It’s very good to be back with you.  I’ve been impatient to get back—and preaching—since I started receiving that flood of cards y’all sent.  Wow!  It seemed like hundreds of them.  I was very much amazed, and lifted up.  After all, I’d only been here—what?—three times?  And here I was being love-bombed like I’d been among you forever.  And I thought, well, these people are going to be okay in spite of their recent painful stuff because they know how to care.

‘Course, I was loaded on morphine and other narcotics at the time, so my perception might be skewed.  But I don’t think so.

I want to think some today about God and cancer.  That’s because I lived in the land of morpheus—death—and I’m not the kind f the guy that can than get in pulpit and pretend it never happened.  And I think everybody has to deal with the disease—either as its prey or knowing a loved one with it.  How many here have had cancer?  Know somebody with cancer?

So, a brief rundown of what happened:  on Nov. 2 I went to the emergency room for a three-month old bellyache which left me increasingly unable to eat.  In the evening the doc said, “I have bad news.  I think you have pancreatic cancer.’  This left me pretty breathless because from my pastoral experience I knew pancreatic cancer to be especially vicious.   A medical team was put together and the next day was a whirlwind of consultations, including the decision to go  through a particularly brutal surgery called ‘the Whipple procedure’.

The day after that they did surgery to drain  my abdomen of the several liters of sludge there.  Five days later—a  week after I went to er—they did the six-hour Whipple surgery, cutting and sewing and redoing  the whole thing down there.  After the surgery I was on a respirator for a week, keeping my family and friends very much on edge; and not having much of a good time myself, either.

I had a couple of what I call psycho moments.  The first came about three weeks in, when I determined I was going home while everybody including my family tried to stop me.  It got very nasty, with security being called.  I stayed there that night, but they let me go home the next day.  Within just a few hours I stared vomiting and begged to go back to the hospital.  Somewhere in there I had a slight heart attack and caught pneumonia.  (One of the docs:   you thought this was like other surgeries, where you get stitched up and go home.  That’s not the way it is.’)

My second psycho moment came when I managed to corner about three of my doctors at one time and demanded ‘straight answers’.  I kept at them about this for awhile, until it sunk into my morphine-soaked brain that with cancer everything depends on the individual.  One of the docs who is a friend said, ‘Larry are you angry?’  ‘You’re doggone right,’ I shouted, though not with pulpit language.  ‘Good,’ he said,  ‘Then you’ll have a chance to survive.’

I spent 43 days in two different hospitals, and came home on Saturday, December 18th.  Since then I’m thoroughly ensconced in what I call ‘the cancer lifestyle’ of daily radiation treatments, and chemo, and wearing a nutrition bag and seeing doctors two and three times a week.  Oh, and vomiting.

Okay.  That’s enough to move us along to the ‘whys?’ of cancer.  I’m thinking particularly of the questions ‘why is there cancer?’ and ‘why did this happen to me?’

I have to say that I do not recall wrestling with those questions this time around.  I might have.  But I was so blitzed on narcotics that I have no memory of things.  My wife Sue has had to tell me what went on.  (And by the way, everybody’s name whom I’d learned here got wiped out in that blitz, too.)  I also think it’s because about ten years back I went through a very traumatic experience that took me into the ‘why’ questions—why this?  Why me?–for about two years.  And here’s how it got resolved for me:  stuff happens; and I won’t know why.  It is hidden in God.

That’s why when my pastor came to see me I asked him to read from the divine speeches in the OT story of Job.  Job, who is an innocent and righteous man suddenly loses everything and undergoes terrible suffering.  His friends keep telling him it’s because of some terrible sin.  Job insists he has not deserved this.  The argument intensifies over 37 chapters until Job demands a face-off with God:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?— when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?

And he goes on like this for the next two chapters, setting Job in his place in the universe.  He never does give Job a reason for his suffering.  Here’s what he does instead:  he draws near to Job.  He blesses Job  with his presence, justifies Job’s claim to innocence, and shows him his love.  Job doesn’t know why he suffers but he experiences the presence of a caring God, and that’s what made the difference.  We don’t need to know why so much as we need someone to walk with us.

But I didn’t have a cozy time with God in the hospital; in fact, pretty much the opposite:  what I experienced of him was profoundly frightening.

As I mentioned I was on a ventilator for a week.  They keep you unconscious with morphine and other narcotics.  Morphine—the name is related to the Latin word for death—is a land of darkness.  Most of the time you don’t know you’re there.  But sometimes you come up to a kind of self-awareness.  That happened, and I had the terrifying experience of knowing myself as nothing against this mighty and all-powerful darkness.  I call it the cosmic indifference, because this power—some thing like a god—just didn’t care about me.  History would move on; I was already forgotten.

Martin Luther made the comment that God and the devil would look a lot alike were it not for Jesus Christ.  Unlike a lot of people’s spiritual experiences, Jesus didn’t show up in the middle of this for me.  Instead I spent my ‘aware’ time in the fearful presence of this omnipotent cosmic indifference.  Of course, physically I was very much hovering between life and death, so that might have something to do with it.

In a book called The Idea of the Holy, the theologian Rudolph Otto calls this the experience of mysterium tremendum.  It’s that encounter with the overpowering omnipotence and, again, indifference  of an unknowable power and my own insignificance that leads to a sense of dread.  It was within this dread that I lived those days.

Jesus didn’t show up.  But I began to open my eyes and come to the light, and my darling Sue was sitting there.  And this guy who’d rather have a heart attack than cry broke into sobs as grand as a baby.  And another time I woke to my daughter, and then each of my sons, who were all taking turns to be with me and all I could do was sob.  I was back among the living; no longer floating in that terrifying darkness.  I was back among those who cared and for whom I cared, no longer a nothing of cosmic indifference.

Then your cards were coming and I received wonderful emails from friends and acquaintances, a few visits from friends, and phone calls from folks around the country offering to come and help.  One sister spent 6 weeks with us, and her husband came for several and did all sorts f house repair.  I sent out work to my other two sister and other families and my mom and step dad, ‘Let’s all gather in Houston for Christmas’ and they came from CA, OR, AZ, and TN.

And Christ showed up.  And my soul was healed. I was no longer lost in the darkness.  Christ showed up in you and them.  That what it means that God chose to come to us as a man:  the heart of God will always be revealed through the human.  As Martin Luther put it, we become ‘little Christs’ to one another.

So good job and thanks to all you little  Christs out there.  And as you look toward your future as a congregation, let me leave this question with you:  how can you be Christ to the people around you to whom the world is indifferent?  How can you find the ones who are lost in the darkness?

Most recently word that silences my eternity was spoken in the emergency room:  ‘you have pancreatic cancer.’

I’ve walked as pastor with some folks through their life–and death–by it.  It’s an extremely nasty fucking disease.  Nobody survives it very long.  I can hear eliot’s eternal footman snicker ‘and you always thought it would be your heart taking you out, even relatively painlessly and peacefully.  Well, here’s a surprise.’  Shit like that seems to happen in my life.

