Ivar Peterson

In twenty years as a pastor I’ve only once not been able to get through a funeral sermon.  It was in 1993 and the funeral was for Ivar Peterson, my across-the-street neighbor.  Ivar was a 93-year-old 17-year widower who lived in an immaculately kept house with his 25-year-old yellow tabby.  It occurred to me more than a few times that I should have asked Ivar for several gallons of the tap water that he and that cat drank.

In the fall of his 92nd year Ivar took the storm windows from the shed in the back corner of his property and installed them for the coming winter that he never saw.  The entire town turned out for his funeral.  It took me about ten minutes to get through three minutes or so of the sermon, so I finally just stopped and left the pulpit.   Tom Ahlstrom, Immanuel’s organist and a faithful member of the Thursday Morning Bible Study, asked the congregation to stand for the hymn.

The Bible Study group was an interesting one.  Bill Matthis was a member, as was Robert the-Holy-Ghost-comes-out-at-night Jahnke and Ted Sheifelbein, a sweet old man who doted over his wife Beulah and consistently attacked the “Godless homos” in our studies.  There was Lloyd Grob, whom everyone called Bob, and Floyd Claflin, who was every bit as gentle as Ivar.  Paul Hinderlie, co-owner of the Harbor View Cafe and, like his father and mother, a delightfully effervescent and inclusive theologian, teamed weekly with cafe partner Tom, whom everyone but Ted seemed to know was gay, to keep things from going off the rails.  The group was rounded out by another three or four members, all equally colorful in their own way.

Probably several months before Ivar died we were studying in Luke 14: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”  We really took that verse apart, turning it upside down and inside out to explain just what Jesus was saying.  As we talked Ivar, a confused and hurt look on his face and not hearing a word of our conversation, sat and stared at his open Bible.  After some time Robert turned to Ivar and, in his typical outside voice, said, “Ivar!  You haven’t said a durn thing!  What do you think about this?”  Startled out of his reverie Ivar glanced up at us and then looked back at his Bible.  “There’s a misprint in my Bible,” he said quietly.  Robert again: “What the heck are you talking about, Ivar?”  “It says Jesus said we are to hate people.  That’s not true.  Jesus tells us we are to love people,” and he looked imploringly from face to face, hoping one of us could explain to him how he came to have a defective book.  Even Robert was speechless.

 

Thanks, I’ll be fine

103 degrees in the Twin Cities yesterday.  I was only outside between meetings, but when I did go out the heat reminded me of Texas.  And that got me thinking of my first real experience of heat down there.

Our first summer in Dallas, we headed north to visit friends and family.  I headed back early, Jennifer and the boys remained for another week-and-a-half.  I don’t remember it being particularly hot before we left, but it was topping out over 100 daily by the time I returned.  The day after I got back our air conditioner went out.  I put in a call to appliance repair and got on the waiting list… seven days.  It was not what I wanted to hear, but at least I didn’t have to hold a phone to my ear and listen to muzak the whole time. It was going to be hot, but, hey, I knew I’d be fine.

Once it became known around the congregation that my A/C was out I had numerous invitations to stay in spare bedrooms.  To every invitation I said the same thing: “Thanks, I’ll be fine.”  Each day of the seven hit 100 and it never got below 95 in the house at night, but I lived through it, proud of myself that I had “toughed it out.”  It wasn’t till some time later that it hit me–I WAS fine, but it really hadn’t been about me all along.  I had denied at least a dozen people the opportunity to give me a gift, a gift that, truth be told, I truly would have appreciated.

I’ve tried since then to remember my stupidity, my pointless self-reliance.  I’m a part of that “Thanks, I’ll be fine” group of middle-class Scandinavian types who like to be helpful, but prefer not to be helped.  I could go on at length about what’s really behind that, but I’ll just say that even simple and small gifts are good and holy things, and givers require recipients.

 

S if by day, G if by night

Every church has one.  Every church has a member whose calling it is to teach the pastor how to be a pastor.  At Immanuel in Pepin, it was Robert Jahnke.  Before moving into town Robert had been a farmer.  His father had been a farmer, and his father before him.  Farming was in his blood and in his soul.  If I had tried to tell Robert how to farm he would have been too shocked and horrified to laugh in my face.  It was only right, however, that he take on the responsibility of telling me how to pastor.

