Peggy's Dad

Most of you know we lost Peggy’s Dad late last month. The most accurate description of Walter Laitas is that he was a good and decent man, committed to his family and his students (he was a history teacher and coach) and his community. He was 88, did what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it up until the last couple of weeks of his life, and died at home with people he loved with him when he passed. He asked that I say something at his memorial service, and what follows is what I wrote…

He never talked about it much except to those who were really close to him, and then, until recent times, he only talked about it when those closest to him dragged it out of him. But it is safe to say that it’s pretty remarkable that Walt Laitas even made it through his childhood, let alone lived the full life of his 4 score and 8 years. In those days when Warren Harding was president before Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover (I tell you this because Walter the history teacher would have told you this), and when Eastern European immigrants flooded Central Illinois to work the fields and the mines, life was very tough, tougher than most of us could imagine, and no one would have been surprised really when Walt reached adulthood had he been angry, narrow-minded, bitter, defensive and resentful. The very quiet, understated miracle at the beginning of this big, old boy’s life is that he lived through those nearly unspeakably difficult young years and was exactly none of those things.

When Walt was 14 years old, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a piece called The Crack Up, wrote this: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

Anyone who ever had him as a teacher knows that Walt was the poster-child for Fitzgerald’s notion of that kind of first-rate intelligence. When he wasn’t busy pranking his students and colleagues, Walt would often strut into his classroom arguing a fine point of history or government from a point of view diametrically opposed to the point of view he had presented just the day before. Walter could hold forth on almost anything from the stoic Seneca to Howard Stern, from the uniqueness of Lincoln to the muddled reality of the Middle East, and, when he was at his sharpest, he could argue the value or the danger of their ideas and approaches, pretty much reveling in advocating for whatever was the opposite of whatever you were advocating.

So after a childhood filled with enough tragedy to destroy the sturdiest of souls, through a stint in an orphanage and some time working the camps and in college, Walt did what so many committed young men did in those days and went off to war. When Sgt. Laitas came home from the war, he married his best girl, became an Illinois State Redbird football legend, finished school, looked around for a teaching gig where he could remain a Redbird (I made that part up!), came to Metamora, and went about the business of raising his family and directly and indirectly shaping this town’s young people for more than 40 years, of course as a teacher and coach, but even more as a good and determined and decent man. His first rate intelligence, able to function while holding two or three or ten opposing ideas in his head at the same time, paled in comparison to the good and determined and decent man that he was.

For whatever this is worth, I think that in the last analysis God doesn’t really care all that much how we talk about life, about how we shape our verbal expressions of the most meaningful and important stuff. I think Scripture and tradition suggest that God really does care about what we do with the lives we are given. So it is no little thing to remember and celebrate a good man and his good life that by all arguments could have been, maybe should have been, something other than that. And it is no little thing the marvel at the legion of good people who are the good people they are precisely because they had the good fortune to know him and be shaped by him. When it is all said and done, when the great debates of the age are matters for the history books, when the trauma of present movements and moments are little more than arcane data deep in a Google search, when the critical turning points in our lives are little more than turned pages, what really matters is whether or not we embrace and share the love God gives us to share with each other. And, of course in his own key, embrace and share that love he did.

You and I know that there are as many Walt stories out there as there are stars in the sky, and it will be a long time before those stories fade out of our memories. And whether the story is about his affection for birds, or leading an entire classroom of students – another teacher’s students – out of their classroom so that their teacher would enter a completely empty room, or about photographs strategically placed on classroom maps, or about Walt suggesting a more aggressive passing attack not to Coach Ryan but to Coach Ryan’s parents, or – I guess it’s safe to tell now – about how Walt secretly shot the raccoon that died the next day in the Peterson’s yard, what all the stories reflect is our genuine love for Walt, and our inability to really imagine a world without him. But the best Walt story of all is the one that continues to unfold in those legions of people whose lives he touched and shaped, in the lives of the Laitas girls and we tiny band of mildly overwhelmed brothers who tag along with them, the stories that unfold in the lives of Elisa and Jason and Keith and Sarah and Matt and Jenell and Scott and Kelsey and Katelyn and Michael and Teri, and in their little ones already and one day soon to be among us.