As with all things medical, the treatment for pancreatic cancer has improved since I walked that journey with those others–or at least so I am told.  Now my own pilgrimage has begun, first with the ‘Whipple Surgery’ slicing and dicing and reattaching all those digestive organs in a major way.  I like to call it ‘the Benihana’s Procedure’, after the popular Japanese restaurant where they do that fancy knife and stir-fry work right in front of you (today’s special:  Sushi Larry).  I spent a week on the respirator and another week or two zoned out on drugs in ICU (more morphine! I say.  More morphine!)  The most exciting thing then was my determination to go home, I don’t give a shit what anybody says, and the nurse calling for security, a real Dylan Thomas moment, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night. . .rage, rage against the dying of the light.’  I got the raging part down, just ask the darling, who so often and so unfairly gets the brunt of it that I expect I’ll be spending much of eternity apologizing to her.  (That heavenly cloud of witnesses witnesses it all, chanting in a four part fugue, ‘what an asshole.’)

I’ve been in the hospital since November 2nd, save for a five-hour trip home related to the security guard incident mentioned above and ending with voracious vomiting and a new hospital room. I’m told I’ll be able to go home tomorrow utilizing ‘home health  care’ after we learn how to use the IV chemical feeding tube (I’ve not had real food since October).  Guess we’ll see what happens then.

And to the taunt, ‘you have pancreatic cancer’ I’ll reply with Leonard Cohen:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for

If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring

If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

Sushi Larry

In May the drought became sort of obvious, requiring more than just incidental lawn watering, and by June I had a first ever full-fledged watering schedule under way dragging hoses and sprinklers around the yard like some suburban Sisyphus doomed forever to start again what I just finished. The ovens of hell were opened in July with no day below 100. (In one of my dimmer moments, hitting the links one day with Biker Kerry at a 1:00 tee time. We had the normally busy place to ourselves because it was, well, so fucking hot. I was proud to announce my score of 104 equaled the temperature, though upon reflection have considered it a fundamentally stupid thing to do; not even young healthy people were out there.) But it was a dry heat thanks to the drought; so the lawn required increased water and I became a sort of Sisyphus on speed, hauling hoses every day. The lawn was green and plush.

Then I got my water bill. I was a bit appalled–not by the price so much as by the usage: 30,000 gallons. With Houston baking and Texas burning and no end of drought in sight despite Gov Goodhair’s public imprecations to his deity (the pharaoh’s prayers were answered not only by more drought, but by fires descending like some plague of Moses) there seemed to me to be something gluttonous about that green and plush lawn. So the hoses were rolled up and Sisyphus stopped his chase and lassez faire gardening became the operative once again: ‘sure hope you can survive this.’ I spent most of August watching lawn and landscaping die and am reconciled to the cost of resodding and replanting if it ever starts raining again. The same thing’s going on with most of our neighbors–a sign at the entrance to our subdivision announces ‘voluntary water conservation’–whose lawns are also going brown. I’m glad for this little display of community, the weed-strewn dead grasses painting ‘we’re all in this together.’ It’s not like we talk to each other otherwise. The decision to turn the lawn over to the mercy of nature and watch it die then led naturally enough to a question about the utility of the weekly visit from the lawn crew when in fact nothing was growing. But I finally decided that these guys need to live on something and so continue to pay for the kabuki of it all.

I caught an article on the effects the drought is having on the already semi-arid region of west Texas around Abilene where we first started out of seminary. The hamlet of Robert Lee has a lovely reservoir tucked back into the hills that serve the town and surrounding area as both a recreational area (good fishing) and the water supply. It’s down to 1% of its capacity (fishing for, I suppose, mudpuppies); the folks are wondering where they will get water. This is happening to little towns all over the place: they’re running out–or in some cases have already run out–of water.

The problem becomes especially severe with the plague of fires. And that’s additionally compounded by the fact that those little towns are served by volunteer fire departments (as is also true of our little suburbia). Guv Goodhair the Texas miracle and current popup in the whack-a-mole Republican presidential nomination process cut that state budget by 75%. But, hey, no problem, ’cause mr. less guvment got us FEMA funds. My pal Ecclesiastical Dave forwarded a terrific observation: chutzpah — n., when the Governor of Texas cuts funding 75% for volunteer fire departments, then demands federal disaster relief to fight wildfires, while calling for cuts in government spending.

Due, no doubt, to the mustard gas incident in high school chemistry class–a simple lab assignment gone awry and sending old Mrs. Marshall into a panic as if I were the only guy who’d ever done it–and the midterm D earned in Physics that eliminated me from being Head Yell Leader (thus destroying my presidential aspirations forever) I took the minimal number of science classes necessary in college, as I recall, two; one being ‘ecology 101′. This was around 1974, at the dawning of a social awareness of environmental issues, when with the oil embargo came the crisis of the ‘population bomb’. So we began to learn about how all these things–environment and human–interact with each other and I recall from the prof, ‘The environment is a living organism with finite resources. When too much demand is placed on her, Nature will react against it, to put things back in balance. We’re reaching that point. So we have a fundamental choice: we can do nothing and let nature take its course–and you know, nature doesn’t give a shit about human suffering; or we can minimize human suffering by passing environmental protection laws and cleaning our messes up and learning to live more modestly, more respectfully within spaceship earth (as it were, back in ’74).
‘
Forty-seven years later it appears we are encountering the environmental shit hitting the fan only suspected back then: historic droughts, historic fires, historic floods, melting ice caps, sterilized oceans, foul air, and disappearing rain forests. And they’re not historic because they are relatively unique, they’re historic because each one’s more violent than the last (Jake the tv weather guy: ‘Why we haven’t had a storm this severe in, oh, twenty-two months’). Much of the environmental degradation is due to human activity, especially but not only our use of fossil fuels. Scientists have been warning us about this for decades, also noting that without major changes it’s only going to get worse. There is a huge consensus about this among the leading climatologists in the world. But it’s the minority of self-interested deniers who have the money and the power and the airwaves, so little gets done politically. Nature will take her course, and human suffering and misery will get worse.

From childhood years in Pennsylvania I recall walking the forests around Johnstown with parents and siblings and later playing with my pals on the banks of the Stony Creek and skinny-dipping therein. I went to church Camp Sequanota (where I met PA Dave who, bless his heart, continues to help on the periodic maintenance and upkeep of the place) and our church worship calendar included a couple of weeks on the stewardship of creation when we sang ‘This is my Father’s world; and to my listening ears; all nature sings and ’round me rings the music of the spheres!’ And we recited the litany ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world and those who dwell therein; for he has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the rivers.’

And I took with me the ethic that we are to live respectfully with the earth, using only our necessary share and conserving resources for all, and, as per my days backpacking in the boy scouts, remember the people who come after you and leave the campsite in better condition than you found it. You do this because the place doesn’t belong to us; we are only here for awhile to manage it for the good of everybody. ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world and those who dwell therein.’ That’s what the Good Book says.

Books lie, he said.
God don’t lie.
No, said the judge. He does not. And these are His words.
He held up a chunk of rock.
He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.                   (Cormac McCarthy, “Blood Meridian”)

And they’re telling us the same thing.

