Giving thanks for friends

Last week Lynn Reha from Plow Creek had to spend four days in the Chicago area for her work. She stayed with friends in the Clearing, a Reba Place Fellowship household.

Lynn's colleagues were amazed that she could stay with friends while on her business trip.

Lack of friends is a side effect of the mad American rush to succeed. Even though I've lived in a commune since 1977 I too get caught up in the rush. Yesterday I wrapped up a capital campaign feasibility study for a local nonprofit that I squeezed in this fall between being on the leadership team for our church and our communal group at Plow Creek and also serving as the one person staff for Evergreen Leaders.

This morning I've been enjoying slowing down. My first meeting is at 10:00.

Reba Place Fellowship, a communal group founded in the 1950's, sent out three couples to found Plow Creek in 1971. This week ''Christian Century'' has an article on "The New Monastics: Alternative Chistian Communities." Reba is featured in the article.

David Janzen is quoted in the article. He and his wife Joanne often come to Plow Creek for retreats. They'll be joining a bunch of us at Plow Creek for a Thanksgiving dinner at Plow Creek's Alpha House where Mark and Louise Stahnke live.

I am thankful for time to slow down, admire, and give thanks for friends.

Tagworld friends

I love to explore. When I go on spiritual retreats in the Chicago area, I read my Bible, write in my journal, and wander through parks, galleries, and alleys.

There's something renewing about exploring. Sometimes I do the same with the Web, I simply wander through alleys and pages and blogs.

This morning I wandered through e-mails and found a glowing review of Tagworld. I read the review, clicked on a link and registered, creating my own page on Tagworld.

I had vaguely heard of tagging. According to Wikepedia, "Tags are pieces of information separate from, but related to, an object. In the practice of collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords, tags are descriptors that individuals assign to objects."

So I guess I am doing my bit to collaborate on categorizing the web.

After I registered, my Tagworld page appeared and it in the upper left hand corner it said:

Hi, RichFoss
You have 0 friends.
TagWorld Population: 74,163 people.

I had to laugh. Zero friends. A little presumptuous of Tagworld to decide I suddenly had zero friends.

But, it turns out that the people who created Tagworld are nice people. Soon it said:

Hi, RichFoss
You have 1 friend.

I clicked on the link to see who my one friend is. Turns out it's Ryan, a member of the Tagworld team. Hi, Ryan.

You can upload photos to Tagworld, use it as your blog site, and e-mail from it.

I haven't figure out how you become my friend on Tagworld but I am glad to have you as a real world friend and if you figure how to become my Tagworld friend I'll be glad about that too.

News that's not in the news

Last night Sarah and I arrived in St. Louis to visit our daughter, Heidi, and our son-in-law, Woju. Shortly after we arrived Woju began listening on the web to an Ethiopian radio station in Washington, DC.

Soon I heard the voice of a woman speaking Amharic, a language I don't understand, but I could tell she was in great distress.

The radio station called her in Ethiopia, Woju explained, and she is crying out because her son was killed by government soldiers.

In June Ethiopia held parlimentary elections. When the elections appeared to endanger Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's hold on power he ordered international election observers out of Ethiopia.

Even without the international observers and with suspected fraud, the opposition won forty percent of the seats in parliament. When people ammassed to protest the voter fraud in June, 36 people were killed.

This week the opposition announced peaceful protests. A Reuters story today indicates that 46 people were killed this week.

Woju says that police shot on a group of unarmed demonstrators killing men, women, and children. Once the demonstrators fled the government would not allow family members to return to claim the dead. The goverment removed the bodies to prevent an accurate count of the dead but Woju has heard that as many as 1000 were killed.

Ethiopia was ruled by Marxists for nearly two decades until 1991 when the Marxist regime was overthrown by a group of guerillas led by Meles Zenawi.

The Marxists had overthrown 82 year-old Emperor Haile Selassie on September 12, 1974.

