I PROMISED THEM YOU WOULD PRAY

A year, maybe more, seemed to have passed between Thursday, September 1 and Monday, September 5.

My husband Ken’s new role as administrative minister at the White Station Church of Christ in Memphis put us in the middle of starting a congregational response to the Katrina. Once a team of folks got together and identified some needs, they decided to open a shelter on Friday night. So, dozens of brothers and sisters, all committed and competent folks, have been praying, planning, praying, scheduling, crying, recruiting, purchasing, donating, folding, organizing, crying and praying.

Sunday afternoon members of the Osbey family of New Orleans, including four sisters, one finace, and twelve children came to stay at the shelter. They told us that their first cousin Cherlyn Nettles left New Orleans with three children when the evacuation order came and went to Baton Rouge to stay with a relative. Her husband Terrell stayed behind with their 10 year-old child who had a handicap. When the flood waters came Terrell tried to keep the child elevated, but his ankle broke and he lost the child to the floodwaters. He was rescued and taken to a shelter in Arkansas.

Sunday evening, the Osbey sisters got word that the couple had found each other. Monday they received confirmation that the child’s body had been identified. Terrell is taking a bus this week to Louisiana to make arrangements for the child, and Cherlyn, Terrell, and their surviving children may come to the shelter on Quince Road in Memphis.

I told them that my friends at church and other places around would pray for them every day this week as they go through this ordeal. We are saving a place for them so they can stay with their cousins if that works out for them.

So, please write down their names: Cherlyn and Terrell Nettles and call them aloud to our Father. Please pray for their cousins, the Osbey sisters. Pray the Osbey children as they start school.

God have mercy on all the survivors.
May God have mercy on us all.

By the way, this makes the stress of selling our house in Atlanta and purchasing one here seem--how shall I say it?

Minimal.

AFFIRMATION, REPUDIATION, and EDIFICATION
Happy Valentines Day! On February 14, 2006 Harding will be hosting Jose Maria Anzar, President of Spain from 1996 to 2004, instead of Ann Coulter. In an act affirming the highest ethic of Christians--love--and repudiating Ann Coulter's vitriol, though of course, not her conservatism, Harding selected a known statesman.

Now, I will write Dr. Burks a letter saying thanks for listening.

RUMINATION, EDUCATION, AND VITUPERATION

In the dark hours just before dawn, distressing thoughts sometimes persist. Often I pray them away. Just this morning I battled some darkness of spirit.

About 3:45 am today I awakened. For some reason, Ann Coulter’s image entered my mind. I recall thinking Ann Coulter’s popularity among my Christian friends represents a pernicious feature of religion and right-wing politics.
Ann Coulter spews vitriol poisoning political debate with contempt for political opponents.

For some blessed reason, the Lord let the moment of dark reflection pass. I went back to sleep, awakened at a good time, got ready for work and enjoyed teaching my government classes.

I taught about the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

During the course of the day, I observed that there is a time for war and the courage it demands. I added there is a time for peace, the pursuit of which demands tremendous courage as well.

Peacemaking is not for cowards, I urged.

We listed some peacemakers: Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi, and Jesus.

We could have added another peacemaker--Brother Roger who began the Taize reconciliation movement in France after World War II. This week he suffered a fatal stabbing.

Peacemaking remains a dangerous, but apparently rewarding business. Doesn't it say somewhere that peacemakers will be called sons of God?

As I am getting ready to retire for the night, I read online that Ann Coulter has been asked to speak at the Christian university of which I am alum. While an undergrad there I often winced at the assumptions made there that conservatism in politics was the only way. It was often conveyed that it was the only way in much the same way it was conveyed that Christ was the only way. I winced, but still engaged with enthusiasm in political dialogue, social activities, and spiritual enrichment during my days there.

In the years following, I have taught government and economics for many years. In all of those years, it has been my aim to challenge my students to think deeply, read widely, and speak with civility. I pray they will fulfill the Lord's requirements “to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with their God.”

Many of my students have gone on to attend my alma mater, Harding University. I often speak highly of the potential for an excellent undergrad education. I aver the kind spirit at the university. I have done this often in the presence of their classmates who exude skepticism about Harding University. Some assume a small liberal arts college in Arkansas could not be anything but provincial and arcane. I try to disabuse the skeptics.

