Sunday Morning Meds--Be still--sure.

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him. Psalm 37

I don’t think I could go back to life without computers—or the internet, for that matter, this unimaginably huge storehouse of information that sits somewhere mysteriously beneath my fingertips, a few keystrokes from the confines of my basement office.  I use it constantly, really.

Computers speed things up—I can red-pencil my students’ papers faster because of “word processing,” even though, by the way, I use neither red pencils nor paper.  I can and do communicate instantaneously with hundreds of people, no matter where they are in the world, as long as they’ve got a modem.  One might think that our lives would be less hurried because of the instantaneous reach of technology today, but that’s not so.  The computer has made those who use it frequently more, not less busy.

What’s more, it facilitates our very human weaknesses. 

A couple of years ago, some friends asked me to pull off some schtick at their children’s wedding.  I did.  People thought it was funny, but apparently not our friends—well, apparently not the father, who sent me a blistering e-mail a day or so later, a note he typed out with the kind of vengeful glee we feel as we vent.  Slap some keys and punch send.   

Why point these fingers?  I’ve done the same thing more often than I care to admit.  In my entire life, I don’t remember ever sending nasty snail mail.  But e-mails?—don’t I wish I could have some back.

A computer doesn’tfacilitate waiting.  If I’m typing along—as I’m doing now—and suddenly it occurs to me to check on some deal I’m working on elsewhere, I can minimize this screen, flick out a note to Zambia, and return—fifteen seconds max. 

           

I can’t speak for others, but the sweet advice of this verse of Psalm 37 seems to me to be far easier said than done in this computer age.  I wonder if my own expectations of God’s almighty hand—what he could and even should do in my life—aren’t in some ways predicated upon a sense of time that’s in part defined by the instantaneousness of a machine that falsely promises more but delivers, somehow, less.

When my father died, a poet friend of mine sent me a poem he’d written at the death of his own father.  That poem offered the most startling picture of timelessness, of eternity, that I’ve ever considered—specifically, that those who die before us don’t sit around in some heavenly café, awaiting the arrival of the next bus, hoping it will include loved ones. 

Because the dead exist out of time, they really don’t miss us; via their clocks, we’re, in a way, already there. Waiting is a time thing, not an eternity thing.  I love that idea because I don’t like to think of my father waiting, even though, of course, we do.

Waiting is a purely this-world job.  God almighty doesn’t punch a time clock.  There isn’t such a thing in eternity.  His time isn’t time at all.

Which makes patience almost heavenly, doesn’t it?  Maybe that’s why this verse seems so easy to say and so difficult to do.  As everyone knows, patience is a virtue, a virtue to be practiced, something I need to work at. . .he said, his fingers bent over the keys.

Lord, help me breath easily.

            

The Most Un-American of All

(Guest post this morning--Piet Westerbeek IV)

I want to thank my father-in-law for letting me be a guest writer on his blog. As you may read, we differ politically, but he is my dad and I respect his beliefs whether we agree or not. That being said, I am about as conservative as they come--which is a miracle since I was born and raised in Southern California. Because of this, I have a pretty good idea of what it feels like for Democrats to live here in conservative Northwest Iowa.

It’s sad really what politics has become--pure hate in many cases. I see so much venom coming from either side of the fence, and it makes me sad and nervous about what kind of nation my children will inherit. My wife will not even voice an opinion on anything she perceives as being political since she is so scared she will hurt people she loves because they reside on such opposite sides of the spectrum.

I recently read this article by Ann Coulter--her latest brain fart. 

This one made me angry. Really angry. I love soccer, so let’s get that understood from the get go. In the article she claims that she has held her tongue for a decade on soccer as not to offend anyone. Ha… Ann Coulter does not keep her mouth shut long enough to breathe through her nose…. But I digress.

The main part of the article, as you will see, is her trying to show that there is an increase in moral decay as/when soccer becomes more popular in the states. When I read that, my jaw dropped to the floor. It really shouldn’t have, because, again, I was reading something by Ann Coulter….. again, I digress.

Here is a quote from the article:

I’ve held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.

Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks.”

Keep reading--it gets better……

In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms.

The rest of the article basically makes stupid points that soccer is an outside influence and that no real American (she insinuates that you are only a true American if your great-grandparents were born here) enjoys or follows soccer for the reasons she listed above. It is one of the biggest pieces of garbage that I have read in my lifetime.

Again, as a conservative I am sure that I share many similar ideas in politics as Miss Coulter. What I cannot stand is the pure hate and ignorance that this article exudes. She is somehow trying to use soccer as a political Trojan horse. She talks about the game and then out spouts the political hatred. 