Larry

Back in February I posted a little ditty about the existential revelation of leaving my little clan the legacy of a little piece of country ‘recreational’ land (‘Legacy’ at the blog site), not only as a place for family gatherings, but also as a hedge against the prestidigitations of the banksters, gangsters, and corruption which has so overtaken any semblance of our civil community in the name of the savagery of the ‘free, unregulated market’ which make my (our) retirement savings disappear and magically show up in their hands. I was a bit dubious about the wisdom of the idea until Matchmaker Don observed, ‘Well my daddy always said they don’t make more land.’ With strengthened resolve I determined to do it with cash, ye olde savings account taking quite a wallop, there, Ebenezer.

So the clan gathered and discussed it and made plans and went land-scouting until we found just the place: a 5-acre parcel of raw land on the old Lazy Bar S Ranch. It sat among fields and pastures and strips of scrub forest hiding deer and such. It sat at the end of the one-lane macadam road, just past the dozen or so homesteads of similar size; decent places with people tending horses or working farms, so it wasn’t one of those ‘recreational subdivisions’ where, like here in suburbia, you have to get the home owners’ association approval to pee behind a tree. Nope. It was ‘unrestricted’ which means, according to Delightful Debbie our realtor, ‘You can do whatever you want with it.’ (The drawback being, obviously, so can your neighbor: you want to put a tannery in? Have at it.)

The negotiations went okay, though with one of the three sisters who owned it living in California, a little slowly. But a number was reached and it was to be an easy breezy deal: I give you guys $25k (it’s amazing what can be saved when you’re not supporting a sailboat) and you give me the land. In the mean time I did my due diligence, even to the extent of hiring, after the price was agreed, a site evaluator to, well, evaluate the site and educate me on bringing in water, electric, and septic. I signed the contract offer, wrote the earnest money checks, and waited for the rest of the signatories. Two signed, but the California gal was unhappy with the standard contract and wanted an addendum specifically saying that I would not get the mineral rights, just the water rights. I asked Delightful Debbie ‘Doesn’t the standard contract already say that?’ ‘Yeah, but their realtor tells me this sister doesn’t really trust the other two. There are some hard feelings there.’ So I signed the contracts again.

This got me to thinking about the three sisters I grew up with, because I know that where there are three, somebody is on the outside. It’s always two against one, though in healthy situations the alignments are constantly shifting. (I also learned it can become three against one in a flash if as big brother you dare to step in. So I was taught to stay away and let them settle it. Generally I managed to avoid being splashed by their shit.) In my business this is called triangulation: Ann has a problem with Beth but instead goes to Cindy to enroll her as an ally, ‘Hey, help me beat up on Beth.’ Pastors get triangulated on a lot; and the pastoral messianic temptation to join is always there, but woe to the poor sucker who does: ‘somebody’s gettin’ screwed, Zeke. And we even know who it is.’ This is the interpersonal reality behind Jesus’ words in Matthew 18, ‘If you have a problem with your brother or sister, go talk to that one first.’ ‘Course, that ain’t the way we usually do it–first we round up our allies; in congregational life the failure to heed Jesus’ words here (and the accompanying failure to obey the 8th commandment about tearing down another’s reputation) creates more human devastation than all the adulterous peckers in the sanctuary.

So having myself no problems with the Lazy S sisters, I left them to their own devices and waited. When the drop dead date came Delightful Debbie called and said, ‘The California gal won’t sign.’ ‘What?’ ‘She really does not like her sisters, and refuses to sign. But the other two sisters will sell you their portion.’ Yeah, right; like I want the bitch sister as an adjacent landowner. Thus the deal came to an end by the poison of resentment, though not before I heeded Jesus and sent her an email (via realtors) telling her how her behavior affected me and mine. Of course I never heard from her, but that wasn’t the point, since I never knew her to begin with. The point was that a word had to be spoken; an objection filed in the ether (‘next time, take thirty seconds to consider the people you’re doing this to’).
That was in March. So we went land-scouting again, Soccer Saul and I the usual on the ground guys, taking day trips when we could. After several fruitless months of this we came to the conclusion that we evaluated everything we saw through the eyes of the land we had wanted and designed in minds and nothing else could overcome it. While tooling the highways one day at play over these things in the fields of my mind I heard the voice of once bishop and still friend Paul from 18 years ago when my first insane ‘associate’ pastor had intentionally sabotaged a $100k outreach grant the ELCA had awarded us, ‘Is there any way to salvage the deal?’ I contacted Delightful Debbie, explained things and said if the price had been in the way I could cough up a couple thousand more.

After a time she sent me an offer to sign, only instead of one contract being made out to the three of them, it was two–one with the willing sisters, the other with bitch sister. One willing sister signed immediately but the other was out of pocket. Bitch sister surprisingly made a counter offer, though now through an attorney: another thousand. No big news there. Somebody’s gotta pay for the attorney. The interesting thing is her interest in the land amounted to only 15%, or 3/4 of an acre. I’d offered $3900, she wanted $5000, so fine, I’ll pay the premium. Oh, and of course there was a new two-page lawyerly addendum restating what was already in the standard contract, as my pal, Attorney Tim who likes lawyering so much more than he ever liked the ministry–’I never wake up thinking my day’s gonna be about love and fellowship and then being appalled by the church’s behavior. I know my day’s gonna be about conflict and I don’t have to be nice’–put it, after maintaining his reputation as the teller of the most disgustingly funny jokes I’ve known. While waiting for willing sister #2 to sign I planned my next steps.

I was excited when I saw Delightful Debbie’s name on the email inbox and opened it immediately. It’s worth a quote: ‘I am waiting on the contract to be signed by the last sister. I spoke with [her] realtor and he told me she was refusing to sign the contract, because she is afraid the she will not get the same deal that her sister is getting. She said that she wanted to look at the contract. He told her she could not.’

It boggles the mind.

I signed the legal docs cancelling all contracts the next day, and spent about a week steaming and kissing off that particular vision.

The whole episode plays like a Shakespearian farce starting with three hags gathered around a campfire in the wilderness, huddled over a steaming cauldron chanting ‘Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble’ and stirring that bilious acid and throwing heaping spoonfuls of it at each other ever more hysterically: fire burn and cauldron bubble. This is followed by a whole entourage of farcical characters of middle men/women all caught up in an equally farcical scheme of trying to con the dreaming rube. In the end, everyone around those hags becomes only a ladle of their acid; everyone is burned and diminished by the corrosive bile they spew at each other. I wonder what Shakespeare would do with that: what would their farcical comeuppance be? Of course, if Puccini wrote an opera about it I’d have to die in the end following a magnificent crystal-shattering tenor goodbye.

But it really ends with a shrug. Damn. Oh well. And recalling words of advice from a way-back friend, ‘Larry, sometimes you just gotta understand that God put other people here for your entertainment.’

The dreams and schemes of my life have always been accompanied by a silent ‘God willing’. God willing is measured in the experience of engaging the new adventure. There are always hurdles to overcome. The question is does it matter enough to overcome them? Here y’go: what is the flow of the karma in this? Is there a point at which what I am trying does not seem to be in harmony with what I’m experiencing. I know that there’s a point at which dream and desire and almost-in-hand distorts my perception of the costs to be paid trying to satiate a demanding will. So it is a time for, as we, say, second-guessing, reconsidering. It’s a time to take a breath and see what develops. I’m thinking that once Texas stops burning I might get a terrific deal at a, you know, fire sale.

