“Gary and Jesus…
Losing My Faith, Finding My Way”


About the title…I thought about giving Jesus top billing. Many would agree he’s more widely known than I am. Plus there’s that “Son of God” thing. On the other hand, I’m the talent on this project, and it’s not like Jesus doesn’t already get lots of buzz. Still…

Anyway, I decided to do the only fair thing and go alphabetically.

My plan is to compare the two of us by paralleling what I can remember of my life with what I know of his. Why? It’s not because I’m especially grandiose (or masochistic). Rather it’s because I have an interest in the humanness of Jesus. I grew up in a pious family and a conservative religious tradition that saw Jesus as being like Hercules without the muscles. God for a dad, mortal for a mother, magic powers. That construct no longer works for me and hasn’t for many years.

I’m a non-defrocked, but un-refrocked pastor. The Lutheran Church frocked me in 1981. In 1997, I unfrocked myself. A few years ago friends told me I should go frock myself again, but the Church decided that in my case they had frocked around with me enough. I suspect they were right. My non-Herculean view of Jesus puts me out of the Lutheran mainstream.

My interest in the flesh and blood Jesus gave me the idea of measuring his humanness against the humanness I know best…my own. I’ve had an interesting life in a train-wreck sort of way…so did he. So, that’s what this book is…autobiography, biography…Gary and Jesus…the two subjects I know most about.

(Because we are the objects of our own most significant deceptions, in some ways I may know more about Jesus than I do myself. For that reason I’ve decided to give him most of the copy. That’s the plan, but who knows. The truth is I do like to talk about myself which right off the bat is something he and I do not have in common. More later.)

Okay, enough introduction. (I hate books with lengthy introductions titled as “Introduction”. Either don’t do them or call them “Chapter One”. The best introduction is either “Call me Ishmael…” or “Here goes…”)

In the beginning (my beginning) there was “Eden” (the Hebrew word for “bliss”)…otherwise known as beautiful Portland, Maine. That’s where I was born, the first child of a Lutheran tile and linoleum layer and a pious, stay-at-home mom. This is the first thing that Jesus and I do have in common. No, Jesus wasn’t a Lutheran (I mean he REALLY wasn’t a Lutheran), but his dad may very well have been in the flooring business and his mom was surely pious.

Joseph in the flooring business? Perhaps, because the New Testament word that we translate as “carpenter” is actually “technon” from which we get the word “technology”. In the first century “technon” referred to a person in any of the building trades. Jesus’ home town of Nazareth was actually a suburb of Sepphoris which by the middle of the first century was the largest city in all of Palestine. For most of Jesus’ life Sepphoris was growing like crazy with hundreds of building projects on going at any one time. If Joseph was still alive after 6 C.E. when the Sepphoris building boom began he and his sons must certainly have worked there and could well have done some flooring or cobblestone work.

So, how come you’ve never heard of Sepphoris? Perhaps because you didn’t go to seminary or if you did you weren’t paying attention. Sepphoris is historically obscure because although it was Palestine’s largest metropolis it’s never mentioned in the New Testament. It would seem that despite the fact that Jesus probably worked in Sepphoris and maybe even lived there as a younger man he avoided it altogether during his public ministry. A plausible explanation requires the following background…

In New Testament times Italy (Rome) was like the former Soviet Union, and Palestine was like Poland. How come? Because under the leadership of Pompeii, Marc Antony, Julius Caesar and his nephew Augustus Caesar Italy had developed a very effective war fighting system and had recruited a very large army to go along with it. One by one, either through warfare, threats of warfare or one-sided treaties, Italy had picked off its Mediterranean neighbors incorporating them into a growing and powerful empire.

In about 36 B.C.E., just as Italy was hitting its imperialist stride, an ambitious, young and questionable convert to Judaism by the name of Herod (he of the Christmas story kill-all-the-babies-in-Bethlehem fame) persuaded Italy to back him in what had become a decade long power struggle in Israel. The result was that Herod became Italy’s puppet king in the Holy Land. During Herod’s thirty year reign he set records for both psychopathic behavior and phenomenal building projects, most notably Jerusalem’s spectacular, mega-money making, first-wonder-of-the-ancient-world Disneyland-esque temple. (Which Jesus loathed!)

Herod died of something pretty horrible (I’ve read syphilis or really bad scabies) about the time Jesus was born and a few years later Italy took direct control of most of the country. The one exception to this was the northern and largely rural province of Galilee which Herod Junior (Herod Antipas) was allowed to be the pretend king of. Junior, who was raised in Rome, was not much better than his old man. Ethnically and spiritually he was barely Jewish and he adored all things Italian or Greek. Junior was also Jesus of Nazareth’s neighbor inasmuch as his palace was but two miles away in Sepphoris. Jesus very likely could have seen Herod’s palace from the roof of his small fieldstone and mud daubed house.

When Jesus was about ten years old most pious and nationalistic Jews in Galilee had had it with Junior’s mewling, bow and scrape suck-up to Italy. One of the most incensed of these Galileans was a man known to history as Judas the Galilean. Judas organized an underground, minute-man group of freedom fighters who called themselves “Zealots” (they were zealous for the biblical God of economic justice). In 6 C.E. Judas’ Zealots attacked a small Roman garrison in Sepphoris. The rebel attack was initially successful, but Judas’ victory was short lived. Within a few days Italy, apparently anticipating the eternal combustion engine, retaliated by turning the city into a parking lot. Those Zealots not killed in the counter-attack were crucified by the hundreds.

When the dust settled Junior decided to rebuild his capital city promising his Roman friends that he would turn it into a Little Italy. Twenty years later that’s precisely what it was. Oh yeah…and it’s also the place where Junior imprisoned and may have eventually beheaded Jesus’ teacher and maybe-older-cousin, John the Baptizer.

And so, with this as background, perhaps the reason Jesus avoided Sepphoris was because it was a very Gentile flavored city whose Jewish residents were prone to have collaborationist’s attitudes toward their Italian masters. Italians and sell-out Jews would not have responded well to Jesus’ call for economic justice. Trying their patience might well have resulted in an even earlier political execution than the one Jesus eventually received down south in Jerusalem.

So, back to our dads, both of who were tradesmen and both of whom may also have been soldiers. My own father, Nelson, served in the Army during the Second World War, and some New Testament scholars have suggested that Joseph had both motive and opportunity to have been a Zealot follower of Judas the Galilean. Indeed, there are some tantalizing hints in the Gospels that like his son Jesus, Joseph too was a crucified martyr. This, of course, would explain why following the birth stories in Matthew and Luke we never hear of Joseph again. It would also explain why Jesus avoided the city where his father may have been butchered.

Does it seem to you that so far I’m writing much more about Jesus than Gary? My apologies. Let me catch you up on Gary.

I mentioned that Jesus and I had pious moms. Phyllis grew up in Minden, Nebraska and was raised by Scandinavian Lutherans who believed that it was sinful to play cards and drink. They preached mightily against both and when they weren’t doing that they were inventing a card game called “Somerset” that had fifty cards (the number of days between Easter and Pentecost), seven suits (the number of miracles Jesus performed according to the Gospel of John) and instead of heart, spade, diamond and club symbols (suggestive of poker and other of the Devil’s tools) Somerset used down to earth, common sense fractions of the kind that carpenter Jesus may have used when framing up a house. I am NOT making this up.

“Playing Somerset is certainly not the same as playing regular cards”, my grandmother would often insist. Her defensiveness was especially amusing to my father who took every opportunity to “tsk, tsk” and shake his head whenever the subject arose. (Following his years in the Army Dad was both a moderate beer drinker and an unrepentant card player). Minden is still the Somerset capital of the world. Look it up on Google.

So, when they weren’t in church or farming, Lutherans from Mom’s hometown played “Summerset” and individually consumed gallons of black coffee so strong and chewy that it kept some of them artificially alive for years.

Dad also came from pious folk…a Portland, Maine ghetto of Danish Lutherans. In those days Danish Lutheran in this country were divided into two groups called “synods”. One synod was commonly referred to as “the happy Danes”, the other, “the sad Danes”. Guess which group we were in. Yup, we were “sad Danes” which meant that officially we didn’t smoke, drink, play cards (even Somerset), dance, miss church, spare the rod or believed that any Roman Catholic (and just to be safe, Episcopalian) was going to Heaven. Mom and Dad met at a Lutheran college called “Dana” and when the war came along they dropped out, got married, and moved to Portland where Dad went to work in the ship yards as a welder. Because of his youth and inexperience Dad came away from this work with a large u-shaped scar on his left cheek. To some it made him look like Al Capone, to me it was always endearing. Although building troop ships gave Dad a deferment, he soon wanted to be closer to the fight and early in 1943 signed up. Following his stateside training he shipped out to the Pacific which put Mom into serious prayer mode praying with a pietist’s zeal and tenacity that her husband would return home safely. In 1946 he did.

That same year encouraged by the success of her war-time petitions, Mom started praying that she would become pregnant. When it didn’t happen as soon as she had hoped she upped the ante and began praying bargaining style. This means that she offered God the following deal… “Allow me to become pregnant and if it’s a boy I will dedicate him to the greater glory of You, Lord, and Your bride, the Church”, code language for, “I’ll use every trick in the book to get him to become a Lutheran pastor.” This is a prayer strategy she learned from Hanna in the Old Testament (see I Samuel 1: 9-11).

Her prayer appeared to have worked, because that’s what happened, although I’m quite certain that during my troubled teens and festive twenties Mom many times offered to let God out of the deal.

I don’t think it’s possible that Jesus didn’t have the same sort of mom. We actually know very little about Mary even though she shows up a fair number of times in the Gospel narratives. Apart from that business in the third chapter of Mark where Jesus’ mom thinks he’s crazy (another thing Jesus and I have in common), Mary seems to have settled into at least a grudging acceptance and maybe even an enthusiastic support of Jesus’ call to reform the Jewish religion.

For me there could have been no chance that I would have developed a serious interest in Christianity had not Christianity been so fundamental to my childhood experience. Worship and Sunday School every Sunday morning, worship every Sunday night, worship again on Wednesday night, prayers at every meal, prayers with Mom or Dad at bedtime, devotions at the breakfast table, Vacation Bible School, church picnics, no pagan Easter Bunny or Santa nonsense, Bible Camp (for adults too!), and Confirmation. And this was just for starters! The most potent Christian indoctrination I experienced was simply observing how important Christianity was to EVERYONE in my family and to nearly ALL of my parent’s friends.

“Ego sum subolesco proinde ego sum a Sarcalogos.” “I am a grown-up, therefore I’m a Christian.” That’s how it seemed until I was seven and we moved from Portland to Omaha and into a largely Jewish neighborhood. Wow! Talk about culture shock! Talk about people who weren’t going to Heaven!!!

This, very likely, parallels Jesus’ experience. Like me he was probably swaddled in religion and it’s almost certain that his mom was responsible for most of that swaddling. Perhaps when Jesus met Gentiles for the first time he had some of the same feelings I had about his people.

And what were those feelings? Well, my Jewish neighbors and classmates seemed a lot like other kids I had known except that they were exotic. For example, some Jewish kids wore yarmulkes even at school, some of their moms played a mystical looking game called Mahjong, a few kids besides speaking English also spoke foreign languages, next door Mark Rueben’s parents had unimaginative tattoos on their arms (numbers?!), and on the whole Jewish kids and their families were more…what’s the word…vivid! They talked louder, hugged harder, laughed more spontaneously, and ate richer food with funny names like “kugel”, “blintz” and “tzimmes”.

Mostly I loved my new Jewish friends and environs. They made me feel as though the world was bigger and more interesting than I had ever imagined. And yet, how can you love a religion and people that had killed Jesus? How could you in good conscience hang out with folks who were going to Hell for their stubborn refusal to accept Christ? (These days I shudder to recall how creepy my childhood version of Christianity was).

Did Jesus have similar experiences both as a child and adult? I think he did. Like me he was raised to believe that he was a member of the chosen people.* However, growing up near a large, Gentile flavored city, and perhaps working for Gentiles and maybe even living among them, may have caused Jesus to rethink or at least struggle with his fundamental religious centricity.

*We Danes did not equate our “chosen people-ness” with the Teutonic concept of a “master race”. We knew we were flawed. We officially believed Luther’s dictum that human being are “stinking garbage cans of sin”. However, we Danes and former Vikings understood that we were the worst of the lot and were therefore the lost sheep that God clearly loved the most and chose above all others.

As I wrote above Jesus’ work as an adult was the work of reforming a decadent first century version of Judaism. This meant that he worked almost exclusively with Jews. However, when on occasion Jesus did cross paths with Gentiles, he seemed to both like and appreciate them. Samaritans, for example, weren’t exactly Gentiles, but to non-Samaritan Jews they were pretty darn close. “Half-breeds”, “back-sliders”, “heretics”…these words pretty well described Jewish opinion about their Samaritan neighbors and cousins. Jesus, on the other hand, was crazy about them. He made a special trip to visit them, he made a Samaritan the hero of his most famous story, and in the Gospel of John the Samaritans are the only group Jesus meets who really get him.

Who knows how Jesus evolved ethically? No doubt part of it had to do with the stuff that psychologists have taught us about cognitive development…notably Erickson and Kohlberg. Perhaps Mary was a progressive and Jesus drank up tolerance like mother’s milk. With respect to Jesus openness to non-Jews I’m guessing that it had something to do with contact he must have had with gentiles in Sepphoris. Even if Joseph was killed as a result of his having been a Zealot, Jesus was clearly not a “hater”. On occasion he may have been a “disliker”, but my own experience has been that it’s easier to “dislike” from a distance than at close range. Dad was a great example of that.

The zeitgeist that enveloped my father during his childhood caused him to grow up disliking Democrats, Jews, Roman Catholics and Chevrolets. He was one of the most theoretically parochial people I’ve ever known. Had I said to any of my school mates, “My dad’s territorial genes can beat up your dad’s territorial genes”, I would have been right!

And yet…he was only theoretically parochial and prejudiced. Like one of his boxing heroes, Sugar Ray Robinson (Dad liked African-Americans) Dad could throw the long bomb, but in the clinches he was a push-over. For example, he thought the world of our Jewish neighbors and loved to sit out on the porch with them on summer evenings, drink beer and listen to baseball on the radio. As a traveling school supply salesman he called on many Roman Catholic schools and would return at the end of the week anxious to share the hilarious joke Sister Susan Michael had told him or talk about the terrific meal he’d eaten in the refectory with Sister Mary Joseph and Mother Sabina.

Dad talked Archie Bunker but he lived Will Rogers. In the sixties he continued to call himself a “Maine Republican”, but he loved Kennedy and began voting Democrat. Finally, when Reagan was elected, Dad could stand it no more and registered with the party of Jefferson, Jackson and FDR. Dad also changed his mind about Chevy’s. Toward the end of his life he didn’t buy one, but he did agree to ride in one.

Dad was confusing to me. By example, he taught me to be a hypocrite, but a good one. Speak evil, do good. Until fairly recently I continued in his footsteps. I don’t like conservativism of hardly any stripe...political, theological, intellectual or social and I have railed passionately (sometimes vilely) against many conservative groups. However, up close and personal my default is to forge a pleasant relationship.

I think Dad had the same default because at heart he was a very good and gentle man very loyal to his family and friends. Unfortunately he was also loyal to the worldview his childhood had imposed on him. In my case, however, I think the marshmallow-in-the-clinches thing has less to do with my being a “good guy” and more to do with a bent toward people-pleasing, insecurity and/or manipulation. I might come back to this, but I need to chew on it a little.

As for Jesus, he seems to have been a lover at the individual level and a bit of a hater when it came to some ideologies and systems. However, I think Jesus was a “tough-lover” one-on-one, willing to say things that people needed to hear, but didn’t necessarily like. This means that unlike me sometimes, he wasn’t a phony lover. “Gosh, I hope they like me” or “Gosh, I hope that they don’t dislike me”, are probably not thoughts that ran often through Jesus’ mind. All of which means that his love was more of the “I love you” variety than the “I want you to love me” kind.

These days you can’t throw a rock in America without hitting a Christian who believes that all Jesus cares about are people loving him. If they’re right then it would seem that over time Jesus has evolved and become more like me. Clearly this would not be evolution in the right direction. (You know…maybe I’ve had better ideas than to write a book comparing me to Jesus. “Gary and Stalin” might possibly have been more flattering).

On reflection, perhaps I’m not giving Jesus enough credit. By this I mean that maybe he did want people to like him. Maybe, “Gosh I hope they don’t dislike me”, did run through his mind frequently. If so, then Jesus was heroic in that he struggled against his own desires and insecurities for the sake of the greater well-being of his sisters and brothers. This is actually a more impressive Jesus than the superhero Jesus that I grew up with.

When I was a kid I bought into the Hercules, superhero-in-sissy clothes version of Jesus. This Jesus could see through walls, he had rays that could come out of his fingers, he never picked his nose or went to the bathroom. My younger brother, Gordon, thought that Jesus “went number one, but never number two”. Back then I had a high Christology and thought this was a dangerously liberal stuff. He, on the other, was very Nicene and considered it a brilliant solution to the two natures dogma.

Superhero Hercules Jesus worked pretty well for me during the first seven years of my life. Except for my childhood asthma these “Maine years” were idyllic. We lived in a large shake-shingle house on a cobblestone street canopied with mature horse chestnut trees. My very loving grandparents lived upstairs and we lived down. I had lots of friends my own age and just outside my backdoor a small New England wood that featured a frog pond about a hundred yards in. By the time I was five I was Jungle Boy and it was reassuring to know that no matter how dangerous my forest adventures were, all-powerful Jesus was watching over me, poised to leap into rescue mode at the first sign of pirates, dragons, or “Bowl Hair” O’Brian…the most sadistic second grader on the planet. Mean as a snake, and how could it have been otherwise…he was a red haired Roman Catholic!

By the time we moved to Omaha Superhero Jesus had compiled a very impressive record with regard to our family. For starters he had brought my dad home safely from the war. (Dad hadn’t actually seen any combat, but who knows what could have happened to him running a motor pool on Maui or playing for the division baseball team in occupied Osaka?!) Jesus also cured my mother’s infertility by giving her me and then as a bonus my two younger brothers, one of whom he rescued from whooping cough. “Bowl Hair” never laid a glove on me, a small tumor over my right eye was benign, none of us got polio and I unwrapped a Lionel train set for Christmas when I was four…thank you Jesus not Santa.

All powerful, all seeing, all knowing, non-pooping Jesus was a terrific superhero to have in your corner if you were living the life of an innocent; however after I moved to Omaha I began running with a “bad crowd”. That’s how Mom regarded my friends…nearly all of them. Poor Mom. The move to the Midwest was hard on her. Even though she had grown up in Nebraska, she adored Maine. She loved living downstairs from my grandparents. She much preferred a sea of water to a sea of grass. She liked having Dad home for supper each night. She loved all of my father’s many aunts and uncles who treated her like an only child, and she loved my dad’s cousins who treated her like a sister. Finally, although Mom was raised on corn fed poultry, hogs and cattle she developed a down east fondness for steamed clams, lobster and buttery fish chowder.

I don’t think Mom liked Omaha and I know that she hated my dad’s new work as a travelling salesman. It seemed to me that our move somehow changed Mom causing her to become more sullen. So, why did we move? Until I was forty I thought it was because of my asthma. I recall Mom telling me that we had moved because Maine was a tough place for an asthmatic to live and that Nebraska would be better for me. Actually, it was a little better, because instead of living in a house where my grandfather smoked a dozen cigars a day and my dad smoked both a pipe and cigarettes, in Nebraska there was only my dad’s second hand smoke to deal with.

I’ve almost always thought about the Maine years as the Eden of my life. Our trip west to Nebraska was therefore also a trip east…east of Eden. Because of what Mom told me about the reason for our move I felt responsible for all of the unhappiness our relocation caused my parent, grandparents, other relatives and friends back east. I knew that asthma wasn’t exactly my fault, but it didn’t matter. I still felt responsible and very guilty. In Maine I thought of myself as an innocent. In Nebraska I knew I was “fallen”.

Many believe that the Garden of Eden story is a myth about childhood. Here’s how it works…

For most of us the first years of our lives seem magical and we experience ourselves as being virtual gods at the center of the Universe. We are always right and what is wrong is simply our own needs going unmet. Gradually, however, an awareness breaks within us that we are not alone and that we compete with others for our needs. Life, this awareness tells us, is a zero sum game in which there are winners and losers. Life, our caregivers teach us, is also a construct of rules that distinguish what is fair...what is good, what is evil. As young children playing a zero sum needs-game with fairness rules we inevitably fail the rules, we take a bite out of the apple and as a result feel ashamed and nakedly vulnerable to the consequences.

As I discovered several decades later, my asthma had nothing at all to do with our move. My parents went west because my wealthy Nebraska grandfather offered to buy them a farm or house if they moved closer to Minden. Dad had no interest in farming and so he and mom chose the house. I’m sure that my parents thought that the move was in the best economic interest of me and my brothers, but I didn’t get that memo and as a result began to feel like Eve…responsible for not only my own banishment from bliss (Eden means “bliss” in Hebrew), but my family’s banishment as well. Because I was born with and did not choose asthma I later came to think of it as my “original sin”.

Was Jesus able to dodge what many believe to be an inevitable developmental fall from bliss? If the “Oedipal Complex” or something like it is universally experienced by male children was Jesus able to avoid it? Surely not. Not unless he was some sort of pretend human being. (Two early Christian church groups took the “pretend human” view of Jesus. They were the Docetists and the Monophysites and both groups were later declared heretical).

So…I was responsible for my own loss of innocence and in the bargain I took my family down with me to the land of Nod. Once there a part of me began to reason, “what the hell…in for a penny, in for a pound”. Eden and innocence were great, but they were irretrievably lost, and in 1954 the truth of the matter was that the nascent devil in me was ready for something a little livelier. Hanging out with my Hell bound Jewish friends was a start, but it was a Tom Sawyer-esque Irish kid and his mom that really made the apple taste wonderful.

What follows is a sermon I wrote several years ago. It was “Trinity Sunday” in the Lutheran Church and I have never been able to understand Trinitarian dogma. I wasn’t up for a homily filled with back flips of logic and stuff I didn’t really believe so I did something a little different. Of the nearly one thousand sermons I wrote over a fifteen year career this was one of the three or four that folks seemed to like the most. Here goes…

Today is Trinity Sunday, a day when we remind ourselves of the three-ness of our singular God. I, for one, am un-fond of Trinity Sunday…almost as un-fond of it, I suppose, as those who over the years have had to listen to my Trinity Sunday sermons.

You see, the problem is that the Trinitarian paradox is simply too complex for a fifteen minute homily. Too complex because, well…to do it RIGHT you have to talk about the difference between the Jewish and Greek world of ideas, about the Cappadocian Fathers, about the tripartite dynamic of cognition, about Fichte and German Idealism…well, SEE…I mean, already eyes are beginning to glaze over.

So…I am not going to talk about it. Not this year. No…for the next ten minutes I am going to talk about something completely different…something not even theological. That’s right… this is going to be like a Sunday off from the normal pulpit stuff…a bonus for all of you week-in and week-out sermon listeners. Think of it as a homiletical snow day for grown-ups.

I talked to my Mom last Sunday. I called to wish her a happy Birthday. While were visiting she reminded me that she shared a Birthday with my dear departed and beloved grandmother who resembled the chubby fairy godmothers in the Disney cartoon, “Sleeping Beauty”. I lived with my parents and grandparents for the first six years of my life back in Portland, Maine, and those were a half dozen of the best years I’ll have on this Earth. Gramma and I were inseparable and had many adventures together exploring the New England wood out behind our house and going on blueberry expeditions along the rockbound coast not far from the world’s most famous lighthouse. Gramma may have been the most spiritual of my relatives and filled up the quiet moments of our days together brightly whistling and cheerfully singing hymns. “And he walks with me and he talks with me…” All this time and I can still hear her…and still miss her.

Mom also mentioned that she had run into Bonnie Baily, or whatever her married name is these days. Bonnie was the older sister of my best friend when I was growing up. Richard was his name…was because he’s been dead now for over forty years…killed in an automobile accident in 1969, the year I was in Vietnam. Anyhow, Bonnie told my mom that her mother, Mrs. Baily had been in ill health recently, had moved in with them and often reminisced about Richard and me when we were kids.

I haven’t seen Mrs. Bailey for a long time, although whenever I am in Omaha, I think about stopping, yet somehow never do. Not because I don’t want to…not because I don’t have the time, but because I know that it would upset my mother who has always been a little jealous of this “other woman.” You see, I spent a lot of time at the Baily’s house, not only because of Richard, but because of his mom, who I thought, and who most of the other kids I hung out with thought, was about the best mom we’d ever met and that we wished OUR moms could be more like.

Now, don’t get me wrong…I love my mother…always have…always will. She has been a particularly great mom for an adult child. But growing up is a hard thing. There are all kinds of opportunities to grow up kind of crooked or grow up not at all…and therefore, moms sometimes need to be tough. In garden terms they not infrequently need to pick you up off the ground where you might otherwise prefer to stay…tie you to a “trellis”…they also need to weed and prune those sucker branches that could keep you from doing what it is you need to do.

My mom was a farmer’s daughter and so she knew how to raise things properly. Her tomatoes and green beans and yellow squash AND her kids were always pretty respectable, not quite blue ribbon, but close…straight and studious.

On the other hand, Mrs. Baily’s garden and kids were a bit…what would you call them?…a bit uninhibited. Her specialty was wild flowers, not vegetables. “Vegetables you can get in a frozen food case,” she used to say, “But where in the store can you find stonecrop and marjoram and French rose and meadow cranesbill?” Well, I had to admit I didn’t know. I also didn’t know where a person could find so quick a smile as Mrs. Baily’s or so enthusiastic a welcome or so many easy-to-come-by Fudgesicles or glasses of Nestlé’s Quick. These two luxuries at our house were considered a bit too frivolous to say nothing of their potentially ruinous effect upon our dinner which usually featured squash or some other garden inedible.

Another reason my mother was uneasy about Mrs. Baily was that she was a Catholic. A fact that made her seem exotic to me but heretical to Mom. Actually, I suspect the Catholics wished that they had more of a claim of her than they actually did, because neither she nor her children went to church. This was yet one more reason for the twelve-year-old son of Danish pietists to think of her as the perfect mom.

“How come I have to go to church when Richard doesn’t”, I would ask at least 52 times a year.

The response was, “I suspect, young man, that you will find out well enough on the Judgment Day.” The implication, of course, was that for their Sabbath trouble the Boes’ would get Paradise and for their Sunday sloth the Bailys’ would receive perdition.

Now, actually, I didn’t have too much trouble thinking about Richard going to hell. Most of us who were his friends assumed he probably would. Richard was a little like the wild flowers his mother loved…hearty, stringy, with a bright crop of Gaelic red hair. The first out of the ground in the spring and the last to fade in the fall. Richard had all of his mother’s twinkle and twice her mischief. He was Harrison School’s version of Tom Sawyer which was why we loved him and why we thought Richard and Heaven such a poor match.

But, the idea that Mrs. Baily wouldn’t make it to heaven…well, that seemed strange to me. Strange because she was so much of what we had been taught
Heaven was all about….which is to say joy and laughter and unconditional acceptance and forgiveness.

What I mean by “unconditional acceptance” is that Mrs. Baily seemed to love me for just who I was. I mean, unlike my own mother, Mrs. Baily didn’t need to worry about what was going to become of me, didn’t need to fret that I had slipped a notch in spelling or that I was developing a tendency for day-dreaming when there was work to be done. No, the me that Mrs. Baily loved was simply the me that showed up at her front door after school…not that potential me that my own mother carried around in her head and kept working so hard to turn me into. Now, of course, these days as a parent I understand that a kid needs both kinds of love and I wouldn’t want to speculate on which is the most important. But I DO know which kind felt the best and which kind made me feel good about me…feel like I suspect we will all feel about ourselves in Heaven.

Now on the subject of “forgiveness” which Mrs. Baily also seemed to embody, I cant’ help but think about that summer night that Richard and I and a couple of others bought the Black Cats and the Cherry Bombs and the M-80’s and pop bottle rockets from this high school kid who had brought back a trunk load of fireworks from Missouri. Fireworks were forbidden fruit at our house. Fireworks were in that category of transcendent evil that included the nefarious BB gun, grave dangers I was taught to fingers and eyes respectively. I was secretly of the opinion when I was twelve that contrary to Mathew, chapter 5, it might in fact be better to enter Hell with one hand or one eye than to enter Heaven with both.

Anyhow, up onto the roof of Harrison School we climbed with our bag of fireworks and with Richard’s Whammo Wrist Rocket, a high tech slingshot, and for the next half hour over the playground below we recreated the effect, which inspired the hardest to sing part of our national anthem. “The rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air”. It was wonderful… wonderful, that is, until the police arrived and ordered us down off the roof and into the car…an order we only half complied with, for when our feet hit the ground someone yelled, “Run!” and off we went…in four different directions.

Suddenly, I was Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape” fleeing Nazi’s. I realized that if I were caught it would mean painful death or worse…grounding for the rest of the summer. I ran through backyards and over picket fences and down dark alleys and across empty lots until at last, after what seemed like hours, I emerged from behind a garage and was immediately collared by a patrolman who led me to his car and into the backseat.

“What is your name, son? Where do you live?” he asked handing me a Kleenex. The same mechanism which had caused tears also constricted my throat so that it was only with a great deal of difficulty that I was able to say, “My name, sir, is Richard Baily and I live at 1224 N. 52nd. Street.”

Friends, Mrs. Baily now held my life in her very hands.

At the door she looked properly surprised and alarmed when the officer asked, “Ma’am, is this your son?”

I cringed. “What has he done?” she asked.

“Fireworks, Ma’am. It is against the law, you know.”

I looked pleadingly up into her eyes and for the first time in my life saw a cloud come over her face. Uncharacteristically, she frowned, folded her arms and began to tap her foot sternly. I knew I was dead when she said, “Officer, this is NOT my son.”

“He isn’t?” asked the startled cop.

“Certainly not,” she replied. “No son of mine would shoot off fireworks when I have told him time and time again how dangerous they are, to say nothing of their illegality. Sir, I am ashamed and embarrassed.”

Pointing a malevolent finger my way she said, “And YOU…you get to your room this instant.”

I WAS SAVED!

Later, over tall, dark glasses of Nestlé’s Quick, Mrs. Baily reminded the real Richard and me about the danger of fireworks, and she told us that we should never run from the police. Then she began to smile her wonderful Irish smile and to reminisce about her own childhood and Fourth of Julys long gone by…and about the time her father had lit a firecracker with his cigar and then in a panic had thrown the cigar and we all three exploded with laughter.

Well…as I think back on all of this it occurs to me that growing up I was blessed with the love of three different women: my grandmother, my mother, and then Mrs. Baily. Each loved me deeply, but with a different kind of love. One loved me with a spiritual love, one loved me as a gardener loves the garden over which she labors, and one loved…well…just me. Growing up I needed all three kinds of love…indeed, I still do today. I do because each is an ingredient in that “fullness of love”…that love, for which we, among all creatures, were made…made by God who is the source of love in all its aspects.

Well, I know…I tricked you, didn’t I? I told you that I wasn’t going to preach about the Trinity, but then did exactly that. I preached about perfect love which comes to us in three different ways. And now may the grace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in the name of Grandmother, Mother and Mrs. Baily…in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

When I read some of my old sermons, especially the early ones, I often involuntarily exercise wince muscles in my face while at the same time doing kegels. This sermon, however, I like and I think there’s a chance Jesus might have liked it too.

I wonder if young Jesus had any friends. I suppose he must have. Even a village as small as Nazareth (as few as a hundred inhabitants) would have had some children. Not as many as a modern small town because the infant mortality rate in first century Palestine was tragically high, upwards of 50%. This was due in large part to Palestine’s dramatic growing and poverty. A hundred years before Jesus’ birth Galilee was akin to the peaceful, happy Shire in Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”. However, with the advent of Herod the Great, the Italian occupation of Palestine, and the corruption, decadence and land theft of puppet-king Herod Antipas, life for rural and urban small-timers became precarious at best. Taxes and usurious interest rates forced upwards of 80% of farmers to lose their land and become reduced to seasonal day laboring. By 30 C.E. the best estimates are that 2% of the population controlled two thirds of the agricultural out-put. As a consequence lots of children died from the effects of malnutrition. Others were crippled by rickets. Children who survived often began working at an early age in order to help their parents to keep food on table.

When I was twelve I had a paper route, but it was only a two to three hour a day job. In Jesus’ time it was not unusual for seven year olds to labor for ten hours at a time six or more days each week.

Jesus’ family was poor, but it’s possible that people from Nazareth were a little better off than many Galileans. This is because Nazareth was conveniently located a half hour walk between Sepphoris where there were construction jobs aplenty, and the Jezreel Valley which was the Iowa of the entire region and required many seasonal laborers. This fortunate location of Jesus’ home village may have meant that Joseph and his sons had enough work to keep their family’s head above water, but it’s likely that Jesus’ began working at a very early age.

What about his schooling? It would have been very unusual for Jesus to have had any formal schooling that required him to be able to read or write. Ninety-five per cent or more of Palestinians were illiterate and there isn’t a compelling reason to believe that Jesus was the exception to this norm. There is no hint in the New Testament that Jesus ever wrote anything, and most scholars believe that the one account of him reading a scroll is the literary invention of Luke. This is not to suggest that Jesus didn’t have a gift for language. He certainly spoke Aramaic, he probably spoke some Greek, the business language of the day, and he likely knew his way around Hebrew as well. If he was formally schooled it was likely by way of a curriculum involving dialogue with a local priest.

And so Jesus childhood was probably short and not exactly what we would call carefree, especially if, as in most families, he had younger siblings who didn’t make it. He certainly didn’t receive what for me and my friends was the drudgery of, but for him would certainly have been the luxury of an elementary education.

Those who study such things say that the effects of child labor include a high incidence of work related injury (the New Testament shows that Jesus had no shortage of maimed people to heal), the loss of opportunity to develop a sophisticated trade, and a maturity too quickly acquired (it’s likely that some of the adults Jesus may have worked along side of were crusty, world-weary and cynical.) Assuming that Mary was some combination of my mom, grandmother and Mrs. Baily the upside of Jesus’ child labor may have been that he was loved, but not pampered causing him to be less narcissistic or pleasure driven than, for example, “Baby Boomers” of which I am a proud and loved-to-be-pampered member.

I want to write a few words about Jesus’ and my religious educations, but first a little biblical background.

We’re not at all sure who wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because the authors don’t identify themselves. Christians in the second century took guesses about authorship and may or may not have been right. Smarter people than I am believe that the biography of Jesus known as “Luke” was likely written fifty-five years following the events of Good Friday and Easter. Luke was not one of Jesus core students (disciples) and is nowhere mentioned in any of the four New Testament accounts of Jesus’ life. If he somehow was an eye-witness he would likely have been in his seventies or eighties when he sat down to write his account. That “Luke” could write and because he wrote in a fairly sophisticated first century Greek has caused many academics to think that he was a Christian Jew who lived outside of Palestine. What all of this adds up to for me is that Luke’s story is comprised of a grab bag of second, third and fourth hand accounts passed along telephone-game style from one Christian to another over five decades. This being the case I am confident that the author of “Luke” didn’t get everything exactly right. In fact I know he didn’t and neither did the other Gospel writers get everything right. Conservative Christians who may still be reading are free to shut this book, further shut their minds and shuttle off to less challenging and more comforting stuff. See ya!

“Whoa, Gary!”, my tiny angel self is now saying to my wounded self. “Where did that come from?”

“You know damn well where it came from. It came from fourteen years of parish work and one year of prison chaplaincy work where I was consistently hounded by right winged modern Pharisees who if they had been contemporaries of Jesus would have been in the mobs on Good Friday screaming ‘crucify him!’”.

“Wow! You ARE hurting!”

“Hey, tiny angel side of me, don’t act so above-the-fray, Zen superior. You know dog-gone well that Jesus himself called his own sanctimonious conservatives a ‘bunch of whitewashed tombs, full of filth and death inside’”.

“Are you sure he said that?”

“Check the New Testament if you don’t believe me!”

“Yes, but you were just arguing, and by the way I agree with you, that the New Testament was written by fallible people who lacked modern means to report on a story over half a century old. This being the case there were certainly inaccuracies. Further, and as you well know from your seminary training, New Testament authors sometimes put words into Jesus’ mouth that reflected their own views of what Jesus might have said had he faced specific issues that they themselves were dealing with in their own congregations later in the first century. Correct?”

“Yes…you’re right.”

“So, if you believe all of that then maybe Jesus didn’t call conservatives horrible names. Maybe the authors just hoped he did because they had their hands full with their own conservatives.”

Long silence by the non-tiny-angel side of me. Then…

“Okay, I’ll grant you that possibility, but let’s move on because I don’t want to get to far off of the track”.

What I was doing before I allowed my emotions to get the best of me was providing background for a discussion of Jesus’ and my own formal religious educations. I brought up the Luke stuff because in the second chapter of that book there is a story about the twelve year old Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem that may not have been entirely or even a little bit true.

And the story is that Jesus’ parents made annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover which was the Jewish version of our Fourth of July. While they were there Jesus ended up in the temple, Herod’s hideous Jewish Disneyland (much more on this later), in the company of Jewish theologians who he amazed with his questions. As the story goes Jesus and his parents get separated, on the way home mom and dad discover he’s not among their large cohort of pilgrim travelers, they turn back, eventually find him sitting among the afore mentioned theologians, and when Jesus is asked, “where the heck have you been, we’ve both been a wreck worrying about, plus walking thirty or forty miles out of our way is no picnic especially in hilly Judea…!”, when asked this Jesus responds, “didn’t you know that I must be in my father’s house?”

This story is so piously saccharine that it almost gags me, and though it could have happened I doubt very much that it did. First of all, as I’ve already mentioned, poverty in Palestine was staggering and few “technon” families could have afforded a Passover week off from day laboring Secondly, and I will talk about this in detail later, Jesus hated the Jerusalem temple. As an adult Jesus did civil disobedience in the temple. Two major planks in his religious platform were the notions that God was not localized and that it was more important to serve your neighbor than the temple. Jesus was murdered by the temple’s C.E.O. and board of directors. And finally, Stephen, the first Christian martyr was stoned to death for speaking disparagingly of the temple.

“I must be in my father’s house”?! As the Brits say, “Not bloody likely.”

However...what I DO think is true is that Jesus amazed whatever teachers he had with his questions.

So, what is an amazing question? Is it something like, “how many Psalms are there?” or “who were King David’s sons?”, or “is God loving?” or “what if I accidentally eat non-kosher?” No. These are ordinary questions for which Jesus’ rabbi or the local priest would have had answers.

In first century Palestine an “amazing’ question would have been something like this, “are you sure you’re right?” or “how much like a woman is God?” or “why is what Moses says in disagreement with what Isaiah says?” or “if David is so great why does Joshua say that God doesn’t want his people to have a king?” or “aren’t we suppose to evenly re-divide all of our money every fifty years?” or “isn’t it more important to work on the Sabbath if you need the money to help feed your little brother who’s really hungry and getting sick?” or “my mom knows more about scripture than our rabbi, shouldn’t she do the teaching in our synagogue?”

THESE are amazing questions and judging from the things Jesus later said as an adult they may reflect the questions he had as a kid.

My own formal religious education was what we Lutherans called “Confirmation”. Here’s some background on Confirmation. In the first couple of centuries of the Christian era entry into the Jesus cult involved:
• learning something about what Jesus said and did,
• agreeing that his ideas about God and God’s hopes for human beings were on target,
• asking to become a member of the local Christian group,
• being briefly submerged in water as a ritualistic way of identifying with pristine Judaism and those ancient Jews who passed through the Jordan river and entered the Promised Land, and finally,
• living life in a way that mimicked Jesus.

Learn, agree, request, get wet, live differently. That’s how it worked. But somewhere along the line Christians started baptizing their babies probably because they developed the crazy idea that if they didn’t and the baby died God would condemn it to hell. In so believing they anticipated what the Nazi’s did to Jewish babies who in one concentration camp were tossed alive into gasoline pits.

God as a Nazi?! I don’t think so. If anything good happens to Jesus’ best and most faithful imitators after they die, something similar happens to all babies who die. If God was a Nazi I’d surely be terrified of him, and to save my own skin I might obey him just enough to get by, but I would secretly loath and be disgusted by him.

So anyway, because Lutherans baptize babies…babies who can’t learn, agree or live differently…Lutherans have reconfigured and improved upon John the Baptizer’s and Jesus’ original formula. They do the ritualized River Jordan thing and then years later do the teaching. Cleverly Lutherans also make the argument for Christianity at a time when getting the agreement is almost always a sure thing, i.e., when the kid is a middle-schooler. For one thing a middle-schooler’s brain is not yet developed enough to wrestle with abstractions (see the Swiss psychologist Piaget) and most eighth graders will believe nearly anything that an authority figure tells them. Even if they don’t drink the Kool-Aid the majority of middleschoolers would rather die than stand up in front of a congregation that includes Grammy and Grampa and say, “I don’t buy this crap!”

To be fair, it’s not just Lutherans who are involved in Baptism-lite. I’m picking on Lutherans because they were my people, however Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists and others do the same thing.

What follows is another one of my sermons that describes an eighth grade teacher who taught me to ask “amazing” questions. Here goes…

I think that Jesus was stranger than we normally think of him as being. I think he was a mystic. Now, do you all know what that is…a mystic? I think you probably do…at least you kinda know one when you see one. It’s someone who can seem to be on a different channel than most of the rest of us…who is attuned to music we can’t hear and yet at the same time does not have a mental illness.

I had a teacher once who was a mystic. His name was Jim McDowell and he was my eighth grade biology teacher. “Call me ‘Jim’”, he told us on the first day of class and then went on to say, “For the first 154 thousand hours of my life ‘Jim’ is all anyone ever called me, so I’ve pretty much gotten used to it and anything else sounds weird. Besides”, he said, “’Mister’ is an anglicized version of ‘master’ and since none of you are my slaves I’m not sure it applies.”

Jim was the first adult who ever allowed me to call him by his first name and it made me feel like I’d crossed a threshold into some new phase of my life. Which is part of what mystics do…they help you to cross new thresholds.

“This is NOT going to be a biology class”, Jim said, “It’s going to be a thinking class. I’m going to teach you how to think more effectively using biology as a track to run on. Do any of you know about Australopithecines”, he asked.

Well, none of us did…so Jim began to tell us about a family whose last name was “Leaky” and who did work called “archeology” in a place called “Oldavai Gorge” in Africa and how the Leakey’s had found the bones of a little man who lived three million years ago and they called him “Australopithecus” meaning “southern ape”.

Jim then told us that the Leakey’s had nicknamed their boney friend “Tarzan” and that Tarzan when he was alive was four and a half feet tall, had a cranial capacity that was only 35% of ours, and knew how to make tools. Jim then divided us up into two groups. Group one had to come up with a joke one australopithecine might have told another…and the other group had to describe something an australopithecine might have dreamed about.

I was in the joke group and because I was a boy and an eighth grader I came up with an australopithecine joke having to do with flatulence. It was the joke we finally all settled on, but because the flatulence joke was my idea I was chosen by my group to present it which some of my buddies thought was gonna get me clobbered. Jim, however, thought it was “genius”. Yeah, he threw his arms in the air then pointed his finger at me and said, “It’s brilliant…it’s genius… AND it’s plausible because australopithecines didn’t have speech centers in their brains and their comedy would have needed to be non-verbal...which is not to say silent...or deadly”. And, of course, we all laughed.

I don’t remember what the australopithecine dream group came up with, but according to Jim that too was brilliant, and so by the end of the class we all thought of ourselves as far more grown-up and a lot smarter than we had only one hour earlier. By contrast, most of our other teachers made us feel like children...and ignorant, so Jim’s biology class was a happy and intriguing experience for most of us. Of course, not everyone thought the class was wonderful. For example, Carol Detweiller, the Episcopalian minister’s daughter, thought it was disgusting that Jim liked my australopithecine joke and said, “This whole class period felt like recess and recess is NOT what we go to school for.”

As I’ve gotten older I’ve discovered that there are some people who for all of their pomposity are really more comfortable thinking about themselves as being less than they actually are and who feel safer when they are being led around by the nose. Me, on the other hand, I loved the class. I thought it was liberating...and I think that is also what mystics can do...help you to feel more empowered...more confident of your inner wisdom...even if it’s wisdom about Neolithic flatulence.

One of the other things that happened in that first hour was that we learned a whole bunch of stuff and we learned it far more easily than we otherwise would have...things like...well, like australopithecines and the riff valley in Africa which is part of the shifting edge of two tectonic plates...and cranial capacities and why jaw muscles can affect the size of your head...and biological classification....Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family...in our case, Animal, Chordate, Mammal, Primate, Hominid.

Well...if you told us going in that we had to learn those things by the end of the hour we all would have struggled to do so, but most of us would have failed. Jim, somehow, without brainwashing us helped to open our minds to a bunch of new stuff that seemed not just new information but an opening to a world we didn’t know existed. It was breath-taking. And that’s also what mystics do…open people up to exciting new worlds.

But…mystics ARE strange. Jim wore sandals to school and all the other male teachers wore wing-tips. He sometimes sat in the lotus position on his desk. Jim liked a singer named Ray Charles, and a musician called Thelonius Monk while our parents liked Patti Page and Montevanni. Jim knew how to soft-shoe and sometimes when he was pleased with something funny that had come out of his mouth he did a kind of buck and wing with an arm flinging flourish at the end. Jim had a picture of his pretty wife…”my dancing partner” he called her and his three year old daughter on the wall of his classroom, and he talked about both frequently. As far as we knew our other teachers were either eunuchs, nuns or androids who went home at night to grade papers not hug their partners.

Yes, Jim was strange, but in a great way, and by the end of the year he did exactly what he told us he was going to do…even to Carol Detwiler. He taught us how to think...he taught us how to look at things from slightly or hugely different angles and perspectives and thus see things we otherwise would not have seen and that few people saw. He taught us to have the courage to challenge him. One day he said, “I am going to lie to you or mislead you five times in the next week. Anyone who catches me gets a two dollar bill, but if you’re wrong you owe me a quarter.” I won my two dollar bill challenging him that boys who have a slightly larger cranial capacity than girls are on average 3 I.Q. points smarter. I wasn’t sure if I was right, but I DID know that Jim was such a unifier and affirmer, that it was unlikely he would say something in class that would divide folks or make one group feel inferior to another.

About this lying exercise, I remember Jim telling us about a man name Descartes who was a 17th century French philosopher. Jim said that Descartes encouraged his students to frequently ask the question, “under what circumstances might what I just heard from that person in authority…under what circumstances might it NOT be true?” “Yeah, ask that question. Test convention”, he said. “Now, don’t be a rebel just for the sake of being a rebel, but DO look at things critically, because you know just because people have always believed this or done that doesn’t necessarily mean that customary belief and behavior is true…or right. However, be aware that when you set yourself up as a change agent, it won’t always be easy to achieve your goals…take for example the change that Rev. King is working to bring about in the South. His change making has been VERY difficult for him personally. Someone bombed his house a couple of years ago, and as you may know someone stabbed him in the chest while he was in New York City just last month.”

“Yeah…working for change can surely get you into trouble, but if you ARE a change agent, and you DO get into trouble know this…you’ll be in amazingly impressive company.”

Well…the last thing that Jim did that years later caused me to think of him as a mystic was that he helped us to feel really connected to everything and every one. Long before Carl Sagan took America on a PBS television trip throughout the universe, Jim took his eighth grade class on trips through both the galaxy and a grain of pollen. He showed us how amazingly big reality is and how amazingly small it is too which in some ways was even more wondrous. But he did more than that… he also connected us to both big and small worlds. “Yes, it’s immensely huge”, he would say, “but YOU are how it thinks. YOU are that immensity’s awareness.”

He went on to help us understand that at the same time reality is unspeakably small and the spaces between its parts...its protons and electrons are so vast, that we are really nothing but clouds, and the only reason we can’t walk through each other are the electrical charges between the tiny and far-flung parts of our atoms “And, y’know”, he said, “if we could reduce ourselves to the size of molecules, and if we could fly very fast between the atoms, dodging them as we went...we could never ever differentiate between the atoms of you and the atoms of me and the atoms of the air around us or the desk or the windows or the trees and flowers or the bricks and steel in buildings. It would all look the same...and it would all look connected...and in fact it all is.” Yes…Jim was utterly breathtaking!

But then, so too was Jesus. He was a mystic par excellence...a strange, different sort of human being who surely demonstrated his mysticism in what is called the “Farewell Discourse” in John’s Gospel…in chapters 13 thru 17.

Listen to what Jesus says to his students…seven things that remind me of the things Jim taught us, but which in the scheme of things are even more important for how we think and how we see and relate to the world…

1. “No longer should you call me ‘Master’, but instead ‘friend’”.
2. The world is a place defined by evolution…through us the old arrangements can begin to morph into something much better
3. You have to be in the world, but the world doesn’t have to be in you. Resist conformity and embrace transformation.
4. But…in the same way that resisting conformity has gotten me into trouble, doing the same will get you into some trouble as well. Take heart, however, because in the long run transformation wins.
5. There is a fundamental one-ness that defines you, everyone and everything. Tied up in that oneness is a transcendent love.
6. The best kind of human evolution does not result in smarter people, but more in compassionate people.
7. Finally, although transformation can be as painful as childbirth, what results is breathtakingly wonderful

That’s what mystic Jesus taught his students in the years that they were together and that he summed up with them on the final night of his life.

And precisely because Jesus, like Jim, listened to a different kind of music and then danced to it so magnificently, two millennium later we’re still straining to hear what he heard and hearing it we re-create his footwork and the dance goes on…and the world is the better for it.

Blah, blah, blah…amen.

So, that was my eighth grade biology teacher and that was the competition that my Confirmation pastor was up against. Rev. Christensen was a “sad Dane” who graduated from Dana College and who some said was a former alcoholic. My uncle, another Dana grad, disagreed. “He was not an alcoholic. He was simply a pious farm kid who having been talked into drinking a little hooch by his high school buddies, got drunk one night, and afterwards thought he was going to Hell. He was simply a prude with an over-developed conscience.”

Rev. Christiansen was a faithful representative of the unsophisticated theological education he received at the small, backwater seminary he attended in the 1940’s. He lacked charm, but had plenty of the serious and pious bearing that in those days most Lutherans expected from their pastors. His sermons were well written, well delivered take-no-prisoners ultimatums to his congregation. “You’re either in or out…hot or cold…there’s no middle ground for the true Christian”. His sermons had a powerful influence on me. They spiked both my zeal and my guilt…zeal on Sundays, guilt the rest of the week.

Occasionally the guilt spilled over to the Sabbath. I recall the first time I got drunk when my fourteen year old pagan classmate, Joey Blair, stole and shared some Seagram’s from the bar in his parent’s basement. At first I felt great, but soon after I felt guilty enough to improvise a slurring, tearful attempt to evangelize both Joey and his nearly seventeen year old sister, Amy, who had threatened to tell our parents if we didn’t share some of our whiskey.

Amy listened for awhile, but finally put the “amen” to my homily when she swayed over to me and in a sultry voice said, “what do you think Jesus would think about this?” She then pulled my face close to hers and gave me my very first romantic kiss…tongue and all. A micro-second later my zeal for the Lord evaporated and a stronger zeal for something else took its place. What a night! What pagan delights! Unfortunately it was Saturday night and the next morning I felt like Reverend Christiansen had smelled the liquor on my breath and was aware of the stirring in my loins and was preaching directly at me. Later at the communion rail I silently promised never to do that first first thing again, but wasn’t sure I could stand strong against the second first thing. Turns out I was able to hold the line against neither.

Confirmation was a two year program in our church that began when students were in the eighth grade. Each Saturday morning during the school year we confirmands met for two hours in the pastor’s study and had lessons on the Old and New Testaments and on the history of the Reformation. We were also required to memorize Luther’s “Small Catechism” in which the original Lutheran explained the how we should properly understand Holy Scripture, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sacraments. Luther concluded each of his short explanations with the phase, “This is most certainly true”.

I was a terrific Confirmation student during my eighth grade year. In part I saw Confirmation as a way to wash myself clean of a lot of post-Maine activities, things I did in league with Richard Baily, Joey Blair and some of my Jewish friends. During that year I was Reverend Christiansen’s star pupil. I was a theological wunderkind. I read and re-read each lesson each night before bed and memorized all (and more) that was required. One Saturday after a class during which I had raised my hand in order to answer every question our pastor had asked during the entire two hours, Rev. Christiansen took me aside and asked, “Gary, have you ever considered a calling to ordained ministry?” I responded by saying, “Of course. Mom made that deal with God before I was born”. I then gave him the details of the conception story and when I was done, Christiansen nodded thoughtfully and replied, “Well…God is not to be mocked. I think you’ll make a fine pastor.” I thought I would too.

And yet…as much I was committed to Confirmation instruction that much more did I love Biology and the way that Jim taught it. Confirmation was about stuff that had to do with the ultimate meaning of life and I enjoyed being involved in the study of something that important. But Biology was thrilling and I could barely wait for each day’s class to begin. Toward the end of my eighth grade year all that I’d been separately processing from each class and each instructor began mixing together in an oil and water way. For example, the pastor was teaching me to unquestionably accept the authority of the Bible and the Church. Jim, on the other hand, was teaching me to respectfully challenge authority and to own or reject conventional wisdom by testing it. In the same way Jim was teaching me about a natural world that was marvelous in its complexity, rhythms and connections, while at the same time the pastor was focusing on a magic supernatural world, discounting as unimportant the “mundane” world we could see, touch and hear. “This world”, said pastor Christiansen, “is but a dim, imperfect and sinful reflection of the world above, and if you think differently just ask yourself what in this world can cure a leper or a blind man. It is only when the supernatural enters the natural that we are permitted to see miracles!”

