Ponderings

It’s Friday morning and I’m staring at the computer, doing everything EXCEPT writing a funeral meditation for Earl’s service. And a sermon on the paradox of incarnation for Sunday.

The paradox of community is that on Sunday I carried newly baptized Django up and down the aisle, he with his precious smile and peace-sign booties, and then went to the hospital to pray with Earl as he prepared to die. Life discovered as we embrace even death. And that would have been enough.

On Wednesday I experienced another profound paradox of community, that in the vulnerability of serving, we are served. I was mom in a doctor’s waiting room, waiting with the kids, when I received the call about Earl’s death. And again later that same day, at the hospital as pastor in route to yet another doctor’s office as mom. When the evening not so gently rushed in, and my weary eyes were stuck, it was members of the community that listened. Serving and served, object and subject.

Pondering the paradox may be good fodder for Sunday’s sermon, but it isn’t getting me closer to inspired words for Earl’s funeral. Truth be told, I don’t want to share inspired words for Earl’s funeral. I don’t want Earl to be dead. I’m not ready to pastor EUCC without Earl and Ahme. The steady faithfulness, the good intentions, the consistency of the glass half full, the gifts of spirit and presence shared by Earl carried this community and it’s pastor through a lot of change and challenge.

But the clock keeps moving, and one thing I learned from Earl is that we must do the best we can with what we’ve got. No Pollyanna lemonade, but the honest fruit of real and creative endeavor. I can almost hear the deep clip of his “well, kid”, almost feel his hand on my arm. Ready or not, it’s time to write a funeral meditation.

As a Michigander successfully transplanted in St. Louis, I watch the annual unveiling of “Most Dangerous City” (CQ Press) with particular interest. St. Louis dodged the bullet this year as the title went back to Detroit, the long heralded “Murder City USA”.

Admittedly I lived “out state” in Michigan, far from the legendary badlands of Detroit. In St. Louis, I now live in the “first ring” suburbs, relishing the delights of city life by day but tucked into bed in the ‘burbs. Having grown up in the shadow of the ’67 race riots, I was raised to be wary of “the city”. As forbidden fruit, I grew fascinated with what lie behind the towering brick facades. My singular trip as a teen to the downtown Hudson’s in Detroit is still a vibrant and cherished memory. The store is now long gone, but I delighted in St. Louis’ downtown Dillard’s outlet until it too closed. Living now close enough to touch and taste, I am even more enamored of what is so quickly labeled and dismissed.

These two cities, Detroit and St. Louis, are historic bedrock in America’s coming of age story. In these once teeming metropolis’ the immigrants swarmed and the factories churned.

As the factories closed and the incomes vanished, the workforce and the buildings where they labored were left behind. With no plan for recycling the buildings or the people,
the children and grandchildren and now great grandchildren of the workforce have no where to go. No longer needed in a post-industrial economy, they remain as a living witness to the human side of an economy now gone.

Driving the streets of East St. Louis recently, I decided that Dr. Seuss had painted the Oncler much too kindly in, “The Lorax”. In Seuss’ rendition, when the Oncler discovers the Truffula and his Thneeds, he calls his uncles and cousins to people the burgeoning machinery of industrialization. When the Truffula Trees are depleted, the Oncler waves goodbye to his family as the family leave to seek greener pastures and the Oncler himself is left in the wasteland. The Oncler’s real life counterparts were not nearly so kind. The real life Onclers left town before the alarm was even sounded, leaving the uncles and cousins and even the Lorax trapped. The real life Onclers did not understand themselves to be connected to the people upon whom they built their fortune. Indeed the people were discarded as carelessly as the machinery.

Listening to the announcement of this year’s prize, I remembered a professor that held me spellbound as a college freshman at Oakland University, the Michigan school that sat literally on the historic Dodge estate. The professor that captured my attention spoke in stark contrast to the ground of the industrialists. She introduced terms like “blue collar crime” and “white collar crime”. She challenged us to consider the different ways we prosecute the poor man who uses a gun to take an old woman’s wallet and the rich man who uses cunning to defraud her of her life savings.

To be sure the crimes of poverty are most prevalent where we find the poor. Given that my beloved cities now teem with poverty rather than production, the results are predictable. Both cities offer a full complement of troubling behaviors to mirror the rabid poverty. Too many under and un-employed adults, too many hungry children, and too many readily available guns are undeniably a recipe for fear. But I have to wonder wherein the problem lies – the poverty, the hopelessness, the weapons or some combination?