And for the displaced and newly homeless and the bewildered and the children I plead.

Larry

Says Goodhair the cronymeister and corruption prince and presidential wannabe: ‘We believe that America is in a state of crisis. Not just politically, financially or morally, but because we are a nation that has not honored God in our successes or humbly called on Him in our struggles. According to the Bible, the answer to a nation in such crisis is to gather in humility and repentance and ask God to intervene. The Response will be a historic gathering of people from across the nation to pray and fast for America.’ And other equally ghastly stuff. It’s rather like Pilate seeking direction from Jesus. He pretty much misses the point that living justly–with politics searching for justice and financial justice and morals committed to justice for even the least–this is exactly what it means to honor God, as in, say, with Jesus ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, hungry and you fed me, in prison and you visited me.’

The Right Reverend Goodhair, the leader of the state which accounts for a third of all the executions in the country who refused to stay an innocent man’s execution and then buried the evidence of his innocence; the prophet-in-chief of the state tied for the third highest incarceration rate in the nation at 668 prisoners per 100,000 people–for a total of 168,105 (with another 428,773 on probation) (wanna take a stab at the racial stats?) for whom we spend $25,000 each per year to keep caged–about three times what we spend educating a kid–he says we’re not honoring God so we gotta pray and fast and ask for a miracle. Mr. Spiritual Perception claims we are not honoring God. Yowzee! There’s a revelation for ya.

The issue of course is just what god is it we are not honoring? What god will be appeased by those seven hours of dominionist groveling and crowing? It creates a scene out of the pagan Roman empire, a couple of senators strolling along in togas, one says to the other, ‘Hey Claudius, let’s stop at the temple before going to the forum and throw a sacrifice to the goddess; get that bitch off our backs so we can do business without interference.’ But not even these guys were particularly original, since the prophet Amos dealt with the same thing about oh, 750 years before Jesus

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings, I will not accept them,
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Uh-oh, there, Bible-believin’ Goodhair; you might be havin’ a problem. Not only because ‘justice’ and ‘righteousness’ mean the same thing–right relationships among peoples, especially for the least, the conditions that make for God’s shalom. But your show also sounds like that scene on Mt. Carmel where all the prophets of Baal go to moaning and whining and gonging and howling and cutting themselves to no abaal (heh-heh) from an unhearing impotent god. Actually, a couple of months back Preacher Goodhair called for a day of prayer for rain in light of the all time record-breaking drought we’ve been experiencing. Since then we’ve had not quite an inch, if you total the three occasions. A god with prostate problems. How’s that workin’ out for you, buddy?

Of course this is nothing more than religious kabuki where Goodhair (and others) can strut his way right wing tribalistic Goodhair Religion and thus become Goodhair President. Or at least building up the reptilian tribalism of them all.

And the minions of haters-for-Jesus will be showing up at this circus like a Volkswagen full of clowns. But instead of jumbling out in a turmoil of yelling and whistles and big floppy shoes and polka-doted bow ties and red rubber noses and plastic flowers that squirt water and honking bicycle horns these guys will arrive on private jets in tailored suits and hop in limos to palatial hotel suites to end their excruciating 7-hour fast with champagne and caviar. And instead of the slapstick mayhem of squirting seltzer bottles and exploding paddles on pillowed rumps these clowns spew spite and fear and intolerance and anger and the animosity of their god toward anyone different than themselves and then they dress up the golden calf in a flag and a cross.

But I know a circus when I see one. After getting out of the army I spent about six weeks as the lone brass player in a circus ‘band’, which in reality consisted of the drummer, the organist and me the trombone player (they couldn’t find a trumpet player). Occasionally they would hire a local pickup band. It was supposed to be maybe a six-month traveling gig, but it didn’t last: I got fired in Jacksonville (FL) for insufficient loudness–circuses do not care about nuances–and I drove out of town after the last show on the night the race riots broke out. The only difference with that circus was that the people–both the attendees and the performers–knew it was a show. They didn’t pretend it was real nor god. They knew the spotlight on them was not a halo. They took their red rubber noses off after the show.

And they left town peacefully. Goodhair and Gang, on the other big floppy foot, never take off their red rubber noses ’cause they’re always in the spotlight and take it for a halo and they despise peace. They thrive on conflict, pitting brother and sister against sister and brother in the guise of righteous purity. They build their religious edifice in service to greed and the lust for power. And now they’re gonna pray and fast and ask for a miracle? Who do they think they’re fooling–and fooling with?

On my first pastors’ sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands our resource theologian was the legendary sem prof Dr. Gerhard Forde, an old (now, rip) pious fellow from the plains of North Dakota or some place. On the second night maybe five of our crew of ten were at Foxy’s Beach Bar on Jost Van Dyke having a drink when No Shit Jack came dancing up. I’d met him down there a few years earlier, the moniker being a no-brainer given his consistent openers ‘Now this is no shit’ as if this were, in fact, a unique event. He loved the idea of me being a Lutheran pastor as he prided himself on being a New York City agnostic Jew psychologizer type quite used to besting anyone in Central Park in philosophical debate (so long as there was an audience). So when I introduced him to Gerhard the theologian he pounced with the bravado of a guy dancing to rum: ‘Prove to me there’s a god! Prove to me there’s a god!’ dancing on the sand in and out from the picnic table while his wife danced on watching.

Soft-spoken Gerhard responds in a professorial way, ”Well, you have to start thinking about. . .’ he begins, but No Shit ain’t having it, ‘Prove it! Prove it!’ Four times Soft-spoken Gerhard tries to begin And four times No Shit cuts him off demanding proof, each time more triumphally than the last as if shutting a guy up wins the debate (which it might in NYC), until No Shit is staring at Soft-spoken with a prideful victorious gleam in his eye, which Gerhard returns for a pause then speaks softly, ‘Well, wait and see.’  And the rest of us fell out to laughter.

So the Clowns of Baal, Lord of the Flies, shall gather and put on their show and parade their piety and establish their political alliances and the whole thing is only for unique kinds of Christians, ala ‘We’re gonna pray for the nation, but our god don’t want the likes of you around.’ They’ll strut in their religiosity and swagger in their power and and savor the certainty of their rightness and celebrate their exclusivity as god’s agents. For this they know, is the will of god.

And I can hear Gerhard speaking softly: ‘Oh yeah? Wait and see.’

The formula is simple: that nation, state, and/or community which honors its poorest and most vulnerable members with the highest priority in care is honored by God. And that which doesn’t isn’t, dance and gong and moan all you want.

Wait and see.

Larry

You have to put up with his weirednesses, though, the first being that he’s Italian (something of a non-sequitor in a Lutheran pastor), which not only defines his diet but also explains the pilgrimage-a-year (at least) that he takes there, leading groups from his congregation. Another weirdness is that he was an only child and is still used to being treated that way (‘Jesus, Spaghetti, you are so fucking spoiled has been my constant chide). So when somebody wants to join the church he tells them, ‘Well, you have to take me to lunch or dinner at a restaurant of my choice. You pay.’ But then again there is a kind of authenticity and easy graciousness about him that is winsome. And he has a wizard mind (about some things).