When Sarah's father, a Baptist missionary, was killed in Ethiopia in 1951 the Princess met with Sarah's mother as she grieved her husband's death. Sarah's Dad is buried in Addis Abba so we have deep ties to the country.

This week 25 leaders of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD)were arrested this week. Woju has been reading online witness reports of people suspected of being part of the opposition being loaded on buses and taken to unknown location.

Woju's brother is in a college surrounded by troops. No one is allowed to go out of doors.

Wars and rumors of wars.

I dare to believe the world needs me

Gazing out my west-facing window I see the early morning sun highlighting the fall leaves in their dying splendor.

My days are full of bringing life to my family, Plow Creek, and Evergreen Leaders and yet there is a time to die.

A few minutes ago, reading posts on an Open Space List Serve, I came across Tree Fitzpatrick who concluded a post with, "I have been feeling more and more like technology is leaving me behind. And, yet, I dare to believe the world needs me."

A few years ago at Plow Creek Elsie Mast did a Sunday morning childrens' story about plants in fall. She didn't focus on they dying leaves but on all the amazing ways that plants in the fall are spreading their seeds for the spring.

One plant drops seed-filled cockleburs that cling to animals who carry them far from the original plant. Another tree drops winged seeds that glides hundreds of feet. Thousands of plants and each has a strategy to spreads its seeds. While the leaves are dying and getting ready for winter, seeds are daring to believe that come spring the world is going to need them.

Today, with much to do, I dare to believe that the world needs me to spread these little words.

Coming home from exile, Part 2

Fast-forward to August 2005 when I received an e-mail from Dr. Paul Alexander, a professor at Southwestern Assemblies of God University, inviting me to the first annual Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship (PCPF) retreat.

I checked out the on-line brochure and saw that six of the ten speakers were African-American. This has got to be the Holy Spirit at work, I thought.

The modern Pentecostal movement began when the Holy Spirit fell on an integrated congregation on Azusa Street in Los Angeles in 1906 but the Pentecostal movement soon succumbed to the racism that is part of the fabric of our country and divided into black and white denominations.

Being at the retreat was a sheer joy for me. I discovered a group of Pentecostals and Charismatics who were reconnecting with their own Pentecostal pacifist roots. The early Pentecostal leaders were clear in their call to loving enemies and refusing to fight in wars. Most Pentecostals have lost touch with their pacifist roots.

Dr. David Hall of the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal denomination that has not lost its pacifist roots, gave the key note address on Friday evening. Setting the tone for the retreat, at the beginning of his presentation he invited the audience to critique his ideas. That led to a half an hour of great conversation with Dr. Hall following his speech as he and the audience sought to explore the implications of being Pentecostals and pacifists.

My brain still carries lots of snapshots from the weekend. Dr. Paul Alexander, founder of PCPF, made my bed for me when I arrived--now that servant leadership! Sitting at lunch one day I listened to Church of God (Cleveland, TN) seminary professor and missionary Rick Waldrop tell the story of being kidnapped by Guatemalan guerillas.

Ah, the music. Sam Martinez played the keyboard at each worship and invited us to worship our incredible God. I was deeply touched when on Sunday morning Yvonne Williams, a member of Bible Way Church Worldwide, Washington, DC, led us in the spiritual, “Ain’t Gonna Study War No More”.

Another snapshots stored in my brain. Eric Gabourel, Associate Pastor of the Hot Dog church in San Francisco that serves an area of the city prone to gang violence, gave me a pamphlet he had created called, Have you considered nonviolence? The pamphlet urges people to consider Jesus’ way of peace as an alternative to violence. “We hand them out like tracts in our neighborhood,” Eric said.

Diana Aubourg, acting director of Save Africa’s Children, told a powerful story of African children, orphaned by Aids, trusting the Lord to provide when they had no food and then leading the young woman who was caring for them to the Lord.

By Sunday morning of the retreat I was deeply reconnected to my Pentecostal roots.

“In five years,” Dr. Hall said at a meal, “I think this will have grown greatly and when we look back, those of us who are here this weekend will say, ‘I was at the first one.’”

