Taking Cover, but Never Ducking

Hello from the still transforming space,

As of late I have ponder those things in life that give me some sense of pride, not in an arrogant manner, more perhaps more in a resilient way. As I have found myself on the other side of a daily requirement of working in some “you are required to be somewhere” daily process. Recently when speaking with an incredible person who has profound achievements from being a professor to an incredible innovator, from being a wonderful and insightful conversationalist to unparalleled beauty. She told me I need to slow my brain down. I sometimes wish it were easy, but I’m not sure how I might do that. Even when I try to merely watch some show, I find myself asking the larger philosophical or societal questions of why it is we create such dilemmas in our lives. From where does this propensity to think or ponder at some, perhaps, esoteric, even recondite echelon or degree come? Is it a reasonable, a productive place to spend so much of my time?

The two pictures above are of me. The first is my kindergarten graduation, what would be the first of more than a couple; the second is of me in perhaps 7th grade. I was indeed the slight, proverbial smallest member (or darn close) of his class, and perhaps even the year behind me. I was merely trying to make sense of junior high school when I seemed to be quite behind physiologically than those I met or lived among everyday. I was that kid that needed to be away from home and at school because it was safer than being in the same space as my mother. Therefore in spite of my often being teased somewhat mercilessly, it was preferable. Additionally, learning to navigate both aspects of my life, perhaps what could be referred to as public and private, I learned long before I ever stepped onto the yellow footprints of MCRD the Marine Corps’s adage “take cover, but never duck.”

While there were often times as I child I was afraid, I learned or developed a certain strength that would overcome fear. This was, and is, not to say I am never afraid, but much like any less than ideal experience, I’ve developed an ability to face most anything with sense of seeing it as a problem to be faced and solved. Again, this is not to say I’ve been completely successful, but instead, I never duck hoping to protect myself, but I am intelligent or savvy enough to realize there are times to take cover. That requires some quick thinking, at times some thoughtful analysis, about how whatever I do or decide is never performed in a vacuum. When it’s all washed, dried, and folded, it still requires me to do something. I am accountable for all choices and the consequences for those choices. The infamous hindsight seems to be a more constant companion from day to day. And yet if one thinks too much about the what if? should I have done something differently? would another path been more successful or prudent? the possibility of living in the moment and looking forward with a sense of hope would be likely impossible. Life would become a process of regret, and that is no way to live. Too often we seem to jump from one extreme to the other. Our ability to think about the present when glued to our past is difficult at best.

As I have noted, albeit a bit cryptically, there continue to be some health issues from what I learned a year ago to what seems to be occurring now. From my liver to my kidneys, from my Crohn’s and the subsequent diabetes, (Crohn’s has such far reaching consequence), my daily managing of health has become a central part of what I do and who I am, and yet before you think I am lamenting, that is not the case. As I have noted from time to time, a birth of 17 ounces way before a due date had consequence. And yet, I am still alive, and more often than not thriving. My newest way of describing it all is pretty simple: I did not have enough time to bake, and things are a bit tired. And yet, they are working quite well considering. Perhaps that is one of the things that taught me to be generally content. I do not believe I am owed anything, and through an improbable wandering, a sort of meandering with no consistent realization of where I was headed, I have been blessed beyond measure. The difficulties have taught be to know when to take cover . . . stepping back to figure out the immediate necessities to manage whatever I was (or am) facing. And yet this is nothing I have accomplished on my own. Throughout my life I have been fortunate to have people in my life to assist, to protect, and to love me. More often than not, I was not always aware (certainly to the degree) of how important they were. What the situation created in terms of teaching me resilience, hope, and gratitude.

During the past weeks, gratitude has become something I have chosen to focus upon more intentionally. I believe there are two things that have occurred as I have transitioned to this more focused process of being thankful. First, it has reminded me more succinctly of those people from the earliest days of my life to now who have been gracious to me. From a young mother who chose to allow me life (and I realize abortion was not legal then, but . . . she was 15) to my grandparents, who chose to take my sister and me into their home. From when a grandfather passed and a grandmother struggled, who chose to give us up for adoption. And while I have noted some of those hard times as an adopted child, their choice to take us provided opportunity I would have never had. More times than I readily knew, I believe there was a significant aspect of Divine intervention. And yet too often we believe that God’s intervention is some readily perceivable event. I have often noted that most of the angels I have been face-to-face with do have white raiment and visible wings. I remember when I was serving my internship in Big Lake MN. Some of those angels are still in my life and their surname is Snesrud. When I was traveling on a Lutheran Youth Encounter team, their names were Lee and Judy, or when I was in seminary, they had names like Karsten, a classmate, Susan, who I met in a gas station where I had a part-time job. There were people in Houghton with names like Berkenkotter and Sotirin, Schwenk, or Cortright. And there are so many others. It was with their assistance that I was able to take cover rather than merely duck in fear.

When I enlisted in the Marine Corps, I had little idea what I was doing as a pint-sized 17 year old. Even more so, I had little idea what I had learned during that enlistment, but I experienced and saw things that changed my life. That was easily noted, but it is even now that I am realizing what it really did. I have a sense of honor and duty to the other in ways I would have never known. I have a discipline, but also a sensitivity to injustice that runs deep. I have a sense of principle that had been given to me before I stepped on those yellow footprints at MCRD, but I understand that commitment to principle because it was forged like tempered steel in the time I was in the Corp. What I realize yet today is my sense of honor, my sense of goodness, my commitment to the other or democracy, my love for my fellow human beings and the breadth of our world was examined and hardened in a way I could have never accomplished without the Marines. When I see a dress blue uniform or even the Class A uniform to this day, there is a sense of pride and hope that runs throughout my body, it is in my blood, and I will be forever grateful. That time taught me so much, and it was where I perhaps first learned to take accountability, to think and analyze. Those skills were instilled and developed some time later at Dana College, but like all life, it is still in process. Even now, and as I am still learning, growing, and managing my awareness, I am still keenly cognizant of that adage, Marines take cover, we do not duck. Knowing the difference has served me well. Seldom can I listen to this version of the popular song from the movie, The Prince of Egypt. Both Whitney Houston and Maria Carey exhibit two people who epitomize vocals that are unparalleled. This can bring me to tears when I think about how frail such talent was and is. My life is described by this song.

Thank you as always for reading, and I apologize I have been a bit under the radar as of late.

Michael

Understanding How and Why

Hello on a day of taxes, unexpected events and unsure of what next.

The afternoon will be taxes. it’s been a morning of meeting a large truck with the back of the Beetle, no real damage to the truck, and something quite different for the bug. Dinner tonight with a former colleague and feeling like a bit of one step forward and two back. And yet this too will be managed.

Much of what happens on a daily basis, much of what happens even as a consequence of our own actions goes by unnoticed, as we are seemingly innocuous, often believing we have little or no responsibility for what happens. It is because we find it so difficult to take accountability? Is it possible that we are more prone to playing victim than we care to admit? Please, before you believe I am some paragon of accountability, before you assume that I never believe we can be victimized, I am posing nothing of the sort. I would like to believe I have become more honest about my shortcomings or mistakes than earlier in life, and I certainly do believe there were times that I was placed in situations where I was quite powerless, and thereby to some degree a victim of that circumstance. What I have learned about myself at this point is as follows: first, if I have no power over something, it is best to waste no energy on it; and second, if I make a mistake to own it. When I do so, I am free to move beyond it. I have often noted more recently, if I had done those two things earlier in life, I would have eliminated a great amount of drama.