The “100 Neediest Cases” (St. Louis Post Dispatch) in St. Louis will begin this week and offer to us an important invitation to share charity. Charity, though essential, is but a band-aid on a wound that is deeply infected.

The good book says that ‘the love of money is the root of all evil’. Although there is nothing inherently bad about money, our love for it leads us down the slippery slope. Understandably then, in a world where two many children go to bed hungry, faithful people feel compelled to take a hard look at the role and function of money in our culture.

I wish that I could report that my pondering of money in the context of my decision to increase my pledge or to support some new area of ministry. Even a new found passion to store up treasures would be a worthy excuse for this pondering. A confession, even, that a friend recently challenged me to talk more directly about money. The honest truth, however, is that I’m pondering the role of money at the outset of the holiday season for a totally not-altruistic purpose. I’m pondering a new car purchase.

My car search began early last summer after a spring of hefty car bills. With no car payments, ours is a household with older vehicles. We’re on a first name basis with Laurie at Najjar. For several weeks we just kept swapping cars with Laurie and handing her our Discover card. With the savings account wiped out, car payments begin to look more appealing than another encounter with Laurie.

Besides, I reasoned, my beloved Sienna isn’t very green. Beyond the de-greening of my savings, my Sienna is de-greening the environment with 19 miles per gallon and a yellow light for emissions (EPA). My Sienna is beloved in part because at the outset it was extremely green (read: economically), an unearned and surprising gift. My Sienna was my dad’s and it was in pristine condition when my parents gave it to me three years and 60,000 miles ago. For the first 100,000 miles, my Sienna was under my father’s careful tutelage; 100,000 carefully maintained, squeaky clean miles. The next 60,000 haven’t been so clean, but they’ve been joyous. With the possible exception of the old Impala wagon, this is the most incredibly comfortable car I’ve ever driven and it has made many happy trips hauling the four of us and our stuff around the country – Las Vegas, DC, Michigan, the Gulf. Mostly, though, my beloved Sienna is the kid hauling vehicle that runs a continuous circle around Webster, the hospital circuit, and the Brentwood Promenade (Target). Having seen Al Gore’s screen debut in the theater, realizing that most of my miles are racked up with 1 or 2 people in a 7 passenger van, I’m painfully aware of the ecological dilemma my beloved Sienna presents.

Armed with green (read: ecological) zeal, I decided that a hybrid was the only way to go. Until, of course, I started adding up the dollars. Then I examined the ‘mini car’ options, the Honda Fit being my personal favorite in this market. A mini-car would be perfect for the around town shuttling that commands my late afternoons. But the thought of a cross country trip with four almost-adults is not terribly appealing. Keeping the Sienna for trips is an option, but the cost of maintaining and insuring two vehicles is daunting.

Back to the hybrids. The Ford Escape is a worthy option, though I’d rather the Mazda version (Tribute) which is only available in California. The Toyota Highlander Hybrid, of course, is the queen bee. She also sports a rather royal price tag. I read, I wait, I search, I price. I keep coming back to the Highlander Hybrid and today I decided that it would be the wise choice. It’s a bit smaller than my Sienna, but comparable in size and seatbelts. The mileage is much better and so too the emissions, enabling me to justify the expense as good ecological stewardship.

It’s now late evening and I’ve spent a couple of intense and self-righteous hours contemplating spending $30+ thousand dollars that I don’t have on something that I don’t need for the foil of saving the environment. Clearly something is wrong with this picture. Although I have no particular affinity for green paper, the seductive power of wealth is not lost on me.

This search for utopia, for the perfect green (read: affordable and non-polluting) car, is seductive but not in itself evil. Perhaps the point of contention is when we mistake the want for need. At any rate, I enjoyed my search. And tomorrow morning I will happily drive my beloved Sienna to the store to buy the Thanksgiving turkey. Although the seats may be empty, I’ll fill the back with groceries that I can afford. The search for green will have to wait for another day.

Compromise is killing our children.

Compromise in the school cafeteria has become seriously dangerous according to my thirteen year old. A good eater who actually likes fresh vegetables, he has always had difficulty eating school lunch. With two working parents, though, he has had his share of school food. He regales us with the details of fried tacos and the inevitable 4th hour queasy stomach.