 Don’t believe me? Here is another quote from Ann: 

I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce, and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.

Uh, what? Is she using drugs? That is the only way I can explain her course of thinking.

Soccer (football) has had an amazing effect on society for exactly the reason Coulter is complaining about it. Soccer teaches team work. It teaches that society is not an individual, it is a tribe. We win together, we lose together. God created us to be social and to work together for the common good for his glory. Coulter, who is a self-proclaimed Christian, should really know better. She should understand that a game that teaches unity, teamwork, and does not stand for just the individual is as American as apple pie and has roots in God’s teachings.

Anne and I may have some of the same political views, but I call out trash no matter where it comes from. This article is trash and about as Un-American as they come. 

 I would go on, but I have a soccer game to watch with my son.

Calvinist blues

First, let me be honest.

I'm writing from the first floor--I hesitate to call it a basement--of a brand new house my wife and I built out there in the country, miles and miles of farmland just outside the spacious window to my right where, this morning, soon enough the sun will rise and glaze all that farmland in heavenly finery. 

I'm not St. Francis of Assissi when it comes to worldly things.  Shoot, I've got an Aeron chair beneath me, a throne.

But here's the story.

For years we had this deck table, heavy plastic top, scrawny crooked legs. It sat on our deck, as deck tables should, suffering the abuse of Iowa seasons but generally holding its shape in a fashion I would have been proud of myself if I'd have done it. Anyway, emphasis on years.

When we moved from town to the farm house we rented, it stood out beneath a magnificent cottonwood, just a few steps from the river, where, occasionally, it would do what good picnic tables do--hold chocolate and marshmallows and graham crackers and an occasional hot dog. It got rained on, snowed on, blown down, etc., but still came back to serve us, rather selflessly, I'd say.

When we moved to the new house, it came along. Our back yard is a work-in-progress, but that deck table stayed out back until one winter night when a full-scale, northwest wind grabbed it in the crevice where I'd parked it and banged it madly against the house.  I pulled on a coat and boots, grabbed the noisemaker and dragged it into a basement back room, where it sat, unused, unloved.

So July 3, we were cleaning up the mess in the back yard when we realized something had to be done. That deck table has done yeoman's service for us, but its time had come and gone. 

Now had we still been in town, I would have dragged it out to the street and made it clear that if someone wanted it, they could simply take it away. It would have been gone in half hour.  But here we are in the country. So voila! I thought--how about one of those Facebook swap shops? I took the picture above, created a page ("Free, just in time for the Fourth"), and two minutes later, no more, a name I didn't know posted:  "I want it" or something similarly declarative.

"Can I come and get it tomorrow?" she wrote. 

By this time, we wanted it gone. As in now. "We just may deliver," I typed in. "Where are you?"

"LeMars," she wrote. 

Twenty minutes south. Bring her the dumb thing, we thought. "Where do you live?" I wrote.

"Meet me at Bob's Drive-In," she said. 

And I get a hot dog, too.

So we did. She was thrilled. Young, pretty mom, single mom, whose daughter she said, would be thrilled because somehow their deck table didn't make it through the Iowa seasons or something. I don't remember exactly. What I remember is that she loved it. Seriously. She loved it. Then we ate hot dogs.

Only a true Calvinist would say this, but it's true:  I felt guilty about feeling so blessed.

Seriously, that old table served us well, but we've wanted it gone for quite some time and I had no idea how we were going to do that (you can't just put it in the garbage). Stem to stern, it was no more than an hour, and everything was pure win/win. We got rid of the table--hallelujah!--and tatooed single mom was thrilled.  Win/win.

The whole affair just made me realize, even after two moves, how much stuff we still got, really, and how much stuff we could so joyfully get rid of.  

Like I said, only a Calvinist can have that much fun--and a hot dog too, not just any hot dog either--and still feel guilty.

Going home

For so many reasons, I prefer to drive. Not that I'm afraid of flying--not at all. But once you step up to the line, put your Visa in the kiosk, you're baggage.  When I drive, I'm master of my fate. 

Sort of.  I determine whether the windows are up or down. I control the radio dial or which books play on the iPod. I stop when I want to. When I'm alone, otherwise inappropriate bodily noises pass without embarrassment or tsking. When I want coffee, I don't have to ask.

Maybe that's why I don't always trust a GPS. Besides, there are good moral and psychological reasons not to put your fate in the hands of that woman in the gizmo. Three times I allowed her to be the master of my fate last weekend, but she delivered only twice. Once she led me down wild goose chase lane--the woman thou hast given me, I said.   