As the retreat came to an end I told Paul Alexander, “I juggle a lot of balls but I want to add Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship to the balls that I juggle. Envisioning is one of my gifts as is writing and I’m a blogger. I write for the sheer joy of it. Let me know how I can help.”

“You can write up your reflections on the retreat,” Paul said.

We serve an amazing God. As I sit at my keyboard I am filled with awe and gratitude to our God who has been so faithful to me during my on exile from the Pentecostal church, who gave me a new people among the Mennonites, and now has reconnected me with my Pentecostal pacifist roots.

Hallelujah!

Coming home from exile, Part 1

A decade ago while I was on a personal retreat I sensed the Lord telling me that he wanted me to reconnect with my Pentecostal roots.

On the weekend of October 7-9 I reconnected with my roots in a powerful way at the first annual Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship retreat at a Salvation Army camp near Midlothian, Texas.

My Pentecostal roots go deep. While I was still an infant my mother handed me to the woman sitting next to her to accompany my father to the altar of a Pentecostal church in northern Minnesota where he gave his life to the Lord.

At age nine I gave my heart to the Lord at a Pentecostal Bible camp near Lake Bronson, Minnesota. At age twelve I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and began speaking in tongues. The same year I sensed God calling me to be a preacher.

Then when I was sixteen I became severely disabled by rheumatoid arthritis. My church and I expected me to be healed. I answered many altar calls and we prayed fervently. Each time I limped back to my pew. I continued to answer altar calls for the next few years, feeling more and more desolate.

Finally I decided not to answer any more altar calls. I knew that God could heal me but he was not doing so through altar calls and the laying on of hands. To keep answering altar calls and not be healed was too painful. Thus began a slow and painful separation from the Pentecostal church.

About the same time I became a pacifist as a result of Jesus saying, “Love your enemies…” I couldn’t see any way to love my enemies and kill them. In my dorm room at the University of North Dakota I wrote out on a yellow pad my commitment to love my enemies and I signed it. When I became a pacifist I thought I was moving even further away from my Pentecostal upbringing.

Six years later I sensed the Lord calling me to serve him through a life of communal living. He led my wife, Sarah, and I to join Plow Creek Fellowship, a Mennonite communal group near Tiskilwa, IL. The Lord did much emotional and spiritual healing of me in our early years at Plow Creek.

Four years later Plow Creek called me to be one of their pastoral elders. The church laid hands on me on a Sunday morning in 1981, praying for me as I became one their pastors. I could hardly believe it. At age 12 I really had heard the Lord’s call to pastor.

Over the years I have known that, through my Pentecostal roots, the Lord has given me many gifts that help me in my life as a pastor. And I was clear that I am living out God’s call for my life. Still there was always a small ache in being an exile.

Then a decade ago I sensed the Lord calling me to reconnect with my Pentecostal roots. After meeting with a Pentecostal pastor and his wife and later another Pentecostal, I went away feeling empty. “Well, Lord,” I said, “if you want me to reconnect with my Pentecostal roots, you are going to have to do it because I don’t seem to be able to pull it off.”

Worth more than a billion dollar inheritance

Today I turned 54. Generally I enjoy birthdays, seeing them as one more reason to enjoy life. I even blogged my birthday last year. But today I've been sad. I'm not exactly sure why.

Recently I figured out that my insurance company pays about $150,000 a year for medicine for two chronic conditions I have--rheumatoid arthritis and emphysema due to alpha one antitrypson deficiency. And that doesn't count all the expense connected with being hospitalized for a blood clot this summer. Today I recieved a hospital bill for over $30,000 that my insurance company will pay one of these days.

It's expensive making sure I keep having birthdays.

Am I worth it? I suppose the answer is grace.

Here's three words of grace that I am treasuring on this day I turn 54. One, last night as Sarah lay in my arms she said, "I am glad you are alive for your birthday."

She, who's father was killed before she was born, never loses track of the wonder of having a man who loves her and doesn't disappear on her.

