Adolph Hitler

I just finished reading a very powerful book: “The Choice” by Edith Eger. The author was taken captive by Hitler’s forces. She endured unspeakable tortures at too many places including the hellhole called Auschwitz. The book recalls her remarkable survival and how she learned to be psychologically healthy. Her premise is that one must look reality directly in the face. We dare not deny one’s fears, hatred, guilt, shame or terror. Facing them can be a step to affirming one’s survival and making the choice to live a whole life.

When she became a well-known speaker she was invited by the US Army Chaplaincy Corps to come to Berchtesgaden, Germany to address chaplains on how to assist service personnel who had experiences severe trauma. When she arrived at Berchtesgaden she was assigned a sleeping room once occupied by the infamous Nazi Angel of Death, Dr. Joseph Mengele. Imagine being in that bedroom and having her recall that she as a 16-year-old prisoner had been stripped naked in front of him. She was saved from being raped by him only when his phone rang and he decided to answer it she ran away. I cannot imagine what it must have felt like to her to be in Berchtesgaden, in that room and be faced with those memories.

While   her experience was way, way beyond my experience it did help me recall an incident in the life of Jane and me. In the late 1980s Jane and I, too, were invited to Berchtesgaden by the US Chaplaincy corps. We were there to address especially lay people who were active providing Christian education to USA military families stationed in Europe. We, too, slept in a bedroom previously occupied by the top aides to Adolph Hitler. The room decor had been maintained from those days, a very oppressive atmosphere, with black pictures on the wall, dark walls and a foreboding aura that was powerful.

Jane I left Berchtesgaden and went to visit the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. It was so overwhelming that when Jane got to the entrance she was unable to walk through the door. I entered. I looked to the left where I know a trainload of naked corpses had been found when the allies retook that place. Ahead of me was a vast gas chamber. Just beyond that I could still see the smoke stack from which the smoke of thousands of burned bodies once wafted into the sky.

Once again: my experience was nothing close to what Dr. Eger experienced; yet I came to the same renewed resolve that she experienced. We must resolve to never again let the world experience the torture and damnable activities like those of Hitler against Jews, homosexuals, persons with disabilities, etc. etc.

We live in a day in which fears are being stirred. People who are different from us are being demonized. Jews are in danger of being shot to death when they attend a synagogue. White Supremacists in America are yelling at fellow-American Muslims, “Go back to your own country!” Once again  I make a deep commitment to see all of God’s children as my brothers and sisters. I affirm my solidarity with all who seek the same things in life that I want: freedom, liberty, permission to worship according to the dictates of my conscience and the freedom to wear religious emblems of my own choosing. I ask for the courage to always proclaim “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”

Weddings II

 I enjoy writing blogs about weddings. Maybe that is because I have been so blessed in my relationship with my wife Jane and our marriage began with a wonderful wedding. Yet weddings were an important part of my life long before Jane and I had our wedding. 

When I was not yet in school I twice served as the ring bearer at weddings. I enjoyed doing that. I remember wearing a full suit and tie and having my hair carefully combed. I also remember some stress about “doing it right”. At one wedding I carried the rings for the couple on a small satin pillow. The rings were just laid on top of the pillow and I was told to be sure to not let them fall. The best man was especially concerned that the ring would slip off the pillow and down into my trousers. He twice told me he did not want to be in front of the congregation digging through my pants looking for those wedding rings!

I also remember that at one of those weddings, before we went to the reception after the ceremony at church, we went into Georgetown to a professional photographer to have pictures taken. And what I remember most is that while all that was going on a couple members of he wedding party kept urging me to kiss the flower girl. That was unthinkable and resolutely refused!

As mentioned in an earlier blog I especially loved going to the reception and being part of the small group of young boys who “held gate” and asked for a small donation from each car as it went through the fence gate to the farm house for the big party. There the meals were ALWAYS outstanding. There was always beef bar-b-cue. If the family was very poor and had trouble providing enough beef they would supplement the beef with a poor second choice: bar-b-cued mutton; but never chicken! Meals were served in three different seatings: first the wedding couple and the men, then the children and then the women.

After dinner there was often a bit of a “program.”  Central to that was my father singing a special song for the newly married. The songs were always in German and were improvised by my father. Depending upon the relative size of the two spouses dad would sing either “Die Kleine Frau” or “Die Grosse Frau” (The Small or the Large Wife”). I remember one section about the small wife having to climb a chair if she wanted to kiss her husband. After these ceremonies a” midnight lunch” was served to all. Then came to shivaree .Men friends of the couple came with their steel plow shares, wash tubs, and all kinds of other metal to make a big noise. They played until the groom called the helpers to bring on the beer and serve it to all the noisemakers. Technically there was no dancing during any of this since “Dancing is a Sin”. But the pastor knew not to stay too late because after the pastor left it was not unusual for actual dancing to begin!

 I had very little involvement in planning my own wedding and that was fine with me. There was no little boy ring bearer. Nor was there “gate-holding”, bar-b-cue, dancing or shivaree but it was wonderful. And for more than 68 years Jane and I have been doing our best to live out the call of the words from Psalm 34 which Pastor Weber encouraged us to embrace: “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.”

Weddings I

 I have just agreed to preside at the wedding of my grandson Ryan and his bride Jill. It’s scheduled for the 4^th of July in the backyard of his parents Liz and Jim in W. Hartford CT. I write this as the coronavirus is spreading and I am hoping that will all be pretty much history by the time we fly across the USA. Planning for that wedding which they want to be “very, very simple” reminds me of the most recent weddings at which I have presided.

Three recent weddings have all been for same sex marriages, something I would never have even dreamed of when Jane and I got married 68 years ago. One of those weddings was indeed the “most simple” possible. A lesbian couple had been together for years. Finally their marriage could be legal. They wanted me to just “do the legal minimum”. We stood together at a kitchen counter. I asked each, “Do you take her as your spouse?” They both said “Yes.” And that was it (I should add that since they did not want to have a religious ceremony I said my own silent prayer.)

Another recent marriage of two gay persons was of a grand-niece in Texas. It was a beautiful ceremony in a beautiful outdoor central Texas setting. It was joyful and celebratory but I could also feel the tension of family members who were not approving of the marriage and yet wanted the best for this wonderful couple.

The wedding before that was somewhat out of the norm as well. The groom was getting married just 6 months after I had presided at the memorial of his wife of more than 50 years. The bride in this case had also recently buried her husband. The newly married pair had known each other for years and they are now a very happy and blessed couple.

The wedding before that one was really different. The bride is the biggest Disney Land fan in the world and that is where she wanted her wedding. However, she did not want to deal with all the restrictions, protocols and costs of it being “an official Disney” wedding. She wanted guests at the wedding. And she wanted it to be a surprise for all. So we just casually gathered at Disney World, stood around an entrance to one of the rides as I quietly asked for and heard their very brief and casual vows. Then we went to a restaurant there and celebrated. The  marriage is a great success and Disney Land is joyfully visited by the bride on a very regular basis.

 A joyful memory of weddings comes almost every week as I see the very first couple that I married some 25 years ago now always show up for Sunday worship at Calvary Lutheran Church.

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.”