I believe that those two practices allow me to wonder, to ponder, and to question thoughtfully the where and why of both who I am as well as to consider societally who we are as a collective community. Earlier this morning I was fortunate to be added to a group of Bonhoeffer scholars, a reading group from around the country who are exploring the life and theology of the profound Lutheran scholar who chose to stand against Hitler and the Nazis and lost his life in the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp only days before it was liberated. While most of my work on Bonhoeffer is a rhetorical analysis focusing on three specific points, much of his fiction and later writings focuses on what he referred to as religionless Christianity, which can seem counterintuitive to his incredibly Christo-centric hermeneutic. While this may seem to be a departure from the supposed simple questions of how and why, I believe Bonhoeffer’s work on seeing it not only important, but imperative to experience the suffering of Christ, and pondering the questions of how and why as integrally connected. Again, the how and why of most occurrences are logical, albeit often more complicated than we might want to admit. The somewhat deterministic sequential process of our lives can make it easy to believe we are merely caught up in the continual morass of daily existence, and our individual agency does little more than propel us forward toward the next experience.

The ability to confront, to truly experience, the how and why of something is to engage with it, working diligently and thoughtfully about how we can work in the midst of whatever it is we are enduring. And yet while there is always an aspect of endurance, it does not end there. To endure is significant, and it seems to me that Bonhoeffer speaks to this specifically in his concept of Costly Grace, of turning away from cheap grace. We have to experience the trials and the difficulties of life to understand them. This is not merely some cliché, it is reality. It also holds on to the belief that God can work good out of anything we create, anything we experience. I remember this earlier in life when a friend, whose younger brother was a closer friend. The elder brother and I attended Iowa State University together. He was a brilliant and studious person I respected and appreciated. I believe he was a junior at the university when he was diagnosed with cancer. He would die before he graduated, and I remember attending his funeral, and without my own experience of losing a brother, it would not have been possible to empathize with the younger brother and sister to the degree I was able. I think that was the first time I realized how God is capable to work good out of the most dire of experiences. I believe this is exactly to what Bonhoeffer refers when he speaks about suffering with Christ. He noted directly when Christ calls he bids us to follow and to be willing to die. That is extreme. But it is only in the extreme we can understand how that which plagues us or our world has significance. Likewise in our suffering we begin to understand the why. And yet, is this all there is . . . hopefully not . . . and I would continue certainly not. I am reminded of Paul’s negative commands in his letter to the Romans. In Greek it is (transliterated) may geneto – by no means. The suffering of Christ is real, and the difficulties in life are also real, but resurrection goes beyond the suffering . . . it is yet to come. The difficulties of life can see unending, but are they always ephemeral, transitory. The ability to choose is an incredibly sharp double-edged sword simultaneously allowing freedom and imposing consequence.

As I consider my daily life, everything I choose is exactly that . . . a choice . . . at this point, choices in the last 5 years are those I am most conscious of, particularly when it comes to the reality of consequence. The other evening I was fortunate to have dinner with a former colleague, his wonderful spouse and their two lovely girls. In our conversation, they admitted they did not agree with some of my larger choices in the past, particularly leading toward retirement. When I noted I wished they would have said more at the time, he noted he did not feel it was his place. I told them I would have listened as I respected their opinion. As I look back, I wish I would not have sold the Acre. I know why I did, but I think now it was more short-sighted than I believed it to be. I wish I would have not sold my BMW when I did. I wish I might have worked one more year. All of those things were not done on a whim to be sure, but the how they came to be and the why seem less considered than they were at the time. Now, I am where things are different and, in many ways, things are a sort of full circle. I am still trying to figure out where I am (not physically or in terms of location), but what I believe I am called to do.

Calling and vocation are a significant Lutheran concept, and something I believe I understand more completely now as a retired person than I perhaps ever did, and isn’t that ironic to say the least. Whatever our given position or task of daily work when it is performed in the realm of service and love of neighbor, we create a relationship for that person with God. Luther referred to us become a mask for the work of God. And therein one finds dignity in all work. What this did was equalize all work, there was no particular hierarchy of tasks or occupation. Anything done in the service of the other, out of love for the other, was holy and worthy in the eyes of God. Michael Horton in a podcast as recently as the last decade, “Luther believed that when a person knows their daily work is commanded by God, it brings comfort to their ‘cares, labors, troubles, and other burdens'” (“Luther on Vocation,” 2017). In such a possibility there is becomes less reason to question the how and why, and instead focus on the reality of God at work, diligently and consistently, through the face of our neighbor, or colleague, in the interaction with those we meet in our daily tasks, the grocery store, the convenience store, the person collecting our trash. I remember telling my parishioners that they should never put me on a pedestal because the only thing to occur is I would fall off of it. I still believe that. Ultimately, we will always question the how and why, wishing with all our cognitive power to understand. At moments, just such a result might occur; most often, like scripture notes “only in part.” Again, perhaps much like I have often noted when questioned about the afterlife, if I am faithful in the here and now, later will be taken care of. I do not need to be obsessed with the how and why, I merely need to do what I do in the sense of service and love for the other. I need to be the mask God will use.

Somehow the subtitles seem apropos; thank you for reading.

Michael

Trying to Make Sense of it All

Hello at the beginning of another week,

One of my former students was quite exasperated with me when she lived at my house because I was at some points a real pain, albeit unintentionally. She was the first of a number of students and exchange students who would live with me, and I must give her credit for teaching me more than, perhaps, I could have ever taught her. She was intelligent, insightful, fiercely independent, and structured about all aspects of her life. When I would question things, which those who know me are well aware of this given propensity, she finally asked one day, “Does everything have to be logical for you?” I simply answered “Yes; it’s how I make sense of the world and my life.” While she was less than enamored by that answer, what I realized was how deeply true it all was.

What is it that makes something logical? Is it merely the philosophic precept that we in our Western dialectic need for sense-making foundationally hold on to? Is it, by chance based on experience and precedent? When it comes to logical consequence, there is a requirement of necessity, and to push it further, there is no scenario where something cannot be true. There is an apriori nature to the idea of logical consequence. Aristotelian logic works with the idea of non-contradiction whereas eastern logic. works on the idea of possibility. Additionally, the idea of linear, which is more western varies dramatically from the rather spiral idea or what is often known as the Yin and Yang of something; they are not adverse, but complementary. Even as I think this through, I realize that I am more comfortable with admitting the grey area of something versus the sort of right or wrong of something in some contrasting manner.

When considering our American political system, I think it is reasonable to ask, where do we fall on that philosophical spectrum. And I have to admit I did some AI sleuthing to answer this. The complexity of our grand experiment is because it borrows from multiple theories to include: social contract theory, classical liberalism, and enlightenment rationalism (Gemini search). These are certainly broad strokes, for sure, but I recall a paper I wrote while I was an honors student at the University of Iowa. It was an analysis of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government. Along with his commitment to the ideals of liberty, life, and property, which he referred to as natural, he also addressed the reality that when we commit to a society we give up certain rights for the benefit of the whole. This, of course, pushes us into the concepts of justice, equity, fairness, and that social contract that we are indebted to each other. This also creates a natural understanding of the importance of the individual while simultaneously connecting the individual to the necessary evil of government, and yet a government that is constrained by the constitution. Both the constitution and the separation of powers are in place to manage the balance between the individual and societal needs. Therein is the grand experiment because it requires the goodness of those in power and those who vote them into power.