Two, recently I began writing a column for Tiskilwa's weekly newspaper and today I received a birthday card from Wilber and Doris Giltner, a couple I've met a time or two. In the card they wrote: "We sure enjoy your column in the Chief. Keep up the good work - you are an asset to our community!"

Three, you have to know a little background to appreciate the sentence in my daughter Hannah's card that's ringing in my heart. First, as a communal member of Plow Creek Fellowship we've taken the equivalent of a vow of poverty. Sarah and I are accumulating no assets to pass on to our chidlren. Second, I write a letter of each of my children and their spouses/fiancees each week. In her card to me Hannah was reflecting on how close to me she feels even though she and her husband Donny live in Florida while Sarah and I live in Illinois.

Then Hannah said, "I realize it is because of your faithful letters, e-mails, and our phone conversations. Thank you for all your letters--I woudn't trade them for a billion dollar inhertance."

My kind of Mennonite

When the president of Eastern Mennonite College named names in an effort to keep Mennonites pure, he included Jim Harnish.

During World War II, Jim, a long time member of Plow Creek Fellowship, was a conscientious objector and served in an alternative service program run by Mennonites.

The program, sanctioned by the U.S. government, was required to accept not just Mennonites but all conscientious objectors.

Mennonite leaders were worried that young Mennonites were being radicalized by being thrown together with pacifists of other persuasions.

Jim was part of an alternative service unit, working as an orderly at a state hospital near Poughkeepsie, NY, when the president of EMC identified a conservative young man who was part of the unit. He wrote the young man and asked who among the Mennonites at the unit were being radicalized.

Based on the information from the young man, the EMC president sent a letter to the unit naming Jim and others who he deemed as not adhering strictly enough to all Mennonite beliefs. How can you call yourself Mennonites? he asked.

The young man who had provided the names felt very bad. He had not expected the people he had named to be denouced in a letter to the whole unit.

Jim and another person in the unit felt sorry for the young man and took him out for a malt.

Now that's my kind of Mennonite.

Taking a rhythm day to get my groove back

Yesterday, Tuesday, I took a rhythm day. Not a sick day but a rhythm day.

After waking Monday with a headache and going through the day on passionless will power, by evening I was thinking, "I just want to run away and hide." It was at that point I realized I needed to take a rhythm day.

Tuesday morning I left home and wandered to the local library, chatted wih the librarians, taking note for future columns.

Then I had a long lunch at Burger King reading the latest Fast Company. After lunch I drove to a park, leaned my van seat back, and took a nice nap. Actaully two nices naps. The first one wasn't long enough.

After reading Freakonomics for awhile I took a swim and then headed home for dinner with friends.

I love people and pastoring and leading EGL but every once in awhile it's too much.

If I were working for a standard USA company I would face a moral dilemna: should I call in sick?

Margaret Morford, president of the HR Edge Inc., a Nashville-based training and management development consulting company, says people are taking sick days because they are simply working harder and longer. Voice mail, e-mail, cell phones and other technology also allow people to be plugged in to work more than ever.

"People are getting burned out," she said. "And I recommend to managers: You need to keep your eye on people, and sometimes you just need to give them a mental health day, or at least offer them the option."

Companies need to abandon the old sick day policies and give people rhythm days.

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwarz make two points in The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal'':

We need to balance stress and recovery.
Balancing stress and recovery helps us be highly energetic.

When the balance between stress and recovery gets out of rhythm on the stress end we get sick. Much better to take a rhythm day. And now I have my groove back.

Turning the good ship Evergreen Leaders

The major emotional, intellectual, spiritual challenge I've been working on is expanding Evergreen Leaders into board training and consultation. At our Labor Day weekend board meeting the board strongly encouraged me to head in this direction.

First, it's an emotional challenge because our vision from the beginning has been to give ordinary people leadership tools to help their groups thrive. We want to work with groups who would not otherwise have access to leadership teaching. So it feels like a loss to me to invest in boards, pastors, and CEOs, as if we will be ignoring the people ate the extremities of the organization, the people we wanted to work with in the first place. I'm sad at the thought of turning away from ordinary people who make it possible for any group to thrive.

