Train Traveler and Disciple Reminder

She stood there with a book in her right hand and a carry-on bag in her left. As the train shuttered into motion again she looked down at the empty seat next to my wife, Amy. She noticed the book in Amy’s hand and said, “I’m a reader too so we will get along well. Ya, know some people you meet on the train just talk and talk… but not me.” She sat down and talked to Amy for the next hour only stopping because we were getting off at our destination.

The traveler sitting next to my wife started out with the easy non-controversial topics of politics and religion. After learning that Amy was a Democrat and minister and obviously a woman she replied, “I did not know that you could be a Christian and be a democrat.”

Exhausted and tired from the past 12 hours on the train, Amy calmly shared that indeed it was possible to be all three and that the church she belong to there were even Republicans, Democrats and even a few independents sitting in the same pews. Of course the traveler had never heard of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) but seemed excited to learn that one of our good friends was the minister at Central Christian Church in Denver, the travelers hometown.

The conversation ended in nearly the same way it started with the shuttering of the train only this time coming to a stop. The traveler said to Amy as we packed up to leave, “I’m going to have to think about my faith. I never knew that someone like yourself or a church like the one you go to existed. I’m going to have to check out the church in Denver!”

That’s the story, amazing as it is, it really happened and left me with this wonderful memory of what Disciples of Christ can offer the human community. At our best we are an amazing tapestry of people who do not always agree on all social issues or particular religious doctrines or even presidential candidates. And yet, the most powerful thing we do as Disciples is gather Together around a communion table and remember that with God’s help we are called to be one Body.

I think Disciples think too often that we are neutral in the way we live out church and our faith! Well to that traveler on the train, Disciples were to her like a breath of fresh, spirit air filling up her soul. And being reminded of this treasure by overhearing the conversation between my wife and the traveler was priceless! OR should I say proinquitous with the God I know!

Raymond, My Grandfather

On a Monday afternoon he insisted that his hospital bed be raised up so that it became more like a chair than a bed. I looked deep into his eyes and watched as my grandpa, now exhausted from a long life, relied on medical equipment to fold him into a sitting position. I reached out my hand for his and said, “Hello grandpa.” He replied, “Hello, Bill.” We exchanged several looks back and forth while others talked around us but never said another word to each other until it was time to go.

Eventually even the toughest farmers die. However, only then can their story be told for all to hear. My grandfather’s story begins in a chair. Yep a chair! Sometimes it was a kitchen chair at family reunions, other times it was a rocking chair on the sun porch but mostly it was his recliner chair in the living room.

As the Christmas wrapping paper flew through the air and grandchildren played with their new toys I remember pausing just long enough to see my grandfather peering out over the living room. His eyes were sparkling with a deep sense of happiness and satisfaction. He seemed to me more like king than a grandfather that day. I don’t know what its like to be a grandfather yet, nor do I know what its like to be a king but even when I was 10 I could feel my grandfathers sense of pride for what he had helped to create. It was a family—and based on the flying wrapping paper, it was a very large family.

In time, the family gatherings grew smaller as his family began to grow their own and move to other places in the world. Soon even the grandchildren started their own families and began to move to places and experience things that made it difficult to gather together as a complete family like we did when I was 10. Even I could not always return to that living room for the family gatherings but when I did, the act of seeing my grandfather sitting in his recliner listening to the latest story about a member of the family helped to hold, ever so delicately, the family together.

If only half the stories I have been told about my grandfather are true he would be a man of destiny and a hero to many. My grandfather was old from my first memories of him and that means that most of the stories I know about him were told to me by others before he began sitting in chairs.

He was a man who had survived a truck falling on top of him. His finger was once sliced off by a piece of farm equipment and he responded by grabbing it from the dirt, forcing it back on to his hand and wrapped it in a handkerchief. He still had that finger when I came to know him many years later. Before microsurgery my grandfather performed medical miracles. However, I think the most amazing and miraculous thing he did in his life was to marry my grandmother and become a father to my mother and her 5 siblings.