I could see Robert’s house from my office at Immanuel.  Like most farmers Robert had been left semi-lame by a lifetime of hard physical work.  At about 9 a.m. every morning I would see him hobble out of his door and head up the street.  He would nearly always pretend to be out for a walk or on an errand for Dorothy (and I later learned that the latter was often the case, that he would return home after his hour with the pastor and have to explain to his wife that he had never gotten to Dan’s General Store to pick up whatever it was she had sent him to get).  Invariably, however, he would stop in front of the church, look up at the sky (I never knew whether he was gathering strength or asking for forgiveness) and then turn toward the church’s red front door.

Robert discovered Scripture late in life.  When he was farming there was no time to read the Bible, but now that he was retired he read it over and over again, like a favorite “Superman” comic book, and he carried it with him wherever he went.  My enlightenment sessions with Robert were often about the things he had learned from the Bible, things which he felt bound to pass on to his pastor, occasionally telling me point blank, “Now THAT should be in your sermon on Sunday.”  The most memorable of those times was when I learned about the difference between the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost.

On this particular morning Robert erupted from his house earlier than usual and with real purpose.  I suspect that he he had been watching my front door and waiting for me to walk up the sidewalk to my office.  There was no hint of deception that morning as Robert made his way toward the church and when he arrived at his usual pondering spot he did not cast his eye skyward, but went straight for the door, his Bible gripped hard.  He burst into my office, sat down, took off his cap and announced, “I’ve figured it out!”  “Figured what out?” I asked, both curious and fearful.  “The difference between the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit!”  I had not known that this was a puzzle that needed solving.  Neither did I know that Robert had been been chewing on it.  I did know that the next hour of my time was spoken for.

First there were thirty minutes of background.  Then came a recounting of Robert’s epiphany in the wee hours of that same morning.    And when we did get to the point it was this: the Holy Spirit comes out during the day, the Holy Ghost at night.  I didn’t know what to say.  It’s quite possible I said nothing and instead chose to nod my head, which could have meant, “I think you’re nuts,” or “That’s brilliant.”  Robert, I am sure, understood it to mean the latter.

 

 

Bill and Vielma

I thought it might be fun to revisit some interesting characters and events from my time as a pastor, so I’ll start with some experiences from my first call as pastor of Immanuel (the “town” church) and Little Plum (the “country” church) in Pepin, Wisconsin.

I think I had been in Pepin for a year or so when Bill and Vielma Mathis joined Immanuel.  It was difficult for them to move in off the farm, but they bought a house in town with a big backyard, so in his 70s Bill still had the satisfaction of putting food on the table and Vielma still got to can and lay up for the winter.

Bill and Vielma were “salt of the earth / meat and potato” folk.  They had me over for dinner numerous times, and after Jennifer and I were married we had the pleasure of eating with them together on several occasions before we moved to Minneapolis.

I think my second meal in their home was shortly after Christmas one year.  They were in church every Sunday, so I mentioned I had missed them Chritsmas eve, probably assuming they had been out of town.  “No,” Bill said, “mother and I don’t go to church on Christmas Eve and Easter.”  “Why is that?” I asked.  “Well, there are just so many people who go to church only those times, and it’s so crowded, we figure it makes sense to leave a few seats for them.”  I waited for a wink or a grin, something to tell me he was giving the Chreasters a hard time, but it never came.

One other story.  I visited once in the early spring.  Couldn’t raise anybody at the front door so I walked around back.  Bill was in his garden (probably 80 feet by 50 feet), working his hoe.  He looked up at me and nodded, too hard at work to stop and chat, even with the pastor.  After a good ten minutes he took off his cap and leaned on his hoe.  “Hoeing?”  I asked (when one of my sons ask me “What are you doing” when I’m doing something obvious I always say, “Playing soccer.”  Bill could have said the same.).  “I am disturbing the earth,” he replied.  It’s a great image.  I’ve used it a few times, and I always think of Bill and Vielma when I do.