The National School Lunch Program is the unseen player (and funding source) in the school cafeteria. Launched in the shadow of WWII, it began with laudable goals. Assuming the program to be a product of post-war largesse, I was stunned to discover the roots of the program coming from the Pentagon. It turns out that nearly 20% of the draftees were rejected for physical limitation, half estimated to be a product of malnutrition. Major General Lewis Hershey was a key congressional witness in the effort to create the National School Lunch Program. In exchange for what has become a mountain of paperwork, local school districts receive modest funds to provide daily lunches for the children.

Admittedly social liberals like myself believe in school lunches. Believing in the value of an ounce of prevention, we point out that money invested in health, education, and feeding is money that won’t later be spent on disability and prisons. Though it is my trust in the witness of Jesus that moves my compassion, the imperative to care for the vulnerable is not Christocentric and indeed is found across religious and ethical traditions. Sharing this commitment, I applaud the city schools that have adopted not only lunch and breakfast meal programs, but are now expanding to offer after school programming and supper. In theory, the most vulnerable of children will now be presented with full nutritional meals three times a day. In theory, this is a huge step forward in the alleviation of childhood hunger in this country. But the theory isn’t the reality. On the road to implementation, the theory needs to be funded and this is where the compromise begins.

We should have known we were in trouble when then President Reagan declared ketchup to be a vegetable in 1981. To be fair, he wasn’t suggesting that ketchup is a vegetable, only that it could be counted as a vegetable when filling out the USDA paperwork. The advent of processed food options has added fuel to the smoldering fire. In my childhood we were faced with mashed potatoes sprinkled with mystery meat, now my children are presented with chicken nuggets and french fries. Their palates are happier than mine, but their arteries are clogging.

With the task of feeding two children for $5, creative ingenuity only goes so far. The staff costs alone to prepare and deliver the food easily add up to the allotted amount. Although some districts are engaging creative relationships with area farmers, efforts that deserve high praise, the reality is that the dollars available for food make it extremely difficult to provide lunches (and breakfasts and dinners) that are healthy. So we send our children to health class to learn about nutrition and obesity, then to the lunch room to demonstrate the alternative. Given that actions speak louder than words, junk food eaten trumps nutritional chart memorized.

My mother says that compromise means everyone loses. Clearly this is the case with school lunches. Unless, of course, the draft is reinstated. A lifetime of under-funded and over-processed school lunches will inevitably render many of our children ineligible for the draft. As a pacifist with a teenage son, maybe that’s a compromise I can accept.

Occasionally we catch a glimpse of the kin-dom, often most visible in the rearview mirror.

Last Sunday we received a wonderful group of new members at EUCC. As I was putting together the service, I knew that this was a large group (11 adults plus lots of partners and children - with two adult baptisms!). The morning was full and rich and utterly delightful.

Mia Ulmer (Birchtree Studio) was on hand to take pictures and I on Tuesday morning I had the opportunity to revel once more in the wonder of our community. Mia captured the essence of day, simply beautiful pictures of a precious people. The pictures are a treasure. I printed them for the bulletin board, but couldn’t quite let go. I decided to drop them onto a page together and then the full beauty of the morning began to become clear.

The diversity of this group of new members – age, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, family configuration – is stunning.

We talk a lot about diversity at EUCC. While we celebrate the baby steps, we lament the chasms that still divide our wider culture, so evident on Sunday mornings.

We don’t simply tolerate diversity, we revel in our differences knowing that it is our differences that enable us to most fully experience God. Because we recognize that the fullness of God is revealed in the diversity of God’s people, we know that our exclusions impede our experience of God.

Still, too often we find ourselves in monochromatic and age-segregated combinations on Sunday mornings. When I view the UCC “still speaking” television ads, I worry that we might be guilty of false advertising. Diversity may be our goal, but not our achievement.

As I stared at the page of new members, however, I was stunned to realize that for one brief moment in our history, a truly beautiful rainbow of humanity was witnessed at EUCC. The long awaited day of the Lord, the kingdom of God, when there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female… for one brief moment, we saw it.

This vision, this hope for the world, is what we are asked to support with our annual pledges. You will be receiving an envelope in the mail (yes – with a stamp!) asking for your pledge of financial support for EUCC for 2008. Your pledge isn’t to support the building or the staff, though it will do both. Your pledge is to empower this vision. Your pledge is necessary because God’s world cries out for this kind of witness.

Occasionally we catch a glimpse of the kin-dom of God. And at EUCC we have. Thanks be to God!