Ann Arbor, Michigan

[This is a continuation of a series on cities which I have visited or in which I have lived.]

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The late 1960’s and early 70’s was a great time to live in Ann Arbor Michigan. It was a typical university city full of the then current unrest. Students were in protest. Young men went without shaving and young women without bras. I went with my teen-aged son David to my first (and only rock concert) where marijuana  smoke filled the air.

I was Superintendent of the 117 Lutheran elementary and high schools in the state. Our office became “occupied” by a group of black activists who insisted they would not leave until they were paid several million dollars in “reparations’ for past injustices. We dialogued with them, served them coffee, assured them no money was forthcoming but that we would stay with them as long as they stayed. My memory is that well before 10:00 pm they had decided to “call it a day”. They left and they never returned.

But for all of us it was time to reassess our ministry to and with our black brothers and sisters. Dr. Pete Pero who was serving in Detroit and his black allies taught me a lot.  There were 17 Lutheran schools within the city limits of Detroit, some of them with all-black enrollments. Those teachers, students and parents were patient with me, accepted me and broadened my horizons.

My memories of the principals across the State are very positive. While the schools of Detroit may have had very diverse student bodies the schools in places like Bach or Frankenmuth were still all-white and often all Lutheran. Interestingly one of the things I remember of those days 40 years ago is that the State highway department did an incredible job of keeping all highways open during snow storms and I do not recall ever having to cancel a school visit because of weather!

It was a great time to be politically active, especially in the interest of school choice. I helped form the Michigan Association of Non-Public Schools, sat on a special Education Committee of the State Senate, was invited to meet with President Nixon, and served as Vice-president of the now defunct Citizens for Educational Freedom. One of the great joys of all this was that I had two associates,  Don Kell and Roland Boehnke and the three of us together with our aide, Elinor Donohue,  were always challenging and supporting each other into new ways of thinking and acting.

We lived in Ann Arbor for only four years but that was enough time to learn to know its excellent restaurants and friendly bars where Lutheran principals(all except one were male!) could gather, drink a few beer together and sing songs to our hearts content. The University of Michigan football stadium was the site of some great football fetes and the frozen feet of a whole den of boy scouts whom I took there. The memory of that university may have played a role years later when our daughter  Elizabeth returned there to earn her Ph. D

Ann Arbor - a good place of fond memories and intellectual growth.

HONG KONG 1956

(This is the third in a series I'm writing on cities I've visited or in which I have lived)

Welcome: Jane and our 4-year-old David stared out the window of the descending TWA Constellation. We skirted (it seemed like by just a few feet) the hills around Kai Tak Airport. When we walked down the ramp into the sweltering September heat the first thing I noticed was that we had actually landed and taxied across a public street which had barriers put up to allow for our landing. Then came the typical Chinese welcome. Some Chinese teachers from a Lutheran school, a group of Lutheran missionaries and even the President (Bishop) of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod were all there to welcome us. We were immediately herded into small cars and taxis and were off to Winter Gardens where a 12 course Chinese meal awaited us. We were welcomed. And that was typical of all. Fellow workers who were overwhelmed with challenged could hardly wait for a few new hands. Our Chinese colleagues were welcoming beyond any reasonable expectations. They endured our terrible attempts at Cantonese. They laughed with us and not at us as we negotiated chopsticks. They graciously held us back when we forgot that cars traveled on the left side of the street. They understood when we were slow to bow or when we did not immediately have a name card to exchange when we were introduced.

Assaulted: While the welcome was warm, the entire experience felt like an assault. Chairman Mao had won in China. Refugees by the tens of thousands were fleeing into British Hong Kong. In 1945 it had a population of 500,000. Ten years later there were 2 million (and now there are 7 million). People everywhere. On the streets, under staircases, on the roofs, in the parks, in every stairwell. With babies in their arms and on their backs mothers grabbed at us as we entered the restaurant and eagerly clutched at the bags of leftover food from the meal when we departed. Two weeks after arriving I was walking down the road in the midst of a riled up mass. Unrecognized by me I was walking in the middle of a riot. Bullets entered the wall of the classroom I had just vacated. On the street the wife of the Swiss Consul General was tragically killed while riding in her car, just below where I had been teaching. A man ran at me with what I thought was a half-drunken bottle of Chinese wine. Minutes later I learned it was a bottle of explosives. We stayed cooped up in our little apartment and waited until things calmed down under the excellent response by the British and local police.