Still, batting two for three isn't a bad day at the plate, I figure. 

Here's the story. When our two-day meeting was over, I wasn't all that far from O'Hare so I told a friend I'd drop him off at the airport. I've been around Chicago often enough to know that if I wanted to get home all I had to do was head south on the Tri-State, which would eventually deliver me to I-80 where big green signs say Iowa. No sweat.

But that seemed loony, a long ways down south just to go west. So I put my hands in the hand of the GPS, punched in "Home, James," (that's a joke) and listened to this woman's deceptively kind voice. She directed north to I-90, which, I must admit, first seemed a stretch; but I'd given away my freedom. I was in the hand of that doohickey.

And I-90 was okay because 42 years ago I took that same chunk of road every other weekend and was just about the happiest man in three states, on my way, as I was, to meet a woman who took my breath away and became my wife in a kind of fever that still gives me chills.

Okay, I thought, I'll take this old road again.  What the heck.  An hour north and west, I was smiling.

Just outside of Rockford, the GPS took me off I-90 and put me on Hwy 20, on the way to Dubuque, where, long, long ago, I got my VW serviced. Home was still a double header away, five or six hours at least, but I was no stranger in a strange land. 

Just outside of Freeport stands a old barn with "To God be the Glory," transcribed in shingles. I'm not kidding. Soli deo gloria. I knew where I was because I'd somehow seen a picture of that place before. Then it came back to me. It was the home place of a number of brothers I once knew. Sure it was.  In fact, one of those brothers roofed our house once upon a time and still is my grandkids' teacher and--I'm not making this up--my own district elder.  

 

Not far west up the highway a church sign pointed me south a couple of miles, where I'd find the very church where, in 1870 or so, an Dutch immigrant family of Schaaps worshiped God in America for the first time. Right there.

As if that weren't enough, my very first teaching job was another half hour west and just a bit north of Hwy 20, so the closer I came to the eternally rolling hills of the Mississippi valley, the more clearly I remembered kids who came from the dairies and cheese factories scattered, willy-nilly, throughout emerald vistas as beautiful as anything you'll see anywhere east of the Rockies. 

Right there along the highway, one of those students still makes cheese. He spent years in Europe learning from experts, one of only a few master cheesemakers in a state full of cheeseheads. But it was Saturday night; the factory store was closed.

Galena, the town that time forgot--literally--one of the two most frequented weekend vacation spots in the whole state of Illinois, came up next.  That woman I used to visit and I spent a sweet day and cozy night in a fancy B and B right there just last winter.

And there's more.  There's always more. Two hours west on 20, I passed Ackley and Parkersburg, Iowa, where my grandfather lived as a kid, where he graduated from high school--I've still got his diploma, dated 1898.

I could go on, but I start to yawn at just about anybody's summer vacation in just a matter of minutes. 

I could have flown. The committee would have picked up my ticket.  I could have been in and out of Chicago more quickly, I'm sure, even chowed down a real Chicago hot dog in O'Hare. And flying isn't as bad as I'm making out. In fact, these days I'm so old that I don't even to have to take off my belt and shoes to get past security. 

But you lose something when you walk into an airport. I'll admit it--I put my hand in the hands of that GPS, listened to a strange woman's voice and followed a triptik I certainly wouldn't have created myself if I'd thought much about it--I mean, really, what kind of fool would take Hwy 20 across two states when a dozen interstates beckon?--I had a great trip.

Stupid, really, when you think about it--all those blue highways, not even double-lane. And a storm, too, other side of the river, buckets of rain.

I called my wife who said it wouldn't be long and I'd be out of the driving rain. 

She wasn't wrong, and I got a work of art up against the western sky as a bonus. 

I got home safely by getting there all the time.

Soli deo gloria.

Book Review--Origins

Here's the rub. Once upon a time--and still today--people who believe in a Christian education used evolution as a kind of shibboleth. Those of us who chose to send our kids to a Christian school could always say, "You know, if our kids went to public schools, they'd be taught that their ancestors were chimpanzees--how does that square with biblical thinking?"

End of conversation. Maybe. Creation was a mainstay, a foundational principle. That God almighty created all things was a given in what most people considered a Christian worldview. Belief in evolution was belief in Godlessness. 

And it still is.

Well, somewhat. 

The alternatives, for some, are few. Either He did or He didn't. Now if we hang two scenarios on that "either-or" dilemma, only two possibilities exist: either 6000 years ago God almighty snapped his fingers and it all started on time; or, creation is a cute little story for pre-schoolers.

