very heart of the cities of our land.

Lutheran Funeral in Rural Texas

When Victor Kokel died, friends and relatives gathered to swap anecdotes, legends and hard memories. But mostly there were stories of church, of faith, of family and of congregation.

It was 12 noon, only three hours after Victor Kokel had been officially declared dead of a massive heart attack. Already the table and kitchen counter of this Texas farmhouse were laden with food brought by members of the congregation and the community. Frozen produce from the freezers, freshly baked bread, a pot of newly made cheese, whole hams and a large cooked roast were lined up, testimony of a caring Christian community that was used to responding with attention and affection when pain stabbed its communal body.

Victor was 71 years old. He had been born and raised and had lived and died in that same simple Texas farmhouse just up the hill from the Theon cotton gin and down the hill from Zion Lutheran Church and School in Walburg.

His body lay at rest just blocks from the barbershop on the courthouse square where he had been at work only 36 hours earlier. Recurring crises in the farm and cattle business had forced him to find alternative income. So, for almost 35 years, he had mixed the art of cutting hair with he skill of dissecting the politics of a Texas county. The turn-of-the-century barber chairs sat silent, and the well-worn leather razor strop hung unused behind the black funeral notice. Now, customers and cronies joined the cousins and congregants in strong, raw-boned, silent tribute at his wake.

“He just up and went to sleep on me” was the way his wife, Leona, put it as mourners came to express their condolences. Lanky, slim-waisted, cowboy-booted Cal just shook his head, asserting, “I’ve never seen a more peaceful corpse.” After all, Victor had died while in apparent good health. There was no evidence of the intense internal trauma that had suddenly ended his life, and so he appeared to be peacefully asleep, as in his own bed.

As the wake neared the end of the appointed visiting hours, family and friends gathered in the funeral parlor as Zion’s pastor, Lowell Rossow, began a brief prayer service. “Let’s just share a few Victor stories, memories and prayers,” he suggested. And so they flowed. Anecdotes of shy teen-age romance, legends of who got stuck with the beer tab at the local saloon, hard memories of staying alive on fatty pork and potatoes during the Depression of the ‘30s and the droughts of the ’50.

But most of all there wee stories of church, of faith, of family and congregation. There were stories of resistance to change: “If it was a sin then, it’s a sin now,” and “Who needs a new hymnal when the one we use now was just introduced in the ‘40s?” There were recollections of Victor’s dictum that there’s no excuse not to be in church every Sunday. Others testified, almost shyly, to a trust in a God whose promises are always sure. There was no shallow sentimentality, only solid conviction. As the evening drew to a close, those gathered sang all four stanzas of “Asleep in Jesus.” Many sang it completely from memory.

“His confirmation text provided an anchor for his life,” said Pastor Rossow at the funeral the next day. “They that wait upon the Lord shall mount up as eagles, they shall run and not be weary.” (Is. 40:31). A large cross-stitched banner emblazoned with this verse hung next to the pulpit, and indeed Pastor Rossow used this text as the basis for his funeral sermon. His message was classic Lutheran theology: sin and grace, justification by faith alone, the sure hope of the resurrection.

When, on the 55th anniversary of his confirmation, Victor had received a plaque inscribed with his confirmation verse, he had chosen not merely to hang it on his parlor wall. Instead, he nailed it tight with 10-peny nails right through the plaque and into the studs of his 100-year-old farmhouse. When his wife asked him why he didn’t simply hang it in the usual way, he said, “Because I don’t want any strong wind blowing it down.”

Victor believed in open-coffin funerals, where the departed lay in state before the communion rail, directly under the chancel cross. Thus, more than 500 worshipers, braving the 102-degree Texas heat, thronged to that rural church on Zion hill, thundered out “I Know That My Redeemer Lives,” and marched in procession past his casket in final tribute.

The organist, a nephew of the now-sainted Victor, knew his uncle and knew the community. As the strains of “Wait on the Lord, Wait Patiently for Him” began, the congregation silently mouthed the words as they processed. Zion had sat on that hill for 35 years longer than Victor’s 71 years of life, and most in the procession were part of that history. Men – farmers with backs bent from incredibly hard work, women - who had borne, fed and clothed 10, 12, even 14 children, in slow and unhurried steps walked by the bier. Some paused to touch the shoulder of the widow. Toughened farmers, who with Victor had shared battles with boll weevils and milk fever and had experienced the pain of seeing farmland covered by concrete interstates, gave gentle hugs to the grieving family in the front pew.

Changes that had come to the community were reflected in the flow of the procession. There was the county judge. There was the placement director from Texas A&M, where a son of the deceased had graduated. There were the erstwhile yuppies who had grown to respect the strongly opinionated barber. And there was the Texas sheriff, replete in cowboy boots, 10-gallon hat and a six-shooter at his side.

Infants in arms, children excused from the parochial school next door so they could attend, and grandparents with canes and walkers filed past to the chords of “For All the Saints.”

Still they marched: young women in smartly fashioned suits, older women in simple home-sewn cotton dresses, and the lone, dignified black man who had shined shoes at the barbershop longer than anyone could even recall. While they marched, some silently mouthed the words of “Jerusalem the Golden”, the strains of which floated down loud and clear from the organ.

This writer had almost convinced himself that he had become an objective observer ad this old-fashioned Texas Lutheran funeral, but then he noticed his necktie. It was stained with the moisture of his own tears. He recovered himself in time to hear the pastor’s words of Christian benediction and to see for the first time the banner just to the left of the coffin: “Sing to the Lord a New Song.”

