Covid-19 It’s a Hoax

 I keep hearing the message:” Mel, don’t be so concerned about Covid-19. It is a hoax. Last month I went to Texas to attend a Celebration of Life for my sister-in Law Elaine. It was a simple, yet profound ceremony at my brother John’s home. There were 28 of us there; three (3) of us wore masks. The message: The virus is not so bad; in fact, it is mostly a hoax. My sister Darline skipped the “mostly”. It’s a hoax, she was convinced. She cited as an example the deaths in the home for the elderly in her hometown. “We have had more than a dozen deaths in the home,” she affirmed. “They said it was all from the Virus. I don’t believe it for a minute. Those poor old people all died of loneliness! This whole thing is a hoax!” I have a good friend from church whom I admire. He scoffs at the idea of taking all these unnecessary precautions. His argument “We are all going to die sooner or later. What is so bad about dyeing now rather than later? I am happy to take my planned trip to Minnesota or Chicago or wherever. If I die it’s because my hour has come…And as far as our church is concerned, let’s get together NOW and worship as the family we are !” We have a President (for another few weeks ) who refuses to wear a mask, who gathers crowds, who wants everything open. He himself had Covid, People around hm by the tens are unable to come to work because they have the disease. His message, “Ignore it. If you just ignore it, it will go away. Just be as smart as I am: Recognize a hoax when you see one !” On TV news this evening I heard of a woman who had lost her husband and two other members of her family. Her conviction, “I don’t know what they died of, but I am sure it was NOT Covid. That Covid stuff is just bull --!” My reaction: I believe the health experts. I hear the number of deaths from Covid in the world, our country and San Diego County. And I wear my mask. I don’t have guests in my apartment. I pray for patience and an answer to my impatient prayer, “ From this deliver us, Heavenly Father.”

Mighty Mentors of Ministry

My wife and I live in a Retirement Community. Because of vulnerability to Covid-19 we are almost in a lock-down situation. After more than three months it really got to me. I felt locked in. Then came all the social unrest, massive crowds, Black Lives Matter and looting of property - day after day after day. I watched it all and got depressed. “All this is going on and I am not making the slightest bit of difference for anyone! What’s the point of living!”

 

The phone rang. It was Shamayel Ameri, a Muslim woman here from Afghanistan. She fled from the Taliban because she was next on their “kill list”. She thanked me for what I have been doing for her for six years. Her call reassured me. Sometimes the call to make a difference is to simply make a difference in one person’s life.

 

That is my call today. Find one person. Learn from and influence that one person. Have that person be someone of a skin color, ethnicity or sexual orientation other than yours. Get to know that person. Be a friend and mentor. Listen. Learn. Eat at each other’s home. 

 

My life has been enriched by just such relationships with a Chinese descendent of Confucius, the lone female Lutheran school principal in an LCMS District with 117 schools, a gay family member, a black principal of a Lutheran school. Each made a difference in my life and just maybe I made a difference in theirs. 

 

COVID-19-No.3

We are nearing the end of month 5 of being prisoners in our apartment. I write this Blog not because our experience is particularly unique. I write it so that when this is finally over I will have a record of some of my activities (or lack of them) and thoughts.

 

Realities: We are allowed no visitors from the outside. We cannot be legally barred from leaving these premises but we are under urgent appeals to just stay home. Jane has left this facility only twice in all these months. She and I went to friends Dick and Cheryl one evening for an outside gathering (6 feet apart ) where we shared drinks and broiled steaks. I have left once a month: I drive the car to get the battery recharged. It has already died twice because the car just sits idle. Jane joined me on one of those little trips just up and down the freeway. I went to the grocery store twice and to an eye doctor once. The administration here does not want us to go to any neighbor’s unit for a visit and/or cocktails and we have honored that.

 

An attempt was made to open one dining room. That lasted about 4 days as it just didn’t work. Our daily allotted time for our meal was 11:40 am and we just skipped that as we still had the option of food being delivered to our room. We have a daily choice of a couple appetisers, an entre, a couple vegetables, a dessert and a drink. The quality and presentation vary, some days wonderful; other days attractive to neither the eyes nor the palate.

 

Fitness centers are closed. All group activities halted. The administration tries very hard to adapt. Just this morning they announced that the fitness center equipment will be moved outside under tents and will be available by reservations. Of course, there are 15 minutes between users as everything has to be wiped clean after each use. This afternoon I may try ping pong for the second time in over 25 years -outside while wearing a face mask

 

After a couple months of not having maids come to clean our units we now have that option available to us. New move-ins had been halted but are being resumed with all new residents subject to two consecutive negative test results. Packages are being delivered by staff after they have been sprayed and sanitized. The number of packages being delivered is very high as almost all shopping is now on-line

 

Our congregation has held no on-site worship services. Online there is a full Sunday morning service and an abbreviated one on Wednesday evening. Jane and I set up a beautiful little altar each Sunday. We place the bread and wine on a lovely small silver tray (courtesy of Hong Kong International  School).We have an appropriate ivory figure of Christ looking down upon the communion elements.