All of this is to layout the foundation which is the point of this blog: how did we get where we are? And I would note that I have friends on both sides of the political spectrum who are dismayed where we find ourselves at this point in time. While I have been rather vociferous over the past few months about the state of our Union, of the state of the world, there comes a point where one begins to wonder if there is anything we can say matters. There comes a point when we can only look in disbelief at what is happening and wonder how we got to this point. What I realize is that even in the midst of my incredible dismay, my unparalleled fear of what we have become, of who we are as a country, I want to believe that what a group of individuals worked to establish 250 years ago, while still imperfect is capable yet of being a country of justice and equity. That regardless the faith someone claims, the creator that created it all, can find a way into the hearts and minds of all people to enable us to love the other first. I know that is not an easy thing to do, but it is not because we are not capable, but it is, too often, we are unwilling to do the hard work to love the other. I know over the past year my fragility has made it difficult for me to allow myself to take criticism, to see the other’s point of view. What I continue to realize more emphatically than any other point in my life is that we are called on to care about our fellow human beings and to treat them with dignity.

We are easily caught up in the dogmatics of our particular scriptural interpretation believing that somehow we have a corner on the gospel, but I have to say that his Eminence Pope Leo XIV seems to speak the simple truth of the gospel quite simply and plainly. And yet, somehow, that simple truth has all sort of believers up in arms. The AI posting of the President this week takes things to a level I could have never imagined, and his response, claiming that he thought it was a doctor and the Red Cross boggles my head. Indeed, trying to make sense of it all seems beyond any logical possibility, and perhaps, it falls beyond the illogical. It is beyond all comprehension. What causes me the most alarm falls in two areas. What it does to the basics of faith is stunning. And that the most powerful person on the earth has done and said what has happened in the last two days is flabbergasting. How can anyone, regardless their political leanings believe this is acceptable? I cannot make sense of it, but perhaps that is where we need to get to before we will continue down this track toward total destruction of life or faith as we know it.

What have we become? What are we willing to accept? Have we lost all possibility of being thoughtful? Logical? Reasonable? While I am deeply concerned, it is my hope that this unparalleled blasphemy will push all faithful people to say enough. It is my hope that Congress, who are just back from their two week vacay will do something reasonable be it follow up with the removal of two more Representatives for their profound ethical misdeeds, be it actually do something with the War Powers and make both President Trump and Sec. Hegseth come before the Congress with an actual plan for Iran, and be it perhaps time to seriously look at the 25th Amendment. Will any of that happen? That would make sense, and as my title implies and asks, “Can we make sense of anything that seems to occur in Washington at the moment? I remember when this song came out in 1969. I was in 8th grade. My brother was a senior, graduating, and facing the lottery. I bought this 45. There is a blast from the past. Also, today would be my adopted father’s 111th birthday. Thanks Dad for being so incredible. Happy Birthday and I love you.

Thanks as always for reading.

Michael

Sechs Schock und zehn

Hello from my abode,

Today would be the birthday of my adopted father’s eldest brother-in-law, Mr. Clare White Swaby. He was born in 1896, and he was the proverbial Sunday dinner guest when I grew up. He was, by any measure or thought, a character. He dropped out of elementary school in 5th grade, but taught himself to read. When you went to his home, which was only about 100 yards from the house his eventual wife, my father’s eldest sister, Gladys, lived in, you would see scores of National Geographic, Field and Stream, or other things that had to do with hunting, fishing, or the outdoors. He loved to garden; he had the best asparagus or rhubarb patches in our entire area of town, and he loved his Martin birdhouse, which was built, not bought, and his peony bushes were immense.

He was one of the kind. By the time I remember meeting him (and I do not remember the first time), his wife had tragically passed away, and he was retired from his work, which as I understand had been in a hardware store, though in the 1920s he was a guard on an armored car (and in fact, had a functional Thompson submachine gun in his basement. He had been a bugler in WWI, and he was a 32nd Degree Mason and a Shriner. I think he was also in some of the other lodges (e.g. Elks, Moose). And yet I did not know much about all of that. I do still have his Shriner’s Cap. What I remember the most, as noted, he was always working on his yard; he was our perpetual Sunday dinner guest; he was at every holiday meal; and he was the first person to take me out to shoot a rifle and shotgun.

What I imagine now on this occasion of his birthday, where it is 130 years ago he was born, is the profound changes he saw in his life time. The United States was moving toward the Gold Standard. It was changing from an agrarian society toward urbanization. The term the Gay 90s refers to this time in American history, and Plessy v Ferguson upheld the concept of separate but equal. So racism was the rule of the date. America had added a 45th State (Utah) and the move toward progressive policies would be born. That is the world my Uncle Clare was born into. He tried to enlist in the Marine Corps, and he also wanted to fly, but his eyes would not let him. Sioux City had grown to 60,000 people and the well-known Combination Bridge, something that caused fear in any new driver (because of its metal grates) was opened. Riverside Amusement Park (the area of town in which he lived) was a major attraction, and the growing stockyards and meat packing industry were an essential economic engine for the city, which by the 1920s was referred to as Little Chicago.

After the war, as best I can find, Uncle Clare worked for the Lewis System, which was both armored cars and security. I am not sure how long he worked there, but when I imagine him as a person in his 20s and 30s, I can see a somewhat pushy hot-headed person, and perhaps not the best person to be carrying a gun on one level, but then again, I am pretty sure no one wanted to mess with him. He was not tall, perhaps 5’7″, but he was a little stocky. He was bald and had a significant nose, and he wore glasses. I am looking for a picture of him. but not sure I will find it in time for this post. I do believe, and this is a bit of conjecture, that Gladys, his wife was quite elegant, probably made more money than he did as she worked for AT&T for many years. Sioux City in the 1930s continued to grow in spite of the depression with the stockyards and meat packing leaving the way. The Sioux City Airbase would train bomber pilots for WWII, and the neighborhoods were know for the ethnic diversity. Norwegian, Swedish, and Lutheran Churches were across the city as well Orthodox and Catholics as more diversity moved into the area. As I have noted in other blogs, the town was very much segregated by both ethnic background as well as socioeconomically. What I realized it was a great place to grow up.

The stories I have about Uncle Clare are legion, and most would need to be edited for appropriateness. He had an active four-letter vocabulary and little or no filter when he was in his own space. That is not to say he had no sense of decorum, and in spite of his ability to be curmudgeonly, he was genuinely grateful when someone did something for him. He and my adopted mother were the proverbial oil and water mix, but she religiously invited him to dinner every Sunday. My cousins, Jim and Joanne Wiggs, were also caretakers as was Joanne’s father, my Uncle Roy, who would come from Storm Lake Iowa on a regular basis. They would sit at the kitchen table and have a whiskey together (Old Grand Dad). In his later years, he remained in his house though he would slowly drive his 1965 Chevrolet Impala around, serving as a menace to anyone who crossed his path. I remember riding with him one time when he stopped at a stop sign, but about half the car was out into the intersection. I mentioned he might want to stop sooner, and he responded, “But I need to see if anyone is coming. ” I responded, ” You will when they run into your door.” His response was something less than kind. One time when I was perhaps 7 or 8, we were out shooting and he took a break to relieve himself. He handed me his binoculars, and said he would be back shortly. A group of three high school kids happened to be there a few moments later, and they took the binoculars from me. I hollered and he came hustling out of the woods. He saw that they had done, and told them to stop. They saw an elderly short man and disregarded his command. He reached into his field jacket pocket (his normal jacket out in the woods) and pulled out a 38. He told them to put the binoculars down gently or they would be “shitting out of holes they did not know they had.” He got his binoculars back, and I merely watched. This is one of many stories I could tell.

