Tuck In Your Artifice, It’s Showing

May 6, 2013 By 5 Comments

When someone shared Michael Chabon’s New York Review of Books blog post about the movies of Wes Anderson a couple months ago, I was initially drawn into his thinking about the nature of the world and of art making. I was with him as he talked about the schooling in brokenness, how we long for a lost wholeness in a world that has been shattered.

But then he turned his attention to the question about what to do with the pieces. His answer is that the artist reassembles the “scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle” according to her own vision of the world.

I think of the scene in Pink Floyd’s movie The Wall in which our wrecked rock star creates intricate patterns on the hotel room floor with the pieces of furniture, glass, and guitars that he smashed in a psychotic meltdown the night before. At first glance you want to say he’s finally gone bat-shit crazy, but he is not so crazy as to conclude there’s no meaning to it all—he’s still trying to make some sense of the brokenness. [Read more...]

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Wild-Eyed Youth Pastor

April 12, 2013 By 3 Comments

I recently found an unexpected e-mail in my in-box. It was from Joe, my youth pastor from over twenty-five years ago. I haven’t spoken to him in as many years. He was reaching out to apologize for any spiritual harm he had done me all those years ago. The e-mail got me reminiscing.

Joe was one of those youth pastors who seemed to have a sure calling, the kind of guy people called on fire for the Lord. He preached fearlessly, with the zeal of a prophet; unlike others I’d encountered who believed they had the gift of prophecy, Joe did not see it as an excuse to be a loud and judgmental ass. He was open and honest, transparent about his struggles. It drew kids to him. He and his wife opened their home to us, were endlessly patient with the teenage noise, hormones, strife. [Read more...]

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The New Improved Golden Rule

March 25, 2013 By 2 Comments

Our neighbor Jack is a retired widower. He goes to a mainline Baptist church. It’s a massive structure on the edge of what some here call the ghetto. Years ago this big church saw the majority of its members take flight to suburban churches with coffee shops and rocking praise bands.

But there is, in that magisterial building, a haggard group of diehards trying to continue on, trying to fulfill the calling to love their neighbors. Jack is one of them.

He once invited my daughter to be in their Christmas musical. They were trying to fill a children’s choir from their neighborhood but couldn’t find enough kids willing to join, so they resorted to casting their net a little wider. He and my wife, who does much of her work in one of the poorest city neighborhoods, talked about what his church was trying to accomplish.

Jack described the things they were doing, and he himself made the observation, after describing some programs, that their mostly African-American neighbors are not the least bit responsive to their attempts at doing good in the area. [Read more...]

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The Preacher’s Kid Returns

March 11, 2013 By 2 Comments

My sister my brother and I are right now, from three separate states, trying to put together a reception for our parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary.  In addition to the normal stress these things bring, we are feeling a dark ambivalence about the whole affair. It’s not the celebration itself that gives us pause. It’s where we are compelled to hold it.

We will be going back to the church of our childhood.

I think of the movie Junebug, in which our hapless protagonist, simply home for a visit, is called out to sing a hymn for everyone. The fact that we are the preacher’s kids, and expected to be involved every time we return is only part of the problem. That would be easy enough to deal with if there weren’t so many conflicted emotions going on under the surface.

We will go of course. And we will stand and sing. Church members will smile at us, tell us it’s good to see us, and wonder why the last time they saw us was seven years ago, at dad’s retirement from the pastorate there.

There are two related reasons. We were part of this family of hundreds of people who met three times a week, none of whom we knew intimately.

Dad took this church when I was one, my sister was three, and our little brother was just an infant. He stayed at that same ministry until his retirement, thirty-eight years later—something anyone familiar with fundamentalist Baptists knows is quite a feat. [Read more...]

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A Father-Daughter Story

February 15, 2013 By 3 Comments

I sit in the sunroom and look at the strewn possessions of my youngest, my daughter who will be thirteen in three short months. The boys don’t leave clutter like she does—their socks lay limp around the house like the shed skin of fat albino snakes, but that’s about it.

Grace is the one who leaves her possessions all over. From the chair where I sit, within reach is her page-a-day DOG calendar, her Discovery Girls magazine with a special section by Taylor Swift “on mean girls, fitting in & more!” Her black travel jewelry organizer that says umbra on the front. A small bottle of pink bubble gum hand sanitizer that really does smell like bubble gum.

Here’s her change purse on the table, with swirling green and pink and orange and turquoise patterns that spin into paisleys and leaf shapes. Inside she has a library card, lots of loose change, gift cards from Starbucks and Michaels, “where creativity happens.” She also has paper cash, a five and some ones. And a receipt from a boutique called Silver Thistle, where she bought her grandmother a silver candle snuffer for Christmas. With her own money.

This almost looks like the purse of a woman, not a little girl, in which case—I know the rules—I really should keep my nose out of it. This strikes me, hurts a little. I always knew it was coming, the age at which parts of her life would close off to me, as they should, but to realize that the time has come is still a bit of a shock. [Read more...]

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Remembering the Sabbath

January 28, 2013 By 13 Comments

I was recently in an e-mail exchange with someone regarding my refusal to force my children to go to church. I do not go to church myself. I will probably go back someday, but for now I do not. I stay away from church for a number of reasons, but one of them is the fact that I desire my Sundays to be ones of actual Sabbath—days set apart for rest.

The response I found in my inbox to this argument was, “That’s bullshit,” a rationalization because I don’t like church. I know that I do have other issues with church right now, but I don’t think this one is bullshit. [Read more...]

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Come Before Winter Part Two

December 27, 2012 By 2 Comments

Continued from yesterday.

Paul faced the winter of death, and Timothy faces the winter of lost opportunity. If he doesn’t come before winter, the ships will go to dock to wait out the harsh months. He won’t be able to journey until spring, and by that time Paul believes he will be dead. Now is the time, he tells Timothy. Before winter.

When Joseph Campbell lectured on Dante’s life chart in the Convivio, it was in the context of his own charting of an archetypal life pattern. He developed it from his study of world mythologies. He calls it the hero’s journey. [Read more...]

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Come Before Winter Part One

December 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Every year when I was young, as the vibrant colors of West Virginia’s fall foliage dulled to gray-brown, my dad would preach his sermon “Come Before Winter.” He did it for a number of years, and it became so popular that people in the region would abandon their home churches on that Sunday morning to come hear him preach.

Paul is under house arrest in Rome, writing to his protégé Timothy. He writes, “Come see me, and bring my cloak.” He says, “come before winter.” If Timothy doesn’t come before winter, he will have to wait till spring—Paul is old, not in the best health; spring may well be too late. [Read more...]

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