God in the details

God in the details

We just learned that a colleague of ours—someone we considered a friend and “a good guy,” whatever that means now—has resigned as the minister of the church he has served for many years, following his recent arrest by police for soliciting prostitution.

As it happened, this Sunday’s Old Testament text was the story of David and Bathsheba—or “the wife of Uriah” as she’s more often called in scripture. I had already decided to preach on this one passage, not because it’s an easy story of wrongdoing on the part of a king who takes the wife of one of his soldiers and beds her, and righteousness on the part of the soldier who refuses the king’s invitation to sleep with his (the soldier’s) wife while there’s a war going on.

You see, the king had gotten his soldier’s wife pregnant and thus was trying to pass off the deed as that of the soldier by granting him a short leave at home. When the officer proves to be too honorable of a gentleman—“How can I spend the night with my wife while the other soldiers are in the field of battle?!”—the king then gets him drunk, assuming the soldier will do it while intoxicated.

But the soldier does not sleep with his wife even under the influence of alcohol, and so the king sends him back to the war and has him deliver a letter to the military commander. In the letter the king instructs the commander to position the soldier in the front line of fighting and then withdraw the other troops, leaving the soldier to be killed.

No, I decided to preach on this passage because it contains intimate details which don’t allow us to manipulate the big picture to suit our own agendas. One of those intimate details—diluted in some English-language translations—is that the king sent messengers to “take” the woman. That is, she’s abducted by a gang of servants. And as a female in this patriarchal society she has no choice, making this a description of rape. Another detail—it comes immediately after the king has ejaculated into his soldier’s wife—is that she has just had her period. In other words, she wasn’t pregnant to begin with.

As I read aloud this royal rap sheet to the congregation, they counted how many of the Ten Commandments King David manages to break: working backwards, he covets another man’s wife, he is deceitful, he steals his soldier’s wife, he commits adultery, and he has the soldier killed. He certainly doesn’t honor his parents by his actions.

Regarding the four other commandments—those having to do with God, who made David king in the first place—they prompt the question, “Where is God in this story?” God is not given an active role or mentioned by the narrator or any of the characters in 2 Samuel 11. Certainly a detail worth noting.

Has David assumed god-like power and authority? Does he objectify people and idolize his own status? Having earlier promised to serve God as ruler of God’s people, is David breaking that promise by his actions, thus taking the LORD’s name in vain?

As for remembering to keep one day holy, perhaps if David had attended to this weekly detail he might have remembered to honor his one and only God and to respect Bathsheba and her husband Uriah and all the other people effected by his behavior.

This especially holds true for those of us who work on the Sabbath.

Moving House

Moving House

My mother, who was born before 1937 and thus is no longer required to take off her shoes when she goes through airport security, is moving from the house that she and my dad moved into 21 years ago, to a house-like condominium near where my brother and his family reside. It’s a major move that involves putting her house up for sale, finding a new dwelling in a town 400 miles away, giving away and getting rid of several generations of stuff, packing up boxes and hiring a professional mover.

As she undertakes the multiple tasks of relocating, my emotions are all over the place.

It’s not that I’m attached to the house she’s vacating; I didn’t grow up in it.  But I do consider Nashville, Tennessee, where she’s moving from, to be my hometown. I was born in Memphis but don’t remember much about those early years of my life. Then we moved to Mobile, Alabama, for four years during which I started school. Then came Starkville, Mississippi, where my family endured three years before the great escape to “the Athens of the South.”

My family moved to Nashville forty years ago this summer so that come autumn my father could begin graduate school at Vanderbilt University. Neither of my parents had jobs to go to; we started out living on the ominous amount of $666 a month which my dad’s previous employer—the white Presbyterian church in Starkville that had ousted him over his support of civil rights for black people—was ordered by the presbytery to pay him for twelve months. My mother would eventually find gainful employment as a facilitator of the infant developmental program at The Kennedy Center of Peabody College. She helped babies who were developmentally delayed and worked with their families to stimulate their cognitive and physical growth, enabling some of these children to catch up to their peers.

It astonishes me now to think that during that summer of 1972, with both of my parents jobless, my family went on a big vacation trip out west. After we had unloaded all our worldly belongings into a rented house in Nashville, we loaded up our 1967 Volvo with a 10 x 10 feet tent, a kerosene stove and lantern, and six beer boxes which my mother had shellacked to make water-proof. Two boxes contained cooking utensils and food, and each of us had a box for our clothes and personal belongings. We drove from one national park or forest to another where we would spend days hiking, white-water rafting, horseback riding, reading, napping, and sitting around our campfire eating s’mores.