Apparently I had my miracle bar set way too low because what I had seen in a drop of pond water through a microscope seemed pretty darn miraculous to me. So too did photosynthesis, the citric cycle inside a mitochondrial cell, and fusion within the sun that from a distance of 93 million miles could melt the icicles outside of my bedroom window. Miraculous stuff?! Apparently not. No, according to Reverend Christensen what was truly miraculous was the Old Testament prophet Elisha making an axe head float.

Gradually, I began not to buy it. At the end of my first year of Confirmation I came early to our last class to ask Pastor Christiansen about the age of the Australopithecine bones that Louis Leaky was finding in Oldavai Gorge. Radiocarbon tests had dated them from approximately three million B.C. Our pastor, however, had taught us the world was only 6000 years old. “Who’s right”, I asked.

“The Bible’s right”, he responded with the merest hint of annoyance. “God created the Earth 6000 years ago. This is most certainly true”, he added with a patient smile.

“But, Pastor, my Biology teacher and The National Geographic say that the bones are three million years old?”

“I thought you wanted to be a pastor, Gary”.

“I do”, I said with some surprise. “Can’t I be a pastor and believe the world is really old”.

“How old do you want it to be? Six thousand years is very, very old.”

“I know”, I replied, “but what about the bones? Scientists say that they’re three million years old and you’re not a scientist so how can you be sure they not that old? Does everything in the Bible have to be absolutely true?” I was both a little nervous, but also a little exhilarated that I was pushing the issue and not backing off. Christiansen, however, was no longer smiling.

“First of all, Gary, and this is the most important and true thing I will ever tell you, the Bible is not wrong about anything. Not one thing. Secondly…”

“But couldn’t one little thing be wrong”, I interrupted. “What if one little thing is wrong…”

“THEN…IT’S…ALL…WRONG!!!”, he said slowly and loudly. “It’s either all right or it’s all wrong, and as for your precious bones, I think it’s very possible that God planted those bones in the ground to test our faith. I for one have passed that test and I pray that you will too”. At this point I was feeling intimidated and decided to back off. I was a little frightened, but I was also a little angry “Okay, you’re probably right. Thank you for answering my question.”

“I’m not probably right, I am certainly right”, he said showing a little of his own anger.. “I still have high hopes for you, Gary, but I hope that the next time we visit, it can be about more substantive things”.

All of this happened fifty years ago and therefore the above is an approximation of what was said. But it’s pretty close. Certainly the “it’s all true or it’s all false” and the “buried bones to test our faith” stuff was said. In the aftermath, I believed what he had said about the all or nothing truth of the Bible. Why shouldn’t I? He, after all, was the expert. He knew at least as much about the Bible as Jim knew about science. So now, the issue for me was, will I find something in the Bible that’s not true meaning that none of it’s true. And, of course, also meaning that I don’t get to…or don’t have to become a pastor. My call to ordained ministry was slipping.

During the summer between my first and second year of Confirmation I thought a great deal about the conversation I had had with Rev. Christiansen. In fact I thought more about it than I wanted to or felt comfortable doing. And although I came to no decisive conclusions, the next year I was probably the worst confirmation student in my class and I barely graduated.

I wonder if young Jesus had a crisis of faith. I think that he very well may have because the Judaism that he had to have grown up with was nothing like the Judaism that as an adult he taught and modeled. Please bear with me while I take a couple of pages to provide the background that explains this. It’s actually pretty interesting stuff. Here goes...

It’s hard to know how much of the first several books of the Old Testament is historically true. Probably not much. However, anyone who has read Ulysses or Orwell knows that historical truth is often not nearly as important as allegorical truth. The first few chapters of Genesis are incredibly rich in allegorical and mythological wisdom. Even the apparently silly Noah’s Ark story, in which God volunteers to play the role of monster, is a terrific cautionary tale about the evils and foolishness of genocide. How so? Well, the story is that God is irritated because since Adam and Eve things have gone downhill in a big way. With a few exceptions it seems that everyone on the entire planet is innately evil. Those exceptions are Noah and his family who seem to have much better goodness genes. God therefore decides to start over again with this mutated, racially superior family.

Thus, God has Noah build a boat large enough to house and store food for the 30 million existing animal species…in other words a boat about the size of Montana. God then causes a meteorological event severe enough to cover the entire Earth including the Andes and Himalayas with water. (I have no idea if it was fresh water or salt water each of which would have had some implication for ocean or river fish. The problem is made moot, of course, if Noah also had fish and whales on board). Everything on Earth except the creatures in the Montana-size-boat dies, after awhile the water goes…somewhere. Noah gets off the boat, plants a vineyard, makes wine, gets drunk, stubbles into his tent and passes out at which point his youngest son Ham “sees his father’s nakedness” a Hebrew euphemism for “had sex with Dad”. SO MUCH FOR THE INFERIOR SPECIES GENOCIDE IDEA!!!

God, of course, repents of the evil he has done and then to remind others not to imitate his monstrous folly gives light the new property of having an infrared to ultra-violet spectrum, i.e., the ability to prism rainbow effects.

Silly story, great moral. That’s what’s going in nearly all of Genesis. In Exodus through II Kings allegory fades to legend and legend increasingly becomes a loose version of historical. An example of legend is the Exodus story. There may perhaps be a kernel of historical truth in the events recorded in the Bible’s second book, but only a kernel. The legend is that a man named Moses is tasked by God to lead millions of Egyptian slaves out of bondage and escort them to a “Promised Land”. The king of Egypt has different ideas and refuses to issue exit visas to the largest and most productive sector of his economic operation. Ten miraculous, but nasty plagues later the king briefly relents. However, when the millions of Jewish slaves are nearly out of Egypt’s front door the king comes to his senses and sends an army to bring them all back. Unfortunately, God has yet another nasty miracle up his sleeve and uses it to drown the pursuing army. Under Moses’ circuitous path finding the freed slaves wander in the Sinai Peninsula for forty years until generaled by Moses’ successor Joshua they attack and conquer the “Promised Land” known today as Israel, Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank. Finally, with Joshua’s help the million of slaves stake out twelve tribal areas in their new home then settle down and learn farming.

The above is only vaguely representative of what actually happened. What the most knowledgeable biblical scholars contend is a rough version of what follows.

It is not certain if Moses was a real or fictional character, but it is probably true that around 1200 B.C.E. a small group of slaves managed an escape from Egypt. These fugitives eventually infiltrated the heavily forested and sparsely populated central hill country of Palestine. Their god was named something like “I am who I shall be” (Yahweh) and was imagined to be a warrior god. At about the same time a couple of large tribes of “Apirus” (from which we get the word ‘Hebrews) perhaps known by the names “Simeon” and “Judah”, entered Palestine from the south. The southern invaders and the Egyptian escapees hooked up and then joined forces with a much larger third group of northern hill country inhabitants whom the Bible calls “Canaanites”. Canaanite numbers were constantly being added to by serfs and slaves who escaped from lowland and feudal Philistia located along the fertile Mediterranean coast. The three major gods of this third group were the high god “El Shaddai” meaning “the god of the hills” (“El” for short), Baal a male fertility god symbolized by a bull, and Asherah, Baal’s female consort.

Over time these three groups peacefully coexisting groups joined forces in a mutual protection confederacy. Generations later they further cemented their union by merging their gods, southerners tending to call him “Yahweh”, northerners, “El”. (For a time Asherah was Yahweh’s wife). They also invented a story about each of their twelve tribal groups being able to trace their ancestry back to a man the southerners called “Jacob” and the northerners “Isra-el”…the “el” being a reference to the high god “El”.

This or something fairly close to it is what historians have been able to piece together regarding the formation of the nation of Israel. In mainline seminaries today some version of the above is taken for granted, but the graduates of these seminaries are generally scared shitless to share the above with their congregations.

Of course, Jesus and his contemporaries had no clue that this is how it had all happened. He and other first century Jews took a literal interpretation of the allegorical and legendary documents that they called “the law and the prophets”. They also had no way of knowing that the accounts they were listening to or reading were written centuries after fact, and that the many authors were in some cases more interested in arguing for their own theological or political point of view than doing modern day style journalism or historical writing.

So Jesus took it all literally, but what I think he saw in the law and the prophets was a God who evolved…who, for example, was not the same God in Genesis four (“return evil sevenfold upon your enemy and in this way you will deter evil”) as he was in Exodus (“only take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”). Besides seeing an evolving god I think Jesus may also have seen an evolving divine plan…God’s try and try again effort to rescue humankind from all of its self-inflicted misery.

Here, in more depth, is the unfolding salvation history that jumped out at Jesus as he listened to the biblical narrative.

In the beginning God created a garden world that was wonderful. In order to care for the garden world God created a man and a woman. God wanted these two to be happy, and knew that their happiness required that they become friends with each other, with their environment and with their Creator. God asked the man and woman to depend on their Creator to figure out what was good for them and was not good for them. The man and woman agreed, and for awhile their garden world was “blissful” (as mentioned earlier, in Hebrew “Eden” means “bliss”). One day, however, the woman saw a deadly serpent that reminded her of her mortality. She and the man decided that they could trust and depend on God with many things, but when it came to life and death issues they were better off depending on their own judgments. When they did this “bliss” came to an end. On their own outside of bliss things quickly went south. One of their sons killed the other. The murderer ran off and built the first city, one of his descendants invented the first weapons, the weapon maker’s off-spring put together the first militia and believed he was speaking for God when he said, “you hurt one of my men and I’ll hurt seven of yours!”

Eventually things became so out-of-control that God tried the Noah strategy proving that you can’t solve a societal problem simply by wiping out all of the bad guys. In time things were worse than before. In most countries and kingdoms throughout the world a small number of rich and powerful people were exploiting all of the rest. Societies had become economic pyramids with the king, queen or pharaoh and their families at the top, priests and generals just below them, and the masses of serfs and slaves at the bottom.

God hated this arrangement and so devised a new plan. Plan “B” was that from one of the “pyramid” countries (appropriately, it turned out to be Egypt) God would liberate the slave class and take them to a new land. There they would become the sort of society that God dreamed they could be…a non-top down society where people could again become friends with each other, with their environment and with God. Living thus in a new “bliss” would cause other groups to see what a wonderful arrangement this was and make them want to follow suit.

So…in Jesus’ reading of the biblical salvation story God used Moses to liberate the slaves from Egypt and then had them spend the next forty years in the wilderness learning how to be a “blissful” people. The most important teaching aid that God used in the desert academy was the miraculous manna that Moses and his followers ate each day. This “heavenly bread” showed up on the ground each morning and all that the people needed to do was go pick up enough for the day, but only enough for the day. Hoarding was not allowed. If anyone took more than they needed, then the whole lot of manna turned foul smelling and spawned maggots. Forty years of this taught the escaped slaves not to be like Pharaoh gobbling up more than they needed. There were to be no “pyramids” in the Promised Land.

The other desert curriculum was the “Ten Commandments”. These commands are as follows:
1. Stick with me…I’m the only god you’re gonna need.
2. Don’t use me and my name to validate anything that you know I wouldn’t be in favor of.
3. Take a day off once a week. (Days off were unheard of by ancient slaves).
4. Treat your old and infirm people decently so that your kids will learn from your example and not toss you out when you can’t keep up with the wandering tribe.
5. Don’t kill anyone.
6. Don’t ruin a bunch of lives by sleeping with someone else’s spouse.
7. Try not to take something that doesn’t belong to you.
8. Don’t perjure yourself during a conflict resolution process
9. Don’t go crazy wanting what someone else has and you don’t.
10. Ditto on that last one. Don’t go crazy wanting what someone else has and you don’t.

Rather than the somewhat off-putting title “Ten COMMANDMENTS!!!”, I prefer, “The Ten Finger Guide To A Lot Of Happiness”. That’s what God was doing here. Not creating a score card, but instead offering a map.

As Jesus further read or heard the stories about God’s plan “B” he learned about the holy battles that Moses’ successor, Joshua, fought with the local inhabitants of the Promised Land. Although modern archeologists are certain these battles are legendary, Jesus would not have doubted that they had happened. Eventually, however, he must have doubted that God still believed warfare to be a good strategy in dealing with enemies. In the same way that God had repented of the flood, Jesus came to believe that God now repented of war and that God wanted humans to love their enemies and pray for any who persecuted them. Somewhere along the line Jesus became a pacifist, a fact that nearly two millennia of Christians have rigorously avoided embracing.

Once the Promised Land had become occupied by the Israelites God, speaking through Joshua, established a radically new political and economic arrangement which Jesus fell in love with. For the rest of his life Jesus would advocate that the original Promised Land “Constitution” be regarded as valid for every place and time. Here’s how it worked…

• In the new “Bliss” which is to be a “city set upon a hill”…a “light to enlighten the gentiles” there shall be no human king or pharaoh. Human kings are bad news. The nation of Israel shall instead be a “kingdom of God”. (Jesus uses the phrase “kingdom of God” nearly 100 times in the New Testament)
• In the event of an invasion of Israel by a neighboring country a temporary military leader shall be empowered to form a militia and lead Israelites in a campaign to recapture lost territory. However, when this has been accomplished the temporary leader is to return to his home and the militia is to be disbanded
• All Promised Lands are to be divided evenly among the twelve tribes. Each tribe is to further divide the land evenly among the tribal families.
• Each year a tenth of the grain harvest is to be given to and siloed by the local priest. Each seventh year the people and land are required to rest. The siloed grain will be used to feed everyone. (All of which means that the original tithing concept was not established to enrich the local church or TV evangelist. It was, instead a tax that served the interests of the community as a whole).
• In the 50th year, after seven cycles of this seven year arrangement, all land is to be thrown back in the pot and evenly re-divided. This 50th year shall be known as “the Jubilee Year” or “the Acceptable year Of The Lord”. (In Luke’s Gospel Jesus begins his ministry by saying, “I have come to announce the ‘acceptable year of the Lord’”.)

Here in a nutshell is the politics and economics of Jesus. It would seem that he was Amish.

Back to me. Somewhere during my high school years I became an agnostic. Reverend Christiansen’s, “The Bible is either all true or all false”, and our family’s subscription to The National Geographic Magazine were largely responsible. Every thirty days in that brown sleeved wrapper, a fascinating part of the World and/or Universe showed up in my mailbox. Stories about plate tectonics, DNA, primitive hunter-gatherer peoples, outer space, the ocean floor, deep geology, dinosaurs, Neanderthals, the inner workings of seeds, fascinating non-western and non-Christian cultures…all of this opened up for me a world that was so much larger, grander and more interesting than the world of the Bible. By contrast the Bible was a petty, fairy tale world of David fighting giants and Elijah riding fiery chariots, and a jealous God slaying Moabites or any other group of men, women and children who happened to piss him off. Come ON!!!!

Going to church on Sunday or especially to the beyond lame church youth group called “Luther League”, became brutally painful. “I’m sixteen, why should I have to go”, I would ask/whine of my parental jailers.

“As long as you’re living under this roof you’re going to church. This is not up for discussion”, they would respond. One Sunday evening when I failed to show up for “Luther League”, my equally beleaguered (is that where that word comes from?) buddies voted me in as Luther League President. Pastor Christiansen, who by this time was SO over his former star pupil, had wanted his daughter to win the post and after the meeting called me at home. “Gary, tonight by a narrow margin they elected you to be Luther League President.”

“Really?”, I replied, at first surprised, but then amused by what I knew was a practical joke.

“Indeed. I assume that it would probably be you’re desire to resign the post and allow the new Vice President to assume your role.”

“Who’s the new Vice President”.

“My daughter, Ellen”, he said somehow managing to work both pride and chagrin into his inflection.

“Oh. Well…in that case…I suppose I should…I suppose I should humbly accept. Thanks for letting me know. This is great”, I said, barely able to keep from laughing out loud.

I was impeached a few months later after missing nearly all of the planning and regular meetings. It turned out that my parents were embarrassed enough by the impeachment to give up insisting I go. “You are probably the very first impeached Luther League President in the history of the world”, said Dad. “I hope you’re proud.” I kinda was. It was my first real taste of religious freedom, or more accurately freedom from religion. If, however, I thought I had left Lutheran youth groups inexorably behind me, I was sorely mistaken. Decades later they would return to my life in a big way and not so unpleasant way.

I was not a pacifist in those days. As a teen I got into a lot of fist fights and still have scars on my knuckles from those many encounters. I was almost always a lightweight taking on heavier challengers, but I won a few more than I lost. It wasn’t that I went looking for scuffles, but somehow I found it hard to walk away from an insult especially if it came from a kid who had a rep as a bully. Most people dislike bullies, but ever since “Bowl Hair O’Brian” I have had a particular dislike for their ilk. As I wrote earlier “bowl Hair” never laid a glove on me, but he certainly made life miserable for lots of other kids on our block…really nice kids like my best friend Penny and Stevie, a sweetheart of a kid who lived across the street.

I occasionally thought about taking “Bowl Hair” on. He was bigger than me, but I was brave and fearless Jungle Boy with Jesus in my back pocket. However, I knew it would break my Grandmother’s heart. She, more than anyone, was convinced that I was an angel. She and I had an antiphonal ritual that we rehearsed each Sunday morning as we took the trolley care over to Trinity Lutheran Church for Sunday School. Here’s how it went…

“Gary?”

“Yes, Grammy?”

“Do you know what the highest calling is?’

“Yes, Grammy. The highest calling is to be a Lutheran minister.”

“Just like your great uncle Frankie”.

“Grammy…”

“Yes, Sweetheart?”

“When I grow up I’m going to be a minister like great uncle Frankie”.

“Oh, Honey, if you do, that will make all of us so, so proud.” And then she’d hug me.

No, there was no way I could have picked a fight with “Bowl Hair”. For starters I knew that if Jesus happened to be unavailable because he was busy doing other superhero work, I would likely have gotten whipped and shoved down the sewer. But more importantly fighting would have let my grandmother down and that I just couldn’t do.

When I was nine or ten, my grandparents, Sena and Christian Boe, followed us to Nebraska. This was one of the happiest things that happened to me as a kid. Once again, as we had in Maine, we sat with them in church and often ate Sunday dinner together. As I grew older and began to have questions about Christianity I was careful not to let them in on my doubts. I suppose that the one thing that kept me from arguing more forcefully about not wanting to attend church was the prospect of letting them down. I no longer intended to be a “minister like my great uncle Frankie”, but I also did not intend to in any way hurt two of the most wonderful people I’ll ever know.

One Sunday I showed up in the pew with a shiner I had gotten the night before when a friend of mine pasted me in the eye for saying something unpleasant about his sister. I also had a nearly broken right index finger from a punch I had thrown in return. My grandmother was horrified by the carnage and wanted to know who or what had victimized her angel. My grandfather, however, wasn’t as naïve. When I whispered just loud enough to be heard over the organ prelude “I got hurt playing football”, he simply smiled a polite but knowing smile.

Later after Sunday dinner at their place Grampa invited me to join him at the picnic table in his backyard. Lighting up a Muriel Corona he looked at me and in his Henry Kissinger-esque voice and Danish brogue asked, “who won the fight you were in last night?”

I paused, considering a denial, but then said, “I think he did. It was my best friend and I had it coming. I feel bad about it.”

Grampa nodded, was quiet for moment and then rather slowly asked, “Did I ever tell you about the time I killed a man?” I could not have been more shocked. “You KILLED someone?!!”

“Well, no…not really. But for years I thought I had. And thinking I was a murderer changed my life. For the better actually.”

“What happened”, I asked, hardly believing that anything connecting my gentle grandfather with even a hint of violence was possible.

“When I was fourteen I ran away from home and went to sea working as a crew member on Danish merchant ships.” I already knew this about my grandfather. His arms were filled with tattoos he had done himself during lonely hours between ports of call on the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans. His apartment was similarly decorated with exotic knick-knacks he had collected from places like Siam, Singapore, Egypt and Rio De Janeiro…sombrero ashtrays, brass elephants with tusks made of real ivory, intricately carved and in-laid mahogany boxes, and copper vases engraved with Hindu icons.

“I had a friend on one of the ships I worked. He was a few years older than me and he came from Amsterdam. I liked him a lot in part because we both had a knack for drawing. I’ve always been a pretty good artist, but he was wonderful. He had a sketchbook and a box of pencils and charcoals that he took with him nearly everywhere so that he would not miss the chance to draw something that had caught his fancy. Mostly girls caught his fancy and the one tattoo I have that I did not do myself is this one”, he pointed to the beautiful bare breasted mermaid on his forearm…the one we boys loved and Gramma hated. “He did this for me”, my grandfather said proudly. “In Havana harbor. I think the face and probably more are of a girl he met there and was taken with.” We both stared at the faded blue image for several moments. I remember wondering if she was still alive and what her life might have been like. It was a year after the Cuban missile crisis.

“So the guy who did this was the guy you thought you killed”.

“Yes. We were in Marseille working down in the hold of the ship and he had been drinking a little. The night before he had caught me going through one of his sketch books and became very angry. Although he often showed me his drawings there were many others he kept private. I had wondered what it was he didn’t want me to see and so I had taken one of the pads from his sea chest while he was on duty and I was off.”

“What were they”, I asked, “the ones he didn’t show you?”

“Nothing special”, Grampa replied, “Most were very similar to the ones he did show me. The others looked like his mistakes. Sketches that didn’t work out and were muddied from too many failed fixes.”

“Why didn’t he just tear those out and throw them away”, I wondered aloud.

“I thought about that too. I think he was ashamed of his failures, but still they meant something to him. Often on the page following a failure there would be a successful picture of the thing that had not worked out. Maybe he thought of the failures as being somehow his teachers. Maybe he was grateful to them. Still, he wanted them to be kept secret from eyes other than his own.”

“So what happened then? Did you get into a fight?”

“A yelling fight when he caught me. I apologized, but when he refused to accept my apology I started yelling back. We would have gone at it then with fists, but a first mate broke it up and gave us both extra duty the next day. That’s how we ended up together down in the hold checking and tightening cargo straps. It wasn’t long before we were at each other again. We both said things we didn’t mean and the next thing you know he had a knife in his hand.”

My jaw dropped open, “he was going to stab you!!!” A fist fight was one thing, but a knife fight?!!! Knife fighting was barbaric and primal.

“I certainly thought he could kill me. I heard stories from others about fights he’d gotten into while ashore, and how violent some had been. He had what looked like slash scars on his ribs. He didn’t talk about them, but they could have come from other fights where knives were involved. Plus, as I mentioned, he’d been drinking a little and rum could make him wilder than he already was.”

“So what happened?”

“I grabbed an iron rod that we used to tighten the slack in tie-downs and I swung it at him a few times. It surprised him and for a moment he let the hand with the knife drop to his side and when he did I swung again and although he ducked I hit him square on the left side of his head. The sound when I hit him was awful and his legs immediately collapse beneath him. He lay there on the deck with his eyes half opened but with his pupils rolled up into his head. I just knew he was dead.”

“But he wasn’t, right…?”

“I knew he was dead. And I left him there, jumped ship and two days later signed on aboard an American freighter.”

“But he wasn’t dead you said. You just thought you had killed him”.

“Yes”, he replied.

“So what happened, then”, I asked, relieved that Grampa was not a fugitive who might still have to do jail time. (I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with my grandfather. Who was this kindly, retired Church “sextant”, a fancy name for “janitor”. Why had I not known I was related to such an exciting man?!)

“So then I ended up in America where I met your grandmother, and to make up for my sin left the sea and went to work at First Congregational Church in Portland.”

“You went to work at a church to make up for your sin! Didn’t you miss sailing all over the world?”

“I did miss it, but you have no idea how beautiful your grandmother was when she was a girl, and you have no idea how bad I felt about killing my best friend. The sextant job kept me at home with Sena, and at the same time allowed me do penance. The job suited me very well.”

“So how did you find out you hadn’t killed your friend.”

“I saw him many years later. It was my day off and I was sitting on a park bench down at the docks in Portland feeding pigeons and watching the ships unload. He walked up and sat down next to me. He had a sketchbook in his hand and a tin full of charcoals, and although I didn’t recognize him right away when he said, ‘is that you, Christian’ I suddenly knew who it was and instantly began to weep.”

“Wow”, I said quietly. “How did he get to Portland?”

“On a ship. One of the ships in the harbor. It was a day off for him too and he had been sitting on another bench nearby, sketching. He showed me his drawing. It was a charcoal of the docks and ships tied up to the docks and other ships moored in the harbor, and in the foreground a picture from the back of a man sitting on a bench feeding pigeons. He had walked up to show it to me, and then recognized who I was.”

“Wow. What did he say about the fight”, I asked.

“He said he had no intention of hurting me with his knife, and that he only wanted to scare me. He said that the lump I gave him he had coming, and he was sad that I had run off. He said that he had looked for me ashore for a couple of days, guessed what had happened and for the next few years hoped that he would one day run into me. He said that he had over-reacted to my having looked at his sketches, but that he wanted me not to see drawings that might make me feel less impressed with his abilities and with him. He said that what had happened had taught him a good lesson.”

“What lesson was that”, I asked.

Grampa swung his legs out from beneath the picnic table and began to stand up. “You think about it and figure it out for yourself, and in the meantime this story that I’ve told you we’ll keep to ourselves. This is something between the two us. Okay?”

“Okay, Grampa.”

“And let’s you and me try to stay out of fights too. Your grandmother doesn’t approve.”

“Right”, I said, “but could I ask you one more question before we go in?”

“Of course…”

“After you ran into your friend again, did you regret having gone to work for the church? I mean did you regret having done something that you really didn’t need to do?”

Grampa stopped walking toward his apartment building, turned back and looked at me as if trying to read something in my question. At last he smiled and said, “No, Gary. I suppose I could have done other things that might have made me happier, but I don’t regret it. Not at all. But, you know, maybe one church worker in the family is enough and actually in our family there are two…uncle Frankie and me. That’s plenty. My dad wanted me to help him run a store in Denmark, but I ran away to sea. Gary, if you need to run away to sea, go with my blessings. If you decided not to, then stay with my blessings. We all know about your Mom’s prayer, but you know what I think? I think your Mom got pregnant for the same reason that all moms get pregnant. What do you think?”

I smiled back at him and said, “I think it’s creepy to think about my mom getting pregnant in any way.” At this he and I both chuckled and then we went back into house. I loved that man so much and forty years after his death I still miss him a lot. He was a great guy.

There have been a number of books written about Jesus’ “lost years”, all of them speculative, some of them whacko. I suspect that Jesus’ life prior to his public ministry was fairly mundane. If, however, it wasn’t, and if I had to put my money down on something unusual that he might have been involved in, I would guess that Jesus might for a time have been a Zealot…a first century Jewish freedom fighter.

Yes, I know…a few pages back I wrote about Jesus’ being a pacifist, and certainly he was. But perhaps he evolved into pacifism after passing through a period his life when he believed that war could be holy if it was a means to just ends.

There are some tantalizing hints in the New Testament that what I’m guessing at may not be too far from the mark. For example:
• When in Luke 4:22 Jesus begins his ministry by speaking in a conciliatory way about foreigners, the crowd wondered, “but isn’t this Joseph’ son?!”, suggesting that Jesus’ own father (and therefore Jesus himself) may have had an anti-foreign bias typical of Zealots
• Some of Jesus' disciples were known Zealots, e.g., Simon the Zealot (Lk. 6:15);
• Jesus shared with Zealot’s a marked disgust for the Jerusalem temple
• Simon Peter who was known as "Bar-jona" (Mt. 16:17) a derivation of "baryona", Aramaic for "outlaw" which was a common name applied to Zealots;
• James and John shared the nickname "Boanerges" or in Hebrew "benei ra'ash" which is to say "sons of thunder" another common Zealot reference;
• Judas’ was called "Iscariot" meaning “son of the sword” or “knife man” a common Italian reference to Zealots.
• Jesus was executed by means reserved exclusively for Zealots and run-away slaves

In addition to the above, Zealots got their name because they were zealous for God (so was Jesus), Zealots believed that Herod Antipas was a thief and a tyrant (so did Jesus), Zealots wanted a return to the re-divide-every-50-years-Jubilee-system (so did Jesus), and Zealots believed that the Italian tax system was evil (so did Jesus. When he said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God” he knew darn well that EVERYTHING belongs to God…”the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”).

It is intriguing to think that as a youth Jesus may have earned a reputation as a brave and charismatic freedom fighter. One might wonder why else the Zealots who were his followers would have chosen him as their master. Why else would they say things like, “when you become king may we have positions in your cabinet”, (Mark 10:35 ff.). The only possible way that Jesus’ contemporaries could have imagined him becoming a king was by way of his leadership of a successful Zealot/peasant uprising.

So, if Jesus was at one time a Zealot what would cause him to “repent”? (“Meta-noia”, the New Testament Greek word that is translated as “repent” actually means “to change your mind”.) Who knows, but perhaps it had to do with something Jesus said later in his life, “whoever lives by the sword, inevitably dies by the sword.” Does this pessimistic saying reflect Jesus’ frustration with the effectiveness of violence? Does it reveal a personal sadness having to do with a friend or family member savagely cut down in an attempt to deal with evil on its own terms? Was his own father a victim of the sword? No way to know for sure, but Jesus would not have been the first to become demoralized and disillusioned by the horror and folly of war.

Jesus’ background as a Zealot might have helped him make a better and more credible argument for non-violence. As I will later write about in more detail I too am a soldier become pacifist, and my experience as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam has been useful in my many debates with bellicose “chicken-hawks” of which these days there is no shortage.

But now let’s try to understand how a non-Zealot Jesus may have attracted a “Knife man” Judas, a Simon the Zealot, sons of Thunder and their like into his orbit. What other background or personal characteristics might have given Jesus the magnetism that he would have needed to attract such a large following?

Lots of books and magazine articles have been written on the subject of what makes a compelling and effective leader. Here is a list of a dozen or so of the most commonly mentioned characteristics of an effective leader:

• Possesses a clear and well defined vision
• Has excellent communication skills
• Is a person of Integrity
• Is well disciplined
• Is dedicated
• Is magnanimous
• Is humble
• Is open to new ideas
• Possesses creativity
• Is fair
• Is assertive
• Possess courage
• Has a sense of humor

I think a case can be made that Jesus was the complete leadership package. His vision was pretty clear…the kingdom or reign of God happens when you let it. He communicated by way of brilliant, conversation-engaging parables. As for integrity he practiced what he preached. Discipline? How about his marathon prayer/meditation sessions? It takes a lot of dedication to work on behalf of a cause that gets you slaughtered on a gibbet. Jesus magnanimously told his students, “you’ll do much greater things than me.” In humility he also said, “Don’t call me ‘good’. Only God is good”. As for openness to new ideas and creativity it’s hard to know where to start, e.g., Jesus metaphored God as a woman, he invented non-violent civil disobedience, he advocated for the rights and dignity of women, he taught that it was ridiculous to think that poverty and illness are divine punishments. Nothing is more fair than Jesus’ notion that everything belongs to God and God wants everything to be evenly divided. Jesus assertiveness is evidenced in the many times the New Testament says, “and they were amazed that he spoke on his own authority”. Courage? You’ll forgive me if I mention that crucifixion thing again. And finally, some of his stories when liberated from our ignorance of first century culture (more later) are hilarious.

Good looks and physique can also play a role in the ability to attract a following. Helen’s smile launched a thousand ships. Cleopatra’s nose shaped history. George Washington was tall and good looking. Abraham Lincoln was a tall and gifted amateur wrestler. JFK’s handsome features won over a nation. There is, of course, no way to know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Jesus was a first century Paul Newman. Certainly, he attracted the women…Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, and other unnamed “professional” women.

To wrap this up, there’s a lot we don’t know about Jesus, but there are some not too unreasonable guesses we can make about the ability he had to create a loyal fan base…especially one that was willing to follow him along so dangerous a path. We don’t know for sure what happened to Jesus’ disciples, but the tradition is that most suffered very bloody deaths.

Back to Gary. Paul Tillich is one of my favorite theologians. He was born in Germany at the end of the 19th century, served as a chaplain during the First World War, got sideways with Hitler’s Third Reich, moved to America and taught at Union, Harvard and the University of Chicago Theological Seminaries. He died in 1965.

One of the things that Tillich’s books taught me when I was at seminary is that it’s silly to ask a person if they are religious. Everybody is religious. “How so”, you ask? Well, first of all you have to look at the word “religious”. It’s Latin in origin and is a derivation of “ligament” meaning to “fasten” or “connect”. Religion connects things together. It gives us a sense of if and how our lives are connected to each other, to the world and to God. Even if an atheist avows that there is no God, she is still religious in the sense that she believes her connectedness does not include a god.

But Tillich went one step further and wrote that not only are all people religious, but that all people actually believe in God. Or more accurately “a god” who he defined as whatever a person’s “ultimate concern” is. Said differently Tillich asked, “what’s the most important thing in your life? Whatever your answer is, that’s your ‘god’”. Below are some examples of common and one not-so-common ultimate concerns:

• My spouse, kids or family
• My career
• My country
• My physical fitness
• My volunteer work
• My avocation
• My wealth
• My reputation
• My status
• My political convictions and involvements
• My causes
• My pleasures
• Israel’s Jesus through whom humane-ness and god-ness are revealed
• My next drink
• My sobriety
• My cat

Tillich observed that there are as many possible “ultimate concerns” (gods) as there are people capable of having them. At the same time he insisted that not all gods are equal, and that some are more worthy of devotion than others. Paraphrasing Tillich, “In order for a god to be worthy of a following that god has to do three things for its devotee. First, it must give them their identity. It must help them to understand who they are. Second, it must protect them from evil…from whatever they feel most profoundly threatened by. Third, it must give them some measure of whatever they understand the good life to be…some regular activities that evoke feelings ranging from satisfaction to joy.”

Using this definition of an “ultimate concern” a cat can actually be a god. “Who am I? Well, I’m proud to say that I am the owner of ‘Fluffy’ the most amazing feline creature in North America. Maybe ever. That’s who I am!” (Identity), “I used to live alone and I was miserable and I hated my life, but then I adopted Fluff and now I have the companionship I craved and my neighbors are proud of the ribbons we’ve won at local Cat Shows”. (Protected from the evils of loneliness and a lack of prestige). “And I can’t tell you how much fun Fluff and I have at these shows. We’ve both made lots of friends among the regular entrants and I particularly enjoy the hospitality events sponsored by veterinary groups and others”. (The good life.) (All of this reminds me of one of my favorite comedy movies, Christopher Guest’s “Best In Show”.)

The problem most gods have is that they have a tendency to let their devotees down and when they do devotee behavior can range from quiet angst to dangerous desperation. When an individual’s god dies, e.g., Fluffy succumbs to feline leukemia, the result can have mild to serious repercussions for the devotee and her immediate circle of friends, etc. When a nation’s god dies, e.g., Stalin’s five year plans fail, the response can be horrific, e.g., the Archipelagoes.

Okay…so how does this relate to my autobiography? When, as a young teen, I gradually lost faith in the God of my childhood I became anxious and even now recall feeling adrift. Of course, I had no idea who Tillich was and didn’t have the cognitive development or psychological and philosophical sophistication to understand what I was going through. I just felt alienated and vaguely, but perilously cut off. I suspect that lots of teens, even those without a crumbling religious faith, feel something like this as they’re making their way from childhood to adulthood.

Eric Erickson, the late great developmental psychologist, taught that most adolescents experienced what he called “identity vs. identity diffusion”. By this he meant that the time arrives in a young teen’s life when he is no longer comfortable being Nelson and Phyllis’ little boy Gary, and needs to become his own person. In hunter gatherer societies this is easily accomplished. Fourteen year old hunter-gather-Gary simply get’s married, moves out and starts his own family. However, in more sophisticated societies where it’s necessary to have a much longer period of education teens are less able to move physically away from home. Thus in danger of remaining Nelson and Phyllis’ little boy Gary) and never becoming a true individual the teen who can’t move out from under his parent’s roof instead moves out from beneath his parent’s identifying values.

So…if Mom and Pop love opera, I’ll love the “Rolling Stones”. If Phyllis and Nelson are anal about neatness, I’ll be a slob. If Dad wears his hair short (actually he wore it bald) I’ll wear it down to my tooches. AND, if Christianity and the church are the center of my parent’s lives, they won’t be the center of mine. And that’s kinda what happened to me.

What I have written about my struggle sorting out the relationship between science and religion is still a big reason why I lost my faith, but it might not have been the only reason. This Eric Erickson developmental psychology stuff may also have played a role.

(And while we’re on the subject, could stages of psychological development have been at play in Jesus’ life? If he was human they did. So, maybe if Joe was a strident Zealot militant Jesus became his own person by choosing pacifism. And perhaps if Mary was a “fundy” then to get out from beneath her apron strings young Jesus became a liberal. Who knows, but it’s not implausible.)

Having left behind a god defined by a literal reading of the Bible, I moved on to friends as my new “ultimate concern”. And for a time, what a wonderful god they were! They gave me my identity (who am I?...I’m the guy who hangs out with Steve and Robby and Kenny and Dick). They protected me from the evil of being a no-friends-nerd. They gave me the good life of picking up girls, working on cars, playing sandlot football and getting college kids to buy us beer. What could be better! God bless my new god!!!

This was an interesting time in my life. No longer devoted to the God who believed my body to be the temple of the Holy Spirit I was free to reopen under-new-management. Goodbye temple, hello Boe’s Tavern, Smoking Allowed, Single Women Welcome. No longer compelled to have a care for “whatsoever cometh out of a man defileth him” I could now hone my cussing skills to a point where I became the Midwest’s Marcel Proust of profanity. No longer bound to “walk in the ways of the just”, I discovered the thrills and adventures of shoplifting. (As a sixteen year old bagboy working at a Hinky Dinky grocery store in Omaha I devised a method of embezzlement that allowed me to purloin 73 cases of bottled beer over a six month period. Unfortunately I was unsuccessful at stealing my 74th case which brought my shoplifting career to an abrupt end followed by a grounding that lasted just slightly less time than the Pre-Cambrian Geologic Period.

In addition, because I had somehow been led to believe that godliness and good grades were ethically linked (the result of too much exposure to my parents emotionally threatening, “Jesus will be sad if you don’t do the best you can”), I was suddenly liberated from the need to pay attention in class and study at home. Indeed, my new god viewed school merely as a gathering place for friends, no more or less important than the mall or local A and W Drive-In. For the god of my friends school was a kind of Laugh Factory where humor should abound and where I had a chance to perfect my comedy stylings.

I’ve always found it enjoyable and relatively easy to make people laugh. Whatever brain chemical that gets conjured up by stimuli we experience as pleasurable (is it dopamine?), I get a hefty shot off whenever I make someone laugh. I’m clearly addicted to smiles especially the ones that I am able to create. I’m not sure that this is an entirely healthy characteristic. Just like a hardcore junkie I’m entirely willing to interrupt a serious task or to sacrifice my own dignity for a hit. At the heart of things my predilection for comedy may either be a way to get people to like me (a first step in gaining a friend) or a means of besting them. As many comedians have famously reflected getting a person to laugh is a way to disable and thereby to defeat them. People tend to like folks that please them, but they also want to be liked by those who conquer them. My high school jokes, classroom pranks and silly behavior may simply have been the liturgy by which I worshipped my teenage deity, the “Friend God”.

In further service to my new god my grades settled gradually from A’s in the 7th and 8th grades to B’s and C’s in 9th grade, solid C’s in tenth, coming to rest in the comfortable, easy to maintain C minus to mid-D range during my final two high school years. This new way of relating to the educational process seemed fine to me, but it caused consternation for my parents and was a curiosity to my counselors. “Gary, this is the third time you’ve been kick out of French, and you’re still working off the thirty detention hours you got for stealing the mercury and sulfuric acid from the chemistry lab. What in the world is going on with you?!!”

“I dunno.”

“Well, something clearly IS going on with you. You’re a smart kid. You had 99’s on your Iowa Basic Skills Tests. Your SAT scores got your name in the newspaper. And yet you may need to attend summer school to graduate. What gives?!”

“Maybe it’s mercury poisoning.”

“What! There’s no such thing. Don’t get smart with me.”

“No, really, mercury poisoning is a real thing. I’m not making this up. (I was). Our next door neighbor is a doctor and when I gave one of his kids a mercury coated dime he told me it can cause you to be disorganized and have difficulty concentrating and make you more talkative.”

“I don’t think I believe you.”

“Fine, his name is Dr. Margolin…you should call him if you don’t believe me, and he also said that if you had severe enough mercury poisoning it was catching.”

Telling him that it was catching was genius, because my counselor immediately pushed his chair back from his desk, told me to behave myself and sent me back to class. The irony in this recreation of an actual conversation is that there really are neurological problems caused by mercury poisoning and during both my ninth and twelfth grades I filch small Elmer’s Glue shaped plastic bottles of mercury from the chemistry storage room. So who knows, perhaps environmental factors did play a role in how I behaved during that period of my life.

Was Jesus significantly affected his environment? Did his mother receive proper nutrition during her pregnancy? Did Jesus have mild rickets as a result of a calcium or vitamin D deficiency? Was he in generally in poor health because he lacked a diet rich in red meat from which humans get most of the zinc necessary for a robust immune system? Did he, like many of his contemporaries, suffer the effects of chronic malaria or pellagra or beriberi or scurvy. These illnesses seem antiquated to us (isn’t scurvy something that pirates get?) But they are very real for poor people even today and in Jesus’ time it was rare to find a poor rural or urban family untouched by one or more of these debilitating conditions.

Other important environmental problems that Jesus would have had to deal with included typhoid fever, cholera and hepatitis that were associated with inadequate sewage systems and polluted water. These diseases were endemic to first century Palestinians and the young, elderly and weak paid the highest price. But nobody, not even Jesus, could have avoided the constant, irritating, often debilitating gastrointestinal issues that plagued nearly everyone.

I can imagine Jesus arriving one evening in a small Galilean hamlet anxious to talk with the local peasants about his increasingly famous “kingdom of God” philosophy. He waits for the crowd to get comfortably seated, begins by introducing his traveling companions and just as he prepares to launch into his well-used “Prodigal Son” parable hears the quiet rumble and feels the abdominal tremor that tells him “you need to call an immediate time out and scoot as fast as you can to a private squatting place.” How embarrassing!

Or how disheartening it would have been for Jesus to be jazzed for the opportunity to teach and lead a discussion at an important Galilean synagogue, then wake up Saturday morning with chills and fever from a circadian reoccurrence of malaria. I’ll have more to say about disease when I get around to debunking Jesus supernatural powers of healing. (He actually discovered better ways to heal than by vainly attempting magic powers).

I want to add one more detail of my teenage years that probably aligns with Jesus’ adolescence. From the time I was twelve years old and had a paper route I worked. I kept the paper route until I was old enough to get the sacking job at Hinky Dinky. Shortly after being fired for my prohibition activities I was hired at a Safeway store where I worked for the next three years as a sacker, checker, stock boy, produce assistant, floor loved this job and made lots of very good friends. Steve Peterson who went to a different high school became my best friend. Robby Glover became my first African-American buddy. (We had only one “negro” at my high school and he was a freshman when I was a senior). Joey Sesto sold me his metallic blue ’57 Chevy, and Frank McGinnis used his five o’clock shadow and faked driver’s license to buy us beer. Safeway was friends heaven.

I also got a mentor out of the Safeway deal. Store manager Roger Kamprath was to work what Jim McDowell was to learning and Mrs. Baily was to joy. Roger was energy and enthusiasm incarnate. He was the sunniest, hardest working man I’ve ever known and his work ethic was utterly contagious. Customers and employees loved him. Roger taught by example. If a new employee was stocking shelves at a slower pace than Roger believed they should Roger would simply join them in their task and work faster. While doing so he would also engage them in his cheery and irrepressible style asking questions about the employee’s family or hobbies. Inevitably the new employee would begin catching up to Roger’s pace and when he or she did Roger would compliment them on the great job they were doing. After he moved on to other tasks the new employee’s pace inevitably remained cranked.

Those of us who worked for Roger thought he was a god. All the women wanted to sleep with him, the men wanted him as a drinking buddy. But Roger didn’t drink and he was a consummate family man. He must certainly have had faults, but whatever they were we were unaware of them.

One Sunday afternoon Roger, my good friend Steve and I were working together cleaning the grates and shelving in the produce aisle. This was back during the days of blue laws when grocery stores and nearly everything else was closed on Sundays. Earlier in the week Roger had put a sign up in the break room, “need two people to help me Sunday P.M. Will provide lunch and overtime pay.” Steve and I were all over this opportunity to make some extra money and hang out with our hero. The lunch was a picnic lunch that Mrs. Kamprath had made. Fried chicken, potato salad, corn bread and a rhubarb pie. Steve and I ate so much that it became harder than usual to keep up with Roger’s light-speed pace and happy banter. Finally at about three o’clock Roger left for a few minutes, returned with three chilled bottles of Coke and said, “I need a breather…let’s take ten.” We sat on the aisle floor not saying much until Roger asked, “You guys are about to graduate soon what are your plans? What are you gonna do with your lives?” We were both heading off to college, but neither of us was sure what we would major in.

“I think I want to be a doctor”, I replied.

“Really? How come?”

“Well, I’ve just finished reading the last of Dr. Tom Dooley’s books…he’s a Navy doctor assigned to Southeast Asia…and I’ve been reading about the work he had been doing in Vietnam and Laos helping refugees who were tortured by the communists. I’d like to do something along those lines.”

“Yeah, Rog”, Steve jumped in, “Gary wants to torture Vietnamese refugees.” Roger and I laughed.

“How about you, Steve”, Roger continued.

“I’m not sure. I love science and math and I particularly like chemistry. I’ve thought that doing work as a research biologist would be kinda cool. It might give me the chance to do something along the lines of what Jonas Salk and his team are doing.”

“Steve, you’d be good at about anything you wanted to do, and it makes me glad to know that two of my best young workers are doing what I did…choosing careers that are a service to humanity…that are really a kind of ministry.”

I was shocked on two levels. First, that Roger had used the word “ministry” in this clearly secular setting. Even if it was Sunday a reference to “ministry” seemed very out of place. And second, I was shocked that Roger used “ministry” to describe a job that included cleaning rotten, incredibly foul smelling produce out of shelving grates. “Service to humanity?” “Ministry?” Had we at last discovered the chink in Roger’s armor. Was he delusional and grandiose?

Steve and I glanced nervously at each other and for awhile sat there without saying a word. Finally Roger broke the silence. “You think the work we do here in this store isn’t ministry? That it doesn’t provide a service to our fellow human beings?”

We both agreed that it was and did, but were unconvinced. Roger then winked at us and said, “Guys, if I didn’t wake up in the morning knowing that I was a small piece of the complex mechanism through which people in this area had access to safe food to put on their tables…if I didn’t believe that the bread we sell fuels the lives of working men and women and that the ice cream we sell doesn’t bring delight to children and that the cheerful greeting we work hard to provide our customers doesn’t give them a little lift from some of the difficulties in their lives then I might not show up as early and eager as I do. Gents, it may surprise you to know that I don’t especially like work simply for the sake of work, but I do love is being involved in the humble and hard work of being a market square to the neighborhoods around us. This is my way to partner with God.”

That was the first and last time I ever heard Roger use the word “God” or any other theological word other than an occasional “damn” when he discovered a customer had left an umbrella behind or when he saw from his upstairs office window that a lost child was looking frantically for her mother.

Yup, Roger was a great mentor and in some ways a better and more effective theologian than Pastor Christiansen. His sprawled-on-the-floor, two minute sermon that Sunday afternoon preached spontaneously, almost as if he was thinking out loud…that sermon may have had as much overall and lasting impact as any Billy Graham preaching-to-the-choir sermon had on a stadium full of people.

College was a disaster. In one year at the University of Nebraska at Omaha I received ten F’s and two A’s. Going in I tested out of freshman English and had the chance to take a couple of creative writing classes. These I loved and did well in, everything else I failed. On the plus side I improved my golf game, learned how to shoot pool and play spades and I lost my virginity. Over all it was a pretty good year! When, however, I was suspended at the end of the spring semester and the local draft office was promptly notified, wheels were set in motion for Uncle Sam to come and get me. Had I been drafted I likely would have ended up as infantry grunt in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia, so instead I enlisted which gave me an extra year, but also more Army training options.

I choose a course called “Operating Room Procedure” which I imagined would have placed me in a M.A.S.H. unit well behind enemy lines. Turns out that in Vietnam there were no “lines” and so nothing was all that “behind”.

It also turned out that I didn’t go to the “Operating Room Procedure” course because on the Army’s induction tests I scored well enough to be reassigned to Officer Candidate School. In 1966 the Army still did not require its officers to have under-graduated degrees. Nearly all officers did (I’m the only one I know who didn’t), but the diploma was not as yet an official requirement. So, after basic training at Ft. Polk, Louisiana, I was reassigned to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, where I began training to become an Artillery Second Lieutenant.

Basic training at Ft. Polk was difficult, but not overwhelmingly so. I was in good shape physically and because a lot of basic training involves running, marching, doing push-ups, etc., it was, as my Dad used to say, “no hill for a climber”. Officer Candidate School was another matter. In O.C.S. the physical stuff was several degrees more difficult and the emotional stuff was off the charts. In the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman”, Zach Mayo, the character played by Richard Gere, gets on the wrong side of his Tach Officer, played by Lou Gossett, Jr., and goes through hell getting his gold bars. In O.C.S. I had a nearly identical experience.

It all had to do with the fact that I was only nineteen years old when I began officer’s training…the youngest candidate at Ft. Sill since the Spanish American War. By contrast, my Tach Officer, Lt. Michaels, (a grown-up version of “Bowl Hair O’Brien) was among the oldest 2nd Lt.’s then in the service. He was thirty three and had spent several years as an NCO before applying for O.C.S. Michaels hated me and was not reticent about letting me know why, “It’s because you are a goddamn nineteen year old puke who looks fifteen and I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to allow a green-shitting, just-out-of-diapers son-of-a-bitch sissy like you become a member of my officer corp! Drop, Candidate Boe, and give me seventy-five!” (Seventy-five push-ups).

Day in and day out, Lt. Michaels harangued and harassed me. Week in and week out I had the highest number of demerits of anyone in my platoon which meant that I never received weekend liberty and spent all of my Saturdays and Sundays drilling and doing calisthenics. Each day Lt. Michaels would enter our bay area and without even seeing me he would shout, “Drop, Candidate Boe, give me one, zero, zero”, (100 push-ups). Had he known that one Saturday after I had finally graduated he and I would settle accounts in the parking lot of the Ft. Sill Officer’s Club, he might not have put me through so rigorous a training program. A couple of years later I was not at all sad to see his name on the weekly casualty list in “Stars and Stripes” newspaper. I was in Vietnam at the time of his death and remember saying out loud, “Ding-dong the witch is dead…” The Army made me hard, both physically and emotionally.

Following O.C.S. I was reassigned to Ft. Sill while awaiting orders for helicopter flight school. For six months I performed a variety of fairly interesting tasks that it became fun to write home about. For example, I was the platoon leader in a target acquisition battery the task of which was to use radar to track enemy fire back to its source. I was involved in supervising a grueling twelve mile escape and evasion course that all officer candidates were required to run as a gauntlet. (If caught candidates were taken to and were tortured in a mock P.O.W. camp). I was the Brigade Trial Counsel (prosecuting attorney) for crimes for which the maximum penalty was six months confinement at hard labor and six months forfeiture of two thirds of pay. I had thirty-three cases (mostly AWOL cases) and won every one. (“Let’s bring the guilty bastard in and give him a fair trial”). I was also the Brigade funeral officer responsible for providing burial details (bugler, pall-bearers, and honor guard) for military funerals in Oklahoma and North Texas. Because of the Vietnam war I participated in a number of these and handed tri-folded American flags to several widows and grieving moms. “On behalf of the President and a sorrowful nation I present to you this flag that your loved one gave his life to defend.” These were the first of many, many funerals at which I have presided.

I liked being an Army Second Lieutenant. I liked the uniforms and people saluting me and the good pay and having interesting and important work that very few twenty year olds were involved with. Being an Army officer was so cool that it became my new god. My old god, the friends god, had eventually let me down. Some of my buddies when they graduated from high school went to different colleges and the bonds we had faded. In the Spring of 1966 I was transferred to another Safeway store that happened to be quite near to the Hinky Dinky store where I was still something of a beer embezzling legend. Unfortunately, this legend found its way to the ears of my new manager and because he apparently had robust beer protection instincts he promptly fired me. I remember being very disappointed that my hero-friend Roger Kamprath did not come to my rescue. Friends were great, but some deep-inside-of-me me realized that as gods go they had feet of clay and thus were not entirely reliable.

And so I began worshipping a new god…the Army. The Army was a magnificent god that did all and more that a god was supposed to do. It gave me my identity. “Who am I? Glad you asked! I am Lieutenant Gary Nelson Boe, U.S. Army Artillery.” (It would not be long before who I was was even better…Captain Gary N. Boe, U.S. Army Combat Helicopter Pilot…how cool is that?!!!) It protected me from the evil of being a barely-graduated-from-high-school-college-kicked-out loser. It also gave me the good life of status, lots of money in my pocket, sports cars, and women who liked uniforms.