What I think about now is how he might react to all of the changes the world has experienced. I know he would never be at a loss for words. When he passed away, the idea of computers at home were something new. All of the changes since would probably aggravate him, and yet he was more open to possibility that people might have thought. The last time I saw him alive, I was visiting my father, and he was in a nursing home. At the age of 94, he got into a physical altercation with his roommate, and he had some lacerations on his wrist and hand from his wristwatch. My father, his POA, asked me to go check on him. When I arrived at the home, I could hear his vocabulary down the hallway. Every word you could imagine. When got him settled down, the nurse thanked me. He told my father that if we was buried from the church he would haunt my father, and then about two weeks before he passed, he noted perhaps he should be buried from the church. If I could do anything it would be to sit with him and ask him about how he understood life as well as the changes he experienced in his life time.

He was a 5th grade educated, brilliantly thoughtful, and even graciously kind curmudgeon. I still miss him. Happy 130 birthday, Uncle Clare. I remember him singing this song (poorly, but he sand it). The title in Germany, in spite of the measurement of score being Norwegian, is in honor of his background.

Thank you for reading, and take the time to remember those relatives who made our childhoods special.

Michael

Justice or Partiality: it is a Choice

Hello at the beginning of April,

The reality of Spring seems more likely this past week. While the rather usual cyclical weather, both reminding us of the lengthy winter and teasing us the possibility of spring, continues, the increasing hours of light does assist in my more hopeful attitude. As I write it is Holy Saturday in the Latin Calendar; it is on this date in 1968 that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis; and perhaps also significant, but not as readily remembered, on this day, in 1973, Microsoft was founded and in 1975, the World Trade Center opened. Both events could have never prepared us for the change they would make many years later or their importance in our national psyche.

While I understood the tragedy of Dr. King’s death, I was only 12 and his importance to the concepts of justice, to non-violence, or the importance of Civil Rights was not realized by a middle class Midwestern boy who had no meaningful experiences with racial biases or what anyone different dealt with on a daily basis. My town of 100,000 had a minority population, but my little neighborhood of Riverside was more self-contained than I realized. Certainly through elementary school, seldom, with the exception of trips to Sunshine, the food market, the Sunset Plaza, or sometimes downtown, most of my life occurred in a few block radius. As noted, my grandmother’s bakery was in an area of downtown called Lower Forth, and the minority I saw there was primarily Native American. It was probably one of the tougher areas of town, but my diminutive self walked the sidewalks past some department stores, factories, or seedy bars blissfully unaware of most what was around me. I believed what my parents told me. I trusted in my grandmother’s love and goodness; and yes, I saw the world as a reasonable place, where, if I stayed out of trouble (kept my nose clean as my father called it) and went to school, attended church on Sunday, and obeyed both the internal (home rules) and external laws, life would go well. Yes, in spite of some difficulties at home, life was simple. Riding my bike with friends on the block, playing in the yard, and doing to school and church was life as I knew it.

And yet the world was much more difficult, much more unfair. What I comprehend much more completely now is my parents protected us. My father, as oft noted, worked out of town for years; my mother struggled, being relegated to performing parental duties as a single parent, which did not please her. What I know now is my father was working to put aside enough money to purchase a larger house for his family. And I suspect my mother, who probably did not want three children to begin with found her additional responsibilities not only arduous, but being alone to do it as only insult added to injury. There was no justice as she saw it. I think my father believed he was doing something necessary, required, and justified (yes, justice of sorts) to provide for his family. Furthermore, I do not think he ever saw himself as someone treated unfairly or as a victim to his circumstances. He was living the proverbial American Dream. He was providing for the family he had created; he had desired.

As I write today, now Easter Sunday, the memories of Easter Sundays, of singing in church, of going to sunrise service as well as others that same morning, the time I was in seminary, the years I served as a pastor, be it in Lehighton, as a supply pastor in numerous parishes or even after when I was a campus pastor or professor, the connection to the significance of the holy season of Lent or the week of Christ’s passion has always moved me in a way much different than the somewhat parallel season of Advent into the almost two weeks of Christmas in our liturgical calendar. Besides worship, I watched the second half of the Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments as well as listened to a good portion of Handel’s Messiah. My thoughts about faith and the manner in which I believe I can be most connected to my baptism and beyond continues to evolve, or perhaps more importantly, find clarity. In Pope Leo’s Easter homily he said, The mystery of the proclamation of Easter is how it embraces our lives and our history . . . that there is an unfailing hope, and unfailing light, and a fullness of joy that nothing, not even death can overcome. . . . the darkness of death is around us in the injustice of partisan selfishness, in the oppression of the poor, when we fail to provide for the vulnerable, and when we fail to care for those less fortunate because of our own lust of money and power.

This speaks to me as someone who, even in the midst of retirement is still so comfortable, even as I have downsized, minimized, and seem to have given away so much. I still have an ability to carry on with few worries. Too often I think about what I had (even though I chose to make the changes made). Choice is about more than decision it is about agency, and agency is about power. Power is an intoxicating thing; often it is a selfish desire. We have this incredible need to be in charge – and yet often we fail even taking charge of ourselves let alone another. I think that is, at least in part, because we too often want to take care of someone rather than give care to them. The choices I have made at time are made because I felt the pressure of the moment. Too often the choices were made because I wanted something rather than needed something. And yet as noted in a recent blog, some of those choices set me on a path that ultimately helped me. What I believe now is that was not my own individual wisdom, but perhaps the gift of that Easter God, a Creator that watched out for me when I was incapable of watching out for myself. When I was too afraid to allow God to be God as my father once said. I remember him once telling my mother during a conversation about worrying when “the kids got home.” He said, “I say my prayers and I allow God to be God. I cannot worry about them because I have no control over them.” He was a wise man.

I am continually amazed by our propensity for drama. Some people thrive on it, and I must admit, I have been pulled into it more often than I wish, but again there is a choice. I believe if we work toward justice for our fellow humans, if we focus on doing the best we can in any given situation, realizing we only have control of ourself, we avoid drama. This is not eliminating it, but it is choosing to not be involved in it. Perhaps it is a reconsideration of priorities; perhaps it is finally learning to focus on what is most important; or maybe there is a bit of wisdom finally taking hold. Recently I wrote about the difficulty of managing what Luther explains when he considers the commandment about “bearing false witness.” Explaining our brothers’ and sisters’ actions in the kindness of terms – refusing to involve ourselves in gossip about the other. If we can do that, we learn to not take sides, but step away, keeping ourselves out of a fray that does little to help us. One of my former colleagues, a person for whom I have great appreciation, worked on developing her certification to teach mindfulness. Some of my other colleagues saw it as a sort of New Age in vogue thing. I believe there is much more to it because it also considers traits like gratitude, simple acceptance of our situation, which is not resignation, but realizing what we have power to manage and what we do not, and finally, I think the ability to focus on things individually, realizing there is always more, but allowing something to be what it is in the moment.

One of the things I am still in awe of is the beauty of nature and creation, in spite of all we do to muck it up. A walk along the river here in town, the seeing of the sun rise or set on the mountains in the area . . . there is so much beauty if we only take the time to notice. When I began this blog, my mind was somewhat all over the place, but as I complete it, I am content; I am feeling blessed; and perhaps most importantly, I know I am where I need to be at this point in time. Thanks as always to all of you who make my life extraordinary – those who love and support me. The picture at the top of the post is from Artemis II. As they looked back at this amazing planet, the beauty of it in space is stunning.

Thank you as always for reading.