Already in 1925, the theory of evolution was a lightning rod. When William Jennings Bryan, a fiery Christian populist known for his passionate oratory, entered a Tennessee courtroom, not having practiced law for more than thirty years, he was taking on nothing less than atheism itself.  On the other side stood an equally powerful heavyweight advocate--and agnostic--Clarence Darrow. For the two of them, the question of creation vs. evolution was perfectly either/or. 

That trial set a paradigm in the American mind ever since: evolution is Godless; creation is Godly.

Wouldn't it be sweet if life was that simple?

We've been reading Origins, a wonderful little compendium of the parameters of the conversation, for quite some time now, a fascinating study. One of the authors, Loren Haarsma, grew up just down the road in Orange City and is, in fact, some distant relative of my wife. His accomplice happens to be his wife, who, like Loren, is a pedigreed scientist who's made scientific research her life's work.

It's rare to find a book so generously written. That the Haarsmas have a point of view in all of this goes without question, but their largess for those who don't share their views is immensely gracious, given the passion most of us bring to the arguments.

There are land mines in the war between creation and evolution, plenty of them. The Haarsmas don't try to sidestep them. They go out of their way to find them and open them so the reader doesn't miss either the land mines themselves of the character of their composition. This little study does us all well because their mission impossible is to discuss an issue that has made people point their fingers--and wag them--ungraciously for a long, long time.

There's nothing new about the debate--except science. What has changed since that old steamy Tennessee courtroom is what we know about ourselves and our world. Today, solid scientific evidence exists about genes and chromosomes, knowledge that could barely be theorized just a few decades ago. That knowledge has enriched our sense of origins, of how humankind has developed. After all, the science of genetics tells a story, too, a story we can't simply burn or deliver to the landfill.

Orthodox Christianity has always recognized two sources of revelation--that which we discover in the Bible, the Spirit-breathed Word of God; and that which we see around us, God's own continuing revelation in creation.  "The heavens declare the glory of God," David says, because every last painting in the sky teaches us his glory. No one on the face of the earth misses that sermon.

Balancing the weight of the two can be something of a high-wire act. How can ordinary Christian believers go to the bank with a six-day creation and the fossil record or the science of genetics? Answering that question is tough stuff.

What the Haarsmas do in Origins is try to explain the strengths and weaknesses of various deeply held points of view on just exactly how God almighty created this world of ours--and His.

We live in an immensely fractured world. Even in churches, politics are often far, far more highly regarded than theology. Have no doubt, Origins could raise cain and probably does in some strongholds. 

But the Haarsmas have gone out of their way to treat just about everyone with dignity and justice. The book--it's not long and very methodical and comprehensive--is a real blessing.

The ghost of Robert Ray

Honestly, you've got to feel a little sorry for Governor Terry Branstad.  

Iowa's "governor-for-life" really stepped in it last week when, in a press conference, he said things that, with a bit of a nudge or a twist, can sound freakishly fascist. Let's face it, with an issue like illegal immigration, there's a whole lot of "it" to step in, as the Gov discovered.

"Iowa doesn't want illegal children," or so read some headlines. While that interpretation of the governor's remarks isn't far afield, it's a spin. The line, quoted extensively by the way, was far less ugly.  Here's the way Breitbach reported it, quoting the AP: “The first thing we need to do is secure the border. I do have empathy for these kids,” Branstad said. “But I also don’t want to send the signal that (you) send your kids to America illegally. That’s not the right message.”

That he began with "I do have empathy for these kids" makes him sound human. And he is.

However, in a state with a history that includes another Republican "governor for life," Robert Ray, Branstad's words, no matter how they're spun, do sound more than a little bitchy. It was Ray, after all, who took in thousands when no one else would. It was Ray who said he really didn't care what people said about his taking in all those refugees--he'd do it anyway because it was the right thing to do and Iowans were the kind of people who'd help. It was Ray who took all kinds of excrement from the same people who are saying the same things today about "them people" finding a place in the tall corn.

They're illegal, dang it, and Iowans believe in the rule of law. So there.

For what he said in that news conference, lefties may well make Branstad look like a redneck oaf, but he isn't. It's Robert Ray who makes Branstad sound like a moral midget.

The situations are not the same, I know--illegal immigrant kids are not Tai Dam refugees. Their histories are not the same, and neither was or is their motivations to come to this country. But to any Iowan who remembers Governor Ray's greatest moment, Branstad comes up wanting no matter how his news conference answer is spun.