Yes, the Army was a terrific god and religion that had rituals galore, crusades to fight on behalf of, saints like Washington, Eisenhower, and Patton, holy days (Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Veterans Day), and indeed the Army even had hymns, e.g., “The Caisson Song”, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, and “The Star Spangled Banner”. I was entirely devoted to this new god and I was devoted in a way that I had not been devoted before. This was a god fealty to which required that I be willing to lay down my life in pursuit of its causes. In other words it required me to be brave and selfless. (“Who am I? Besides being an officer I am also brave and selfless!”) Wow!!! I was so in love with this god and even more in love with who this god was turning me into!)

I should probably get off the topic of me for awhile and go back to Jesus. I have no way of knowing who Jesus’ “god/s” was or were while he was growing up. The easy answer is to say that Jesus’ “god” was “Yahweh”, but I’m skeptical. I simply can’t imagine that God capital “G” was always the central concern in Jesus’ life. In fact, there must have been times when Jesus was fairly off-put by God. Here’s what I mean…

Jesus’ notion of God (his theology) was unique. He thought about God in a new and arguably better way than did anyone else that we know about. For example, he addressed God by the very intimate nickname “Abba” which means “Daddy” or more often “Mommy”. He metaphored God as a hen and as a woman in childbirth. He was an iconoclast with respect to religious ritual and holy times and places. He believed that God was biased in favor of outcasts and poor people. He was opposed to the use of violence to resolve disputes.

But an old worse notion of God is what Jesus grew up with…the God who wasn’t “Mommy” and who was “high church” and who blessed the pious with riches and occasionally used holy war as a way of dealing with evil. Somewhere along the line Jesus must have thought, “I don’t like this kind of God and can no longer be loyal to ‘him’”. Later, (months, years?) he would resolve his dislike for traditional Yahweh by deciding to re-think God. However, while this thinking was going on what ultimate concern filled the gap? Between, “I don’t like this God…”, and the “new improved God” who would eventually capture Jesus’ fancy, what was the most important thing in his life?

Who knows? Maybe these were his own military years during which he was a true-believing Zealot. Perhaps he fell head-over-heels in love with a young woman that he may even have wed. Nearly all adult Jewish males married and it was regarded as unseemly for a priest or a rabbi not to be married. Another possibility is that Jesus got wrapped up in a new vocation. Maybe he graduated from being an apprentice “technon” to a master “technon”. Perhaps he inherited or was able to buy an acre or two of land. Many of his parables and sayings involved agricultural references. Or maybe he went in with a few of his buddies and bought a fishing boat, some nets and got a license to fish on the Lake of Tiberius. His first four students were fisherman and during his years as a traveling rabbi he lived in the fishing town of Capernaum. But again, who knows?

One final possibility regarding Jesus’ god between Gods is that he had none. This is to say that Jesus may have been in “despair”( from Latin meaning “without hope”) during an extended period of his life. It is not common, but it is certainly possible for a human being to find her or himself for a time without an ultimate concern. “A soul abhors a vacuum”, wrote one very wise man (actually it was me!), but this is not to say it can’t and doesn’t happen. In fact it’s happened to me a couple of times that I’ll write more about later.

If as a young man Jesus did have a spiritual crisis he may have dealt with it by becoming a first century “hippy” under the tutelage of Palestine’s hippy par excellence. First, some background…

Mark’s Gospel was probably the first to be written. Most think that the author wrote it shortly after 70 C.E. when the Italians put down a Zealot up-rising and in the process leveled Jerusalem and its temple. The books we call “Matthew” and “Luke” were both written a decade or more later and each of those authors used Mark’s chronology as a track to run on. Some or all of John was written towards the end of the first century and maybe as late as 110 C.E. I wrote “some” of John because I am among a small number of mainline seminary trained persons who think that there may have been a “proto-John”…some kernel of the final product that was written early…perhaps in the 50’s.

I bring this up because Mark and proto-John (if there is such a thing) both have their Jesus stories begin with Jesus hanging out as a student of the above mentioned “hippy”…a gnarly desert guru known to first century Jews as “John, the Baptizing One”. (The two Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke are most likely “Adam and Eve” style allegories packed with mythical truth, but containing little or nothing in the way of historical fact. Sorry, December 25th lovers!)

We know less about “Baptizing John” than we do Jesus, however here’s what the most knowledgeable scholars have speculated about him:
• He may at one time have been an “Essene”. (Essenes were Jewish monks who lived in Judean wilderness monasteries. They were sympathetic to Zealot concerns but rejected Zealot tactics. Essenes believed that if they lived holy lives replete with prayer and daily ritual washings that God would reward their efforts by entering the world supernaturally to purge it of Italians and other foreign and domestic impediments to an independent and pious Jewish State
• If John was at one time an Essene he would have been literate because Essenes derived an income by copying religious scrolls. (Some think that both Jesus and John were disaffected Essenes who not only could read, but who as part of their scroll copying jobs were intimately familiar with Hebrew scripture.)
• John’s preaching was directed at the rich on behalf of the poor. (The Gospels place him at Jericho, the Palm Springs of ancient Israel, and Aenon Spring, the Catskills of same.)
• John agreed with the Essenes that the end of the current social world (not the planet) was near and that folks needed to get on board with the socialist policies that the new management (God) would impose, e.g., “anyone with two coats should give one to a poor person who has none”
• John seems to have envisioned God as a no-nonsense autocrat who in his coming role as judge would be terrifying in his sentencing of the unrepentant rich
• John hated the Jerusalem Temple
• John thought that Temple authorities who required pilgrims to spend money to have ritual baths before entering the Temple precincts were simply ripping-off the poor. He felt the same way about local priests who charged poor families exorbitant fees relating to other purity issues. “Come be washed once and for all in the Jordan, and enter the Promised Land where social justice is the only law you need to worry about.” This was the essence of John’s message and ministry.

Apparently, there was more than one young man who may have been at loose ends philosophically (and perhaps financially) who ended up in the informal company of John the Baptizer. Italy and its stooge Herod Antipas would not have allowed John to have had a large group (militia?) of followers, but he could have had a dozen or so pupils and roadies. As John’s students these men would have engaged in Socratic-style, camp-fire conversations with their rabbi. They would also have been his advance men, body guards, and the most trusted among them would have been John’s fundraiser and treasurer. (Might this have been Jesus at one time?)

There is no way to know for certain, but I am convinced by those scholars who believe that John was Jesus’ most important mentor and that the two of them spent much time together and became very close. Of course, I could be entirely wrong because it’s certainly possible that despite the stories in the four Gospels Jesus and John never even met. But I think that they did meet and that both influenced the other. I also think that after a year or two together they had a falling out over matters of theology, that John’s disciples took sides, and that some stayed with the Baptizer while others left and connected with Jesus. That’s what I think, but who knows.

Back to me…

Helicopter Flight School was a trip and a half!!! Actually it was two trips. One to Ft. Walters, Texas, for sixteen weeks of Primary Training, the other to Ft. Rucker, Alabama, for sixteen weeks of Advanced Training. What was great about Flight School was the thrill of flying helicopters (it was a total blast), the friendships with aviation cadets who were crazy enough to want to be helicopter pilots in Vietnam, the money that we all had (officer base pay plus flight pay plus $600 a month per diem), the camp-following females, the sports cars we all drove, the parties five nights a week, and the sense we all had that if we didn’t live it up now, there might be no living it up or even living in a year or two. It was high octane hedonism, adrenaline and dopamine and it was very addictive. Forty years later a part of me still craves it.

People died during flight school. One classmate inexplicably fell out of his helicopter while flying solo. (He was probably doing a mid-air seat switch). Another student and his helicopter disappeared during a night solo flight. Where he had gone was a complete mystery until he was found two months later still buckled into his helicopter at the bottom of a north Texas lake. My favorite instructor, Mr. Patton, and a student from another class were killed in a mid-air collision during instrument training. And yet another of my classmates died practicing a take-off from a confined area.

These flight school deaths were only a warm-up for the carnage to come. Among all the combatants in the Vietnam war helicopter pilots and crew suffered the highest percentage of casualties. The life of a combat helicopter pilot was exciting, our quarters were much better than the grunts we ferried into and out of landing zones, and because we were officers our pay was better. However, the prospect of death and severe injury hung heavy over every pilot and crew member, and for those of us who survived the sense that we had literally dodged a bullet was huge. Until the last year or so I still had unpleasant dreams that I was back in the service and had just gotten orders to return Vietnam.

But in Flight School all of that was ahead of us, and most of us didn’t give a damn about the future. We certainly weren’t Zen Buddhists, but for living in the “now” Tibetan monks had nothing on us! Panama City, Florida, and New Orleans were the places many of us single guys hung out at on the weekends. The blindingly white beaches and sunny, open-air bars of Panama Cit, and the dark, smoky haunts of the French Quarter were where we wanted to be from Friday night through Sunday afternoon. I had lots of adventures in both places which I hesitate to let family members who may be reading this in on. There are, however, two stories I will tell because they relate to events that were important later in my life.

The first happened in Panama City. One night I was in a bar with a young woman whose name and face I no longer recollect. I do remember that we were enjoying ourselves and I, for one, was anticipating romance later that night. Later in the evening while my date was in the lady’s room a man who looked to be about ten years older than me stopped by our table and asked if I wanted to leave with him. I was initially confused by his question, however, when the light dawned on me that he was gay and had just propositioned me, I jumped up and hit him squarely in the face as hard as I could. I was humiliated that he had imagined me to be a homosexual and flew into a furious, arm swinging rage. Because the bar was packed it was not easy for him to either escape or even fall to the floor in the seconds before the bouncer could get to us I had struck him several times. In the next instant a bouncer grabbed me from behind in a choke hold so tight that it became difficult for me to blurt out, “but he’s a goddam fag…he tried to pick me up!”

At this, the bouncer released me and asked if it was true. I replied, “I’m a fucking helicopter flight student from Ft. Rucker and had no idea my girl and I were in a gay bar!” (We clearly weren’t.) The bouncer then turned and attacked my victim. After punching him in the ribs he picked him up by the back of his shirt and pants and threw him out of the door as if he were a stray mutt. The bar manager could not have been more apologetic to me and for the rest of the evening my date and I drank free. Later I was rather proud of myself feeling as though I had struck a blow for decency. It would have been impossible for me then to have imagined that decades later I would go to bat for gay persons in a way that would contribute to my losing at least one job. And there’s no way I could have wrapped my mind around the prospect that I would one day preside at three or four gay and lesbian unions. Isn’t life interesting!

The other story is about a night in New Orleans when a friend and I were approached by a black panhandler who said, “I’m gonna shoot straight with you…I don’t want a dollar to buy a sandwich…I’d like five dollars so I can buy a decent bottle of wine.” My friend and I were so charmed by his honesty that we gave him the money. He then gave it back and told us that he wasn’t a bum at all. In actuality he was a reporter for a local African American newspaper doing a story on what it was like to panhandle in the French Quarter. After chatting for a bit he asked us if we’d like to see a part of the old city that tourists rarely saw. We did, so he took us four blocks from Bourbon Street to a dingy part of the quarter and to a series of run-down bars that were filled with dingy, run-down patrons some of whom had remarkable stories to tell. It was a very interesting night that didn’t end until the sun came up.

We heard some terrific music, ate some fabulous bar food, drank much cheaper liquor than we would have on the strip and had fascinating conversations. One old man told me that for most of his life he’d been a slave. The year was 1968, the man telling the story was 88, and when I reminded him that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed seventeen years before he was born he replied, “I don’t give no goddam when no proclamation be signed I worked for the man in Pointe Coupee Parish and he no way would have let me go from his pecan groves and his fishing business. He’d a kilt me first. You know what I’m talkin’ about”, he said to a man two stools down from him.

This other man shrugged and smiled pleasantly. His name was Rudyard and the only way I remember that is that he had memorized most of Rudyard Kipling’s poems and could recite them on command in a full nasal British accent. “O ‘e’ll be servin’ drinks in ‘ell, but I knows bloody well…’e’s a better man than I that Gunga Deen…” Rudyard had a horrible scar that ran from just above his right clavicle to just below his left ear. “How did you get that”, I asked. “Bunch a white boys”, he said. “But it was a long time ago,” he said smiled again guilelessly. “A long time.”

“Times ain’t changed that much”, said an amazingly obese woman at a table behind me. “No, sir…times ain’t changed that much.” This woman, I later learned, had been a prostitute until, “I outgrew my work…not with everyone though. Some like ‘em fat”. She had started out as a cook working in “fine white houses”, but when at the age of about twenty she was caught stealing a bottle of wine to give to her uncle for his birthday she was arrested, fired and blacklisted. “I shouldna done it, and I’d only taken one thing before and hadn’t gotten caught…a blouse the little girl had outgrown. But that was that.” We heard many other life stories that night that told of subtle and not so subtle racism. And yet for all of the evil that had been visited on these people by folks of European ancestry, they could not have been more languidly hospitable to us two white boys. They weren’t afraid or intimidated by us…they weren’t trying to impress us or guilt us into picking up their tabs. They were simply genuine in their easy welcome to a corner of their world.

Jesus is reputed to have so identified with poor and oppressed persons that he was able to say things like, “whenever you connect with the least among you you’re connecting with me…” It never would have occurred to me back then that anything theological was going on that night, but perhaps it was. Their genuine graciousness and warmth to the two of us felt both damning and forgiving. I wasn’t the monster who had by threat and intimidation enslaved my 88 year old friend. However, the white domination system of which I was a part and from which I had benefited had played a villainous role in his and many other lives. And that night I felt an existential guilt. But from the same folk whose circumstances condemned me came an air of forgiveness and grace that Christianity associates with Jesus. Was Jesus there that night? Was he somewhere among the cigarette smoke and the body odor and the sour smell of beer and the briny hint of the near-by docks? I didn’t sniff him then, but I think I might now

I mentioned earlier that I had a black friend from a different high school. Robby’s dad was an engineer who was able to provide his family with a comfortable, middleclass life on a par with my own. I’m sure Robby’s life was not prejudice free, but I never heard him complained and only once was I aware of anyone calling him a name. By contrast those southern blacks in those ramshackle New Orleans bars introduced me to something that made me every bit as angry as I had been when “Bowl Hair” was torturing Penny and little Stevie, and much more than guilt or forgiveness it was an endowment of anger that I took away with me from that remarkable night.

Upon graduation from flight school I was assigned to the 10th Aviation Group stationed at Ft. Benning, Georgia. I was furious. Nearly all of my classmates were sent to Vietnam and I wanted to go with them. Flying helicopters in a combat environment was what we had been trained for and it was what we had been prepared for psychologically. Ft. Freaking Benning was an unforeseen delay of the inevitable and as soon as I arrived at my new duty station I began lobbying my branch at the Pentagon for an overseas reassignment. It was my new boss who made it happen. Major Harbor was the Battalion Operations Officer and he offered me this deal, “I’ve been assigned to be a project officer for the Ft. Benning Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration. You help me with this project, specifically take responsibility for the Officer’s Wives contribution to the enterprise, and I’ll call my good friend at the Pentagon Army Aviation Section and we’ll get you to Vietnam.”

“Deal!”

Actually it turned out to be a heckava deal, because the job itself was interesting and allowed me the chance to shake hands with Vice President Hubert Humphrey, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford, and several distinguished Ft. Benning alumni including Medal of Honor winners. I also developed a “close” relationship with the nineteen year old daughter of a high-ranking officer whose wife was on the committee that I was liaison to. Thanks to Nancy the call to duty in Vietnam became far less alluring and, in fact, a little irritating.

However, in October of 1968, my orders overseas were cut, and added to them was an eight week detour back to Ft. Rucker. For some odd reason, probably an Army experiment, I had been chosen by the Pentagon to be the very first fresh-out-of-flight-school student to receive training to fly the Free World’s largest and most powerful helicopter…the Sikorsky CH-54 Flying Crane. I was stunned. Up until that time to be considered for this prestigious program a pilot had to have had several thousand hours of flight time plus a thousand hours in some older heavy lift chopper plus five hundred hours of instructor time. My total number of hours in the air was less than three hundred.
I was living a charmed Army life…the youngest First Lieutenant in the Army (I had been promoted the previous June) and now the youngest and most inexperienced Flying Crane pilot. Thank you, Jesus! Except it wasn’t “Jesus” that I was grateful to…it was my new and very generous god, the United States Army.

I have vivid recollections of only three things related to my eight week stop-over at Ft. Rucker enroute to Vietnam. The first happened the next to the last day I was on post. As part of my out-processing I needed to get nine overseas shots. Most people got one or two a week, but I had put it off and so I got drunk prior to going to the flight surgeon’s clinic. On the way home I passed out and somehow ended up on the lawn of the Post Admin Building’s with my un-dented front bumper gently touching a giant flag pole. The M.P.’s who pulled me from my sports car seemed a bit discourteous. Telling them so was not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but by morning it had all sorted itself out.

The second thing I remember is sitting in the cockpit of this giant helicopter, feeling totally overwhelmed by the hugeness of the aircraft and hearing my flight instructor say, “forget about the rest of the helicopter…just fly the cockpit.” This was the flight instruction version of “a day at a time” or “just do the next thing”, and it became a kind of mantra for me during my year in Vietnam. “Just fly the cockpit”.

The third recollection I have is being in the Officer’s Club during happy hour one night and accidentally bumping into a Captain causing him to spill a little of his drink. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, Sir”, I said, “let me buy you another one.”

“Oh, no, Sir”, he responded, “it was my fault, Sir”.

He was calling me “Sir” and he outranked me. I was confused for a moment, but then noticed that his uniform looked brand new and that his lapels bore medical symbols. He was a green as grass flight surgeon who had recently been drafted and didn’t know squat about the Army. “Sir, I insist on buying you a drink and I’d also like to point out that you’re a Captain, I’m a First Lieutenant and therefore you outrank me and don’t need to call me ‘Sir’. I’m the one who calls you ‘Sir’”.

“Yes, Sir, I understand that, Sir, but you see, Sir, I’m so fucking pissed off to be in this goddamn Army just after I started my practice and began paying off some of my enormous medical school bills that I am protesting by calling everyone who I outrank ‘Sir’ and not calling people who outrank me ‘Sir’. Does that clear things up…Sir?”

Even though the Army was my god I could not fail to immediately appreciate this very creative and funny apostate patriot. We visited for awhile, got a kick out of each other and asked if he wanted to join me at a party I was headed to him to. “Damn right, I do. Let’s go”. As it turned out he was the hit of the party thanks in large part to his iconoclastic sense of humor and his medical marijuana. His willingness to offer pro bono gynecological exams was also popular with one or two of the women.

But the party is not why I remember Capt. White. It was instead a conversation we had a few days later back at the Officer’s Club. White wanted me to know why I shouldn’t go to Vietnam.

“What do you mean ‘shouldn’t go’? I have to go…I’ve got orders.’

“You don’t have to go. Refuse to go on religious grounds.”

“I’m not really religious.”

“Neither am I, but just fake it.”

“But why would I not want to go?!”

“Because you could get killed and your mother would be upset, or you could be terribly maimed and no girl would ever want to sleep with you, or you could accidentally kill some innocent civilian…maybe even a child, or the war could twist you into some psychopath and you could end up loving violence and mayhem, or you could one day grow up ethically and decide years from now that what you had done was horrible and then you’d feel bad about it for the rest of your life…and that’s just for starters. Mostly you shouldn’t go because it’s a bullshit war that we never should have gotten ourselves into.”

“What ‘bullshit’?!!! We’re on the side of the angels, here, haven’t you ever read any of Dr. Tom Dooley’s books?”

“Dooley! Don’t get me started . He was just another McCarthy era anti-communist homosexual like his philosophical running mate Roy Cohn. C’mon, Gary, grow the fuck up.”

White then went on to talk about Ho Chi Minh being a hero of the South Vietnamese people, about a 1956 unification election that the C.I.A. prevented because Ho would have won, about how U.S. propagandists had hugely influenced the mostly Catholic migration from the north to the south, how the Tonkin Gulf incident was a hoax, how the U.S. Food for Peace Program was really a “food for war” plan cooked up by the Department of Agriculture and the military industrial complex, etc.

I understood very little of what he was talking about and was surprised at his fury against what I had believed to be a true holy war. “Where did you get all of this garbage? How do you know this stuff?”

“How do I know this stuff’? How can you NOT know it?! How can you be willing to risk your life and perhaps take the lives of others without knowing to a faretheewell why you’re about to do what you’re about to do? Do you think that just because your government is sponsoring this war that it’s a righteous enterprise? Were you not aware that our founding fathers tacitly endorsed slavery when they crafted the Constitution? Are you also unaware of the brutal and indecent wars that your government undertook against the several nations of native Americans? Are you fuzzy on why we started the Spanish-American War and how we happened to become the so-called protectorate of the Philippines? Geez Louise, Gary, you’ve got too good a brain not to use it. Or…maybe you are using it, but lack a moral compass to govern it?”

“Hey, asshole…I’ve got a moral compass! I was raised as a Christian in very strict family. I give a shit about the Vietnamese people and I want to protect them from godless Communism. How is that immoral? Hell, I think what I’m doing is far nobler than these chicken-shit Hippies who want to spend their lives smoking dope, living in communes and screwing all day long.”

“Bullshit! You’re no more a Christian than I am. You just said so. Besides, if you were a Christian then you would follow the lead of Jesus who was a clearly a pacifist, and you would refuse to resolve public or private problems by way of violence. And as far as Hippies are concerned, from what you’ve told me of your college years…oh, I’m sorry, college year…you were no less decadent than they are. You’re in the Army precisely because you had no choice not because you are a devoted Knight Templar. You love the Army because you think it redeemed you from your failures, because it made you an officer, and because it allows you to do cool shit like flying helicopters. Well, let me tell you, to the Army you’re nothing more than a fresh log on this current conflagration…a conflagration that warms and sustains elderly and rheumatic politicians, and that reminds old generals of the campaign campfire of their youth.”

“So why the hell are you serving in the Army then? What are you doing here?”

Dr. White was quiet for a few moments, then slowly offered, “I’m here because there are people in my life that…that I can’t let down…people who have invested a lot in me…people who would be devastated if I left the country or went to prison.”

“Wow. And so you care more about them than the people who will die because you are a part of the machinery of this war.”

“That’s…that’s right.”

“And so what’s going on here is an attempt to gain moral high ground by getting me to do what you can’t or won’t?”

“I suppose.”

“And it’s probably more cynical than that, because you know I won’t fail to go, and so you’re trying to redeem yourself by merely making the argument. Tell you what Doc, I’ll go to Canada if you give me $10,000 a year for five years. What do say?”

“Fuck you”.

“Well, then, aren’t we a pair. Ethically we’re peas in a pod except that I think I’m doing the right thing, and you think that what you’re involved with is evil. So who, Doctor, is the most evil…the one who does evil unawares, or the one who does it regretfully?”

“Fuck you again, Asshole.”

“I’ll drink to that!” And we did, and spoke no more about weighty matters. A couple of months later I left for Vietnam and just before I returned home to the States I ran into Dr. White again. He was still doing outrageous, anti-Army stuff and he was still a great guy to go drinking with. More about that later.

Did Jesus do evil unwittingly? Of course. For example, in selecting his twelve disciples (settling on the number twelve as a symbol of the repristination of Israel) he excluded and thereby discriminated against women. His blind obedience to convention in this matter caused a two thousand year legacy of misogyny in the movement that bears his name.

Jesus unwittingly did evil when after developing a large following of those who hung on his every word he apparently said nothing about the terrible problem of street sewage, animal filth and public urination and defecation that was and has been the cause of so much disease and death. How much human misery could have been avoided with one little parable about the need to develop proper methods of public sanitation? But, because Jesus was a human being, and because human beings don’t know everything and can’t see into the future, in Jesus’ case, ahead to the times of Lister and Pasteur, because of this he said bupkiss about a terribly important issue. And as a result, untold evil occurred.

Vietnam will probably always be the most interesting year of my life. Because of something that happened that year it also haunted and cast a spell over me that was not exorcised until 2009…forty years later. Vietnam was fun and horrifying, exciting and terrifying, beautiful and grotesque. What for me it was not was character building or a venue in which to develop the right kind of courage. For me it was in no way glorious or redemptive and in the end it caused Deicide and broke my heart.

I was assigned to the 478th Aviation Company of the 101st Airborne Division located in Da Nang, South Vietnam’s northern-most large city. For most of my year overseas I flew CH-54 Flying Cranes. Our job was largely to haul howitzers and ammo into the mountaintop artillery bases that dotted the western high country near the DMZ. We did this work not only for the 101st A.B. Div., but also for the First and Third Marine Divisions and the Army’s Americal Division. We also recovered downed aircraft for all branches of the service including the Air Force.

Because the Crane is such a large aircraft, because we had no internal guns on-board, because an approach to a mountain top with a very heavy load is slow, and because we were often required to hover for long periods over a load that was either being dropped off or picked up, we were sitting ducks for an enemy that hated helicopters. On my very first Crane mission…a mission to pick-up an F-4 Phantom jet that had been shot down ten miles west of Da Nang…our helicopter was hit by over forty rounds of AK-47 fire. Until I had been in country for eight months I did not allow myself the expectation of survival.

Most days began with a feeling of relief that we had not been rocketed or mortared the night before, and if we had that I had not been killed or injured. Our flying days usually started early and might involve a single sortie to transport a 155 howitzer and cargo net of ammo from Camp Eagle to some fire base often in or around the always dangerous A Shau Valley. That done we would sit on the helipad somewhere and wait for an “add-on mission” to come down from higher headquarters. When add-on missions didn’t happen our flying days could be short. Contrariwise, additional sortie assignments could come one after another making our flying days a dawn to dusk effort.

Flying a helicopter is not apparently as strenuous as laying bricks, but the tension inherent in combat work can be draining and usually by four in the afternoon we pilots and our crew members were mentally exhausted. Thankfully, to help with the longer days, we were often provided with “white-crosses”…amphetamines provided by the flight surgeon’s office. White-crosses sharpened our senses and revivified us for the late day sorties. I LOVED these white-cross amphetamines because they not only gave me energy, but also elation and courage. Once the working day was done they also enhanced my libido and gave me the inclination and mojo to party late into the night. I can still feel the palpable and excited tingle they caused in my chest and along the temporal areas of my head. I can still remember feeling at once giddy and expansive, and can still hear the laughter that my humor on speed could elicit. Jacked up like this I was a poor man’s Robin Williams and was appreciated by the pilots in my outfit for bringing mirth to an otherwise grim circumstance.

There are lots of interesting things I could write about my year overseas…dangerous missions, having dinner with General Creighton Abrams in his quarters in Saigon, being the escort officer for the Georgie Jessel USO and Miss America USO shows (I won the orders in a poker game)…the depraved fun I had on R and R. However, because my war year had a largely deleterious effect upon me I don’t want to run the risk of either glamorizing or trivializing the consummate evil that it was. I will therefore share only two more brief stories.

The first I choose to be vague about because I don’t want the survivors to know who I am referring to. I will simply say that near the end of my Vietnam year I casually asked another pilot in another outfit if he was planning to perform a frivolous maneuver that he probably would have done had I not asked. (He had done it before). He responded in the affirmative then did the maneuver so poorly that his helicopter crashed killing all on board. I was in no way implicated in the event, but was horrified and felt responsible. For decades thereafter there was a part of me that expected and waited for some sort of punishment. Not divine punishment, but something. These days I wonder if I myself tried to impose a penalty.

The second incident happened one night after I had flown all day and returned home exhausted. (I had been given no white-crosses). My plan was to get a beer and a sandwich in the Officer’s Club and then head to my room to read. (Besides flying, drinking and gambling, etc., I did an extraordinary amount of reading.) The club was not especially crowded that night because the club officer was wining and dining a Navy chief petty officer from the Seabee base next door. He was hoping to get this guy to build us a new and longer bar.

The chief petty officer turned out to be a non-commissioned Navy version of Lt. Michael’s from O.C.S. He was a stocky, thirty-five-ish fella who hated me from the moment he laid eyes on me . I heard him whisper to our club officer, “that twelve year old is a lieutenant?!”

“No, actually he’s a captain. Two bars is a captain in the Army. He’s a good guy.”

“Holy, shit! What has this world come to when we gotta salute babies for chrissake?!”

I decided to take the high road by going behind the bar, holding out my hand and saying, “Hi, Chief, my name’s Gary. Can I pour you another drink?”

Rather than take my hand or my offer he did an exaggerated salute, and said, “Yes, Sir…pleased to meet you, Sir!”

I didn’t return his salute, but simply replied, “Listen, Chief, we pilots are not very formal, and except for the ‘Old Man’ we pretty much go by first names especially after hours. He still refused to take my extended hand and sarcastically replied, “Yes, Sir, Captain…whatever you say Captain.”

I decided to ignore him, but he reused to let up. The more he drank the more mockingly formal he became. Later outside at the latrine the club officer approached me and said, “Hey, I know this guy is being a jerk, but just let it go. He’s a lifer and hates the idea of young guy like you out-ranking him. Ignore him…maybe you should turn in early and we’ll get a new bar out of the deal. Whaddya say?”

“Yeah, fine. I’ll finish my beer and then go read.”

What happened next could easily have put me in prison for the rest of my life. I returned to my seat behind the bar (our bar girl was off for the night) when he started in on me again. I ignored him well enough until I had finished my beer, then just as I was leaving he said, “Sir, can I tell you what I think you are?” When I ignored him he asked again, “Sir, can I tell you what I think you are?” Finally I replied, “Sure…what am I?”

“You’re a goddamn, fucking puke.”

I snapped. In an instant I grabbed the lapels of his fatigues with both hands and pulled his face into the top of my head in a head butting fashion. His nose and mouth exploded in blood. I did it a second time and felt teeth break. Continuing to hold his lapel with my left hand I hit him with my right hand several times in the face as hard I was able. I could no longer see his face clearly for the blood. I then pushed him back off of his stool so that he fell straight back and hit his head on the floor with a sickening thud and without skipping a beat I reached for my shoulder holstered .38 caliber pistol. It wasn’t there…I had left it in my flight helmet back in my room. Not yet horrified by my frenzied desire to kill the Seabee, I began grabbing heavy bottomed glasses from the shelf behind me throwing them at him one after another. Finally, two other pilots jumped over the bar and restrained me and as quickly as the violence had begun it was over.

The Chief Petty Officer was covered in blood and it wasn’t clear to me that he was alive. Slowly my fury subsided and as it did the realization dawned on me that my life was over. I had either killed or nearly killed an enlisted man and depending on what happened to him I was going to spend some or all of the remainder of my life in a Federal Penitentiary. When the Commanding Officer entered the bar having been summoned from his quarters, he angrily pointed a finger at me and ordered me to my room.

Stretched out on my cot, feeling very alone and much more than a half a world away from those trolley rides with my grandmother in Portland, Maine, I wondered how I had wandered so far from Eden…from “Bliss”…from life the way it was supposed to be lived. What had happened?! I thought too about the war. Dr. White was right…it was bullshit. I had been to the villages and had seen how the people lived. How could it have been worse under a socialist economic? How could the Vietnamese plutocracy be more corrupt than it already was? Government leaders did not give U.S. food aid to their own hungriest people, they instead sold it to food wholesalers. They did the same with military aid. To get a new pair of Nomex flight gloves I could either wait months to get them through regular supply channels or I could take a jeep downtown to Da Nang and buy them at any number of shops and outdoor markets.

My Lai was now in the news and I was reading stories about people States-side who denied or were skeptical of “alleged” U.S. atrocities. Were they nuts?!!! Were Americans civilians no different from Germans who denied or made excuses for their horrors? In some ways American apologists were worse than German apologists, because in any protracted war there is bound to be some particularly egregious insanity of violence and evil. Owning up to a relatively rare event of atrocious behavior would therefore seem an easy thing to admit. But to deny that any atrocity has occurred?!!! Only God is without sin and therefore if a government’s war is believed to be without fault then the perhaps the believer has made a god out of the government’s war or out of the government itself.

I remember feeling a lump in my throat that night, that didn’t quite, but that nearly erupted into weeping. And the lump happened not because I was fearful of punishment for the beating I had given the petty officer. Indeed, the lump came later that night after I had been let off the hook. You see, the Seabee was not dead or dying. He was badly injured, but not so much so that he was unable to respond when my commanding officer interviewed him and asked what had happened.

“I’ll tell you what happened you piece of shit Army pilot…your fourteen year old faggot butt-boy, cold-cocked me because I told him what he fucking was…a goddamn, fucking puke…” As it turned out, this was the politest part of the chief’s response to the Old Man. After the few more minute of this it was all the C.O. could do to keep from hitting the guy himself, and so he turned to the Club Officer and said, “Get this son-of-a-bitch outta here. Take him down to the clinic, get him stitched up and put him back beneath the rock where you found him. And you, Chief…if you try to bring charges against my young Captain, I’ll have thirty pilots swear on a Bible that you were insubordinate and that you threw the first punch and then got the shit kicked out of you by a kid half your weight. Now get the fuck off of my compound!”

Later the C.O. sent someone to my hooch to summon me to the bar. There alone he and I had a drink and he both scolded me and said that he was sorry he had not been there to watch “the sorry bastard get whipped.” We weren’t drinking Nestles chocolate, but I did feel some déjà vu and a great sense of relief. However, later in the dark I felt the lump in my throat and I knew then and there that the Army was not for me. My god could no longer offer me an identity I wanted or protect me from evil or give me joy. A few weeks later I received my orders back to the States. Amazingly I was still somehow the Army’s golden boy because my orders were for the Career Course…a fast track to Major…orders that where nearly unheard of for a captain with less than a year in grade. I respectfully turned them down, writing to Washington that I had decided to leave the Army as soon as my five year obligation had been completed. I was subsequently reassigned to Ft. Rucker, Alabama , where I would work as an instructor, live like a libertine, and eventually meet and marry the first of my four wives.

While out-processing from Vietnam I ran into Dr. White. He had arrived in country four months earlier and like me had been assigned to 101st Air Airborne Division. We went to the Camp Eagle Officer’s Club for a drink and an opportunity to catch up. I told him a little about my tour of duty, admitted that he had been right about Vietnam and that I had decided to get out of the service in a couple of years when my flight school obligation was completed. He was very gracious in not even hinting at an “I told you so”.

“What I’ve been doing”, he said, “is treating all you pilots with gonorrhea (you guys must feel lonely without it), AND routinely going through the medical records of everyone in the air battalion looking for people who had a record of childhood asthma.”

“How come”, I asked.

“Because when I find a person whose record showed that they had childhood asthma I discretely schedule an appointment with them and let them know that if their asthma bothers them that I’ll let it be their ticket back home.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“Nope. I’m attempting to draw down U.S. involvement in this fucking war one soldier at a time. ‘Tricky Dick’ sends ‘em over, I send them back. Hell, I’m having so much fun with this I damn well may re-up”.

We spent most of the afternoon drinking and talking and towards the end White spotted a pilot buddy of his and gestured him over to our table. After introducing us (I can’t remember the other pilot’s name) he said, “tell Gary that story you told me last Christmas …the one about the Christmas you spent on your first tour a couple of years ago.” White’s buddy demurred, but with encouragement from both of us finally agreed to tell me one of the most moving Christmas stories I’ve ever heard. I’ve never forgotten it and it goes like this…

In 1967, there was a twelve day holiday cease which pretty much reduced our mission load to zero and gave us pilots the opportunity to plan and execute a heck of a Christmas celebration. Some of the guys made or otherwise acquired decorations. Others were in charge of food. I was on the entertainment committee and what WE came up with was a Thai rock band and two “go-go girls”, all of whom were Buddhists but who for an extra fifty bucks had agreed to learn and perform carols. It wasn’t the "Bob Hope Christmas Show", but y’know…it wasn’t all that bad.

Yet another thing that we did was to organize a gift exchange...the kind where you buy a gift for whoever’s name you pull out of a hat. Unfortunately the name I drew was the name of First Lieutenant Jonathan Christopher Klaus (pronounced "klouws"). . .the name that NONE of us wanted to draw. Let me explain.

When John Klaus had first arrived in our unit no one was happier to see him than me. His arrival one month after mine meant that I was no longer the “FNG” (the fucking new guy). As you’re no doubt aware, Gary, no one likes to fly with a rookie...especially on a tight formation approach to a hot landing zone where survival demands concentration, skill, but above all the composure to REMAIN in formation while the flight is being shot at or mortared. Doc, panic in a pilot is often more hazardous than enemy fire.

But the thing about Lt. Klaus was that he seemed to have the necessary concentration, skill and nerve from the very beginning. In fact, many in the outfit thought of him as the best natural pilot they had ever seen. And I suppose that he was. Hell, he was promoted to aircraft commander six weeks ahead of me and it wasn't until after I myself had flown with him as his co-pilot that I understood the wisdom of that decision, but understand I did because Klaus was so good you’d have thought he had been flying for a thousand years.

BUT... as good as he was in the air, he was considerably less spectacular on the ground. By that I mean he didn't smoke, drink, play cards or go visit the bar-girls in town. He was kind of a prude, but at the same time one of the nicest fellows you’d ever want to meet...but in wholesome kind of way that seemed out of place in a war zone.

No, mostly, John liked to read and to take pictures with his Nikon camera. His pictures were extraordinary. He shot a lot of 400 black and white film that he developed himself in a makeshift darkroom that he had set up in his own hooch.

John's pictures were extraordinary because instead of taking pictures of scenery his were almost exclusively of people...c1ose-ups of people. You see, much more interesting to Lt. Klaus than a helicopter were the folks IN the helicopter...the pilots, the crew, the anxious soldiers enroute to patrol and/or battle. Sometimes John either took pictures so close or he cropped them so close that all you could see were the mouth, nose and eyes...especially the eyes...eyes that were often wide and fearful. I suppose it’s fair to say that none of us really LIKED John's pictures so much as we found them strangely fascinating and charged with a truth that was difficult to confront.

Anyhow, in the summer of 1967, John began to spend a lot of time taking pictures outside of our compound, in and around Saigon. Again, these were mostly pictures of people...mostly of our Vietnamese hosts. Many of the pictures were of children. One day I stopped by his room and found John sitting on his bunk starring at the opposite wall which was nearly covered with 8 x 5 glossies of kids...sad faced kids. When I asked about them John didn’t respond immediately, but eventually said, "Those kids are actually orphans. Many of their parents were killed by friendly fire." ...something that helicopter pilots knew more that just a little about.

Well, anyhow...none of us knew if it way the books he was reading or the pictures he was taking, but something in the fall of ’67, six months after his arrival…something caused John to walk into the C.O 's office and respectfully announce that he was refusing to fly any more missions of any kind. I guess the "old man" thought maybe he'd had a little bit of a breakdown because we HAD been flying a lot, and things were pretty rough that summer. Anyway, the C.O. gave John an R and R to Australia…John went, took his camera with him, but when he returned he still refused to fly. It was about this time that we all started to dislike John and began to give him the silent treatment.

Now…why did we dislike him? Certainly wasn’t because he was a coward. As I said earlier he was the coolest hand in the outfit and had already been recommended for two Distinguished Flying Crosses.

No, it wasn’t because John was a coward, and looking back I do remember thinking that maybe it wasn't exactly JOHN we disliked, so much as it was something that John made us dislike about OURSELVES.

Back to the Christmas party, it was yours truly who drew his name, which put me in an awkward situation. This is to say, that I could get him something nice and be looked down on by the others, OR I could get him something insulting and end up looking down on myself. Sadly, I got him something insulting...a peace medal which to Army officers in ‘67 was worse than a swastika. I put it under the tree and even though several times in the days before Christmas I thought about swapping it for something decent, I never did.

Well, Christmas Day arrived and our spirits were high. In the early morning we opened gifts that were sent by our families and by the American Red Cross. That done we set about our tasks preparing for the one o'clock festivities. By ten the meat was cooking in the mess hall ovens and the Thai rock group and go-go girls had arrived and were rehearsing “Ludolph the Lead Nosed Lane Deer"..

At one we sat down to eat and we ate and ate until we were green.

Let me add that Lt. Klaus wasn't among us. During the previous month he had been questioned by various senior officers in the Division, by the flight surgeon and by Army psychiatrists. A judgment had been made that he should be flown back to the States for further evaluation after which would come treatment, court martial or medical discharge. Due to leave in the next couple of days and confined to the compound, he had been spending most of his time in his room.

At about two o'clock, however, after we had finished eating, John entered the Officer’s Club loaded down with gifts. Placing them under our tree he returned to his room for more until at last he had arranged about thirty brightly wrapped presents beneath our tree...at least one for each pilot in our unit. When he had finished he asked permission to speak and when the "old man" nodded John said, "Gents, in honor of the birth of Jesus I have given each of you a gift. Some have gotten two. They each have two names on them ...yours and the name of a child who lives at the Sacred Heart Orphanage in town. I took the liberty of telling the nuns there that at some point, maybe today…maybe sometime in the next week when you had a chance you might be stopping by to deliver them. When and if you do I promise you’ll be glad you did. Merry Christmas, Guys", and with that he left the room.

Well, we all just sat there for awhile not quite knowing what to do. Finally someone reached over and grabbed one of John's gifts...squeezed the wrapping a little bit and said, "It feels like a Teddy Bear." They were, of course, all toys...each careful selected for each child according to age and gender. These were, no doubt, the children on John’s wall. The children whose sad faces John had first seen through the lens of his camera and whom, as we were to discover, he had eventually come to know and to love.

As I said, none of us knew quite what to do until finally we took our cues from the "old man" who said, "You know…I’m stuffed. Maybe a trip into town would be a good way to work off a little of this Christmas goose. Whad'ya say, men?!" And so, off we went...twenty-seven of us in a couple of two and a half ton trucks loaded down with John's presents and a lot of mixed feelings.

As it turned out we were at the Orphanage until eight o'clock that night...until past curfew...until the nuns finally threw us out. In a word, it was one of the most unforgettable afternoons of my life...an afternoon of remarkable contrasts...of big ugly soldiers and small beautiful children, of laughter and tears, of wealth and poverty, of the effects of hatred and the effects of love. It was also a contrast of language for none of us spoke French or Vietnamese and almost none of them spoke English. And yet, in that universal language of children...of broad-faced grins and knee bouncing and tag and pretend tea parties and catch...we communicated worlds and came to know much about each other...we came to know that for all of our contrasts we had in common the subtle and not so subtle desolation that war brings to people's lives...we had in common our homelessness at Christmas.

Well, when at last we left it was with a solemn promise to return again soon...a promise that we would more than keep. Back at the base we paid off the Thai rock group and two go girls and then opened our presents to one another. On the ride back in thinking about Lt. Klaus' wonderful gift to me and to all of us, I remembered my mean spirited gift to him. Consequently, as soon as I hopped off of the truck I hurried to the club to remove it from beneath the tree, but was too late. John apparently had found it while we were gone as he was placing one last present with the others.

That gift, addressed to all of us, was a card and a single page that John had carefully cut out of his Bible. On the card John had penned the words of the last verse of the American hymn "Away in a Manger"...the verse which goes, "Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask you to stay...close by me forever...and love me, I pray. Bless all the dear children in your tender care...and fit us for heaven to live with you there." He concluded simply, "Thanks, Fellas...Love, John."

The page from his Bible was from the writings of the prophet Micah...and included the words, "But you, O Bethlehem Ephratha, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth from me one who is to be ruler of Israel and he shall give justice to the foreigner and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: and nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore... "

I desperately wanted to thank John for his gift to me and at the same time apologize for my gift to him, but I never got the chance. You see, the light in his room was out when we returned from the orphanage and so I waited until morning. However, because I was a long time getting to sleep...a very long time...I didn't awaken until nine, and by that time he had gone...gone to Ben Hua Airbase enroute to the States. Only the "old man" and the duty officer had the chance to say good-bye, and to thank him for the most memorable and meaningful Christmas that they or any of us had ever had.

Well, wish I could tell you what became of John, but I can't because I just don't know. I never heard from or of him ever again. Maybe he’s flying for a major airline. Maybe he's got his own little portrait studio somewhere. Maybe he’s doing some kind of social work stuff for kids. I dunno.

I DO, however, know what happened to us...the rest of the pilots in the outfit. Beginning the week after Christmas we made that little orphanage our chief charity. To date we have invested thousands of dollars and hours in John's kids...we send money regularly and from what I can gather a couple of those kids have been or soon will be adopted by guys in my unit who have since gotten out of the service.

Yeah...that was SOME Christmas John gave us...a Christmas consistent with what I’ve always thought the first Christmas was really all about.

“So what happened to Klaus”, I asked.

“No idea…unless he went back to the North Pole.”

"What d'ya mean, 'North Pole"', I asked.

"Well”, said Doc’s buddy, "He WAS, after all, the best pilot we'd ever seen. And after that afternoon at the orphanage we all thought of him as a saint."

"Yeah..so...?", I responded.

"Well...so, figure it out. Saint Klaus. Or as they say in Latin “Santa Klaus” ...Santa Claus…the master aviator who made sure that the children received toys at Christmas."

At the time I liked the Santa comparison. These days I wonder if instead of Santa the Lieutenant might somehow have been Jesus in disguise. Jesus in a run-down New Orleans bar and then again in a disgraced helicopter pilot. How odd.

Before I write about the next part of my life I want to spend a few paragraphs reflecting on what happened in the Officer’s Club the night I battered the Chief Petty Officer. I’ll never know for sure, but I think that if I had had my pistol with me I would have shot and maybe killed him. I was that out-of-control.

I don’t think that I am an especially violent person. In my youth I was in several fist fights, and one Sunday morning when I was forty-four (and a pastor) I beat up my wife’s paramour. However, I have never been in a fight that I knew I’d win, and most were fights that I expected to lose. Although I love being in woods and wilderness areas I don’t hunt or fish because I don’t like to hurt animals. Twice a month I vow to become a vegetarian and then don’t eat meat for a few days. (I’m currently three days into my latest vow…which is something of a record for me!) I even catch and release insects and the occasional mouse that invades our home. I did not spank my children and have never been violent with a spouse. I cannot watch movies in which there is simulated violence against children, e.g., “Slum Dog Millionaire”, and although I love almost anything that Anna Quinlan writes, I could not read her best seller, “Black and Blue” a book about spousal abuse.

I am a pacifist and I am opposed to the death penalty. I do support a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, but largely because I am opposed to the many and various ways that woman are discriminated against and are the victims of institutional violence.

So, what happened that night? Here’s a list of the things that were working against me:
• I was raised in a culture that celebrated violence
• I did not want to appear weak or cowardly
• My dad loved boxing and taught me how to “defend” myself
• Testosterone
• Win or lose, there is often a chemical rush associated with violent contests
• I was a well trained employee in an organization whose business was killing
• I was twenty-two and un-sure of myself
• I was at too young an age invested with too much prestige
• I have a temper
• I had been threaten throughout the day and was feeling vulnerable
• I was tired
• I was put-off by the temerity of a non-combatant (and a Navy man at that) to speak disrespectfully to a combat pilot
• I had had just enough to drink that an edge had been taken off my inhibitions
• I lacked a “story” or “god” that allowed me to identify myself as a person with a strong commitment to non-violent means of resolving conflict

I wish that I had a better handle on the human condition. My actions in the bar preclude me from having a particularly high anthropology, but neither do I believe that we humans are innately and fundamentally evil. As I mentioned earlier Luther once referred to human beings as “stinking garbage cans of sin”. If, what he meant by that, is that we are ethically neutral vessels distinct from whatever cultural evil may have been poured into us, then I think he may be close to the truth. There are, however, other factors to consider. For example, several million years of natural selection has caused us to come from the womb pre-wired for certain behaviors that have well-served the process of our evolving from tree shrews to homo sapiens. Among these hard wired pre-dispositions are territoriality, xenophobia, the fear/flight response, a very strong, non-seasonal sexual drive, and an inclination to value others in direct relationship to the amount of DNA we have in common. One anthropologist has said, “Like any other animal human beings are as ‘good’ as they need to be to survive.” More needs to be said on this subject, but I’ll wait til later to say it.

The reader will also have to wait for me to say more about Jesus until I get just a bit more said about Jesus’ foil, i.e., “Gary”.

It was good to be back in the States and good to be stationed again at Ft. Rucker. I was assigned as an instructor pilot with the “Rotary Wing Qualification Division”. We used OH-13 “Whirly Bird” helicopters to teach fixed-wing pilots how to fly rotary winged aircraft. The work we did was fun and easy. We were only required to fly half a day, Monday through Fridays. I had a little extra to do because as the ranking pilot I was necessarily the flight commander responsible for approximately 30 pilots and 60 students.

It wasn’t long before I ran into a couple of buddies from flight school days who had survived Vietnam and were looking for a roommate to share a three bedroom apartment off-post in Enterprise, Alabama, the self-proclaimed “Goober Capitol of the World”. It certainly had my vote.

During my first months back I dated two very interesting women. The first was a Link simulation instructor named June who was fun, very attractive, but, unfortunately, saving herself for her wedding night. The second was a local real estate consultant whose first husband had left her for “Catch 22” author, Joseph Heller. Grace wasn’t saving anything from nearly anyone. Grace was a shared delight, but well worth sharing for all kinds of reasons.

The spring and summer of 1970 was amazing, out-of control hedonism. I was driving a brand new MGB, playing lots of golf, flying just enough so that it wasn’t tedious, dating enough to get one of the aforementioned hard-wired non-seasonal drives met, and listening to Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Who and other groups arguably at their best. On weekends we rented a cottage in Panama City and sometimes flew to Atlanta or Miami just for the hell of it.

As far as a “god” was concerned I was pretty much going it alone which was a new and vaguely unsettling experience. It was unsettling because for the first time I felt as though my life lacked some transcendent meaning. These days I accept the very real possibility that life has no ultimate meaning, but back then that experience was uncharted territory. I no longer believed in the biblical God. I couldn’t trust friends to be what I had discovered they were clearly incapable of being. I didn’t want the Army as a god. So that left…what…June? Grace? No, I liked each of them. On some level I may even have loved them. But not that much. I mean, c’mon…”Who am I?” “Grace or June’s boyfriend?” Nope. Being Grace or June’s boyfriend was not that divine .

One night late in the summer of 1970 after I had moved to my own apartment a local Lutheran pastor knocked on my door. “Hi,” he said, “your church back home in Omaha sent me your name and address and asked that I stop by and invite you to attend our worship services.” (Christiansen!)

I was having a beer and watching a ball game and responded with something like, “It’s very kind of you to stop by. Why don’t you leave me a pamphlet or something and I’ll look it over.” He appeared not to have heard what I said and looking past me at the TV, inquired about the score. He also asked if he could come in and have a drink of water. When I decided to run him off by offering him a beer he surprised me by accepting!!!

I don’t remember this pastor’s name, but he wasn’t a bad sort. He was a jollier version of Pastor Christiansen believing that there was virtue in doing theology with one half of his brain tied behind his back. I think his father was a pastor, but unlike some second generation clergy I’ve known he didn’t seem to have a Son-of-God complex. He ended up staying for a couple hours listening to me politely level with him about why I couldn’t believe in a traditional God. His responses were lame (“sometimes we just have go on faith”), but they were expressed in a way that made me think he was a little embarrassed by them. At around eleven I told him that I needed to get to bed, but thanked him for coming by. I lied and told him that I might visit his church some Sunday.

A few nights later he stopped again and asked if I had a beer in the fridge. He was a German Lutheran who apparently felt an ethnic obligation to drink. I liked that about him. He brought some new ammunition with him to counter my arguments, but they were of a disappointingly low caliber. For reasons I have discussed above I was a better prospect for his evangelism than he might have thought, but he wasn’t going to win me over with a first century, pre-Copernican world-view.

He came a third time and then a fourth time, and I began to appreciate his gentle tenacity. He wasn’t having much luck winning me over theologically, but on a personal level I found him charming. I finally asked him, “why are you here? Why do you keep back?”

“I’m not sure”, he said, “I know my arguments aren’t working, and I can’t for the life of me think of anything that will convince you to believe, but I like you and I can tell you’re looking for something, and I want to help…I just don’t know how. I suppose I’m deluding myself into thinking that if I keep showing up, something will happen to win you over.”

I felt sorry him and decided I would toss him a crumb. I offered him a debating point that he hadn’t thought to use. I said, “One thing that has been a seed of doubt for me is the fact the disciples were so committed to their belief in a resurrected Jesus that eleven out of the twelve were horribly martyred for their convictions.”

“Yes”, he brightened, “that’s true. Indeed, it’s a very good point!”

It wasn’t. The stories of the disciples were largely legendary and lacked sound historical grounding. Besides, even if the accounts of apostolic martyrdom are true there has been throughout history no lack of delusional persons who have thrown their lives away for what they believed to be a holy cause. I had just return from one such “noble” crusade. The pastor feasted on my crumb and for awhile stopped coming around.

A few weeks later at a high school football game that I had not wanted to attend and almost didn’t, I met Crickett Carlisle a beautiful young woman who a month and a half later would become my first wife. Unlike June or Grace, Crickett was someone you could make a proper god out of. And much to my own astonishment I wasted no time in doing so.

“Tiny” was a 300 pound civilian good ‘ol boy who was assigned to provide maintenance and re-fueling for the Rotary Wing Qualification Course over which I presided. Each day I would briefly meet with “Tiny” to sign-off on the paper work that his civilian contracting company required for Army reimbursement. Over time I developed a congenial relationship with this local heavy-weight. He was a southern bigot who theoretically did not like persons of color. Nonetheless, in his mundane dealings with students and pilots black, white, Asian and Hispanic he was relentlessly and genuinely friendly.