Michael

When the Applause Stops

Hello from my little 3rd floor corner of the Magee,

As I look out the window, I see a typical little town. There is a statue at the center of our little town commemorating the veterans to the Civil War and beyond, I can see the back of the public library, the flag pole with the Star and Stripes raised before the United States Post Office building, and as I gaze down toward the horizon of Main Street, the buildings have histories that could tell countless stories of Bloomsburg’s past when the family-owned businesses were the life-blood of this only incorporated “town” in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. When I arrived in Pennsylvania the first time as a parish pastor, I was here for about 4 years, and when I pulled away in my 25 foot UHaul truck with a 4 Runner on a trailer that August day, I did not believe I would ever find myself back on the East Coast (and I know it is not technically the coast, but to an Iowan it felt like it), and then due to a multitude of events, I was asked to return. I had a new profession of sorts, and more education, and I was not all that far from where I had been a decade and a half before. Now as I write this, it is yet another decade and a half and I am still here in the Keystone State. Life has its way of throwing the proverbial curve ball, and while I do not know baseball pitches all that well, but I think that in spite of the variety of pitches (e.g. split-fingered fastballs, sliders, sinkers, or cutters) I have somehow managed them and perhaps even hit it out of the park.

My time here, my excursions, beginning at 17 when I left home to a meandering educational journey, my experiences from visiting every state to service in the Pacific and profoundly life-changing trips to Europe, the blessing of students, foreign exchange students, and a variety of surrogate children who graced my home with their presence, has been extraordinary. It has been beyond anything I could have ever imagined, or possibily anticipated, even in the wildest of dreams. I was that undersized boy who seldom imagined anything beyond the next day. When I graduated from high school, my enlisting in the Marine Corps was to leave home because home was not a positive experience. The choice of the Marine Corps was because I needed to prove I was more capable than I had been told most of my life. I did not even pass the physical when I went to Omaha for my initial testing. I did not weigh enough!

Retirement is an adjustment; and it is not all that I expected, though like most of my life, I am not sure what I expected. That is not to say I did not plan, but rather the profound difference from life before is immeasurable. Al least for me it has been. Conceptually, I understood that I would not be required to manage the same schedule; I realized that while I had planned there might be some things that would be different. In the last three years I worked, I worked dilligently and intentionally to do things to add to my pension. Waiting to collect Social Security more more than the 2 1/2 years after I was able to qualify for a full check was also planned, and undoubtedly, that all has made a significant difference. So what is it that makes retirement so different. It is the more abstract qualities that I took for granted. While people still refer to me as Dr. Martin, and some refer to me as Reverend Doctor, I do not feel like I am that person anymore. Even when returning to campus, be it in my old building or the Starbucks where I spent hours, days, and tens-of thousands of dollars over 15 years, I feel like to old guy in the corner. Most of the students who might know me have graduated or on an internship somewhere. Even the atmosphere of campus, which was substantially different after COVID is still different. When I first arrived on campus in 2009, the quad was teeming with students and the classrooms from 8:00 a.m. on where full of students. That is no longer the case. When I walk through my old building in the morning most of the classrooms are empty, and the quad has merely a fraction of the students of past years.

What I am realizing is I am wondering who I am on the other side of working? From being a server to a parish pastor, from being a graduate teaching instructor to an eventual tenure track professor and program director, I was in charge of my space. This is not something I understood until much later in my career. When I told restaurant servers that they were in charge of a guest’s experience; that server was an oxymoron of sorts because what a guest orders or how they remember the restaurant is much more about the server, not to say the food is not important. When I was the pastor of a parish or a campus pastor, when you have that title or wear that tell-tale shirt with the turned-around collar, people have decided a lot about you, but they also give you incredible authority. I used to tell my parishoners, “Please do not put me on a pedestal.” And whether I was a GTI, an adjunct, a probationary or tenure track faculty, there was to some degree a level or respect, be it from title or their perceived giving of power, I was afforded a certain degree of decorum. So . . . all of my adult life, I have found myself in positions where I held a position of authority or knowledge that provided some sense of automony and a position of value.

The American focus on individual freedom, of the belief that one must pull themselves up by their bootstraps does not bode well for how we regard or portray the elderly. Studies demonstrate there is a sort of polarization (how surprising in our current world situation) about how people consider the value of elderly people. First, what constitutes elderly? That is a question for which there is little agreement. Stereotypes fluctuate between regarding them as something in decline or dependent because of mental acuity or physical struggles (about 40%) to at least a significant percentage believing their life experience and subsequent wisdom are of value (75%). And yet about 2/3 of the public believe we do not know how to adequately care for elderly people. All of this is, of course, an important societal issue, from finances to medical care, from social acceptance to understanding how the increased life expectancy of humanity requires a rethinking on multiple fronts. I am at the point where I think old is a mindset versus a chronological benchmark. I believe that when people live into their mid-80s and beyond they have had a long life. And yet on the other hand, I know people younger than me who seem to act old, or appear old.

What I realize for me that having a role that required accountability to others, and that was the case in all the things noted above, it demanded to some extent the necessity of being around the other in some systematic way. Retirement does not require that. I am the captain of my schedule, of what I must put on my daily planner. I am not accountable to much of anything or anyone when it comes to where and when something occurs. That is not to say there are no boundaries or necessary things, but I have much more flexibility and autonomy. When I make an appointment, I do not have to say it has to be between this time or that time, on this day or that day. When I want to set up a social engagement, I do not have to worry about how things fit into my schedule to the degree I did. When I want to sleep in; when I want to decide to take a trip; when I want to decide it’s time to eat or even what to eat, it is my decision. And as a single person, that is even more my reality. There is an incredible freedom to that, but perhaps that is wherein there is a rub. I do not know what to do with such an increased level of freedom. It is so outside most of my life experience, such a level of choosing is beyond what I find comfortable. Is it something I will grown into? I hope so.

I am reminded of how we respond to the clapping of something. When I greww up, I was in a select Children’s Choir in my hometown. I was in a City Community Theatre for children. I was in band and orchestra, and one year I traveled on a LYE team where we were constantly infront oaf people. I was in concert choir in college, and I even did my own solo guitar vocal gig at one point. As humans, we are affected by applause. I have attended multiple concerts from Roger Waters to Elton John, from Celtic Woman to Mannheim Steamroller, from the 5 Man Electric Band (my very first concert) to Areosmith as a backup band (in 1974). The applause at times was deafening, but it was also electric. It affected us. What I realize now is while there was not always visible applause at what I did, there was always some sense of satisfaction when something was completed. There was acknowledgement. Sometimes it was as simple as the class was over and they left the room. Sometimes it was as surprising as someone telling me some 20 years later they remember a sermon. Other times it was actual applause or a standing ovation. After the initial retirement party, there is little that acknowledges who you are. There is no need to require your presence in an old classroom or at Starbucks, and when you are there, people seem genuinely surprised. While I am appreciative of my less hectic, my less demanding or requiring schedule, I am not sure how it all fits together or what I want to need to do. The applause has stopped, both literally and figuratively. What I do know is how grateful I am for those who still seem to believe I have something of value to offer. What I realize is this absence needs to be filled with something new and I need to figure that out.

Thanks as always for reading.

Michael

Making this Place Home

Hello from Bloomsburg,

What makes some place home? There is certainly the physical attributes. There are the things, the events, the moments that become habitual. There are the people, and the weeks that become months, seasons, and eventually years. While I have always been amazed by what I refer to as the duality of time, conceptualizing this reality of existence affects me much differently as I navigate a post-retirement existence. When speaking with someone the other day, a former student in their mid-20s, we were discussing their life and what has been some significant changes. I noted when discussing their circumstances, what I believed important in my 20s does not seem quite so necessary now; on the other hand, things I often disregarded as superfluous now seem unparalleled in their importance. How time changes us, or at least modifies us. Indeed, the truism that is on the backside of Ben Franklin Hall on the Bloomsburg Campus rings out: Wisdom – the fruit of reflection.