In his own way, and of course in his own key, Walt was a hero to those of us lucky to get close enough to him. A hero proved, as Katherine Bates wrote in America the Beautiful, in liberating strife, but more than that; a hero proved in a good, determined, and decent life that even death cannot take from us.

Social Justice

Marty E Marty is an emeritus professor of church history at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Among the many and varied things he continues to do, Dr. Marty writes a weekly column called Sightings. It is a commentary on the interaction between church and culture, and Marty’s articles appear in my e-mail every Monday morning. This week’s column was his response to the latest nonsense from Glenn Beck about “social justice.” If you find it interesting, and would like to take advantage of the free subscription, use this link https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/sightings

Social Justice

— Martin E. Marty

Are 68.1 million Americans connected with a Communist front movement? Yes, if they are Roman Catholic. Are another 20 million citizens listening to “coded” Nazi messages? Yes, if they are mainline Protestant. Are tens of millions more in danger of being part of a similarly coded Fascist front? Yes, if they are in a growing wing of Evangelicalism; and yes, if they keep hearing social justice messages in thousands of African-American congregations. Those four “yeses” pick up on oft-repeated accusations by Fox News host Glenn Beck. They provoked the least underreported public religion news of the week, which appeared in the March 12th New York Times as well as “all over the internet.”

The fact that Mr. Beck charms millions of devotees tells more about the sad state of truth-telling and the high state of lie-receiving than civil citizens should want to hear. The broadcaster has picked up an ally in folk like Jerry Falwell, Jr. and a few other fundamentalists on the right who have been at least as condemnatory as he. Their most cited biblical passage is from the gospels, where Jesus announces that his kingdom is not of his world; therefore they conclude that Christians should avoid political life. A test of ironies: Quick, now, can you think of any element in American religion which has been more publicly engaged in recent politicking than these “not-of-this-world” dwellers in glass houses?

Where should they direct the stones they must throw? And how should they follow through? Mr. Beck knows: Leave any church which talks about, supports, or “does” works of justice beyond what an individual or a church charity can do. “Leave!” “Run!” Do it fast, he says, because of the way things are going. He might as well be wearing a beard, a robe, and a sign: “THE END IS NEAR.” Before that end, these “social justice” churches might at least fling some pebbles back while they seek consistency. Ask: Would all the Christians and the churches which accept any benefits of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, tax exemption and other such programs cut them off tomorrow? They all involve the government and all were backed by “social and economics minded” leaders and followers in churches, often against the odds raised and symbolized by the Glenn Becks of their past.

Sightings likes to be fair and to see more than one side of things as it does its observing and commenting. So let it be noted that some sane and serious Christians also think that believers should pay no attention to public order, structures, circumstances, and possibilities. “Don’t talk justice! Just be just!” “Don’t support programs which support widows and orphans, just share your bread and coat and cold water with your innocently needy neighbor.” Thereafter do the math: It will become obvious that the limits on the individual responses to need at their highest won’t meet needs if reckoned at their lowest.

Biblical verses wisely do remind readers, “Put not your trust in princes.” That usually means governments; “princes” in the media, banking, punditry, universities, and, yes, churches demand scrutiny, and their programs deserve careful evaluation, as well. But those who say that you have taken care of biblical injunctions if you simply keep government out of everything face biblical reminders with which they have to contend: The Hebrew prophets all dealt with “nations,” and the apostle Paul, writing to people suffering under Nero, also said that civil “authority…is God’s servant for your good (Romans 13:4). Paul even goes so far in 13:6 to urge believers to “pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants.” Come on, Paul, don’t press your luck in Beck’s world!

For a Limited Time...

Just came across this today. It may too “new age” to be of interest, but I thought I’d throw it out there just in case.

John Shelby Spong is participating in a free teleseminar series called “Sacred Awakenings.” There is a different presenter every day during Lent (yes it is ok to jump in in the middle) from all sorts of different religious and spiritual traditions. If you’re interested in exploring this, go to this link, http://sacredawakeningseries.com/BishopSpong , and follow the instructions.

That's What God Is Like

I’m hoping we all know about the United Church of Christ’s “StillSpeaking Daily Devotional” that can be delivered to our e-mail inbox every morning. Each day a United Church of Christ writer offers a brief reflection and prayer, in much the same pattern used by popular daily devotional booklets. Their pieces are thoughtful and provocative and, I think, quite useful. You can subscribe for free by going to http://www.ucc.org/. The daily piece is also available on Facebook and Twitter.