Some of my buddies and I played on a sandlot post football league and Tiny had seen a few of us throwing a ball around on the flight-line while our students were flying solo. His son played football for a local high school team and imagining that I enjoyed watching adolescent boys scrum and roll around with each other more than what my friends and I usually did on Friday nights (scrum and roll around with young woman)he invited me to a game. I almost didn’t go. June called and wanted me to take her to the Officer’s Club Lake Lodge, then called later to say that her mom was sick and she needed to stay home.

Five minutes later Tiny called and asked, “are you still coming?” (I was planning not to.) “I usually sit with this divorced woman whose son, Ronnie, also plays on the team. She’s got this beautiful daughter who goes to nursing school, but is home this fall. If she’s there maybe the two of you will hit it off and you could go for ice cream or something after the game. She’s a knock-out.”

I didn’t go because of the “knock-out”, but I did go and when I arrived and easily spotted my obese white-t-shirted friend waving at me from the top of the stands, I wondered, “Why is the actress Katherine Ross (“The Graduate”, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”) sitting next to Tiny?

Crickett was precisely as advertised and bore a striking resemblance to Katherine Ross. I don’t remember a thing about the game because whenever our legs touched in the closely bunch stands some internal taser would stupefy me.

“So you’re a helicopter pilot?”

Leg touch. “AH…AHHH!! ….what?...oh…ah…yes…I hell flelicopters…I fly helicopters.”

“That sounds exciting. Will you have to go to Vietnam?”

Leg touch. “ER-AAUGH!!! NO! I mean…I’ve already been in there...BEEN there.”

“Was it awful?”

“No. It’s wonderful”. Our legs weren’t touching and I was staring at her face.

“Vietnam is wonderful?”

Leg touch. “EEEE…huh?!! Oh, no…no…it…ah…it wasn’t great.”

I thought to myself, “My GOD!!!! She must think I suffered some kind of head injury.”

It got better. I was able to stabilize my amazement and libido, and I think we did go for coffee afterwards. (This night remains a blur of the sort first time heroine users describe). Either that night in person or at some other time on the phone I remember Crickett telling me that she had always wanted to visit the Officer’s Club…that her father had been a World War II fighter pilot and had earned some of the same decorations I had. There was a formal ball coming up at the club and although I had already invited June I asked Crickett if she would like to go. When she accepted June ceased to exist and I’m not sure that I ever laid eyes on her again. Henceforth, I only had eyes for Crickett and if that lyric from the 1934 song of the same name sounds painfully sappy it well describes my condition. I was painfully smitten and very surprised to be feeling as I did. I had been in love before…or maybe in lust before…but this was new and intense, and as I look back on it I wonder if more than just the obvious stuff was going on with me because Crickett not only filled my heart, but she also filled some empty place in what even Freud called the “soul”.

It wasn’t long before Crickett seemed smitten by me. (A therapist would later suggest that I may have been filling her “soul” in a way that would be disastrous for our marriage.) Crickett and her mother were at odds over some issue that made Crickett unhappy at home during her autumn break from school. I “chivalrously” offered her the use of my lodgings, “You can have the bedroom, and I’ll be fine on my somewhat uncomfortable couch.” She thought about my offer, but declined, saying, “I’m a Catholic and a virgin and I intend to remain a virgin until I am married.”

I recall connecting the “Catholic” and “virgin” thing in a cause-and-effect way which did nothing to rehabilitate my feelings about Christianity. Nonetheless, I could not bear to be apart from Crickett and responded, “Of course. I didn’t even consider the possibility of…well, maybe it did cross my mind, but only…you know, fleetingly…and because I too am religious…in fact, I have a friend locally who is a pastor…a Lutheran pastor…and maybe sometime we could go to church together…Lutheran or Catholic, it doesn’t really matter, I like them both equally…but anyway the point is that I am just trying to be helpful, because I…REALLY like you and just want to help you and your mom work things out, because you know sometimes a little space when people aren’t getting along…”

“Okay”, she said, putting an end to my tortured ramblings the only truth of which was the “I REALLY like you” part. ”Okay, I’ll move in for awhile, but only until Mom and I patch things up, and honestly, Gary, I’m not going to sleep with you.”

“Perfect”, I said, and from that moment on and for the next five weeks I applied all of the innate intelligence that had gotten me high scores on the Iowa Basic Skills Tests, SAT and Army induction I.Q. exams…I applied all of this to the challenge of getting Crickett to make love with me. For her part she applied herself to remaining virtuous and in the end it was no contest. She won. But so did I, because I was so head over heels (another stupid but apt cliché) in love with her that I asked her to marry me and lo and behold she DID! And my pastor friend performed the private ceremony believing me to be on the verge of a return to the fold. Boy, was HE wrong!

“Who am I, Paul Tillich? I am the husband of the most beautiful and completely wonderful woman in the world. How does she protect me from evil? She protects me from waking up in the morning and wondering what the purpose of my day, indeed, my life will be. It shall be, today and always, to love her. And how does she provide me with joy? By allowing me to love her and by loving me back.” Crickett really was a “goddess”. She was my most deeply experienced “ultimate concern” ever.

In the beginning being married to Crickett was the embodiment of fun. It was the first day of summer vacation, my birthday, Christmas and the trip home from Vietnam all rolled into one. Sex was new to her but she took to it like a minute’s old springbok takes to standing, walking and then running. A little shaky at first but soon off at a gallop. Crickett was a playful, generous and thoughtful lover. Crickett adored my friends and they were crazy about her. She didn’t look for the spotlight, but it inevitably found her. It would have been easy to be a little insecure about the attention she received from other pilots, but with a look here and a touch there she made it clear that I was the one she loved the most.

What Crickett’s catalogue of kitchen recipes lacked in quantity it made up for in quality. For years I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to recreate her fried chicken. She used a mixture of spices that would have made you want to throw rocks at KFC. She told me that it was a military secret that she was not at liberty to reveal to any Yankee, even one with conjugal privileges. She also introduced me to fried okra which remains on my ten most favorite foods list.

I don’t recall if Crickett was an athlete. If, however, dancing is a sport then surely she was an Olympian. Crickett danced with graceful and joyous abandon.

But there was a “non-dancing” side to Crickett that I only caught glimpses of at first. One night just after we had gotten married she became very quiet and said, “Gary, I can’t have children. I have a double cervix and if I was to become pregnant I would not be able to bring the child to term. It could be dangerous for me. Are you upset?”

I didn’t care in the least. I wasn’t even sure what a single cervix was and my “ultimate concern” was not getting my DNA into the next generation. My “ultimate concern” was Crickett. “If we decide that we want children we’ll adopt. Children are clay. Together we’ll shape them into something wonderful.”

“We wouldn’t have to adopt Yankee children would we”, she asked teasingly.

“Of course not. Since my own personal ‘invasion of the South’ I’m completely won over. May I surrender my ‘sword’, General Carlisle?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

There were also headaches, terrible headaches that she worried might be caused by an aneurism. She once offered, “I’m not sure that I’m going to live very long.” I remember exactly when and where she said this. We were in my car late one afternoon returning from my brother’s wedding in Nebraska. Her words terrified me, and may well have been the etiology of the reoccurring dreams I soon began having of the helicopter crash I felt responsible for. Was I fated to be punished for the crash by somehow loosing Crickett? I did what I could to suppress that awful notion, but the dreams of nose-diving helicopters had begun and they would continue two or three times a week for the next thirty nine years. These night-terrors caused me to further fret about Crickett’s health, but they also caused me to wonder about my own worthiness to be Crickett’s husband. “Surely she deserved better”, whispered something deep inside. And yet…how could I give her up? I loved her so, so much.

But Crickett had a demon of her own (was the victim of a demon) which was related to yet another pilot…her father…the man a therapist would later tell me I may have been a surrogate for.

Here’s what I recall about Crickett’s parents…

Her father was a very dashing Clark Gabel-ish fellow from Austin, Texas, who during the Second World War was a Lt Col in the 8th Air Force, assigned to the 357th fighter Group, the same outfit for which Chuck Yeager flew. In the fall of 1944, Col. Carlisle was Commander of the 363rd P-51 Fighter Squadron that provided air support to “Operation Market Garden” and that helped turn the tide in the “Battle Of The Bulge”. His war time career was exemplary.

Crickett’s mother was a beautiful “Georgia Peach” who made her way to New York and a successful modeling career. I never met Col. Carlisle, but I did know Crickett’s mom who at the age of fifty was still a very handsome woman. It was not hard to believe that she had been a 40’s cover girl. I believe that Crickett’s parents met during a Savings Bond drive. I know nothing of the details of their courtship and marriage, but do recall Crickett telling me that after the war her dad was “RIF’ed (“Reduction In Force) out of the service and that her mother’s modeling career ran its course.

Crickett was born in 1950, at about the time her father could have been called back to active duty to serve in Korea. It is my understanding that Col. Carlisle might have abandoned Crickett and her mother following his Korean War service. Again, I know nothing of the specifics of this abandonment. I do know from my own experience of post traumatic stress disorder that harrowing combat involvements can be a source of marriage and relationship havoc.

It may be the case that Crickett’s mother kept the details of Col. Carlisle’s whereabouts a secret from her daughter and that Crickett grew up believing her father had died. Mrs. Carlisle eventually married a man from her hometown in Georgia…a man who turned out to be an abusive husband and step-father. As a result Crickett grew up Cinderella-style…badly treated and loving a deceased Prince Charming of a father. Except that he wasn’t deceased.

When, as a teenager, she discovered that her father was alive and living in San Antonio, it had to have been confusing, exciting and devastating all at once. That Crickett overcame this and has gone on to live a very productive and remarkably interesting life is a tribute to her and to the resilience of the human spirit.

Because I didn’t live in Crickett’s head I have no way of knowing for sure how Crickett thought about her father back in the early 1970’s. However, because Crickett is very bright and because like all human beings she is her own unique matrix of world-view, facts, feelings, desires and fears I suppose that she had mixed and ambiguous considerations of him. Did she love and admire him because of his dashing countenance and war-time exploits? Did she love the idea of being the issue and off-spring of such a hero? Contrariwise did she hate that he had abandoned her and her mother? Did she hate being someone that a hero might abandon? Was she, like some children of alcoholics, anxious to win him back or punish him? Did she both love and hate him? Who knows?

Here’s what can be known. Crickett rushed into a marriage to a decorated combat pilot who was no Clark Gable, but who drove sports cars, wore dress whites at military balls, and had been conditioned by war and nihilism to live on the edge. Ironically, like her father I too would be RIF’ed out of the service and would eventually move to San Antonio, Texas. Could a case be made that in marrying me Crickett may have been attempting to connect with “father”? One professional therapist thought so. Is it possible that because of her paternal experience Crickett both liked or loved, but also resented and distrusted me? Although speculative, that too is possible.

And for my part, was there some homunculus…some inner me that sensed and preyed upon Crickett’s vulnerability because I intuited disaster and believed that I deserved it? Or was Crickett the god or goddess I needed in order to give my life meaning? Or was she both? Or neither. Was it simply as straight forward as the fact that Crickett was beautiful and fun. Or was it all of the above? Or something else?

I don’t know. I do know that during the fall, winter and spring of 1970 and 71, I fell more deeply in love with Crickett and in January of 1971 was agonized when she went back to Mobile to finish her final semester of nursing school.

During that winter my pastor friend began stopping by once again. I could tell he was disappointed at not having seen me in church since the wedding, but he masked his feelings with chatty, “so-how’s-married-life-going” banter. Finally, on his third or fourth visit he asked if I was any closer to overcoming my doubts. “No closer than overcoming my doubts that the Sun revolves around the Earth”, I said unkindly. He was clearly unhappy with my response and asked, “but what about the disciples all dying for their beliefs?” It was a fat pitch and I swung hard thinking it would keep him away. He was becoming tedious, and increasingly it felt to me as if it was not my soul he was concerned about losing so much as it was an argument. It took two or three more visits for me to run him off for good.

On the last night he visited my apartment I asked him, “What would you do if I convinced you that I was right. That there is no God, or at least no God who cares any more about you than you care for the fruit mold in the back of my refrigerator. What then?”

“First of all, you’re just as short of proof that there isn’t a God as you think I am that there is. So to that extent our argument is a stand-off. But even if you were able to cause me to have major doubts about Christianity, I would still choose to believe because it makes me happier and it makes the world I’m engaged with a little better.”

“Okay, but all you’re saying is that it’s impossible to prove a negative. What you’re saying is the equivalent of asserting that there’s no absolute proof that there aren’t unicorns.”

“Maybe. But the question about the existence of unicorns is existentially empty. Who cares if there are unicorns? How is my life going to be any different one way or the other? However, if you believe that there is a God who is about love and forgiveness then your life will be different and better than if you don’t.”

“How so?”

“Well, because if you believe in a God of love then you have to believe that being godly involves being loving, which humans aren’t always that good at. And if you believe that God is about forgiveness then you have to believe that being godly involves being quick to forgive…another thing that doesn’t come easily for us, but probably should. So, even if there is no God my decision to believe that there is a God of love and forgiveness is going to make me happier and the world a little better.”

“And are you happy”, I asked.

“Yes, I am. There were a few years in my life when I didn’t believe. Now I do and I feel…I don’t know, more contented, more at ease, better able to cope with bumps in the road. I laugh more and enjoy my family more. Yeah…I’m happy. How about you?”

“You bet. I’ve got the best wife on the planet, easy job, nice car, terrific friends, plenty of money, good health, several decades to live. I’m very happy.”

“Really?” His tone irritated me

“Yes, REALLY! Really, really, really happy. But how about you…are YOU really happy? I don’t know…I sense some sadness in you…” (Two could play at this game.)

“Yes, I’m happy”, he repeated, “And I apologize for suggesting that you weren’t.”

“Let me ask you a question…Jesus was a pacifist, he told us that we should love our enemies and turn the other cheek…he chewed out Peter for cutting off the ear of a slave, he said ‘whoever lives by a sword, will die by the same means’, he told people to follow him by which I’m guessing he meant imitate him…so with that in mind do you support our country’s involvement in the Vietnam war?”

“I have supported it, although I’m not thrilled with how it’s been handled.”

“My first impulse is to ask what kind of military background or direct experience with combat you’re drawing on when you decide that the war is not being well handled, but that aside, did you somehow miss the preamble to my question…the part about Jesus being a pacifist. Y’know it’s one thing to assert vague and warm generalities about being a devotee of a God of love, but how are you, pastor, an imitator of a pacifist Jesus when you serve a congregation that I’m guessing is mostly military or composed of civilians who derive their living directly or indirectly by supporting an Army base? How’s that goin’ for ya”

I had him! He was very uncomfortable with this and wanted to argue that Jesus wasn’t a pacifist or worse that Luther wasn’t (who the hell cared what Luther was!), or that Jesus said something nice to a Centurion, or that it was not the role of the church to get involved in the affairs of state and should render unto Caesar...and, of course, Paul said we should submit to those in authority and other bull shit.

I had him, and simply said, “So I imagine that these are some of the same arguments that German Lutheran pastors used to let themselves off the hook during the Nazi years.”

He suggested that there was a difference between Hitler’s war and the Vietnam war and I suggested back that imitators of Jesus needed to be oppose to whatever war their own slice of history presented them. I also suggested that he might be a lot less happy than he was if he wasn’t selling out, but was instead using his pulpit to advocate for a pacifist solution to the conflict in Southeast Asia.

There was more and I piled on and he tried to be calm and pastoral, but in the end he was pissed and after he left that night I never saw him again.

In May of 1971, Crickett graduated from Mobile’s Spring Hill College School of Nursing and became an R.N. As a part of her scholarship agreement she was required to work for a year at the Spring Hill Hospital Medical Center in Mobile. She was assigned to the Coronary Care Department.

At about the same time the Army decided that since I had rebuffed their generous offer to become a career officer, they would make me a part of their Reduction In Force program. I was released from the service in early June and moved with Crickett to a garage apartment near a lovely antebellum part of Mobile. It might have been a charming and romantic time in my life had it not been for two things: the country was in the midst of a recession and it took me almost the entire summer to find a job, and Crickett fell out of love with me.

It was a terrible time. Suddenly I was no longer Captain Gary Nelson Boe, driving a yellow MGB convertible to the flight line, flying OH-58 Jet Rangers in the morning and playing golf in the afternoon. Instead I was the thirtieth guy in line to apply for a counter job at Whataburger. “So, you ever work in a restaurant?”

“No, but I was an Army artillery officer and flew helicopters in Vietnam”.

“Yeah, well, we don’t have any artillery…and come to think about it, we’re out of helicopters too. We’ll let you know.”

One employer said, “I don’t want no captains working here. What I need are privates. Too damn many captains as it is.”

I was also no longer the well dressed young junior grade at the Ft. Rucker Officer’s Lake Lodge dancing with Katherine Ross. I was instead the fellow waiting at the crowded bus stop, fingering the five dollars my wife had given me for a newspaper (want ads), bus transportation and lunch wondering why she had seemed quiet and distracted at breakfast.

By autumn of 1971, my circumstances had improved. Crickett continued to be distant, but I had managed to find a 40 hour per week job selling cameras and stereo equipment for a local department store, and I had enrolled as a full-time student at the University of South Alabama. I loved going back to school! There was an arrested development artifact to my having been in the Army for five years, but in other ways I had matured. The fact that I had become a non-stop reader allowed me to see that life was filled with doors behind which are marvels and curiosities galore. At South Alabama I chose the door of Philosophy and discovered Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza and Kant. At the door of Anthropology I met Franz Boaz, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and Claude Levi-Strauss. Psychology was marvelous! Freud, Piaget, Jung, Erickson, Skinner and Kohlberg. Political Science was also a wonderful entrance to the thoughts of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Marx and others.

One of the books I was required to read was Soren Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”...a reflection on Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac. The allegory is that Abraham has been promised by God that his descendents will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Yet he doesn’t end up having a son from which these descendents will issue until he’s a hundred and his wife is ninety-one. Twelve years later
God returns to the tent of the patriarch and says, “I want your son back…sacrifice him to me at Mt. Moriah a three day journey from here.” Abraham does as he is told. When he arrives at Moriah he binds Isaac, raises his knife and just before he is about to plunge the blade into his boy, God calls out, “Stop…just kidding. Oy-vey!!! Are you faithful or what! Now I’m REALLY gonna keep my promise to give you lots of grandkids, great-grandkids, etc.”

So that’s the story and it was Kierkegaard’s notion that it is a parable about the true nature of faith. “Faith is a leap into absurdity”, says the Dane. Abraham trusted that God would give him lots of descendents. Isaac was the key to lots of descendents. When Abraham and his wife are way too old to have any more kids (besides which Sarah is dying) God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac leaving Abraham with choice A, DON’T sacrifice Isaac and take your chances that he’ll be the progenitor of a large family…or, choice B, DO sacrifice him trusting that despite that you’re not going to have more children that it will somehow, against all odds work out that God’s promise will be kept. Abraham does the absurd B choice and it does work out.

I mostly liked the book, because I agreed with the author that faith IS absurd. What I found preposterous was that absurd faith works out. Perhaps it does in fairytales like the Abraham and Isaac story, but in real life?...not so much. As a consequence it became evident to me that a life should not be grounded on faith, but instead on reason.

I was actually reading Kierkegaard and thinking about this when a stranger knocked on my door. “Hi, I’m Pastor __________ from the near-by Lutheran Church, your pastor back home (Christiansen!) sent us your address and asked me to stop by and invite you to visit our congregation.” Before I could shoo him off, he said, “I don’t have a lot of time, but I understand that you’re a student and we’ve got this Wednesday after-school character and issues program for kids and are desperately in need of a teacher for the sixth and seventh graders. They’re great kids, mostly boys, and would really respond to a young guy like you. We could pay you ten bucks a class.”

Ten dollars in 1971 was thirty dollars today. “What kind of issues?”

“You know, the regular stuff…honesty, charity, obeying parents and teachers, being good sports. We’ve got a decent curriculum…the kids have workbooks and the teacher’s guide is real helpful, and again the boys are terrific and I understand you were a pilot and they’d love being around you.”

Well, hell, who doesn’t love being around people who love being around you?! Plus Wednesday was my day off. Plus there was the ten dollars thing. Plus this guy didn’t seem to want to hang around and talk. “I’ll do it”, I said, and in the space of a few minutes I had gone from, “isn’t Christianity ridiculous”, to, “yes, I’ll be your Sunday (Wednesday) school teacher.” Talk about absurdity!

This Mobile Lutheran pastor was right about the kids…they were terrific. There were about fifteen of them and it wasn’t long before I was looking forward to my Wednesday afternoons. The curriculum allowed me to work a little Jim McDowell into our class time. Soon I was asking questions like, “Is it always good to be honest? What if you were living in Nazi Germany and you were hiding a Jewish family. And what if the Gestapo came to your house and asked, ‘do you know about any Jews who are being hidden in your neighborhood’, should you tell them the truth? Are there some rules that you should break in order to keep more important rules? What are the most important rules?” It was great watching these kids wrestle with moral ambiguity and at the end of it all arrive at deeper notions of what is right and how to discern the greater good.

One Wednesday before class the pastor dropped by and said, “We’re glad you’re willing to teach these sixth and seventh graders. It’s hard finding someone who’ll do it. But you need to stick to the lesson plan. We’ve had a complaint from one of the parents. Gotta run”, and off he went. This guy wasn’t much for discussion. He was more into pronouncements and as such was very well suited for pulpit monologues that didn’t allow for give and take.

The following Wednesday the lesson had something to do with caring for the sick and the biblical example that was used was the story about Jesus’ miraculously healing of ten lepers. I was quite certain that Jesus was not able to suspend the laws of nature and that therefore he had done no miracles, so I said, “Let’s not focus on how Jesus cured the leper. Instead, let’s think about what why people living back then…people who didn’t know about germs or contagion…why they didn’t want lepers living among them. Let’s also think a little about who our ‘lepers’ are today…who we don’t want to live close to.”

Almost immediately one darling little sixth grade girl raised her hand and said, “Niggers”. I was stunned, but was the only stunned person in the room. One other kid offered, “yeah, them and midgets.”

“Do any of you disagree”, I asked. One boy asked, “Are people from Hawaii colored? They kinda look like Japs”.

On my additional reading list for “Into to Anthropology” there was a book entitled, “The Myth of Race”, by Ashley Montagu. I decided to check it out of the library and read it before I tackled the lenses of southern prejudice and general ignorance through which my kids viewed their world. The following week (the next to last week of my employment with this congregation) I came well prepared to turn them into liberal Yankees. Here’s how it went…

“You all know about evolution don’t you?”

“We don’t believe in it”, said a couple of kids.

“Okay, but if you did…who do you think is closer to the ape family, whites or negroes?”

“Negroes”, they nearly all said in unison.

“Why negroes”, I asked.

“Because negroes are black and so are apes.”

“Really? I don’t think so. Apes and monkeys all have white skin. What’s black about them is there hair.”

“Yeah”, said one of the kids, “but they have black hair like colored people”.

“No, they don’t”, I replied, “oh sure…they do have black hair, BUT it’s straight black hair…like yours, William. What they don’t have is curly hair like negro people.”

“How about their big lips”, said one seventh grader with just a hint of malice in his voice.

“Whose big lips? Monkeys and apes have very thin lips, in fact it’s difficult to tell that they have any lips at all. And another thing, negroes tend to have smaller ears than white people, but of course monkeys have huge ears, plus negroes are on average slightly taller than white people and apes and moneys are short in stature…and well, I could on and talk about how white people are hairier than negroes and how like apes white people tend to have stronger jaw muscles than negroes, but you get the point. If there IS such a thing as evolution negroes would seem to be miles further down the road than we are.”

Now it was the kid’s turn to be stunned, and I allowed them to be stunned until one kid near the back of the room began ooo-ooo-ing like a chimp. Following his cue I jumped up on the desk and began doing my own monkey imitation and soon the room was a Primate House of monkeys and apes running around hooting and scratching and knuckle walking. It wasn’t long before the pastor stuck his head in the door looking very...pastor-like. “Too much monkey-business”, I asked as the kids found their way back to their seats. “Let’s talk after class is over”, he said.

I went on to explain that asking which race was more closely related to apes and monkeys was a stupid question because the physical characteristic distinctive to blacks and whites were environmentally determined and over time were plastic. “Take a village of Norwegians living above the arctic circle and move them to Kenya…take a village of Kenyans living near the equator and move them to Norway and in about 25,000 years the Kenyans will look like Norwegians and the Norwegians will look like Kenyans. It all has to do with natural selection and direct and indirect rays of the sun and melanin and skin cancer and our body’s strategies for dealing with heating and cooling.”

We had a great discussion! The kids were receptive to these new ways of thinking about race and throughout you could see the wheels turning and schemas being re-shaped. We also had a short discussion about the words we use to describe various groups of people and why some are fine and others hurtful.

When class was over the pastor wanted to know what had gone on and when I explained he looked horrified. “Do you know what you’ve done”, he asked.

“No, what?”

“You’ve caused a great deal of trouble and you’ve probably reduced your class size by half or more. Why can’t you stick with the curriculum? Why do you feel the need to do social engineering with sixth and seventh graders? This congregation is not ready for integration and for…”

“Wait a minute”, I interrupted, “you don’t have negro members?”

“No, we don’t. We are not yet at a place where members are comfortable changing our constitution to permit negroes to join. Certainly they are welcome to visit and worship with us, but the kind of change that people like you would have us do would split this congregation and would prevent us from doing the kind of ministry that we do…ministry like our clothes closet, and the volunteer work we do once a month at the Open Door Mission downtown. Would you have us no longer able to help the poor of our city?”

I was too stunned to answer him. I had only worshipped there a couple of times and had seen no black persons, but I had assumed it was because black people were creeped-out by this stiff and sacerdotal pastor. “Not permitted to join”!!! Is this what it was possible for a church to be? Was the story of Jesus of a sort that it would permit this kind of congregation? I suddenly had more reason to not want the God of the Bible to be my ultimate concern.

The following Wednesday only two kids showed up and before I could begin the class the pastor entered the room and said, “See. I knew this would happen and I just can’t allow it. Kids”, he said, “for today you’ll be joining the fourth and fifth-graders down the hall in Mrs. Cantwell’s class.”

“I don’t remember if I took a parting shot at this third and most repugnant of the Lutheran pastors I’d known, but it would have been rather untypical of me not to. I hope I did, but, of course, it would have made no difference. But now I was sure that I was done with organized religion for good and I very likely would have been had it not been for a very fluke encounter with yet another Lutheran pastor four years later…a very flawed and eventually disgraced fellow that I still have the very fondest regards for.

I don’t recall that Crickett was mean spirited during the period that our marriage was going south. She didn’t provoke arguments or gratuitously utter unkind things. She just didn’t seem to care about us. As a first born people pleaser I was anxious to do what I could to try to spark greater amiability or simply get her to laugh, but an occasional pleasant smiles and a neutral affect was about as good as I could get from her. I was frustrated and a little scared because I loved her and wanted her to love me back. I was proud of her for the important work she was doing at the hospital, and although I no longer had the status of an Army captain and aviator I wanted her to be proud of how hard I was working.

In February of 1972, I hit on an idea that I thought might get us back to where we had been in the first several months of our marriage. Crickett spoke often and fondly of San Antonio, Texas, where her father and other Carlisle family members lived. I don’t recall if she had ever been there, but she spoke of it in the way that some Roman Catholics speak about Rome or that those of Irish descent talk about the “old sod”.

“Let’s become Texans!”, I said one morning. “Just as soon as your year with the hospital is up, let’s move to San Antonio. I was there in 1967 when I was in flight school and the World’s Fair was going on and it was fabulous. What do you think?”

“What would you do there…go to school?”

“Eventually, maybe at night, but what I really want to do is to get a real job and make enough money so that we could maybe buy a house and maybe you wouldn’t have to work as many hours”.

“But I like my job.”

“Well, I mean…it would be entirely up to you. But we would be living in a great city near your dad and his family, and we’d have more income…”

“What kind of work would you do?”

“Sales. My dad has made a good living in sales and there’s no good reason why I couldn’t. Maybe I could join the Texas National Guard and make a little extra money there as well. You’d be married to a captain again, and someone with money again and we’d be living in your favorite city. What do you think?!”

She wanted time to mull it over and a week later said, “Sure, we can move to Texas. Anytime after the first of June.” She in no way seemed giddy about the idea, but that she was willing to do it…that she was willing to pack up and head out on a bold western adventure…with me!...this was encouraging and it made me very happy.

Spring was glorious that year. The second semester was even more interesting than the first. “Into to Philosophy” gave way to “Modern Philosophy”, “Intro to Anthropology” was replaced by “Ethnology of Pre-Columbia Americans”. I also took a course in macro-economics, 19th century English literature, and a political science course in which everything Dr. White had said about the wrong-headedness of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam was proven to be reserved understatement. What I had been involved in was far more evil than I had imagined.

But…Mobile was decked in Azaleas and Crickett was coming with me to Texas!

One night, two weeks before we were to move she said, “Gary, I’m not going.”

“You want us to stay?”

“No. I want you to go”.

“Alone? You want a divorce?”

She hesitated. “No. But I want you to go, and at least for now I’m going to stay.”

She may have had a lover. She may have been identifying me with her father. She may simply have fallen out of love. Whatever the case I decided the issue was money. She loved me deeply when I was an officer and had money in my pocket. Now I was poor and her love had cooled. So…I was, by god!, going to go to Texas and I was, by god!, going to make a lot of money and I was, by god!, going to win her back! And that’s nearly what I did. But not quite…

It took me all of two weeks to find a sales job and somehow I managed to score this job with one of the best salespersons on the planet. I’m not exaggerating. Mr. Lynn Sabold, Manager of the West Texas District of Dictaphone Corporation, was a salesperson par excellance. I’ve never met anyone quite like him. He was a consummate professional of the selling trade. In little more than four years he took the Dictaphone district that nationally had been next to last out of fifty-two districts to the number one spot and as long as Lynn was in San Antonio his district was a perennial top three district..

The secret to Lynn’s success was not the people he hired, but rather in how in trained them and in what he expected of them. “This job is simple”, he would say, “just do everything I tell you to do and you will be successful”. What follows is Lynn’s sales canon…

1. Learn as much as you can about your product, but then “forget” it. Allow your product information to be in the back rather than the front of your mind.
2. Look the part. If you want your potential customer to think that you’re successful because you’ve got a dynamite product that everyone wants to buy, then dress up like a very successful salesperson.
3. Each day make as many face to face contacts with decision-makers as you can.
4. When introducing yourself to a prospect, don’t act as though they are your best friend. They aren’t. A prospect for dictating equipment is a busy professional with lots of correspondence. Respect their time and move quickly to the reason you’re there.
5. Ask the kind of questions that will allow you to know whether or not what you have is what they need. LISTEN to their answers.
6. If a prospect doesn’t need what you’re selling don’t sell it to him or her. In the long run integrity pays off.
7. Don’t talk about the features of your talking-machine. Instead talk about the benefits of those features.
8. Be prepared to overcome objections, but don’t get into a ping-pong tournament with prospects. People may need what you’re selling, but for their own reasons they may not want it and may have a hard time saying “no”. Respect their wishes and check back with them every now and then. Most sales require several respectful contacts.
9. Ask for the order when you’ve earned the right to do so, and in a way that is respectful and fitting.
10. Don’t sacrifice your commission in order to get the sale. Your product is competitively priced and you deserve to make a living. Regard your commission as money that the customer is paying you in advance to take care of him or her. When you work for me you get one chance to service a customer poorly. No matter how good of a producer you are the second offense will result in termination.

This is what Lynn taught and modeled and it made him and those of us who worked for him very successful. Within six months of being hired I had sold an entire year’s quota of equipment, I was living in a brand new apartment in the young-and-on-the-make suburban side of the city, and had qualified for a trip to with my spouse to the annual sales celebration which that year was in Acapulco, Mexico. Six months after that I was promoted to branch manager in beautiful Corpus Christi.

I LOVED selling and I loved being successful at it, but it never quite rose to the level of becoming my god. “Who am I? I’m the number two salesperson in Dictaphone’s West Texas District. I am protected from the evil of having no money or status. I enjoy a good life comprised of a lovely home, nice clothes, new car and the fine dining, travel and night life that twenty-somethings enjoy. Certainly my new job made all of that possible, but I had had better ultimate concerns and was not willing to settle for a lesser god. And besides…I still loved Crickett. I really did, and even though it had dawned on me that I should not expect much success from a marriage that had been agreed to impulsively…after only six short weeks…still there was something about Crickett or something about Crickett in combination with me that made her the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing I thought about as I drifted off to sleep.

And in November of 1972, she agreed to come out for a four day visit and I did all that I could to make her stay exciting and fun and romantic and it worked because in the hours before she left she said, “I’m sorry for what I have put you through…I’m still not entirely certain about us…but I want to give it a chance, so if you can help me find a hospital nursing job, I will move here and give it another try.” I could NOT have been more excited!

Well…it didn’t quite work out. Crickett did move, she was quickly hired as a coronary care nurse at Baptist Hospital, our time together was not unpleasant (we traveled together to Acapulco), but after six months she decided to move out and file for divorce. We had some counseling, but our therapist had concerns about the parallels between me and Crickett’s dad and could not recommend extraordinary efforts at reconciliation. “I’m sorry”, she told me, “I know that this isn’t what you want to hear, but I promise that you will be happy again.” I believed her no more than I have believed any of the other therapists who have told me the same thing over the years. But she was right and so were they.

At about the same time the divorce was final I was reassigned to Corpus Christi to take over the branch. Thanks to Lynn I had become a pretty good salesman, as usual I was ginned up for a new adventure, and I loved Corpus Christi, but…I was a mess emotionally. I rented a quaint, mossy apartment a short walking distance from the bay and a dumpy little oyster bar where I too often found myself drinking beer and hoisting sliders. I had a series of affairs with women I’d meet on the job or in bars. Most were nice, but none caught my fancy, and following our intimacies I was more than anxious to disappear from their lives.

I may have been clinically depressed, but knew nothing of that malady in those days. Years later I was hospitalized for depression and I don’t recall feeling any sadder or any more at loose ends then than I did during the summer of 1973. I sold enough to keep Lynn’s confidence in me, but I could have sold a lot more. At night I drank in quiet little taverns along the gulf. On the weekends I often didn’t leave my apartment, but would sit alone with the curtains closed reading and drinking cold beer. I was drawn to melancholy literature and stumbled on a writer whose literary mood well matched my emotional temperature.

One day I found a book on a deck chair near the pool. Looking inside the cover I discovered that it belonged to Sue Peterson, a young woman from an upstairs apartment who I had seen a couple of times by the mail boxes. The book was entitled ,“Moving On” and was written by Larry McMurtry. The owner was not at home when I tried to return it so I took it back to my place and read it in one night. And I loved it. The dark and ironic mood of the McMurtry’s story fairly well match my own and I began to wonder about the young woman, Sue Peterson, who also appreciated this young Texas author who would one day win a Pulitzer Prize for “Lonesome Dove” and an “Oscar” for the screenplay of “Brokeback Mountain”.

It wasn’t long before I had the chance to get to know Sue. One Tuesday morning a few weeks later I saw her waiting at a bus stop just outside of our small apartment complex. I asked her if she needed a ride and she told me that her VW Bug was in the shop. “Where do you work”, I asked. “Downtown, at the ‘Corpus Christi Caller Times’ newspaper.”

“Well, hop in”, I responded. “I go right by there on my way to work!” Actually taking her downtown was quite a bit out of my way, but I was very anxious to meet this semi-hippy-ish-looking literary lady whose license plate indicated that she was from Michigan. It turns out that she had grown-up just 90 miles from Omaha, and had a troublesome father who, scarred by his World War II experience as a combat photographer, was a divorced salesman who drank too much. That’s right…I had just offered a ride to the woman who would eventually become wife number two.

However, before that would happen there was still another chapter in the story of my first marriage. A very sad chapter.

One night when I was working late at the office the phone rang and when I picked it up Crickett said, “Hi, stranger. How have you been?” If I had been standing my knees would have buckled.

“I’m fine, how are you? It’s great to hear your voice.” We chatted for several minutes and then Crickett asked, “Do you ever get back to San Antonio?”

“I do”, I replied, “In fact I’m going to be in San Antonio a week from Friday for a sales meeting. Can I buy you dinner?”

“I’d love that”, she said and my heart leapt. “Where are you going to be staying?”

“At the Holiday Inn near the office, why do you ask?”

“Well…because I thought that if you hadn’t already made plans, maybe you could stay here. I think I miss you.”

I could not believe my ears. I had been waiting for Crickett to say something like this for nearly two years and had long since given up believing it would happen. And now out of the blue…

We had a wonderful weekend and suddenly it seemed that we were back where we had been when we first met and were both over the moon in love. In the subsequent weeks we spoke several times on the phone and had another weekend together less than a month later. On the way back to the coast following our second liaison I began to worry that I was setting myself up to be hurt again. I didn’t trust this new happiness. I loved feeling joyous again, but in my head I suddenly had a vivid recollection of a time late one afternoon in Vietnam. We were flying home from a long mission. I was exhausted, but the next day I was leaving for an R and R to Australia and I was very excited about the trip. We were flying at nearly 4000 feet over the ocean watching the sun set in the west over the mountains. It was all so glorious when suddenly lights began flashing wildly on the instrument panels, warning buzzers began beeping loudly through our headphones and a banging sound and terrible vibration began to shake the helicopter violently.

I thought we’d been tracked and then hit by very deadly radar guided 40mm anti-aircraft fire and I was certain that in the next moment or two the aircraft would break apart and I would fall to my death. I was terrified. As it turned out we were not in peril. Earlier in the day a stray bullet had hit and weakened the cap of one of the rotor blades and on the way home it had failed and set up the vibration and the banging sound that occurred with each revolution. We were fine, but that event became a symbol for me of the chaos in life that can turn the happiest trajectories into sudden spiraling descents of calamity and heartbreak.

Is that what I was setting myself up for? Is that what Crickett was setting herself up for? Crickett was (and still is) a wonderful person whose default is not to hurt, but rather to help people. Hence the nursing career. She is also a person with an appetite for life and for adventure. (As of the writing of this book Crickett has lived all over the world, most recently in Morocco). Apart from the reminders of her father, marrying a military pilot was consistent with her desire for excitement and the prospect of accompanied tours at home and abroad. But how much adventure would Crickett find in the life of a Dictaphone salesperson? The answer was “not much”.

All of this made me reconsider what we were both getting ourselves back into. I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t want Crickett to get hurt. I didn’t want Crickett to feel as though she was hurting me. A few days later I resolved to put a stop to what was starting again.

A month later Crickett called to tell me that she was pregnant. She wanted to know what I thought she should do. I didn’t think she had a choice. She couldn’t let the pregnancy imperil her health and I told her so. She asked about “us”…whether I thought we might be able to work things out. I told her that there was a time when there was nothing that I wanted more (I didn’t tell her that I still wanted it), but that I didn’t want either of us to again be hurt. She was quiet for awhile and then sadly said, “okay”.

There was no baby, but years later she was able to have a child who is now grown, and although I do not know the details she has hinted that there may have been another child and maybe a husband who somehow died tragically. Thinking about that makes me very sad. Whenever my thoughts run to Crickett my first image is and will always be of the beautiful and lighthearted girl I sat next to in the bleachers on that Friday night long ago. I have been in love more than once in the years since, but I learned romantic love from the girl from Brundage, Alabama, and behind the bright experience of other loves Crickett has always been there somehow in the shadows. I am glad that her life now is replete with love, happiness and adventure and I hope it always shall be. We found each other again only recently and I am glad for the renewed friendship, and I will never regret that we once were lovers and that for a season of my life she sat both serenely and tempestuously on the throne of my soul.

Before I begin writing about Susan and the next important part of my life I want to get back to Jesus for a page or two. What follows is speculative...even more speculative than most of what we think we know about Jesus. Dr. Bruce Chilton, Professor of Religion at Bard College has suggested in his book “Rabbi Jesus”, that at a very early age Jesus left home and became a follower of John the Baptizer. Perhaps as early as age twelve or thirteen. He believes that the fact that each of the four New Testament biographers writes about John is a clue that Jesus’ relationship with John was a very important part of his theological formation. For years scholars have conjectured that the gospel writer’s default would have been to not give credit to any but the spirit of God for Jesus’ vocational calling and development. These same scholars conclude that the fact John plays a role in both is a very big hint that John was Jesus’ most important teacher. Chilton’s contribution to this widely held notion is that John was Jesus’ teacher for many years.

Dr. Chilton argues that Jesus probably began his time with the Baptizer by working as one of his gophers. This would have involved campsite duties, food preparation, crowd barkering, perhaps some fundraising. Over time John may have trusted Jesus enough to have let him work as an advanceman…going on ahead to the next hamlet to prepare the people there for John’s arrival. Such work would have allowed Jesus to do a little public preaching and/or in local synagogues some teaching. Anxious to generate as large a crowd as possible for his boss Jesus would also have done a bit of selling. Did he employ some of the same techniques that Lynn Sabold taught his sales staff? I think so…

• Learn as much as you can about your product, but then “forget” it. Allow your product information to be in the back rather than the front of your mind. (Know scripture and important rabbinic interpretation of scripture, but don’t vomit it all over your audience)
• Look the part. (If you want your audience to think you’re a prophet dress like one. Wear a hair suit. If you want your audience to think that you’re an advocate for the poor, dress as a poor person dresses)
• Each day make as many face to face contacts with decision-makers as you can. (During his life’s work Jesus spoke to thousands)
• Ask the kind of questions that will allow you to know whether or not what you have is what they need. LISTEN to their answers. (Jesus parables were designed to engender conversation)
• If a prospect doesn’t need what you’re selling don’t sell it to him or her. In the long run integrity pays off. (When a “rich young ruler” wanted to join Jesus’ merry band, Jesus said, “fine…what you first need is poverty and the personal freedom and communal dependence that goes with it. Sell your stuff and give it to the poor.” When the rich guy disagreed that that’s what he needed, Jesus said, “okay…adios”)
• Be prepared to overcome objections, but don’t get into a ping-pong tournament with prospects. People may need what you’re selling, but for their own reasons they may not want it and may have a hard time saying “no”. Respect their wishes and check back with them every now and then. Most sales require several respectful contacts. (Jesus would later tell his students, “if you enter and village and they don’t seem to be interested in what you’ve got to say, move on to the next village”)
• Ask for the order, but only after you’ve earned the right to do so. ( Jesus asked his listeners to “repent”, i.e., change their minds and the direction of their lives, but only after he spent time with them doing dialogical teaching)
• Regard your commission as money that the customer is paying you in advance to take care of him or her. (Jesus took care of his customers well enough to put himself in harm’s way by demonstrating and modeling what he sold)

As time went by John may have taught Jesus how to meditate. John seems to have appreciated the very strange Old Testament book of Ezekiel and like some mystics of his time he may have used Ezekiel’s recorded visions as the focus of his own meditations.

Ezekiel was written in the years when Israel had been defeated by the Babylonian Empire (550 BCE) and the leaders, the wealthy and the intelligentsia of Israel had been relocated to Babylon. In those days it was believed that the world was flat, that Heaven was located directly above the flat disc of Earth, and that each national god had his or her own heaven directly above their own country. The question, therefore, for Ezekiel was could he pray to the Jewish god (Yahweh) when what was directly above him was the heavenly airspace of Marduk, Babylon’s god.

In his vision Ezekiel sees Yahweh in a chariot suggesting that Yahweh is a moveable god who is available anywhere. This was a precursory idea to monotheism. Another part of Ezekiel’s vision involved a mysterious character who is referred to as “the son of the humane one”. The “humane one” would seem to be Yahweh suggesting that Yahweh is above all else humane. Not above all else powerful or above all else perfect or intelligent or demanding of goodness or punishing of evil…but above all else humane. A son or daughter of the humane one would therefore be humane him or herself.

Interestingly, Jesus self-identification throughout the four of his biographies is primarily “a son of the humane one” usually translated into English as “son of man”. Was the notion that God is humane an idea that he learned from the Baptizer or did he come up with it on his own as a result of the Baptizer’s encouragement to let Ezekiel’s vision become the visual mantra of his meditations?

Was Ezekiel’s Yahweh-on-a-chariot the genesis of John’s and Jesus’ belief that putting Yahweh in a box (the Temple) does violence to the notion that Yahweh is everywhere and that everything (and every one, e.g., the poor and infirm) is therefore sacred? I don’t know, but it’s not improbable.

So, John the Baptizer as Jesus’ ethical teacher. This is a good segway into the next phase of my life where Susan and seminary both become important ethical teachers for me.

Susan and Crickett had in common father’s who could have done their parenting jobs far better. Like Lt. Colonel Carlisle, Leonard Peterson was very handsome, had seen war up close and came home from overseas with a drinking problem. He married a remarkable woman named Dorothy who was an inspiring school teacher, who held things together when Leonard’s alcoholism spun the family into dizzying worry and financial chaos, and who raised her only child, Susan, to believe that strong women could overcome the folly and weakness of second-rate men.

During Susan’s childhood her father’s verbal violence, emotional distance and frequent periods of unemployment were mitigated by a close and extraordinary loving cohort of family and friends. Susan’s maternal grandparents, her childless maternal aunt and uncle, and her childless godparents were fiercely protective of Susan and treated her like a daughter. Her school friends were also a tight-knit group and many have remained close to Sue through the years. So it could have been worse, but it could also have been much better for Susan had her father not been a feckless alcoholic. Over the years Susan suffered from “child-of-an-alcoholic parent syndrome” and in her it manifested itself in a dogged determination to prove herself to a father who until his death was unimpressed with anything beyond a well-stocked bar.

I have long speculated that what most attracted Susan to me was that I reminded her of her father and that I therefore provided her with the opportunity to win me/Leonard over. He was a salesman…I was a salesman. He was an alcoholic…I drank more than I should have. He had a thin veneer of respectability that masked serious dysfunction…I appeared more substantive and together than I was. I was a Leonard Peterson impersonator which not only gave Susan the chance to get me (Leonard) to love her, but also, because I was young, allowed her the chance to redeem me.

Are these speculations accurate? I don’t know for sure. Maybe what attracted Susan to me was more or less complicated. Perhaps she just liked me. It could be that she settled for me. Whatever the case we did fall in love and about a year after we met we got married in a large Lutheran church in her home town of Sioux City, Iowa.

Here’s what I liked/loved about Susan:
• she was apple-cheek pretty
• she was a corn and catechism fed Midwest Lutheran (a cultural not religious Lutheran)
• she was smart (my mother is very bright and I’ve always been attracted to intelligent women)
• her eyes twinkled and her dimples blossomed when she laughed
• she enjoyed conversations about serious matters
• she was a journalist and a fine writer
• she was involved in anti-war protests as an under-grad at Iowa State University and again while at Michigan State working on her Masters
• she had a non-materialistic hippy, Franciscan sensibility that I have always appreciated for reasons that are not clear to me. (One of the things that I did like about Vietnam was the material simplicity and close communal character of our lives).
• she had fun and interesting friends
• she incarnated some of the Peter, Paul and Mary freedom song justice concerns that my religious training may have predisposed me to appreciate
• she campaigned for McGovern. (I actually had campaigned for Nixon in order to win over the dictating account of the Texas Petroleum Institute in San Antonio, whose business counsel was a Young Republican. I got the sale, but later felt sleazy about having sullied myself in support of our chief dick)
• she was a good lover although not one who conned me into believing that I was a magnificent performer. For a long time part of me kept coming back to win that acclaim, but never quite pulled it off
• she was restless and was up for adventure
• she was hilarious when she smoked dope
• she could be very sweet and tender

I did not do with Susan what I had foolishly done with Crickett. I did not festoon her with the mantle of ultimate concern and place her on the empty throne in my soul. Her place was in my heart. I loved her, but did not give her the responsibility to give my life ultimate meaning or protect me from grave existential peril. But neither was anything else providing me with these comforts and I was, to a significant extent, at sea.

This angst began to show itself most obviously in my work. I was no longer producing at a frenetic pace and although I easily made my annual sales quota, my enthusiasm for the game had run its course. Lynn Sabold became aware of my disenchantment with talking machines and Salesman Of The Month Awards, and hoping to re-invigorate my passion for success transferred me back to San Antonio to take over responsibility for Dictaphone’s government accounts. (San Antonio has five military bases and a large State University). It didn’t work and after about six months of lackluster production he let me go. “I don’t know what happened, Gary. I had you pegged for a superstar in this business, but somehow the air went out of the balloon. I’m really sorry it ended this way.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry too, Sir. I feel as though I really let you down. I want you to know that I will always be very grateful to you for giving me a chance, for putting so much money in my pocket and for teaching me so much about so many things…not just about selling and business, but also about doing things the right way and with integrity.”

I really loved Lynn and was very sad to learn a couple of years ago that he had passed away. I sent the following note to his widow, Jackie…

Dear Mrs. Sabold,

My name is Gary Boe. I’m sure you don’t remember me, but I worked for Lynn in San Antonio for about three years in the early to mid 70’s. I later went to grad school, was a Lutheran pastor for 15 years, and since 1995, I have worked in human services on behalf of children. These days I am a V.P. with the largest child welfare agency in Iowa.

I have just learned of Lynn’s death and am very saddened. Lynn was an important and iconic figure in my life...a marvelous teacher...and a person that I still think about on a remarkably regular basis.

Lynn was (of course) the best salesperson I ever knew, and what he taught me about how to sell has never left me. “It’s a recipe”, he said. “all the normal ingredients that everyone else uses...hard work, product knowledge, persistence...but the secret ingredients, the ones far more rarely added by others are integrity and gratitude. To be really successful you must first keep your promises (large AND small), and second, you must also be demonstrably grateful to the customers and others who are part of your success.”

It’s been 35 years since Lynn shared his secret recipe with me and whatever success I’ve had professionally or personally has a lot to do with my having taken his advice to heart. Words are cheap and Lynn’s might have been too had I not observed him relentlessly heeding his own advice.

I have several stories about Lynn that I have shared with many people over the years, and inevitably folks respond by saying, “I wish I could have met this guy.” Well, I was one of the lucky ones who DID, and I promise you I will always be grateful.

Jackie, I remember you as a beautiful and full-of-life woman with two handsome young boys and a rock-star husband. I hope that your life has been filled with happiness and that you will be consoled by your family and by the best possible memories of your life with Lynn.

--Gary

She did remember me and sent back a lovely note thanking me and letting me know that Lynn had gone on to be very successful in business and that her life with Lynn had been wonderful.

I didn’t take me long to find another job. I had the opportunity to choose between two very good offers. The first was with a law book company called Matthew Bender. I was promised a great deal of money, but would have had to relocate to Sioux Falls, South Dakota and travel extensively.

The second job paid well, but only a third as well as the Matthew Bender position. It was with a pharmaceutical company called Stuart. After many conversations with Susan (“Gary, whatever you decide I will happily support…”), and after a lot of private agonizing over the choice, I decided to accept the safer option…Stuart Pharmaceutical. “Safe” has rarely been an important criteria in my decision making, but in this case I chose “safe’ for two reasons. First, because I thought it best for my tender new marriage, and second because something was going on in San Antonio to rekindle my interest in Christianity. Here’s how it happened…

One rainy Sunday morning, not long after we had moved from Corpus to San Antonio, Susan and I decided it might be trippy to go to church…take a stroll down ecclesiological memory lane. Like a lot of people Susan had drifted away from the church during college. She shared some of my notions that Christianity was a belief system ill-suited for the modern world. She had also been disappointed by the reluctance of grass-roots Christians and their churches to take a more active role in the civil rights and anti-war movements.

We kicked the idea of a church museum-like visit around for awhile…we nearly didn’t go…on the way to the church that we’d found in the yellow pages we briefly got lost and almost gave up…we arrived late and wondered if we should go in…but finally settled into a pew on the outside aisle, two-thirds the way back on the lectern side of the nave. (I don’t know why I remember this, but I do).

We heard a flat-out GREAT sermon by a Buddy Holly look-alike pastor by the name of Delmas Luedke. The subject of the homily was world hunger and the need for Christians who take Jesus seriously to get involved politically to stop the calamitous death-toll that starvation imposes on children around the world…40,000 per day!
I was appalled to learn of the scale of the suffering and could not remember ever hearing a Lutheran pastor talk about using political means to deal with a social ill. Oh sure, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy and William Sloan Coffin and the Berrigan brothers had taken their causes to the public square...but they were sainted and celebrity clergy. This Luedke guy was real and standing fifty feet away and…and…he was LUTHERAN!!! How come he hadn’t used the word “sin” in his sermon…and where was the word “grace”...and how could it have happened that Luther had not been mentioned in his fifteen minute monologue?!

Sue liked the sermon too and during the hymn that followed she leaned over and whispered something. Flying helicopters had damaged my high frequency hearing and I wasn’t quite sure what I had heard. She later told me that she was filling out the visitor card and asked, “that was a really good sermon, shall I check the ‘Interested in becoming a member ‘ box?” Apparently I only made out the “really good sermon” and answered, “Yeah! Absolutely!” And thus was set in motion events that would result in me becoming an un-refrocked pastor and the author of a book about me and the mysterious peasant who for better or worse has had the single biggest influence on modern human history.

The following Tuesday I came home from work and Susan greeted me with, “that pastor is stopping by after supper.”