Tonight, as I contemplate early morning ruminations, hours of teaching, and the news of the evening, I am chagrined. Bewildered. Disappointed. Saddened.

So as Harding University announced with fanfare the name of Ann Coulter as a speaker in their American Studies program, she becomes part of the heritage and intellectual life of HU students as have other conservative luminaries like Moshe Dyan, Colin Powell, and Barbara Bush. Ann Coulter will join that roll call with others as well. Like Spiro Agnew.


Long ago, I accepted the fact that the university embraces a conservative ideology.

Ideology is one thing.

Hatefulness, spitefulness, and contempt for others is another.

Even a brief perusal of her website shows, that Anne Coulter has earned her review from the Washington Post Book World, as “a fluent polemicist with a gift for Menckenesque invective”.

During my years at Harding, I kept these words from J.B. Phillips translation of James on my bulletin board

3:17-18 - The wisdom that comes from God is first utterly pure, then peace-loving, gentle, approachable, full of tolerant thoughts and kindly actions, with no breath of favoritism or hint of hypocrisy. And the wise are peace-makers who go on quietly sowing for a harvest of righteousness - in other people and in themselves.

I believed that then; I believe it now.

I think I'll write a letter to the president of the university. My husband and I are not big donors. Our objections to this announcement may not carry much weight. Ken is a minister. I am a teacher. Although I have never embraced the political ideology of the institution, I would like to think that we exemplify the core values of our university.

But featuring Ann Coulter makes me think, Harding does not value us.

Moving Rocks

After a little over ten years in the same house and at the same job, I am moving from Roswell, Georgia to Memphis, Tennessee.

If it “takes a heap of living to make a house home,” what does it take to move?

It depends on what you have to sort through, on what you have to pack, and what you have to unpack.

My friends know we have had a garage that no cars can fit in, because we’ve a good bit of our past with us.

For example, I have a box of rocks.

I have been moving some of these rocks for at least thirty years. Fossils appear in this box from my husband’s childhood collection. The fossils weren’t formed during his childhood. We’re pretty sure they were already solidified by 1952. In high school he displayed them in his room in some fishnet hung from the ceiling over his antiqued avocado green dresser drawers.

A red rock with some sparkling qualities dominates the box. This rock hales from a park in Colorado. The Civilian Conservation Corp constructed the fences and pavilions at that park. Ken’s dad, Jim, proposed to Ken’s mom, Shirley, at that park during World War II.

Once the boys, exultant in discovery, uncovered shards of broken Coke bottles, rusted AW Root Beer caps, and some pieces of broken concrete. When someone disparaged their finds, one of them defended with, “One’s person trash can be another’s treasure.” A concrete treasure stays in the box of rocks.

I’ll admit, my box of rocks, my portfolios of Trevor and Chris’s artwork, the CD jewel cases, the boxes with the school certificates, medals, trophies, and immunization records needed some thinning out.

Paper, scissors, rocks.

When you move what do you keep? What do you cut? What’s solid and sustaining?

It’s not really the things I see that make moving so hard.

Well, okay. Stuff does make moving hard.

Cleaning stuff out that garage reminded me of a weird little film called Housekeeping in which an eccentric woman dealt with her obsessive keeping of stuff by torching her abode. Okay, so a few thoughts of arson have passed through my mind. Figuring it would be hard to set a fire that would selectively preserve some of the priceless papers has repressed the impulse.

My rocks might have survived a garage fire.

After ten years of boys, of teens, of laughter and tears
of work, of play
of faith and fear

After ten years
I am saving and sorting the things of life
our boys’ childhood
the seasoning of our marriage
the weaving and unweaving of friendships and careers

I have resisted torching stuff
I have sorted, straightened, sifted, and tossed

Now, so much is gone
Yet, so much goes

I have packed
much joy
some sorrow
failure and success

I have packed some fear
and bundled up some doubt

I have packed prayer
and a confidence hard won by sharing the yoke of life
with a loving empowering God of grace

I cannot pack Trevor or Chris and Lauren

I cannot pack my sister, Kim, her husband Ted,
or their children Katy and Josh

I cannot pack my many precious friends

I can take my life with Ken
my mom, Jo, along with the heritage of love we bring from all of our parents
the continuing treasure of parenthood

and my box of rocks

I can make the unpacking a work of art
a labor of love

Unpacking can reveal
gifts received
the grace for which my weaknesses continue to beg
the antcipation of joy, friends, and ministry

Moving hurts
Moving exhilarates
Moving rocks


.