Here is today’s piece, written by Ron Buford, who, among other things, was team leader for the StillSpeaking campaign when it began.

That's What God is Like

Excerpt from Luke 13:18-2

"Jesus said therefore, 'What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it?'"

Reflection by Ron Buford

In Luke 13 (read entire chapter), Jesus mocks human superstition and proneness to conspiracy theories about God when Pilate kills a couple of Galileans in the temple, or when a tower falls in Jerusalem, killing eighteen people. Jesus asks, "Did these things happen because these people were greater sinners than others?"

Jesus aims to un-twist our primitive God-mischaracterization in which God avenges, bending laws of the universe just to "get us" for some secret choice we now regret or about which we have doubts. Mistakes may have natural consequences, but God has nothing to do with them. This teaching we learned is false. Sickness, accidents, natural disasters, and Murphy's Law come with randomness despite anything we may have done . . . and they always feel unfair.

Jesus invites us to think of God's city as our dwelling place with God, where all God's children have yeast to make life's dough rise, double and triple . . . and, after waiting a while, produce enough to share. Imagine the smell and taste of fresh daily bread, kneaded by our hands, infused with the yeast of God's grace, shared among many. That's what God is like.

Transforming the barren places of God's city, with vision and patience, God's children plant God's seeds. And those seeds, after waiting a while, become mighty shade trees -- sheltering people, nesting birds singing . . . because that's what God is like.

Prayer

Gracious God, thank you for your Good News and grace, made known to us in the life and teaching of Jesus, freeing us from doubt, guilt, and condemnation about the past. Please grant us the daily bread of your mercy -- bread to share with all who love us as well as those who sin against us, and others who just make our lives yucky sometimes . . . because that's what our Divine Parent God is like. Amen.

Stars

If you were in worship at First Church this morning, you got all this already… some “star data” and a true story…

On the clearest of nights, if you’re at least 10 miles away from any source of light like streetlights and cars and lit up houses, and if your vision is relatively good, and depending on the time of the year, you can see anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 stars in the sky. The closest one to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years away, which means that the light we’d see tonight from that star was generated by that star about Thanksgiving, 2005. The brightest star in the night sky, the North Star, or Polaris, is 2,527,808,910,468,952 (2 quadrillion, 527 trillion, 808 billion, 910 million, 468 thousand, 952) miles, or 430 light years away, which means the light we’d see tonight from that North Star was generated about the time Sir Francis Drake was wrapping up his circumnavigation of the globe. The farthest star we’d see on our really clear night isn’t really a star at all, but a galaxy, Andromeda, and it looks like a star because it is so far away, all of its stars look as if they are all one star. It’s 2.5 million light years away, Andromeda is, or something like 14,696,563, 432,959,020,000 (14 quintillion, 696 quadrillion, 563 trillion, 432 billion, 959 million, 20 thousand) miles, which means the light we’d see tonight from the Andromeda galaxy was generated about the beginning of the Proterozoic Era, when the continents became stable and oxygen started to saturate the atmosphere. The star that is farthest from us but still in our own Milky Way Galaxy that we’d see tonight is only about 23.5 quadrillion miles, or 4,000 light years away, which means the light we’d see tonight was generated a couple of centuries before Father Abraham’s vision in Genesis 15.

About the time the 12^th brightest star in tonight’s sky, Altair, was generating the light we'd see in tonight’s perfectly clear night sky (that’s about 17 years ago), we had a group of youth community young people staying at the Powder Horn Ski Resort on the western slopes of the Rockies. The last night we were at Powder Horn was a gloriously clear night, and after our worship time several of us sat outside as far away from any earth light as we could and just looked up. Several of the young people with us said they had never seen as many stars. Shooting stars darted across the night sky like fireworks, and one of them said something about how the light we were seeing at that moment was generated long in the past. Then one of the boys, one of the rowdy, always-hard-to-keep-down-on-the-farm-always-knows-much-much-more-than-anyone-else boys who we loved to be around but whom we always had to keep kind of a tight leash on, got up and started to wander off into the dark. Somebody called his name, and he just kept walking, so I went off after him. When I caught up with him, he was sobbing. Shoulders heaving, struggling to catch his breath sobbing.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“The stars,” he said, ‘the stars. The stars might not even be there, and we’re still seeing them. That’s how it’s gonna be for us, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