Which brings us to Sunday’s sermon, which is a tale worth telling, though with a few thousand fewer words. It’s about what Jesus says in Matthew: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

The context here is that Jesus is prepping the disciples to head out on their mission and has just spent a bunch of verses telling them how the work’s gonna suck (the famous ‘I have not come to bring peace but a sword’ stuff) and sort of ends it up on this happy note: ‘But you will also experience hospitality. Anyone who gives you disciples a cup of water because of the work you are doing God will reward them.’ So there you go, huh? The words are not commands of how to live, but indications of how to see. The work may suck at times, but you’ll receive hospitality. And God will reward those who care for you. A cup of water for Jesus doesn’t go unnoticed. Spaghetti does a nice job of highlighting this, then gets to the story, coming out of his year of internship in inner-city african american slums in Philadelphia.

Now this part of the city was the battle zone of three violent street gangs of the sort which in one case, upon hearing of the death of a member of a rival gang, three guys walked into the funeral parlor where the body was on display, shot it six times, and walked out. Not the kind of place where a white guy wants to be hanging out, and indeed Spaghetti was about the only one in town (I ALWAYS wore my black clerical shirt), getting no salary but living in the neighborhood with an african american family. His assignment right out of the shoot was to plan, organize, and carry out a six-week summer program for 235 kids of the neighborhood including field trips to parks and museums and such as that. Six weeks with 235 kids from the ‘hood; it sounds to me like the VBS from hell, but he claims to have enjoyed it.

He decided to celebrate the completion of the program by renting a plane and going flying since he had a private pilot’s license (figures–he’s an only child) so rounded up a priest buddy with a license and off they went. Until the fog bank set in and the instruments went out and they flew into the side of a mountain. He’d told me some years back about how his buddy was decapitated going through the windshield and how he was so busted up he could barely crawl the the mile or so down the mountain to a road. He was hospitalized and in rehab for five months. A lot of him is held together with screws and bolts (which provided the perfect excuse for not lifting anything heavier than a book when we were sailing in the BVI’s).
On his first day back he pulled up to his workplace in his VW beetle, which, he had been instructed by his host family, should never be locked. Three gang members were leaning against the car across the street. ‘Hey!’ they demanded as he got out, ‘where the hell you been, man?’ So he decided to introduce himself and approached with his hand extended ‘Hi, I’m. . .’ but they cut him off. ‘We know all that. Where you been?’ So he told them about the crash.

Later he made the mistake of locking his car, and his host family was griping at him about it: ‘Have you ever had anything stolen out of that car? Have you ever been accosted or mugged or even threatened in all those times you were on the street, even at night when no white guy dare be around? Do you know why you’ve always been safe here? Because of that summer program you did. Those 235 kids were the younger brothers and sisters and sometimes children of the gang members. These three gangs which so hate and want to kill each other actually got together and agreed that you would be protected because of what you did.’

In the name of Jesus, ’cause that’s why he was there.

So eventually Spaghetti Jim lands his sermonic plane not with a mountainous crash but a gentle glide into a meadow of grace: and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward. What, then, of those gangs who extended the hospitality of God to disciples unaware? What, then, of this God who will work this compassion among even the most vicious?

Grace abounds with Spaghetti Jim (because he’s so spoiled). Nice job, buddy.

Larry

The birthing was not banana-peel slick, ultimately requiring surgical assistance, a ‘caesarian birth’ (with deference to the terrifying earth-mom who led our ‘preceasarian birth classes’ at the U of Minnesota during the advent of our twins, demanding ‘Grapefruit are sectioned, not women! It’s a caesarian BIRTH!’ while the silver coke spoon on the dainty chain bounced along her collar bone for emphasis). So New Momma Again Deb had to spend a couple extra days in the hospital and now wears the physical scar of being God’s vehicle of creation (as it were, ‘Let it be according to thy will’, a sutured madonna).

Too bad that wasn’t all there was to it. Henley the bug is doing fine, but NMA Deb has had a horrific post-partum period thus far with blazing migraines and screaming high blood pressure that’s landed her back in the hospital a couple of times, even earning a two-night stay in ICU while the medicos scratched their heads in wonder, trying this treatment or that, ultimately sending her home with blood pressure meds and headache painkillers and the explanation, ‘Eh, we don’t know what it is, but it’ll probably go away in a few weeks.’

Meanwhile now daddy of two One L Wil is doing a good job at the frantic juggling of his job, both doing child care and arranging it, and spending time in the hospital with his wife while also carrying concern for his father, who was also hospitalized. I feel for him. He’s got that shell-shocked look of a guy running on pure adrenaline. But then again he’s young and can handle it. Welcome to the club, pal, in the words of Bob Dylan, ‘You know there is something happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?’

‘Course the darling and I, being the most readily available (people without a life, as it were), have pulled much of the child care duty with enjoyment, even if occasionally relieved that the Queen and the bug are not staying at our house. In fact, about two weeks ago I proved my competence–indeed, heroism–by keeping all three of their little highnesses alone myself. This was the day of the aforementioned Big Diaper Dump, when, with NMA Deb home at her house, we agreed to keep Princess Peppy (a la The Queen’s take on Penelope), Doc Boner and Cat Doc Rayna’s kid, Her Highness II. But then the darling decided to host a real puny NMA Deb and her two ‘just in case,’ and a 3:3 adult/kid ratio seemed fair and went well for, oh, thirty minutes until her screaming high blood pressure and blazing migraine fulfilled the darling’s prophecy of another trip to the hospital; and given the choice I’d stay with three infants over admitting someone to the hospital any day; besides, the darling’s a pro at the hospital stuff, and she knows all about this post-partum motherhood shit.

I did a fully confident job once I déjà vued into that reality dimly recalled from 30 years back: someone is always in motion–the energy comes at you like a wall of sound; and indeed, someone is always squawking for attention, requiring a kind of triage approach, ‘anybody bleeding?’; and, oh yeah, somebody’s diaper is always in need of changing (though The Queen has been housebroken for some time). Once this reality is recognized I can relax and enjoy it and so rocked, cuddled and fed the bug, did a couple of laps around the house with Princess Peppy, who loves walking so long as she is holding onto your fingers requiring that back-aching gorilla stoop (C’mon, kid, let go of at least one hand. You can’t learn without taking some falls; besides, between that diaper and its load of shit, you can’t possibly get hurt.) (Fuck off. I’ll learn at my own speed). I was impressed by how easily The Queen shared my time with the other two, being quite content to do her own thing for a spell, then asking for about five, ten minutes, as it were ‘just checking in’. She joined in the tickling romps, and became a co-caregiver (‘Hey, can you give your sister her chew toy?’) The afternoon was polished off with the sight of her three-year-old highness sitting in the overstuffed lounger for an hour, watching ‘Strawberry Shortcake’ and holding her little 10-day old bug of a sister.