MOTTO SHOPPING

While shopping at Nordstrom Rack last weekend my two sisters began a campaign to find a motto. Not for a business. Just for them. Since it wasn’t for any real enterprise they figured it could be co-opted from a legitimate source and employed for reckless and meaningless self-promotion. The first potential slogan catching their eye was for Nike socks, “appealing exterior-inner strength”.

What kind of family produces sisters who seek mottos?

It became clear to me when we were all together the same weekend to celebrate the wedding of Deborah’s daughter, Emilie Shepherd, to Dale Rohrbach. The minister, Mark Frost said, "Someday Emilie will be raising little Rohrbachs. And someday Dale will be raising little eccentrics."

I think eccentric families seek mottos.

While having breakfast yesterday at Panera Bread Company, Kim discovered the coffee flavors there provided two phrases, either of which might be a fitting motto. She saw potential in “bright and balanced” as well as “dark and vibrant.”

It’s agreed that that “fair and balanced” cannot be a motto. It has already been co-opted.

What kind of sisters do I have that would continue the motto search?

Kim’s a sister that yesterday stopped all of her activities to call and tell me she saw a bumper sticker that read SOMEONE ELSE FOR PRESIDENT. Then, she laughed really hard when I repeated jokes I heard on a Prairie Home Companion rerun. Jokes like, “Hey, John Kerry—what’s with the long face?” Next, she told me all about her Sunday school class in which a graduate theology student from Emory student explained why the ten commandments should not be co-opted by politicians and made out to be a mere public historical document, because the commandments are by their very nature sacred.

Kim’s a person who works hard all of the time to care for her family, to do a good job in her career as a librarian, and to serve the poor. For a couple of years now she has coordinated the COW, Clothes on Wheels, Northlake Church of Christ's clothing ministry serving poor Atlantans.

Deb’s a sister who would find a piece of Victorian crazy quilt embroidered and assembled by our full-blood Chippewa grandmother, have it framed, and then wrap it up and give it to me for Christmas.

Deb’s a person who works hard all of the time to care for her family, to do a good job in her career as a librarian, and to serve the poor. For a dozen years now she has coordinated S.O.S., South Oakland Shelter, Troy Church of Christ's annual one week immersion in homeless ministry serving Oakland County, Michigan. This year's SOS week at Troy Church of Christ began on the Sunday following Emilie's wedding. Never a dull moment for Deb.

Along with hundreds of other books, Kim and Deb read Tolkein, Lewis, and Rowling and tons of the King Arthur stories from the Mists of Avalon to the Crystal Cave.

They embrace the power of story and joyfully believe, as Lewis did, that there is one great Story that is the True Story.They attempt to live out the Story from day to day with grace, guts and passion.

In my life they shine like the son, radiating hope, and inspiring faith.

I don’t think there’s motto adequate to capture their essence, but just for today, it’s a toss up between "dark and vibrant" and "bright and balanced."

PRAYERS WITHOUT BORDERS

To: bevchoatedowdy@yahoo.com
From: Chris and Lauren
Date: Monday, June 27, 2005

“I just wanted you to know that we went to church with the president yesterday morning.”

My son Chris and his wife Lauren attended worship at St.John’s Episcopal Church Sunday morning. They said they sat about five feet away from the President. They experienced a strong sense of his warmth, charm, humility, and sincerity.

Their sense of this confirms everything I have ever heard of and seen of President George W. Bush. I see him as sincere about his faith and humble in the realization of his place before God. I understand him to be one who comes before God to seek wisdom and strength.

The fact that I challenge his administration’s policies doesn’t fly in the face of that perception.

Thinking of the president at worship reminds me of how sad it is that there is such a climate of animosity in politics today. It’s a bit of irony of to me that at the point when Bible believing Christians have gained a good bit of influence, there is a marked abundance of mean spiritedness.