 

The Calvary Men’s Support Group (9 of us) which I helped organize more than 10 years ago now meets for an hour each week via phone. It is good to share joys and concerns and whatever topic is chosen for the evening.

 

As I was typing this the doorbell rang. It was staff coming with special treat options. This time they included coffee, tea, hot chocolate and coffee cake. At other times we have had choices like ice cream cones, Mai Tais, Margaritas, Bloody Marys, candy, et sim. Twice a week we get fresh fruit, breakfast rolls and hardboiled eggs. We are not going hungry or losing weight. In this community of well over 1000 residents and staff we have had 8 cases of infection, none requiring hospitalization. None of the infected were residents in our Independent Living section.

 

The owners have not laid off any staff but had to make many reassignments as the required duties varied greatly, especially in matters like food and package deliveries, cleaning all railings, door entries et al. While a group of residents gathered names for a request that monthly fees be frozen for next year management responded that that was not possible. They warned that increased costs especially for insurance, food preparation and delivery and hundreds of tests will result in a fee increase beginning in January.

 

Much alone time is used by Jane and me in a variety of ways. I make lots of phone calls to fellow residents and to members at our church. I read at least one book a week on Kindle and hard copy. Jane has finished her 500-piece jigsaw puzzle and is now working on a very detailed 1000-piece one. Both Jane and I walk about 6 times a week. For the first time since we have been here at La Costa Glen we have watched movies on the closed channel which shows films selected by the staff here.

 

Every morning in our daily devotions we give thanks for the incredible blessings we experience in the midst of all that is going on. We pray for a stopping of both racism and inexcusable violence, even if it is in the name of seeking some needed cultural changes. We ask for people to act responsibly and for God to act graciously to stop the spread of the virus. We parade before God the names of family members who are very ill, of friends who have experienced deaths, of those who have lost income. School children and those who teach them are very high on our list of concerns. And so the list goes on. In the midst of it all we rest contentedly in the arms of One who loves us and in community with any of you who might actually read this Blog. 

 

 

 

White Privilege

 Our country is in an uproar. The on-going and growing threat of Covid-19 has kept me house-bound for 3 months. Millions of lives around the world and here is the USA have been severely disrupted. The swirling social unrest, first aroused to protest police brutality, has morphed into much more- some of which is very disheartening and inappropriate. Near the top of the list of matters to contemplate has been the topic “White Privilege”. I have reflected upon that topic and have once again become aware that I have indeed been (and continue to be) someone who has benefitted from White Privilege. I decided to make a partial list and to share it. Here it is.

EDUCATION I went to excellent Lutheran elementary and secondary schools. Neither one would have allowed my enrollment had I been black. To the best of my knowledge there was not even a black public school available within 10 miles of my home which I could have I attended had I not been white.

PROFESSION I became a Minister of Religion in The Lutheran Church. Had I been black I would have had the option to attend one very low-quality Lutheran College in Selma Alabama. But If I graduated from that school there is no way on earth that I could have served in any white church organization if I had not been white. I cannot conceive any of the positions that I held in the first 30 years of my ministry as being open to a black person-even if somehow or other that person had a PhD degree.

HOUSING I lived for years in rental housing in areas in which there was strong agreement that the owner would rent to whites only. When I bought my first home in Crestwood, MO it was in an area where all agreed that no house would be sold to a black person.

TRANSPORTATION Much of my transportation while in high school and college was via hitch-hiking. Had I not been white I would have stood in vain on the side of the road with the thumb sticking in the air. When I took public transportation, I could sit in front of the bus while the Blacks had to sit in the designated area in the back of the bus.  When I took the train to go to college I rode in the “whites only” coach. In the train station I drank from the “whites only” water fountain and used the “whites only” rest rooms Interestingly enough just a few years ago I was on an international flight from the Middle East through India. When I boarded the flight in Abu Dubai I noticed almost all the passengers were of a skin color other than mine. We had been aloft only a few minutes when the white flight attendant came to my seat. She said, ”Sir, I have an open seat up in first class. Why don’t you come sit there?” 

