Original Sin - I've Seen It!

Ain't nothing original about original sin! I don't know if you've ever heard that one-liner, but I'll bet you've witnessed it. Just when I think there's nothing new under the sun, wham! With unsuspecting naivete I'm hit with something new, unexpected, unanticipated - a new tear in the fabric of civility, even among Christians. Good grief, we don't handle it well either. After my momentary shock at this new appearance of original sin, I usually stumble through searching for some easy balm to try a quick patch on the opening wound.

And that usually NEVER works! Rabbi Edwin Freidman's book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, says it all! Quick fixes don't usually work because it has taken a lot longer than we think for the junk to float to the surface anyway. So maybe this is why we need Roberts' Rules of Order and an unbiased, objective leader presiding in tense situations. Roberts' Rules actually help defuse anxiety, except for those who don't know anything more than yelling, "Point of Order!" Okay, I'm a parliamentarian, been elected one for nearly 2 decades now, so I'm prejudiced. I do like Roberts' Rules, and I don't care for everyone bashing them. Truth be told, I think they do help contentious bodies of people have a little breathing room so they can think through an issue rather than get into a shouting match. But, indeed, because so few people know the process, they sometimes just add to a sense that the know-it-all's are controlling things so we the ignorant masses are purposefully left in the dark.

Ah, this is where leadership can help by reframing a person's comments in an assembly into a suitable motion; i.e., the person's suggestion that the previous motion to do something potentially divisive should be put off and decided by more people can be reframed by the presiding officer as "I seem to hear you saying that this should be postponed to a later date with a larger gathering. Therefore, it seems to me that you're making a motion to postpone to a definite time when more people can be present at a duly called meeting. Is this your motion?" If it isn't their motion, then you're in deep trouble, but hopefully you've restated their intent well enough to give a little breathing room for the issue to defuse itself or give ideas to clearer heads to think in new ways.

What's this got to do with everyday life when we're not in a situation where you use Roberts' Rules? For me, it's about leadership and emotional process. Original sin's perpetual lack of originality makes people react, blow up, and blast others. Blame-shifting has been going on since the Garden of Eden. In everyday life I have to remember that the issues at hand are not as much about facts as they are about personalities.

Therefore, information over-kill isn't as important as understanding the emotional process we use in dealing with the so-called facts. In Roberts' Rules fashion we need to track what emotional forces are at work, restate them, stand our ground in a responsive rather than reactive way, and try to air everything out in a neutral environment.

This is hard as heck to do when people are showing their fangs, and you are tempted to show yours,too. That doesn't help anyone. Find a calm place within from which to speak. Don't wimp out and say nothing. That just gives ammo to the lions and bears. Do what St. Paul said, "Speak the truth in love." Leadership risks saying what people want to say but don't feel like they can, and restates it in such a way that everybody walks away a winner. They don't walk away "winner-take-all," because that's not reality. In our non-original sin-filled world, the best we can do is win-win-lose-lose; i.e. everybody gets something and loses something. Hey, I've been married 35 years and that's as good as it gets from my experience. Going nuclear and winning is still losing.

Chill out, lead with calm authority, and give peace a chance.

It's Good to be Home

As I reflect on the rescue of the Chilean miners trapped for months below ground, the lines of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz keep ringing in my ears, “There’s no place like home!” I cannot imagine the joy of families reunited after these desperate months. Just as it is true that home is where the heart is, there is also a need for a place to call home. Home is more than a heart-feeling, though it is often that. It is also something tangible.

This past week I was reminded of this in several ways. One was through an offer that someone made to buy our two-tenths of an acre at Lake Junaluska. We just got finished paying for that tiny parcel. There are only rocks and trees and a few stray golf balls, but it is also a vision, a hope. It is a tangible place for our family to call home – a family that has lived in someone else’s house/parsonage forever. Will we sell it? Only if we decide that I can’t stand living in retirement around a bunch of “My-church-was-bigger-than-yours-preachers,” or it finally sinks in that we can’t afford what we want to build.