“What pastor? Why?”

“Pastor Luedke…the one whose church you’re interested in joining. Do you not remember what we did Sunday? Did my poor Baby have a brain injury today?”

Ordinarily I would have smiled at this, but I didn’t want a repeat of the Alabama Lutheran pastor who in time had become a pest and the thought of whom now conjured up painful memories of Crickett.

“Yeah, I know, but why is he coming here?”

“Because remember I asked if you were interested in joining and you said ‘yes’ and so I indicated as much on the visitor card”.

“I didn’t hear you ask if I wanted to be a member. I only recall you asking if I liked the sermon. I don’t want to join a church. You can, but I don’t want to”.

Susan leveled her gaze at me and very deliberately said, “Of course I can if I want to. But Pastor Luedke is coming in an hour…I told him you would be here and if you’re not interested in membership just tell him.”

“Listen, how about I go play nine holes of golf and you tell him?” I knew this wouldn’t fly.

“C’mon, Mr. Brave Helicopter Pilot. You can do this. I’ll bet he’s a very nice guy and even if you have no interest in church it might be good to find out about this ‘Bread For the World’ advocacy organization he talked about. That’s something that I’d like to know more about.”

When Rev. Delmas Luedke arrived Sue welcomed him at the door and ushered him into our living room. I stood to shake hands and, as I had the Alabama pastor, I offered him a beer hoping as I had then that it might send him running. I was disappointed.

“Sure, I’ll have a beer! Thanks!” Most Texas Lutherans are of German ancestry and believe beer to be an improved version of holy water. We chatted for awhile about nothing in particular until Delmas said, “So, you’re interested in membership?”

I folded my arms, glanced briefly at Susan and said, “Susan may be, but I’m not.”

“That’s fine”, he said, then turning to Susan said, “Well, Susan, can you tell me…”

I interrupted with, “I mean, I’d like to believe, but I am convinced that the Universe is sixteen billion years old.”

He turned back and starred at me for a few seconds, “What…?”

“I said that I believe that the Universe is sixteen billion years old”.

“Well”, he replied, “I think that the better estimate is 12.6 billion, but what ‘s that got to do with anything?”

I was astonished! “So, you believe the Universe is twelve point six billion years old?”

“That’s what I remember from something I read recently in ‘The National Geographic Magazine’”.

“Wait an minute…you read ‘National Geographic’?!”

“Well, I subscribe, but I don’t always get everything read each month.”

I was doubly astonished. “Okay, how about this…I believe that the Earth is about five billion years old…that life somehow got going in the primordial soup four billion years ago…that from single cell creatures there was an evolution…”

“Prokaryotes”.

“What…?”

“Prokaryotes were the first cells. They didn’t have a nucleus, but they evolved into bacteria and archaea which also don’t have nuclei, but then there was an evolution to eukaryotic cells maybe a billion and a half years ago which, of course, led to protists, and then to the Pre-Cambrian critters and then finally to us a couple of hundred thousand years ago. So, Susan, tell me a little about you.”

“Hold on”, I interrupted yet again. “how can you believe all of this and still be a Lutheran pastor?”

“Believe in prokaryotes?” (I think he was having fun with me).

“No…evolution. How can you believe in the Bible and the Adam and Eve story and still believe in evolution. I don’t get it. Are you an intellectual schizophrenic?”

“Well, my wife sometimes accuses me of being an ordinary schizophrenic…or at least a little crazy…but no, I don’t have bifurcated world views. Obviously you’ve had some experience with religious literalism which I’m guessing you couldn’t buy, and you seem to have some knowledge and appreciation of modern natural history and are convinced that Christianity and modernity are deeply at odds. Have you read anything at all about the issue of science and religion?”

“Bertrand Russell’s ‘Why I Am Not A Christian’”.

“That’s a very good book”, he replied.

“You’ve read it and think it’s a good book?”

“Yeah, it’s a terrific book because it exposes the evil, lack of creativity, folly, and fearfulness of the Church. It details the way that over the centuries the Church has failed to trust its own Gospel. It’s a wonderful book that I think every Christian ought to read.”

At this point Susan jumped in as I was trying to clear my head after having been sideswiped by a point of view…a philosophy that was completely alien to me, i.e.,
the apparent marriage of cutting edge science and Christianity. When the cobwebs of astonishment cleared I heard Luedke saying, “So, yes, Susan, there are four questions that can be asked about the creation…what, when, who and why. Now, for answers to those first two forget the Bible and talk to professors at Berkeley and Cornell. In my judgment the Bible is completely useless for the what and when questions. Completely. However, if you’re looking for answers to what may be the more important questions…the who and why inquiries…well, then for those I think the Bible is a marvel.”

This conversation continued for several hours and was one of the most important I’ve ever had. It is not too dramatic to say that it changed the direction of my life. Thank you Delmas! Thank you Susan! We didn’t commit to joining Delmas’ church that night, but we did commit to further consideration of the matter.

A couple of days later Delmas called and spoke with Susan. He had identified her as the more liberal of the two of us and wanted to invite her to attend a weekend retreat at the church. The retreat was called “Matrix”. “’Matrix’ is a way to introduce ordinary people to some of the issues facing poor and other marginalized persons in our community. It forces middle and upper class folks to move beyond the comforting clichés and ignorant assumptions that keep them from becoming agents of biblical justice. We’d love to have you be a part of this, because although you probably don’t need the insights that ‘Matrix’ provides, because there will be lots of discussion among the participants your voice would be very important. You could bring Gary along too. It would give you both a chance to meet some of the other members in the event that you’re still half interested in joining.”

When Susan suggested that we attend I was anxious to do so because I wanted more Q and A time with Delmas. I had other questions that had occurred to me following our first meeting.

The retreat was amazing! On Friday evening we gathered in the fellowship hall of the church. We heard a couple of speakers, then afterwards ate brats and drank from an ice cold keg of Lone Star beer. (We were a long way from my Lutheran church in Omaha. Reverend Christiansen had wanted to impeach my uncle from church governance for suggesting that after a council meeting, “we all go out and get a beer and chew the fat”). On Saturday we visited a poor mother and heard her describe how difficult it was to take care of herself and her two very young children on what she received in welfare. Her social worker invited us to help her develop a budget, but try as we might we could not figure out any way to make ends meet. We left scratching our heads in amazement at this young mother’s ability to provide so much nurture for her children with so few resources.

We visited a county hospital emergency room and saw poor people with fairly serious trauma forced to wait hours to receive treatment. We tried living on the street for just one night with fifty cents in our pockets. We heard a member of the Hispanic community talk about issues of prejudice. We listened to a gay person talk about his struggles to live safely and with a modicum of respect in a violently homophobic world. (I squirmed and felt both guilty and defensive while he spoke). We played a game called “Star Power” which resulted in the participants eventually being divided up into upper, middle and lower classes, and we observed how in this game, as in life, the wealthy make the rules that keep them secure and ever more wealthy and keep the lower classes permanently stuck in poverty and apathy.

It was an amazing weekend and was nearly as important to my theological development as the conversation about religion and evolution had been. Once more I have Susan and Delmas to thank for this paradigm shifting opportunity.

Some of the people we met at the retreat became our very good friends, and were even more encouragement for us to join the congregation. Two months later we requested and were received into membership. One of the couples we became very close to were the Hunts, Willie and Laura. Willie was an ordained Lutheran pastor who was committed to what is known as a “tent-making” ministry. Like St. Paul he had a business which put food on the table, in this case a small stereo store, but in his free time he did youth ministry on a pro-bono basis. There was yet another member of this church who was a tent making pastor. Rev. Gene Fogt and his wife Mona owned a Christian book and gift store which specialized in peace and justice literature. Along with Delmas these two other clergypersons did an enormous amount to rehabilitate my stereotypical notions of what a pastor was like. These were NOT stiff, sacerdotal, closed-minded and humorless people. They were smart, fun, compassionate, creative and spiritual people who were not nearly so interested in worshipping Jesus as they were jumping into some of the mischief he had created.

I love that phrase, “not nearly so interested in worshipping Jesus as jumping into some of the mischief he had created”. I crafted that phrase, but Delmas and the Hunts and the Fogts and Susan were the reality that that phrase describes. And thirty-five years later it still sums up what I believe to be the best way of relating to Jesus.

Six months after we became members Delmas and his wife, Bobbi, and Susan and I had become good social friends. One evening Delmas called and said, “Gary, you’ve still got so many theological questions (and not all of them are entirely dumb-ass, by the way)…and since I’m getting tired of fielding them in restaurants and movie theatres, I’m gonna offer you a deal. This September I’ll be introducing a course of study that will help members develop a good overview of the Bible both historically and thematically. It’s a pretty chewy course and the way it works is that you first spend a couple years training the teachers. I need a dozen teacher trainees and I’m offering you and Susan first rights of refusal. What do you say?”

We said “yes” and that fall we began meeting with Delmas and ten others every Thursday evening for two hours. It was not seminary level material, but it was quite a bit more sophisticated than most adult education curriculum offered by churches. Years later I would hear one of my professors say, “Jesus played with kids and taught adults. In churches these days we do just the opposite.” The curriculum that we studied did not challenge a literal approach to Hebrew scripture, but it did emphasize the allegorical message in the Old Testament stories. For example, in dealing with the narrative of Abraham it did not argue that there actually was no Abraham (nor did it dogmatically insist that there was), instead it made the case that Abraham was blessed by God in order that he could be a blessing to others. The curriculum went on to say that “blessed to be a blessing” was a central theme of the Jewish/Christian enterprise. “Do you feel forgiven by God”, Delmas would ask. “Great, now go out and forgive others. Do you feel loved? Terrific…show that same love to people who need it the most.”

This way of looking at the Bible did not assuage my doubts about the veracity of the Christian story or the existence of God, but at the same time it posited biblical religion as something other than a selfish way to get God to answer prayer and/or escape perdition. This was a way of looking at religion not as a saved from strategy, but rather as a saved for partnership with a God on a mission…a mission to make the world a better place for everyone to live. As such I liked this form of Christianity and for awhile I put my questions about the truth of it all in abeyance.

I think about this period of my religious life as the “Godspel” years. I was very happy in my marriage, my job selling pharmaceuticals was fine, I had resolved conflicting notions that had prevented me from owning Christianity (in later years the conflict would return with a vengeance), we had a cohort of wonderful friends, I was finding new causes to throw myself into, because Susan and several of our new friends were involved in counseling (Susan had a master’s degree in student counseling, Mona Fogt had a Ph.D. in psychology, Gene had a master in either psych or social work, Bobbi was a psych nurse, Delmas and Willie did pastoral counseling)…because I wanted to know more about what my wife and friends knew I began reading everything I could find on the subject of modern psychology and sociology, AND the version of Christianity that we were all drawn to had the flavor of “Godspel”. It was counter-cultural, social justice based, communal and joyful! It was very addictive.

Although I would have denied it at the time, I suppose that what I was getting out of Christianity was akin to what my mom’s parents and grandparents had gotten from it in earlier times. They too were counter-cultural to the extent that their severed piety made them different from most others. In a tiny and isolated pioneer town like Minden, there were no civil rights or world hunger issues to work on, but neighbors in need could provide plenty of outlet for Christian compassion. During the dustbowl and depression years many families took destitute neighbors into their homes and rural churches became hostels for families that had lost their farms and were moving west. These small Midwestern churches were communities within communities and were the hub around which birth and baptism, confirmation and marriage, social connections and funerals danced in the circle of life.

What Susan and I had found seemed different to us than what our parents and grandparents had had, but these days I wonder if anthropologists or ethnographers would agree. But what seemed like a difference was also what attracted me to Christianity redivivus. I didn’t want a Christianity that would bless me as I went off to Vietnam. I wanted one that would convince me not to go and then offer me sanctuary. I didn’t want religion that would discourage African-Americans from having a place next to me in a pew or at the communion rail. I wanted a faith tradition that would march in the streets, boycott or do whatever non-violent thing was necessary to give all people a place at the table. And finally I didn’t want a faith that required me to undergo a circumcision of the cerebral cortex. I wanted one that would allow me to take hold of and own it not only with my heart and soul but also with my brain. In San Antonio, Texas in 1975 I was finding such a faith.

But I didn’t find quite as much as I needed…

“Delmas…I’ve got these questions…

• I don’t understand exactly how virgin birth works. Mary supplies 24 chromosomes and God twenty-four chromosomes…or does God somehow provide all 48…?
• If God knows everything then God would have known how everything following the ‘Big Bang’ would have unfolded…meaning he would have known that there would one day be the Holocaust, so how come God didn’t do a different ‘Big Bang’ in which there was no Holocaust, but since he didn’t do that other ‘Big Bang’ doesn’t this mean that God was responsible for the Holocaust? I mean I can make an apple pie or a poison apple pie. Likewise God can make a pleasant universe or a poison one so how come the poison one?
• And also along those same lines, if God knows everything then he knew that I would be here which means that he knew that my great grandparents would meet, that they would choose to have sex on the day that my grandfather was conceived by that one in a million sperm cell that made it through to the ovum, and he knew that one day my grandfather would meet my grandmother...well you see where I’m going? Instead of building a different universe God chose to build this universe where all this would happen which means that nothing ever happens which wasn’t pre-conceived in God’s mind and that therefore nothing ever happens that isn’t supposed to happen which means that we have no independent reality…we’re all simply a well known tune in God’s head that God is humming with no possibility of variation!
• Many of the miracles that Jesus did seem like cures that could have been the result of the placebo effect. Is it possible that this might explain some of his cures? And how come you never hear of Jesus or any of the Oral Roberts types ever healing an amputee?
• I read that speaking in tongues is referred to as ‘glossolalia’ by psychologists and that there are tongue speakers in many pagan traditions and among those with mental illness and that the tongue speaking of psychotics is indistinguishable from that of Pentecostals.
• Christians make up only a fourth of the world’s population and there are a total of 5000 other religions on the planet. If there is a God who cares about human beings why is he only working with 25% of us? And will 75% go to Hell?
• And how about ‘Hell’? What kind of God sends a Hindu to ‘Hell’? Hell…what kind of God sends anybody to ‘Hell’…an eternity of fire? The worst that we do is electrocute someone. Are we more humane than God?
• And I was reading in National Geographic that there are about four hundred billion stars in the our Milky Way galaxy and maybe a total of a hundred billion other galaxies and that the empty universe beyond the visible universe is as large as the entire Earth is to a grain of sand and that being the case how is it possible that God would have any interest in anything so unimaginably tiny and brief as us? It would be like me caring about the individual bacteria in the gut of a single Indian Ocean bottom fish.
• If Jesus was God and if God knows everything that’s going to happen then Jesus knew about Easter which means that the cross was not that big a deal. Yeah, it was painful for a few hours, but knowing it’s all gonna work out is like having a tooth pulled without anesthesia. Later Christian martyrs who were not God and who couldn’t know the future with absolute certainty would therefore have suffered doubly. There would have been the physical pain on top of the psychological pain born of an uncertain outcome. So what they did was therefore more heroic than what Jesus did. They make the cross look bush league. Am I right?
• I don’t understand what the Holy Spirit is. I don’t understand what any spirit is. When the Bible talks about people being filled by the Hoy Spirit does it just mean that they had some sort of emotional experience? Is the biblical word for ‘spirit’ just some pre-scientific way of talking about phenomena for which we today would use other language?
• Help me to understand ‘soul’. Is soul the me who may live on past my death? Do I have it now? If a person has a soul now is there any way that they can loose it now? Is it part of our cognitive process? Does a brain-dead person have a soul?
• Could there be other people out there on other planets in other solar systems. If so do they get a Jesus? If dolphins and other sea mammals with brains bigger than ours have awareness can they be saved? If the chimp I just read about who has a vocabulary of 300 words and can put together sentences using symbols…if that chimp was in an airplane crash with a micro cephalic who had a lower measureable I.Q. than the chimp…and if one of them went to Heaven which one would it be?
• Is Jesus really coming again to judge the living and the dead and if so will special allowances be made for persons who did not live exemplary lives because they suffered from manic/depressive (bi-polar) disorder or had schizophrenia or whose parents were savagely abusive and caused them to grow up twisted?
• On the Jesus-coming-again thing will we be judged for the last thing we were doing or will it averaged out? For example if Albert Switzer came back from the forty years of medical missionary work in the jungles, stopped into the Hoffbrau Haus for a few Bavarian ales, lost control and went home with a bargirl and if mid-coitus Jesus returned, would Albert be screwed (bad choice) eternally culpable because he got caught fornicating?
• What will Jesus be wearing when he returns? Will it be first century eastern Mediterranean peasant clothing or Brooks Brothers or Mezo-American priestly garb or something colorful and African?

Poor Delmas. No wonder he sent me off to the seminary.

Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that. A year and a half into our involvement with the San Antonio congregation Delmas mentioned the possibility of seminary as a way for me to get many of my questions answered. I was not entirely opposed to the idea, but because I didn’t have my under-graduate degree completed and because Susan and I were happy living in the “Alamo City”, I didn’t feel anything like an overwhelming pull in that direction. It turned out to be an impromptu poker game that would stir the fire in me to get a formal theological education.

One night just after I had gotten home from work my next door neighbor, Tony, stopped by to invite me to a poker game. Tony was a sales rep for Proctor and Gamble and his poker-loving boss was in town. Tony was frantic to get a game together on very short notice. I had spent a year in Vietnam working as a poker player and sometimes pilot and jumped at the chance to sit in. Tony’s boss turned out to be a bit of a jerk especially when the cards weren’t going his way. Towards the end of an evening during which he had done poorly and I had been lucky, he said to me, “So…Stuart Pharmaceuticals…I don’t think I’ve ever heard of your company, Gary. What do you sell?”

“Mylanta, Dialose and Dialose Plus, Mylicon 80…

“Mylanta I’ve heard of. It’s a Maalox wannabe, isn’t it? What’s Dialose and Dialose Plus?”

I wished he hadn’t asked. “They’re both stool softeners. Dialose Plus also has a laxative in it.” There were chuckles around the table.

Refusing to let me off the hook, Tony said, “Yeah, and isn’t Mylicon something that helps you to fart?” Louder chuckles.

“It’s an anti-flatulent. It’s used post-surgically to reduce the build-up of painful entrapped gas caused by low motility.”

“Yeah, it works by making you fart, right?” Outright laughter.

“So…”, said Tony’s boss, “If you start early and go late…if you make many more calls than your competitors…why, hell, in fifteen or twenty years, you could become the laxative king of the Southwest.” Gales of laughter.

I couldn’t resist, “That’s right…which will in turn boost your sales of Charmin Tissue and make you ‘king ass-wipe’.” Now folks were falling off their chairs.

We then went around the table with each card player attempting to make a case for the importance of their job. The local weatherman said, “Yeah, well all of you guys have bullshit jobs, but I’m in the business of warning people about inclement conditions like snow and sleet…

“SNOW?!!!!”, we all cried in unison. “In San Antonio?!” “What do you do for the rest of the decade”, asked the owner of a pet boutique. We were merciless with him. As well we were with the rip-off title company employee and the manager of a local direct mail operation.

When we had finished ravaging each other’s vocational involvements the air went out of the party. “Ante-up”, “gimme two”, “fold”, “call”, “I’ll see that and raise a quarter”, “too rich for my blood”, etc….this was the extent of our conversation. I suspect that we each went home depressed and wondering what we would tell our grandchildren when they crawled up on our knees and asked, “Grampa…what did you do with your life?”

As I lay in bed that night trying to get to sleep I rolled over and whispered to Sue, “What would you think about me going to seminary?” Two things worked in my favor. First, Sue never met a job she didn’t in time dislike (she was currently unhappy in her job as a P.R. writer for the University of Texas at San Antonio)), and second, she’s always been up for adventure. “Sure”, she said, “Why not. Let’s talk about it in the morning.”

We did talk about it and we included Delmas in our conversation. “Here’s the thing”, said Rev. Luedke, “Seminary is a four year graduated program and the work is fairly chewy. Whether or not there is a God, it is still a rigorous Masters. You’ve got to learn two ancient languages, Greek and Hebrew, lots of history, a fair amount of psychology, rhetoric in the form of homiletics and you’re learning all of this at the feet of scholars most of whom have seven year doctorates from places like Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Heidelberg. It’s tough. And therefore an undergraduate degree is required. However…I have discovered that there is a little known provision for any accredited graduate school that allows them to have up to 5% of their student body as non-degreed students.”

“Really”, I said quite pleased and surprised.

“Really. Which means that you COULD get in without the having to do the two to three years of undergrad work that otherwise would be necessary.”

Sue, looking very thoughtful, added, “Well…maybe you could argue that because you’re a little older than most students and have other life experience…and maybe…let’s see…okay, yeah!…perhaps you could further make the case that for you to get your undergraduate degree as quickly as possible you would need to major in military science at a school with an R.O.T.C. program using the credits that you’d get for O.C.S. and flight school. Yeah, then you could then follow up with the obvious point that a degree in military science is wasted effort as a prerequisite for seminary and that therefore they should admit you without the degree. It would, after all, get them a couple of more years out of you as a pastor. Right Delmas?”

Delmas looked at Susan in amazement. “I think that if I was trying to talk the smartest member of this family into going to seminary I should be talking to the one who’s also the prettiest.” Susan blushed and waved her hand as if to say, “no way”. “I might want to go and do another graduate program someday…maybe law school like my friend Jane Wicher, but not seminary. No, I’ve got a temper and some of what you all have to deal with in church work is not something I’d be able to handle without permission to occasionally use a weapon…or at least become a serial ex-communicator. No, this is Gary’s thing…I’m just don’t know if what he wants is to be a pastor or simply go to seminary so he can ask the questions. I hope it’s the former, because I don’t think I want to move from here up into the snow belt simply so Gary can settle an argument in his own head.”

Before the poker night, seminary was mostly about figuring things out about Christianity…deciding once and for all if there was anything to it. If there was, well then, maybe giving myself over to it in some way would be the thing to do. If, however, I discovered that Christianity was a well-intentioned fraud then finally after some stops and starts I could at last move on. Since the poker game, however, I had an increased interest in becoming a pastor…doing something with my life that was meaningful. Others might be wasting their lives selling Tide, toilet paper and laxatives, but I would be saving souls…I would be doing work that had ultimate significance. Other’s might feel regret when, as old men and women, they looked back on how they had spent the center cut of their days and years, but I would be able to say that I had done so in partnership with the Lord of hosts…that I had been an agent of the meaning behind all meanings. No laxative king title for me!

The throne in my soul that had been vacant since Crickett had stepped down three years earlier now had a new occupant…an occupant who was actually me…or the future me…Pastor Gary Boe. “Who am I? I’m the soon to be Reverend Gary N. Boe. I am protected from the evil of having a vocationally vapid and meaningless existence (and from culpability for any past crimes related to my work as a combat pilot), and I experience the good life that comes with being a respected and revered member of the community (to say nothing of also being an archdeacon of the mysteries!)”

Holy shit! This was the best ultimate concern I had ever had…or planned to have and I wanted it more than anything. All of which means that I went to the seminary for all the wrong reasons. (One real benefit, however, was that my re-occurring dreams of planes and helicopters crashing, and the dreams that bodies I had buried were soon to be discovered…these dreams went away…for a year or two.)

Getting to seminary involved me finding a way to make Susan’s arguments with seminary decision-makers. A year before I actually started at Trinity Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, I learned that Trinity’s President Dr. Fred Meuser was going to be speaking to pre-seminary students at near-by Texas Lutheran College in Sequin. I arranged an invitation to the dinner event and as luck would have it ended up sitting to Meuser’s immediate right at one of the tables.

“Hi, Dr. Meuser, you don’t know me, but my name is Gary Boe and one of your former students Delmas Luedke helped get me here tonight because he thinks that although I don’t have my undergraduate degree I would, in his words, be ‘good grist for the seminary mill’ because I devour everything he gives me to read and the reason, by the way, that I don’t have my under-graduate degree is that I was drafted out of college for screwing around playing basketball, BUT I scored well enough on Army I.Q. tests to get into Officer Candidate School and become an Army pilot and as a Captain even be selected for the Army Career Course, but I got out because I had some ethical concerns about the war and I was branch manager for Dictaphone Corporation in Corpus Christi, but these days I am a pharmaceutical sales person, the only pharmaceutical sales person in the company which was just purchased by Imperial Chemical Industries of London the largest chemical company in the world, who doesn’t have an under-graduate degree and I’m doing great because sales in this area have improved significantly, and if I was to go back to school to get the degree in the most expeditious manner I would need to enroll at a school which has an R.O.T.C. program so that I could use my military background to score credits (I think I could get 36 worth) and eventually end up with a degree in military science which I am completely certain would not help prepare me for a life representing Jesus who seems to have a been a pacifist and, oh yeah, I didn’t mention that I went back to school for a year after getting out of the service and had straight ‘A’s, but then took the job with Dictaphone because I needed the money. What do you think?”

The troubled look on his face clearly indicated that what he thought might have had something to do with his bad luck in choosing my table to sit at. Lynn Sabold would have been horrified with my selling technique.

“You’re a salesman”, Dr. Meuser asked with a note of incredulity.

“Yeah…you wouldn’t know it, would you?”

“Not unless you’re selling slicer-dicers door-to-door…and not very many at that.”

I liked this guy. “Can I start over?”

“Not now. Let me eat, visit with some of these other folks at the table and make my speech. We can chat for awhile after. I think I understand what your situation is, but let’s investigate it further when we’re done here.”

Later that evening we visited for about thirty minutes. Somehow I was more relaxed and lucid, and this time my selling style hummed. “We’ve never had a non-degreed student…at least not since the 1840’s”.

“The Army’s Artillery O.C.S. had not had a non-degreed student since the Spanish American War.”

“We’re not the Army”, said Dr. Meuser.

“No, but neither are you an organization that despises courage or those willing to make sacrifices for a holy cause or people who are able to make 180 degree changes in their notions about what constitutes a holy cause. Are you?”

Meuser starred back at me and smiled. “Delmas called me a few days ago and told me that you would be here tonight. I looked for you when I walked in. I’ll tell you what…if you and your wife, on your own dime, would be willing to fly to Columbus, I’ll get you a meeting with our admissions committee. From there you’re on your own. Their decision will be final.”

I was ecstatic. I reached out and shook his hand and said, “Deal. Thank you very much, Sir!”

“Stick your head in my office when you get to town”, he said, “If I’m around I’d like to meet Susan. Delmas has said some lovely things about her too.”

The Columbus interview was nearly a disaster. One of the interviewers, an administrator responsible for internships, said something a bit disrespectful about Susan. I don’t recall quite what it was, but I do remember the flash of anger I felt, and a response that went something like, “I don’t know you well enough to dislike you, but given time and more comments like that I’m quite sure I could pull it off.”

On the plane ride home, I inelegantly said to Sue, “I’m fucked.” She, however, put her hand on mine and said, “Oh, I don’t know… When you said what you did I glanced at Dr. Liefeld, and saw a slight smile cross his face.”

“Really”, I asked.

“Yeah…really. And by the way, when you said what you did, a slight smile crossed my face as well. Thanks for sticking up for me at a moment when it would have been very easy for you not to.”

Her words made me feel good. Brave and good, and I thought to myself, “Heck…whatever happens...whatever we do, I’ll be fine for as long as what we do we do together.”

A few months later a letter arrived congratulating me on being provisionally accepted into Trinity Seminary’s 1977 Junior Class. The letter informed me that I was required to take the Graduate Record Exam and that if I graduated from Trinity I would not be awarded the Master of Divinity degree, but could be certified for ordination as a pastor in the American Lutheran Church. I was thrilled.

I will always be very grateful to Susan for her willingness to support me in my seminary venture. Susan grew up in an environment that was financially chaotic. Her father’s alcoholism cost him jobs and with each pink slip Susan and her mother would suddenly find themselves “living on the brink”. For this reason Susan spent a fair number of her early and middle adult years being hyper-vigilant about money. During the majority of our sixteen years together Susan maintained a 60’s sensibility regarding material wealth, but at the same time her financial crisis seismometer could detect the vibration of a stray penny that had fallen through a hole in my pocket.

All of which means that her willingness to leave two good paying jobs and move without job prospects to a strange city with only a few thousand dollars in savings as a cushion…this would have been gutsy for anyone, but especially for a person with Susan’s history. But Susan not only did this brave thing…for me…but she did it with aplomb! Susan will always be one of my heroes.

As it turned out our move went smoothly. We very quickly found an apartment three blocks from Trinity Seminary. Susan was regarded as a catch at Columbus’ Children’s Hospital where she was in short order hired as a public relations writer. I soon found a part-time job working for a local Sears store, and I also qualified to receive substantial G.I. Bill income. In years to come I would protest and organize against U.S. military adventures around the world, never quite meeting an armed conflict I thought Jesus would approve of. It seemed hilarious to me that the military paid for an education that radicalized me and turned me into a staunch opponent of my educational benefactors. That said, considering Vietnam I believe I earned every dime that I was given.

My initial exposure to a seminary education came in the form of a two week Junior Student orientation organized around a study of St. Paul’s letter to the small house church he had started in the Greek town of Philippi. A little background on Paul…

Paul was a Jew who was born and had grown up outside of Palestine. Like many modern U.S. Jews he was unapologetically crazy about Israel. Consequently, when Paul was old enough, perhaps after graduating with a degree in rhetoric from the famous University of Tarsus, he said goodbye to his family in southeast Turkey and moved to Jerusalem where in time he enrolled as a student with Gamliel, one of the most famous rabbis of his time. Gamliel taught his students within the precincts of the great Jerusalem temple which as I have previously written was universally regarded as the first wonder of the ancient world. Paul loved this temple and probably learned his tent and awning making trade by working in the temple’s tannery.

Because Jesus thought the temple was ridiculous and Jerusalem little more than a cruel joke being perpetrated on the poor, Paul and Jesus would not have gotten along had they met. But, of course, they didn’t meet because the C.E.O. of the temple had Jesus murdered by thuggish Italian overlords. Unable to despise Jesus Paul settled for despising Jesus’ community of fellow travelers even to the point of orchestrating the death of one of them. This, of course, so impressed the temple staff that they hired Paul to do more of the same. While in route to debate Christians at a prominent synagogue in Damascus, Syria, Paul had a change of heart and began to see things Jesus’ way. In time he came to believe that Jesus was somehow God’s final and most important messenger.

I’ll have more to say about all of this later, but for now I just want add that Paul, who could be pretty arrogant, took a real shine to Jesus’ ability to not take himself too seriously. In fact, Paul began to think about this and other qualities that Jesus had as exemplifying humanness at its best. Paul therefore writes in his letter to the Philippian Christians (I’m paraphrasing), “If you care anything at all about me then do me this favor…in your dealings with one another act humbly. Don’t think about yourself as being better than the next guy. Don’t regard yourselves as religious superstars, instead do what Jesus did…quit being important. Don’t just not act important, go a step further and be servant-like”.

This was a genius way for the faculty of Trinity Seminary to welcome all of us “chosen ones”…all of us soon to be members of “the highest calling” cadre…we intern stewards of the “keys to the kingdom” to our four year preparation for ordained ministry. It was genius, but at the same time it was like pissing into the wind. We were God’s special ones and two weeks of Philippians was not going to disabuse us of that rock solid certainty.

By the time I graduated in 1981, I had great affection for most of my classmates, but held only a few in high regard. I am told that there was a time when seminaries got the best and brightest of students, but my experience suggests that that may not be the case these days. I realize that this comes off as smug, and I further realize that the reader will regard this as left-handed Gary-boosting as in “my fellow students were not the cream of the crop, but I, of course, was.” Be that as it may, while seminary professors were among the most gifted and virtuous persons I’ve ever met, the student body was pedestrian. For example…
• some students were what one wag referred to as “chancel prancers”…those who saw ordained ministry as way to get a stage for their music-major interests
• some students were the sons of ordained ministers and suffered from “son of god complex”
• some came from near-neo-Pentecostal Lutheran churches and believed deeply in supernatural inspiration while at the same time believing-not-so-much in rigorous academics
• some were guys who if they hadn’t gone to seminary might well have chosen the police academy. These were the ones who wanted positions of authority and control
• some were sweet and kind, but lacking the backbone required to clean out a temple
• some did not have the mental horsepower to be in graduate school
• a few were just creepy

I met one of the creepy ones on my second day. As I sat down next to him at lunch I heard him prattling with others about something a professor had allegedly gotten wrong in the morning lecture. “Impossible”, I thought, “the lecture was fascinating and the instructor was obviously brilliant.” I tried to tune him out, but when I heard him use the phrase, “when I was a pilot in Vietnam…”, I turned to him and said, “when were you in Vietnam?”

“In 1970”.

“Really? What branch of the service were you in and where were you stationed?”

He paused for a telling moment, and then said, “I was in the Air Force and I was stationed at Pleiku.”
Without analyzing what was going on I said, “but there was no Air Force base in Pleiku.”

He suddenly looked squeamish and uncomfortable and said, “Well…we flew around Pleiku.”

“What did you fly?”

“B-52’s”.

“Yeah, but here weren’t any b-52’s in Vietnam. They all flew out of Guam and Thailand.”

“Right”, he said. “I was stationed in Guam”.

“And you were a pilot? What was your rank?”

“I was a sergeant”.

Sergeants were not pilots. Only warrant and commissioned officers went to flight school. This second day seminarian who knew more than the professor was obviously very anxious to have others think highly of him. Although I did not expose his lies to the others around the table, the look that I gave was meant to convey that I was not soon going to be one of his admirers.

But those I did admire included Johan Bergh, a carefree, but very bright young man whose uncle was an impressive bishop. Yo had movie star good looks, but he also had a genuine humility and a genius ear. He was one of the best listeners I’ve ever known.

Merle Gunderman reminded me of my brother, Gordon. Like my brother, Merle was very smart and had a degree in librarian science. He also had a dry sense of humor, and the best thing about him was that he played golf a little more in-expertly than did I.

While Brad Binau was in college he memorized all of Robert Frost’s poems. Brad was another of my seminary friends. Brad was a little stiffer than Yo and Merle, but no less intelligent.

Besides brains what each of these guys had in common was a heart as big as an Iowa barn. Each understood clearly that Jesus had suffered and died not so that we didn’t have to suffer, but rather so that our suffering might resemble his. Together we shared many meals, many bottles of cheap beer and many hundreds of hours of conversation about what Christianity was really all about and how we as future pastors should teach it and model it to the congregations we would be working for. In our Middler year, the four of us created the 125 year old seminary’s first student newspaper that we called “Skandalon”, the anglicized version of the Greek word that translates into English as “scandal”. The reference was to Paul’s notion that Christianity scandalized conventional wisdom.

I did not have close seminary friends who were women because in the late 70’s only about 10% of the student body was comprised of females. As a general rule the women at Trinity were a bit more impressive than the men. In the class just ahead of mine the two top awards given to seniors both went to women. One was the award given to the student judged to have the best gifts for preaching, the other was awarded to the student regarded as the best churchman/churchwoman.

One of my classmates was kind of a “babe” and the normal electro-chemical responses that tend to create magnetic, but fairly harmless flirty attractions were fully in play with many of us males whenever this female student was in the room. Fortunately, for our virtuous selves, five minutes with this young woman was like six hours of Disney’s Anything On Ice.

Gary: “Hi, I’m Gary. What did you think about the lecture this morning?”

Anna: “Oh, hi, I’m Anna. I thought it was heavy…but kinda like a shadow is heavy, y’know…because it’s dark and stretchy…and because it’s representative of what’s actually there…I think Plato said that…but in this case it would be more like a 3-D shadow, y’know, because actually there was a lot to it. I mean it spoke to what I think a lot of us say but don’t really mean, except that today I really did mean it…on some levels.”

Gary:

Anna: “So are you the one from Texas, because I had a friend who was from the panhandle and she always thought it was weird that the only two panhandles we have actually touch…you know, the one in Texas and also the one in Oklahoma. That is weird isn’t it?”

Gary:

Anna: “So anyway this same friend was in the choir with me and…

Gary: “Oh, hey…there’s Johan, I need to go tell him something…” What I needed to tell him was to amend his slow drift in the direction of the blonde with the John Lennon specs.

As it turned out Anna and the B-52 pilot fell in together, proving that what doesn’t abhor a vacuum is yet another vacuum.

Dr. Ralph Doermann taught “Intro to Old Testament”. Ralph was a gentle soul who enjoyed teaching and loved his students, but occasionally during lectures would pause, look wistfully out of the windows and then quickly return his focus to the class and the subject at hand. There’s no way to know, but I sometimes wondered if in these little daydreams Ralph was being transported halfway around the world to the archeological dig sites in Israel where Ralph spent his summers and sabbatical years. Ralph was our own frumpier version of “Indiana Jones” who instead of looking for the lost Ark of the Covenant was delighted to find potsherds and burn sites and the roasted remains of animal bones and other bronze age detritus. Ralph was pious and never missed daily chapel, but he was also a serious researcher who did not allow his religion to prejudice his science.

I had read enough before coming to seminary to know that much of Genesis was mythological, but Ralph helped make the myth come alive and seem very important.

“Alright, boys and girls, here’s the straight skinny on the Garden of Eden story. First thing to know, Genesis gives us two different creation accounts, the longer one in the first chapter, and a much shorter one in the second which is followed by the story of Adam, the woman later to be known as ‘Eve’, the tree and the serpent. The style of language in the first tells us that it was written around 500 B.C.E. probably by a committee of Jewish priests. The first story has cadence, a little bit of rhyme, and is written in a style that strongly suggests that it was used as a liturgy in a worship service. It’s antiphonal…the priest says one thing…the congregation responds with something else. The fact that it’s set up according to a seven day scheme…with the seventh day being the day of rests…well, heck that’s got priest’s fingerprints all over it, don’t you think? It’s propagandizing on behalf of good church attendance.

“Now the second story…that’s the older one. If the language of the first could be compared to modern English, the language of the second is like Shakespeare or even Chaucer. It’s real old. In the second story God makes a human out red dirt, which in Hebrew is pronounced ‘a-DAM’, hence ‘Adam’. God then breathes into him and he comes alive. The Hebrew word for breath is ‘ruach’ which means ‘spit’, ‘breath’ and ‘spirit’. This is a heck of a play on words. First you’ve got Adam being made of dirt and spit…essentially a mud ball which is how you’d make a clay doll if you were a kid. Second, you’ve got Adam comprised of dirt as indeed we really are composed of elements of the ground, but also ‘breath’ which along with blood was regarded by ancient people as an animating force of life. Then finally you’ve got this ‘spirit’ business which in Hebrew is a tricky concept. It can refer to an ability that maybe only humans and God have…the ability to think reflexively. Let me explain…”

“If I look at you, I see you…I am aware of you which, in the language of cognition, means that I ‘perceive’ you. Perception is pretty advanced stuff. Plants can’t do it very well. Neither can bacteria. But I can perceive and so can my dog, Max. Yeah, Max can perceive every bit as well as I can and maybe even better, because Max not only sees me, but also smells me which I hope you all can’t.”

“But now I can go one better than to simply perceive because not only can I see you, but I can see you seeing me see you. In other words, my brain allows me to be aware that you are aware that I’m seeing you. This next level of cognitive ability is called ‘reflective thought.’ A lot of birds and animals can not only perceive, but may also think reflectively.”

“But now there’s still another step we can go and that’s called ‘reflexive thinking’. Thinking reflexively means that not only can I see you, and not only can I see you seeing me see you, but I can…ready?...I can see me seeing you see me seeing you. Yeah. I know…that’s a head scratcher, but we humans do it all the time and it’s the inter-play of minds that allows us to be in close and complex relationships with each other and with God. Max’s little brain can do a lot of things, but it can’t quite pull off reflexive thought.”

“So back to Adam… ‘ruach’ can also mean ‘spirit’ which means the ability to think reflexively…which implies the ability to be in deep and complex relationships. All of which means that Adam is made of dirt and brains, and that’s true too.”

“Kids…the Adam story is our story. We’re the ones made of dirt, which in Latin is ‘humus’ from which we get the word ‘human’. We’re the ones who are dust, but who have brains so complex that we can write the love sonnets of Shakespeare or the hymns of Bach or the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech of Martin Luther King, Jr.”.

Wow! O the first day of class had it been up to me I would have dismissed the Adam and Eve story as a silly fable and recommended it’s removal from the Bible. Doermann was bringing it alive and he had only just gotten started…

“So now this guy we call ‘Adam’ or ‘dirt’ or ‘human’…God says to him, ‘I want you to name the living things in the garden…figure out what we should call them’…and here you have another important Hebrew concept at work.”

“To get at this let me ask you, what do we modern people give names to? Babies, right? Sure, and what’s your relationship to your baby…do you own it? Can you do anything at that you want with it? No, you don’t own your child, it’s yours to care for…to nurture. You’re its steward…but not its owner. Okay…so to ancient Hebrew people to name anything is to have that same relationship with it…to be its benevolent caretaker. So… ‘cow’, ‘horse’, ‘river’, ‘hill’, ‘blue bird’, ‘trout’, ‘butterfly’…Adam names these and in so doing take responsibility to exercises loving dominion over them. Which is how it’s supposed to be. The natural world does not belong to us humus’s…us adams. It is ours to care for. Not strip mine or slash and burn or pollute or slaughter into extinction. It’s ours to care for. Which again is how it’s supposed to be…which is what the word ‘Eden’ means in Hebrew…Eden is the place where things are the way they are supposed to be.”

“Folks this story is NOT about some ancient fictional protagonist living in the land of make-believe. It’s about you and me living now…or at least how we ought to be living now. But there’s more…”

“This dirt man with the prodigious brain that allows him to be in profound relationship…he’s lonely. And of course, he’s lonely, because he and we are all tribal animals…we’re made for relationships…we gotta have community. Therefore in a neat bit of symmetry God opens up the man and makes a woman just as women open themselves up to give birth to men. And what is this woman’s name? No…it’s not Eve…not yet. She doesn’t have a name. It will not be until after they are outside of Eden…outside of the place where things are the way they are supposed to be that Dirt will presume to exercise dominion over her and treat her like any other creature instead of the equal partner that she is. So, yeah…this is a story about us and how we are suppose to live in a world of gender equality, and how when we don’t we are outside of Eden…beyond the pale of a world as good as it could be.”

“Well…so let’s look at what happens…let’s figure out why we’re no longer there. In the garden there is this tree…to the ancients it was a fig not an apple tree…and the tree was called ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. What does that mean? Well…let me ask you this…who knows what is good for you and what is evil for you better than anyone else? Better even than you? Wouldn’t you think it might be the genius who created you…who knows you inside and out…everything from how your pancreas works to why what you like to eat seems to tastes good to you? Well, sure…trusting the one who made you to know what’s best for you makes all kind of sense.”

“But now what happens is that the woman is hanging out near the tree and meets a snake with whom she strikes up a conversation. And so who is this snake…or what does the snake represent? And the answer is ‘not the Devil’. No, go back in a time machine to the place and era that this story was written, get out and ask anybody, ‘who’s the Devil’, and they will scratch their heads…won’t have a clue what you’re talking about.. Y’see this is a 1000 B.C.E. story, buy the Devil is a 500 B.C.E. invention. So what does the snake represent? It’s simple…DEATH! In the Middle-East there are fifty different kinds of snakes. Forty-nine are poisonous…the fiftieth one just swallows you whole.”

“So, what’s happening here is that the woman is having an encounter with her own mortality…she’s aware that she’s going to die and she’s frightened. The snake, by the way, never lies to her. He asks, ‘did God say you could not eat the fruit of the trees in the garden?’ The woman responds, ‘no, we can eat from the trees, but not from this one because on the day we eat of this tree we will die.’ The snake corrects her and says, ‘no you won’t…you won’t die on the day that you eat of it. What’ll happen is that your eyes will be opened and you will be like God’.”

“What does he mean by that? Well, by having her eyes opened you need to understand that Hebrews thought that in Eden…in the place where things were the way they were supposed to be, Adam and the woman weren’t exactly blind, but it was as if they had blinders on…blinders that made them utterly focused on God. Or think of it this way. In Eden God was superimposed on everything they saw. For example, they couldn’t look at the environment without seeing God and realizing that what they were seeing was something that God had made and loved. So, tell me this…how do you pollute what you see that God has made and loves? You can’t. And when they looked at each other again they saw something that had God superimposed on it…they saw something that God loved, and that being the case how could they yell at one another? They were forced to ask themselves, ‘If God made and loves this person how can I possibly regard them as being a ridiculous idiot?’”

“So, that’s what the ‘your eyes will be opened’ business means. And now putting this all together…if in the encounter with the snake, that is, with your own mortality, you become frightened and say to yourself, ‘I can trust that God knows what’s good for me and what’s evil for me in most situations, but when it comes to matters of life and death I’m going to be the one who decides what good for me and what’s for evil for me’…if you do this then you’ve bitten the fig…that is, then you have made yourself to become like God…you’re now the one making the calls about what’s best for you and necessarily your eyes are opened…your focus is no longer solely on God…your focus instead is on protecting yourself and carving out some meaning that death can’t steal. And as for God? Well, God is simply becomes one more thing among many things…and you’re now out of Eden…out of bliss…out of the state of mind and heart where things are the way they are supposed top be.”

“And you feel naked and ashamed and you hide from God because you imagine that God is now angry with you, and you start blaming others and if you’re Adam and have made the decision to become God then you need someone to be God over and so you point your finger at the woman and you ‘name’ her…you imperiously say, ’you’re Eve!’”

“Now…one more thing before we move on…how come it wasn’t Adam at the tree and how come that it was a snake and not a poisonous spider or mountain lion…some other symbol of death? Well, it’s because what’s going on in this story is not only some pretty amazing mythology that helps us to understand the human condition, but also some pretty amazing propaganda. You see, in the period during which this story was crafted there were many female gods that were serious competitors to the fledgling God of the Hebrews…this Yahweh god. There were also lots of religious traditions involving snake gods who were regarded as mysterious masters of life and death and who because they shed their own skin and re-created themselves were thought to be world creators as well. Thus the heavies in this story are the woman and the snake. You’re the Hebrew who writes this story and you kill two birds with one stone…you do great anthropology and theology and at the same time you bash your ecclesiastical rivals.”

“Okay, girls and boys, that’s it for today. See you all on Wednesday.”

On the way out of the classroom Merle turned to me and whispered, “Holy shit!!! Was that great or WHAT?!!!” We had only just gotten started.

Dr. Leland Elhard was the Peter Lorre of the faculty. He was an odd, socially awkward and stand-offish man who these days might be thought to have a touch of Asperger syndrome. Elhard taught a first year required course called “something, something Integration”, (???)…I’ve forgotten. The goal of his pedagogy was to force us to examine the darker side of the human condition. I suppose the deal was that if Christianity was about saving us from something, Elhard’s job was to show us from what it was we needed this saving. In a nutshell the answer seemed to be ourselves and the world we had and were creating and sustaining. And so we began with “Night”, by Elli Wiesel, the autobiographical account of an Auschwitz survivor. During week two we followed this nightmare narrative with a second and even more compelling holocaust memoir entitled, “Man’s Search For Meaning”, by Viktor Frankl. When even for a short time you immerse yourself in this depth of evil it becomes difficult to maintain a positive anthropology. I remember going to see Neil Simon’s light comedy, “The Goodbye Girl” on the Friday night after finishing “Man’s Search for Meaning’. Susan loved the movie and I would have too had not the Third Reich cast a hideous and depressing spell over me. Enjoying a movie of this sort after Elhard, Wiesel and Frankl was like trying to savor a class of fresh squeezed orange juice immediately after brushing with fresh squeezed tooth paste.

So, after helping us to understand the sociological sources of evil, Elhard zeroed in on the innate causes. To do this we considered the role that evolution had played in getting us from tree shrews to australopithecines to homosapiens and we recognized that had we not at an early stage of our primate history been hardwired to for xenophobia, a flight/fight response, territoriality and a significant level of self-involvement we never would have made it to our present evolutionary stage of development. We don’t fight…we don’t think reflexively. However, the instincts that got us here…that we needed for survival in prehistoric times..are now imperiling us in an age of mechanized warfare and hydrogen bombs. This endowment of primitive instinct is perhaps part of what theologians refer to as “original sin”…helpful when we lived in small bands and were hunter/gathers…not so good now.

We also examined mental illnesses….those that had a genetic etiology…those that had a genetic etiology and an environmental trigger…those that were sociological, e.g., mass hysteria. These too could make a contribution to the pollution in our human fishbowl. We examined birth order, the effect of serious trauma on a human life (early PTSD considerations), we studied Erickson, Piaget, Kohlberg and other developmental psychologists. We considered the effect of potent mythologies and stories on how humans behave and at the end of it all we individually, and nearly unanimously agreed that whether or not Christianity could pull it off, we were good candidates for some sort of rescue.

Along the way, Dr. Elhard did not appear to be stacking the deck. In other words it didn’t seem to be a rigged game in which he was allowing Christianity to decide both the problem and the solution, as in, “the problem is sin and we, the Church, have the solution which is forgiveness.” He picked the books we read, but left lots of time for classroom debate. By the end of the semester only the air headed, self-righteous neo-Pentecostals were unconvinced of their “stinking-garbage-can-of-sin-ness”.

My Better Angel: Whoa…there you go again, Gary. Obviously there’s a part of you that’s really hurting vis-à-vis fundamentalists. Want to talk about it?

Stinking-Garbage-Can-Of -Sin-Gary: No. Shut up. Write your own book.

My Better Angel: I’m just sayin…

These days when I look back on this course and consider how it affected my view of human nature, I have ambivalent feelings. One criticism I now have (although I’m not certain how valid it is) is that there may have been too much emphasis on evil as a way of coming to terms with the human condition. Let’s take the holocaust for example. Although Nazi barbarism was unprecedented in its hellish cruelty, it was not at all typical of what was happening in the world as a whole during the years of the Third Reich. On most days during the period from 1932-1945, in places like San Paolo, Omaha, Quebec, Panama City, Karachi, Giza, Bangkok, Sydney, Istanbul, Madras, Cali, Medan, Kabul and tens of thousands of smaller towns and villages scattered around the globe people did not get up in the morning and report their Jewish neighbors to the Gestapo or herd children, women and the elderly into gas chambers. Instead they rose from slumber, made breakfast for their kids, hurried them out of the door to school, went to a field, factory or shop to work, paused from their labors to enjoy a mid-day meal, returned home later in the day, prepared and ate dinner, discussed the day’s events, laughed, played with their children, helped a neighbor with a chore, kissed their kids good-night, made love and slept until the dawn of the following day.

This or something similarly mundane is what most days were like for 90% of the world’s population during the Nazi years. This is not to say that life was always rosy for the majority of the world’s population. Famine, natural disasters, cancer, malaria, coronary artery disease, polio, dementia and accidents of various sorts caused death, injury and heart ache for people across all six habitable continents. But for the most part these are tragedies that all human communities have had to deal with and that simply go with the territory of being a human.

In addition, and on the opposite side of the Nazi equation, there were the countries and peoples who lined up against fascism and went to war in a bloody campaign to overcome and destroy the Axis’ powers and their hideous notions. A half a million Americans and millions more Russians died in the effort to eradicate the fascist vision.

So, is human nature as dark and depraved and, to use the theological term, as “fallen” as Dr. Elhard’s course caused many of us to believe? I don’t know. I continue to wrestle with this question. One book that I keep coming back to as I sort the pros and cons is Langdon Gilkey’s “Shantung Compound”. Gilkey was a University of Chicago theologian who during the Second World War was a teacher in China. From 1943-45 he was interned in a Japanese concentration camp built to house Allied non-combatants and their accompanied families. Most were professors, business persons, missionaries and government staff workers. If not the brutal environment that nearly all American P.O.W.s were subjected to, Shantung was nonetheless unpleasant.

Gilkey writes that as time went by and as Shantung Compound became increasingly crowded and food supplies more limited, the inhabitants became meaner and less humane in their relationships with their fellow prisoners. Gilkey attributes this to the thin veneer of civilization being strip away from the compound’s residents which thus revealed their true character. I see it differently and I have rats to thank for my critique of Gilkey’s conclusions

Rats have a complex social life and as parents they are relentlessly protective and nurturing. However, studies have shown that if rats in captivity are subjected to over-crowded conditions or other significant stresses, they become anxious, unusually aggressive and they will even eat their own young. Why? Because over-crowding and otherwise stressing rats causes their brains to change in such a way that they have fewer serotonin receptors in their neurons. What does this mean? Serotonin has many functions in animals, but among these are mood regulation. In many primates, including rats and humans, normal levels of serotonin cause tranquil feelings and a sense of well-being while a deficiency of serotonin can produce anxiety, a higher level of self-involvement, an aggressive need to dominate and other unpleasant behaviors. It is quite possibly the case that humans and other primates evolved in such a way that under stress our brain physiology and chemistry changes and thereby changes us in such a way that we go into survival mode.

What, therefore, happened in Shantung Compound that Gilkey thought of as the unmasking of the human ethical default, our original sinfulness stripped bare, was instead a human aberration caused by the body’s natural reaction to stress. The ethical default would instead be the behavior of the inmates in their pre-war lives outside of the camp.

All of this suggests to me that if Christianity is going to save us from anything, it needs to save us from the sociological conditions which create the aberrant and selfish behaviors we are all capable of. Ironically the idea that we need to change human hearts by way of changing human environment is reinforced by Gilkey himself when he describes the one group within the compound that did function humanely. In Shantung there was a cadre of Franciscan monks who throughout their internment were resolutely generous and considerate of the needs of others. This was the case, however, because the monks had habituated themselves to a very simple lifestyle and as a result felt no undue stress during their captivity. Life in the camp was virtually the same as life outside the camp. Further, although the monks didn’t realize it, they were using a serotonin increasing practice as a part of their daily spiritual lives. In recent years prayer and meditation have been shown to dramatically increase serotonin’s functionality in the brain thereby creating an over-all sense of well-being.