  

POLICE Fortunately I have not had not many encounters with the police. I think I have been stopped about 8 times and got 2 tickets for speeding. Each time the police were very professional. They never asked me to step out of my car. While I cannot prove it, it is my fear is that had I been Black it might very well have been more threatening. I suspect (but cannot prove) that I encountered White Privilege.

Thank God many of the privileges I enjoyed are now available to all. Unfortunately, that does not mean that all disadvantages for people of color have been overcome. I need only to look at the topics like education, profession, housing, transportation and police to see that there continues to be inequality in access.

I reflect on all of the above in this week of the 4^th of July. I thank God for the privilege of living in the United States of America. I make a vow that I will make an extra effort to do my part that the vision of our wonderful constitution, “to form a more perfect union”, might become a reality.

Generosity

Generosity Moment: No. 1

It was in the 1950’s. I was at Sunday worship in Hong Kong. The hall was packed with refugees who were fleeing the threat of death at the hand of Mao Tse Dung. The preacher Andrew Chui was someone who him fled as he had been an officer in Chiang Kai Shek’s military. But this Sunday he was preaching a powerful sermon  about the unlimited grace of God and our response.

I noticed an old woman sitting to my left in the row in front of me. She was obviously very poor -dressed in the cheapest totally black dress available anywhere. But she was paying very close attention to every word of the sermon; obviously being very moved by the message of grace and gratitude. Soon it was time for the offering. As the plate reached her I noticed her hand move to her right ear. There she carefully removed her small stud earing made of jade. She carefully placed it into the offering basket and passed it on to the next fellow worshipper.

Generosity Moment No. 2

The year was 1970. My son Tim was 10  years old. He had taken on a challenging job for a 10 year old boy. He ha in Ann Arbor, MI.. He had to do it not only on Sunday but also during the week because the church was running an early childhood program. But he was highly motivated and did his work faithfully.

His motivation came from his desire to have ping pong table for our basement. He had seen a used one advertised for just $20.00-which he did not have. So he resolved to shovel that snow at 50  cents  per time. He faithfully stored his hard-earned cash in a glass fruit jar carefully stored on a shelf in his bedroom

His earnings had come to $13.50 and he was excited because he was more than half way home. 

Then Missionary Heinz -visiting form Hong Kong arrived as a visitor at our home He recalled his work among those very poor refugees escaping Mao Tse Tung-fleeing for their lives. He  especially talked of young kids who lived in make-shift huts on the hillside. He explained that they did not have the money for school fees so were growing up unable to read or write. He told of how each morning they lined up in front of a truck operated by Lutheran World Relief where they were given a glass of milk-which was their total breakfast. Tim listened very carefully and I noticed he was very quiet.

After a while he left. He went to his room and returned with that jar of his hard earned cash. He handed it to Missionary Heintz and said, “Here, take this. Help those kids get enough to eat.”

Tim is now 60 years old. I know he still tithes. Just last December he caed and said that he and his wife had calculated their annual earnings an were now writing checks to the charities of their choice. He was paying is tithes and asked me if I had a favorite charity which he could help support.

Scars

The magazine “The Christian Century” has an interesting little writing competition. At regular intervals the magazine selects a single word. It asks writers to submit an article of less than 1000 words on that topic. This month the topic was simply PLATE. The next topic is SCAR. I decided that my reflections on that topic did not merit space in the magazine, but I did want to write on that topic and post it as a BLOG. So here it is.

I have what I will call a scar in my body which I think is unique. I was actually unaware that it was in my body until I was in college. There I played football. I fell and broke my ankle. When the Dr. looked at the x-ray. He immediately saw the fracture. However, there was another scar that interested him more. He asked me “Do you know that you have a pin embedded in the flesh of your ankle?” I did not. He explained that the x-ray clearly showed a full-length pin 

firmly embedded there. “It is not a needle,” he said. “There is no eye. It is a metal little pin about 2 inches long. It seems so firmly in place that I think we will just let it stay right there.”

I have no idea just when I stepped on that pin as it could have been at almost any time in my life. I went barefoot at least 10 months of every year. My feet and toes were often filled with stickers, or were punctured by nails, step edges or cactus. etc. I do not recall ever unsuccessfully asking Mother to try to remove something sticking in my foot. When I told Mother about this, she was concerned that the pin might move. She even imagined it moving all the way to a vital organ and causing mortal danger. I never worried about that.

It was about 10 years later. I played some basketball with my Chinese students in Hong Kong and injured my ankle. When I had it x-rayed once again the Dr. was not so concerned about the bad sprain, but he did excitedly point to a little 2-inch long mark on the x-ray. “That is a pin!” he exclaimed, “Looks like it has been there a long time.”