Challenged: I can still list a few of the many challenges: finding an affordable apartment, keeping Davey occupied in that tiny upper-floor apartment we shared temporarily with two women not used to having a kid around, figuring out when to take a bus or a ferry or a rickshaw or tram, or a taxi or to just walk. Learning to never, never drink unboiled water. Even my faith in a just God had to face the reality that I had just walked by a 12-year-old who I am pretty sure was dead of starvation before the next day’s sun rose.

Inspiration: Yet it was all -inspiring. My colleagues, both American and Chinese were determined to make it work. Everyone wanted schooling and that is what I was there to help provide. Faith had been discovered and was rewarded with the sight of belief, trust and moving forward confident of the future.

Within a very short time I learned to love Hong Kong. I still do. I am encouraged by my Chinese friends, I am energized by the resourcefulness of the Hong Kong people, I am enthralled with the beautiful lights and architecture, I am blessed by 4 new children born to Jane and me while in Hong Kong. I still salivate at the thought of the good food and remember the contrast of the city pavement and housing blocks with the greens of The Royal Hong Kong Gold Club. I loved Hong in the late 1950’s. Now I go back at every opportunity and there are several more Hong Kong blogs in me just waiting to get written.

Chicago (Late 1940’s)

[Note: this is the  second in a series on the cities in which I have lived--or visited.]

Making my first visit to Chicago in late August 1945 was a big deal. The train-ride from Texas to there was my first ever experience with rail travel. World War II had ended only a couple weeks earlier. I knew the city would be immense to this 17 year old boy from Walburg Texas. My father who had made the same first-ever train trip some 30 years earlier had given me very detailed instructions on how to use the el to get me to Concordia Teachers College in suburban River Forest. But I was met at the Union Station and my first el ride didn’t come until weeks later.

Yet the el rides help define Chicago for me. As we went by crowded tenements it was a new world for this rural kid. Encountering people of many different ethnic groups and black people at all economic levels was ever eye-opening.

Visiting the Loop was (and still is) always special. Perry Como at the State Theater. New productions (at very low student ticket prices) at The Goodman theater, the Lake front, Buckingham Fountain, Outer Drive, Michigan Avenue, the stockyards, the South side, Maxwell Street (where I reinforced my biased ethnic stereotyping.) Just imaging these still stirs my heart.

And in the middle of the heart is Jane Adams Hull House: a community settlement for “young girls”. We visited that as a class assignment. But what attracted me was not Jane Adams but another Jane who wore a unique pair or earmuffs. I introduced myself and told her I liked those earmuffs. Now 65 years later the earmuffs are long gone but Jane and I still share those memories and five kids and 8 grandkids.

 It was in the Chicago area that Jane and I got certified to be Lutheran teaching ministers. In that role we have traveled the globe and lived all over, yet without Chicago’s Hull House it might never have happened. Together we still visit Chicago and I still love that city. Pick any ethnic food and you know some of the best will be in Chicago. If you need to keep hope alive after decades of evidence to the contrary visit Wriggly Field. Want to see good art look at Picasso at the Art Museum or other ancients and moderns at lots of other places. Look at the exotic sea creatures and enjoy the cafeteria at Shed Aquarium close to Soldiers Field. Listen to good Bach music at worship at St. Luke’s Lutheran.  I can stop by (as close as security allows) at the Obama Chicago Mansion and recall visiting my son when he lived in that very home as a street worker for alienated youth, or go just a little farther south (but lock your car better than I did and it costs me my new expensive camera) and visit Chicago University.

I think O’Hare wasn’t even there in my college days. All subsequent school-time trips were via the thumb of a hitch-hiker until I got my own car. So whether it was or is by train, plane or thumb I am always ready to head there.