We had camping down to a science. We would pull into a campsite and—before other people towing a trailer could manage to back it into their site—my mom would unpack the trunk while I climbed onto the hood of the Volvo and opened the car-top carrier and lifted down to my dad and brother the rest of our equipment. Then as Mom geared up the stove and filled the collapsible water container, Dad and my brother and I would pitch the tent and blow up the air mattresses and arrange our sleeping quarters. As you entered the tent, my bed was always to the left of the door. At the foot of my bed and perpendicular to it was my brother’s bed. Next to him and in the opposite direction was my parents’ air mattresses and sleeping bags which zipped together. At the head of each bed was our respective beer box. My mother was usually the last person to change into her pajamas at night, after the lantern had been turned off, and we would sometimes shine a flashlight on her in the middle of disrobing. To scare away any wild animals, we would claim.

Now as my mother picks up stakes and prepares to live outside the South for the first time in her life—aside from the first year of their marriage when she and Dad lived in Edinburgh, Scotland—I find myself in awe of her courage to let go and move on. She’ll be saying good-bye to friends with whom she has shared many lifetimes. She’ll be saying good-bye to the metropolitan area that made great use of her talents as well as those of my father. And she’ll be saying good-bye to the Presbyterian congregation that four decades ago took us in and restored our faith in church. Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, is where I was confirmed as a member at the age of 13, where my mother transferred her church membership not once but twice, and where she was ordained an elder.

Nashville will always be my hometown, just like Louisville, Kentucky, will always be my mom’s hometown, even though neither one of us has relatives living there anymore. I look forward to visiting Mom in her new home in her new town and attending the church that takes her in. After she gets back from her next vacation.

What does freedom feel like?

What does freedom feel like?

I was sitting at a table one evening recently with my husband, my stepdaughter and son-in-law, and my two grandsons, when my heart all of a sudden gushed, "I give thanks for being adopted by this family." We happened to be eating in an Ecuadorian restaurant along the very international street of Central Avenue in the not-as-white-bread-as-it-sounds city of Minneapolis in the still-blue-despite-Michelle-Bachman state of Minnesota. One of us was born here (my stepdaughter); the rest of us hail from Tennessee, Oregon, Ohio, Ethiopia, and Thailand, respectively.  Only two of us (my stepdaughter and my husband) are related biologically. My spur-of-the-moment gratitude reminded me of something a campus minister once said to me: Regardless of where we come from, at some point in life we have to adopt our families.

This is true not only of kin but of country; wherever we come from, at some point we have to adopt our place in this world.

On May 25, 2012, the Scottish National Party launched its campaign for Scotland to become an independent country. The leader of the SNP (who is also First Minister of the Scottish Parliament), Alex Salmond, during an interview on BBC radio was asked, "What will freedom feel like?" He of course could only answer from a pre-independence perspective. I've been mulling over my response as a white European-American who was born in the South in the Jim Crow year of 1960, who at the age of 11 read "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown, and who celebrated Bicentennial Sunday, July 4, 1976, by signing a replica copy of the Declaration of Independence while serving on a church work camp on St. John's Island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina.

What does freedom feel like? Being adopted, taken in, welcomed, given a sense of belonging. It also feels like adopting a place as one's own, partaking of its cultural highs and lows, practicing being a gracious guest and host, remembering its collective sins and working to leave things better than they were—at personal cost to myself.

Freedom is an exhilarating enterprise, but it's also a heavy burden. It brings a sense of pride which cannot be imagined, as well as the temptation of hubris that too often thwarts its very essence. True freedom is when you can take it for granted—it's the air you breathe. Only like the wind you cannot capture it; trying to do so out of irrational fear or for "reasons of national security" leads to unhealthy consequences like war. Freedom never makes things safer, nor is it supposed to. Freedom means risking my life for a better quality of life for others—not just my blood relatives or fellow citizens, but my adopted family around the world. 

Blackielocks and the Three Campers: Part 2

Blackielocks and the Three Campers

Part 2 of a story for the whole family

Meanwhile the three campers had enjoyed a full afternoon taking turns floating on the inner tube, waving to people canoeing down the river, and observing the wildlife. They had seen an otter swim across the river and scamper up the bank into the woods. They had noticed turtles sunning themselves on a boulder and then diving into the river whenever canoeists paddled by. They had spotted a bald eagle nest way up in a tall tree on the other side of the river.

The three campers had also watched a crane, standing in the water down along the opposite side of the river, as it slowly stretched out its long, graceful neck. Then in one fell swoop the crane shot its bill into the water and immediately brought it back up with a large fish skewered on the end. With the fish flailing on its sword-like beak, the crane strode toward the shore. There it lowered its bill and shook off the fish which fell with a SLAP! loud enough to be heard all the way across the river. The crane proceeded to stab at the fish until it lay motionless. The three campers watched as the crane tossed up pieces of meat with its bill, caught them in its mouth, and quickly gulped them down.

Finally the three campers decided to leave the river for the day and head back to the campground. They each put on their shoes, hat, and sunglasses. Daddy gathered up the towels, Dad got the inner tube, and the Child picked up the empty sunscreen bottle before they began walking up to their campsite. 