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The following is excerpted from a letter received by Mr. Kokel’s widow shortly after her husband’s death. The writer asked that his name be withheld.

Dear Mrs. Kokel:

Your husband, Victor, never knew of the impact he had on my life. I regret not taking the time to visit with him to express my thanks for a deed he did many years ago that proved instrumental in shaping the direction of my life.

Although I attended the funeral service, I really heard very little of what Pastor Rossow said. My mind kept straying back to 30 years ago when I was a young boy with the simple wish of having my hair cut in a downtown barbershop. This was no easy task. Many barbers had already refused to cut my hair because of my skin color.

I remember how your husband brushed the barber chair clean and asked me to have a seat. It was one of the most memorable moments of my life. Your husband saw only a young man who wanted a hair cut. I’m sure that at that moment he was not the most popular man in that barbershop. But he did what his heart told him to do and was not concerned with what others thought. Later, when I walked out of the shop, I felt 10 feet tall.

As I stood in the rear of the church, staring at your husband’s coffin, it occurred to me that they just don’t make coffins big enough for men like Victor Kokel. To my mind his heart alone weighed 100 pounds.

God be with you and your family.

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HEADS UP!

“Heads Up” is a voice I hear often from my wife. And, as usual, she is right. I have gotten into the habit of walking with my head and chin turned downward. Not a good idea. I have nearly bumped into people in the hallways of this retirement community. When I had my head down on my morning walk I narrowly escaped collision with a bicyclist only because she swerved to avoid me. My physical trainer adds her voice to the chorus, “Keep you head up ! It is good for your posture and your whole body.”

Then I recall my father’s advice to keep my head up, and he was referring not just to my physical safety and well-being, but to the very state of my soul. It all began when I was a youngster and watched the roosters in our barnyard. I noticed that when they drank their water they always pitched their heads back with each swallow. Now, my father was raised on the farm and he knew about the swallowing mechanisms of roosters. But he gave me a different explanation. He said, “Melvin, learn from those roosters. They know that every drink of water like everything else comes down from above. So with each mouthful they just tilt their heads back and in rooster language say ‘Thank you God’.”

So this afternoon I am recalling those Texas roosters and my father’s good instruction. I have been in a funk because of some things over which I have little control. I am tempted to put my head down and mope. Then I remember my wife, my trainer, my father and those roosters and I follow their good advice, “Heads Up !”

Mental Illness

Within less than 24 hours of time the issue of mental illness stared me in the face and stirred my heart. I was in an ordinary meeting in the pastor’s office at my church. Suddenly a significant eruption of angry noise blared from the reception area. A very angry person was screaming, threatening bodily harm to humans and physical destruction of the property. It doesn’t really matter what the issue was but it seems that the person was looking for a different person than one to be found at our church offices. Pastor went out to assist. The ruckus continued and in spite of excellent intervention skills by pastor was escalating. Someone said: “Do you think we should call the police?” The Director of Family Life at our church replied, “That would solve our problem, but it surely would not help the mentally ill person.” How true.

When I arrived home I had a message on my answering machine. The caller had not identified herself, but said she was calling at the request of another. I, of course recognized the name. My mind made an assumption “This would be a call from the emergency room of a local hospital. The person leaving the message had probably attempted suicide.” Four times in the past I have been in that hospital ministering to the person whose name was in front of me. Each time this person had attempted suicide and each time had failed. Severe bi-polar disorder. When drugs are taken the disorder is somewhat controlled. When drug are not taken, deep suicidal depression often comes. I knew that if I went I would feel better, but would it really help the sick person?

Later in the day I watched some Tucson Memorial events. Concurrently I read the newspaper. It contained an article with the news that the sale of Glock pistols was up at a record high. I recalled Sandy’s comment: “That may help us, but it surely won’t help the mentally ill.”

That same day another person asked me, “Mel, have you really looked into the eyes of the person who allegedly shot those persons in Tucson? He reminds me of---. “ She was right. The person referenced often had that vacant look in the eye, which betrayed a hole in the heart. That person was very functional in some aspect of life, was able to be a university professor. Yet was not well mentally. Two of the children of this family are mentally ill. I don’t know why they suffer this, but I am assuming that it might be a combination of heredity, environment, and family interactions. I knew about this long ago. I was never able to help.

That evening I opened a book recently given me about service men and women with posttraumatic stress disorder. It contained the startling statistic that more Viet Nam veterans have committed suicide than the number who were killed in action. What will be the number during/post Iraq/Afghanistan?

So the thought comes back to me, How can I respond to Sandy’s remark that sometimes we protect ourselves when dealing with mentally ill, but how are we helping them? I felt disheartened until I did come up with a few things I can do: 1. I can support early intervention, especially in our school systems. I can insist that we provide public funding for children with special needs. 2. I can at least be there with people who are suffering, especially also those with whom it is sometimes difficult because of their mental state. I can give them my presence and my prayers. 3. I can promote parenting styles that are healthy and that tend to result in adults who have healthy coping mechaisms. 4. I can be a spokesperson/volunteer at my church and elsewhere for the ministry of reaching out in support of all veterans and especially those hurting from PTSD. 5. I can be an advocate for all who assist the mentally ill: mental professionals, special ed teachers, parents whose children show symptoms, congregations and other organizations which include the mentally ill in their outreach.

The mentally ill. There are too many of them. I am resolved to do something that not only protects me, but also helps them.