Chicago - it’s my kind of town

Austin, Texas (Personal Memories

 [Note: this is the first in a series of blogs in which I will reminisce over cities of the world that I have visited or lived in. Hopefully it will stir pleasant memories or anticipations for those who may choose to read this.]

In 1941-45, Austin Texas was my home. It was about 35 miles from my rural Texas home one mile from Walburg. Walburg still welcomes all visitors with its town sign which announces: "Walburg: Home of 88 friendly people and one old Grouch ". I went to Austin after finishing 8^th grade and enrolled at Concordia Academy of Texas, a boys only dormitory school for persons preparing fore the pastoral or teaching ministries of the Lutheran Church.

That Concordia campus was home. We ate, slept, played sports and endured lower classman hazing.  We were not allowed off campus except for Saturday afternoon and to go to church (twice each Sunday). Our dorms had two to a room. Times were tough and our meals were spare. Cereal, the same boxed stuff every morning for breakfast and cheese and baloney for the evening meal at 5:00. Chapel services every morning and every night. At 10:00 p.m. the dean came to each room to check and make sure we had pulled down our Murphy beds from the closet and were in bed. It was a close-knit community with lots of good and some not so good or ethical stuff going on in the lives of the 40-50 of us young boys studying there in a very cloistered, girl-free environment.

To go down town to Congress Avenue was a treat. We went for 5 cents each way on the city bus. The state capitol was always an attraction. There was a place for wonderful chocolate shakes (which at 15cents each we could afford a few times a year). We would not venture below 6^th Street as that was the hub of really bad stuff we weren’t supposed to even know about.

Austin was where my eldest sister Erna worked. She had given up a college scholarship to work and send home the money so that I, her younger brother could “study for the holy ministry.” She helped me get a job at Wukash Brothers Café where I slowly advanced from a potatoes peeler and dish washer to waiter and where I could earn 20 cents an hour plus tips. In the three years I worked there never once did a customer leave a tip as high as one dollar.

Austin was/is the home of the University of Texas and Memorial Stadium and Saturday football. I never missed a home game. We ran there after classes on Saturday, scrounged up the 25 cents needed for a seat and cheered them on. At one point we discovered that the Coliseum was left open after the games so on Sunday a bunch of us went there, found a group of equally eager and foolish black teen-agers and played each other in tackle football on that hallowed field, all without helmets or any other protection. The septum in my nose is still not straight.

Now I need to get back to Austin with its 850,000 people doing electronics and computers and its wonderful music and bands. But until that happens I will let my very selective memory recall to me four glorious years of adolescent discovery, growth and dreams.

The Ninth and Tenth Commandments: “Thou shalt not covet.”

Now here is a word I don’t use every day, “covet”. In fact, I don’t know if I have ever heard it used outside the context of church or religious discussion. Yet it is one of the specific prohibitions in the Ten Commandments - so much so that Catholics and Lutherans assign two commandments to this prohibition.

Looking at the original context it is pretty clear that what is talked about is an inordinate desire to have one’s neighbor’s property, whether that be real estate, financial resources or even slaves or wives who were considered property.

Immediately my mind plays games to help me escape the condemnation of this commandment. I say to myself, “I do not covet my neighbor’s specific house, beautiful spouse or new Mercedes.  I only want one just like it. That surely is not coveting.”

Then I hear the defensive assertion, “It is the desire to have more things than one’s parents had that made America great.” Surely it is a legitimate wish of each parent that their child have greater resources than they.

So what’s the big deal? I think the big deal addressed in these commandments is CONTENTMENT. It is the directive to not let my contentment be dependent on my possessions, especially when I compare my assets with my neighbors, particularly those who seem to have more than I do.

Of course, it goes beyond just discontent and wanting more, better, newer, more expensive… , although this gets me into enough trouble. It is when these desires not only leave me unhappy with what I have, but then also lead me to plan how I can get more, outstrip my neighbors, raise my social economic aspirations and that becomes the basis for life’s satisfaction and impels me to work seventy-hour weeks.