Along the trail the three campers observed that the bear poop had attracted a variety of insects, and the bear tracks were still visible on the ground. When they reached the path to their campsite they saw on the ground two of the cups which they had used at lunch and left to drain on the picnic table—the big one with yellow stripes and the medium one with red circles. The small one with blue stars was laying on its side on the edge of the table. “A strong wind must have knocked over our cups,” said Dad.

Next they looked over at the shady tree area and noticed the mangled frame and torn canvas. “What happened to our chairs?!” Daddy exclaimed. “No amount of wind could have caused this much damage.” “What’s my chair doing way over there?” said the Child, pointing to the empty campsite beside theirs.

Then they spotted the gaping hole in their tent window. “Oh my gosh!” said Daddy. “It looks like a tornado’s come through here!” The three campers peered through the ragged mesh at all their stuff strewn around. Then their stuff started to move. 

“It’s alive!” the Child shouted. Up from the small sleeping bag rose Blackielocks who was not too happy to have its nap disturbed. “It’s a bear!” yelled Dad. “Quick, get in the car!” said Daddy, grabbing the Child and Dad and pulling them away from the tent.

The three campers rushed to their vehicle and got inside. They watched as the black bear, still groggy and now very grumpy, poked out of the hole of the tent. Blackielocks stuck its nose up in the air and sniffed. “I’m hungry again,” Blackielocks growled. “I wonder what there is to eat around here.”

Blackielocks started to mosey out of the tent, but coming out was not as easy as getting in. Blackielocks’ long, curved claws snagged the mesh, and when the 350 pound creature started to move forward, the 35 pound tent and all its contents followed. 

The three campers sat stunned in their car as every one of the tent stakes popped up out of the ground and the aluminum tent poles collapsed. Blackielocks just kept going, dragging the tent and the sleeping bags, air mattresses, and duffel bags with it.

Blackielocks headed toward the woods, but as soon as it entered the thicket the tent and all the gear got stuck. Blackielocks tried to shake off the mesh which only caused the nylon fabric to slip up over Blackielock’s head. The more Blackielocks struggled, the more entangled it became. Soon the black bear was caught underneath multiple layers of tent and could no longer be seen by the three campers.

“We need to go to the ranger station and report this now,” said Daddy. “Right,” said Dad, still in shock. The Child continued peering out the car window at the huge blob moving under the big pile.

At that moment a maintenance truck entered their area. Dad honked the horn, rolled down the window, and waved frantically. The truck pulled into the vacant campsite and the driver leaned out the window. Dad shouted over, “There’s a bear right here caught under our tent. Can you do something?!”

“Stay in your car,” said the maintenance worker. “I’ll radio the ranger immediately.” With that, all the humans sat in their vehicles and waited until two rangers arrived in a big tow truck. They pulled into the campsite beside the three campers and motioned for them to stay put.

The rangers surveyed the situation, saw the mound of tent still moving in the thicket, and then got out of their truck. Each of them carried a big gun with a dart on the end. The two rangers crept toward the covered mass until they were a few yards away from it, with one ranger standing in front and the other just to the right. Then they both raised their guns, and the three campers could hear the one ranger say to the other, “Are you ready?  On the count of three – one . . . two . . . three!”

The three campers jumped in their seats as the two guns exploded. They watched as the two rangers moved carefully toward the pile of tent, still carrying their guns. The rangers slowly began lifting the tent, tossing aside any loose items. Finally they uncovered the black bear which looked like it was taking another nap.

One of the rangers gently prodded the bear with the nose of the gun. There was no response. Then the other ranger went to the truck and returned with a little black box. The three campers continued to sit in utter silence as the rangers proceeded to put a big yellow tag, like an earring, on the black bear. Then they both went back to the truck and put away their guns and the black box. “We’ll need you to move your car for us,” one ranger said to the three campers. “So we can get in here and haul this critter away.”

“Is the bear dead?” asked the Child. “Oh no,” said the ranger, “just put to sleep. Blackielocks has been hanging around here for weeks, and this is our first opportunity to catch it, stun it, and tag it.  We have about six hours now, before Blackielocks begins to wake up, to transport it to a wilderness area way up north. Hopefully Blackielocks will never encounter people again. If it does, this tag will help identify it.”

“We’re sorry this happened,” said Daddy, still shaking from the experience. “You folks did the right thing,” said the other ranger. “You protected yourselves first and then sought help. Once a bear is in your stuff, there’s nothing you can do about it but seek safety. We’re just glad you folks are okay.”

“Yeah, so are we,” said Daddy. “And to think,” said Dad, “we came camping to relax and enjoy the wildlife.” “I’m just glad the wildlife didn’t enjoy us for lunch!” said the Child, and everyone laughed with relief.

The End