As a sort of tumbleweed (something someone once pointed out to me), I have been fascinated by the concept of place, and once did significant work on an article titled the “Rhetoric of Place,” perhaps something I should return to. My connection to a location is a complicated one and has a tenuous notion or intellection at best. As noted multiple times, the place I felt most safe was at my grandmother’s home as a small child, and yet, it was a difficult time. My being there with my sister as small children was because our life up to then had little or no stability. And yet in that two years, my grandfather would battle and pass on from cancer. My grandmother would struggle with alcoholism, and try to keep from losing her business. Neither of those issues are minimal or without consequence, and yet, I don’t ever remember feeling neglected or in danger. That speaks volumes about a number of things. It was more than place or events . . . something existed in that place, because of the people there. That house, nothing ostentatious, the last house at the end of Harrison St. (at least at that time) and the three acres (which are now all filled in) created a home. It was so much more than a house.

As I consider the physical places I have resided, there are some things that are consistent for me. When I had some say in what the space looked like, the atmosphere or ambience of that space, there are two things that seem consistent. I am pretty neat and orderly (and I kept my room like that as a child), and second I work diligently to make it feel welcoming. When I was in college, people would come into my dorm room and be astounded by what I could do with a basic dorm room. In fact, when I was a junior the space my roommate and I created became a must see for prospective students. When I was first married and we lived in student housing, both in Blair or St. Paul, I worked hard to make our space seem like much more than merely an apartment. The same occurred when I was first in Lehighton, back in the Upper Peninsula, and when I got my places in Menomonie. I worked hard to take care of whatever space I was afforded to occupy. From my first apartment to the house and space I referred to as “The Acre” here in Bloomsburg, I worked dilligently to make a space, both inside and out, that people wanted to come. The desire to make something or some place inviting is something not something that occurs magically, and most certainly not automatically. For me it takes intentionality. It is about color and light. It requires thought and desire. And as significantly it requires an emotional understanding of both love and safety.

Love and safety are the two things I desire most in life, and what I realize now is that has always been a need for me. Those needs, those essentials, make believing in the possibilities of something extraordinary worth considering. Lately I have pondered the connection between safety and place. I think it is the feeling of safety that makes a house a home, makes a place more than a collection of buildings in. Already three years ago this summer I was back in Sioux City for my 50th High School class reunion. The initial gathering was in the very building that housed my grandmother’s bakery. Even though the current establishment called Buffalo Alice’s, another landmark in its own right, is very different, the memories of the space, a place I spent my preschool days and weekends as I grew up all the way to graduation came flooding back. There was a safety in those memories because the love of my grandmother permeated every experience. Even though the parking lot was now an outdoor cafe for the restaurant, I could remember pulling the station wagon to the back door to load bakery goods for the next delivery. Even the most inanimate of objects can create a moment where we are transported to that previous, but precious of times when we were loved and protected.

What seems typical at the moment was anything but. It was consequential, and I believe it becomes essential to helping us determine what mattered more than we might have ever realized. As I write this blog, which has been in process for a week, I am now sitting in the Little Bakery, a small establishment on Center Street. It had been here for 4+ years, and the proprietor is a lovely Ukrainian woman who works incredibly hard. When I walk in the aroma immediately moves my emotions to 1022 4th Street, the address of my grandmother’s bakery. I am comforted, safety returns, and someone ironically, and in some ways because of the owner, I feel the love of my grandmother. It is a healthy thing for me, especially now.

Bloomsburg is the place I have spent the most time in a single place since that graduation 53 years ago. Between people, places, and experiences, it has become home. From the experiences in the classroom to dinners at a couple of homes with dear friends, from students who lived with me from semester to year or more, from exchange students to travel across the pond to Central and Eastern Europe, the experiences and memories created have changed my life and developed the person I have become now. As I have noted, after leaving Pennsylvania in 1992, I had no expectations of ever returning to the Keystone state. And in spite of travel and other things, I am back in Bloomsburg. It is home. It is more of who I have become than I ever expected.

Thank you as always for reading.

Michael

Teaching Someone to Dream

Hello from my corner,

Often I am asked if my life turned out as I expected, and my unequivocal answer is immediately “no; not at all.” There is no statement I have ever spoken or written that is more truthful than that. And of course, a reasonable response would be why not? I think for me it is simple (and perhaps simultaneously complex). I had no idea of what I would do, what I wanted, or where I might go. The simple answer is I had no plan,and I had no dreams. My childhood, which had a number of positive things in terms of having some sense of stability was equally difficult as an adopted child. I have noted that in a thread that has been visited many times over the past decade-plus of writing, but I see it quite differently now. I was not taught to dream as a child or, at least, I do not remember being encouraged to do so. This is not to disparage my parents in any manner, but I do not think they were dreamers either. My father worked hard to make enough money to support his family, purchasing a larger house during my latter elementary years to make sure each of us, and especially my sister, had our own bedroom. My mother was a simple person, again not to speak unfairly of her, but she saw things as either this or that. There was no real grey area. When I faced graduation from high school, during my last semester, I skipped school one day (not a regular practice) and tagged along with another friend to the Armed Forces Recruiting Center. This was never something I had imagined myself doing. Long story short, I ended up enlisting in the Marine Corps.

Even though I did well in my service time, I came back to my hometown, still misguided and more directionless than I hoped, and the next couple years including the untimely deaths of a brother and my hero, my grandmother. I spiraled into smoking way too much pot and drinking too much Jack Daniels. An unexpected and fortunately not-life altering situation with a firearm on a New Year’s Eve was a serious wakeup call for me, and revised my life trajectory. Perhaps, like I am wont to say, “God works in spite of us.” Traveling on a LYE team was another one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions that would somehow transpire and lead me to enrolling in Dana College as a 24 year old freshman, starting my post-secondary studies from scratch, even though it was my second time in college. That acceptance at Dana College, and working with Richard (George) Schuler and the Director of Admissions, Dennis Barnum, created the possibility of dreams and opened me to experiences that would change my life. From incredible classmates, from freshmen to seniors because I was older, provided both academic and social experiences that inspired me. People like Kathy Swenson, Paulette Strecker, Barb Kalal, Sandy Barnum, Tom Kendall, Merle Brockhoff, or a roommate, Peter Bonde, kept me grounded. People in my actual class like Leanne Danahy, Shelly Peterson, Kevin Johnson, Sarah Hansen, or Michael Keenan were all more important to me than they will ever realize. I remember staying in on Friday and Saturday nights to study, and at times, people would come and drag me out of my room because they believed I needed to do something other than study. A trip to Europe for an interim, a transfer to the University of Iowa’s honors program and back to Dana woiuld propel me to seminary. And while I began to believe I had the intellectual capability to succeed in the academic world, I still had little idea where I was called, to what I should focus my energies. While I struggled with the choice of law school or seminary, I chose seminary because I was still trying to gain my mother’s approval, and foregoing seminary for her meant I no longer believed in God. And yet seminary and that first summer Greek class, the incredible classmates again, Sheryl Nielsen, Mary Jorgensen, Mark Van House, John Valentine, David Mattson, Lee Herberg from that summer, and those during junior year would change my understanding of faith and my decision, my sense of calling. Perhaps for the first time I began to dream.

