Reflections on Fathers Day

In one way it was a fairly low-key Fathers Day for me, which suits me fine. A couple of funny cards, no obligatory store-bought gifts. I grilled some burgers and we enjoyed a family meal, something that I count as making me a most fortunate man. My wife and I have three sons ages 22, 18, and 13. I believe that I have a close relationship with each of them and that makes me feel like a success as a father, which is all that I really want and something that no one can give me.

In another way, it was a very emotional day for me. I was hardly able to talk without getting a catch in my throat. A lot has been going on that reminds me that life is a fragile and precious gift. Not the least of which is the knowledge that my sons are no longer boys. My oldest son is older now than I was when I got married. That certainly gives me pause for reflection and I think that may be the best thing for fathers to do on Fathers Day: take at least a few moments to reflect on how we are doing.

My father sent me a message recently with a passage written by Ruth Beebe Hill who asked: "will not each father look for the day when he sees his son walking beyond him?" As I think about each of my sons and where they are in the world at this point in their lives, I am amazed and proud at how much more mature, knowledgeable, confident, etc., each of them are than I was at the same age. I have a hard time trying to imagine what their world will be like when they reach my age, but I am confident they will each have made an impact to make it a better place. So, "thanks guys" for a good Fathers Day.

Resist the fear mongers, embrace freedom, celebrate life.

On the misuse and disowning of ideologues

An article in the NY Times this morning caught my eye, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/us/08wichita.html?_r=1&th&emc=th, as the anti-abortion groups based in Wichita suddenly are without a target now that Dr. George Tiller has been murdered. Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, is quoted as "tearfully" saying, "This idiot [Scott Roeder] did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine." That much, I hope, is true, but Newman's words seem little more to me than a lament for loss of donation income for his political agenda - was he also moved to tears for the Tiller family and the members of Tiller's church? His words also reminded me of a passage from Don DeLio's book "Libra" - a quasi-fictional speculation about Lee Harvey Oswald and systematic plots surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy.

In the book, when Oswald is in the Soviet Union looking to become a Soviet citizen, a KGB agent assigned to debrief and evaluate Oswald is reflecting on how to possibly use Oswald. He recognizes that the problem with Oswald is that Oswald is an ideologue and he knows that ideologues are unpredictable because they are not rational, guided rather by their very strong emotions. So while an ideologue may serve as a very valuable puppet, there is always the chance they will become disillusioned with the puppet master, cut the strings, and take matters into their own hands.

As I look at the picture accompanying the NY Times story, I can easily place Roeder in the photo holding one of those terrible placards and screaming at Dr. Tiller's clients. I wonder how many of these people know Roeder and/or share his ideology that killing an abortion provider is not wrong - an ideology that he openly proclaimed. Did anyone in the anti-abortion movement ever try to talk sense into Roeder, ever report him to authorities as someone who is over the edge and a danger to society? 

I have very strong doubts this was ever the case because Roeder and others like him are people that Troy Newman and his ilk welcome with open arms when they come to line up at the gates every day with their obscene posters and tirades of abuse for anyone who disagrees with their ideology. Newman uses the news coverage generated by these folks to raise financial donations for his political agenda. Consequently, Newman must also keep his puppets stirred up and coming back day after day to generate more press coverage so he can claim to have prevented x number of abortions by disrupting operations at any given clinic. But once one of the puppets cuts the strings, takes matters into their own hands, and kills a doctor or bombs a clinic, suddenly the puppet is an "idiot", no one knows him, and he is portrayed as a solitary crazy man.  In the words of the SNL Church Lady: "How conveeenient." 

Last week I wrote about a sermon from years ago when I hoped that Dr. Tiller would go out of business due to a lack of demand for his services. Today I am hoping that Troy Newman will go out of business for a lack of financial support. 

Resist the fear mongers, embrace freedom, and love life.