Late that night, after all had been disbursed to their homes and the darling returned from the hospital–though sans NMA Deb, who remained there–and collapsed on the sofa I strutted my competence, ‘Why are you so tired? All you did was sit around all day and watch tv. I took care of three babies.’ I suppose that’s why she had no response to the Big Diaper Dump a couple of sentences later; almost asnore. The next morning she said ‘I talked with Doc Boner. He said you forgot to give Princess Peppy her lunch.’ ‘Huh? Where was it?’ ‘In the tupperware in the refrigerator.’ ‘Oh. Is that what that was?’

I love my grandchildren, even if occasionally ineptly.

It’s a good thing, too, because here in bubbaland the People of The State of Texas don’t give a shit about them; nor any other children, as far as that goes. Under the inspired corruption of Governor Rick ‘Goodhair’ Perry (a la Molly Ivins) our budget situation is at least on par with that of California, and golly gee folks I guess the only place to get them billions is from kids and the worthless poor. Of course he wants to cut a bunch of billions out of education, and teachers are being axed and demonized. The Teachers’ Retirement system has been savaged, to wit: a smoking gun memo surfaced detailing how Perry appointed friends and donors to the Teacher Retirement System Board who steered hundreds of millions of teacher dollars – and millions in fees – to firms run by Perry donors. In 2000, when Perry took office, the TRS had more assets than it needed to fund retiree benefits for more than 30 years. But now, the TRS has an unfunded liability of $21.6 billion. (Burnt Orange Report) And then there is the taliban majority he appointed to the state board of education which confuse education with propaganda–make up shit and call it ‘creation science’; make up fables and call them ‘history’, and how it was of the highest priority for his legislative ‘special session’ that all women seeking an abortion must have an ultrasound. ‘Course, I don’t know how you pay for it, ’cause health services are also being cut and Planned Parenthood is under attack, so them poor gals, they’ll just have to use a coat hanger, I guess. Matter-of-fact, in the case of child welfare among the underclass, Texas is right down there with Mississippi, while Perry makes the top of CREW’s list as one of the five most corrupt governors in the nation.

The corruption–and, oh say, perversion of Christianity–list is tantalizingly long and I could get into a real jeremiad, so only one more from Goodhair, as he was addressing conservative businessmen encouraging voters to leave public education and go to private schools: Well, there is a lot of fat to cut from our public schools, especially those in our biggest urban areas like Houston and Dallas. I am concerned that some the highly diverse Magnet public schools in this city are becoming hotbeds for liberalism. Do we really need free school bus service, Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, ESL, special needs and enrichment programs like music, art or math Olympiad? I think we should get back to the basics of the three Rs, reading writing and arithmetic. I mean when is the last time a 6th grade science fair project yielded a cure for a disease?

And even better: I really don’t see why high schools should have to teach college level courses like calculus, economics, physics, chemistry or biology. Not all children go to college anyway. Texas has plenty of on the job training programs that teach skills and trades. Oil field workers need to know how to operate machines that extract oil. They don’t need calculus to do their job. Yeah, Rick. Train ‘em as servants. What a nasty doofus; even the bubbas of bubbaland think so: only 4% of his own Republican party want to see him run for president. But maybe it’s just because they’re making too much money off his governorship.

So the pigs are at the trough, bumping and pushing and shuffling and snorting and slurping and chewing to grab all that they can there, and to push the other pigs out of the way to get even more. And what does not make them fatter, they shit into the sty. And this is the food for bugs.

My prayers for Keenegarten are beyond words, from that place where the heart cries kyrie.

Larry

That was the most interesting of the few reports I heard about, since I’m not usually present for reports, after, say, the credentials committee at the opening session.  I’ve never been able to sit with rapt attention through these things, preferring instead random encounters while strolling the convention center hallways.  But I always show up for resolutions because they’re sometimes fun and occasionally matter, though this year’s batch promised to be not much of either–the church’s equivalent to apple pie resolutions:  one to encourage our congregations to think about providing some financial support for the Lutheran  Seminary Program of the Southwest (LSPS, from which NT Ray hailed ’til he went to Chicago) and a couple more going on record in opposition to bullying.  Your basic yawners.

But first someone spoke against encouraging LSPS ’cause ‘our’ seminaries are Wartburg and Chicago.  What the hell–is there now a scarcity of encouragement?  I mean, it’s not like we’re actually doing anything.  Which brought Bombastic Brian to the mike to do what he’s been doing for the two and a half decades he and I have toiled as pastors in the synodical vineyard:  amend the motion to force congregations to pay.  He doesn’t like ‘encouragement’ motions, but he’s always ruled out of order because the synod has the same kind of control over congregations’ finances as the congregations have over their members:  none.  And even after that was ended we had a whole line of speakers thinking it necessary to defend the encouragement though nobody was speaking against it.  Somebody called for the question so we had to take a voice vote about that and the bishop  ruled that those wanting to continue discussion won it,  and incredibly somebody called for a division, meaning every vote had to be counted, and even el bisho was blown away ‘are you kidding me?!’ but quickly regained his composure.  Eventually we voted for the encouragement, though not unanimously.

Then came the two motions to oppose bullying with again a huge line of people speaking in favor of opposing bullying with nobody there speaking in favor of bullying.  The mind wanders at such times and I  caught the notion that the resolutions referred only to children, as if bullying were not a problem in, say, marriages, or the work place, and the church, both by pastors and by churches against pastors.   I wanted to amend the resolution to ‘memorialize’ the churchwide assembly to direct the presiding bishop to communicate to the president of the US that the church is opposed to America bullying other nations.  But once the crying mother of the bullied third-grader got the microphone, not even I dare to do it.  So, hoorah! we are opposed to children being bullied.   The most exciting part of the session this year was getting to vote with electronic gadgets that immediately put the results on the big screen.  ‘Course, these things matter to people, and this is a way of getting them out there before the gathered church. Some ‘debates’ are really infomercials.

After the resolutions the keynoter started key-noting about ‘intergenerational ministry’–being the focus of the assembly–and got about two sentences in praising what a wonderful day it was and how good it is to be thankin’ God upon  awakening when I bailed to the hallways again.  Way too smiley faced for me.  I asked a couple of pals ‘Intergeneration ministry?  Wasn’t that gonna be the salvation of the church back in the eighties?’  One observes, ‘And we’ve seen how well that’s worked out,’  The other with a shrug, ‘Eh, new generation.’  Well oh yeah, that makes perfectly good sense–the church needs to attend to that because no other organization in society does; in fact, most tear at the fabric of the generations.  And–here’s a thought–God cares about the generations, hence all the freakin’ genealogies in the Bible.  God lives and moves through the generations.  Faith is learned, lived, revealed and passed on from one generation to another, from grand- and great grandparents–and even beyond in family legends–to parents to their kids.  So it’s right and good that the assembly does this, even though Keene wanders the halls.