The significance of beginning to dream, the willingness to believe in dreams, the taking the leap to dream creates an important consequence that is basic to life. The result of dreaming is to hope. It is connected to a faith, that something extraordinary is possible. My time at Dana started that for me; my professors, the things they taught as well as how they instructed us took all the disparate pieces of my life and established a foundation that has kept me grounded. My professors, who were pastors and mentors at Luther Northwestern Seminary taught me that faith needed to be both understood and practiced. Many of the things they offered from my Confessions class to that Constructive Theology class, incredible minds from Drs. Juel, Harrisville, Gaiser, Nestigen and Forde, Tiede and Fretheim imparted both wisdom and grace in ways that I am still understanding. And yet again, life would take unexpected turns from health to relationships, from leaving the clergy roster after taking on a bishop to feeling I was back at square one. Once again I would find dreams dashed only to turn to new ones. Two couples at dinner one night as I was waiting tables would turn into an interview and a return to the academy once again. And yet that road would not be an easy one . . . eventually through more health issues and a departure and a return, I would complete a doctoral degree and find myself in Wisconsin. Something that seemed more than an impossible vision, a pipe-dream at best, occurred, and yet in that first semester the chair told me that people would not like me because I was in the Technical Communication major within the department. I was stunned. That was nothing I was told when I interviewed that is for sure. And after 6 years I would be transient again. It’s interesting how when we look back we see connections and reasons for things we were blind to in the midst of them. My position at UW-Stout that important lessons, and I believe certainly prepared me to become a much more effective professor. Now I see the position at Stout as the vehicle that would ready me for what happened later in my academic career, but perhaps the real reason I was there was to take care of a little tornado that I would be introduced to about two years after I found my way to Menomonie. Likewise, I would meet a family (also colleagues) who would facilitate my final teaching position. And yet what happened during the time I have spent in Bloomsburg has been unlike anything I have ever experienced.

As I look back at a life that seems as fragile as it ever has, and there have been more than my share of moments wondering how my 17 ounce beginning would continue in the face of numerous medical experience, I find myself reconsidering dreams and what they are and how they affect us. Currently I wonder if my sort of merely meandering was the dream of a child who had no real carefully planned thoughts of where he would go or how that would be achieved. Some of the most significant moments of change in my life were happenstance – from the Marines to joining the LYE team, from meeting someone at dinner to interviewing for one position as I finished a doctoral degree and getting hired. And yet, here I am . . . when I was moving from Menomonie to Bloomsburg, I wanted to rethink my teaching and what it meant to be educated. A brilliant woman named Joan Navarre shared an article about what it meant for someone to claim their education. That article changed my perspective on what we were doing as professors. To claim something is to take charge of it, to make it your own, but also to take responsibility for it. And it involves dreaming about the possibilities. It means if you are in college, generally you are smart enough to be there, but asks what are you going to do with the opportunity? Life is funny in how it presents opportunity or possibility. Too often we overlook them. Too often we try to convince ourselves we are not capable or perhas we are afraid to venture out and take that chance. What I realize now, perhaps later than I should have is that our most important duty (and yes opportunity( in life is to teach another how to dream . . . and to convince them they are capable and lovable. As I look back I realize the connection between being able to dream is to believe we are loved as well as worthy of love.

That is the basis for human goodness. Sharing compassion and making another feel valued. If they are loved and valued, they can dream. While I am not completely sure, I think much of my inability to dream was because seldom in my life have I felt completely loved by someone or all that lovable to begin with. And yet, in many ways, I have been able to flourish for the most part. Maybe that is why I have worked hard to love other people, to genuinely care, and yet even some of my most intentional attempts have not been as successful as I wish. That is a possible reflection for another time. As I work on some things intentionally, I know that there are things I wish would have turned out differently, even in the immediate set of circumstances, be it with people who are more distant to things I would still like to accomplish. but we do not have much control beyond ourselves. Certainly my perception is altered at the moment, and my thoughts about priorities are more attuned than at other moments in my life. Just maybe I had more of a dream-life than I realized. What I do know is I have expereienced so many wonderful things. And for now . . . I just keep doing it, and to all of the rest of you, please dream!

Thank you as always for reading.

Michael

Using Power for Others

Hello from my small corner,

It’s turned colder again. After a beginning of a week that allowed for walking in merely a t-shirt or a long sleeve, yesterday I had my winter coat on, and this morning the little abode is chilly (or beyond) as the wind works its way through the windows typical of an old building whose windows are probably a century old. And March is always an unpredictable month, teasing Spring to the point the little flowers will poke up only to be lured into a late winter’s freeze or early Spring snow. In spite of our knowing this probable course of events, we are regularly pulled into our desire for warmth so easily, daring to believe Spring has sprung.

The power of suggestion, our desire for warmer weather at the end of the winter season, and also in the midst of Lent, regularly convinces us that the magic of Christmas and hot chocolate, the kindness that characterizes the holidays that seems too often to freeze into banks of grey frozen snow will soon become hospitable once again. I know what even a hint of buds on a tree or bush provides a sense of renewal that turning my post-holiday sadness toward happier thoughts, renewing my energy and restoring my hope. Yes, the pattern is well-known to me, and yet my desire for “spring to just get here now,” which will ultimately be dashed when sub-30s return or the hint of snow reappears, happens every year. Part of that is choosing to remain in a geographic location with four seasons.

What is also apparent is that profound reminder that when it comes to some things, we have little or no power. That is not to say we cannot influence some things more easily than perhaps realized, but when it comes to most things, actually power is minimal at best. Having more time to ponder, I find myself returning to some of the things I found interesting, intriguing, and maybe even confounding from my classes as a seminary student. I remember one of my professors describing our journey through seminary in the following manner. We entered seminary (titled junior year) believing we knew what it meant to be faithful or how we understood God. By our second year (titled middler year) we were now unsure of anything we held true when we began. The third year (internship) we were attempting to put theological knowledge into practice. And by our fourth year (titled senior year) we understood faith and practice of that faith to be the grace of God that provided any possibility of a faithful life. There is both a wonderful promise as well as a simultaneous reminder of our fragility. The Biblical concept currently ruminating for me is the concept of “stranger.” It is integrally connected to the idea of power and faith for me. The only real power I have is how I treat others or how I let their treatment affect me. And faith is a tenuous thing. Where is God in those moments I feel that God is the stranger? What happens when God seems distant or unreachable?

Isaiah notes in the 55th chapter, my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways. This is a verse I find most comforting and again most complexing. Can we truly understand God’s intimate plan if we cannot fathom his thoughts or actions? Does that make God the stranger? Would that make us the child who must perceive God as the ultimate stranger/danger? That might be the easy response – the simple reason to walk away, but as noted there is, for me, comfort in that verse. The concept of stranger is immersed throughout the verses of the Bible. The Hebrew word Ger (גֵר) or Zar (זָר) includes the idea of foreigners, outsiders, even aliens. Particularly in the Old Testament, the chosen of God are referred to as sojourners and refugees at one point living in a land, not their own, and subjected to heavy toil and bondage. And as one moves into the New Testament both the Hebrews and eventual Christians are commanded to show compassion, justice, and love. It seems all too apparent even now that the commandments of God are difficult for us. Thoughts and ways are not the same. From the Old Testament command in Leviticus to treat the stranger as native-born to the New Testament and Jesus example of radical welcome, the scriptures are full of examples of welcoming the stranger regardless the customs or laws in place.