On the murder of Dr. George Tiller

I was traveling home this afternoon from a weekend celebrating my wife's parents 60th wedding anniversary when I learned that Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed during the morning worship service at his church while he was serving as an usher. Just a couple hours earlier I was congratulating my father-in-law on surviving the Battle of the Bulge and nearly two hundred days on the front lines of the Second World War to come home, raise four children, put them through college, and now enjoy being surrounded by a dozen grandchildren and one great-grandson. To go from a joyous celebration of life and affirmation of children to hearing about an assassination in a place of worship, a murder probably carried out in the name of God and rationalized as a way to save lives, leaves me once again trying to make sense of my world.

I was still in local church ministry back in 1993 when Rachelle Shannon shot Dr. Tiller in both his arms at his clinic in Wichita, Kansas. I was serving two congregations less than a hundred miles away. Operation Rescue was staging highly charged protests at Dr. Tiller's abortion clinic, which were on the television news most every evening. The Old Testament lesson for the Sunday following the 1993 shooting was from the story from book of Exodus of Pharaoh ordering the death of all the Hebrew infant males and how Moses was spared that fate. It seemed to me that the Scripture called for a sermon addressing abortion, valuing life, and social responsibility. 

The point of my sermon was that I wished that Dr. Tiller was unemployed for a lack of demand for his services, but that as long as our society was willing to devalue children through the acceptance of poverty, lack of universal health care, and keeping education as a low priority, then the services of Dr. Tiller would always be in demand. The problem was not Dr. Tiller, the problem was and continues to be us. 

More than one child in ten in this country does not have health insurance. Nearly 30% of young adults aged 18-24, a likely time for pregnancy, are without health insurance (http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml/). Over 3 billion people in our world live on less than $2.50 per day and less than 1% of what our world spends on weapons could put every child in school (http://www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty). These are the problems we can and must address.

I did not know Dr. Tiller and I admit that I was a little surprised to read that he was an active church member. I admired the man and now I admire his congregation for refusing to give in to the protesters who have tried to shut him down for years. He and his congregation respected the free speech rights of the protesters even as those opposed to his work vandalized his property and sought to intimidate his clients and fellow church members. Dr. Tiller refused to be the scapegoat for our society. Now we must avoid the temptation to make his assassin a scapegoat and dismiss this violent act as the unfortunate act of a crazy man. The anti-abortion rhetoric and vitriol must be turned off, tuned out, and held accountable for the fear and reactionary violence that it creates.

Resist the fear mongers, embrace freedom, and celebrate life.

Absurdity

I am sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for a flight to take me back to Ohio and my other life. Earlier today I was driving to an airport in Kansas with my spouse and youngest son and I made the remark that I felt schizophrenic. It was probably an improper use of the word, but it effectively communicated my feelings of having two different lives. I had just finished two weeks of being reunited with my family and I was trying to prepare myself for six weeks or so of being separated from them once again. 

The trip to the airport was generating feelings of being disconcerted as my emotions were in once place and my physical being was on the way to another place with a separate place of residence, a different time zone, with different sets of routines and responsibilities. My mind needed to be refocused on my life as a professor and researcher who is on a tenure clock, who is facing a lot of grading as the end of the semester approaches as well as articles that need to be written. But doing so was painful and something I wanted to avoid as long as possible.

As I sit here in the midst of this parade of humanity that is a busy airport on a Sunday afternoon, inundated with a head-splitting cacophony of sound, I am struck with the realization of this absurd aspect of my life. It is in the time I spend with my family that I am able to create a life with clarity and meaning that is emotionally fulfilling and comforting. However, to provide for the economic security and well being of my family, I live another life that separates me from them by 900 miles. My other life is a time of working for clarity and meaning in the midst of uncertainty as a new professor and researcher. It is an adventure which a part of me wants to liken to the explorers of long ago who set forth into the unknown, wondering if they would ever see home and loved ones again, but I know that my adventure is much safer and certain than was theirs.

I look forward to the time when this geographical and chronological split in my life is bridged, but there is also a part of me that realizes that this emotional turmoil is somewhat healthy in the search for intellectual clarity and meaning. Holding too tightly to the emotional clarity and meaning would require foregoing the opportunity for intellectual adventure.