I am not sure how you analyze it, but it seems to me that the mean spiritedness has not come as a single handed swing from the secular liberals. If I didn’t spend a tremendous amount of time with church going political conservatives, I might be able to blame it on the secular types, but the tone of many among the religious right towards their political opposition often drips with mocking and the assumption of moral and intellectual superiority. I think my Bible believing church going friends and the media, to which they exclusively attend, contribute greatly to the climate of animosity.

Sadly, some folks who regularly pray publicly for President Bush never did so for President Clinton. When President Bush was elected, at one assembly a fellow got up and said, “Thank God we have a Christian president.”

Another fellow in the same assembly turned to his wife and said, “So what is Clinton? Buddhist?”

Whatever you may think about Clinton’s politics and personal life, he privately and publicly acknowledges his reliance on the grace of God.[1] I’m not suggesting you vote him or for his wife. I am suggesting that it’s a little scary to hear condemnations and recriminations of any believer asking for forgiveness.

During the Clinton adminstration, a good friend of mine was undergoing tests for a serious illness. She was told she would probably have to wait four days for the results.I remember remarking "I bet Hilary Clinton wouldn't have to wait for four days."

My friend's minister said, "Well if it was Hilary Clinton, I wouldn't care."

When it comes to political ideology, there are very significant debates to be had, but drawing the borders of the kingdom around views about public policy and politicians may show us to be more the objects of the marketing of political consultants than the disciples of Jesus.

He sees way beyond our ideological, theological, political, ethnic, and national borders and loves the whole world.

This leads me to one of my passionate complaints about church assemblies of late. Since the run up to the invasion of Iraq I have sat in worship assembly after worship assembly made up of fairly conservative folks. Conservative in politics. Conservative in biblical interpretation. One glaring inconsistency to me centers around what seems to be an implicit interpretation of I Timothy.

In these assemblies of worship, the women are excluded from public speaking. This is based on the leaders’ interpretation of the somewhat complicated advice on women in the second chapter of I Timothy. Yet, when I hear prayers led--by the men only--they ignore a direct, simple to interpret, command coming from the first part of the same chapter.

“First of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all those in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus who gave himself a ransom for all.”

For years now I have heard prayers for our president and for our troops and for our success in war. I am trying to think of a public prayer I have heard in which we prayed for everyone--for all of those in high positions. I rarely, if never, hear a prayer for peace. I rarely, if ever, hear a prayer for our enemies or for the peoples or soldiers of the other lands embroiled in conflict.

Praying for our troops, our president, and our national security reflects our concerns and our anxieties, but I don’t think that limiting our prayers to these reflects the will of God.

He sees way beyond our ideological, theological, political, ethnic, and national borders and loves the whole world.

We could think of it as living below our privilege. We could be praying for all of the leaders of all nations. We could be praying for all humankind everywhere.

How lonely for our president to go to the table of leaders all covered in prayer meeting folks for whom we have NOT prayed.

What a blessing that we can join together to pray for peace for all nations.

When one looks down on earth from the reaches of space, the multi-colored political maps we usually visualize become the artificial. What’s real is the wide expanse of earth with no political lines.

How precious that Chris and Lauren got to worship with President George W. Bush. How precious for them to gain a sense of his warmth, charm, humility, and sincerity.

We can love and appreciate our president. We can love and appreciate our nation. We can ask for safety and security for our loved ones in uniform. We can debate our ideologies. But we must remember His transcendency. God loves all men everywhere. It's time for us to utter prayers without borders.
[1]
* McDonald, Gordon, ”Body Politics, Amid political tensions, when is a pastor to speak out and when to refrain?” Leadership, Fall 2004 p. 107-108

"Injustice Anywhere"

Ken and I, along with our son Chris and his wife Lauren, walked through the visitors’ center at the Martin Luther King Center last week.

As I thought about the irony of reports of torture perpetrated by US operatives while we work to establish democracy in Iraq and protect our national interest, MLK’s words, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere,” kept echoing in my mind.

Exhibit after exhibit reminded me:

It’s possible for an entire generation and an entire culture to be wrong about important issues.