Deuteronomy (whose very meaning is second giving of the law) 10:18-19 reads, “ [The Lord] defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” It is a difficult thing to believe that even for someone illegally here, we are to welcome them. Can I say such a thing? I believe I theologically can, but more profoundly, I must. Escaping injustice, sojourning from a place of danger to somewhere else must be beyond merely a question of borders, particularly for us who struggle with the sense of legality. In the earlier verses, the author of Deuteronomy writes, “Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.” The importance of loving the other is expressly noted. And anyone who has felt the power of being loved, particularly when we are feeling unlovable, understands that power, the transformation that occurs for the one being loved.

However, the one doing the loving, the one who believes that loving is the greatest of all (1Cor 13:13), follows the greatest of the Commandments. As a person with a doctoral degree in argumentation, my study of disagreement is pretty extensive. We often use power unethically particularly when it comes to wanting to prove our correctness in something. Believing we so completely understand God or have some insider knowledge because of our faith is to place ourselves outside of the grace of God, which is God’s love. when we argue believing we must win completely, we have lost a fight to love people profoundly. The most powerful thing we have in our humanness is our relationships with the other. It is the very thing that defines us, has the potential to transform us, and it is in our loving the other that power is used most ethically.

And yet I know, as I look at my own life, the times I failed to do this are readily apparent. It’s difficult to love first and ponder later. No matter how empathetic I wish to be my selfishness gets in the way. The battle to love first to treat all strangers as fellow sojourners, that is the way of God as I understand it – perhaps it is there that to duality of my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways is most apparent. And yet even the gospel of that Old Testament text from Isaiah is indeed good news because it reminds us there is a better way. The year I traveled on a Lutheran Youth Encounter team, there was another much more accomplished group named Spiritbourne. The following is from them.

Thanks as always for reading.

Michael

Teleological Transactionalism and Christian Conservatism

Hello from my little corner of the world.

While a part of me loves the political of the world, another part is continually surprised (to some extent) and dismayed at how the human lust for power and the seemingly insatiable need for resources (e.g. greed) seems to determine what we do, be it individually or collectively. As I write this, I am trying to come to terms with some of my own health issues, with some of my thoughts about where I am going as well as who I am. Those are individual things, and they are of immediate significance. Then there is the collective of who we are be it nationally, globally, as a species, if I can push it out to that level. In the past 36 hours, the actions of both Israel and the United States (and probably others in terms of covert intelligence) has resulted in the removal of another leader of a country, and certainly one who is the enemy of both countries as well as those who question the theocratic rule of the Iranian Revolution. Again, before you think I support what the late Ayatollah did to his people, I do not, and I can say that unequivocally. And certainly the extended removal of what appears to be a significant number of his apparatus (supposedly more than 40 people), creates even more uncertainty about what will happen in the coming days and beyond. Hearing of the death of American service members will undoubtedly have consequence in the coming week as the Administration hopefully speaks with all the appropriate individuals in Congress (I do still believe there needs to be a separation of powers, and that each branch has to step up and be true to its constitutional responsibility).

One of the most important things I have learned about myself and life in general is while we generally work hard to be ethical, to practice our morals, our values in some consistent manner, few of us really understand what ethical methodology we employ, and even more are unaware of what an ethical methodology is. That is not to be arrogant or pompous in any manner, but it is the reality of our humanity. I would continue that even when I do know them, figuring out where I fit is more difficult that I sometimes realize. The two basic methodologies: teleological or deontological are pretty straightforward, and while I find myself more a deontological ethicist, there are times I find I might waver toward the teleological side of that dichotomy. I am not sure I would ever believe myself to be a situationist, and I generally believe situational ethics a lack thereof, has our transactional world, our secularism, made situational ethics the only possibility? Has the relativism that seems to be the order of the day created an atmosphere where the only thing that matters is money and power? I would note that I am differentiating between relativism and moral relativism, where as moral relativism might argue for some degree of tolerance, it seems the relativism I see exhibited has little appetite for any tolerance; in fact, it is often just the opposite (e.g. diversity or now anti-DEI, any religious acceptance that falls outside an increasingly narrow understanding of Christianity, openness to any sense of the other, the invoking or passing of policies and laws that marginalize groups of people who are not sufficiently sympathetic to the administration, rolling back of long-held precedents that supported undervalued or denigrated individuals – including an attempt to disenfranchise those citizens protected by the 14th Amendment).

Again, inherent in much of this a push of executive power that is not something new, believing such a push can be traced back to President Reagan. The belief that American influence and power are for the benefit of the country is also not unique to the homeland, but history is littered with the consequences of such actions as well as the demise of such users of those actions. What makes this idea of using power so indiscriminately, or with such commonality, is its connection to an incredibly arrogant idea that God is always on the side of the America. It is a parallelism of politics and faith that has been often used underpinned by the belief that we have some inside track to a moralism or the most fundamental inside track to a Creator. The foundational hubris, the unparalleled pomposity of that position resulted in the Executive Order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. The consequence has been an unprecedented attack on the signing at our National Parks, a profound attempt to whitewash (used intentionally) any part of our history that makes us uncomfortable. Cicero, the Roman orator, once said, “Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child.” As a student of history and a lover of history, I am always amazed how complex our history is; but only in that complexity are we able to see how we have changed or transformed to “create a more perfect union.” The teleologic system that is all too common among us, from individually to societally, from community to state, from nationally to globally has a consequence to be sure, but when you add a transactional element, those consequences are compounded.

There is little (and I would assert no) chance that anything is done for the greater good as a starting point. So the larger idea of utilitarianism is eliminated (The photo above is of John Stuart Mill, the philosopher and economist who is credited with utilitarianism). Certainly, rhetorically, the appropriate language will be employed asserting that the actions taken are for the good of the collective, but seldom does that seem to occur. Trickle down economics is a great example. The percentage of those in the county who fall in the middle class is down 10% from 1971 (multiple sources). And while the number of individuals who are in an income bracket above has grown, and all brackets have seen a rise in income, the increase of the wealthy median income is 78% compared with 60% for middle income and 55% for lower income. Additionally, in 1970 the middle class held about 62% of the total aggregate income, and in 2022 that fell to 43%, while upper income, over the same period rose from 29% to 48%. So much for trickle down (multiple sources). And as the ability to invest in the stock market, cryptocurrency, or other investments demonstrates the possibility of incredible return, the gap will continue to grow.

In the spirit of disclosure, as a single person in a professional position for the last 25 years, I did well, and while I fell squarely into the middle class – perhaps upper middle class, never did I believe I would ever be a person who did not have to worry about what one unexpected event might do to my security. Additionally, I worked quite diligently to give to others. And I believe I probably should have done more. This is where a horizontal theology is more appropriate than a vertical First-Article dominant practice that believes we have some corner on God’s favor. Practicing something that is essentially greedy or self-centered and arguing a gracious loving Creator of all somehow ordained it seems to be more than an abomination. I would argue it is evil.

Is there a way we can use our incredible abilities in a manner that it is truly utilitarian? Is it possible that people can make money and yet share their profits in a manner that it makes a real difference for the other? Is it possible, returning to the concept of altruism, is it possible we could move toward an altruistic nature in our dealings with the other? How might that occur? I believe that question is a difficult one, particularly for us as Americans. We are used to, attached to, defined by, our individual freedoms. We have been convinced that in that individualism we have God on our side. This might be a topic for another time. I do not have answers, or so it seems, only questions and concerns. How do we begin by taking time for the other? The following video is a compilation of incredible musicians playing a cover of The Guess Who, one of my favorite bands in high school. We need to take the time.

Thank you as always for reading.

Michael