Tomorrow: Robert Jahnke and the Holy Ghost.

 

More Signs

Drove Charlie and his choirboy cohorts to rehearsal this morning. Right before we got to the choir building I spotted this simple sign: “Free Kittens”

Like deciphering the “Slow Children” road sign, it’s not difficult to figure out that “Free Kittens” is not a call to support the cause of releasing felines from unjust imprisonment.  But it does make me wonder how far we’re going to go with “fast language”.  I’ve noticed that the words to the ”contemporary” songs we project on Sunday mornings are devoid of punctuation.  The majority of them are wading pool theology, so it would be difficult to confuse the message of “Jesus is so awesome.”  And perhaps that’s the point.

When we are doing no more than broadcasting simple information–”Slow down, because there are children playing near this stretch of road,” “We have kittens we will give away for free,” “I love Jesus and he loves me”–I think we’re probably fine.  But life is about more than passing information around and most of reality comes in shades of gray.  Fast Language is the enemy of nuance in the same way that the political soundbyte is the enemy of public discourse.

 

RH+

We are beginning to make some headway with a new initiative at Our Savior’s: Radical Hospitality (or, as the header has it, RH+, because, yes, we’re as wild as most churches about the guild language of acronyms and abbreviations).  The goal of this team is not only to make our congregation a welcoming place for persons of all ethnicities, races and cultures (led, of course, by the portion of our Identity Statement that proclaims God creates us for relationship with “all people everywhere”), but to see that Our Savior’s will accept new persons as gifts and welcome and embrace the changes that will surely come because of them.  We are seeking to become not a color blind congregation, but a “color curious” congregation, a “color positive” congregation.

I have no doubt that there will be some rough and rocky ground on this path.  And it isn’t because the people in our congregation are bad or bigoted (well, I mean, we are–I am–but perhaps not more so than any other gathering of sinners).  It’s because we are people, and change comes hard to people.  As Ray Bakke says, “All change is experienced as loss.”  So we will need to cope with that, to coax and cajole people along.  But I am hopeful.

I am also sad.  I am sad because at present this kind of hospitality truly is seen as radical.  It should not be.  So I long for the day when we will reflect on how God has transformed us as a people and we will be able to change our acronym to NH, Normal Hospitality, or TH, Typical Hospitality.  That will be wonderful.

 

Yellow Badge of Courage

Our neighbors across the street have a statue of the Blessed Virgin in the middle of a small rock garden in their yard.  Their yard is kitty corner to ours and the statue is cocked ever so slightly so that its gaze is toward our lawn, and not straight ahead.  Every time I glance over at Mary I get the sense that she is admonishing us for our dandelions.

Dandelions, and less visible creeping charlie and crabgrass, used to be the scourge of suburban lawns.  Time was, committed surburban greenskeepers spent untold hours on hands and knees gouging the offending weeds from the ground, or paying their kids a quarter a pound to do so.  But now True Green Chem Lawn has beaten the yellow blight into submission.  Lawns are now gorgeous manicured carpets.

I envy our neighbors.  But thank God we’re too poor right now to pour chemicals on to our grass (and the various and multiple little critters that live in and beneath it), because, like the odd smiles botox creates, all that beauty does not come without a cost.  So I hope that even when we win the lottery we will resist the temptation to poison our yard. Maybe we’ll put in a bunch of native grass or something.  Or maybe we’ll just learn to love the color yellow.

 

Everything but a child of God

I grew up a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan in Missouri.  One of my favorite players was Curt Flood, their fast and graceful centerfielder.  It was Curt Flood who paved the way for Andy Messersmith’s “reserve clause” suit against major league baseball that ushered in free agency.

Flood was a black man who came up in baseball shortly after the Jackie Robinson era.  In Ken Burns’s PBS series on baseball Flood told a story about one particularly difficult day on the road.  It was a double header.  Between games the players’ uniforms were taken to a nearby laundry to be cleaned.  Flood’s uniform was sent across town to the black laundry, so while his teammates were dressed and warming up for the second game Flood sait in the locker room in his underwear waiting for his uniform.  But the day was difficult also because of the abuse he took from the fans.  In addition to throwing things at him in the outfield he said, “they called me everything but a child of God.”