There are many more stories of my grandfather that I will write someday but they will only be an expansion of the story I saw begin in a chair that Christmas morning when I was 10. I only hope that when my own grandchildren see me sitting in a recliner watching them throw Christmas wrapping paper into the air they will see at least a small part of my grandfather in me.

2008 Intern Team

The season is done and I am free once again to reflect a little on my propinquity with God during the summer. I know that you would assume that when I spend most of my hours in the summer at church camp I would most surely have propinquity with the God who actually called me in to this ministry I now live. However, I think that these kinds of assumptions have lead many, including myself astray or to believe that through basic mechanistic motions and repeated actions I can make propinquity with God just happen over and over again. It just does not happen like that at all and I have learned that sometimes the hard way…

However, that is why when it does happen; when I get even a glimpse of God I treasure it in my heart and in my soul like it was breath itself. This summer was in the most ordinary way so wonderful to behold. It was not because of new record numbers at camp as we were under last year’s number and above the year before—So just ordinary or average. It was not because my life changed in some radical way and now I am a new person—Nope in fact it seemed to me that my life in general just journeyed along neither bad nor radically good. BUT that is why this propinquity moment is not about me and my life so much…

This propinquity moment is focused on the 2008 intern team. They did so many ordinary things together. They set tables together, built campfires together, got vehicles stuck and unstuck together, they did dishes together, hung drywall together, played in the mud together and built a waterfall in the process, they created games together, they laughed together and cried together. In the end, they created in the ordinary moments of life together hope for the church in the future.
PS. They also created in me a whole lot of propinquity with God by letting me mentor them just a little in the same everyday, ordinary moments of life. Their names are Charlie, Sonya, Will S. and Will B., Justin and Megan but to me they shall be known as the team that brought just a little more light to the darkness of this world.

An Old Friend and a new Memory

When he stepped out on the porch to check in his daughter for Junior mini camp, I immediately had the feeling that we was someone I had known in my past but my mind could not think quick enough to place what part of my past I was remembering. I went on my way doing my normal check-in procedures thinking I may never figure out who he was and how we knew each other. The memory was lodged in a deep part of my mind, the place I keep people whom I have spent day in and day out with for months. Yet, I still could not place him as he stood on Holy Ground Sunday afternoon.

As luck would have it he had a better memory. As he was heading out the door, he called me by name – in a question sort of way – to confirm his own memory I suppose. He then said, “You went to Culver-Stockton College, right?” “Jim! Yea that was his name!,” I said to myself loudly and the memories began to flow back in like rushing water. We lived in the same dorm and on the same floor for a whole year together. We sat next to each other and watched tv many nights in the dorm lounge and played a game of pool together now and then. Years ago, he and I had been in the same place and became friends.

Now, he and his wife are members at Noelridge Christian Church in Cedar Rapids. Though I have been there many Sundays over the past 8 years we have never made the reconnect until that moment on the porch this Sunday.

It was all because, Sue Thompson, Youth Minister at Noelridge Christian Church, encouraged Jim and his wife Robin to send their daughter to camp at the last minute. It turns out that the image of “rushing water” is key in this story. You see, Jim’s store that he runs was flooded with over 4 feet of water and because the store is where Jim’s Daughter has formed many memories of her father, she was taking the flood very hard. Sue thought maybe by sending her to camp, to meet other friends, to experience another place and form other memories – it might just help her balance out the memories of the flood.

Sometimes it is simply by being in the same place for long enough that we develop relationships that can linger deep in our soul. My favorite word is *Propinquity because I think it is the secret to forming relationships that give us hope in life. I think *Propinquity is what makes us care about others and I believe that it is what makes us the Body of Christ.

I witness everyday moments of propinquity (and RE-propinquity) on our Holy Ground at camp but I know, as the flood and our response has taught us again, this propinquity (Body of Christ) exists far beyond the bondries of camp -- IT is what makes us the church as God intended.

*pro·pin·qui·ty n.
Proximity; nearness.
Kinship.
Similarity in nature.