It’s possible for Christians be on the frontlines of a social and political issue and be wrong.

It’s possible for an individual to speak truth to power, but it may be very costly.

Seeing the response to Martin Luther King’s criticism of the Vietnam War reminded me:

The government will prosecute failed policies in war if they seem politically expedient.

The government will intimidate and smear its critics in war time and seem justified.

Tonight the president will attempt to rev up support for the War in Iraq. Certainly our soldiers fighting there need our prayers and command our respect.

Meanwhile, we should be unafraid to hold leaders responsible for their policies and their rhetoric. We must be unafraid to exercise the freedom to hold a debate over these issues.

Going to the King Center reminded me that while war making is dangerous business, MLK, Gandhi, and Jesus demonstrate that peacemaking is also deadly work.

Jenny and Hal Runkel
Braves Stadium April 2004

The limits of lilting

“Hello, Mrs. Runkel. This is Dr. _____’ s office.” The lilting voice on the other end left the picture of a woman caller in her early twenties smiling as she continued, “The x-ray taken yesterday shows a mass on your lung so the doctor scheduled a CT scan at 2:30 today.”

From listening to Jenny ‘s account of this, the caller might have been letting her know that reprints from the family vacation photos were finished and could be picked up in the afternoon.

I don’t know if there is any good way to let someone know about a life changing challenge, but it seems to me that there might be a better way.

Perhaps doctors need to review their staff’s approach to calling about results. Just because you tell a staff person once how to make a difficult phone call, doesn’t mean they get it down and remember always. Also, patients probably need to tell the doctor when they experience unnecessary unpleasantness, else the doctor will never know.

So many of you have emailed and expressed concern for Jenny and her family. She has set up a website with regular updates so you can wish her well and let her know of your love and prayers. Go to www.jennyrunkel.com

Tomorrow’s post:
“Injustice Anywhere”
Prompted by a recent visit to the King Center

“Not exactly the summer I had in mind.” Jenny Runkel


Jenny Runkel, my blond thirty something friend possesses a figure taut from tennis and sun kissed skin. She’s just bronze enough to show off her pearly whites with out the tanning bed look. It’s a very healthy I-have-been-on-the-tennis-court-wearing-sunscreen type of bronze combined with the potential to model for one of those dentists that specialize in whitened teeth.

Her blue eyes dance and laugh and disarm.

Jenny is conversant on a wide range of topics from the dramatic and important to the spicy and obscure. So in a given day we can chat about Shakespeare, Jesus, and Tabasco Sauce. Her mind sharpened by great literature, a smart--slightly smart aleck husband, and brilliant senior high students, generates the kind of humor that produces in me those deep down in the gut kind of laughs.

When I am with her, for a few minutes, I forget to take myself so seriously.

After an exhilarating and often exhausting year of teaching high school juniors and seniors, Jenny Runkel planned to enjoy her kids, her husband’s growing writing career, and some time to write a bit herself. She planned a trip to Houston, a vacation in the tropics, and plenty of tennis. Meanwhile, lymphoma has forced itself into her body, into her consciousness, and now challenges all of her plans.

Thankfully, Jenny is not just conversant about Jesus, she’s conversant with Jesus. Besides the fact that we have both lived in south Louisiana and both teach high school, we have the Jesus thing in common.

For now, since lymphoma has reared its hatefulness, I am admitting to having a few angry and sad conversations with Jesus about all this. After being thankful for Jenny’s friendship and registering my unhappiness at this turn of events, I am asking for few things. Immediate healing will do just fine. If He chooses the chemotherapy route to heal her, then I want Him to give her an overwhelming sense of his peace and joy in the process. I am asking Him to equip her with everything she needs to enjoy her kids, her husband's growing writing career, and write a bit herself.

As she requested, I am praying for Hal and Hannah and Brandon to feel the love and support of God and of the many others who love them so.

As she temporarily lets go of the blond, I am asking that she be able to keep up her tennis game and bit of bronze. I am asking Jesus to keep shining through her dancing blues eyes and her brilliant smile. And I am asking Jesus to provide to her, in increasing measure, pressed down and running over what she has given to me, the sense of being loved and respected, and an inability to take myself too seriously.