Second, it's an intellectual task because to keep integrity we need to figure out how to add board teaching and pastor/CEO consulting within the framework of our mission which is to give ordinary people the tools to help their groups thrive. All along I've had a nagging concern that to be really beneficial to nonprofits and churches, that we need to engage the pastors and CEOs. I pretty much overlooked the boards, a mistake, I think. I am reading a lot about church and nonprofit board development as a way of filling my brain with what others are thinking about the roles of boards. I am enjoying the reading and trusting we will be able to fit the pieces together into a uniquely EGL approach to boards just as we've done with our series of workshops.

Third, it's a spiritual challenge because EGL is God's business and I am God's man. Even though I am very passionate about Evergreen Leaders, it's not mine. Each day I focus on trusting that Jesus will shape my day and my work that day including my work with Evergreen Leaders. In turning the good ship Evergreen Leaders to also focus on leaders and boards, I am obeying the true founder of EGL, the big Dude I work for.

Evergreen Leaders is all about helping groups change so that they can thrive. Now we are getting to practice what we preach, or maybe, we are practicing on ourselves so that we will have something to preach.

Whenever I think of helping an organization to change I think of that a small change in the direction of a ship’s tiny rudder will, over time, change the course of an ocean liner.

Bringing a little joy to an IRS agent

Several months ago with the help of my attorney friend, Mitch Kinglsey, and dozens of hours of work, I completed a 20+ page form to apply for 501(c)(3) status for Evergreen Leaders--such status makes it clear that people who make gifts to EGL can take tax deductions.

Six weeks ago I received a phone message from a Miss Johnson. I couldn't understand what company she was with and when I returned the phone call it turned out she was from the IRS.

She needed another document for our application. I faxed it to her.

A CPA friend had warned me to expect such a call, that the IRS often calls several times to ask for more information. I waited for another call.

Two weeks ago we received our letter declaring us a 501(c)(3) organization. I e-mailed Mitch to thank him and shared the good news with the EGL board. I thought: I should thank Miss Johnson too. A few minutes ago I did.

When I first told her who I was I could sense the coolness in her voice as she wondered what I wanted. "Filling out that form was a lot of work for me and I'm sure it was a lot of work for you too," I said, "So I wanted to thank you for all your work."

"Did you get your letter?" she asked.

"Yes, we received it and we were really happy. Thank you for your work."

Her voice warmed right up. She expressed her appreciation for my thanks, we chatted for a few moments, and then hung up.

It's a great day when you can bring a little joy to an IRS agent.

Refusing to join the career club

As I dressed after swimming this afternoon I glanced at a brand emblem on the inside of my shirt collar: Career Club.

When I finished graduate school in 1977 I decided not to join the career club. Something seemed amiss with the pattern in our culture that leads us to forsake people and place to follow a career where ever it may lead.

Instead I moved to Illinois and joined a commune.

Now it's 28 years later and I'm still part of the commune. When I Sarah and I moved to Plow Creek it was was an idea, a vision, a call. Like a seed that I could hold in my hand, the idea of joining a commune was something I could play with, maybe even kiss it, or not.

But once we joined and started living at Plow Creek it was like a seed disappearing into the earth and taking on a life of its own.

Sarah had moved 21 times by the time she was 18. When her mother first visited Plow Creek, Sarah, in her middle 20's, gave her a tour and when they passed the cemetary she said to her mother, "This where I will be buried."

She was done moving.

I have spent countless hours over the years listening and praying with our farmers, supporting them through draught and flood and bountiful crops. One fall I sat in my wheelchair next to a poorly producing pumpkin patch and wrote a poem about Autuckee, the chief of the last of the Potawatmi to live on this part of the earth that is now Plow Creek:

Perhaps this year a tiny piece of America is mourning
the memory of warm footprints from the brothers and sisters
of the First Nations.