‘Course the generations rise and fade in more than families, this case being with the church as well revealing itself quite apparently at the assembly where, egads! the young turks and turkettes are taking over.  They’re everywhere you  look–from the lines at the resolutions mike to the ministry and mission presentations to worship stuff, even to preaching, to those clumps gathered in the lobbies yo-ho-hoing it in the tone of those slightly seasoned veterans growing in confidence, approaching the, ahem, big balls stage of development which comes with the realization and experience of being a leader of the pack and finding a place in the pack of leaders of the packs.  Strutting their stuff, in various forms; learning, for the Great Sorting of tragedy, trauma, and terror is yet to come for them and they will be leading the church.  The mantle is obviously passing from ‘my’ generation to this next one, the relay baton is changing hands, as my generation moves from doing and accomplishing to mentoring and supporting.  The communal spirit of Christ, the tone of it mall, will be expressed by them.  In short, my glory days are over, ‘I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.’  The spirit blows along through time.

It is, nonetheless, disconcerting, that kind of melancholy whispering ‘what a bunch of punks’ while seeing yourself, that time, clearly revealed.  That ain’t the spirit; that’s the ego.  Biker Kerry and I got into it over a few beers when I said ‘the sermons are solid enough, but I get really tired of the oozing sincerity and breathtaking urgency of them all.’  ‘You gotta hop up the troops, man’  ‘And how come the newbies get to do all the preaching?  I didn’t when I was one.  In fact, I’ve never been asked to preach a synod assembly or theological conference, and I’m a damn good preacher.’   ‘Me neither, and I’m a better preacher than you.’  ‘No you’re not.  You’re not cynical enough to be better than me.’  But he’s close.  He coined (or stole) the terrific phrase, ‘faith is a conversation, not a conclusion.’

I finished my work at St. John down in Angleton this past (Memorial Day) Sunday, as they got ‘em a new real pastor.  They’re a good group of folks, if a bit, let us say, on the stodgy side.  I enjoyed working with them as they made the shift from one generation of pastoral leadership (the last guy was there 11 years) to a new generation, with new challenges, new hopes, new possibilities.  I hope they don’t fuck it up.  (That’s my prayer upon completing any interim.)  They said nice things to me and gave me cigars and stuff and we had cake.  I don’t have another interim lined up, so I’ll be hanging and doing some supply preaching,  maybe even attending the church where I am an actual member.

I’m sitting on the deck in the days after these endings wondering well, what’s next for who Larry Keene is; but it is wonder without fear.  In a few hours the action will begin:  The Queen will be dropped off and Momma Again  Deb and One L Wil will head to  the hospital so she can be set up for the delivery of Henley (yeah, been named for months), the third granddaughter of our brood, tomorrow.  Another new beginning, as Albert Schweitzer has it:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not.  He speaks to us the same word:  “Follow thou me!”  and sets us to the tasks that He has to fulfill for our time.  He commands.  And to those who obey, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings that they shall pass through in his fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He Is.

Larry

I’d been being urged by that little nag of the mind, ‘Larry, you really gotta get to know something about Islam.  It’s the hospitable thing to do.’  ‘Cause–you know–they’re everywhere! they’re everywhere!  It’s not that I was ignorant of Islam–I’d had my encounters.  But it’s one thing to catch glimpses of a picture as you walk down a hall, and another to stop and look for awhile.  My knowledge of Islam is of the ‘Jesus died and rose on the third day as the Easter bunny’ sort, and that’s not fair to my Muslim neighbors; it is, like I said, inhospitable.  But I didn’t know quite where to begin because the whole thing’s so politicized, so it sat on the back burner.

Until I got to catching up with Duane the Red one day.  He’s completed his call as a seminary president and is in the process of discerning what the spirit has in mind for him next.  Quite incidentally he mentions this guy–Tariq Ramadan–and that sets my nag bell to gonging ’cause the name sounds kind of Muslim, eh?  So the conversational thread took a sharp turn as I explained my project and asked more about him, the gist of which is that he’s a Muslim scholar teaching at Oxford and is very interested in the question of how different religions can live with each other, which appeals to my concern for hospitality (the lazy man’s spiritual discipline).  Also, the Bush administration wouldn’t let him into this land of the free and home of the brave to accept invitations for teaching and speaking by colleges and universities (which, incidentally, changed after the election).  ‘Course this meant I just had to read him ’cause, wow, how dangerous could he be?  So I asked the Red about his books.

I like having brilliant friends who are also scholars and academics because I’m always learning all sorts of new shit just by hanging with them; but sometimes I have to pedal real hard to keep up; and sometimes I have to remind them that I’m ‘just Larry, not Dr. Keene.’  So DtR launches in on a review of Ramadan’s books, then focuses on the new one just translated from French.  ‘The English title stinks; the French title is much better’ and to prove it he begins reading the fuckin thing in French.  ‘Dude!  C’mon!  It’s me–just Larry.  French simply sounds to me like a long string of wet farts.’  So he switched to English:  ‘oops.  Sorry.’  My envy would growl that he was showing off, but I know him beyond that, to how much he delights in what he does, like a jazz soloist:  strut it baby!  But in a different language.  And he says, ‘Oh yeah, and he’s got a website, too:  www.tariqramadan.com.’  and helps me get to the English translation.

So I ordered and read The Messenger:  The Meanings of the Life of Muhammad. It’s interesting–using Muhammad’s history as an examples of spiritual teaching, in a kind of What Would Muhammad Do? sort of way while telling the story of his life.  I discovered that I had consistently to remind myself that I was entering a whole mostly unfamiliar religious thought world with traditions and language and culture going back 1500 years.  That required of me the resistance to that inclination to jump to the defense of Christian exclusivity and/or superiority in order to in fact hear and try to understand what they are saying:  ‘Whoa!  This is these people’s experience of God.’  It requires the humility to say that my side might not be the whole and only truth of human and divine experience.  And I think it’s an act of gracious hospitality to allow my neighbor the reality of her life and experience without passing judgment on it.

‘Course, this isn’t such a noble thing on my part since I’m not much of a divine exclusivist anyway, and it’s been a long time since those sophomoric days of my god’s bigger than yours; which, by the way, was usually carried out  by what I think is called ‘Pharisaic argumentation’ wherein I stereotype your side by the worst of you and my own by the best of us, a kind of Hitler versus Mother Theresa thing.  It happens to the Muslims a lot, I’m thinking–the ignorant killer assholes get all the airplay and the whole religion is thus stereotyped as if the Klan were to get all the airplay about Christianity; the face of bin Laden–may he howl in eternal misery–becomes the face of Muslims like the face of the Grand Wizard Pooh Bah of  the Bohunk Clavern of the White Knights of Amerika becomes the face of Christians.  Ignorant killer assholes:  every religion’s get ‘em.  They are the perversion,  the enemy of the religion in which they cloak themselves.  Too bad that’s mostly what we see of Muslims in the media.  True Muslims, like true Christians (and Jews) live an ethic of compassion and justice and mercy.