However, it is our land for the time being and there is great comfort in having a home even if it is still invisible. But, the other “homely” thought came this week through remembering an October day spent with my Dad. We did our usual fall circuit. We cleaned off my mother’s grave, sprayed a weed and grass-killer to finish things off before the first-frost, and purchased a new season’s array of her favorite flowers. We traveled out to Barr’s Chapel, a closed United Methodist Church near Modoc, South Carolina. My great-great grandparents are buried there and Daddy, though only semi-ambulatory as a double amputee, was one of its trustees through the Edgefield UMC. Then we traveled a few short miles down a winding familiar road to Red Hill. This is the road that I remember traveling while sitting in Daddy’s lap angled between him and the steering wheel pretending to drive. We visited the Red Hill church where we ate on the grounds every year and reverently paid homage at Papa Mac and Ma Mac’s grave, plus the tombs of more great-grandparents, cousins and the like.

We had our usual visit, replaced flowers, saw the old homeplace of Daddy’s mother, reminisced about Grandfather Thomas’ old store and turned around. However, there is a part of me that never leaves because this trek reminds me of another home. Part of this other home is in my memory and part of it is in my future. It sneaks into my present more every day as I get older; ponder mortality, and the upcoming All Saint’s Day. It is a home called heaven by some, but in my mind’s eye it is Paradise - maybe more so because we live in a parsonage, however beautiful, but not ours. Nonetheless, heaven looks pretty inviting when my memory is overwhelmed by the carefree days of yesteryear where I can see my family alive and well with no worries to speak of. I am reminded that my longing for a place to call home on earth is far surpassed by the one waiting in heaven. There I will see the cloudy mist between the saints evaporated. Church Militant and Church Triumphant will be together again. There’ll be a reunion so fulfilling that I cry now to know it. As much as having a home here seems so attractive, there is a better one there.

Flying the Team Flag

How 'bout those Gamecocks! Most of your know that I've been a frustrated University of South Carolina Gamecock fan forever. I say "frustration" because they have been worse than hapless, but I was in Omaha for the College World Series when we won the national championship and I was there this past Saturday when we knocked off the vaulted #1 Alabama in football. I still can't believe it. You've probably heard someone say to someone else's mix of glee and doubt over the next shoe dropping, "You can't stand prosperity." I never quite got what that meant until now. I've never been here before.

Now football matters and next week's USC-Kentucky game is looming large when I never really cared that much before. Wow, what a difference a big win makes. It adds jubilant joy and more than a tinge of sheer fear. Expectations are taken up a notch, and the absolute magnitude of the event is staggering. Do I yell, do I walk away and say "I'm good. It doesn't get any better than this so I'm not watching next week," or perhaps, just perhaps, I get so jacked that I am willing to make a road trip to Kentucky? Hey, people, driving to Lexington ain't nothing compared to driving all the way to Omaha, Nebraska, and I've done that 4 times to watch USC play.

Wait a minute - Ah, now I get a sense of the see-saw of the disciples after the news of Jesus' resurrection. Go back to Galilee or to the ends of the world? Stay on the Mt. of Transfiguration or go down into the valley and tell everybody about the Jesus team? I don't own a USC car flag, but somewhere somehow today I'm going to get one, and I'm going to fly it! Who knows, maybe someone has a Jesus flag, too.

I Miss My Mama

One of the first serious books that I ever read was Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. As a fifth-grader it came at a pivotal time in my life. I had issues with my self-worth that were awful. In the third grade I had encephalitis, an extremely dangerous illness. Statisticians say that 50% of its sufferers die and 80% have permanent brain damage. Whether the latter is true or not is up to you, but it did put me behind in school. Unfortunately I was also one of the youngest in my class with a birthday less than a week from the next grade’s cut-off.

To compound things, either due to encephalitis or not, I also had a difficult time saying a “th” sound and earned the ignominious nickname of “Fim” because of it. I do know that much of my memory before the age of eight is simply blocked out due to the high fever that I had. If it weren’t for my dear Aunt Florence tutoring me in the fifth grade I would never have caught up in school. She also re-taught me how to tell time and tie my shoes, abilities evidently erased by my illness. There were plenty of deficiencies I ingeniously compensated for until her tutoring. However, before you begin to think that I wasn’t that bright to begin with, don't forget the Magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

But, it was The Red Badge of Courage that helped me turn the corner inside my own head. The book’s hero, Henry Fleming, was an anti-hero of sorts, a lad too young to have to face war and maiming. Henry Fleming was real. I could identify with him. He went through the stages of being scared, a deserting coward, cocksure in false bravado, gutsy under fire, and in the end became a wise veteran who knew that the golden sunlight of peace was a better goal than a red badge of combat. He had earned his stripes, so to speak. As for me, I still run the gamut of all these stages. At least Henry Fleming remains a model of someone who makes it to the finish line.