I have learned that to be part of this place is ache for the people who have gone before. To be part of a people is to be part of death and birth.

Our son was born in a room in the upstairs of the Alpha House, Plow Creek's first house. He was born during a members meeting and when someone called over to the common building with the news, David Gale, who took the call, returned to the meeting and said, "Plow Creek has another son."

Each of our children grew up knowing they were part of a place and a people.

I don't know where the Career Club shirt came from. Sarah loves to shop at used clothing stores and shirts and pants simply show up in my closet.

After 28 years in a commune I have a people, a place, and a Career Club shirt.

The new president gets tears in his eyes

Blogging SMC festival 5

Two years ago Anali Gatlin of Hope Fellowship was one of two people who were members of the Baylor Students for Social Justice.
What can two people do for social justice?

They decided to start a campaign to urge the University to provide a living wage for their employees. Soon other students joined the group and the campaign.

All year long the president of Baylor ignored their e-mails and refused to talk to the Baylor Students for Social Justice.

Then this summer the Baylor hired a new president who asked to meet with the group. Two weeks ago they went to his office and made their presentation urging him to lead the university in providing its workers with a living wage.

He listened to them and with tears in his eyes, and said, “It’s not right that we the world’s most beautiful parking garage and we are not paying our workers a living wage. We need you.”

Two shy people from Camden House

Blogging SMC festival 4

The two shyest members of Camden House, Elissa and Melissa, have been sent by their community to tell the SMC festival about their two-year old community.

“We are the shy people in our community. We like being in the background. The rest of our community told us we would do well but we’re a little nervous,” Elissa said as they stood at the microphone.

For seven years a Catholic priest in Camden, New Jersey held on to an abandoned house in his parish, waiting for a religious community to come looking for a place to locate. Perhaps a group of Jesuits or maybe a Catholic worker house.

A handful of 20-something Protestants (and one Catholic) showed up looking for a house to start a community. The priest handed them the keys.

In May they dropped off their gear at the house and went back home with plans to gather in July to launch the community. When they arrived in July all their belongings had been stolen.

Welcome to the neighborhood.

The house across the street openly sells drugs and does prostitution as a service to people who drive in from the suburbs.

Camden House works with the environmental and social degradation of our neighborhood. “We are committed to Christ and committed to each other…it’s a beautiful time together…as we stumble through together,” says Melissa.

Currently the eight people of Camden House all work at jobs outside the house, paid and unpaid.

“Andrea and I do community gardening during the summer…it’s so much fun to introduce people to organic gardening…,” says Melissa. “We have the neighbors do a lot of the work so the rows are a little uneven but it’s beautiful.”

In the sweet understatement of people who follow Jesus, Melissa says, “We live in a culture of mistrust and alienation. Our neighborhood is a dangerous place. Opening up our house and trying to be trusting is important.”

Thus Camden House welcomes the prostitutes and crack addicts who wander over to visit.

A conversation with a young radical

Blogging the SMC festival

After lunch this old radical invited young radical Shane Claiborne of the Simple Way over for a visit. One of the founders of the Simple Way, next February Shane is publishing with Zondervan a book called The Irresistible Revolution.

Shane is an interesting character. He’s evangelical to the core and a radical living among the poor in Philadelphia. He’s had a goods time working with a group of young editor’s at Zondervan.

Zondervan is committed to publishing the book but they’ve put together a team of lawyers in case they get sued for what Shane says in the book.

Shane says there is a whole group of young evangelicals who are looking for models of how to live out their faith.

I’m glad to hear that not all my evangelical brothers and sisters are enamored of right wing politics.

What does a young radical do when he publishes a book. He makes sure the book is copyrighted by the Simple Way, a nonprofit, that will give away all the money that he makes on the book.

Zondervan couldn’t believe it. When they finally did believe it they decide to give away some of the money they make on the book.

This world needs more evangelical radicals. Young and old.

