Birthing Babies and Celebrating the God Who is Present

I had the ecstatic pleasure and fearsome opportunity 28 to years ago deliver my son, Josh. Narcie had been born two years earlier, in 17 minutes in the wrong hospital. Cindy is quick on delivery! We wouldn't make it to the hospital 40 miles away so Narcie was born in the old Chesterfield General Hospital in Cheraw, SC - no OB doctor there, they had to call in a local General Practitioner. I was in a gown before he was. Then two years later, the day after I had finished reading an emergency child birth book, I came in from visiting church members and Cindy said, "I think this is it!"

Narcie was asleep in her room. I called the designated friend who was going to watch her while we went the needed 40 miles. But once again we didn't make it. We didn't even get out of the bathroom. The friend helped ease Cindy up, and I got on the business end. Then Josh, Mr. Torpedo Head, started crowning. Thank God for the book and having been raised in an agricultural context ( won't say any more), I prayed, yelled, panicked, but did what I really supposed to do: turn him, ease him out, then grabbed an ear-bulb syringe from the medicine cabinet and suctioned Josh's nose and mouth and he started breathing and crying. Whew! It was also a good thing I had just finished painting the bathroom just a few days before, not having any idea it was going to become a delivery room! God is sooooo... Good! Then I called the Rescue Squad. They came and cut the cord, and I went outside and tossed my cookies. Cindy was great and the rest is almost history.

I say "almost" because now the circle comes back around. Josh's dear wife, Karen, turned 26 today, February 23 and Josh turns 28 this Friday, February 25, and, guess what, she's pregnant, expecting a granddaughter at the end of March. I hope all goes well for her and the precious K.L.M. Baby Girl they are going to have. We have no idea what the initials stand for, but that's better than okay.  Karen is such a wonderful person! She just finished up her second undergraduate degree - this one a B.S.N and she passed the NCLEX exam last week so now she's a R.N., registered nurse. Most of you know that Josh, like his sister is United Methodist Clergy. He gets ordained an Elder, like his sister, this summer at Annual Conference. Anyway, best wishes to Josh and Karen on their birthdays, and K.L.M. as her arrival looms.

I am so thankful for all 3 of our children: Narcie, Josh, and Caleb. Caleb, by the way, was born at the new Cheraw hospital. It's hard to imagine in a small 1500 population like Cheraw, SC that all 3 of our children were born there and in 3 different places! God bless Cheraw and all of our dear church members there. We ended up moving away from my initial 3-point charge and spent 9 years in 26-miles-away-Hartsville, SC, but then we were sent back to First UMC, Cheraw for a four-year-stint. The doctor who delivered Narcie, Dr. Jim Thrailkill, was a wonderful parishioner, God rest his soul.

The point of all this isn't to do a weird Birthday Greeting to our kids and soon-to-be-born granddaughter. I'm just reminded on this day between Josh and Karen's birthdays that God's providence and love are an ever present help no matter the situation. There's plenty of junk to go around in this sin-marred world. I am thankful to God for the goodness that's left and how Jesus redeems it all if we let Him. So, in the midst of the continuation of Narcie's brain tumor saga, and all the other stuff that makes every day a challenge - today I am grateful for the personal epiphanies that I have seen with my own eyes: 3 children, 2 great children-in-law, 2 grandchildren and #3 on the way, a wonderfully patient wife, and a host of people who day in-day out reflect a real relationship with Jesus Christ, the Hope of Glory. Yes, indeed, I have beheld His glory.

John Wesley, United Methodists, and Me on Love

Valentine’s Day may be almost a week past but love’s importance is forever. I have been reading a lot in preparation for my weekly lectures at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. I’m in my 4th week of teaching “UMC History.” It has been a great refresher and good experience. This week I have been especially taken with all the dalliances that John Wesley had with women. This was a guy who said as a young man he probably wouldn’t marry because he wouldn’t be able to find someone like his mother. Ah, “Mother” issues. Well, we all know the story of Sophy Hopkey in Georgia and how that got Wesley in trouble with a grand jury and on a boat back to England.