Like Kierkegaard’s Absurd Man, I choose to embrace the absurd and create my own meaning and clarity. I am thankful that my family seems to be coping with this absurdity as well. It was great to spend a couple of weeks with them and summer vacation will be here soon.  

What Comes After?

It has been a good weekend for me, for which I am thankful. I spent some quality time with good friends and got to know and appreciate them even more. I made a new friend, got to hold a newborn baby on his second day home from the hospital, and made my first visit to the Akron Art Museum. It is so exciting to be living just a few miles from such an excellent museum.

A good deal of the weekend was spent in pretty heavy conversations about life and death, love and betrayal, selfishness and selflessness, the present moment and eternity. I found myself reading "The Hound of Heaven" by Francis Thompson aloud to my friends. It is a favorite poem for within its words I somehow find reason to believe in an eternal dimension of life that defies my preference for objective rationality. It is a poem that moves me to believe in the eternity of Love as the power of Life. The poem is made all the more powerful when one also reads about Thompson's tragic life. 

There are no words, however, for the powerful experience of holding a small bundle of new life in ones arms, especially one's own son or daughter; knowing you would sacrifice your own life to protect this little one from any harm and recognizing the presence of an emotional bond that I want to believe transcends life and death. It is a bond with the timeless dimension of life that I also find evidence of in humanity's awesome capacity for art. 

I went to the Akron Art Museum today to see an exhibit of the photography of Edward Weston. Weston is known for his very sensual photographs of vegetables, especially peppers. I have included a picture of one that I found amusing in that it reminded me of the wrinkled face of a baby or elderly man with a pacifier. Weston saw patterns in nature that affirmed his belief that all of life is one.

While I went to the museum to see the works of Weston, I fell in love with the works of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson. Her extremely moving and innovative works document the life of a community from earlier days in Columbus, Ohio.  Ms. Robinson will be speaking at the Akron Art Muesum on Sunday, March 22, 2009. I regret that I will be out of town, but I hope it is a standing room only opportunity. 

I was especially struck by the large hands of the people in Ms. Robinson's works. Large, strong hands, seemingly for the necessary work to hold one another up in love and community in the present moment and also patiently waiting for what tomorrow brings. The use of buttons, shells, and thread are also very powerful in her work and speak to me of holding things together, one for the other, today, tomorrow, and for what comes after.

Thanks for reading.

A Blog about Living each Moment in the Moment

One of the nicest persons I have met in my move to Kent State University from Kansas is Ruth Smith. Ruth is in charge of public relations for the School of Library and Information Science. That is a responsibility I used to have for the library school at Emporia State so I can appreciate her work to listen to others, to gather and spread news that helps make people feel good about themselves, and to remember a lot of details in her efforts to help the school put its best foot forward. 

Knowing that I was here by myself, Ruth invited me to her church, got me complimentary tickets to university drama and musical performances, introduced me to people at the homecoming alumni event, and more. I have never seen this person in anything less than a positive mood and it is infectious, which is also something that I needed.

It was very upsetting to learn a couple of weeks ago that Ruth had just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Unbelievable. The details did not make sense. The situation confirmed that life is not fair. 

Then Ruth stopped by my office this past Thursday. It was the first time I had seen her in a couple of months. She looked great as always because she was full of life, as always. There was no denial, there was no anger, though I am sure those emotions have not been absent. Instead there was a determination to live every moment in the moment. I have not doubt she will.

Among her many talents, Ruth is a writer and she has a wonderful blog at http://www.laurasmomlearns.com.  She has added a new section to the blog entitled "Dealing with It" - http://www.laurasmomlearns.com/blog/category/dealing/. 

I encourage you to subscribe to and read Ruth's blog and follow her story as she tries to make sense of what is happening in her life. Our lives will be enriched as we affirm her life just by reading her courageous words and taking her story to our hearts. 

Thanks for reading.  