"The first thing we need to do is secure the border," Branstad said. I've never understood what Republicans and Fox News means by "secure borders," unless it's what Herman Cain suggested, a Great Wall of China secured with electric wires, like Dachau. We have a problem with 50,000 kids from Central American countries right now because we have secure borders, right? They got caught. Just how exactly do we make them more secure?

"I do have empathy for those kids," Branstad said. He didn't say, "Keep them the heck out of Iowa." Never did, even if that's the way it sounded.

Still, my guess is Branstad won't look back on that press conference his finest hour, not with Bob Ray looking over his shoulder.

Correspondence*

She kept them in her desk, but I'm not sure if I'm the one who found them. In the flurry of activity surrounding my mother's death and funeral, I don't remember how they ended up in my laptop case, but that’s where they stayed for the last six weeks or so, until Sunday afternoon, when I pulled out the case

There they were, jammed in the bottom.

It's possible no one looked at those letters for years. In fact, it's quite likely she didn't. Most all of us have old letters. . .somewhere. I do, and I don't look at them and wax nostalgic, don't even need them. But neither do I toss them. They document a life.

As do my mother's, the ones I just discovered. Some run back generations, the writers, the characters, long gone before her.

“It is Sunday afternoon, and I am home alone so I thought I would write you a few lines.” This one is dated—June 21, 1903—and addressed to “Deric,” who was my great-grandfather, a man who died years and years before I was born.

“Edgar and Mabel are out picking strawberries,” my great-grandmother says of her children. Fourteen years later Edgar would be killed somewhere in France at the end of World War I. Mabel was my grandma.

“We went to church this morning. It was a lovely day only I wish you could have been home,” Great-grandma Hartman writes.

I know this from family lore: Great-grandpa Deric was not kind to his wife, not at all. I don’t know the stories, but I’ve often thought the worst. What’s unmistakable within the lines of this letter is his wife's anxiety. “If I had been sure you were not coming, I would have gone into Sheboygan over Sunday [but] I did not feel able to go circus day I had pain all week but feel some better to day it is so lonesome and we are afraid to be alone nights.”

There’s brokenness in the sentences, brokenness in her life.

“I get so nervous sometimes and do not sleep well all night. I wish you would go in business again so you could stay at home.”

Deric was a travelling salesman, farm equipment, but obviously not home often, probably somewhere else, carousing. Before my mother died, she told me that one of her earliest memories was going into a tavern on Indiana Avenue, Sheboygan, and watching her mother retrieve her father from a bar stool.

“Brother is still in Iowa,” my great-grandma writes. “He wrote me a letter this week asking me about the auction and how much the land brought and who bought it and everything else, but I did not answer.” What she says--and how she says it--suggests something shady I know nothing about. But my distant Iowa relatives tell me that “brother” was steered away from Wisconsin by his wife, who simply would not allow her husband to work for or with “brother” Deric. She didn't want her husband to become anywhere near him.

There’s more news, all of it spoken in a cadence that’s fearful and sad.

And there’s another letter with it, this one from little Mabel, my grandma, who was just a little girl in 1903, this one also dated June 21.

“Dear papa,” it begins. “It is Sunday and I will write you a few lines to tell you that I went out strawberry picking and I found a quart box full don’t you think that is pretty good mama taught it was good for me pick that much. Fanny Wykhuis papa is dead and that to bad.”

A little more and then: “My hand is so tired I cannot write any more so good bye write soon,” and the signature, “From your little girl, Mabel.”

Great-grandpa Deric may have held on to these letters, but his character suggests that's unlikely. If he didn't keep them and bring them home, then it's possible these notes were never sent, a possibility which carries as much brokenness as any scrambled sentence therein. 

If they were never sent, neither were they tossed, which means it's likely my great-grandma kept both of them, held them dearly because of what they said about what she had felt. And so did Mabel, my grandma, a generation later. And so did my mother, who wouldn’t be born for another 15 years.  Three generations--now four--could have thrown away these letters, but didn't.

Even though these two letters, written on a Sunday afternoon in 1903, may never have been sent, they have been kept most preciously for more than a century.

When I hold them in my hands—and there are more of them, many of them glorious--I can’t help feel both proud and humbled, proud that there’s a story here, a story that’s mine, for good or ill; and humbled too, to know that in joy and in sorrow, I'm not alone, none of us are, to know through their brokenness that human life is what it is, for better and for worse.

That's what we feel in the psalms, finally, isn't it? In David's joy and in his sorrows, in his horrible fears and in his strutting pride, we see ourselves. We're all alike, we’re all human, we’re all looking for love, we all need a savior.

I think I'll keep them. They're good for the soul.

____________________ 

*A shorter version of this essay appears this month in The Banner.