A healer of machines

Blogging the SMC festival

Rose, a tiny young woman from The Simple Way, an eight-year-old community planted in a poor section of Philadelphia gave a brief history of the community.

A decade ago there was a big housing crisis in Philadelphia. (Still is). Thirty homeless families squatted in an abandoned Catholic church in a neighborhood called Kensington. The bishop wanted to kick them out. A group of Eastern College students began to befriend the squatters, rallying to their support although eventually they were evicted.

Ten of the Eastern students formed a community and decided to settle in Kensington. They now own two houses.

All of them come from evangelical backgrounds but as one of their founders, Shane, says, ‘It’s really been our neighbors who are teaching the kingdom.”

A handful of people with lots of visitors, “The Simple Way believes in living authentically small in a way that is visible,” says Shane.

For instance, one of their members, Justin, tells the story of their car mechanic telling them about Adrian, a mother with three children who had just become homeless. The Simple Way folks contacted Adrian and took her and her children in. ”It’s cool to provide some hospitality,” says Justin.

One day while they were driving Adrian around to look at houses for her to rent, a city bus clipped the door of their car, driving the door forward and ruining it.

When they brought it to their mechanic they told him what had happened and told him the progress Adrian was making.

“I’m going to fix your car door for free,” he said. “You guys are healers and I’m a healer of machines.”

Bringing our praise and longings

Blogging SMC festival 1

Reba Place is leading the worship this morning. David Janzen, 60-something, and a group of 20-something folks serves as singers, drummers, and guitarists as we pour out our praise and longings.

Paul Rhode and Heather Munn are sitting next to me. Yesterday morning as I sat in my chair, keeping my leg up, writing on my laptop, I saw them moving hither and yon, gentle servants, preparing this place for the festival.

Prayers:

“Thank you, Lord for the beauty of creation, for the purple and red sunrise this morning.”

“Put your loving healing hands upon us…”

“Enrich everyone one here.

“We pray for this broken and warring world…”

“Let us continue to exalt you with righteous fellowship, Father.”

It looks like heaven

Tonight Plow Creek began hosting the annual Shalom Mission Communities festival. We have 70 guests from communities around the USA and Canada.

To accomodate everyone for all group meetings we rented a big tent and put it up in the middle of the meadow--that piece of earth in the center of the Plow Creek houses.

Tonight as I rolled home in my wheelchair I looked at the tent in the meadow lit by interior lights. The striped roof glowed in the dark and the light through the open sides was bright.

Plow Creek has no outdoor lights so when it is dark it is dark.

In the middle of the darkness the tent glowed beautifully and I thought, "It looks like heaven."

Because of my blood clot I am going to have to keep my leg up six hours a day during the festival, missiong out on the fun.

So I've decided to blog the festival. With my laptop I can do that in my chair with my leg up.

The theme of the conference is discerning the times. That led me to suggest a variation of the Chicago Bulls shout during their championship years. The players gathered in the tunnel before the game, put their hands together, and one of them shouted, "What time is it?" And the rest of the team responded, "Game time. Huh."

What time is it? Kingdom time. Huh.

Hospital tales 8: Gee, but it’s good to be alive

When life sends you into a tailspin, tell the tales.

After the procedure, I encouraged Sarah to go home and get some rest because she would have had to sit up all night in ICU with me. I thought she needed sleep.

By 3:30 a.m. I had a headache and nausea and felt so alone. I lay there thinking, when somebody from Plow Creek is in the hospital we ought to always have someone with them.

Sarah called the ICU nurses on Tuesday morning and in my infinitesimal wisdom I told the nurses to tell her to come at noon. Poor Sarah. When she showed up at noon I kept weeping because I had been feeling so alone in my misery for the last eight hours. Also, apparently the medicine they gave me for nausea made me weepy.

I went back to interventional radiology where they took the catheter out, peered around inside the vein, and saw that the clot was gone from the knee to groin. Thank you, Lord. They sent me back to ICU for four hours because I guess I was still a high risk for dying.

“I just want to get out of here,” I said to Sarah.