On Approaching 50

I will celebrate my 50th birthday in less than two weeks. I am happy to say that I can honestly use the word "celebrate" to mark the occasion. I saw a t-shirt in a novelty shop the other day that was black and had the words "Oh crap, I turned 50." I considered buying it, but decided against it as that does not correctly communicate how I am feeling.

My feelings are more properly expressed in a passage from "All the Pretty Horses" a novel by Cormac MacCarthy. The main character, John Grady, is listening to the matron of a wealthy Mexican family tell the story of her youth. It is a story of captivity, rebellion, and hope bounded by the institutional walls of society that kept a young woman from realizing her dreams. The story revolved around one night many years  earlier when a young man had cried for her soul.

She tells Grady, "That night I thought long and not without despair about what must become of me. I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily. I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it. That the desire was the thing itself. The thing itself. I could think of nothing else of which that was true."

As I crest this hill I find myself facing a new dawn rather than a sunset. I feel invigorated with courage from having turned away fear, embracing opportunity, and taking up the challenge to be a person of value. I am finding the courage to love, to share, and to savor more than ever before. I feel more alive, more aware, and more spiritual than ever before. I no longer need to fear what I do not know because I am in awe of what I have yet to learn. 

I have for a long time resisted the forces of fear and its minions, but the piece that I have been missing or at least have previously failed to fully embrace is courage. Not a macho bravado, which is merely a mask of fear, but courage as a spiritual experience that is greater than faith or belief. It is a constancy independent of fortune that I am consciously allowing to bloom in what has been a void.

As I approach fifty years of age, I consider myself the most fortunate man in the world, richly blessed with family, friends, health, and opportunity. I am humbled, excited, and eager to see what lies around the next bend in the road.

Thanks for reading.

Inauguration Day 2009

This is a day for memories, hopes, and dreams. A couple of my strongest memories regarding Presidential events include the televised funeral procession for John F. Kennedy. I was three years old and unable to understand the gravity of the situation. The funeral was on a Saturday and I remember my disappointment that cartoons were not broadcast back in that era when cartoons were on television only one day a week. I know now that a lot of hopes and dreams were buried on that day with the young man who personified the potential to let go of the fears that gripped our nation during the 1950's. Fears generated by the Cold War and manipulated by the likes of Senators Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. 

Another vivid memory is from 16 years ago and the first Inauguration of Bill Clinton. He was the first President to take the oath of office for whom I had voted. I don't remember the words as much as I remember the emotions I felt while listening to Maya Angelo recite the poem she wrote for the occasion. I remember using it in my sermon the following Sunday. 

The 16 years since that day have been difficult. First, from witnessing the disappointment of the Clinton years in terms of political partisanship and his personal failings. Second, from suffering through the eight years of Clinton's successor to the Oval Office, who must go down in history as the worst President in the history of our nation. Eight years ago there was the zealous talk of a permanent Republican majority that sounded a lot like the rhetoric coming out of Germany more than 70 years ago in reference to the future of the Third Reich. Thankfully, both of those regimes had much shorter lives than their deluded visions.

My joy on this day is tempered as our nation struggles to remove itself from the muck of a political, foreign relations, and economic meltdown even worse than that of the Great Depression.  However, the flame of enthusiasm is growing with the televised images of the throngs of people, especially young people, in attendance for the Inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama. 

I find myself hoping this is a day that is meaningful and memorable for my three sons, especially for the oldest two, both of whom voted for Obama. I believe that Obama will be the President that Clinton should have been and Kennedy could have been. A President who energizes and inspires people of every generation with his vision, wisdom, competence, and impeccability. A President who restores a proper sense of community spirit, social and corporate responsibility, political and personal ethics.

My hope is that eight years from now we are all looking back on the greatest eight years in the history and I wish our new President all the best.

I will be attending ALISE in Denver later this month.

Reading my first book by Cormac McCarthy, "All the Pretty Horses." I like his voice.

Working on an application for a Publication Grant from the American Theological Library Association.

Aw, shucks, Ohio State loses to Texas. By Thursday night least 3 one-loss teams are going to claim the championship, but only Utah is 12-0.