So…are we humans essentially “sinful and unclean” as the traditional mainline confessional liturgy asserts? I’m not entirely convinced, but I DO believe that our societal structures are not always as conducive to our over-all happiness as they could be. There are clearly bad characters among us. And just as clearly there are wonderful human beings among us who live very selfless and inspiring lives. All things being equal I think that most of the time the majority of the rest of us are somewhere in-between these two, probably shifted in the direction of the saint side of the polarity. However, if stressful environments like Shantung can cause us to slide down the continuum in the direction of the bad characters then it seems as though any religion that wants to be saving needs to promote the best possible human environments.

Most cultures and governments come into being over the span of many lifetimes and are often shaped by that small percentage of persons in any society who are the most aggressive, anxiety-prone and non- tranquil. Cultures and governments although non-personal nonetheless can develop lives of their own with built-in mechanisms of self-preservation and promotion. Armies, police, flags, anthems and pledges of allegiance are some of the more obvious examples of these. Any religion that has a goal of increasing the happiness and humaneness of homosapiens will always be at odds or will be potential at odds with the government and culture in which it is embedded. That’s how I see it today. In seminary I was still working through all of this and back then I had a more negative anthropology that would for a time skew my understanding of who Jesus was and what he was up to.

So…in those days here’s how I saw it. Human were essentially sinful. We, among all creatures, were born somehow flawed or broken or fallen. Our sinfulness was a problem for us, but also a problem for God. Why a problem for God? Because while the perfect God could have relationships with creatures who were imperfect, this same God could not very well carry on with creatures who were willfully less perfect than God wanted them to be. I suppose I viewed humans as having a chronic Turret’s –like predisposition to thumb our noses at God. “Gosh, Lord, I don’t really want to irritate you by not helping my neighbor-in-need right now (on my day off!), but that’s what I’m going to do anyway because…well, just because. And now I don’t want to think about it anymore, so…so catch you on Sunday, Big Guy! As usual I’ll be pulpit side about ten rows back.”

So, how can God deal with this kind of insubordination without looking like a schmuck?! Somebody’s got to pay, right? Of course. All of which is where Jesus comes in. Jesus, the perfect one, takes our place…takes all of our sins on himself and dies with them, so we’re off the hook. God’s no schmuck because he made sure justice was done, but he remains merciful because he made his own son pay the price for us. That, incredibly, is what I believed throughout the first half or more of my first year at seminary. And it’s still what a lot of Christians continue to believe today. Dr. Walter Bouman, my most important teacher ever, helped me to get over that non-biblical idea and move on to something far more interesting and psychologically profound.

Before I go on to write about Dr. Bouman and his radical reconstruction of my theology I should probably write a few paragraphs about my personal life. Susan and I were reasonably happy during the 1977-78 academic year. Sue liked her job at Children’s Hospital a bit more than the one she had left in Texas. Our apartment was cute and comfortable and better than most married students could afford. My seminary studies were thrilling and I was getting A’s. We were developing and nurturing new friendships. What was missing was the baby we both wanted. Susan had a condition called “endometriosis” which caused pain during ovulation and because it scarred her fallopian tubes it made it difficult for her to become pregnant.

She had miscarried once in San Antonio, and I was surprised at how sad the loss had made her. I think it must be quite a bit different for a husband. To my mind the miscarriage was Susan’s body protecting her from a pregnancy that had serious flaws, and I believed that we would be happier in the long run. We had gotten pregnant before and we would get pregnant again. However, because the miscarriage made Susan so sad and because I hated seeing her that unhappy I became even more anxious that she conceive and have a successful pregnancy.

A San Antonio physician specializing in fertility issues performed a laparoscopy and removed some of the endometrial scarring. An Ohio OB/GYN treated Susan with medication and gave her advice on how to improve her chances of conceiving. One afternoon as I was returning from classes Susan met me at the front door of our apartment wearing nothing but a rose from a bouquet I had given her for her birthday. “I just got back from the doctor’s office and after examining me, he told me to rush home and ravage you. I am in peak fertility mode, Sailor. Do your thing!”

I did. And it worked! A month and a half later we learned that our first child had begun his journey from non-being into being and Susan and I were frightened and completely thrilled!!! Except for some serious first trimester morning sickness issues, and Susan’s newly acquired olfactory ability to smell a cat’s flatulence from three miles away, my wife was VERY happy.

“Being” and “non-being” Those were issues that Dr. Bouman introduced us to by way of Paul Tillich who you have already met. Tillich had been a chaplain in the First World War and saw up close and personal how fragile and contingent human life can be. For example, an artillery round lands in a trench, three are killed, but the deaths seem random because men who were standing next to the deceased are only slightly wounded or completely unscathed. Events of this sort caused Tillich to wonder about the providential character of existence and he went on to be puzzled about why there is anything at all. In time he was led to consider the nature of being itself. What does it mean to exist he wondered. Some of his conclusions are as follows…

• being stands out of non-being in the way that a tree stands out of the ground
• God is the ground out of which being arises. Tillich called God “the ground of being”
• if being is everything in the Universe, and if everything in the Universe is made up of time, energy and matter tied together according to Einstein’s famous equation (E=MC2), then the God who made the building blocks of existence is beyond those things. God is not made of time, energy or matter (the stuff of being…of things) and therefore is no thing (nothing).

Thinking about God in this way was new, but also intellectually liberating. No longer did I have to wonder where God was. God is not localized and therefore God is nowhere. Or…because God is that out of which everything arises, God is somehow everywhere. This way of thinking about God is not pantheism (God IS everything), but rather panentheism (God is IN everything as the non-being in which all being stands).

Neither did I need to concern myself with what God was doing prior to the creation of the Universe, because “prior” is a function of time and God is beyond time. (I recall asking Pastor Christiansen what God was doing before the Universe was made and the answer I received was, “Making Hell for curious children like you.” After he said this he laughed and tousled my hair, but if he thought it was funny I found it a bit chilling).

Before I do more of what Dr. Bouman taught me about what Tillich had taught him, let me provide a quick overview of the Old Testament narrative that I learned in Dr. Doermann’s class.

Hebrew Scripture can be described as the history of God working through Israel to help create a happier world. I’m using numbers with the foregoing by way of emphasizing the sequence of this history.

1. The most consequential human invention so far is settled agriculture which happened 12,000 years ago. In this event Cain (the farmer) killed Abel (the nomad hunter/gatherer pastoralist). It changed nearly everything especially human social arrangements and contracts. It also opened the doors to advances in art, language, literature, science, mathematics and technology.
2. With the advent of settled agriculture, human survival instincts which had well served the evolutionary process, and reasonably well served hunter/gatherers did not become vestigial. Indeed, they were amplified. For example, territoriality was experienced more deeply when people became “owners” of land. Selfishness was more acute when there were more things to be had. Aggression had a worse effect as weapons evolved. Dominance was more pernicious when the military became a new profession and was used as a tool by dominant individuals or groups.
3.




The above picture, copied from Daniel Erlanders’s book “Manna and Mercy”, demonstrates how the settled agricultural nation of ancient Egypt organized itself. With some variation, the drawing also represents most other settled societies.
4. What follows is important. God’s vision for human community as expressed in Hebrew Scripture is that societies should be structured in such a way that there is a maximum experience of “friendship”...friendship with all other people and communities, friendship with the environment, and friendship with God.
5. God’s Plan A to change things so that they squared with the above “friendship vision” began with Moses and the Exodus. “What I’ll do”, God thought, “is rescue the bottom strata of the sociological pyramid. I’ll take them to a wilderness area where over time I’ll work the pyramid sociological construct out of their heads. I’ll do this by making them share manna for 40 years and I’ll cause any hoarded manna to rot and stink. Eventually I’ll give them a ‘promised land’ that I’ll have them divide up evenly between themselves and then re-divide evenly every 50 years. I’ll make clear that they’re not allowed to have a king (they can be a ‘kingdom of god’)...and when this new way of organizing a society allows them to have maximum friendship with each other, the environment and me, and when they experience a far greater happiness as a result...and when their neighbors see how happy they are...THEN they shall be like a city set upon a hill, a thing of beauty that will draw all other societies to want to imitate them.” That was Plan A and it worked for about 200 years then fell apart when two of the twelve tribes wanted a king so that they could organize a campaign of aggression and seize Philistine and Moabite territory.
6. NOTE: the first vaguely reliable history that we have in the Hebrew bible is the story of the Exodus which is massively over-laid with fanciful material that would have made it all a better story to tell around campfires when it was passed along orally. Placed ahead of the Exodus story is another, but completely fictional proto-plan to save the world...specifically, the Noah story. According to this plan, the way to save the world from the consequences of settled agriculture and its troublesome amplification of human instinct, i.e., “pyramid societies”, is to wipe-out the bad people and start all over again with one good family. (The idea, I suppose, is that some people are genetically less hard wired with the survival instincts and that starting over with them will create a moral “super race” that will function more redemptively). Unfortunately, this plan failed when after the flood super-moral Noah got drunk and passed out, and super-moral Ham incestuously sodomized him. In the fable God repents of this stupid ethnic cleansing concept and puts a rainbow in the sky to remind future generations not to try it.
7. As stated above, Plan A...the manna-sharing/hoarding-stinks/no-king/every-50-year-land-redisitribution plan that would be so attractive that it would catch on around the world...that plan fell apart when the southern two tribes of Israel insisted on having a king. God was disappointed, but did not give up on either saving the world or Israel, and instead instituted Plan B. According to Plan B God said, “Okay, you can have kings, but I get to pick them. No hereditary monarchies. The king must be an anti-pyramid, manna-type of person who promotes friendships.” (It didn’t work. The first few kings started out well, but were corrupted by their power. Later kings didn’t even start out well and imposed a hereditary monarchy.)
8. God still refused to give up. God said to Israel, “Alright, Plan B’s a bust, so here’s Plan C...keep the office of king if you insist, but along with kings you must also accept a brand new office...the office of the prophet. The role of the prophet is to inform the king of my manna-way of doing things (sharing, not hoarding) and to nag and criticize the king when he fails to accomplish my manna-way.” (Sadly, the prophet plan didn’t work. The kings killed the real prophets, and in their place hired phony yes-man prophets most of whom were chancel-prancing priests concerned more with ritual than with justice).
9. Plan D was “return to Go and start over again”. The Babylonian Captivity in 586 B.C. was in essence a return to a new Egypt, and the edict of Cyrus fifty years later that allowed the captives to return home years was in essence a new Exodus. Beginning in 536 B.C. Israel had the opportunity to do Plan A all over again...to share the land and resources equally, to legislate against the hoarding of wealth, to resist monarchy, and to practice friendship with one another, with the planet and with God.
10. Plan D failed about as quickly as Plan A and by the time of Jesus’ birth the “pyramid” which described the sociological situation of Israel looked more like an ancient trumpet standing on its fluted end...VERY wide at the base (lots of poor), very narrow on the way up (a thin middle class), and a small plutocracy at the top. An identical, but inverse trumpet would describe the distribution of wealth in Jesus’ day. Almost nothing at the bottom, 90% or better at the very top.

(I realize that back on pages 26-28 I ran through a briefer version of the above. However because a biblical salvation involving political, economic and sociology salvation will be new for some readers, the reinforcement might be helpful.)

The above is what I learned in two semesters of Introduction to the Old Testament. Later elective courses that I took on individual books of the Hebrew Scripture reinforced what Doermann had taught me. One of the criticisms that I have of my seminary training is that there was not good integration of what I was taught by the Old Testament Department and what I was subsequently taught by professors teaching New Testament studies. The Old Testament was clearly about God wanting to save communities by way of political, economic and sociological strategies. The New Testament was taught in such a way that there seemed to be a new God at the helm…one who was attempting to save individuals (not communities) from Hell (not from their own flawed systems of governance and community.) Quite a disconnect.

Years later other teachers would help me to see that the God of the Old Testament was identical to the God of the New Testament and that the narrative of the former flowed smoothly into the narrative of the latter. Theologians like Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan and others would allow me to understand that there was a Plan E at work in the life and teaching of Jesus, one that was built upon and utterly dependent on the failure (twice) of Plans A through D. The failed plans of Hebrew scripture were an important antecedent to the Jesus plan and taught humankind the following:
• that manna sharing (distributive justice) is central to God’s friendship strategy
• that un-checked government becomes perniciously evil
• that prophetic ministry is the means God uses as a check on government
• the failure (twice) of Plans A, B and C prove that these particular strategies are ineffective
• that God doesn’t give up and is forbearing of failure. God has a parent-like compassion and commitment to Israel and through Israel to all other human communities

What I would learn some years after seminary is that the New Testament “Jesus Plan” posits the following:
• Human beings are “born into ‘sin’”, i.e., we come pre-loaded with the above mentioned instincts (instincts which were necessary to our evolution from tree shrews to homosapiens)
• We live in a “fallen world”, i.e., a settled agricultural and manufacturing life which was not what evolution prepared us for and which sometimes, to our detriment, amplifies our pre-loaded instincts. This said, there’s no going back
• “Pyramid societies” are evil, but inevitable
• Individual prophets are too easily silenced and are thus an ineffective check and balance on government
• Governments still need a prophetic check on their proclivity to pyramid
• The world still needs a city set upon a hill that will draw all societies to want to imitate it.

Plan E, the Jesus’ Plan, is the plan to create a prophetic community which will do three things: first, provide a more effective check against government than any single individual prophet can; second, multiply and export itself beyond Israel to every pyramid society and government; and third, function as a manna society within each larger society, becoming an internal, embedded city set upon a hill that will draw the larger society to want to imitate it. What I learned after seminary was that Jesus’ teaching and example-ing were all about creating, defining and empowering prophetic communities for their work.

So, back to Dr. Bouman. Bouman was a Lutheran who like most Lutherans believed that to build a good house (society) you needed exceptionally good bricks (individuals). Of course, you also needed a good plan, but without good bricks no house could stand regardless of how clever the plan was. Dr. Bouman was politically and economically liberal. He was a pacifist who had been opposed to the Vietnam war. He cared enormously about environmental issues, but he also believed that Christianity was fundamentally about changing human hearts…about making us better “bricks”. These days I think that Jesus cared about both a good plan and a good heart. I think that he leaned more towards the importance of the plan than the heart, but I know that he regarded both as very important.

So Bouman taught the plan but he did so incidentally. It was, however, the heart change that he saw as crucial and he taught it using his considerable skills as a teacher and his considerable passion as a Christian. He also taught “good brick theology” by way of the insights of the Lutheran Paul Tillich who was also more of a brick than a plan guy.

Tillich’s focus was indeed on the individual, but what he believed Christianity saved us from was not Hell, but ourselves. He also thought that besides saving us from something, Christianity also saved us for new and better ways to be in the world. What follows is a Paul Tillich/Walt Bouman way to respond to a non-Christian person who asks, “can you teach me about Christianity. I know virtually nothing about it and would like to understand what it is that you Christians believe.” The response below is inspired by the second volume of Tillich’s three volume, “Systematic Theology.” Here goes…

Begin by drawing a six inch straight line on a sheet of paper. At the left end of the line write the word “Worst”, at the right end write “Best”. Ask your non-Christian inquiring subject to allow the line to represent the full spectrum of humanness from an ethical and self-actualizing point of view. The right end of the line would represent, “you as the very best person you could possibly be…you using your gifts to their fullest potential…you being the most caring, generous, creative, nurturing and loving individual that you are capable of being…the left end would represent you as the polar opposite…you as the very worst person you could possibly be.”

Then say, “Draw an ‘X’ where you would place yourself on this line.”

I’ve actually done this many, many times and everyone draws their ‘X’ in the center third of the line. (Those who place themselves at either of the extremes are under-medicated, are not great candidates for a theological discussion, and should probably be referred to competent medical practitioners).

Next ask your subject how they feel about being where they are on the continuum. Most will feel okay. They will compare themselves to people they know and will decide that they’re somewhere in the range of above to slightly below average.

Now, write the word “God” an inch or two above the word “Best” at the right end of the line. Continue with, “for the sake of this explanation of Christianity assume that there is a God who has a benevolent interest in human beings. How do you think God feels about your being where you are on the line…about you being less than the best person you could be?” Again, I’ve actually done this many times with people wanting to know how Christianity works and in every instance the response to the question, “how do you think God feels about where you are o the line”, has been something like, “not great”.

The next step is to ask, “Would I be right then in saying that your experience of God, given that you are not the best person you could be, is the experience of a disappointed or even an angry God?” The inquirer typically agrees that this is the case. In response to this I then draw an arrow from the word “God” to the “X” in the middle of the line, and above the arrow write “angry”.

I then suggest the following to the inquirer, “I think that what we are dealing with here is pretty close to a universal human experience. In other words, most everyone experiences her or himself as being less than the best person they could be. We haven’t lived up to our fullest potential…we haven’t been as caring as we could have been with each other, with our environment or even with ourselves. When we consider this fact (apart from also considering God) we don’t feel too concerned. As over against others we know we don’t stack up too badly. We’re not as good as some, but lots better than others. However, when we add God to the equation, then the result is guilt and anxiety caused by a real or imagined angry deity.

Note: anthropologists have identified as many as 4400 different religious traditions. Most are small and tribal, but nearly all envision God as being displeased with the gap between what we could be and what we are. This displeasure is demonstrated in religious iconography which almost never portrays God as smiling.

The next move in this explanation of Christianity is to introduce the story of “Adam and Eve” with which even many non-Christians are familiar. I usually ask, “At the beginning of the story where were Adam and Eve on the line?” Inquirers point to the far right “Best” end of the line. “Right! Then they broke God’s single prohibition and moved where on the line?” People usually point to the middle of the line near where they have located themselves. If they do not recall or know what happened next I remind or inform them that Adam and Eve felt shame and subsequently hid from God. I continue by suggesting that the “Adam and Eve” story is re-enacted in every human life. We too have conducted ourselves in such a way that we are less than the best people we could be, we too experience God as angry with us, we too hide from God.

Another Note…A Long One: Paul Tillich made much out of the fact that the serpent in the Adam and Eve story represented death and that we human beings get ourselves into lots of trouble thinking about and trying to avoid our mortality and the implications thereof. All created life is subject to death which is a servant of the ecological balance of Nature. Few would argue that it’s a good thing that mosquitoes die and do not reproduce endlessly. It’s also good that there are cycles of birth, maturation, death (and in some cases, harvest) in the plant world. Hooray, too, that the billions upon billions of human beings who lived before us have moved off of Earth’s stage and have made room for our generation.

Yes, looked at in an objective and rational way death, even human death is a good and necessary part of the created order. However, there is clearly a tragic side to death as for example when a young child or a young parent dies. As far as we know no animal grieves the loss of a companion or loved one as deeply as homosapiens do. “I cannot”, wrote essayist Logan Pearsall Smith, “forgive my friends for dying: I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.” But, of course, it’s not only the death of others that bother us, for we are also terrified by the prospect of our own “vanishing act”.

Woody Allen famously said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.

Few have written more profoundly about the anxiety that our mortality causes us than Ernest Becker in his Pulitzer Prize winning book “The Denial Of Death”. Here’s a sample…

“A human being is a creature with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place him or herself imaginatively at a point in space and bemusedly contemplate their own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to a human being literally the status of a small god in Nature. And yet a human is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: a human is out of Nature and yet hopelessly in it: a human is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill marks to prove it. A human’s body is a material, fleshy casing that is alien to the human in many ways…the strangest and most repugnant of which is that it aches and bleeds and will decay and dies. A human is literally split in two with an awareness of his or her own splendid uniqueness in that he or she sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet goes back into the ground in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to have to live with.”

Becker was a student of Tillich’s.

Tillich argued that because we consciously and subconsciously worry about dying we spend our time on Earth protecting ourselves from both death and from the meaninglessness that accompanies death. What do I mean by meaninglessness? Just this…

I don’t know the names of my great grandparents…any of them. The chances are excellent that my great grandchildren won’t know my name or anything about me. But I wish they would. I wish that this book that I’m writing would immortalize me. It won’t. I wish that some of the hundreds of watercolor paintings I’ve done will find their way to the Louvre. None will. I’ll likely live about 25,000 day. A relatively few number of days after I die I will be utterly forgotten. No one will know or care that I was ever here. Nothing I have accomplished will last. In time it will be as if I never existed. That’s meaninglessness and we all struggle with it. End of Very Long Note. The Way To Explain Christianity to a Non-Christian Continues…

So, says Dr. Tillich, rather than trust that God will protect us from death and meaninglessness…rather than let God decide what’s good for us and what’s evil for us, we take matters into our own hands…we fail to trust our Creator and thus move from being the best humans we can be to becoming something less, and in the process we decide that God must be angry with us and so we hide from God in at least three different ways.

The first way is the way of the philosophical “Naturalist” (not to be confused with a forest ranger). Philosophical naturalists do not believe in God. About the “Best, Worst” line, they would argue, “God is not mad at me because there is no God. There is only the natural world.” They might go on to say, “AND if I’m there on your line…in the middle…I’m there for the same reason that birds fly and fish swim. Being in the middle is simply how it is with human beings. It’s what’s natural for us. You can’t teach a horse to fly and you can’t teach humans to be much better than they already are.”

Of course philosophical naturalists may be right. Maybe there isn’t a God…or at least one who knows or cares about us. However, the problem for humankind that philosophical Naturalism creates is that it subverts society’s normal ethical underpinnings. This is to say, that if there is no God who urges compliance with the Ten Commandments or with Hebrew Scripture’s call for economic justice, AND if our position somewhere on the middle of the line is the best we can hope for because that’s how Nature made us, then ethical accountability and ethical potential have been dealt serious blows. Thus, if I feel like stealing from my neighbor or being adulterous…and if I think I can get away with it…WHY NOT?!!! Other mammals steal, and even so-called monogamous animals have recently been shown to “mate-around”. If Nature is all that there is, and since nothing can rescue us from death, why NOT do whatever feels good…why NOT, in the words of a 1970’s beer commercial, “go for all the gusto you can”?!

The problem is that on an overcrowded planet with diminishing resources there isn’t that much gusto to go around these days, and if everyone is going for as much as they can get there’s bound to be some trouble, i.e., war and worsening ecological crisis…or on a smaller scale, broken marriages, workplace battles, and neighbors at odds with one another.

All of which means that if the philosophical Naturalist is right…if there is no God to guide us, hold us accountable and shape into better persons than we would otherwise be, then we might do well to invent a God for our own sake…so that we might begin to live less hedonistically and in ways more appropriate to a world with limited “gusto”.

On the other hand, even an invented righteous God will conjure up the guilt that causes us to hide in the first place…to hide by saying “there is no God”, which will then cause us to “go for all the gusto”, so that we’re right back where we started. It would seem that there is no way out of the God/no God dilemma.

Another way to hide from God is the way of the philosophical Idealist who I will refer to as the “Futurist”. The Futurist is someone who would look at my drawing and offer the following, “Well, maybe there’s a God…sure, why not…AND maybe we’re where you have us on your line (somewhere in the middle)…and maybe God is a bit angry with us, BUT the thing is with the right political, economic, educational and/or technological solution to our problems we can move ourselves and others up the line and create a “Best” society…thereby removing any reason for God to be angry with us.

Note: These days I believe that the “Futurist” is on to something. In the past 500 years we have seen an evolution of political and economic models and systems that in many ways have improved lifestyles, contentment and behavior. In economics the several European, North American and Asian rim combinations of capitalism and socialism have increased the standard of living of over a billion persons whose great grandparents lived shorter and more brutal lives. Political democracy has gradually brought an end to slavery, to child labor in many countries and to women being treated as third class citizens. Although technology has and continues to create problems for modern people especially as it relates to war-fighting and environmental issues, it nonetheless has also improved our lot both medically and in the area of agriculture and food production. The “green revolution” has significantly reduced the number of people around the world who die each year from the effects of starvation. Anti-depressants and other pharmacological products have gentled millions of the 30% of all people who at some time in their lives experience a mental illness. Public education has dramatically increased literacy, has been a boon to economic growth, and offers every high school graduate in the U.S. a six time greater chance than non- grads of avoiding prison during their lifetime.

Jesus seemed to have been an advocate of an ideal society that he called “the kingdom of God” and that he characterized in such a way that it was reminiscent of the manna society of early Israel. However, Jesus also seems to have been aware that without some solution to the death and meaningless issue that hangs over human beings like a Damocles’ sword, no political or economic solution is going to be quite enough. End of Note.

Paul Tillich and my teacher, Walt Bouman convinced me, and for several years I remained convinced that the Futurist way of hiding from God (offering an easy political, economic, etc., fix to our human circumstance of being less than the best people we could be) was entirely destructive. The examples of futurism that they used were Leninist and Maoist Marxism, Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich”, and John Dewey’s overly optimistic notions about the benefits of education.

There is very little question that people like Karl Marx, Hitler and others have underestimated what is required to ethically improve the human species. Progressive politics and economics are important, but so too is some means of reassuring humans vis-à-vis their finitude.

Another problem with political and economic plans is that they can become religions. Marx anticipated a Heaven on Earth and spoke of a “worker’s paradise” where there would be no need for police. Hitler’s vision was also replete with messianic and parousiac notions. Soviet style communism and National Socialism also had hymns, somber rituals, holy days, joyous liturgies and a cadre of ministers to preach, teach and evangelize. But here’s the problem…religions are great candidates to become an individual’s and a group’s ultimate concern…their most important thing…their God. “Who am I? Why, I’m a member of the Communist/Nazi Party, which party is the goal of historical evolution. I’m protected from the evil of being insignificant as I am a standard bearer for this great movement. I have the good life of status in the Party, comrades and the improved economic conditions that National Socialism/Marxist-Leninist Communism provides.”

The further problem of a political and/or economic system becoming a God is that when they breakdown…when they fail to be God-like, then their adherents panic and resort to extraordinary and often destructive measures to prop them up. So, when Stalin’s Five Year Plans failed he over-reacted and began to massively collectivize farms that eventually caused millions to starve. When new five Year Plans also failed it was off to the gulags for hundreds of thousands of so-called counter-revolutionaries.

Likewise when Hitler bogged down in Russia and his best generals knew that the war had been lost, suicidal military strategies were employed and the “Final Solution” was began as a demonic attempt to gain an “ethnic victory”.

So again, we experience ourselves as less than the best people we can be…we feel as though God might be angry with us…we therefore hide from God either by saying that there is no God which results in hedonism, or by saying that God isn’t that mad because we’re in the process of perfecting ourselves and our species…which leads to the gulags, Auschwitz, the killing fields of Pol Pot or some lesser evil.

Note: In his wonderful play, “Spoon river Anthology”, Edgar Lee Master refers to human beings as “chickens with angel’s brains”. In my view that is a pretty fair analysis of the human condition. We ARE in a sense merely chickens possessed of the same basic circulatory, skeletal, respiratory, gastro-intestinal and reproductive systems as poultry. And YET we are more than chickens for what chicken has ever produced music like that of Mozart’s or poetry like Emily Dickenson’s? What chicken can chart the heavens or unravel DNA’s double helix? No…we are more than chicken’s for we are also possessed of an angel’s brain.

What seems to be the case is that the philosophical Naturalist and the Futurist each have an incomplete anthropology. By this I mean that the Naturalist accepts our “chicken-ness” (“we’re here on your line for the same reason that bird’s fly and fish swim”), but does not take fully into consideration our “angel’s brain” which implies our creative and redemptive potential and our failure to achieve the same...in other words our “falleness”.) By the same token the Futurist too little appreciates our “chicken-ness” which speaks to the truth that we are not only IN but OF Nature, a consideration that might call into question our ability to perfect ourselves and overcome, among other things, our hardwiring for baser instincts. End of Note.

There is yet a third way to hide from God that I will mention. Ironically, this is a way that many church folk make good use of. It’s the way of the “TRIVIALIST” and here’s how it works…

The Trivialist would look at the Best-Worst line and say, “Yes, indeed! There IS a God, and you’re right…God is angry. Why? Well, because people are smoking, drinking, using foul language and not going to church as regularly as me and my family do. Of course, I don’t drink or smoke…I never use foul language and my family and I rarely miss church. So you see, God and I are very close.” (Translation: “I am darn near the best person I can be.”)

The genius of the Trivialist’s way to hide from God is that they make their own relatively unimportant laundry list of ethical achievements the heart of God’s ethical concerns. Thus if the Trivialist enjoys a glass of wine, then it’s the smoking, swearing and missing church stuff that most gets God’s goat. The problem is that the Trivialist really IS hiding from God…from the biblical God who doesn’t care all that much about smoking, drinking, swearing or missing church…but cares enormously about economic justice and peace making and knocking down walls of discrimination and prejudice. Whether or not I drink a beer after cutting my lawn on a hot day in July or say “shit!” after stubbing my toe matters little to God. If the Bible is right what matters to God are the 40,000 kids around the world who die each day from hunger related causes. What matters to God is the blight of Palestinians in Gaza or the single mom in a Chicago cockroach infested ghetto struggling to give her children a shot at a better life than she has had.

The destructiveness of the Trivialist’s way of hiding is that by not being enrolled in God’s cause on behalf of justice and in the non-violent struggle for peace, the Trivialist is part of the problem. Says Jesus, “whoever is not for me (meaning: my cause) is against me”.

And so the human condition, says Tillich, is one in which human beings experience themselves as being less than the best people they could be. As a consequence they experience God as being angry which in turn causes them to “hide”. “Hiding” from God in the ways that the philosophical Naturalist, Futurist and Trivialist do is destructive and makes life worse for the hider and others than it otherwise would be.

So what’s the solution?

When I was eight years old I was in our back yard practicing my pitching and fielding by bouncing a golf ball off of the concrete steps that led up to an alley. My father asked me to use a tennis ball instead. He was afraid that the golf ball would get away from me and break a window on the back of the house. I complied with his request, but later, when Dad wasn’t around, I went back to using the golf ball and did, in fact, break a window. I was afraid my father would be very angry and so I hid from him in a vacant garage. I hid there most of the night and was terrified by the darkness and strange night sounds. I was cold and hungry and miserable.

At about four A.M. I heard my father’s voice. He, along with many others, had been out all night looking for me. As he walked down the street calling my name, I could tell that he was crying. There were tears in his voice. When I heard those tears I knew that he loved me more than the window I had broken and that his affection for me was so much greater than any pique he felt because I had disobeyed him. At this point I was free to come out of hiding, run to my father and jump into his arms.

Tillich’s notion was that all humankind is in a more profound version of the predicament I was in when I was eight and hiding from my father. He also believed that if God could somehow demonstrate “tears in his voice”, that we all would be free to come out of hiding and once again be God’s children and partners. Tillich believed Jesus to be both the “tears in God’s voice”, AND a great example of a human life lived very, very well.

Here are ten examples of how Jesus demonstrated God’s love:

• His traveling companions were people who wouldn’t make it past the fourth row of pews in many modern churches
• He compared God to a mother hen who would do anything to protect her chicks
• He befriended those who religious persons thought of as impious
• He told stories in which the heroes were people regarded as half-human by the dominant culture
• He treated women and children with as much dignity as he treated men
• He was opposed to the punishment of prostitutes
• He argued that non-violence was Godly
• He championed forgiveness and insisted that it was a divine attribute
• He confidently asserted that God was working through him in his advocacy for poor and outcast persons.
• In risking and eventually losing his life on behalf of the above causes he insisted that he wasn’t doing anything that God wouldn’t do if God was a human being.

Dr.’s Bouman and Tillich believed and influenced me to believe that Jesus was somehow both God and a human being at the same time. These days I don’t believe this. Being God and being human are mutually exclusive. However, for several years the dual nature of Jesus was an important part of my own faith construct and was crucial to how I explained the Christian story to others. Here’s what I told people…

“I know what you’re thinking...you’re thinking that there is no way that Jesus could be both God and a human simultaneously. God is infinite and humans are finite. Either you’re one or the other…some things even God can’t do. Neither is it possible that someone could be both omnipotent (an attribute of God) and impotent (an attribute of human beings). Again, you are either one or the other. Nor is it possible to know everything and not know everything. Either you’re omniscient or you aren’t. Even God can’t have it both ways.”

“So what does it mean to say that Jesus was both human and divine? I’ll explain it this way. I am six foot three inches tall, I have blond hair and blue eyes. If I grow older and my spine compresses so that I’m only six foot two, am I still me? Sure I am! Who I am really doesn’t have much to do with my height. Likewise if my hair grays or even if I lose my eyes I am still me. My height, hair and eye color do not get to the essence of who I am.
“Just so, who God is…what makes God really God is not God’s omnipotence or omniscience or infinity. From the point of view of the Bible God’s God-ness has to do with the tenderness of God’s heart…with God’s mercy and love. The prophet Hosea got at this when he wrote, “God is not please with your behavior but is thinking, ‘how can I give up on you? My heart swells within me, my compassion is warm and tender. Despite your disobedience I can’t destroy you for I am God not a human’”, Hos. 11:8-9.

“So Jesus was God according to his fierce and extravagant love…a love such as the world has never seen before or since. In Jesus, the essence…the grace and love which is at the heart of God showed up in an otherwise ordinary human life”.

I then concluded my explanation of Jesus’ dual nature by talking about WHY it’s crucial that Jesus be both God and a human simultaneously.

“Jesus MUST be God because only if God tells you directly that you are divinely loved is it going to be believable. I could tell you, but I might be wrong.

“Jesus must also be a human because by suffering and dying on the cross (something only a human can do) we are shown HOW MUCH we are loved. Enough that God in Christ would be crucified for us.

“And so, Jesus is the tears in God’s voice that frees us to come out of hiding…to no longer have to avoid God in the way that the philosophical Naturalist, Futurist and Trivialists do…in ways that are harmful to ourselves and others. And now that we’re free FROM hiding, we’re also free FOR new and much better ways to be in the world…ways that are consistant with Jesus’ life of sharing, forgiveness, acceptance, peace making and partnering with God. In imitating Jesus we may not live the absolute best lives that we can, but we will live lives that are more humane and thereby more fully human.”

Well, all of this is what Dr. Bouman learned from Paul Tillich and then passed along to me and the rest of his students. For the last sixty years lots of progressive, mainline Protestant clergy have been and continue to be positively influenced by Tillich’s Christology. He has helped many tens of thousands of clergy and lay persons move beyond a crude and nonsensical Jesus-died-for-my-sins notion and appropriate a far more profound and expansive Christian theory of the meaning of life. That I now have a few issues with Tillich’s views in no way dilutes my appreciation of all that his books have done to give me a much greater understanding and ownership and Christianity. Dr. Bouman and Dr. Tillich will always be among the four or five most important teachers in my life.

Early in the morning of January 29, 1979, Susan woke up with fairly intense cramps and headed to the bathroom. When she returned to bed she gently shook my shoulder and said, “My water broke.”

I regard the events of the next few hours as being among the most extraordinary of my life. In many ways what happened was mundane. A woman was anguished by the terrible pain of labor. There is never a moment of any day when some woman somewhere isn’t feeling the same agony. A man stood near her feeling fear and apprehension and like a minor character in an epic drama. Men around the world are feeling all of this as I’m writing and you’re reading. There was blood and loud crying, and from childbirth assistants there were firm instructions mixed with gentle encouragement. Then suddenly the woman sighed a sigh that sounded ancient and primal and out of her sloshed a bluish, wriggling baby that my heart leapt from my chest to embrace. The nurses aspirated him, severed his connection to the woman and process that had created him, wrapped him in a soft cotton blanket and laid him in the arms of his sweat soaked, exhausted and ecstatic mother. Out of nowhere…now here! The mental picture of Susan holding her first born son will be with me all of my life. The smile that was equal parts relief, wonder and joy…the smile that said, “I have waited for you a very long time and I will love you forever”…that smile is as good a reason as I can think of for God to have created and nurtured the entire Universe. There in that delivery room I had a nearly palpable sense that God and I were standing together and sharing a moment…that together we were shamelessly intruding on the private and heart-breakingly serene vision of a mother falling in love with her child.

Matthew Nelson Boe was born just as the sun was rising on a cold winter day in Ohio. A few hours later in San Diego a sixteen year old girl by the name Brenda Ann Spencer would go on a shooting spree in an elementary school killing two and wounding eight. She would later claim that her actions were the result of having been physically and sexually abused by her father. For a few minutes that night as I drove home from the hospital in the dark I wondered about Brenda and her dad. Had he been enraptured when Brenda was born? Did he feel then for Brenda and her mother what I felt for Matt and Susan? Did he promise himself that he would do all he could to nurture and love his child into the fullest bloom of young adulthood? Possibly. But if so, what had happened? And more pertinent to Matt’s birth day, I wondered what WOULD happen. I was still agog with wonder and excitement, but now I also felt the anxiety that most new parents must feel…anxiety about the responsibility that lay ahead. Would I be a good parent? Would I be a good partnering parent with Susan? Would the job I was headed to be a good “nest” for my little one to grow up in? I fell asleep that night alternately recalling Susan’s smile and wondering about Brenda.

I’m jumping ahead now thirty plus years to the present. It’s Saturday and what follows is the sermon I wrote today for church tomorrow morning. The text is the story of Nabboth’s vineyard…the story of how the allegedly wicked Queen Jezebel arranged to have a man killed in order to acquire his plot of land for her husband, the wicked King Ahab. Here goes…

Here’s the question that I want to start with…for U.S. citizens the final authority for how we live as member of our republic is the Constitution, but what is it that is authoritative for the Christian? In other words, where does the buck stop…where are the head waters of our convictions and behaviors as people of God?

For Roman Catholics the answer has traditionally been “canon law”. Yeah, for our Roman sisters and brothers canon law is where you go to settle competing notions about how to believe and to live out the faith

So how about for Protestants? What do you think? You think it’s this? (Hold up the Bible)

Well, let me read you an e-mail that I got from my brother-in-law a couple of weeks ago…

In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:


Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination ... End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan.

Pretty funny, huh?

For another example of how unhelpful the Bible can be we need go no further than our Old Testament reading for today…the completely baloney story of Nabboth’s Vineyard set within the completely baloney account of the lives of two of Israel’s most impressive people…my personal heroes, the brave and honourable Israelite King Ahab and especially his brilliant wife, Queen Jezebel.

Before I say more about this I want to recommend a book that I read on Friday as preparation for this sermon. It is one terrific read especially if you like chewy, cutting edge biblical scholarship. The book is entitled “Jezebel, The Untold Story of the Bible’s Harlot Queen”, by Leslie Hazelton, published by Doubleday, copyright, 2006. I really wish I had an hour to share what I learned from Hazelton, because even for a guy like me who reads a LOT of theology and biblical studies materials, this was really something and I think I know many of you well enough to believe that you would be as fascinated as I was. Let me give you just a few highlights…

First of all, the stuff in 1st Kings that was written about King Ahab, Jezebel, Elijah and Elisha was written 300 to 400 years after events the events that are described.

Second, what was written was crafted by scribes in the southern kingdom of Judah who hated almost everything about the northern kingdom of Israel over which Ahab and Jezebel ruled splendidly as king and queen for thirty years. Said differently, these particular biblical writers are like the post-civil war, rebel biographer of President Lincoln who wrote that Lincoln had had an incestuous relationship with his older sister, Sarah, and that he had murdered his younger brother Thomas.

Third, while it’s true that Jezebel DID primarily worship the goddess Astarte, who was her favourite of the deities, nonetheless like everyone one else in Palestine in those days (we’re talking roughly 850 B.C.E.)…like EVERYONE including her rivals, the grubby cowardly Elijah and his successor the traitorous, blood-thirsty Elisha…like EVERYONE she believed in Yahweh, in Yahweh’s wife, Asherah, in the high god, El and in Yahweh’s brothers the gods Shemem and Yam.

And yes…you did hear me correctly…everyone including Elijah and Elisha believed in all of those gods. Here’s the way it worked… El was the high god, Astarte was his wife (symbolized by a palm tree that was called the “tree of life”), and together they had three sons, Yahweh the warrior god whose wife was Asherah, Shemem, the god of the sky who was a bachelor, and Yam, the sea god, also unmarried.

Elijah and Elisha would not for a second have denied the existence of any of these other gods. Their deal was that they were huge fans of Yahweh the male warrior god and they despised Yahweh’s mom, Astarte, because they thought she was weak and that El was weak for putting up with her. They also didn’t like the idea of female priests which there were plenty in the religious tradition of Astarte. Oh, yeah…and by the way. the idea that there was cult prostition associated with these traditions…BOGUS! No way. No archaeological evidence at all. And so Elijah and his successor were misogynists par excellance AND together they wrote the book on religious intolerance.

And here’s why they hated Ahab. Prince Ahab was a highly decorated general and a brilliant strategist who before he became king had fought bravely in many battles…mostly against the southern kingdom whose descendents wrote the Ahab/Jezebel stories. Soon after his father died and he ascended to the thrown Ahab and Israel were threatened by the king of Syria over a disputed piece of land known today as the Golan Heights. Although King Ahab offered to compromise and divide the disputed territory, Syria pre-emptively attacked Israel, but subsequently was out-witted, out flanked and out-fought by Ahab’s cavalry and in six days fell to disastrous defeat. Yeah, this was the ORIGINAL six day war.

So anyway, when the king of Syria and his generals were brought to King Ahab’s field headquarters begging for a merciful death, Ahab said, “Nonsense, my brothers, you shall not die at all. Let us now live together in peace.” And, as he had originally suggested, they divided the land in question. He made this concession at the behest of Jezebel whose favourite deity, Astarte, was the Earth Mother and an advocate of forgiveness and mercy.

Ahab would later say about war in general, “It is not the man who puts ON armor who should boast, but rather the man who takes it off.” THAT my friends is a bumper sticker!!!

Well, anyway Elijah was furious with King Ahab for showing womanish mercy and not putting all the Syrians to death as Yahweh’s holy war law insisted. Allow me to quote, “your enemy shall be as a burnt offering unto me…all who survive, men, women and children, shall all be put to the sword”. Think “total jihad”.

So, to the fundamentalist, intolerant, fanatic Elijah, Ahab screwed up…he became a Prince of Peace…an insult to Yahweh, the god of war. And the Naboth’s Vineyard story? Well…never happened. A complete fiction. Don’t take my word for it…reference the article by Dr. Nadav Naaman, Professor in the Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University published in vol 33 of the “Journal for The Study of The Old Testament”, September, 2008. The Naboth’s Vineyard story is simply a 400 years-after-the-lives-of-Ahab-and-Jezebel, propagandist fabrication by southerners wanting to defame the best and most successful king and queen Israel ever had…a ruling couple who was far better than David and who for thirty years provided an unprecedented level of prosperity and peace to the nation.

So, again, my question is…for the Christian what, if not canon law, and if not this, the Bible, what is finally authoritative? And the answer is…the Gospel…the message about the TRUE nature of God as delivered in the life and the teaching of Jesus. And what is that Gospel. It is the good news of God’s unconditional affirmation of all people…of ALL people…Jews, Muslims, atheists, Astarte worshippers, agnostics, you name it…an affirmation that involves no “if’s”, “and’s”, or “but’s” of any kind.

And more precisely what that means is that if someone comes along and says, “the Gospel…the good news is that if we keep the Ten Commandments we get to go to Heaven”…if that happens we say, “Wrong! Utterly wrong! No…the good news IS…the Gospel IS that despite the fact that none of us manage to get past number one, nonetheless, we are desperately, passionately loved by God and shall be included lovingly in the World’s final destiny. That’s the Gospel.”

And if after saying that someone else immediately says, “Yes, the Good News is what you just said it was, and if we deeply believe it in our hearts we shall be saved”…if someone says that then we say, “Wrong again. ‘Wrong’, because the Gospel rightly spoken really DOES involve no ‘ifs’, ‘ands’, ‘buts’ or ‘maybes’ of any sort. It does not say ‘if you live a good life God will reward that life’, or, ‘if you believe’, or, ‘even if you want to believe’. No…the Gospel properly spoken simply says, ‘because Jesus lives your life has meaning and your destiny is secure’. That’s the Good News!”

And you see, this is actually the only POSSIBLE Gospel, precisely because it is only a Gospel this radical…this contrary to human convention that has the power to create and grow the Church…to turn people’s lives around…to free us up from self-involvement, and from the need to safeguard and justify ourselves. Yeah…certainly it was and, indeed, it is still true today, that only a Gospel as amazingly unconditional as ours can liberate humankind from it’s congenital turned-inwardness…only a Gospel of unbounded grace that makes it possible for us to exist no longer for ourselves, but instead for others…for all others…even our enemies…even our Syrians…who Elijah and Elisha never understood…never figured out are no less loved by God than are we.

And so…the Bible is the far from perfect narrative of an evolving understanding of God…of who God is and what God is up to. And along the way some got it right, others didn’t…and the terribly unfair legacy of Ahab and Jezebel demonstrates that there was no guarantee that getting it right would also get you a place of honor in the history of Israel. Yup… Jezebel argued for tolerance, Elijah embodied INtolerance. Ahab turns out to be an agent for peace…Elisha would turn war into pogrom. And the argument continues for 800 years until a young rabbi would finally settle the debate…a young rabbi who surrounded himself with strong Jezebel-like women…who loved the Samaritan and the Syro-Phoenician and the Centurion …and who like Ahab saw boast not in violence, but in laying down not only his armor, but also his life.

And it is this one and his Gospel that we Christians now hang our hats on…this one and his Gospel where for us the buck stops, and the love and forgiveness and redemption begins. Amen.

The first sermon that I wrote and preached at seminary following two semesters of homiletics (preaching) instruction was based on an Easter text in John’s gospel…the text in which Jesus appears to his students and says, “Peace be with you…as the Father sent me so now I send you.”

I interpreted the “as the Father sent me” to mean “in the way the Father sent me”. This is to say in the turning-the-world-upside-down, violating-conventional-wisdom, creating-new-paradigms, potentially cruciform way. I contrasted this rocky and dangerous way to be sent with the “peace be with you” prologue. I suggested that another way to read the text was, “relax, don’t have a care…I’m sending you out to stir things up enough that you you’ll often find yourselves in major trouble.” I solved the contradiction by reminding listeners that the one doing the dangerous sending was doing his commissioning from the Easter side of death…that he was a sneak preview of their destiny.

My own preaching has always been a bit edgy and the above sermon is not untypical of the thousand or so sermons that I have written and delivered. It’s now the day after I came to Jezebel’s defense and while there were people in the congregation who enjoyed and appreciated what I had to say, there were plenty who didn’t. One of my favorite things to do is write a Mrs. Baily kind of sermon that everybody likes and gives me positive feedback on. I’m a firstborn and therefore have a bent toward crowd-pleasing and love a pat on the back probably more than I should. But as a preacher and would-be imitator of Jesus I feel compelled to use pulpit time to get people to think like Jesus did…unconventionally and with a view to living more selflessly and in a less prejudicial, us/them way. I also realize that it’s not enough to merely point the way to a different kind of being in the world. A good sermon should also empower the way.

So…in the Jezebel sermon I cracked open conventional wisdom about who the bad guys were. I discomforted those who identify with take-no-prisoners Elijah and let’s-solve-our-problem-with-violence Elisha, but at the same time I introduced a radical, uncompromisingly graceful gospel designed to free people up from hating as much as Elijah and Elisha did.

Some get it. Others are slower to get it. Some never get it at all. And those in the “slow to get it” and the “never get it” categories are the folks who can make “being sent in the way Jesus was sent” really pretty interesting. MUCH more about all this later.

Dr. Paul Harms was my professor of homiletics and he was probably the best preacher I’ve ever heard. He had two doctoral degrees…one in theology and another in drama from Northwestern University…from the same teacher that Charlton Heston had and always claimed was largely responsible for his skills as an actor. Harms had good things to say, but the way he said them was extraordinary.

“Make what you say interesting”, Harms taught us. “When you’re writing your sermon always anticipate at what point your listener’s mind will begin to wander off to what she’s having for Sunday dinner, or who’s playing who on the TV that afternoon. Don’t let it happened. Be surprising. Say old thing in new ways. Recall that Jesus used parables that were jaw dropping to a first century audience. A ‘good’ Samaritan? Are you kidding me?! To us that would be a good ‘Maoist commissar’…or a ‘good Iranian hostage taker’. There won’t be anyone thinking about pot roast if you stir the pot like Jesus did. In the best case scenario your congregation will be thinking about what you said all week…or better yet inviting you to have coffee and a conversation.”

Over the years I’ve tried to do what Dr. Harms taught us and most who appreciated me as a pastor liked me largely because of my preaching. Those who didn’t like me tended to hold my preaching against me.

I loved being the father of Matthew and I loved being married to Matthew’s mother. Our life during the spring and summer of 1979 was marvelous. I have several photographs of the three of us from this period and in nearly everyone I have a kind of dazed and happy look on my face. There was nothing about being a new dad that I didn’t enjoy. Matt was a fairly contented baby who learned his developmental tricks right on schedule. Often I would think to myself, “oh, my…he’s just adorable at this stage. This is my favorite baby age.” Then he would grow and evolved into some new and advanced version of himself and I would think, “no, wait…this is even better. THIS is the development stage I like the best”. And so it went…and he just kept getting more loveable.


Susan loved being a mother. In the sixteen years we were married I don’t remember her being any happier. She and Matt were inseparable.

Perhaps because Susan’s dad had often created family crisis as an excuse to storm out of the house and head down to the neighborhood tavern to drink himself silly (or mean), and perhaps because his behavior left his wife and daughter feeling somehow guilty and responsible, and perhaps because this family dynamic caused Sue to use her dad as a mirror to judge her own self-worth, and perhaps because Sue felt that if she was a better child, a more worthwhile and accomplished daughter then Dad would not get so angry and cause all of the turmoil…perhaps because of this the adult Susan, when I was married to her, was hyper-anxious to be successful and get her real father or the mirror-father she carried around in her head to be proud of her.

Perhaps there was a time early in my pastoral training and career when Susan thought that being a clergy’s spouse would somehow boost her stock. Perhaps later on living in the shadow of a pastor who some really liked and others could hardly stand to look at worked to stir up childhood anxieties. Some of the turmoil of Susan’s childhood had to do with the frequent job losses her dad experienced (and the family suffered through) as a result of his alcoholism. Being married to a pastor who was roundly disliked by some of his parishioner/employers would not have been fun for any spouse, but it would have been especially difficult for a spouse with a pre-disposition to worry about the bread-winner’s job security.

All of what I have “perhaps” about Susan is speculative and it clearly puts the blame for any problems we had during our marriage on Susan’s father (and indirectly on Susan) and let’s me off the hook. Clearly I brought my own baggage to the marriage including a difficult childhood relationship with my mother, post-traumatic stress disorder, and my own and not-insignificant “less-then-the-best-person-I-can-be”-ness. But, that aside, Susan’s baggage in the first year of Matthew’s life was overcome by a serenity that made being married to her blissful. Her life at this time was not without problems, but she responded to problems with a light-heartedness and with aplomb. Susan bonded with Matt in this first year of his life in a way that nothing short of her own death will ever be able to sever. There would be difficult years ahead for Matt…growing up, said Freud, is the hardest, messiest thing we ever do…but through it all Sue would always have her heart wrapped around her child and the feelings that were evidenced in her delivery room smile have never dissipated.

I should mention that during my first and second years I had three part time jobs. As I wrote earlier the first was at Sears, but this lasted only a few months. The second job was at a local hospital where I worked as overnight orderly in an adult drug treatment center that was modeled on the famous Hazelton rehab program in Minneapolis. I learned a great deal in this program because all staff persons were required to experience the same curriculum that patients did. And so, for example, I read the “big book” by Bill W., I attend A.A. and Al Anon meetings, I participated in classes on the Twelve Step Program, did a nearly 24 hour psycho-drama retreat, and heard lots of lectures on the nature of substance abuse.

In the parish and in other human services work that I’ve been involved with I’ve had many opportunities to minister to persons with alcohol and other drug related issues. The training and experience I received at St. Anthony Hospital has been very useful both professionally and personally. I am a huge fan of Twelve Step Programs. If I was ever abandoned on a dessert island with a male stranger I would hope to be sequestered with a recovering alcoholic or a longtime Al Anon participant. In my experience such folk are among the most authentic, grateful, honest and humble people I’ve known. Bill W. and those who were the earliest cadre in his healing movement rank with those in the twentieth century who developed penicillin, and the smallpox and polio vaccines.

My third part-time job was at the same hospital working as an orderly in the emergency room. I hated to leave my drug rehab assignment, but the eleven to seven over-night hours were taking a toll on my study routine. My grades were good enough at the end of my first year that I won an award with the result that the faculty voted to give me the Masters degree upon completion of my four years of study. This was very gratifying, but I had come to seminary to get the most out of what the experts had to offer and a year’s worth of three to four over-nights each week was making that difficult. Thus, when I saw the E.R. opening on the bulletin board in the employee locker room I applied and was subsequently hired for the three to eleven shift.