And since I tend to do things in threes, I repeated this experience one more time. So now I assume that pin still happily resides there after some 80 years. It is an invisible scar until it shows up on x-rays and I am happy to just let it rest in peace.

There is a second much more obvious scar. It is on my right side of my abdomen just below the waist. It is a reminder of when I had appendicitis at about age 7. That scar experience very nearly cost me my life. I had a punctured appendix. The puss and other materials completely swamped the whole area. This was before penicillin. The doctors were surprised that I survived. I just remember three things about that ordeal of almost 90 years ago. My dad and Uncle Reinhold Leschber took me to King’s Daughters Hospital in Temple. Mother really wanted to be with me, but she had to stay home with the 4 other little ones, including an infant. The ether was terrible. A small nurse told me she would wait for me to grow up and would then marry me and I believed her. And my mother told me that after that experience I became a slow runner. “You used to be the fastest boy of your age”, she said. “Now you are among the slowest.” I don’t need to look at that scar these mornings to be reminded that I have indeed slowed down a lot.

When I looked for it this morning, I found that my third scar has actually disappeared. It was right there above my right eye near my hairline for decades. I was maybe 10 when I needed to cut a string. I went to the kitchen, got the big ten-inch knife, pointed it upward through the string and pulled hard. The knife was sharp. It went right through that string, all the way up to my forehead just above my right eye. The gash was substantial. The blood flowed freely. Embarrassed and scared I ran and showed it to my mom. My Aunt Maddie happened to be visiting. She joined the Mother in the decision “Let’s not bother Dr. Weidemeier. We will just patch it up. Put some monkey blood (mercurochrome) on it and it will heal.” It healed. The scar remained for decades.

I write this BLOG on May 13 the day my Mother would have turned 118. She would remember all of this and then sum it all up with “God always took care of you, Melvin, and you needed that!”

Graduations - Past and Present

May is the month that I think about graduations, especially in the year 2020. It was on May 10, 1945 that I graduated from Concordia Academy in Austin, Texas. So, this marks the 75^th anniversary of that wonderful event. I was honored to have Mom and Dad drive from Walburg to attend accompanied by my Aunt Elizabeth from Austin and a “sorta” girl friend from Thorndale. I still remember the theme of the guest speaker: “He (Christ) must increase. I must decrease.” The party afterward was not very extravagant a trip to an amusement park where I invested 25 cents to hit some balls pitched to me by a machine. It was a wonderful miracle that I could graduate from this boys-only boarding school, a school devoted to training future ministers of the church. The national church paid for the tuition and parents were responsible for room and board. This was a major challenge to my father who was a teaching minister in the Lutheran church working for an extremely low salary. In fact, one reason I was able to attend is because my eldest sister Erna gave up a college scholarship to become a secretary and thus provide some assistance in paying for my school fees.

A second graduation took place in late May 1950 from Concordia Teachers College (now University) River Forest, Illinois. This year marks the 70th anniversary of that event. Again, Mom and Dad scrounged up the money to drive from Texas to Illinois to attend. More important to me than graduation is that just before we went to the ceremony, I handed Jane Scheimann an engagement ring which she has now been wearing for 70 years. I do not remember who the graduation speaker was or what his theme was. I do remember that after the event Jane’s folks (including her very old grandmother) and my parents and went out for dinner to celebrate both what was and what was to be.

As I reflect on those years of 1945 and 1950, I also recall the May of 1920, the year my Father graduated from that same Concordia Teachers College and this year, obviously, marks exactly one hundred years of that celebrated event.

There have been many, many graduations to attend since then. As I served both as a principal and the as superintendent of schools, I am sure that I have been the speaker at more than 50 graduations including speaking at three university graduations. My guess is that none of those grads remember that I was the speaker-much less what I might have said. 

Graduations in 2020 will always be remembered as the graduations that never had any real ceremony. As I write this blog we are still in the midst of the Covoid-19 epidemic and all “live” school graduations have been canceled. It gets personal because our youngest grandson Antonio was due to graduate from New York University and our “adopted” Afghan refugee “granddaughter” was scheduled to be at a ceremony at the University of California San Diego. That too, will not be held with people in attendance.

All of this causes me to just stop for a few minutes and let my mind and heart reflect. Thank God for all teachers who lead students to the point where they can graduate. I am thankful for all who study and use their gifts to learn and thus increase their ability to serve. And I don’t want to forget those millions of young people around the world who will not only not graduate but will continue to be illiterate because we still do not have universal worldwide education. In the context of all that I will open a bottle of champagne in the quiet of my house and Jane and I will salute all graduations, ours and others, both past and present!