When I got to a regular hospital room Tuesday evening I was exhausted. At one point I woke up and Sarah was on the phone with Heidi and Jon. She asked if I wanted to say hi to them. I greeted them cheerfully and then woke up a bit later. “Did I fall asleep talking with Jon and Heidi?” I asked, feeling very embarrassed.

“Yes, they laughed when you started snoring.”

Uffda. Later, to Sarah’s utter amazement, I slept through getting my blood drawn.

The next morning a young doctor sauntered in and began spelling out their plans for putting me on a blood thinner and regulating it over the next few days.

“Ah, what about Lovenox? I understand that if I went home on Lovenox I could get home sooner.”

He looked a bit taken aback and said, “I’ll go check on that.” He left.

“You can go home,” he said when he returned. My head was spinning. Fourteen hours before I was in ICU because I might die at any moment and then he casually announces I can go home.

When Sarah and I questioned him about what kinds of activities I could do once I was out of the hospital he said, “Use your common sense.”

Sarah, who teaches a lot of non-medical people at her job to provide basic medical care for people with developmental disabilities, knows you never tell people to use their common sense. You never know what people think is common sense.

“He should write that in the chart and then have to go to court and explain that he told the patient to ‘use common sense’”, Sarah snorted to me.

Hopefully he was a first year resident and will learn to move beyond “use common sense” before he’s unleashed on patients on his own.

At home I took a shower. Ah the simple pleasures of life.

But during the shower I noticed my back was itching. “Oh, know,” Sarah exclaimed when she looked at my back. “You have a bright red rash.”

Then she explained that a rash can be the first sign of an allergic reaction to a medicine. The second stage is anxiety because our system realizes something is amiss before we do. The third stage is difficulty breathing. The fourth stage is shock and you need immediate medical attention (or you die).

Great. I lay in bed checking to see if I was anxious.

Of course, I was anxious.

But was my anxiety the normal “I might die at any moment” anxiety or was it the second stage of an allergic reaction to a medicine?

Fortunately, I have an amazing ability to fall asleep at night. I kept waking up and I was always alive.

Gee, but it’s good to be alive.

Hospital tales 7: Way out in the forefront of medicine

When life sends you into a tailspin, tell the tales.

After the lysing procedure they wheeled me into surgical ICU with four tubes and wires coming out of my leg, an I-V in each arm, and two monitors. I must have looked like a float in a parade.

As soon as we entered, an ICU nurse looked at one of the monitors and said, “What’s this? We’ve never had one of these before.”

“It’s an ultrasound that pushes the clot buster into the clot,” said a radiology nurse who was part of the parade. “This is only the second patient we’ve used it on.”

“We don’t know anything about it? What if the alarm goes off?”

“Call the tech. If the something goes wrong call the tech. We have a power point I can show you about it.”

There’s nothing like being on the forefront of medicine, so far out front that the ICU nurses are scared.

Bravely, and later I thought, foolishly, I encouraged Sarah to go home and get some rest since she couldn’t stay with me in ICU and spending the night in the waiting room would be very uncomfortable.

At about 11:00 p.m. the alarm went off on the ultrasound monitor. The nurse came in and pushed a button that turned it off. Then she didn’t now what to do next. I reminded her that interventional radiology had said to call the tech.

She went and got another nurse and they both studied the monitor. Neither one of them knew what to do. “Should we call Angio?” one of them asked the other. Assuming that Angio was the tech I voted for calling Angio.

The nurse pushed a button turning the machine back on but she wasn’t sure if the monitor reading was correct. Again I voted for calling Angio.

Later the nurse came back and told me that she had called the number for the tech. The tech, she discovered, lived in Seattle and was flying out the next day to teach staff at St. Francis, She described what the monitor was displaying and he reassured her that everything was fine.

It’s good to be out in the forefront of medicine, I guess.

The next day as I was being wheeled back to interventional radiology we passed a door with a department sign on it: Angio. Oops, I realized, Angio was not the tech.