So I end up looking at these commandments and confessing, “I have not kept them.” But it also brings me up short with the wonderful reminder to be content with what I have, to live within my means, to share with those who need it, to rejoice with my neighbor in her good fortune and in the meantime to joyfully enjoy the blessings and the bounty of each day. And if I am going to covet, then maybe I should covet virtues like faith, hope, love and contentment.

The Seventh Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.

I want to scream it to the world: Thou shalt not steal! This morning’s newspaper reported a young man as saying “Yes, I shoplift. But I never steal from friends, just from corporations, like Walmart. I steal from Walmart all day”. He is obviously not alone. It is reported that in the USA $32.3 billion is shoplifted annually and 4 times that amount is stolen via employee theft. Equally stunning: 74% of people polled thought that taking something from someone else is probably okay as long as the other person is not going to miss the stolen object.

I just mailed in my Federal and Sate Income Tax returns. I hope I did not steal. If I was completely honest I was unlike thousands of others. The IRS reports that if no one cheated on their taxes our national debt could be retired in one year.

If course, it is not only “others” that people steal from.  I wonder what the figure is for hyped expense accounts. Then there is the matter of simply no putting in an honest day’s labor for an honest day’s wages.

The Internet is a wonderful way to just ignore intellectual property rights. My son recently reported that after working as an advisor for two years with a PL D candidate he discovered at the very last minute that almost all of her dissertation had been plagiarized (since it was translated from the Chinese, the candidate probably thought it would go undetected.)  My young friends say that if you were completely honest about downloading music there would be nothing good to listen to.

I railed against stealing recently and a friend stopped me short. “Mel,” she said, “If your child was starving to death and you had no money would you steal a couple of bananas? Would that be so terrible?” I reflect upon whether or not I am a partner in any system that exploits the poor or withholds resources due others.

I even ask myself, “Did I “steal” when I did not report the source for the statistics quoted above. But then a voice pipes up, “Come on, Mel, this is a simple blog read by very few. It is not about to be published in some famous research journal. Come off it!”

 

So I work on being honest and not stealing. And I am pointed to good old Martin Luther when he says in his explanation of this 7^th Commandment that we should not only “not take our neighbors’ money or goods, but should help them to protect and improve their property and business”; and I hear my father repeating that age-old axiom, “Honesty is the best policy.”

The Sixth Commandment

People may not even remember the prohibitions of each of the Ten Commandments, but everyone seems to know there is one that says very explicitly “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” I want to focus first on the blessings that come from keeping this commandment, especially as it relates to being sexually faithful to one’s spouse.

Jane and I have been married for 61 years. There have been lots of good things in our marriage (and, of course, also a few rough spots). One of the really great things about our marriage is that both of us are absolutely truthful in asserting that we have not committed adultery, in terms of having sex with anyone other than each other. I fudge on saying I’ve kept the commandment perfectly because Jesus did say that even to lust after another woman is to commit adultery. But with that caveat aside I have found that being faithful in the matter of sex has implications ways beyond sex.

Faithfulness in these areas is just a pointer to even deeper faithfulness in love, commitment, support, and comfort. And by looking at past faithfulness we get a glimpse of the future. I know that we will be faithful if it ever comes to issues like long-term care, dealing with memory loss, having to be wheeled about, being reminded of when to take drugs, making personal messes with clothes, furniture and carpets! And at the heart of it all is undying faithfulness, which we have evidenced in our sex lives. There can hardly be a greater blessing and joy in a marriage relationship.

After saying all those positive things about marriage I also bring up the other side: having adulterous relationships. I recently finished the tome The Kennedy’s: After Camelot. The Kennedy men were infamous about not taking The Sixth Commandment very seriously; I was shocked to read how one Kennedy brother reportedly assured another brother with a message something like ,“Remember, the good news. Just because you are married to person A does not mean you have to stop having sex with person B.” Wow! How is that for brotherly advice!

Another aspect of the Kennedy’s spousal relationship and The Sixth Commandment is how the Commandment seemed to apply only to the women. It would have been scandalous had one of Kennedy female spouses had an affair, but when it was the guys it was overlooked.

Reflecting upon the fact that each of the Commandments is designed to protect us and our neighbors it is so good to see how this commandment helps protect one of life’s most precious relationships,  that made between committed partners.