Interesting, too, how all of the people in his society/class meeting in Georgia were female teenagers at least 10-15 years his junior – sounds like a “safe sanctuary” problem to me. Then shortly after Charles gets married in the early 1740’s, Wesley is nursed back to health after an illness by Grace Murray, a serving girl 15 years his younger. Brother Charles is so upset at the differences in stations in life that he hijacks the woman and marries off to one of Wesley’s preachers. By all accounts she would have been a great partner in both family and faith! Wesley was very close to lots of women in the Wesleyan Revival. Some of his contemporaries even suggested that this was because women had the spiritual disposition to grasp his “practical divinity” and “holiness of heart and life” better than men. This assessment must have been pretty true. Wesley wrote pseudo-love letters about God to lots of women, many, no doubt, who became enamored with God and/or Wesley.

But then, 15 months after the famous Grace Murray incident, Wesley fell on some ice on London Bridge and was nursed back to health in the home of a wealthy widow, Mary “Molly” Vazeille. In two week’s time, in 1751 at age 48, John Wesley is married and Charles is too late to stop it. Like Grace Murray, Charles thinks this marriage will derail the revival. It almost does. There seemed to be maybe 6 good years of marriage then the toll of Wesley’s travels and the issue of female soul-mates and the letters to prove it became the undoing of their marriage. They separate off-and-on for the rest of their marriage. They exchanged heated words, letters, and plenty of triangulation with other people about “She said-he said” evidence surrounding John’s relationships with women leaders in the revival. Molly Wesley, some would say, actually helped the revival and kept Wesley on the preaching circuit so he wouldn’t have to go home. When he was away she compulsively tore into his desk looking for evidence in his letters or journals of his moral failings. Nevertheless, he finally told her he would come home if she would, “Suspect me no more; asperse me no more; provoke me no more. Do not any longer contend for mastery, for power, money, or praise…” After 30 years of fitful marriage she dies October 8, 1781. Wesley was away from London, returning the day of her burial, but was not informed of it until 2 days later. Wow, and how sad.

Some of Mary Wesley’s actions remind me of a speaker at a woman’s club who was lecturing on marriage and asked the audience how many of them wanted to “mother” their husbands. One member in the back row raised her hand. “You mean you really want to mother your husband?” the speaker asked. “Mother?” the woman said. “I thought you said ‘smother.’”

In a true marriage smothering doesn’t take place, by either person. There is a free mutuality of purpose and a partnership of respect. Unfortunately John Wesley never experienced married bliss. I’m not saying it was Molly’s fault. Wesley had plenty of issues and would have been a therapist’s nightmare concerning intimacy and love. On loving God and others he was great! Unfortunately, like many of us in the church today, we can love everybody and not be intimate with anybody. We can more easily bless people from a distance by a donation or a check than by our close involvement, especially if they’re different from us. We’re good on paper like Wesley, and, like him, we’re good with friends and strangers. It’s the people we live with that know the truth about us. They have seen the pretense disintegrate and fall to the floor. A man asked his children one day why people thought he was a Christian. Their hasty response was, “Maybe because they don’t know you!” I pray that people will know us and our true personal love. I hope that we United Methodists will love people, really love people – not by giving a donation but by giving ourselves.

Happy Valentine's Day to Gabby Gifford, Mark Kelly and the Rest of Us

I’m thinking about Congresswoman Gabby Giffords’ and her husband Mark Kelly’s marriage as Valentine’s Day approaches and the O. Henry-esque “Gift of the Magi” decision that they are making about his Space Shuttle flight. I’m wishing them both Godspeed along with every couple across the world who have been through life’s gauntlet. With Cindy’s recent surgery and Narcie’s continuing saga I know that I’ve seen great love from my son-in-law Mike and I hope I’ve been an okay nurse to my dear wife. Here’s wishing a safe flight to Mark Kelly and Rep. Giffords.


Every disaster connects us, doesn’t it? For instance, cross my fingers, the Space Shuttle “Columbia” disaster contained a lesson for all humanity. There were Americans on board, of course, but there were also connections to India and Israel. Diversity in race and gender was also present. Space exploration has been a great human leveler. It combats our xenophobic national pride and from the vantage point of space we embrace the whole planet.

Astronaut Sultan Bin Salman al-Saud from Saudi Arabia once said after a shuttle trip: “The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day we were aware of only one Earth.” The losses of seven souls on February 1 were not just American, Indian, or Israeli, but a diminishment of all humankind.

