One of my favorite blogs is RealLivePreacher.com. His post, "Susan and the Cookie Man," January 5, reminds me of the strange situations pastors can get themselves into.
For twenty years I worked with Jack Domagall. His first wife was bi-polar and I remember sitting in our shared office as he described his tale of woe. Once in a manic episode this woman, who almost never went out of town, drove all night to the Peace Gardens on the North Dakota - Canadian border.
Eventually they divorced.
He married again and soon discovered he had married a woman with bi-polar illness. That marriage didn't last long.
For years we shared an office and he'd ocasionally say to me, "If I ever tell you I am going to get married again, shoot me."
Then he met Rose. They lived together for awhile and then Jack asked me to marry them.
I'm a big believer in church weddings. After all marriage, in my eyes, is not only between the couple but between the couple and God. And every marriage needs the support of a community.
By the time Jack asked me to marry he and Rose I had been a pastor long enough to know that life seldom fits the neat little boxes we'd like it to.
And there's always Jesus who seemed to bang regularly through the boxes that his religious compatriots had set up to manage life with God and his people.
I took a deep breath and said yes.
It was a small private ceremony with 20 people at a bed and breakfast. Jack, who was blind and the funniest man I've ever known, walked down the little aisle with his bride to be, swinging his cane, and firing off one-liners.
Jack died last winter. Such a shock. He'd been sick but none of his friends or Rose knew he was that sick.
At his memorial service lots of people shared. One of the themes-- the handful of years of being married to Rose were the happiest years of his life.
Every once in awhile I do things as a pastor that don't fit the box. Maybe I do it because I know that God loves me. He knows that life is much bigger than the little boxes I'd like to wrap it in.
And, as Jesus demonstrated over and over again, people and groups never thrives in too small a box.
I just want to be gentle with the out-of-the-box people who wander across my path. When I get to heaven I trust Jesus to be gentle with me as he tells me how I've done.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Figuring out blogger
I'm playing around with blogger. I used a template. Is there an easy way to modify a template? By the way this is a duplicate of a blog I have been keeping for some time at http://www.evergreenleaders.org/elcc/tiki-view_blog.php?blogId=5 on the Evergreen Leaders web site. The blog section on the site has some limist so I'm trying out blogger.com as a way to do things like include links to other blogs, not a possibility on the EGL site.
A long, slow slog
To accept one's past--one's history--is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. James Baldwin (1924-1987)
Two scenes from our recent trip to Florida. Taking 24 hours to travel 30 miles in Kentucky on I-24 due to snow and Kentucky's seeming denial that it snows there. (Few snow plows, no road salt, and tow trucks not big enough to move semi's).
Watching a TV preacher at my daughter and son's-in-law. The preacher's sound bite--"We have to move from being victims to victors." He's a 40-something pastor of a megachurch (I don't remember where), one founded by his father. He said that it was hard when his father died, especially when so many people, including him, were praying for healing. But he has moved beyond the past. "I've never visited my father's grave," he said.
He made me uneasy. Why?
First, telling people to move from being victims to victors could be a way of silencing people; i.e., saying,"don't bother me with your pain." Many a victim has been silenced and that's definitely not the path to being a victor.
Second, and perhaps a deeper reason for my uneasiness is that our past, all of it, is part of our roots. Even the pain and shame of our past is part of our roots.
Becoming disabled at age 16 was the beginning of a whole series of painful, shameful events. I basically had to reinvent my life after it burned down. Eight surguries between ages 17 and 23. People mistreating me because I was disabled. Losing my Pentecostal people when I failed to be healed. Losing my sense of call to the ministry. A major depression.
Let me tell you, it was a long road from victim to victor. And I can imagine the guilt I would have felt during those years if I would have heard the pastor's sermon. Forget this victim stuff. Hurry up and get to victory.
But I had a body that kept sending me back to the hospital for more surgeries. I had a body that made planning for the future seem like a crazy guess.