So are Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and every other saint I can think of. The most common characteristic besides faith in all the saints is a set-apart life, a sense of vocation unmitigated by divided loyalties. Saints are ordinary people who dare to do what God says. Because that is so rare is the reason we call these special people “saints.” How many saints are still among us? I better not name names, but in my mind many of you qualify. More than anyone my Mother was my hero. Wow, did she love! She lived it. She helped people, legally adopted an mentally-challenged African-American man into our family. I cannot begin to name the ways that she championed the Golden Rule. I miss her so much. Maybe it's because I have a birthday coming in a week or so, or because of what she sacrificed for me to even be born at age 39 and the gestational diabetes that turned into the real thing which changed her life forever and caused her to die far too young.

Who's your inspirational saint, and do you emulate them? Do you ever watch ABC’s TV show, “Extreme Makeover:Home Edition”? It’s my Sunday Night inspiration for the week in terms of doing something good for deserving people. The stories of the recipient families are amazing and touching. I am amazed at how whole communities want to say "Thank you!" to the saints in their midst. I also like the ways that the marvelous gifts of the Design Team are matched so perfectly with the families’ needs is a joy to witness. It’s a show that reminds me of a little bit of heaven on earth: the good guys actually finish first! It’s a good reminder before facing another week where our reality too often resembles a less than stellar outcome. The Design Team members are heroes for putting others before self.

This is our saintly mission, too. This is our race to run with Jesus as player/coach and the Holy Spirit as dynamic energizing cheerleader. God wants us to make it to the finish line and hear those long-awaited words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Advocates for Service

Wow, there are a lot of needs all around us. I just got back from our Columbia District Clergy meeting. We heard about The Cooperative Ministry that is helping the working poor. "Hootie & The Blowfish" Grammy-winner Jim Sonefeld was also there. He shared how God had brought him from a "dark place" and has given him a new life. A big part of that new life is to help others. He has teamed up with The Cooperative Ministry and the Benedict College Choir to produce a new version of their break-out single "Hold My Hand." All the proceeds from purchasing the song go to The Cooperative Ministry. If you want to see a great video and hear a great song, plus make a donation; go to www.withalittlelove.org. This ministry speaks well of our theme as United Methodists: "Together We Can Do More!"

Connectionalism is our way of being and doing church. God made us in God's image and God is Trinity, a community. So if God exists in community, how can we not? Unfortunately, the world sings a different song promoting individualism. Sure, some differentiation is a good thing, but isolation is horrible. We need each other. Therefore, to all the churches, even United Methodist ones, that want to be their own little silo without connectional responsibility - You're missing out! Hiding and individualism gone amok is part of Adam and Eve's hide-and-go-seek game after the debacle in the Garden.

So, I want to stay connected and do together what we can't accomplish alone. One of the ways that I do that was also lifted up in our meeting today: "The South Carolina United Methodist Advocate." For $15 bucks a year, you can find out all sorts of good things about our shared ministry in South Carolina. Now, I don't always agree with the content, but it always makes me think. It gives us all a forum in SC United Methodism to share ministry, gain new ideas for Kingdom-service, grieve one another's losses, and be better disciples for Jesus. If you want to learn more; go to www.scadvocate-online.org/home/ remembering "Together We Can Do More!"

Mercy is a Better Way

This morning I have been reading Matthew 15. Some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law approached Jesus as they were building their case that he was a false prophet. The accusation wasn't the usual charge of breaking the Sabbath by healing someone. This time it was more ludicrous. They badgered Jesus because his disciples didn't wash their hands before they ate.