John Donne of England said it well, however antiquated, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

In every death, whether of innocence or life, the ripple effect amplifies the tragedy to universal proportions. This is what makes Adam and Eve’s actions in the Garden speak for all humankind and perpetuate self-will over God’s will. Original Sin may explain our human condition en masse, but it also finds its proof in the everyday actions of you and me. Is there anything original about Original Sin anymore? Each of us has done our voluntary part to carry on the bent to sinning with which we were born.

But, just as there has been a ripple effect of sin, there is the ripple effect of love. St. Paul said it something like this in Romans: Through one man Adam sin entered the world; through one man Jesus Christ comes grace. The ever-expanding example of love begun in Jesus reflects God’s best hope for humanity. In Jesus we see the victory of selflessness over selfishness.

The crew of the Columbia exhibited this same selflessness. Every journey into space is a selfless cry for a cosmic view of humanity. By its very nature, space exploration should imply an effort to better all people. From space we get a God’s-eye view of the world that comes closest to God’s own motivation to leave behind the safe confines of eternity and become bound by time and space in incarnation. In the selfless sacrifice and risk-taking of the shuttle crew we glimpse the God-like motivation to lay aside personal gain for the good of all.

James Gillespie Magee aptly describes this selfless heavenly vantage point:

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew –

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high unsurpassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.”

United Methodist Appointment-Making Anxiety

February 1 is the day that Advisory Response Forms are due to my office declaring that churches and/or clergy want a change in appointment. It’s been like a full moon around here! My phone has been ringing off the hook with people asking, “Can you get us a better pastor?” or clergy asking, “Is this a good year to move?” In other words, this is that time of year that United Methodist laity and preachers get antsy about changing clergy. It is unsettling to think that one might have to move on to a new ministry, or break in a new pastor.

I am glad to report that it appears that I will have very few moves this year in the Columbia District. I don’t say this because it’s a lighter load, but because ministry and partnerships are bearing fruit! Our younger clergy (under 35) aren’t doing ministry for extrinsic reasons, so there’s some built-in reluctance to move. This is according to Dr. Lovett Weems of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership. My impression is that most clergy feel this way. Ministry isn’t an easy ride so the reason to be in it has to more intrinsic than extrinsic. What I’m trying to say is this, whether a clergyperson is young or old, or somewhere in between, moving is no picnic. I often have thought that maybe we should move all the people and leave the pastors so everyone would have a taste of itinerancy. Ha!

The prospect of starting over in a new parish is difficult to ponder, whether one is laiy or clergy, especially if age or infirmity is making box-lifting a problem. I wonder if Abram and Sarai felt some of this age-reluctance when, in their seventies, they were asked by God to leave their home in Ur and travel to an unknown destination? Sounds like United Methodism’s method of deployment, doesn’t it?

I know some clergy with more zip in later life than earlier, and I know others who have already retired and have forgotten to tell the Board of Pensions. But, look at Abram and Sarai and you see a clergy couple ready to do what God wants! Ah, but you might say that their ages weren’t computed the way that ours are today. After all, they both lived well into their 100’s.

Perhaps they enjoyed good health because of the Middle Eastern diet. For instance, Mussa Zoabi of Israel claims to be the oldest person alive. He says he’s 160 years old. His name won’t go down in the record books because he is older than most record-keeping systems and his age can’t be verified. The interesting thing, however, is that Mussa Zoabi can tell you exactly why he’s lived so long. He says it’s his diet. Every day he drinks either a cup of melted butter or olive oil. Yuck!

Diets are the rage, aren’t they? It seems that everyone has some special diet that will do this or that for you. Maybe Abram and Sarai had a special diet. Remember, when they got to the Promised Land, Abram had to pass his seventy-something wife off as his sister because she was so good looking that he was afraid someone would kill him to get her. Wow! Abram and Sarai must have had good genes and a super diet.

Sixty percent of the people in North America say that they’re on a diet. Imagine that! We all want to be modern day Sarai’s and Abraham’s, at least in vitality! A staff person at Weight Watchers once told this story. She said that a new client had begun their diet. The person came in to be weighed after the first stressful week. The person stepped on the scales and had only lost a couple of pounds! The dieter wasn’t too happy, and complained. This is what the dieter said: “My friend comes here to Weight Watchers, and told me they had lost ten pounds. They said I’d lose ten pounds in the first week, too!”