I loved the E.R.! It was exciting, very interesting and it gave me the chance to work with some extraordinary medical professionals. The Emergency Room nurses were the BEST!!! They were so skilled and smart and creative and compassionate. They were like the very finest pilots that I flew with overseas…brave (I watched one 100 pound R.N. jump fearlessly on the back of a huge out-of-control drugged-out patient who the police had arrested for breaking into a pharmacy), unflappable (they were occasionally dealing with two life-threatening emergencies at once), smart (several times I heard nurses say to doctors things like, “you prescribed 50 milligrams just now… shouldn’t that be 5 milligrams?”) and dedicated (the end of a shift meant nothing to these nurses if the work was not done. It was not at all unusual for them to pro bono an extra hour or two when things got really busy).

As a rule the physicians were not nearly as impressive. They seemed more detached, aloof and sometimes even callous. The nursing staff knew who the good ones were and appreciated any new tool or trick these doctors would teach them. They also knew who the bad ones were and they worked hard to protect these docs from their own incompetence or shoddy, hurried work.

One of my favorite nurses was a young woman by the name of Kathy Olympio. Kathy was extraordinarily competent (she read E.R. journals on her breaks) and compassionate (she was wonderful at calming a hurting child or a frightened dementia addled geriatric). I began work in the E.R. just about the time Matthew was born and it was Kathy who took up a collection to buy him a very lovely baby gift. She hardly knew me, but this sort of kindness was very typical of her. When at Easter Susan took Matthew home to the Midwest to show him off to both of our families, Kathy invited me to have dinner with her family…her husband and three young children and her parents. “You shouldn’t have to be alone for Easter”, she insisted. This was so Kathy.

One evening while Kathy and I were eating supper in the cafeteria she said to me, “I’m not a Christian you know.”

“Okay”, I responded.

“Do you want to know why?”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“I do. I did my training at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City where I worked in the pediatric ward. A lot of what I saw horrified me. Congenital birth defects, kids with cancer, a beautiful baby I took care of who was born without most of her brain, children with terrible burns and awful pain. It was a hell of suffering and I would have been bothered by it had the patients been adults. But they were children…small, beautiful, wide-eyed, hungry to be loved children…and what had and was happening to them was awful and it was evil and in many cases the only possible help they could get was from God and God couldn’t or wouldn’t lift an omnipotent finger to help. Even after in prayer I had begged and given him an offering of tears and even at one point…well…never mind.”

“No, what? What were you going to say”, I asked.

“It sounds too horrible to even speak of now, but for one little girl with an awful kind of cancer I tried to bargain with God and told him that if somehow she could survive I would dedicate one of my children to the priesthood. I don’t mean to offend you because I really like you, but for me the idea now of sentencing my son to a life in service to either a non-existent God or a monster God is hard for me to think about.”

I didn’t say anything. Neither did Kathy for the longest time.

“So what do they teach you in seminary about things like this? What’s the answer to all of this evil and a God who in the face of it sits on his hands?”

I didn’t know what to say. Not because I hadn’t wrestled with this question and found what was and still is, for me, a satisfactory answer. I was silent because it seemed that the moment was not quite right for a theological rejoinder. Instead I reached out my hand and touched her on the shoulder. When she looked up at me I said, “Kathy, I love knowing someone like you who cares so much about hurting people. Honestly, you’re a hero to me and I wish I could be more like you. There are so many who might experience what you did at Sloan-Kettering, but then not be nearly as moved by it. You really have a gift of compassion and I’m awed by it. Your patients and colleagues at the hospital are so lucky to have you.”

Kathy looked down again and then said, “Gift or curse…I’m not sure which.”

In her case it was both and I would soon find out just how much of a curse it was.

Like most thoughtful religious persons I had struggled with the problem of suffering in the world and with the help of my teachers, especially Dr. Bouman, had settled on the following:

• God does not act “super-naturally”
• Prayer is therefore not a cosmic slot-machine that occasionally pays off. It is instead a form of meditation
• The evolutionary process that got us here is random and violent. Exploding supernova’s that created the heavier elements, colliding planetesimals that gave Earth it’s moon, comets that impacted Earth and brought water to fill the oceans, plate tectonics (earthquakes and volcanoes) that gave Earth dry land above the surface of the sea, cosmic radiation that altered RNA and DNA causing mutations some of which were beneficial…each of these has been important to the process of creation
• The same meteorological system that produce hurricanes and tornadoes moves water from the oceans and re-deposits it on what would otherwise be deserts
• Much evil is caused by human beings and cannot be blamed on God, e.g., war, inequality and prejudice, economic disparity resulting in poverty
• Death is beneficial to the enterprise of life in a variety of ways. Rabbits eat grass and cause it to diet, foxes feed on rabbits and prevent rabbits from over-populating the eco-system, cancer kills long-lived foxes and makes room for new generations
• Physical pain is the body’s alarm system. A hand that cannot feel pain is more likely to be damaged than a hand that can

In a nutshell, the above is my response to the problem of suffering. It’s what I could have shared with Kathy, but didn’t.

The hospital that I worked for was in a lower income neighborhood and served a diverse population. Among our more frequent emergency room patients were the residents of two or three older and somewhat run-down nursing homes. EMT personnel would respond to a call that 93 year-old Mary Doe “does not seem to be breathing normally” or “is confused and completely out-of-control” or “claims she is in severe pain and needs to be taken to the hospital ASAP” and they would deliver Mrs. Doe to us with no more history than what the nineteen year old nursing home care-provider had said during the 911 call. Frequently these patients were asymptomatic when they arrived. Some had simply feigned illness in order to break the boredom of their very lonely lives. As a result unless the EMT’s had diagnosed a serious condition enroute to the hospital these elderly patients were warehoused in the E.R. until the doctor on duty got around to examining them. The doctors tended to triage them as low priority and therefore it fell to the nursing staff and even orderlies like me to console them while they lay on their gurneys waiting to be seen. “The doctor is very busy right now (bull shit…he’s talking to some guy in a pro shop about a tee-time) and will get to you just as soon as he can. Please be calm, it won’t be much longer.”

One night a few weeks after Kathy and I had had our conversation I was again downstairs in the cafeteria when the P.A. system announced a “code blue” in the E.R. “Code blue” is standard hospital jargon for a serious patient emergency to which appropriate hospital personnel need to immediately respond. For me it meant leaving my uneaten supper and hurrying upstairs to be available for whatever assistance the attending doctors and nurses needed me for. Usually it involved doing cardiac compressions for a patient who had had a heart attack.

Such was the case during this particular event. The person who had arrested was a low-rent nursing home patient who had been in the E.R. for three to four hours without having been seen. The physician on duty was an especially imperious horse’s ass who occasionally filled in when the regulars were unavailable. He was a person who seemed immune to advice, which in any case was hard to offer inasmuch as he was frequently hard to find. “I’ll be in the doctor’s lounge if you need me”. For whatever reason this doc had not gotten around to providing the dying patient more than a cursory glance during her several hour stay with us. Kathy and the other nurses had been looking in on her every ten minutes or so and comforting her as best they could. I had even visited with her for a time. She was confused and seemed to have pain that she was unable to be specific about. At one point I had asked the doctor if I could give the patient some idea of when she might be examined. He turned and looked at me as though I was a world class impertinent.

“And you are…?”

“I’m the orderly, Sir, and I was just wondering what I might be able to tell the elderly women in six about when you would be free to see her.”

He turned away without saying a word and picked up the phone and asked for an outside line. I wasn’t sure what to do so I just stood there and waited until he turned to me again with a withering stare.

“Okay”, I said, raising my hands in surrender and then spun and walked away.

While several of us were at supper Kathy peeked in on the woman, saw that she was barely breathing and yelled “Code blue…she’s arresting!” After the call went out on intercom those of us in the cafeteria hurried back, the doctor raced in from the lounge, the crash cart and inhalation therapists arrived and everyone went to work attempting to revive the elderly patient. Twenty minutes later after several defibrillation attempts, a couple syringes of sodium bi-carp, and the insertion of a portable pacemaker the patient was still not responding. We all looked at the doctor waiting for him to call an end to our efforts, but he insisted on being what in hospital parlance is referred to as “heroic”. And so I continued the compressions, the inhalation therapist continued “bagging” the patient, another defibrillation was attempted and ten minutes later the doctor in frustration literally threw up his hands, turned to Kathy, pointed a finger and said, “this is all your fault. If you had been paying more attention and watching her more closely this never would have happened!!!” We were all horrified, but none mores so than Kathy. Kathy could only stare at the deceased and mumble, “I’m so sorry”.

To be clear it was not at all Kathy’s fault. If anything it was the doctor’s fault. Everyone knew it. It is likely that on some level even the doctor knew it, but he never apologized to Kathy or to the rest of us who were Kathy’s friends. Three days later Kathy committed suicide by ingesting a massive over-dose of asprin. He husband asked me to preach the funeral sermon and the hospital asked me to conduct the memorial service it held for her. This was the very first funeral I presided at and it may have been the most emotionally difficult of the nearly one hundred that I have done since.

Kathy left behind a heart-broken husband, three children under the age of six, saddened and very angry co-workers, and Catholic parents who were not only grieving, but worried that their daughter was going to Hell for having taken her own life. The homiletical assignment was robust.

I don’t think I still have the sermon I preached although it may be deep in some box of old papers in the basement. I’m afraid to look for it now, for the same reason that I don’t like looking at early watercolors that did when I first started painting. I do remember talking to Dr. Bouman about what I should say. His response went something like this…

“The way you describe her makes Kathy sound like a wonderful person. I wish I could have met her. You said that she was an atheist. Are you aware that early Christians were referred to as atheists by their adversaries because they could no longer believe in the God of conventional wisdom? Kathy’s atheism seems to be of this type. She could no longer believe in a powerful God who did not care about suffering people. Good for her! Jesus didn’t believe in that sort of God either. No, he believed in a vulnerable God…a God who rarely got his way…a God who was frequently rejected by those he loved desperately…who was liabled by so-called theologians…priests who represented him as a warrior God who cared little for any but royals and their wealthy acolytes. Yeah…good for her!”

“It’s just too bad”, Bouman continued, “that Kathy didn’t know the God that Jesus said could best be found luring his human partners to care for the sick, feed the hungry, give hospitality to the stranger and visit the imprisoned. The irony, of course, is that Kathy, the compassionate nurse, lived precisely that life that the God she was so angry at has to have been so proud of.”

“Now, about Hell”, Bouman said, “you might want to schedule some time with her parents to talk about what we modern Christians have learned about that Persian invention and about the considerable doubt most New Testament scholars have that even Jesus himself believed in it. Finally, with regard to the doctor that your co-workers felt in some way murdered Kathy…I don’t know how you deal with that, but I would remind you that the scandal of the Gospel is that God loves that arrogant physician every bit as much as God loves Kathy, the humble and compassionate nurse. You will not well serve the cause of Jesus’ God if you encourage hatred and an unwillingness to forgive”.

And so with Dr. Bouman’s good and redemptive counsel I did the best job I could. But I am still reluctant to look for the sermon for I fear that I would now discover that I did not do as good a job as I so wanted to and still hope that I did.

A four year Masters of Divinity program is organized in this way: students complete two years of academic studies then spend twelve months working in a parish before returning to seminary for a final academic year. The third year internship allows seminarians to discover their in-the-trenches-weaknesses prior to having a homestretch year to refine their skills.

My internship was at Zion Lutheran Church in Iowa City, Iowa, a congregation founded by German immigrants in the middle of the 19th century. The congregation had been involved in the internship program for several years and generally enjoyed having “sem” students around to learn the ropes. For all practical purposes interns functioned as inexpensive ($600 per month stipend) associate pastors and, under the guidance of a supervisor, did most of the duties that an ordained pastor did including preaching, teaching, making hospital and home visits, co-officiating at communion, baptisms and funerals, recruiting new members, attending committee and counsel meetings, working with youth, calling on elderly shut-ins, and participating in synod and other clergy meetings.

My supervisor was Dr. Reverend Richard Trost, a wonderful man with a world class theological education (the University of Tubingun in Germany) and a very conventional orthodox Christian theology. Most clergy with Dick’s background would have come out of his very sophisticated, seven year Ph.D. program with a much more progressive understanding of the Christian story. Dick, however, fell in love with Martin Luther and along with him much of Luther’s 16th century worldview…his pre-modern anthroplogy and his fairly literal take on the Old and New Testaments. Dick and I disagreed on many things, we had epic arguments, and I worried that he might not give me the best evaluation. However, Dick was a lover not a hater and among his strong convictions was the belief that there is plenty of room for diversity among Lutherans. As for diversity outside of Lutheranism Rev. Dr. Trost had only weak ecumenical impulses and did not go out of his way to fraternize with Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, etc. And yet, because he loved the Old Testament and was conversant in Hebrew he felt very much at home in the company local rabbis or the Jewish professors at the University of Iowa School of Religion.

Dick and many in his congregation were Deutchaphiles and in 1979, the year I worked there, Zion still had a German language Christmas Eve service. Dick led several tours to “Luther Land”, the mostly East German towns where Luther had lived, studied and worked. Call me “narrow minded”, but by contrast my regard for Germany was someone besmirched by events commonly known as “World War II” and “the Jewish Holocaust”. In truth I held Luther and Lutherans somewhat responsible for both.

My affection for Luther is modest. I love the fact that he had the death-defying courage to take on an extraordinarily corrupt Church…a church that was in league with the aristocrats and plutocrats of Europe responsible for economic arrangements that impoverished the majority of the population. I loved the fact that he democratized the Christian faith by:
• translating the Bible into the language of the people
• thumbing his nose at the so called inerrant authority of Church Headquarters in Italy
• pressing the notion of the “priesthood of all believers”
• encouraging congregational hymn singing and liturgy in the vernacular
• making the case that most ordinary vocations are no less ministry than ordained ministry
• opening up the opportunity for ordained ministry to men who, for whatever reason, did not want to live their lives apart from close and intimate relationships with women
• decreasing the number of sacraments (religious services that could only be conducted by priests) from seven to three. He kept baptism and communion which he believed should primarily be public events at which the laity could co-officiate. He also hung on to private confession but only allowed clergy to announce an unconditional forgiveness (no, “I forgive you, but first you must do x, y and z”)
• encouraging the training of the laity for the role of parish religious instructor, e.g., Sunday School and Confirmation teaching.

However, what I don’t like about Luther is that he was too much a man of his age. In other words I don’t like the fact that he:
• presided at a few witch burnings
• wrote hellishly hateful things about Jews who refused to convert to Christianity (Luther was not a racial or ethnic anti-Semite…but he was a virolent-religious anti-Semite)
• did not believe in political democracy
• encouraged the Protestant royalty of Europe to be blood-thirsty in putting down a peasant’s revolt
• worried too much about Hell. In other words, he was a bit too “other-worldly minded to be much earthly good”
• he did not have the benefit of modern biblical scholarship which has revealed the Jewish and Christian enterprise to be more significantly concerned with distributive justice, egalitarianism, and an end to violence as a means of responding to evil

With regard to the last bullet point, Luther interpreted the phrase from Paul, “we are justified by grace through faith” to mean, “given our sinfulness we are nonetheless in a positive relationship with God (justified) if we believe (have faith) that Jesus died for our sins (an act of God’s grace)”. However, the towering modern New Testament scholars John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg have helped this generation of Christians to understand that what Paul was really saying was, “we are freed to become justice-loving (justified) people, and justice-doing (faithful) people by way of an awareness of the full scope of God’s interest in and love for humankind (grace).” Herein lies the fundamental difference in the theologies respectively of Dr. Rev. Richard Trost and Intern (or “Vicar” as Zion referred to it’s interns as) Gary Boe.

Something occurred in Reverent Trost’s congregation that shook his theological convictions and at the same time caused some people in Iowa City to hold me responsible for a murder. Here’s what happened…

In the late winter of 1979, “Ruth” the Zion Lutheran Church Sunday School Superintendent and her best friend, “Sara”, who was the Assistant Sunday School superintendent entered into a conspiracy to murder Ruth’s husband. Sara’s boyfriend was also recruited to be involved in the plot. They tried wiring his pick-up truck with explosives, but the bomb failed to explode. They tried throwing a “Molitov cocktail” into his truck one night, but missed. Finally, the boyfriend said that he knew a guy in Illinois who would do the awful deed for $500 plus mileage and incidental expenses. The Sunday School Superintendent said, “call him and work out the arrangements”. He did, and a week later the Illinoisan drove over to the rural home of the victim’s parents, duct taped them to kitchen chairs, ordered them at gun point to call their son and ask him to stop by the house (“he owes me money”), and when the husband of the Zion Lutheran Church Sunday School Superintendent arrived the man from “The Land of Lincoln” shot him dead. He then made a sandwich for himself and drove home.

For a couple of months no one knew about the conspiracy. Reverend Trost and the members of Zion Lutheran Church went into full let’s-minister-to-the-poor-grieving-widow mode. A jam-packed funeral was held for the deceased, a fund was established on behalf of the widow’s two young children, hundreds of hot-dishes, plates of cookies, Jello salads and other Lutheran food was prepared and delivered to the devastated faithful wife and mother. Reverend Trost spent many hours providing spiritual counseling to the clearly distraught and heartbroken Sunday School Superintendent who against all odds had bravely offered to continue in her role and begin lining up teachers for the new fall year. “My Heavens”, said one member, “have you ever in your life witnessed such strong Christian faith?!”

Then one day a Zion member who was also a police detective showed up at Pastor Trost’s office.

“Pastor, you were one of the first to visit Ruth after the killing…how did she seem to you?”

“Aggrieved, frightened, confused. What you would expect.”

“Do you remember if she was actually crying? I mean, were there tears?”

“I…think so. Why?”

“Did she say anything at all that seemed to you to have been out of the ordinary?”

“Well, I don’t ordinarily have people tell me that their husband has just been shot and killed. Why are you asking me these questions?”

The detective leaned back in his chair, looked at Dick carefully for a few moments, then said, “Well, Pastor, I’ll ask you to keep this to yourself for a day or so, but we’re about to arrested Ruth on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder.”

Dick was incredulous. “How is that possible?!”

The detective then shared information that incriminated Ruth including an insurance policy she had taken out on her husband shortly before the murder. Later, while being interrogated by police Ruth broke and later still with the help of her attorney struck a bargain with prosecutors. In return for her willingness to plead guilty and testify against her two co-conspirators, Ruth was given a ten year prison sentence. The assistant and her boyfriend, however, were charged with first degree murder and their trial started the third week of September 1979, a week after I arrived in town to begin my one year “vicarage”.

Pastor Trost was personally devastated by the scandal. Besides the pain he felt for the innocent family members of the victim and the guilty parties, Dick felt personally embarrassed. The fact that the two women involved were both Sunday School superintendents was not missed by the press who played up this more interesting aspect of the story. Dick thus experienced himself as the pastor whose preaching and teaching had had so little impact on the two women that they could involve themselves in so terrible a crime.

He privately told a friend who later told me that he felt humiliated. I suspect that he may even have had a crisis of faith based upon something he said in an off-hand way as I was riding with him in his car one afternoon. We were talking about a famine in the Sahail region of Africa that I had wanted to do a special fundraising appeal on behalf of. Dick was opposed because he thought that it would interfere with the annual stewardship campaign for the coming year.

“But Dick, we can’t turn our backs on this terrible hunger issue. People are dying. Mostly its children who are dying. If the Gospel is true then it’s won’t be an either/or decision for the congregation. The Gospel will free members up to do both…give to the hunger appeal and pledge generously for the coming year.”

“You’re exactly correct. Everything you’ve said is true. Which is precisely why we should NOT do the hunger appeal.” He then laughed his particularly fetching laugh, but punctuated it with a sighed and said, “Yeah, well, let me think about it.” Dick’s comment caused me to wonder if he was suddenly doubting the effectiveness of the Christian story to increase compassion in the human heart. I think he was. In the end he didn’t do the appeal, but I hit it hard two weeks later in the one sermon I was allowed to preach each month. By detailing the gruesome circumstances of villagers in Sudan and Ethiopia and by using my best rhetoric to encourage members to donate to Lutheran World Relief I was clearly insubordinate and expected a good chewing out, but after the service Dick put his arm around me and said, “Nice job, Vicar Boe. Well done. Now off with you to the stake.” His laugh told me I was home free and more importantly that he was actually proud of me.

So again the trial began a week after I arrived for my vicarage and two weeks before my first internship sermon. I worked hard on that sermon anxious to impress the congregation, Pastor Trost and especially Susan whose praise always felt the best and whose criticism cut the deepest. I have no record or recollection of that first sermon at Zion, but do recall feeling as though I had written a pretty good homily. Throughout the week I was so focused on my writing, that I paid scant attention to anything else. The only interesting distraction was news from the trial that the Sunday School superintendent had decided to kill her husband because he would not give her a divorce without a custody battle for the two children. In testimony it was revealed that the reason she wanted a divorce was that three years earlier she had had been seduced by and had subsequently had an affair with the vicar at Zion Lutheran Church. This was her first dalliance with adultery and despite some initial guilt she soon found sleeping around to be an especially delicious hobby. The vicar at Zion Lutheran church had opened up a whole new world for Ruth.

In those days Zion had two Sunday morning worship services…one at eight and another at 10:30. The first service was normally populated by a small crowd of mostly elderly parishioners some of whom were retired farmers who had been up since at least five o’clock and who regarded eight AM as a mere twelve hours from bedtime. Dick and I vested in the sacristy located in the basement, then walked up a narrow stairway that led to a door behind the reredos. When we walked out into the sanctuary I was surprised to see that the nave was nearly full of people. There were even people in the rarely used balcony.

Dick’s face was filled with bewilderment as he entered the lectern to welcome people and do opening announcements. “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen. Well, this is quite a crowd for our eight AM service and I see a lot of new faces so I want to welcome you all to worship this morning. We ask that you please sign the visitor cards located in the pew racks and place them in the offering plate when it is passed later in the service.”

I noticed that very few people did as Dick had requested. Following the announcements we sang the opening hymn, did the Kyrie, the Hymn of Praise and the Prayer of the Day. The lectionary texts were read by lay readers, the Psalm was chanted and then it was my turn to announce and read the Gospel text for that Sunday and then preach the sermon based on one of the readings. It all went well except that a couple of humorous lines in the sermon went un-laughed at which surprised me as I had practiced my comedy with good results on Susan, the church secretary and even the taciturn church janitor. I wondered if as a general rule early risers were constitutionally resistant to mirth and made a mental note to save my comedy stylings for the later crowd.

After the service at which very few people exited through the center door of the nave where I stood waiting to shake hands, Dick said, “Let’s go to my office and talk.” He said this so seriously that I assumed there had been some problem with my sermon. Had I unintentionally spoken some heresy? Was homiletical humor regarded as an impertinence by this congregation? Was my message so vapid that together we needed to drastically edit and revive it for the 10:30 audience? It turned out to be none of the above.

“First of all, nice job on the sermon. It was about three minutes longer than it needed to be, but a very satisfactory first effort. I’m impressed and pleased.”

“Thanks!”

“What did you think about the size of the crowd?”

“There were a lot of people here!”

“Yes there were. Other than the Easter sunrise service three years ago, this was the largest early service attendance Zion has ever had. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“They were here to see you.”

“Really? That makes me feel really good…I’m mean that they are so welcoming of me…and so anxious to support me during my first pulpit effort.”

“Yeah, well…that’s not why they were here. They came because they don’t understand that ‘vicar’ is the word we use as a title for our interns. They came because they think that you are the vicar who seduced Ruth and got her started on her life of sexual immorality which eventually led to murder and several ruined lives.”

“No shit?!”, I uttered having forgotten where I was and who I was talking to.

“No shit”, Dick replied gazing through me appearing to be lost in thought. “And now I don’t know what I should do at the second service…let ‘em know during the announcements that you are not THAT vicar, or keep my mouth shut. You might end up being good for business”. He then smiled and winked. “Don’t worry…we’ll set everybody straight. I won’t let you inherit a bad reputation, you’ll have to earn it yourself!”

At the second service we had an even larger crowd than at the first. Most were visitors When during the announcements Dick set folks straight about what a vicar was at Zion and how THAT vicar had been gone for three years, and how after returning from internship to seminary the faculty had refused to certify that vicar for ordination, and how Vicar Boe was newly arrived from Ohio…when all of this was made clear then many people rose from their pews and headed for the doors disappointed because in coming to the House of God to see the Devil they had encountered only me. Years later there would be those who knew exactly who I was and yet thought of me as the Devil. It was not fun to be so regarded, and I tried hard to comfort myself with the knowledge that St. Francis, Luther even Jesus himself labeled by some of their own contemporaries as demonic. But then, so too were Jim Jones and David Koresh who may have comforted themselves in the same way. I suppose I’ve never been completely certain that I wasn’t at least a little demonic.

My internship was mostly terrific. I enjoyed preaching, I LOVED teaching (passing along to adults what I had so far learned at seminary), I was thrilled to be the husband of smart and pretty Susan, and I adored Matt who with his chubby cheeks and quick smile could not have been a cuter baby and toddler. I may have been a little full of myself and it probably came at the expense of Susan having to play second banana, but my work at the church, the times when we were together as a young family at church social events or when we were with other young families with whom we became friends…these times seemed golden to me…then and now. Clearly I was growing to love the small-scale spotlight associated with being clergy-ish, but I also loved the sort of person that living in a glass house, a glass house of God no less, was forcing me to become. Despite a raucous adolescence, and despite my violent and libertine years in the military I was beginning to recapture the experience of innocence that I had a child. I once again thought of myself as a good person. Not a perfect person, by any means, but someone who was trying…someone whose heart was usually in the right place, someone who could fess up to being wrong. I loved Christianity and what it could do to change lives for the better.

But disappointments were lurking. Delmas, the Texas pastor who was responsible for my reconnection with the Christian story had an affair with the associate pastor’s wife and resigned from his parish. A year later he resurfaced in Houston where he was caught having an affair with the church organist. He subsequently resigned from that congregation and left ordained ministry for good.

As a result of a Zion book study that I facilitated (“On Being A Christian” by Hans Kung) a man my age made the decision to sell his business and go to seminary. I could not have been more proud. Four years later he graduated with honors, was called to a parish in Mason City, Iowa, and promptly had an affair with the Director of Parish Education. He left ordained ministry, divorced his wife, somewhat abandoned his two young children. I have not heard from him since. Nice work, Gary.

Okay, so Christianity was not a sure-fire panacea for the complicated and negative aspects of the human condition. C.S. Lewis was said to have compared people to teeth and Christianity to oral hygiene. His paraphrased analogy went something like this…“for people who have inherited wonderful teeth with deep layers of enamel even a little toothpaste will make an already great smile dazzle. This is akin to an inherently virtuous convert to Christianity who becomes saintly. For people with ordinary teeth toothpaste regularly applied will prevent not all, but much decay. This is analogous to ordinary people for whom a frequent ‘brush’ with Christianity is beneficial, but will not prevent an occasional ‘cavity’ or worse. For people whose parental endowment included teeth of poor quality even heroic dental care may not be enough to do more than keep some of the teeth from remaining intact. This is perhaps like the dysfunctional individual for whom the story of Jesus prevents them from tumbling into utter despair.”

Jesus told his audiences a parable about a sower of seeds who must have been drunk because he scattered seed not only where seed should be scattered, on plowed and fertile ground, but also among stones, thorns and on a hard pan walking path. Obviously the seeds carelessly cast did poorly and did not amount to much if anything. Did Jesus conjure up this metaphor out of his own experience? Was his philosophy and theology life-changing for some, but a shrug for others? Did some of his students fire up quickly, but then burn out just as fast? I’ll bet that this was exactly the case.

The twelve disciple part of Jesus’ biography is probably a fiction meant to be symbolic of the twelve original tribes of Israel. Jesus’ biographers no doubt wanted to portray Jesus as being the author of a new and better Israel. But in fact Jesus likely had hundreds of disciples (students). A few who were permanent traveling companions were like monks fiercely loyal to an abbot. Many more fellow travelers came and went, leaving because they had heard as much as they needed to hear in order to understand his program. Some no doubt would have enjoyed staying but needed to get back to work. Some were disillusioned or disagreed with important parts of his platform. A few simpering hanging-on-celebrity hounds would probably have been encouraged to leave. Still others would have been his students for as long as he was in their neck of the woods, but would have gone back to their old routines when he left.

The point is that reaction to his ideas about loving enemies, a God who stood with the poor, the inherent rights and dignity of women, the temple system being a crock of shit, etc., would have been all over the board. And even for those who bought his ideas, the staying power of those ideas would have varied from person to person. Some would be enchanted for the rest of their lives. Others for only a month or two.

Overall, the local area would have been a little better off for a Jesus sermon or question and answer session. But his sermons would not have had a uniform impact on those who heard them. Indeed, it would not have taken Jesus too long to figure out that how much of his message people were able to bite off had a lot to do with their “teeth”.

During my year as an intern or vicar at Zion in Iowa City I had three supervisors. Dick Trost, the bright, charming and conservative Lutheran who, embarrassed by the murder, left in November to take a call to a congregation in Oregon; David Belgum, the socialist mayor of an Iowa City suburb and head of pastoral counseling at the University of Iowa Hospitals; and with a month left in my one year stay, Dick’s replacement, Roy Nielsen, a pleasant, theological lightweight just left of center on most issues. I liked each of my supervisors and by listening to them I learned some things, but by watching them I learned more. From Dick I learned how to love a congregation. From David I learned the importance of diagnosing and caring for the over-all health of a congregation. From Roy I learned that becoming a successful pastor of a large congregation requires that a pastor not take a stand on controversial issues.

There were many things that happened during my internship year in Iowa City that are story-worth…a harrowing single engine airplane incident that could have been disastrous for Susan, Matt and me…an evening with an Amish family that was utterly charming…a friendship I developed with a wonderful man who had mental retardation…a yelling match and near fist fight (he had his fist clenched and his arm cocked) that I with a member and long-time friend from Texas in the church narthex immediately after a service. But the one event that I should not fail to record was a debate that I heard at the University of Iowa between two distinguished theologians with international reputations…Dr. George Forrell, a renowned Luther scholar, and Dr. Krister Stendahl, a New Testament professor at Harvard University. The issue…the Lutheran understanding of the relationship between biblical law and the Christian Gospel. First some background…

Luther seemed to believe that human beings are fundamentally depraved. He also thought that most of us had no clue about (or were in denial of) our depravity. Luther further believed that our depravity kept us from being any more than superficially obedient of biblical laws like the Ten Commandments. He was fond of saying, “Jesus said that we commit adultery even if we THINK a lustful thought or that we violate the prohibition against murder when we hate another person.” (Jesus may indeed have said this, but the biblical context suggests that it was likely as a polemical device to knock holier-than-thou Pharisees and their ilk off of their high horses). To Luther (and to St. Augustine, his favorite theologian) humans are congenital outlaws congenitally suited for Hell.

Luther and Augustine got their ideas from a mistaken interpretation of St. Paul who in a letter to a small Christian congregation in Rome wrote that it is not through works of the law that we humans can have a proper relationship with God, but instead through our very strong conviction and life changing trust (faith) in Jesus’ philosophy. As it turns out Paul was dealing with a mixed congregation of Jewish Christians (who ate kosher and circumcised their young) and non-Jewish Christians (who did neither). The Jewish Christians thought they were superior to the non-Jewish Christians and were alienating them to the point that some non-Jewish Christians were leaving the church. Paul writes to say that the Jewish Christian fealty to Jewish cultic law (kosher rules, etc.) was no big deal and that what was more important was become justice seeking (justified) as Jesus himself had been a justice seeker.

Paul wrote, “We are JUSTIFIED (turned into justice loving people) by GRACE (because God is a lover not a hater) through FAITH (a commitment to justice) not through works of the LAW (eating kosher).”

The way Augustine and Luther read Paul was, “We are JUSTIFIED (forgiven) by GRACE (because Jesus atoned for our sins on the cross) through FAITH (simply by believing that Jesus died for our sins) not through works of the LAW (by trying to earn our way into God’s favor).

The Lutheran Stendahl felt that Luther and Augustine had misunderstood Paul. The Lutheran Forrell believed that Luther and his favorite theologian had gotten it exactly right and during the debate they went at each other. Forrell argued that if we think that we can live a life that is pleasing to God we are both wrong and dangerously self-righteous. Stendahl countered that the Augustinian/Lutheran interpretation of Paul had turned most Protestants into quietist do-nothings…those who were convinced that all God required was right belief not right action. At one point Stendahl said, “It can’t be simply belief, George. Who believes in God more certainly than the Devil, for heaven sakes?!!!” (I’m sure that neither Stendahl nor Forrell believed in an actual Devil, but it was an effective rhetorical jab.)

The debate went back and forth and although I agreed more with Stendahl than Forrell it did seem as though Forrell was ahead on debating points. Forrell’s style was more slashing than his opponent’s who in manner and voice was a far more gentle man. Finally, after Stendahl appeared to be a bit on the ropes having refused to counter-attack and lacking Forrell’s obvious relish for a fight, he concluded with a story about two World War II resistance fighters that he knew when he was Bishop of Stockholm. I don’t recall the details of their story, only that they had been imprisoned for helping Jews escape from Denmark. When Stendahl visited them in their jail cell they were both aware that they would soon pay for their valor with their lives, yet both were almost joyful that they had been faithful to their hero Jesus. One of them said something like, “I’ve never quite understood the atonement theory…how Jesus or anyone can die for another person’s sins. For this reason I regard myself as a person of weak faith. However, I have tried very hard to put one foot ahead of the other in an attempt to follow the path that Jesus took and even now I don’t regret where that path has led me.” His friend agreed.

Stendahl contrasted these men with those of great intellectual faith who when terrible times had called for great courage had nonetheless sat on their hands. With this story gentle Stendahl handily vanquished hard-charging and fiery Forrell.

One last humorous story about my internship year. Susan, Matt and I lived in a two bedroom apartment about a block from Zion. Directly above us lived Dr. Moltke S. Gram, the world greatest Kantian scholar who taught at the University and was a member of the 800 year old Heidelberg Philosophical Society. Although he seemed a little arrogant and rarely did more than grunt at my hallway greetings I still thought it was pretty cool to be the neighbor and mailbox casual acquaintance of one of the smartest men on the planet. However, because Gram was nocturnal and because he occasionally played classical 3 A.M. nocturnes in his apartment study directly above our bedroom…and because while he worked at night he must also have been drinking Heidelberg beer…because of all of this it was sometimes difficult for me, my wife and child to sleep.

One night the stereo volume was particularly high and so I took a broom and gently tapped on our ceiling to let him know that the noise was a nuisance. For a few moments the music abated, then returned at a higher volume. We weren’t sure, but we thought we heard a muffled “Ha, ha…take that!” I tapped again, this time more forcefully with the result that the music crescendoed. This time we were quite certain we heard Gram yell, “Philistines!”

I was done tapping. I was now banging the broom using the Morse Code I had learned as a Cub Scout to spell out “Fuck You!!!” I’m quite sure this subtlety was lost on him. I couldn’t imagine that Dr. Gram had been a Cub Scout although it is certainly possible he had been a member of the “Hitler Youth”. Suddenly the music stopped. Susan and I looked at each other and just as she sighed with relief and as I effected a victory grin, a thunderous bang reverberated from our ceiling. Gram had apparently hoisted his squatty body to the top of some piece of furniture and jumped flatfooted onto his floor and our ceiling.

I was out of our apartment door and up the stairs in a personal burst of speed matched only by my Vietnam sprints to the bunker during mortar and rocket attacks. I pounded on the door of the distinguished professor and recently elected president of the Heidelberg Society whose former members include Hegel, Kant, Spinoza and Leibnitz, screaming “come out here and fight you chicken shit, Kraut, sonofabitch.” From inside of his locked door he cackled, “Nail your grievances onto my door, Lutheran, and I’ll review them in the morning.”

His was, of course, the better response and though I wracked by brain for a witty rejoinder all of my best thinking blood had rushed to my extremities. All I could think to say was “fuck you.” I was relieved and somewhat gratified to hear him say, “fuck you too.”

I am glad that it only took me a few minutes to be able to see the comedy and irony in our exchange. Here were two men, one a brilliant interpreter of philosophy whose specialty was Immanuel Kant a genius ethicist…the other a pastor in training, a representative of him who said, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”…these two men acting like children screaming the “f” word at one another in the middle of the night. Did God create humans for precisely this kind of amusement, I wondered. If so, I thought as I headed back to sleep, I have just given God his money’s worth. The contrary thought also crossed my mind, that I had moments before caused God to sigh and wonder, “what’s the point?”

During the last two weeks of my internship I fell ill with flu-like symptoms. I managed to get through my last Sunday at Zion and the task of packing and loading our U-Haul. Susan thought I might be faking an illness to get out of my share wrapping dishes in newspaper, however, after we returned to Columbus and the last box was emptied and the last picture was hung on the wall of our seminary apartment she said “you really ARE sick, aren’t you? I’m going to call and make an appointment for you.”

It turned out to be hepatitis…some brand of hepatitis at that time referred to as “not A. not B”… which was a relief, because with all the blood tests that the doctor did and because I was loosing weight and couldn’t get rid of a reoccurring fever I had convinced myself that I had leukemia. (I’m a bit of hypochondriac.)

I told myself, “It seems a shame to be cut down as I stand on the verge of a career as a pastor and an agent of love in a hurting and broken world. On the other hand, perhaps cancer of the bone marrow is just desserts for Vietnam and all that had happened there.” I steeled myself for the six months or so that I had left. I remembered a local bishop who two years earlier had been diagnosed with a fatal illness and who sent a letter to each of his congregations saying, “I look forward to the opportunity to be a faithful witness to God’s strong promises…the promise of forgiveness, the of God’s intimate presence in all our lives, the promise that death is not God’s last word to us.” This bishop lived the rest of his life courageously and loving. It was my plan to do the same.

Sadly, a lesser diagnosis than leukemia prevented me from becoming the brave and cheerful martyr that I had my heart set on. The fact that I whooped for glee when the doctor said, “it’s hepatitis”, might be some indication that my actual bravery in the face impending death might not entirely have lived up to expectations. It’s funny…I like to think of myself as brave and dignified in the face of peril. In Vietnam I mostly was. However, I was anything but dignified during events as yet to be detailed, and until very recently the threat of a job loss has been very upsetting. I now understand why, but more about that later. Suffice it to say, however, that my belief in the Christian story has not been a completely reliable hedge against fear and bad behavior in the face of fear. It would have been better for me and others if it had been.

My memories of my last year at seminary are dominated by a teacher named Bruce Schein. Dr. Schein was a visiting professor who was Director of the Holy Land Seminar Program in Israel, a pastor at Jerusalem’s Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church and a missionary to Islamic Palestinians. He was also a cross between a mystic, a monk and a drill sergeant. Schein was and continues to be hugely influential with respect to my ability to deepen the faith of the Christians for whom I am a teacher. His almost entirely unique interpretation of the biography of Jesus known as The Gospel of John is jaw-droppingly interesting and makes Jesus seem real as the god-man who performs supernatural feats that are revelatory of who we are as a species and who God is as our creator and benefactor.

To be clear, I don’t believe that Jesus violated any laws of nature, and yet the stories of Jesus doing precisely that in John’s Gospel are stunningly moving and powerful for what they tell us about the God that Jesus represents. Other of my New Testament professors had demythologized other New Testament narratives and thereby opened to us the underlying meanings of the stories. But Dr. Schein was different in that he did not challenge the literal accounts. I doubt that he himself took them to be literally true, and I’m not even sure that he believed that the first and second century readers of John thought that they were reading empirical truth.

But as he saw it the intent of the genius who was the author of John was to pull us in to a new way of seeing the world and walking through it. In order for that to happen Schein believed that the reader had to give him or herself over to the story…be completely immersed in it. To that end he took us through the fourth gospel from start to finish without periodically jumping out to the twentieth century for some modern literary perspective. He kept us there in first century Palestine by gradually doling out the geographical, geological, political, theological, literary and sociological background of each event, sign or monologue so that we experienced ourselves on a very real journey with Jesus up and down the hills and valleys of Palestine increasingly able to ferret out the deeper meanings of Jesus’ words and actions and thereby discover them as our own. It was breath-taking pedagogy the likes of which I continue to struggle to recreate for my own students when asked to teach.

Schein was monkish and mystical in his lifestyle and piety. He lived in his office on campus, rose at 4:30 for prayer, showered and shaved in the single student dorm bathroom, was available to his students from 6:30 in the morning and unless he was in class or a meeting or in the refectory until 11:00 at night. He began and ended every class with very moving prayers, and whenever students tried to applaud a particularly brilliant lecture he would redirect their admiration with the words, “Let us pray…”

I want to give you an example of what Schein taught us. The ninth chapter of St. John has a very odd ending that theologians have wrestled with unsuccessfully for centuries. Schein figured it out. The story goes that Jesus is in Jerusalem at the south entrance of the massive temple where it was not uncommon to find professional beggars. One such indigent, a teen who was congenitally blind, caught the attention of Jesus’ students and his circumstance is cause for them to ask their teacher an important theological question, “whose sin caused this kid to be born blind…his parent’s or his own?”

In those days wealthy Jews who ran the temple had convinced the poor that their lot was the result of their own sin and that they had no one to blame but themselves. This theodicy (theory about why bad things happen) had spilled over to include most misfortune including illness, disease and birth defects. With regard to the latter malady some rabbis taught that a fetus could sin in the womb. Other teacher’s of Jewish law argued that the sins of parents could effect their children. “So which is it”, Rabbi Jesus’ students wanted to know.

Jesus’ response demonstrates his irritation with a blame-game reaction to people in need, and immediately he squats down, spits into the dust, makes two little mud balls and then tells the young man to go to the Pool of Siloam at the south end of town and wash the mud from his face. The blind man does as he is told and when he does he is able to see.

The theme of St. John is all about creation. It begins, “In the beginning…” reminiscent of the Genesis creation story. Thematically John intends to portray Jesus as the one who is sent to bring human beings back into Eden (bliss) where we are in a friendship orientation to God, one another and the environment. Therefore the author has Jesus do for the man with uncreated eyes what God does in the second chapter of Genesis…combine dust with spirit (the Hebrew word for spit, “ruach” is the same as the Hebrew word for spirit) and make the inanimate come alive. The fact that Jesus sends him to the Pool of Siloam is important because Siloam is fed by the Gihon Spring and Gihon was one of the three rivers of Eden. First century Jews thought about the Pool of Siloam as containing Paradise water.

So Jesus “heals” the teen by creating his eyes with dust and “ruach” as Adam himself was created. And the story continues that there is a big stir in town because of what Jesus has done and his temple and ritual loving rivals, the Pharisees, are upset and think this may be some kind of scam. So they find the kid, ask him what happened and then inquire, “what’s your opinion of Jesus?” The teen says, “I think he’s a prophet”.

Now, the Hebrew word for prophet is “navi” and in the first century it simply meant, “one who speaks for God”, which was no big deal. Lot’s of folks spoke for God…priests, rabbis, scribes, Pharisees, parents teaching their children the traditions of the Jews. To be a prophet was nothing out of the ordinary, however to the Jesus haters interrogating the young man prophet was way too positive an evaluation of Jesus for their tastes and thus they ridiculed him before marching off to find and interview his parents.

The parents were no help to anyone and clearly did not want to be involved. “Listen”, they said, “yes, he’s our son, yes, he was born blind…but how he had his sight restored is nothing we know anything about. He’s is of age (thirteen)…ask him”. And so they did. Again.

“Listen, kid”, they said menacingly, “we need you to re-think your opinion of this Jesus character. You need to give God the credit because trust us…Jesus is nothing but a first-rate sinner.”

The boy responds, “He’s what I know…I was blind, now I’m not…now I’m able to see.”

“So how did he do it”, asked one of the Pharisees suspiciously.

“I’ve already told you. Why are you asking me all of this? Are you thinking about joining up with him and becoming some of his students?”

At this they were so angry they could hardly speak. “YOU are his student”, they screamed. “WE are students of Moses, the law giver…the one to whom God spoke. As far as this Jesus fellow is concerned, we have no idea who his rabbi was or where he came from.”

“Wow”, answered the former blind man. “You don’t know where he comes from even though he opened my eyes. It has not been since the time of creation that anyone has opened the eyes of a person who was born blind. God doesn’t do the sort of thing Jesus has just done at the behest of sinners. I think Jesus is from God.”

Okay, to be a prophet is one thing, but to be “from God”…well, that raises the stakes considerably. Very few people are ever so designated. Moses was from God…Elijah was from God…Jeremiah, maybe. So naturally on hearing this from the young man the Pharisees explode in anger. “You arrogant pup! You who because of your congenital blindness were born dripping with sin…you would presume to teach US?!!!” And they physically pushed and chased him off.

In the final scene the young man and Jesus have found one another and are talking about what has just happened. Jesus asks the kid, “Do you believe what Daniel wrote about…that someday that God will send someone who embodies God’s own humaneness…a new Adam who will usher in a new beginning to how the world operates?”

“I do believe that.”

“Well…I’m him.” And at this the former blind man falls to the ground and begins to worship the God so fully present, alive and redemptively at work in Jesus.

In this final scene the Pharisees show up and hear Jesus say (and THIS is the text that has been so undecipherable for so many for so long) “I came into this world so that those who do not see may see, and so that those who do see may become blind.” The Pharisees ask him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41Jesus responds, “No, if you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see’, your sin remains.”

So what does this final paragraph mean?

The first part is easy enough…he came so that those who do not see may see. Jesus is literally opening the eyes of sightless persons. But what does it mean that he also came to make people blind? The Pharisees suppose that he regards them as blind, but Jesus says, “absolutely NOT. In fact, if you WERE blind you would be without sin. And because you see your sin remains.”

Huh???

Well, here’s the solution to Jesus’ riddle-like remarks. It all goes back to Genesis and the myth involving Eve’s confrontation with the serpent at the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”. The serpent says to Eve, “if you eat from this tree your eyes will be opened and you will be like God and you will decide what’s good and what’s evil.” And the story continues that she did eat and her eyes were opened and Adam ate and his eyes were opened too.

Remember the blindness-in-Eden discussion back on pages 110-111? Now, in Eden…in Bliss…in the place where things were the way they were supposed to be it wasn’t that Adam and Eve were literally blind, but that they had blinders on and were utterly focused on God. Said differently, God was superimposed upon everything that they saw. Thus they could not look at each other without seeing God in the other reminding them that God had created and loved people other than themselves. And indeed, if God loved those others so then should they. Likewise they could not look at the environment without seeing God and this reminded them to treat the environment as sacred…as belonging to God. They could not even see their own reflections in a pool of water and not see God over-laid and thus be reminded that despite their failings they were nonetheless valuable to God.

However, when the blinders came off…when their “eyes were opened” then Adam and Eve became focused on the stuff of the world and God was reduced to be simply being one thing among many things. Other people and the environment lost their perceived sacredness and life became broken.

And so Jesus said, “I have come so that folks might become blind…once again have blinders on…once more become focused on God and have God superimposed upon their world.”

And the Pharisees ask, “Are we blind?” And Jesus says, “No way. And because you’re not blind your sin remains”. This clearly suggests that Jesus viewed sin not as a transgression against a law, but rather as a condition of alienation from God that is at the same time an alienation from others, the environment and even from ourselves. To the Pharisees becoming sinless meant obedience to a laundry list of rules, many of them silly. To Jesus it meant seeing God in everyone and everything.

This is what Dr. Schein helped us to discover in this enigmatic chapter of John’s Gospel, and as icing on the cake he pointed out one more astonishing thing about the story. It had to do with the young teen who was given his sight and who in Act One said that Jesus was a prophet, and in Act Two upped the ante considerably by affirming that Jesus was “from God”, and in the final Act fell down and worshipped Jesus. In other words as the story progressed the young man became increasingly focused on Jesus making this story not so much one about the sighting of the blind man, but rather the “blinding” of the sighted man.

So this is a small sample of what Dr. Schein helped us to discover in the fourth gospel. And if it’s not true that Jesus miraculously healed a young man who was born sightless and spent his days begging outside of the southern entrance to the temple, still it probably IS true that the world is less than the best place it could be because we fail to see God in each other, in our environment and even in ourselves.

One more story about Dr. Schein that it is a little embarrassing to write about. It had to do with an assignment that he gave us early in the semester when I was as yet unaware of how helpful and “blindingly” brilliant his course would be. It seemed simple enough. We were to translate a part of the sixth chapter of John from the original Greek into English. I did the work using my Greek New Testament and a lexicon, turned the paper in and when I got it back along with two pages of single-spaced type written comments I saw that the grade was a C minus. I was livid! It was my first C ever at seminary. I had rarely gotten B’s and was at the very top of my class academically. I went to Schein’s office several times during the day, but each time he was busy with another student or faculty member. Finally at 7:30 that evening I caught him alone. Our conversation went something like this…

“Yes, Mr. Boe, how can I help you?”

“Well, Dr. Schein…it’s about my grade…a C minus. Sir, I don’t understand how I could have gotten such a grade. I am currently first in my class here at Trinity. I am the teaching assistant for the Systemmatics Department. I have won two major academic awards. I don’t get C’s, much less C minuses. For crying out loud, I haven’t gotten a B since my first year. Obviously something is wrong, Sir, and I’m not sure that it’s with me.”

Schein look at me evenly then said, “Mr. Boe, please have a seat.” I sat down and he continued. “Mr. Boe, since you’re a teaching assistant may I share a frustration that we teachers here at seminary sometimes have?”

“Okay”, I responded a bit apprehensively.

“The frustration is this…as faculty it is our hope that the women and men who come to this place as students come with a good measure of humility…come hungry to be filled with knowledge about the God revealed through Israel and Israel’s Jesus…anxious for that knowledge to be transformed into wisdom…and for wisdom to lead to lives that are a witness to grace and compassion. Unfortunately what we teachers hope and even pray for does not always come to pass and instead we end up ministering to students who are more arrogant than humble…who are hungry for status and to know things that others don’t simply so they may bolster an already too exulted opinion of themselves. I suppose, Mr. Boe, that the problem is that they don’t yet trust Gospel…trust that apart from all of their efforts at self-aggrandizement their lives already have meaning and value in God’s love. Can you understand that frustration Teaching Assistant Boe?”

I suddenly wanted to be anywhere but where I was. “Well…yes…of course…although…I, ahh…I’m not really a teacher, but…yes…I can see where that would be…a frustration…and…ah…just to be clear…the reason I’m here is not because I have issues with the grade itself…I mean I’m sure it’s fair…probably MORE than fair…no, the thing is I simply want to make sure that I understand how I missed the mark so that…well, you know…so that I can learn and grow from this…which is very important to me…y’know, growing and learning…so that as you said I can be filled with…y’know…wisdom…and…and…the other stuff…”

“Oh, I see…you want to know why I gave you a below average grade. Let me ask you this…did you happen to look at the two pages of single-spaced typewritten notes that I included with your paper when I returned it to you?” (I had been too angry to look at them.)

“The notes…oh, yes, and may I say that they were very helpful…yeah, they really cleared things up. No, the real reason I stopped in was simply to say how much I enjoy the class and…ah…you know…that the grade was fair and I intend to do better on my next assignment…although the grade is not really the important thing…it’s…you know being open to learning and the wisdom thing…and…”

“Well, thanks for coming by, Mr. Boe, and allowing me to confide in you about the matter we spoke of.”

“Oh…no problem, Sir…I was happy to help…”

I left his office by walking under the space between the bottom of his door and the floor. Although painful it was one of the best lessons I have ever been given and I’m glad that I think of it often. It centers me.

As a side bar to this story I will tell you that I received an A as a final grade, but it didn’t matter. On the second of the four assignments that constituted our grade I got a B plus, and on the third Schein simply wrote “you’re in”. By this he meant that I had found my way deeply enough into John’s story of Jesus that I was thinking like the author. On the last assignment Dr. Schein quoted from the final verses in John “’These things were written that you might believe and through believing you may have life as Jesus had it.’ Now go live that life as a pastor.”

During my last year at seminary Susan worked as a public relations writer for the University of Ohio Hospitals and Clinics. It was an exciting year for her because doctors were striking, radiologists were over radiating some patients, and anesthesiologists were allowing people to wake up on the operating table. As icing on the cake one university physicians also robbed a bank. Spinning all of this took a great deal of creativity and Susan was up to the task. She gave inspired interviews, wrote terrific copy, and strategized skillfully with other members of the P.R. department. Susan seemed to enjoy her work perhaps especially because it was challenging and because she had not worked outside of the home during my internship year. She had pent-up vocational energy.

But as interesting as the P.R. gig was, Susan had her sights set on bigger things. One of her very best friends, Jane Wicher had gone to law school and was working for the ACLU in Chicago. When Jane talked about her cases it triggered Susan’s liberal juices and reminded her of her protest days at Iowa State and Michigan State. At some point during our last year in Columbus she told me that she wanted to go to law school and that supporting her in this endeavor would be the way that I could pay her back for my seminary years. I was happy to reciprocate and requested that upon graduation I be assigned to the Iowa Synod and a parish close to the University of Iowa School of Law.

As it turned out I was assigned to the Iowa Synod and in short order was given the chance to apply for call to St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Cedar Rapids which was a forty minute drive from the University of Iowa.

St. Stephen’s was a small neighborhood congregation housed in a butt-ugly white cinder block building on a dandelion-filled lawn with a dirt parking lot. The neighbors hated living next to it. It had been founded the same year that I was, 1947, and during the late fifties, sixties and early seventies it had grown from just a few families to over 700 members. Under the leadership of a former Standard Oil sales executive turned pastor it began to burst at it seams and in 1971 plans were begun to build a new and much larger worship facility on a small hill less than a mile away. Fortunately the membership included a skilled and creative architect who pro bono-ed plans and drawings for a lovely building. Other members who worked as contractors and engineers were favorably impressed and enthusiastic about the blueprints, but the pastor, Norris K. Woggin, believed the new church was far too modest in scale. He wanted a building twice the size and three times the expense of the one that the architect proposed.