JoJo--Yours, Mine and Ours

This is my one year anniversary of blogging. I wrote one entry on June 3rd 2004, but the first one I really loved writing was on June 7, 2004 called "Prince Albert Goes to War" and it is still one of my favorites. If you read this blog and have never read that post, I would love for you to do so because it's a sweet story about my mom's brother, Bill, who died this time last year.

One startling reality of that passing is that my mom is the last living member of a large "yours, mine, and ours" family. You wouldn't know by her demeanor that she's shouldered the loss of not just her mate and both of her parents, but also all of her sisters, brothers, their wives, and her niece, who was like a sister.

Her demeanor may be to a great extent influenced by her birth order.

First, her natural birth. Do you know any toddlers whose siblings are all teenagers? You know how little ones like that are often doted on by everyone? You know the little one that everyone picks up and loves? Well, I think my mom, Emma Jo Evans Choate, was a much loved little one. This could have produced an overindulged unpleasant type of person. But, not in this case. This "yours, mine, and ours" baby matured into JoJo.

JoJo opens her arms. She picks us up. She loves us. All of us. The whole family. The whole church. The kids at school. The whole staff at Kroger's.

She loves you and you love her.

But don't be fooled into thinking that her cheerfulness precludes a deep seated grief over the stinging losses she sustains. A demeanor like hers can hardly be sustained simply by a natural birth order. It is her second birth, her life in Christ, her spiritual self that keeps the twinkle in her eye, the song in her heart, and openness of her spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that gives birth to an irrepressible spirit of love and hope.

God loves her. She loves us. We love her.

Because God is her father and Jesus is her brother she has embraced the promise of brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers Jesus promised those willing to give it all up for him.

JoJo and Jesus. Yours, mine, and ours.

We are all freshman; we are all seniors

At the piano-Kieran Patrick Dowdy of

Huntsville, Alabama on the occasion

of his senior piano recital, Sunday, April 18, 2005

In the foreground, his parents, Jim and Rachel Dowdy

.

The cloudless morning of September 11th brought the class of 2005 into high school and into a new era of life in America. We all became freshman again, treading nervously a new terrain.

We who teach have walked with them on a kind of balance beam seeking a point of equilibrium that may exist at some point out of our range of sight, perhaps out of our dimension. On the morning of September of 11, 2001 my government students opined that their current event assignment was SO boring. The headlines consisted of an education initiative (always exciting to teens) and a couple of shark attacks. The shark attacks were disturbing, no doubt, but hardly brought about any sense of personal threat to our suburban land locked teens.

What followed the World Trade Center attack was the end of our insulation. Shocked into awareness of threats that had existed for a long time, they saw headlines transformed from tedium to terror. From random shark attacks to beheadings.

Then we went to war in Iraq. As Jimmy Carter accepted his Nobel Peace Prize bombs went off in Bagdhad. The political fallout went from the smashing of Dixie Chix CD's, to french fries, to elections in Iraq.

In our examination of public policy, I often felt that we had to balance the possibilities for solutions to world problems with the gravity of the threats. Because even while living with the fog of war--kids still need to be kids.

In those days before September 11, this class charmed us through their toddlerhood, amused us with missing and disproportionately big incisors, entertained us with their voice changes, and startled us with physiques taking adult shapes, overnight, or so it seems.

We assumed this Class of 2005 would have a world like our’s in which to mature. We assumed that we could prepare them for the ups and downs, and to a great extent we have.

But even as we walk under a cloudless sky, we are a country at war.

This week, graduation ceremonies begin, tassels will be turning, taking these kids away from us. The subject of the photo on my blog today rates as my favorite among the class of 2005. He can be favored because he doesn’t go to the school where I teach, and because he is our nephew, Kieran Patrick Dowdy, the child of Jim Dowdy, my husband’s brother, and his wife, Mary Rachel Formby Dowdy. Graduating from Huntsville High in Huntsville, Alabama Thursday night of this week, he will be noted as a summa cum laude scholar. Along with his stellar academic achievements, he has the added charm of being an accomplished pianist.