Well, the leader at Weight Watchers was a little disturbed. She knew that you don’t lose weight over night. So she asked the dieter, a little indignantly: “Who told you that? Is this person a doctor?” The dieter said, “No.” The leader asked, “Is this person a nurse?” “No,” again said the dieter. “Well,” continued the leader, “Is this person a nutritionist, or another Weight Watcher’s leader?” Negative again! “Well, who is this person?” asked the leader. “I think,” said the newcomer, “I think this person is a liar!”

Most of us know the truth and the lies about dieting. But what’s the truth about Abram and Sarai? How did they get the courage and gumption at their age to leave Ur of the Chaldees and strike out for Canaan? What made them any different from us and can we have a little bit of what they had? Whatever it was, like the person in the restaurant observing the obvious delight of a nearby couple, I’d like to say, “I want to have what they’re having.” Whether we’re laity or clergy at this anxious time of year and are concerned about moving and United Methodist itinerancy, we know what Abram and Sarai’s main diet was this: FAITH! Trust in God and yielding to His direction will be the best move we will ever make! Trusting and obeying are the only diet that works on a faith journey. May it be so with all of our United Methodist anxiety about appointment-making and moves!

You and Your Situation are Real to Jesus

It’s been an interesting saga over the past year and a half. Cindy’s mother came to be near us for rehab after what was purportedly a broken back from osteoporosis. Cindy saw to her needs every day, then after her fifth hospitalization they finally suspected something more sinister. They said they would let us know on Monday from the bone biopsy. On Sunday she died: acute myleoblastic leukemia. It would have been good for that to have been known sooner. Then 7 months after that our 30 year old daughter, Narcie, mother of two little ones with a great husband, Elder in our annual conference, and Wesley Foundation Director found out she had an oligodendroglioma with a very scary prognosis that remains a source of prolonged fear and faith mixed together. Just yesterday she was asking me about the conference’s life insurance because now she can’t get any. All you clergy out there, especially young ones who think you’re going to live forever – get some ASAP. Then last August my oldest brother died suddenly of a heart attack on his birthday no less. Then two days ago Cindy had two operations in the same day, two different doctors, and here we go again. Things are going to be okay, but it’s no picnic. Thank God for Josh, the other UM minister in the family. He married well! Karen is a nurse, expecting their first child in March and she’s been a God-send helping regulate the meds, and a whole lot of etceteras.

There’s nothing seemingly in common with these situations. The people have been unique, the treatments, the outcomes, but there has been one Common Denominator: Jesus. Everybody goes through the crud of life, and nobody or family has a corner on whose story is worse. We’re all different, but God’s immutable attribute of love is constant. God NEVER causes the problems, but remains ever steadfast on our side. I am grateful. Whatever your unique situation or problem remember the adage: “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.” God relishes our uniqueness and intertwines incarnationally our individual stories with His desire to save the whole cosmos.

Studies of human DNA suggest that we have common origins. Some say we all came from an “Eve” source in Africa that migrated some 10,000 fold into Europe’s hinterlands and intermarried with other hominid life forms. Others say that we have a common ancestor of unknown origin but share Neanderthal attributes. Either way, the similarity in our DNA doesn’t diminish our individual uniqueness.

God loves diversity. Look at the myriad colors of birds, the duck-billed platypus, and the multitude of human personality and biological differences for evidence. An old Russian proverb says it well, “If I try to be like someone else, who will be like me?” We need to treasure our uniqueness, even those aspects of uniqueness that don’t always fit in. I saw this illustrated in a cartoon that showed the foreman of a jury at the door of the jury room giving the lunch order to the bailiff. You know the jury is in for a long time when you hear the order: “Eleven cheeseburgers and one hot dog. Eleven coffees and one hot chocolate. Eleven fruit pies and one bagel.” As much as we share in common, we all have different tastes.

A waitress was taking orders from a couple and their young son. She was one of the class of veteran waitresses who never show outright disrespect to their customers, but who frequently make it quite evident by their level stare that they fear no mortal, not even parents. She jotted on her order pad deliberately and silently as the father and mother gave their selections, down to what was to be substituted for what and which dressing changed to what sauce. When she finally turned to the boy, he began his order with a kind of fearful desperation.

“I want a hot dog…” he started to say. And both parents barked at once. “No hot dog!” Then the mother continued, “Bring him the Lyonnais potatoes and the beef, both vegetables, and a hard roll and…” The waitress wasn’t even listening to the mother. She said directly to the youngster, “What do you want on your hot dog?” He flashed an amazed smile. “Ketchup, lots of ketchup, and – and bring a glass of milk.”