T-shirts, Tattoos and a Family Tradition

The dirt was piled high and the heat of the sun was making everyone gathered seek out the shade under the funeral tent. Standing next to me, gripping my hand as tight as he could was my son, Tristan. In the front row was my cousin, whom I had not seen for nearly 17 years and she was bursting with tears and wailing louder than a chainsaw without a muffler. It was her mother that we were burying today but my mother stood behind my cousin and comforted her as if she were her own daughter. The family was represented by multiple branches of the genealogical tree. Standing in my dress shirt and khakis, I felt out of place among the t-shirts and tattoos. Yet, funerals have always been something that brings the family together. I don't understand it but I still go and so does the rest of the family tree. It seems that in this moment, with my son standing next to me and other children literally playing with my aunts hair in the coffin, while the minister spoke words of hope and memory, we have passed this gathering tradition on to the next generation. Each funeral builds on the last because as the family gathers again we cannot help but remember the funeral of my brother, my sister, my cousin bubby and others whose death has triggered the family gathering. As I stand there, wondering what my son is creating in his mind with this experience I find myself looking around wondering who will trigger the next gathering. When it comes to Propinquity with God I'm not a big fan of funerals. I suppose that I should be or at least I should be used to them by now as a minster but still in the end, I'm not! I believe in God and believe that God journeys with us but I struggle with the deeper questions of why people have to die. Maybe its enough that in those funeral moments I have propinquity with my family even if I don't always feel I'm in the right place.

College Picture - Things Change!

Change surely happens. We all know it and when my grandma found this old picture of me in my college mailer from 1990 it became all the more true for me. Sometimes when I look back at my life it seems like I moved through different worlds as I grew older. I often write about my Childhood neighborhood friends but there have been groups of people that make up these different times/worlds of my life. When I see pictures of them the memories of those times come flooding back. Its not that I really want to re-live them or somehow transport back in time to change things. It is just that I don't want to forget them. This picture has not produced a story as such, just revived a memory that may one day bcome a story. My College days were a wonderful time with some wonderful people but they were also a time when my whole family, including my grandmother, seem to collect every scrap of paper that told the story of the first child in our family to go to college. I know there is a story here but it wont come out tonight. Since the moment this picture was snapped I have lost hair, gained a few pounds experienced 6 new worlds of friends, gained a wife and child, served 3 churches, wrote a book, became a minister and finally returned to my home state. I guess what is important is that I do remember each of these snap shots of my life. Here is to more pictures and more people and many more memories.

The Mowing Cycles of My Dreams

The grass was no shorter than seven inches and the mower I was using was under powered. I would push it forward 2 feet and it would chug and sputter and die. I would pull it back, yank on the cord and start it again and push it forward 2 feet and it would come to an abrupt stop. I repeated the cycle many more times than letters in this story. Yet I had to do this. This small plot of land I was mowing is now for me one of the holiest places on the holy ground we call the Christian Conference Center. It is our pond chapel and its not very old but it has come to be a place I would call santuary to me.

I only mowed for about 40 minutes and after finishing the task I sat down and looked across the water, breathed and remembered the last time I pushed a lawn mower through grass that was even taller just because I needed to do it. I was in the middle of my 7th grade year when I convinced several of my friends to help me mow the grass of the abandon lot in our neighborhood. There were stories about who used to live there and why they had to destroy the house years ago but mostly those stories were known by previous generations and not part of the way we understood life or our neighborhood. It was just a lot that no one took care of and the grass grew tall.

So we started early and began mowing, pushing our lawnmowers into the heavy grass time and time again. With each time they would choke out and die and we would pull them back and start them again and push them forward into what had seemed to most an overwhelming worthless task. I dont know why I had to mow the grass of the abandon lot in my neighborhood, I just knew I was going to do it. In the midst of neighborhoods full of drugs, broken families, abuse of many kinds and too many adults who had given up on dreams of anykind WE, the children and youth of Holt street, played into the night on our freshly mowed field of dreams. We got our picture taken in the local paper and I am glad that I still have tall grass to mow now and then to remember when I first noticed that God was encouraging me to dream and build sanctuaries for all who need them.