Plus all the things I had learned as a child about God and faith and healing didn't speed me along the road from victim to victory. I tried them all (answering altar call after altar call and limping back to my pew every time.) Rather than speed me along from victim to victory they added to my misery.
Yet all of these experiences are part of my roots. And crazy as it seems, I draw incredible strength and courage from these miserable experiences. To use James Baldwin's image, I didn't drown in my misery, although for years it felt like I might.
Now I use my past. As I prepare to teach Evergreen Leaders workshops I draw on those victim years because as part of my roots, they energize me to work with groups. Groups and people in them are often victims and moving from victim to victor is not a hop, skip, and jump. It's a long, slow slog.
It's organic.
I like that Evergreen Leaders is named after a a type of tree. On Memorial Day weekend 2003 when nine of us gathered to found Evergreen Leaders we planted a Colorado blue spruce. The tag on the spruce said that it's supposed to grow to 35 feet tall. Now that's a thriving spruce. But eighteen months after we planted it's only 15 inches tall--a long ways from a 35 feet.
On alot of days Evergreen Leaders seems about 15 inches tall, a long ways from a thriving organization giving tools to lots of ordniary people, teaching them to help their groups thrive.
But that's okay. A Colrado blue spruce grows to 35 feet tall, one slogging season at a time.
Two scenes from our recent trip to Florida. Taking 24 hours to travel 30 miles in Kentucky on I-24 due to snow and Kentucky's seeming denial that it snows there. (Few snow plows, no road salt, and tow trucks not big enough to move semi's).
Watching a TV preacher at my daughter and son's-in-law. The preacher's sound bite--"We have to move from being victims to victors." He's a 40-something pastor of a megachurch (I don't remember where), one founded by his father. He said that it was hard when his father died, especially when so many people, including him, were praying for healing. But he has moved beyond the past. "I've never visited my father's grave," he said.
He made me uneasy. Why?
First, telling people to move from being victims to victors could be a way of silencing people; i.e., saying,"don't bother me with your pain." Many a victim has been silenced and that's definitely not the path to being a victor.
Second, and perhaps a deeper reason for my uneasiness is that our past, all of it, is part of our roots. Even the pain and shame of our past is part of our roots.
Becoming disabled at age 16 was the beginning of a whole series of painful, shameful events. I basically had to reinvent my life after it burned down. Eight surguries between ages 17 and 23. People mistreating me because I was disabled. Losing my Pentecostal people when I failed to be healed. Losing my sense of call to the ministry. A major depression.
Let me tell you, it was a long road from victim to victor. And I can imagine the guilt I would have felt during those years if I would have heard the pastor's sermon. Forget this victim stuff. Hurry up and get to victory.
But I had a body that kept sending me back to the hospital for more surgeries. I had a body that made planning for the future seem like a crazy guess.
Plus all the things I had learned as a child about God and faith and healing didn't speed me along the road from victim to victory. I tried them all (answering altar call after altar call and limping back to my pew every time.) Rather than speed me along from victim to victory they added to my misery.
Yet all of these experiences are part of my roots. And crazy as it seems, I draw incredible strength and courage from these miserable experiences. To use James Baldwin's image, I didn't drown in my misery, although for years it felt like I might.
Now I use my past. As I prepare to teach Evergreen Leaders workshops I draw on those victim years because as part of my roots, they energize me to work with groups. Groups and people in them are often victims and moving from victim to victor is not a hop, skip, and jump. It's a long, slow slog.
It's organic.
I like that Evergreen Leaders is named after a a type of tree. On Memorial Day weekend 2003 when nine of us gathered to found Evergreen Leaders we planted a Colorado blue spruce. The tag on the spruce said that it's supposed to grow to 35 feet tall. Now that's a thriving spruce. But eighteen months after we planted it's only 15 inches tall--a long ways from a 35 feet.
On alot of days Evergreen Leaders seems about 15 inches tall, a long ways from a thriving organization giving tools to lots of ordniary people, teaching them to help their groups thrive.
But that's okay. A Colrado blue spruce grows to 35 feet tall, one slogging season at a time.
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