“Coming up,” she said as she turned from the table, leaving behind her the stunned silence of utter parental dismay. The boy watched her go before he turned to his father and mother with astonished elation to say, “You know what? She thinks I’m real! She thinks I’m real!”

God feels the same way about each of us. None of us are overlooked or ignored. Each one of us is that special and unique to God. What a comfort to know that we are real to God! That belief is a big part of what has kept us going these long months.

Worship Wars & Epiphany

Join an argument I’m having with myself: How do we experience epiphanies when our rituals feel stale? As a church we can get so caught up in doing things right that we forget to do the right things. But, oh, how we love rituals, especially church ones! They give us a sense of order and structure in our otherwise chaotic existence. When we can’t focus or concentrate, we can at least remember the words of the 23rd Psalm or the Lord’s Prayer. When all else fails, we are able to recall the rituals that have sustained us over the years. Their routine nature is precisely what gives them their staying power when adversity strikes.

But most of us abhor any that is routine. Even in interpersonal relationships we want to spice things up every now and then. Yet, what works better than what has already worked? As someone once said, quite appropriately, “Where water has once flowed it can more easily flow again.” How true! After a year of drought and parched earth, the rains don’t easily cut new channels. They flow down familiar paths. Aesop did say, however, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” but, I dare say, the familiar is exactly what we long for when the rains come tumbling down.

But worship has changed over the years. The liturgical reform movement of the 70’s has continued to this day. It has pushed innovation in worship. Though reluctant at times, we have experimented and embraced new things like contemporary Christian music, Holy Communion by intinction, and “passing the peace” during worship services. Some new-old things have been accepted more easily than others: Children’s Sermons, Advent candles, Chrismon Trees, and the use of the Paschal Candle have pretty much been welcomed.

It’s good to try new things while honoring the old. Jesus had something to say about this when he spoke of new wine in old wineskins. Unfortunately, the common errors of the church are: 1) Confusing tradition with truth, 2) Confusing rhetoric with reality, 3) Confusing practice with presence. Like the Laodiceans in Revelation 3, who had confused their practice with God’s presence, we also can get so busy that we miss what's truly important - not what we do, but to Whom we belong. Therefore, our traditions must be infused with Divine Majesty. Empty rituals don’t cut it. For instance, George Barna, who does research on churches, says in his Index of Leading Spiritual Indicators, “Seven out of 10 adults (71 percent) say they have never experienced God’s presence at a church service.” How sad!

No matter what we do in worship, whether timeless or entirely unheard of, it should highlight and celebrate the real presence of God. According to Ron Rolheiser in his book, The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering The Felt Presence of God, “God is always present, but we are not always present to God.” Indeed, for God’s epiphanies to become less rare we should open ourselves to God. Old ways, new ways – which matters, just so it happens! For those who need it, worship should rattle their very beings with power, or for others’ needs, soothe their souls with the greatest wash of calm ever experienced. Whichever we need, worship is the very place where God’s epiphanies should most easily occur and be recognized. I want to always do my worship homework, but I know I need to get out of the way and make room for the Spirit to cut new channels in my brittle bones.

Good Church Work: Responsive Rather than Reactive

After 13 days of the flu, I feel like I've been caught in some funky episode of the "Twilight Zone." But it's been back to reality for the last few days, and they have had their funky edges, too. The glow of Christmas and our 35th anniversary in New York have been overrun by the tyranny of the urgent - you know, those things that demand our attention and can't seemingly wait. Well, if the old-fashioned flu taught me anything, everything can wait.

I was about to zip off an email to the Worldwide UMC Study Committee this morning. I've been bewildered at the emails of the last 2 days that seem to take us back to where we started: a distentegrated polity of disconnectionalism, a confusing hodge-podge of disarray. I know that there are no easy fixes to turn around a ship as large as the UMC, but rearranging the deck chairs isn't worth the time the debate will take at General Conference. But rather than give into the tyranny of the urgent and respond without carefully rereading the inititating document, I'm going to wait. I trust the others on the committee. We've worked together. Now I need to commit to pondering together. I'm going to reread and respond rather than react, I pray.

Lord, I pray for fersh eyes that will help me see Your truth, what's best for all, and what will cause the UMC to be a spiritual movment of purposeful vitality, not regressive theological wars. Please let the truth of Jesus win the day, every day. Amen.