As we sat at Kieran’s senior piano recital, mesmerized by his rendition of a Rachmaninoff piece, my heart jumped in my throat when my camera captured Jim and Rachel in the foreground with Kieran performing in between them. For a moment I saw them representing all of us who have launched our children. Sitting, watching, and absorbing the artistry of life. Feeling at once the joy and the pain of being a family. Contemplating what love has wrought. Hearing the music, cheering the achievement, anticipating what's next.

We watch this class of 2005 on one hand confident we have equipped them for the trek ahead. We watch this class of 2005 with an unraveling sense that they are walking a path that we have never walked. Both sensibilities are true.

We are all seniors. We are all freshman.

The vicissitudes of pollen and Prague

My hairstylist's appointment book won't budge until after the big dinner. Twenty essays demand grading. Driving to school, my hair at the miserable can't do a thing-with-it-until-its-cut stage; I glance down noting the floor mats need vacuuming. The brake fluid light shines red and the low coolant light beams yellow. Yellow pollen covers the car. The windshield wipers, sans fluid, turn the dust into yellow granular slimes. As I pull out a quick glance at the mailbox reminds me that the mulching is undone and the snapdragons await planting.

Thoughts turn to home and five loads of laundry awaiting sorting, suds, drying, and worst yet--putting away. Thankfully the Christmas tree is down and put away, but weeks after Easter the fancy eggs from Prague still need nestling in their storage box. Problem is, getting that storage box out would mean opening the pantry which would remind me of the need for grocery shopping and restocking. Restocking the pantry will remind me again, that my husband and son are vegetarians and that I just don't have a good rhythm for meal planning yet. So, it's been three years. My pre-vegetarian meal planning rhythm wasn't all that great either.

Thinking of the stack of unread news, home decorating, and church leadership magazines irks me momentarily until I refocus on the irksomeness of the driver in front of me who seems to think blinkers are for ordinary people. I hope that a few minutes of NPR will help me focus on something more than the cruel vicissitudes of appointment books, pollen, and unread articles. Just my luck. It's pledge drive week.

How much more could go wrong?

Now it's nighttime. I stop working on my classes about 10:30 p.m. and contemplate a couple of pictures my husband Ken and I took on our recent trip to the Czech Republic.

First, Wenceslas Square. Home of the Prague Spring. Few folks alive can forget the thrill of seeing thousands of Czechs gathering there expressing their desire for freedom. Few can forget the spring of 1968 when Soviet tanks and troops crushed the nascent democratic movement.

I see the picture we took of a little wrought iron plant holder mounted on a tile on a building close to the square. I asked Ken to take the picture because I thought the plants were cheery and the wrought iron holder clever.Stepping closer, I saw an inscription on the tile. Our friend, Eddie White, read the Czech inscription explaining that it is a memorial to a 50 year-old woman who was shot and killed at that spot in 1968.

Someone, perhaps her grandchildren, placed the color plants.

What luxury--no, what grace---to experience appointment books, pollen, unread magazines, and ungraded essays as the vicissitudes of life.

Wenseclas Square 

Hi friends.
This week Ken and I are in Brno, Czech Republic with 23 other folks with the GACS Czech Mission Team. We have enjoyed cloudless blue skies and the company of members of the Brno Church of Christ as well as the students at the Brno Gymnazium Videnske--a secondary school. If you are interested in our trip journal Czech us out at www.gacsczechtrip.blogspot.com

Grace and peace to you.

Here's a view from the train station...

One night at the cinema and a week of TV news

Hotel Rwanda
Red Lake Reservation
Fulton County Superior Court
Woodside Hospice
Guantanamo Bay

A tiny kitchen in a small apartment in Duluth

Matters of life and death
Matters of morality
Matters of politics

As we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead
Do it again God
Do a mighty work

Let your angel roll away stones
stones of
unbelief
hatred
racism
violence
oppression
war

Let your people find their broken selves
quickened by
faith
love
brotherhood
gentleness
service
peace

at our kitchen tables
may we speak truth and love and purpose
in the face of hopelessness and threat
may we copy the courage of Paul Rusesabagina
and be students of Ashley Smith

in the halls of power
may we speak truth and love and purpose
in the face of hopelessness and threat
may we copy the courage of the prophets
and be the imitation of Christ