We've all gotten that one from the clean-patrol in our lives, but the Pharisee's issue wasn't about germs as much as it was about protocol. Under the guise of trying to not let anything "unclean" enter their bodies, they washed their hands. Admirable, but Jesus nails them for their worship of doing things right over doing the right things. Have mercy. I've been to about half of my charge conferences and it's the same story. I have a lot of churches that value doing things right to the point that they aren't in ministry to those around them until the idea snakes its way through all the right church channels. In the meantime, people are getting cold with the change of season, and they're hungry. We let our methodical United Methodism insulate us from our true heritage as a group that would do whatever it took to reach the people on the margins.

We are the domesticated and comfortable middle to upper class now. Jesus gave the Pharisees a zinger. He asked how could they say they kept the Law such as honoring parents when they had a tradition that allowed them to deprive their parents of needed help by saying their resources were going to be used for a better purpose in the temple, which, by the way, gave them a better seat in the Sanhedrin. "No fair!" says Jesus. You can't let human tradition trump God's intentions. Doing the right thing is more important than doing things right. They were doing things right by their standards but not by God's.

As I trudge through more charge conferences oh how I want to hear about risky, daring ministries that value people more than a "that's the way we've always done things around here" attitude. I uphold the Book of Discipline, and I uphold grace. Jesus is pushing my buttons today, Book of Discipline guy that I am. How can I make a personal difference today in someone's life, not by paragraph 423.13, but by Matthew 5:6?

The Bumps of Life

Conventional wisdom says that you can never be too well-off or too good-looking. That’s a myth! According to the Bible our weaknesses are what make us strong because they cause us to depend on resources that are outside of ourselves. Of course the main source of strength when we’re feeling overwhelmed is God. Secondly, we can depend on other people to help us out. Especially helpful are those who have been through what we’re going through.

Everyone has weaknesses. What differentiates one person from another is whether or not one admits his or her weaknesses and then what is done about them. A college recruiter interviewed a high school basketball star. The recruiter said, “I hear you’re pretty good.” “The best there is,” the player replied. “I averaged 45 points a game, was the best rebounder in school history, and I led our team to three straight undefeated seasons and three state championships.” “That’s incredible,” said the recruiter. “Tell me,” he asked, “Do you have any weaknesses?” “Well,” said the non-Lebron sheepishly, “I do have a tendency to exaggerate.”

We all have weaknesses. There are no perfect “10’s” in the world. Ninety percent of men rank themselves above average athletically, which is statistically impossible. Very often we’re only legends in our own minds, but our weaknesses can become strengths. People who think that they’re perfect remain emotional adolescents and spiritual babies. Emotional and spiritual maturities are forged in life’s furnaces.

George Reedy was President Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary. He was a very persuasive person, as presidential press secretaries need to be. He was so persuasive that he convinced President Johnson that he should never have any assistants who were under 40 and who hadn’t suffered any major life disappointments. Without that maturity and without that disappointment, Reedy felt these people were under-qualified and overly conceited.

It’s not that optimism is a bad thing, but sometimes too much early success has a tendency to spoil us. We begin to think of ourselves as clever. We begin to rely on our ability rather than our hard work. Worse than that, we begin to rely on ourselves rather than on God. Everyone who does anything spectacular in life knows what it is to have failures. It’s what they do with failure that separates the truly successful from the also-rans. I pretty much disagree with ruling out the young in leadership circles due to their lack of hard-knocks. My wife is an Elementary Guidance Counselor and I get to hear the horror stories of bullying victims. I remember my own early years and their toll on my self-esteem. Everyone, if truth be told, has been through life’s crucible of crisis, and age hasn’t got anything to do with that. My 30 year-old daughter with a brain tumor is a whole lot more seasoned than I am with life’s crud.

What makes for a blessed 30-something or 50-something, with or without a brain tumor, is that failure throws us into seeking help – from God and others. One of the most revealing lines in literature appears in the opening paragraph of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh: “Here is Edward Bear coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way… if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it!”

Well there is another way and that’s to ask for help when you’re bumping through life. I know we won’t make it with everything that’s been tossed our way this summer without help. We will keep on bumping along because that’s the way life is, but thanks be to God and you – we will survive. Your prayers and support have made a difference. Thank you and thank God.