Very different circumstances, but I know how Flood felt.  I long to be something more than a “taxpayer” and a “consumer”.  Perhaps it could start with me being a citizen.  You see, if I am just a Taxpayer (and according to the TV, the newspaper and the radio I AM only that), then I have one value; to pay less.  But if I am a citizen who pays taxes that changes the equation entirely.  Then I have values that include good schools, public parks and open space, infrastructure in good repair, available healthcare, etc.  If I am a citizen, taxes become less onerous.

I am even more weary of being labeled a Consumer.  Every time that label is slapped on me I think of Kurtz in “Heart of Darkness,” mouth open wide as if he would consume the entire world.  It really is a horror.  Again, if I were a consumer only, I would have one value; to consume more (and, interestingly, that’s one of the chief reasons Taxpayer Steve would want to pay less in taxes).  But here’s the issue: I do consume to live, but I do not live to consume.  If I were first a citizen then my consumption would be tempered.  My consumption would not be the rapacious and grasping consumption that is feverishly propping up an economy that needs to grow, grow, grow, heedless of the harm we all do by consuming, consuming, consuming.

What I really want to lay claim to, of course, is being a child of God.  But I don’t think the media, politicians, etc. will ever do me that honor.  I will depend on my sisters and brothers in Christ for that.

 

“See you there”

Andrew Small died last night.  Andrew, a little younger than our youngest, Charlie, battled cancer long and hard.  He was diagnosed with and treated for leukemia when we were still down in Dallas.  All looked well for a while, but the doctors think the radiation that beat back his leukemia gave him the brain cancer.  Mark, Andrew’s father, wrote beautifully of the family’s struggles in his Caringbridge site.  For some time Mark and Andrew had a little routine as Andrew drifted off to sleep.  “See you in the morning,” Mark would say.  “See you in the morning,” Andrew replied.  Late at night not long ago Mark took Andrew’s hand and said, “See you in the morning.”  “See you there,” Andrew replied.  Andrew continued to say that.

Andrew no longer struggles.  Mark and Julie, their daughters, extended family and friends will suffer for some time.  As a parent I don’t know whether you ever truly get past something like that.  I am grateful I do not speak from experience.  I am not one who believes that “everything happens for a reason.”  I do believe, however, that God can and does bring good from evil, joy from pain, life from death.  We will pray that the Smalls experience good, joy and life going forward.  See you there, Andrew.

 

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven

I love rain.  Every night in our prayers, at least during the two or three months when it’s warm enough to rain up here, my boys and I have a special request: “…and make it rain tonight.”  We say this regardless of what the weather has been lately, even when we’ve had so much rain that we’re stacking gopher wood against the back of the house.  “…and make it rain tonight.”

I love rain.  I love it because it’s fresh.  I love the sound of it, the feel of it on top of my head.  I love that it makes things grow and that it fills the lakes and rivers on which I paddle my red wood-canvas canoe.  But I love it mostly because rain is an invasion.  When it rains, especially when it rains hard or when it’s an all-day drizzle, I feel like the world we keep at arm’s length with air conditioners and saran wrap has settled down on top of us, refusing to go away.  I like bitter cold for the same reason, the kind of cold that makes my eyes water and hurts my lungs if I open my mouth too widely to breathe.

It is good to be reminded that no matter how hard we try we cannot escape this creation of which we are a part.  I lament the death and damage that floods cause, but I am deeply grateful that floods continue to exist, that we have not turned rivers into stainless steel sluiceways to hurry water safely past our lives and homes.

As I sit in my office I am serenaded by the “drip… drip…” of water into buckets on the floor.  Our roof needs replacing at church, and last night’s rain ruined a few books and further stained the carpet.  If I had any sense, if I were a responsible pastor, my boys and I would change our tune tonight and we would ask God for a few dry days.  But I love rain.  So I know this evening’s prayers will include that same thrilling refrain: ”…and make it rain tonight.”