I was fascinated with the discovery that Islam roots itself in the story of Ishmael, who, it may be remembered,  was the first, say, bastard, son of Abraham, whose wife Sarah was not producing according to God’s promise, and so hooked up with Sarah’s maid Hagar to produce the desired result.  So here comes Ishmael–along with a whole shitload of trouble between Sarah and Hagar (there’s a surprise) resulting in the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael.  Eventually Sarah conceives Isaac who, as we all know, God wanted Abraham to sacrifice so that, in effect, right up to the last minute Abraham had to give up two sons, the one born of his faithlessness and the one born of his faithfulness, which, I guess had to be tested (Keene excursus).  But both were born of the same earthly–and heavenly–father who himself was the birth of monotheism.  So here’s this religion rooted in the legends of the outcast bastard son of the one who was favored by God. But that story is not the centrality of the faith, which of course is that long poem of spiritual and ethical behavior known as the Koran and revealed to ‘The Messenger’ Muhammad by the angel Gabriel over a period of about twenty years.  That’s a whole different take on holy scriptures than we Christians and Jews, whose scriptures are more like the legends and historically incidental documents of over, say, 3500 years and composed by a gazillion known and unknown people.  And their Messenger was a conquering warrior whereas Jesus was a nonviolent challenge to the state.

I was mulling these things over with a cigar on the bench outside the car wash while waiting for the Mother’s Day gift of having the darling’s cleaned for her when a young guy, say 20′s/30′s came out and stood at the standing table and lit a cigarette.  ‘Hey!  Is that one of those mid-eastern beards?’ I called, referring to  the long spiky one he was wearing.  ‘Well, yes, but not really,’ he turned, smiling.  ‘You a Muslim then? Tell me about the beard.’  He stepped over and sat next to me:  ‘Well, The Prophet had a beard, so we wear it to honor him.’  And for the next ten minutes we talked about being a Muslim and praying (‘individually together’) and bemoaned the ignorant killer assholes of both faiths and the desire to thank God for the world he gave us to share as brothers.  And then his car was announced and he stood and stuck out his hand and said ‘Thanks for the visit.  My name is Nick.’  ‘And my name is Larry.’

And there was no god but One.

Larry

It hasn’t been the smoothest pregnancy ever, treating her first to gestational diabetes and then in the middle of rush hour traffic on her way to work, debilitating panic attacks.  This led to the necessity of me driving her to the traffic hell hole known as the Galleria at the peak of morning rush hour and her hubby the Dad To Be Again One L Wil to drive halfway cross town to pick her up.  ‘Twas real brutal for them–and sorta brutal for me, since I have never had to handle Houston rush hours on any regular basis at all.  Yeow!  A new, miserable experience.  But it takes a family to birth a child, and I enjoyed being with her.  In what I think a very decent act, the guy she worked for cut her loose a week and a half back with a pretty generous severance.  He, too, was concerned with her health.  So maybe it takes a whole village to birth a child.

Now, this new freedom raised some scheduling questions for me, to wit ‘Should I plan to have The Queen on Fridays as we’ve been doing?’  Her response was the classic misdirect learned so well from the darling. ‘Well, Mom’s off on Friday.’   In 37 years I’ve never understood the mind step that’s taken  there, and here it was  manifested in my daughter.  (One L and I’ve had a few conversations about that.)  So I asked the darling about Friday’s plans and was informed of pedicures and egg-dyeing and decided I could get the lawn n garden supplies for the work I’ve been putting off doing.

Good Friday dawned and about 9:30 the darling returned from the doc’s holding an ice pack to her neck where they had done a needle biopsy on some wad there with, of course, no report yet.  The Queen showed up in a snit with her folks not much later, and One L quickly and wisely left for the barbershop so that it’s me and the three of them–the needled wife, the hugely pregnant daughter and the three year old snitster.  The odds only occasionally scare me, but their simultaneous astonishment at realizing I was planning to go lawn n garden shopping sounded the siren and I was in  trouble without knowing why, though I think it was because the two of them had not planned to take The Queen for their toe job.  I remember saying, ‘The three of you always go together’ and hearing that simultaneous snap ‘Fine!  You just go do what you want!’ but not before demanding to know just why it has to be today?  thus upping the ante of martyrdom.  Had it ended there it would not have been a story ’cause I’m quite used to shuffling out of the house feeling–or thinking that I ought to feel–vaguely guilty.

But the snitster suddenly decided she didn’t want to go, and no amount of encouraging, cajoling, and bribery was going to change her mind.  Now, my attitude is when all this fails you just announce to the three-year-old ‘Tough shit, you’re going anyway.’  But the women weren’t in that mood, and I sat trying to stay inconspicuous at the desk next to the kitchen and listened as their intercourse escalated to the snitster stomping off to the g-kids’ room crying.  I’ve always been fascinated by how these women talk to each other.  But then I heard mother and daughter mumbling about me and knew it was both somehow my fault and time to act:  ‘You guys go.’  But of course they would not let me out-martyr them by announcing, ‘We’re gonna dye Easter eggs.  You just go.’

So I beat a hasty and miffed exit and walked the aisles of Home Depot wondering about that bizarre logic by which I had become the fall guy.  The more I thought, the more Kafkaesque it became (The Trial is a terrific description of the existential experience of living with these women:  you certainly are guilty of something).  But then the thought hit me:  she just got stabbed with a needle; she is miserably pregnant; she is in an irrational snit; it’s Good Friday:  somebody’s gonna get crucified.  And that made me feel better.  But I did as I was told for the rest of the day.  Ain’t no sense in tempting fate.

But it’s not for this reason that I don’t attend Good Friday services.  I prefer to carve out some space alone and let the story have its way with me.  (I don’t recall ever preaching a Good Friday service–the story is simply too powerful on its own for me to presume upon it.)  So, having so nobly endured the morning’s crucifixion, I sat on the deck in the evening as the breezes blew and the sun set and it became dark and thought about the Good Friday services in Angleton, where they were doing some ‘seven last words’ thing and drifted on to thinking about my pastor pals leading those services and was thankful for their faithfulness.

Matchmaker Don (the Dust Bunny) had given me the Leonard Cohen quote for the ‘Lazarus’ sermon and Cohen, being one of my long time favorite poet/singers, I fetched my computer to get the tune for my ipod and eventually got to downloading the album ‘The Essential Leonard Cohen.’  The wireless wizardry seemed something of a Good Friday non sequiter but after a time I sat alone in the dark feeling the wind and listening to Leonard Cohen, who is so often a Good Friday kind of guy.  The tune I’d wanted was called ‘Anthem’ and I enjoyed it.  But flipping through the 31 songs there I discovered one that just took me out of the world (as it were).  It’s called ‘If It Be Your Will.’  Catchy Good Friday title anyways, huh?

I probably listened to it two dozen times before I sent an email to Jazz Richard asking ‘Hey can I join with Third Stream to do this?’  That’s the excellent musical teams that carry out ‘Third Stream Worship’ once a month down in Angleton.  They are very good, and Jazz Richard works up terrific arrangements.  I don’t like to impose my stuff on ‘em (as if I could) but the assumption at this point is that I’ll be out of there by the end of May, ’cause they’re fixing to take a vote on extending a call.  So I’ll sing my way out, as I did in Beaumont.  I’ll sing ‘em a prayer.

No.  We’ll sing ‘em a prayer–me and Jazz Richard and Third Stream (who will make me sound so much better than I am) will pray:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

Larry