And then I heard one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard, from the mouth of that frightened, distraught boy…

“You’re always telling us, Rob that we have a lot of life to live. Well, we don’t! We don’t have very long, maybe 90 years if we’re lucky. I’m already 16. I only have like 70 some years left. It’s like the stars! When I’m dead, people will still see me. Well, maybe they won’t see me, but they will still be affected by me, by the person I am. They won’t know me, they won’t love me, but they will still see me. And I want them to see me at my best, not as the jerk I am most of the time. I don’t want them to think I’m a jerk. I want them to see me how I really am.”

“I don’t want them to think I’m a jerk! I don’t want to be a jerk anymore.”

More on "Fearing Not"

Jim Collins is a leadership and organizational leader who wrote among other things the leadership development books Good to Great and Built to Last. Though a huge proponent of changing processes (he calls them "mechanisms") and being responsive and embracing new technologies, he argues that the whole "change or die" emphasis prevalent in so many organizations is wrong-headed in at least two ways. In addition to not wanting to change for the sake of change, Collins argues that fear can set things in morion, can get people moving, but almost never results in healthy change. In short, fear is a lousy motivator.

In an article in Inc. a dozen years ago, Collins used this story as an example:

Picture the great composer Beethoven struggling to write a perfect Fifth Symphony that will stand the test of time. He starts with a simple theme. Discards it. Starts again. Revises it. Finally settles upon the famous "fate motive" (Da Da Da Dommmmm!). Inverts it. Extends it. Rends, amends, and dissects it. All in the context of a primal thematic struggle: that of light versus dark, hope versus despair, major versus minor. With great discipline he holds back the trombones, the piccolo, and the contrabassoon until their triumphal entry on the downbeat of movement four, when the forces of life and hope blast forth to obliterate the forces of angst and despair once and for all...

Now imagine asking Beethoven during his toil to perfect the Fifth Symphony, "Ludwig, why are you working so hard? Your First Symphony has established you as one of the most popular and successful composers of the day. Your Third Symphony, Eroica, will stand as one of the great cutting-edge creations of all time, having shattered the constraints of the classical style. You've already earned your place in the history books. Why do you continue to push yourself?"

Can you picture Beethoven responding, "Why push myself? Because if I don't write a better symphony, then someone else will. The competition is fierce, and if I don't improve, I'll be pummeled by those feisty foreign upstarts. Change or die. Innovate or self-destruct. Eat lunch or be lunch. It's not that I really want to reinvent and perfect my work; it's just that in this world, only the paranoid survive..."

The next time you encounter..."Change or die,"... remember the words of Royal Robbins, the great rock climber who pioneered ascents of Yosemite's big walls: "The point is not to avoid death - if you want to do that, simply stay on the ground. The point is to reach the top, and then to keep on climbing."

God is...

Paul Tillich talked about the limitations of language and the transcendence of the holy when he wrote about "the God above the God of theism." That is to say, whatever God is, God is more than our best description of God. For centuries we have argued some (a lot?!) about which image is better, what symbol set makes most sense rather than seeing what we can learn from images and symbol sets that don't necessarily make sense to us.

In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius Loyola encouraged his young Jesuit novices to begin their search for spiritual truth to begin with this exercise. Prompted by one's spiritual director, the novice was instructed to complete as many "God is..." statements as could be corroborated by "scripture or experience." The novice would then create the "God is..." list --

God is love.
God is peace.
God is justice.
God is light.
God is ruler.
God is truth.--
God is... --

and then proceed to the mentor for direction. The spiritual director would listen warmly, intently, patiently as the novice would read one by one the "God is..." list and explain each individual statement. The mentor would press the novice through each rationale to the place where the novice would say "God is not only love, or peace, or light," or whatever.

"What then, my son, is God?" Almost invariable the novice would revisit his list, and his "not only list" and then move to a place of great exasperation and blurt out "God is...God!"

"Precisely," the mentor would reply. "God is God."