Norris regarded himself as an expert on all things especially those things with which he had dilettante experience. Because Norris had hammered some nails during the building of the parsonage he regarded himself as an expert when it came to the subject church architecture and construction. Rev. Woggin was an unabashed, full-bore, enthusiastic and joyful fan of all things Norris and in an exuberant gesture of self-promotion had a bust of himself commissioned. This heroic looking, heavenward gazing sculpture was ensconced in his den just below a small spotlight that when turned on may have reminded Norris of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Unfortunately for the congregation Norris’s charm (and he WAS an engaging fellow) could not compensate for his ego. About as quickly as former-salesman Norris could move new members into the front door, older fed-up members exited the back. The biggest exodus occurred in 1973 because of Norris’s unwillingness to heed the advice and counsel of the architect and engineers regarding the new building. Over the space of two Sundays half of the congregation left and transferred their memberships to other parishes. Soon after Norris himself left determined to start not just a new congregation, but indeed a new denomination. Watch out, Lutheranism…Wogginism was coming to get ya!!!

In considering a new pastor, the remaining members of St. Stephen’s wanted someone who was less flamboyant than Norris. They over-reacted when they hired Landis Olson. Landis was a gentle fellow reminiscent of the joke about Henry the farmer who one Sunday afternoon looked up from his porch and saw the clouds form what looked like a giant “P” and “C” in the sky. He saw this to be a sign from God and believed that the letters meant “Preach Christ”. Henry subsequently sold his farm, went to seminary and four years later was assigned to a parish where as a pastor he was something of a disaster. He was not good at preaching or teaching, was uncomfortable around kids, was too shy to be much of a parish visitor and was squeamish and faint in hospitals. When the membership began to dwindle the Bishop paid a visit to this farmer turned pastor and asked him in a gentle way, “Henry, do you really feel as though you’re cut out for clergy work?” When Henry said, “Oh, absolutely”, and then told the Bishop the story about the “P” and the “C”, the Bishop quickly put his hand on Henry’s shoulder and said, “Oh, no, Henry, it didn’t mean ‘Preach Christ’. No, no…it meant ‘Plow Corn’!!!”

Well, Landis and Henry had much in common and in five years Landis managed to slow simmer the congregation down to about a hundred…few enough so that the phone didn’t often ring in his office, only a couple of Confirmation children needed to be taught the difference between consubstantiation and transubstantiation, and high maintenance elderly were sparse.

When Landis left in 1981, the congregation voted on whether or not is should disband. By only a handful of votes they decided to try one more pastor. I was the one they hired.

I was still a month away from graduation when I drove out to Iowa for my interview. I had been warned that the congregation and its building were in sad shape, but for congregations it was a buyer’s market (there was a glut of post-world War II pastors who in a difficult economy were waiting a few extra years to retire) and I wanted any job I could get…especially at a church close to Iowa’s School of Law. When I arrived at the church and walked into the building the first person I met convinced me that I was wasting my time and would never be seriously considered for the position.

“Hi, Gary, my name is Harriet Hemphill…I’m the secretary of the Call Committee and I think you know my son Denny.”

“Fuck!”, I almost said aloud. Dennis, “Denny” Hemphill was a member of Zion, my internship congregation. At one time he had been a student at the University, but had dropped out and continued to live in town on some kind of disability stipend. I would learn more about Denny later, but what I knew at that moment was that he had had a crush on Zion’s parish worker, Jan Bollander, that he was extraordinarily immature, a total drama queen, and told lies that were completely grandiose. I have often struggled to “suffer fools gladly”, but in Denny’s case I got over my suffering by refusing to have anything to do with him. He was at the church ALL THE TIME!, mostly to whine to Jan about some injustice he’d endured, some woman he’d rescued from a burning building, some vision he’d received from the Lord, and also to confess his prurient thoughts and fantasies. “Jan, whenever I think about a certain someone I often do things to myself. Do you think God will forgive me?” Jan had a fulltime job, but with only part time responsibilities. She was often hungry for something to do and therefore put up with Denny.

When it was Jan’s day-off or when she was out of the office Denny would bee-line to my door. “Got a sec, Gary?” (Translation: “can I talk to you for a few hours about complete inanities?”) It only took me a couple of sessions with Denny to realize that a couple more sessions would result in a murder, a suicide or both.

“No, Denny, I don’t have any time for you. I’m preparing for Confirmation and then I’ve gotta run to the hospital.”

“But Jan has time for me.”

“Then go see Jan.”

“She’s off today.”

“Then come back and see her tomorrow.”

“It can’t wait.”

“Well, Denny, I don’t have the time. You might try Pastor Trost”.

“He told me that I can’t bother him anymore.”

“Well, Denny, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

“You’re one of the worst vicars we’ve ever had. Do you know that?”

“Sorry you feel that way…I’m going to close my door now, Denny, so that I can concentrate on what I’m doing.”

“You’re going to be a terrible pastor too. I would hate to be a member of your church. You don’t like helping people.”

“Fine Denny. I’m closing my door now.”

“I had a vision about you the other day and it wasn’t good. Do you want to know what it was? I had it just after I saved this baby from the wading pool.”

Sound of a shutting door and a clicking lock.

So anyway, it was Dennis’ mom who greeted me at the door. “…and I think you know my son, Denny.”

I stared at her for a few moments, my smile fading to the look of mouth-breathing. “How is Denny”, I managed.

“About the same. He’s lonely, you know. A poor lost soul. I wish God would send him a friend. Friends are important, don’t you think?”

“Eeee-yup”, I said absent-mindedly deciding I should stay for the interview in order to get the mileage they had promised me. In the next instant a hand grabbed my shoulder and I turn around and saw the smiling face of a guy who would become a dear friend for life…another “Denny”…Dennis Oldorf…the husband of Donna…the father of Suzy and Forbes…the owner of a small, but growing business…the guy who would get me my first job as a pastor.

Dennis had grown up on a farm east of Cedar Rapids. In high school he loved Donna, baseball and Elvis. He attended Iowa State…hated it and transferred to the University of Iowa where he eventually received a Master of Finance degree. For a couple of years he worked for a bank in Cedar Rapids, then moved with his bride, Donna, to a prominent bank in Chicago where he began to make a name for himself managing investments. As it turned out one of the funds that this bank stewarded was the Teamsters Mid-States Pension Fund which at that time was pretty “mobbed-up”. Dennis and Donna were small town Iowa Protestants and knew next to nothing about organized crime. For quite a while Dennis had no idea that some of the people with whom he had regular contacts were very unsavory. Chief among these people was Allen Dorfman, the adopted son of an Al Capon lieutenant.

In the sixties Dorfman became a high-ranking official in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and a close associate of Jimmy Hoffa. Dorfman played fast and loose with pension fund monies and was eventually indicted for embezzlement. He was later charged with attempting to bribe Nevada Senator Howard Cannon and subsequently was assassinated by the mob in 1983 to prevent him from cutting a deal with authorities. He was played by Alan King in the 1995 film “Casino”.

When Dennis discovered who he was dealing with…who was lavishing gifts and trips on him because of the good (and honest) work he was doing on behalf of the Teamster’s Pension Fund, he began to look for a way back to Iowa. He found it in the “Wall Street Journal”, in an ad offering to sell a fledgling business for only a few thousand dollars. He and Donna would subsequently turn this small and dying concern into a hundred million dollar company called “Lil Drug Store”.

But in 1981 Dennis was not yet where his hard work and business savvy would eventually take him. He and Donna were running this and a couple of other small businesses and were enjoying their kids and friends and for some reason had taken a protective shine to their butt-ugly little church building and it’s small, but friendly congregation.

“Welcome, Pastor Boe”, Dennis said in his slightly gravelly voice. “We’re really glad you’re here and look forward to visiting with you.” I felt a small surge of hope.

The interview actually went well. Dennis liked the fact that I was a bit older as seminary students go, that I had a business background, and that I had been an Army pilot. “What did you think about Vietnam”, he asked. I thought for a moment and considered saying something like, “I was glad to be able to serve my country in a time of war”. (I thought this might play well with Midwest Lutherans). However, I opted instead for, “If I had to do it over again I wouldn’t. It was brutal and pointless.” Dennis smiled. I had no way of knowing then that although Dennis was a fiscally conservative Republican who had no doubt voted for Reagan, he nonetheless was a foreign policy progressive who had been opposed to the war. He later told me that he liked the fact that I had been a pilot because he assumed it meant that I “had a backbone”.

In the end I was offered the job and a year later another Call Committee member told me that two people especially liked me. Dennis and (go figure) Harriet Hemphill. (I’ll say more about her and her son later). I got the news one week after I had returned from the interview and I was totally thrilled. The offer was $12,000 per year and a parsonage. It was about $35,000 less in salary than what I had been making as a pharmaceutical rep, but I could not have been happier.

Graduation from seminary was glorious. My parents came as did my cousin Steve who was working for the National Health Service as a dentist in Michigan. We processed in cap and gown from the seminary to the capital University Chapel where ceremony/worship service was held. We sang two of my favorite hymns, “Lift High the Cross” and “For All the Saints”, and heard a stirring sermon that called us to take risks for the Gospel and empower our congregations with what we had been taught. A week later Susan, Matt and I moved into our new home in Cedar Rapids. My mother’s promise to God had been kept. I had now been “dedicated to the greater glory of the Lord and his Church”.

A word about Matt. He was two and a half when we came to Iowa for the second time and he was adorable. If I had wanted to win over a congregation with cute I could not have had a better ally than my little boy who was filled with fun and with smiles. People loved watching little Matt enjoy life.

A church picnic held to welcome us suddenly had a pall thrown over it by a heavy thunderstorm. People huddled under the pavilion and some may have wondered if it was a bad omen. However, if they did, that thought didn’t last long for suddenly they looked a few feet beyond the shelter and saw Matt running gleefully in circles, his arms out-stretched and his face lifted skyward, happy for every warm and stippling drop of rain. He later plopped himself down in a puddle and splashed to his heart’s content, oblivious of all of us who were watching him and perhaps envying his freedom and spontaneity. Soon the sun came out and things got back to normal, but several commented that they had loved watching Matt love the rain and make the most out of an otherwise dampening cloud-burst. As a young adult Matt would continue his love affair with the natural world…with the out-of-doors…and he would become a strong advocate for the notion that humans should be on better terms with forests, wetlands, and things like a sudden summer rain.

Being the pastor of church in serious decline seemed formidable. I remember sitting in my office chair that first Monday on the job and thinking, “holy shit…what do I do now?!” My mind flashed back to the first morning I flew as a student in the giant Flying Crane helicopter. “Just fly the cockpit”, the instructor had said. “Pull your perspective in and just do the next thing.” This was aviation talk for “be in the moment”, or “live one day at a time”. At the interview the Call Committee had given me a list of things that they hoped the next pastor would do. They were as follows:
• help grow the membership
• provide better Christian Education opportunity for adults
• help the congregation become more involved in the community
• get youth more actively involved
• offer more enriching worship experiences
• get new persons involved in church leadership

I thumb-tacked this list to the bulletin board adjacent to my desk where I could easily see it and be reminded of why I was hired. Most mornings I looked at the list and organized my day with a mind to inching one or more of these objectives in the right direction. At the end of most days I graded myself on what I had accomplished. What I needed to do I would do one day at a time…I would just fly the cockpit.

The Christian Education for adults was the easiest. In September, two months after I had arrived, I offered a Sunday morning class entitled, “Origins…The First 400 Years Of the Church.” I followed up with “Boe’s Book Bunch”, a September through May, every Sunday night, seven to nine study of John’s Gospel which met in our home. I increased the frequency of our church newsletter from monthly to weekly so that I could do a more effective promotion of the adult studies and other church events. From time to time I wrote a four to eight week series of short newsletter articles on topics like, “Why Bad things Happen to Good People”.

To improve Confirmation and thereby increase the commitment of youth I changed the enrollment years from fifth and sixths grades to eighth and ninth. (In my Christian Ed classes at seminary I had read the developmental psychologists Piaget, Kohlberg and Erickson and had learned that the chewy, abstract concepts central to Christianity did not stick well in a fifth grader’s brain.) I also required the parents of confirmands to attend class once a month so that they could know what their kids and I were talking about and then continue the conversations at home. I told parents, “Luther changed the name ‘Confirmation’ to ‘Affirmation of Baptism’. He knew that most children were carried across the threshold of the Christian family as infants when they were baptized and had no say in the matter of their faith. Luther wanted Confirmation to be a time for them to hear the Christian story explained in detail and at the conclusion be given the opportunity to decide for themselves if they wanted to be a part of it all.” I told parents that I was going to encourage their kids to be their own persons and to accept Christianity (or not) of their own volition.

And because I didn’t want kids to have the same Confirmation experience I had I encouraged them to challenge me. When they did I was careful not to bully them, and instead found ways to celebrate their contrarian questions or comments. I recall one especially bright high school freshman and his dad who stuck around after class one evening wanting to talk with me. “Todd has a question he’d like to ask you”, his father said.

“Ask away, Todd.”

“Well, I like the fact that you believe that God created the world in an evolutionary way. But we’ve been learning at school that there have been periods of extinction on the planet…times when asteroids or comets killed most animal life and evolution had to take two steps back or when it came close to having to start over. Why God would allow that?”

I wondered what Eric Christiansen would have said. It likely would not have been pretty. What I said was this, “Gosh, that’s a REALLY great question and I don’t know the answer for sure. However, my guess is that it’s because chaos, uncertainty and randomness is a very big part of God’s creation.”

“What do you mean”, the young man asked.

“Well, let me answer by giving you a quick overview of the Old Testament book called ‘Job’ which is really a parable that attempts to answer your question. The story goes that an angel has a bet with God about how loyal Job, one of God’s most pious humans…how loyal he would be if things in his life got really bad. God is sure that Job would continue to be loyal…the angel isn’t so sure.

“So anyway…the angel causes Job’s life to become calamitous. Locusts devastate his fields, his kids get sick, his herds of animals die, he develops disgusting skin diseases, he looses all his money, his friends abandon him. Things get pretty terrible.”

“I’m not sure I get where you’re going with this”, the teen said.

“Hang with me. In the course of this story Job get’s really crabby and publically chews God out for being so unfair to him. Then God gets even more crabby because the angel has clearly won the bet. In a fit of petulance God shows up on Earth and shouts, ‘Job, what the heck do you know?! You think things are so unfair, do you?! Well, where were you when I was putting the world together. Yeah…I made you and it’s true that I care a lot about you, but you’re not the ONLY thing I care about. Sure…you had a bad day when the locusts came through your fields, but guess what…the locusts had a GREAT day and I love them too!’ God rants and raves some more (remember…it’s a parable after all), but then concludes by saying, ‘Among all of the things I created I also made the behemoth and the leviathan…and they are two of my favorite creatures’. The behemoth and leviathan are probably ancient names for rhinos and hippos which in biblical times were symbols of chaos and uncertainty.

“The biblical meaning here is first of all that God doesn’t know everything. He thought he’d win the bet with the angel, but he was wrong. Second, what God built into creation along with order and predictability was chaos and uncertainty. Order and chaos are two competing realities of existence. And what does all of this mean? It means that extinctions can happen…AND it means that God may not know about these extinctions in advance.”

“But I thought that God knows everything”, the ninth grader responded.

“Yeah”, said his dad.

“Well, not according to the book of Job…and not according to other stories in the Bible which characterize God as being disappointed with human outcomes. But…how can you be disappointed when you already know what will happen?”

“So, God didn’t know that the extinctions would happen and that the process of evolution would be delayed.”

“Maybe not. Maybe the deal is that God only knows as much as it is possible to know in any given moment of time, but doesn’t know with absolute certainty what the future holds.”

The teen thought for awhile then said, “Well…if God let’s chaos have its way is it possible then that in the past something really big could have happened…something that not only destroyed much of animal life, but also the entire planet. Could that have happened?”

“I suppose so. And I’ve thought about that myself and have come to the conclusion that human life on this planet was not inevitable.”

“REALLY”!?, he said looking at me as though he was surprised that a pastor could think such a thing. “But if we humans weren’t a hard-and-fast part of God’s plan then how can we be so sure that God loves us?” (This was fun. I loved having these kinds of conversation, and knew that there was no way I could have had this level of discussion with a fifth grader!)

“Well, my son Matt was not a hard-and-fast plan for me. I didn’t know when I married his mother that he or any child would be conceived, but now that he’s here I could not love him any more than I do. Maybe that’s how it is with the Universe and God. Maybe when God set things in motion God had an idea that something like us COULD happen, but wasn’t certain IF it would, and if it did when or where. Maybe the fact that we’re serendipitous makes us even more special to God.”

Todd’s dad said, “Yeah…I hear what you’re saying, but doesn’t the Bible say that God knows everything?”

“It might. I can’t think of chapter and verse off the top of my head, but the idea of an omniscient God is mostly a Greek notion. It was Socrates, Plato and Aristotle who were largely responsible for people thinking about God as a passion-less, omniscient, infinite, omnipresent, all-powerful deity. For the biblical writers God is much more…I don’t know…more human…but human in the sense that we humans can be humane and compassionate.”

The three of us sat thinking for a few moments, then Todd’s father said, “It’ll take me some time getting my mind wrapped around a God who doesn’t know everything that will happen in the future, but I kind of like the idea. If God knows everything that will ever happen then there really isn’t any freedom for creatures or creation. My grandfather HAD to marry my grandmother, my dad had to marry my mom, I had to marry Peggy, I have to do whatever it is I’m going to do tomorrow and for the rest of my life. And if that’s the case…what’s the point. I even have to think the thoughts I’m currently thinking and say the words that I’m saying. I only THINK that I’m free to say or think or do what I say, think and do. Again…what’s the point?”

“Yeah…I know.”

Then Todd said, “It’s like God could have made a cherry pie, an apple pie or a peach pie, but once he decides that’s it’s going to be one of those three, then the suspense is over. Likewise, God could make a universe that he knows I’ll be in and do the things I do, OR he could make another universe that he knows I’ll be in, but will do things a little differently, OR he could make one in which he knows I won’t be in it at all. If that’s the way it is besides it being pointless for us, it sounds as though it might be pointless for God too.”

“Good point”, Todd’s dad and I said at nearly the same instant.

“So…are there others besides you who think God doesn’t know everything?”

“Sure”, I said, “there’s a whole school of theology built around this idea. It’s called ‘Process Theology’ and some of the smartest theologians alive are on board. I’m certainly not in their league, but it keeps my theological boat afloat.”

“Well, I’m an engineer, not a theologian”, said Todd’s dad, “but I’m a Christian and I want to believe that there are good reasons for me and Todd to stay Christian, so I suppose that as long as YOU keep thinking about these things and as long as YOU hang in, we’ll feel like we can too.”

He thought for a moment and then said, “But here’s one more thing… I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d sure like to know if you start thinking that the ship is sinking. I’m not sure I want to waste my time betting on a dead-end theory. I sometimes do that in my engineering work and it’s frustrating. Will you let me know, Captain, if YOU think the ship’s unsound?”

“I will”, I lied. “I certainly will.”

These days I’m still in the boat and I wouldn’t be anyplace else. But I’m no longer anyone’s Captain, which is a good thing, because I spend more time bailing than most who know me realize. But again, I’m still in the boat and always will be. The bailing continues to be worth the ride.

Dennis and Donna Oldorf were our first St. Stephen’s friends and today Donna remains a very good friend. Dennis died a few years ago. Back in 1981 Susan and I were happy, but poor. The Oldorf’s were happy and although not yet rich they were well on their way. During their financial ascent they were very generous to the church and also to us. Some of the best meals we had we ate with them in up-scale restaurants around town, and the only golf I could afford to play was the free golf I played with Dennis at his Country Club. During the years I was a pastor I sometimes felt that certain wealthy and/or influential members were using their largess to influence my preaching and teaching. I never felt that with the Oldorf’s.

I had been radicalized during my seminary years. I now bought into the politics of Jesus as I understood them. In 1981 I was more than the bleeding heart, liberal, pacifist lefty that my parishioners assumed me to be. I was a “Small Is Beautiful” Euro-socialist. I believed that in the same way that most heavy drinkers were alcoholics, most heavy owners were addicted to and were corrupted by wealth. I believed that the corruptions of wealth included an atrophying of compassion, a tendency to isolate from those without wealth, a paranoid need for security, and a general turn inward.

I kept all of this to myself while attempting to radicalize my congregation. I voted for Democrats, but regarded the Dems as the lesser of two evils. Like a lot of the people I worked for, the Oldorfs were Midwest moderate Republicans whose friends were cut from the same political cloth. Although they knew that I was liberal, unlike others in the congregation there was nothing in anything that either Dennis or Donna ever said to me that caused me to wonder if they were out to “buy my vote.” Indeed, I’m sure they were not.

However, I sometimes found myself writing particularly hard hitting peace and justice sermons for the Sundays following a golf outing with Dennis or dinner with Donna and her husband. I wasn’t entirely comfortable writing and delivering these sermons, but I was very concerned…hyper-vigilant about being co-opted. The reason had to do with an experience I had at the seminary.

In my second year I was selected to be the “sacristan”, meaning the assistant to the dean of worship and the chapel. Every morning at ten, Monday through Friday, everything at the seminary stopped for an hour while students, faculty and staff went to chapel for a matins service followed by coffee and refreshments in the refectory. As the sacristan it was my job to help prepare for the chapel service and clean up afterwards. The preparation was usually a very small chore amounting to little more than turning on the lights and the P.A. system. Occasionally we had a guest preacher and on these mornings I would greet them and show them where they could vest for the service.

One morning I arrived in the chapel ten minutes before the service and was introduced to an elderly man who I was told would be preaching that day and would later be the speaker at a convocation in the afternoon. I recalled seeing a few posters around campus advertising that fact, but because his name was not familiar to me I had not planned to attend. He was a small, very polite and somewhat shy fellow who spoke with a German accent. “Who is he”, I asked my friend Johann as I slipped into the pew beside him. “I not for sure”, he replied, “but I think it might be Pinocchio’s dad, Geppetto.”

I laughed out loud violating the decorum of the nave and prelude, causing several faculty heads to turn in my direction. I coughed unpersuasively and cleared my throat in a futile attempt to make mirth seem like expectoration. When it came time for him to deliver his homily he introduced himself as someone that he believed few of us had ever heard of. He went on to explain that he had been born before the turn of the century in Bavaria, the son of a prominent Lutheran pastor. He had served briefly in the First World War then had done university work eventually earning a doctoral degree in theology. He taught briefly at another university then settled into a call to be the senior pastor at a large Lutheran congregation in Berlin. “If you had lived in Germany at the time there is a good chance you might have known who I was.”

He had not approved of Adolph Hitler, his cronies, his political agenda or his tactics. But most in his congregation did. Among these persons were well-to-do businessmen who had benefited from an economic resurgence during the pre-war years, party officials, government bureaucrats, those in the military or those with family members in the military. And then, he said, there were those don’t-rock-the-boat Lutherans who had been taught to believe Luther’s “two kingdoms” doctrine. A word about the “two kingdoms…”
Luther’s doctrine of two kingdoms teaches that God is the ruler of the whole world and that he rules in two ways.
First, God rules the earthly or left hand kingdom through secular means, i.e., the government. From Luther’s point of view the primary role of government is to promote order and keep the peace even if it means government must use violence to do so. Second, God rules through the heavenly or right hand kingdom by way of the Gospel. It was Luther’s belief that by trusting that we were ultimately secure in God’s love we were transmuted into more compassionate and redemptive people and thus became better family members, neighbors, friends and citizens.
Although in his book, “On Secular Authority”, Luther had written, “if government invades the spiritual domain and constrains the conscience, over which God only must preside and rule, we should not obey it at all but rather lose our necks”, nonetheless 20th century grassroots German Lutherans had come to believe that Christians should almost never question civil authority because God was working through it in mysterious and sometimes brutal ways to achieve positive outcomes.
So, besides the Nazi supporters in his congregation there were also those did not think it proper for the government to be criticized…and especially they did not believe that it should be criticized from the pulpit. “Doesn’t our pastor realize that Luther believed that all governments in Christian societies are the arm of the Lord?”
So, anyway…as the evil in Germany and Europe crescendoed…as Jews, Gypsies and others became more and more marginalized, then hounded, then rounded up…as armies marched, then “blitzkrieged” their way into neighboring countries our guest preacher remained silent. “I was afraid to offend those in my congregation who I was not sure liked me. I was even more afraid to offend those who did. I was afraid for the safety of my wife and two children. I was afraid for my own safety. And so I preached, I taught Bible studies, I instructed Confirmation…I encouraged people to forgive one another, I argued on behalf of the Lutheran understanding of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as over against the Roman Catholic and Reform views on this matter, I married and buried people, I made hospital visits, and I counseled people who were struggling in their marriages. I presided over a ‘Good Samaritan Fund”, worked with our choir director and organist to provide up-lifting worship experiences…” Then in a strong and tearful voice he said this… “But what I did NOT do was challenge in Jesus’ name the greatest and most obscene evil that humankind has ever seen. Evil that I was at the heart of…mere blocks from the Reichstag. Young people, I failed to seize one of history’s most pressing opportunities to be a faithful witness to Christ and all that he lived, anguished and died for. In the end my ministry was a mockery of the Lord I claimed to love. An UTTER mockery!!!
Then…I heard a pin drop…or perhaps it was a tear. I’m not sure, but for twenty seconds, which during a sermon is an eternity, no one spoke, or breathed, and every eye was fixed…transfixed on the little German pastor whose head now hung on his chest. At last he looked up at us, and for a time it appeared as though he was looking from face to face at each one of us, and when he was done he said in a soft voice, “For your sake, for the sake of your congregations, for the sake of your communities, for the sake of your as yet unborn grandchildren who some day may crawl into your lap and ask ‘what did you do with your life, Grandfather…Grandmother?’…and then finally for God’s sake…do not make the mistake that I made…that so many of my fellow clergy made…many of whom have committed suicide, many more of whom resigned their ordinations in disgrace, and nearly all of whom count their lives as a grievous failure. Don’t sell out. Don’t miss your opportunities to take a stand…perhaps a vocationally dangerous stand…who knows, maybe even a life-threatening stand for him whose call to service is always, as the martyred Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonheoffer said, is always the call to come die.”
He looked in each of our faces again, then said, “amen”, and sat down.
I still think of that sermon from time to time, but during my ministry I thought about it almost daily. As a result I became hyper-vigilant about selling out. The spirit of the age, conventional wisdom, and the allures of glory and prestige had taken me to Vietnam where I had done evil things. I knew I could be had and for that reason I felt uncomfortable around those who did not think almost precisely as I did about theology and the political and economic matters that were central to my understanding of Christianity. I was like a parishioner I once had who having recovered from a long and near fatal illness was henceforth dreadfully uncomfortable in hospitals or even around a person who sneezed because of a mild allergy.
I REALLY liked and enjoyed Dennis and Donna. Obviously, they and most wealthy Americans are not Nazi’s. Still, because Jesus believed wealth to be a corrupting influence on people…and because he further believed that wealthy people could be a corrupting influence on non-wealthy people (see St. Luke for several examples), for some time I felt uncomfortable around Dennis and Donna even though they had no apparent interest in changing my core values and if anything, were encouraging of my work. Interestingly, the more I came to like them the more uncomfortable I became. Eventually, however, with them, but ONLY with them, my discomfort passed. Ever since the “Geppeto sermon” the only wealthy Republicans I have ever felt entirely relaxed and at ease with are the Oldorfs. I suppose that this is evidence of some personality deficiency or pathology. However, it is what it is and years later it made the work that I did as a fundraiser much more difficult for me than anyone would ever realize.
A word about prayer. Although I grew up saying grace at every meal and despite the fact that each night my brothers and I said bedtime prayers with one or both of our parents, still, I don’t think that prayers works. At least not in the way that most Christians do. I don’t believe that if you ask God for something that God will act supernaturally to give it to you…ever. I’m sure that Jesus thought that God worked supernaturally, although to first century types almost everything was supernatural. For example, to the ancients the sun didn’t rise because the Earth revolved from west to east. It rose because each morning God said to the sun, “Get up and do it again!”
Will and Lois Zillstrom MAY have agreed with this first century cosmology. I suspect that they were crypto-flat-earthers. One thing for sure, they didn’t believe in ME. Something I had said during my interview had gotten back to them and had caused them to be the lone dissenting votes at the congregational meeting that agreed to hire me.
The Zillstroms’ were founding members of Stephen’s and from their very first Sunday they had parked themselves center aisle, third pew back, pulpit side. For almost thirty-five years this had been their Sabbath longitude and latitude. Beginning on my first Sunday they migrated to last pew, lectern side, right aisle. I suppose this was their way of giving me the finger. During sermons they also gave me the folded arms, pursed lips and grinding molars.
“I’ll win ‘em over”, I decided confidently. I may just as well have decided to convince them to become “Dead Heads” and get Jerry Garcia tattoos on their not inconsiderable asses.
My second week on the job I called and asked if it would be okay if I stopped by for a pastoral visit. “What for”, Will wanted to know. I told him that I wanted to get to know the congregation and to solicit any advice that could help me to a good job.
“Advice, huh? Are we some of the first that you’re coming to see”, he asked. When I told him that they were (I was hoping he would be flattered) he said, “My advice is do your pastoral visits alphabetically. I’m busy”, he said, and hung up.
A few hours later Lois called and said, “Well, I suppose you can come over. Could you make it next Monday evening?” Mondays were my day off and I’m sure she knew this, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to mend fences.
Their home was exactly as I had imagined. Impeccably neat, stuck in the 50’s, boring. It was a doilies, needle-point and porcelain knick-knack museum. Lots of Hummels. Lois was cautiously polite at the door and invited me to have a seat in their living room. Will was waiting for me there and both positioned themselves on a couch across from me and quickly put on their pew body language.
“You have a lovely home.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you lived here long?”
“Yes, we have.”
I waited for some indication of how long, but got nothing. “And are you both from Cedar Rapids originally?”
“No.”
I waited. Bup-kiss!
“So where ARE you from?”
“Slater and Ely”.
“Ohhh…”, I said knowingly, but didn’t have a clue where either of those towns were and didn’t want to offend by asking.
“How did you meet”, I tried.
Will looked at Lois then said, “I hear that you were opposed to the Vietnam war”.
Okay, so that was it. “Not until well after I had served there for a year as a combat helicopter pilot. Were you ever in combat, Will?” He looked slightly startled.
“He had a deferment”, Lois offered. Will shot a look at Lois that suggested that he didn’t find her comment helpful.
“I was working on the farm, but I would have gone in a minute had I been asked to.”
“Yeah…well, I volunteered”, I said, but kinda wished I hadn’t. But only “kinda”. I continued in a more conciliatory way. “Well, none of us could have done what we did without farmers providing the chow. I think it was Napoleon who said, ‘an army moves on its stomach.’”
“Farm work is awfully hard”, Lois said, “and your dad was laid up. You could have gone off to Korea, sure...but then what would your folks have done?”
“I don’t know what they would have done”, replied Will in a softer tone.
“There are all kinds of bravery”, I said. “Being brave enough NOT to run off to a young man’s adventure, but instead being willing to stay at home and do the hard physical and emotional work of caring for your parents…well, there is a lot of valor in that too.”
“I suppose you’re right”, Will said with a hint of pride.
“Plus he had flat feet”, Lois said earning another hard stare from her husband.
So what was it? Did Will stay home because he had a deferment or because he tried, but couldn’t get in due to his feet? I wasn’t sure and was struggling to get a grip on liking these two people. I decided to change the subject.
“So, do you have any kids?” As it turned out, far from changing the subject I had stumbled into the heart the issue.
“Not anymore”, Will announced defiantly.
“We have a son”, said Lois, “but we haven’t spoken with him in some time. He was a hippy during Vietnam and it was upsetting to his father and me.”
“I see. What’s he doing these days? Does he live around here?”
Lois answered. “Oh, yes, he’s married and he and his wife and son live in Cedar Rapids. He works for some electronics company or other.”
“You said that you hadn’t spoken with him in years, do you see your grandson?”
Lois and Will looked at each other for a few moments, then Will said, “No, sir! We have NOT seen our grandson. He’s welcome in our home, but his father isn’t. Nor is his mother.” Lois looked at Will a little plaintively at first, but then turned to me and said, “that’s right”.
Will summed up with, “Anyway…we hope that we won’t have to hear any of the anti-american garbage from the pulpit that we heard from our son.”
I took a pass on this remark and asked, “Is there anything that I could do to help with a reconciliation between you and your son? Do you think that if I called him he’d be willing to visit with me?”
Will suddenly became agitated and said, “This is none of your concern, and we would appreciate if you would stay out of it. This is a private family matter and has nothing to do with you. You told us that you came here for our advice not to give us advice about things that are none of your business.”
“Your right”, I said, “I apologize. So…tell me…what do you think I could be doing better?” And that’s where the topic of prayer was raised. Lois didn’t think that I prayed quite enough publically. She chided me for not offering a prayer at the beginning of the welcome picnic, or at the conclusion of the altar guild meeting or even at the outset of my visit that night. “Don’t you believe in prayer”, she wondered aloud.
“Of course, I believe in prayer”, I somewhat lied.
“Do you believe God answers prayer”, she burrowed in more deeply.
I didn’t, but I said that I did and then did a ten minute monologue on what seminary had taught me about the nature of prayer from Jesus’ point of view…that he regarded prayer as a form of personal meditation, that he also thought about prayer as a constant being-in-touch-ness with God, that he made fun of the public prayers of the Pharisees, and that the prayer he taught his disciples was shocking in that it could be said in only ten seconds. I’m not sure the Zillstroms heard a word I said or at least approved of anything I said because Lois responded with, “I don’t find the Lord’s Prayer shocking, but I’m shocked that YOU do.”
“No, Lois, I did say that I found it shocking, what I said was…”
“Well, you didn’t answer my question about whether you think God answers prayer, and another question I have is do you believe in the virgin birth?”
“Virgin birth?!!! Are you out of you’re fucking mind?!!! Why don’t you ask me if I believe in Santa or the Tooth Fairy, for crying out loud!!!!”
This is actually not what I said, but it’s what popped into my head to say, and then got filtered out. I knew as well as I knew my name that I was not going to be able to keep the Zillstroms’ from becoming inactive members or transferring out. I suspected, and I was right, that they would hang on for a time, that they would be waiting for other members to discover how awful I was, and that if that didn’t happen they would feel betrayed by their longtime friends. I didn’t like the Zillstroms, but I felt a little sorry for them and wished that there was something I could do.
After I left, having artfully dodged their theological minefield, I decided to call their son. I found his name in the church records and then the phone book and the next evening we visited for about forty-five minutes. He told me that he had made several attempts to reconcile but to no avail. His father could not forgive his politics, his mother couldn’t get passed the fact that he and his wife had lived together for a couple of years before their marriage. “They are both very conservative, very stubborn people. Change is not easy for them. My mother has not moved a stick of furniture in her house since I was an infant. Any change you make at St. Stephen’s is going infuriate them. What’s even more difficult for them is changing their minds. Years ago they decided that my wife was, to use my mother’s word, “whorish” and despite the fact that she just got her teaching certificate and is Mother Of the Year material, they will likely never change their opinion.
“I appreciate your attempts to help work things out, but it’s not going to work. It sounds like they’ve already made up their minds about you and the chances are good that their bad opinion of you will only get worse. If I was you I’d excommunicate them.”
When I told him that that wasn’t going to happen he laughed and told me that he was kidding (“can Lutherans excommunicate”, he wondered), but then he added that the sooner they moved on the better for everyone. “They’ll leave”, he said, “but as difficult as change is for them they will need a huge reason to make the jump. If you don’t give them that reason they will manufacture something. Be careful”, he warned.
I thanked him then had a thought, “You know, you’d always be welcome here if you didn’t have a church that you are already members of.” He laughed and said, “Thanks, but the Christianity I learned from my folks is something I’m still recovering from. It sounds as though you have a more progressive view of things, but for now at least I think I’ll take a rain check. If you’d like to pay me to come in order to get my parents to leave more quickly, maybe we could work something out, but otherwise I’m gonna pass.”
He sounded like a really good guy and I was sorry that his parents had ruined any chance the church may have had to recruit him into the cadre of folks who did peace and justice work on behalf of Jesus. One of my seminary professors once said, “getting people who have had a bad experience with Christianity or the Church to try again is not impossible, but it’s really difficult. It’s like getting someone whose first taste of goat’s milk was sour to ever drink goat’s milk again.”
So the Zillstroms were going to leave and the chances were fair that they could take two other families with them…two families they frequently went RV camping with. (By the way, is there anything lamer than RV camping in Iowa, .i.e., spending your weekend twenty miles from home in a temporary trailer park?!) The prospect of loosing three families in a congregation as small as St. Stephen’s was concerning and therefore the “help grow the membership” task that I had been given began to take top priority. This meant that I had to recruit outside the congregation whenever I could and at the same time be vigorous about courting visitors.
By way of the former I increased the size of our Yellow pages ad, went door to door in the neighborhood with a brochure I developed, got involved with a couple of ecumenical Peace and Justice groups (hoping to “sheep steal”), and made cold call home visits on former members, playing dumb and acting as though I didn’t realize they had left.
With regard to the courting of visitors strategy, I assigned “climb-over-church-pews-if-you-have-to-but-don’t-let-a-visitor-get-out-of-here-without-a-handshake-and-friendly-chat” shills for both services. I also made sure we got the names, addresses and phone numbers of our visitors so that I could go to their homes, often unannounced, in the week following their first Sunday with us.
“Hi, I’m Gary Boe, the pastor at St. Stephen’s, and I hope I’m not bothering you, but I just wanted to stop by and let you know how much we appreciated your coming by last Sunday. We’re a small, kind of tucked away in a neighborhood congregation. We don’t get just a whole lot of visitors and so we’re really excited whenever somebody does stop in. Anyway, I just wanted you to know…we ALL of us wanted you to know that and we’d love to have you come again any time you’re able to”.
This or something like it almost always got me invited in and once planted in a chair I used everything that Lynn Sabold had taught me to get the prospects to like me and to consider the benefits of a ground floor membership in a congregation that was going places.
I’d give them a brief history without sparring the details of the seven year decline. I’d tell them that the folks who left had gone for good reasons and that the people who stayed did so because they loved and cared for each other and realized that a church was much more than the pastor…it was a people united around a story of unconditional love…a people freed by that love to live joyfully and daringly for others. I told them, “there are lots of churches who would LIKE to have you as new members, but we are a church who really needs you to join our family and we promise that if we’re lucky enough to get you we’ll treat you like the gift from God to us that you actually are.”
In time these tactics began to work and we started to grow. By the end of my first year we’d increased our rolls by fifty members. At the end of two years our membership was a little less than three hundred. When I left St. Stephen’s in November of 1985, our census was right at five hundred. I’ll say more later about another couple of factors which spurred our growth, but for now I would simply add that the original members were magnificent in their welcoming of new families and in their willingness to let new folks have a full share in the leadership of the congregation. There were virtually no seniority impulses in the longer term members.
I need to say a few words about the very first family to join because in time they became my family members. I was at the lectern making opening announcements when they walked in for the first time. Marc and Cathy Gullickson and their two young girls Anna and Erin looked liked they’d just step out of a magazine ad for a new car, a major appliance or a vacation to Disney World. I could tell by their faces that they were underwhelmed by the interior appearance of our building whose façade was even uglier. “These are First Lutheran (the large society congregation) people if ever there were any”, I almost said aloud. “I wonder if they’ll stay.” They did. Cathy Gullickson appeared a bit ill at ease and unfamiliar with some of the hymns. She kept glancing at her husband who seemed right at home. The girls, two and four, were impeccably behaved, and when they weren’t reading the children’s books or nibbling Cheerios from small, round Tupperwear containers, acted interested in everything that was happening even the sermon. As I marched down the center aisle at the close of service I passed close enough to Cathy to notice that she had a beautiful singing voice. As I looked in her direction she smiled sweetly.
At the door Marc introduced himself and his family, then said, “Are your sermons this good every week?”
There were a variety of clever or funny responses I could have given, but when Cathy smiled at me again I simply sputtered something like, “Well…sometimes…they…ah…ah…”
“Well, we enjoyed it. We’ll come again”, Marc said. And off they went. The line backed up as I watched them head out the door and down the steps to the parking lot. “I WANT that family…and I want them BAD”, I thought. And I continued to think that and little else until I sat down with them on the following Tuesday evening.
The Gullickson’s house was magical. It was a large three story, turn-of-the-century doll house looking home that at one time was notable for having the most panes of glass of any house in Iowa. The warmth of the exterior was exceeded only by hospitality and the sense of love and fun that pervaded the interior. I had called in advance of my visit and had received an, “absolutely! Please stop over anytime. We’re free tonight…why don’t you stop by before we put the kids to bed so you can meet them and then we’ll have pie and we can visit.”
Pie! It’s always been my favorite dessert. We ate it in screened-in porch on an unseasonably warm late autumn evening. The porch was the pleasant but unspectacular which made Marc and Cathy seem not the least bit anxious to flaunt their utterly charming home. They were both from South Dakota and had met as students at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. After graduation and marriage they moved to Ann Arbor where Cathy earned an MBA at Michigan and Marc a masters in hospital administration. Marc had recently followed one of mentors to Iowa…a very able administrator who had been hired to run Cedar Rapids’ Mercy Hospital. Marc served as his deputy.
Cathy explained that she was a Roman Catholic and Marc a Lutheran. “My family is VERY Roman Catholic and Marc and his family are very…”, she hesitated.
“Lutheran”, I offered.
“Yes, they’re Lutheran, but more than that they’re very NOT Roman Catholic.”
“That’s pretty much right”, Marc agreed
“I think it’s important for our marriage and especially for our little girls that we figure out how to worship as a family, which is why we stopped by on Sunday.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. Any chance I could get another slice of pie? I really like pie”, I said a little sheepishly.
Cathy beamed. “You’ve got it, Father!”
Marc and I caught her mistake, looked at each other and Marc smiled and said, “VERY Roman Catholic”.
“Actually, Cathy”, I said, “the title Lutherans use is ‘pastor’, but I much prefer my first name.”
“Oh, did I say ‘Father’? Yeah, I know it’s ‘pastor’ and I heard people at the door last Sunday calling you ‘Gary’…it’s just not what I’m used to. Although I have to say that except for some of your hymns, the mass or liturgy that you used Sunday was nearly identical to what I grew up with post-Vatican II. How often do you have the Eucharist? At Marc’s home church it’s once a month.”
“We have communion at both services every Sunday”.
“REALLY?!”, said Marc more surprised at this than Cathy. “How come? Are you a high church sort of guy?”
“No, I’m really not. For example I’ve always thought the costume we clergy wear is a little silly…the dress and long scarf. I’m not an especially big fan of the ‘Agnus Dei’, ‘lamb of God’ deal…or some of the other liturgical pieces that go back to the early centuries of the Church. I suppose it’s cool to think that our worship today has continuity with Christians in all times and places, but I also worry that it seems irrelevant to young people in our own tradition and to visitors from other Christian traditions. If I was a visiting Congregationalist I might be put off by how archaic our liturgy is and how it suggests a pre-modern version of the faith.”
“So why then have communion at every service”, Marc wondered, “what’s more pre-modern than crackers turning into meat or Mogen David into blood?”
While I laughed Cathy gave Marc a grimace and me an apologetic wince.
“Well”, I said, “that’s not how I think about what’s happening when we have communion. Would you like me to tell you what I learned at seminary about what it all really means…or at least what it meant to Jesus and his students?”
“Sure”, they both replied.
“Well, apparently in first century Palestine people said table grace both before and after they ate and the opening prayer worked like this…the head of the household or the honored guest would take a loaf of bread and begin pealing off pieces and handing them out to folks around the table. When the guests received the morsel of bread they wouldn’t eat it, but would instead hold it in their hand while the host said a four part prayer. I should point out that occasionally there might be a person present who would NOT get a piece of bread. I’ll explain why in a second.
“Anyway…the host said a four part prayer the first part of which was the ‘praise of God’ part…’O God, great king of the universe, we praise your holy name…’, something like that. The second part of this four part prayer was remembering God’s mighty deeds of old…’you are the God who rescued us from Egypt, gave us a homeland, and when we had sinned sent prophets to guide us, etc., etc… The next part was the ‘thanksgiving part’…’we thank you for this food and fellowship, yada, yada…’, and then the final part…the most important part…the reason that some people might not have gotten a piece of bread…this fourth part was the invocation, a fancy word for ‘invitation’ in which God, godself, was invited to be present with them. And this fourth part they took very seriously. They really thought that when they invited God to join them, that God somehow showed up.
“Which is why not everyone got a piece of bread, because you see, that piece of bread was the ticket to the meal. If a person got one then it meant that they were welcome and worthy to be there inasmuch as God was coming too. If they didn’t…and maybe the person who didn’t was uncle Saul from two villages up the road…and everyone liked uncle Saul, but the deal was he drank a little too much, told off-color jokes, was not especially pious and, “hey, Uncle, if it was just us, well, of course, it would be different, but the Old Man’s coming and we don’t want to take a chance of offending him, so…we hope you understand…’, and Uncle Saul would get up and leave. Or perhaps it was an unruly child who had been disrespectful to her mother…she wouldn’t get a piece of bread and that would be her cue to get up and leave. Do you see how it worked?”
They did.
“So again, at the beginning, a piece of bread as your ticket to the meal…a sign that you were pleasing in the sight of God…the four part prayer…praise of God, remembering God’s mighty deeds of old, the thanksgiving, and the crucial fourth part…the invocation…and then as a way of saying ‘amen’ to that opening prayer everyone would take their piece of bread and eat it. And then they dug in and ate whatever was for dinner.
“And then when dinner was over the host said a closing grace that was nearly identical to the opening prayer…praise of God, remembering the mighty deeds of old, the thanksgiving…’we thank you for this food and fellowship we have just enjoyed…’, but, of course, they wouldn’t do the invocation…the inviting part, because God was already there…so then to say ‘amen’ to this second and final prayer the host would take his cup of wine, sip from it, passes it to his right, that person would sip, she’d pass to the person on her right and when then cup had gone all the way around the room and come back to the host the meal was over and everyone got up and went out. And what does that sound like?”
“The Eucharist”, Cathy said.
“Sure! ‘On the night in which he was betrayed he took bread, broke it, gave thanks…then again, after he had supped, he took a cup and gave it to all of them…’ This, by the way, is not the formula for the Seder meal, the Passover meal. I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and have been the token Gentile guest at Jewish Seders. The bread at the beginning and cup at the end is not what they do. It’s completely different…much more interesting. In Matthew, Mark and Luke the authors put Jesus at a Seder meal on the night before he is killed, but John does not. For John the Seder is the next night so that Jesus, the ‘lamb of God’, died at the same time the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the temple.
“No, for John Jesus’ last meal with his students is an ordinary meal where they did the ordinary table grace thing before and after they ate, but AT this meal Jesus as the host repeats a practice that over the two or three years of his public ministry had gotten him into a whole bunch of trouble and created a controversy which followed him throughout Galilee and all the way south to Jerusalem. Any guesses as to what that thing was?”
Marc and Cathy looked at each other then one of them said (I can’t remember which of them it was, but I was impressed), “He never excluded any ‘Uncle Sauls’”.
“Exactly!!! He never excluded anyone. Everyone regardless of who they were got a piece of bread…Zacchaeus, the odious tax collector, the prostitute who washed Jesus’ feet, other nere-do-wells who the Gospels report caused the Pharisees to grumble because he ‘broke bread with sinners’…and on that infamous ‘night in which he was betrayed’ he gave pieces of bread to Peter, who denied him three times, to Thomas who doubted him, to the rest of those guys who when Jesus needed them the most were cowering like frightened dogs…and, of course, Jesus also gave a piece of bread to Judas himself.
“Why? Was it because Jesus was naïve about who he was handing out ‘God tickets’ to? No…he knew who these folks were…he knew their failings. But, what he ALSO knew was how compassionate God is…how desperately God wants to be in each of our lives…how anxious God is to waive past crimes and recruit all of us into a cadre of those who are agents of love, reconciliation, peace and distributive justice. All of which means that communion is a weekly reminder of our summons to and our fitness for the work of God. It’s also a reminder that those we stand next to at the communion rail or next to in line to get our bread are every bit as welcome and worthy as we are and sometimes that’s the more important message.”
“Fascinating”, Marc said. “REALLY fascinating”, Cathy echoed. “I’ve never heard it explained quite like that. Actually at ALL like that. In our tradition besides an emphasis on the mystery of the real presence through transubstantiation, there are also community themes that the Eucharist evokes, as well as a one-ness with Christ…but it’s a oneness with him to no particular end other than some kind of spiritual thing”. She thought for a moment then said, “I suppose that the Eucharist is so central to who we are as Catholics and therefore as Christians that participating in it is a kind of re-charging of our identity AS Christians. The way you explain it is some of that, but you also describe it in terms of our mission as Christians.”
“You’re right, which is why I think that it’s perfect that at the end of it all we say, ‘Go in peace…serve the Lord.”
The evening remained warm and so we stayed in the screened-in porch and the three of us talked for another hour. Then Cathy left us to attend to one of the children. Marc and I continued talking about theology, politics, our respective life histories and sports until well after midnight. At the end of it all Marc said, “If you see us in church this coming Sunday it’s because we’ve decided to join.
When I got home Susan was only half asleep in bed. “Where have you been”, she asked. “I was worried”.
“I’m sorry. I think I found a family to replace the Zillstroms.”
“The Zillstroms haven’t left yet, have they?”
“No, but they’re going to.’
“Are they nice?”
“I think they’re going to be wonderful. No way to be sure, but tonight I may have earned my salary for the entire year.”
“For what they’re paying you, I’m sure you did, Sweetheart. Now try to get some sleep.”
I was excited and it took a while for me to finally nod off. As it turned out, the first family that I recruited would be the most important family that I would ever recruit. Ever. The Gullicksons would be a great boon to St. Stephens over the years and also to me.
I was not in Cedar Rapids very long before I met several of my Lutheran clerical colleagues. Here’s a run down:
Phil—Good guy, but cautious…smart, but not terribly interested in theology or biblical scholarship…decided soon after seminary that he wanted to be a bishop and eventually made it…as bishop he un-heroically enforced the Church’s ban of non-celibate gays on the clergy roster. Phil was a company man.
Charles—One of the worst Lutheran pastors I ever met…very conservative, not very bright…allergic to ecumenism…rarely allowed another pastor in his pulpit for fear of comparisons…cultivated a salt and pepper hair, patches on his elbows, pipe smoking faux academic affect. Charles was to academics what checkers is to chess.
Cecil—Top notch thinker…wonderfully compassionate…unassuming…would have made a terrific bishop, but was ambitious only to be a good and faithful servant to his congregation.
Gary H.—Very charming…cautiously progressive…enjoyed working as an assistant pastor at the large society church…married a wealthy older parishioner who turned out to be his “beard”…moved to a church in California…came out…developed a drinking problem…left parish ministry and somehow bilked an elderly woman out of her fortune…went to jail. Too bad…I liked Gary.
Al—Very smart…good parish theologian…perfectly liberal…wonderful preacher…had an affair with a member of his parish…was warned by his church council to stop…tried, but was unsuccessful…went into the insurance business and did very well.
Bob and Steve—Co-pastors at church just outside of Cedar Rapids…best friends in seminary…had a falling out while working together…got into a fist-fight in the narthex of the church one Sunday immediately after worship…the loser resigned.
“Don’t Rock The Boat Marv”—Middle-age Nebraska farm boy…hadn’t read a book in years…loved to tell gay jokes…thought I was way too liberal and would get kicked out of a parish eventually…prescient.
George—The senior pastor at the big society church…the only clergy who was a member of the Cedar Rapids Country Club and Downtown Rotary…saw Jesus as a forgiver of sins and the Henry Ford of the religious industry…preached Norman Rockwell sermons that his members loved…retired to San Diego…died a wealthy man.
There were others whose names I have forgotten. The guy who had a fetish for guns and owned enough of them to outfit a National Guard unit. The pleasant and harmless fellow with a Norwegian fro who found every opportunity to play his xylophone during Sunday worship, weddings, even funerals. “They absolutely love it”, he once told me, “I had no idea Lutherans were so taken with percussive heptatonic instruments!” The fact that his congregation remained small throughout his long tenure may be an indication that there are some Lutherans who are vibraphone averse.
My three favorite Cedar Rapids clergy were Methodist Pastor Glenn Dawes who was Cedar Rapids most prominent Communist, Father Phil Schmidt, a pastor and Liberation Theologian at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and Rabbi Bob O’Rourke of Temple Judah. Rabbi Bob insisted on spelling his last name O-R-A-U-C-H, but he wasn’t fooling me! Short in stature, reddish blond hair, mischievous, nice singing voice, the heart of a poet. C’mon!!! He had to have been an Irish Jew.
Bob was the President of the Cedar Rapids Ministerial Association which met once a month at Mercy Hospital where the policy was that clergy ate free in the cafeteria. He recruited me to the organization and shortly thereafter nominated me to become Vice-President. He and I began having lunch on our own and I discovered that he was so affable, and so committed to the same justice concerns that I was that he had to be not only Irish, but a closet-Christian. I decided to convert him or help him to “come out”.
Now, I wasn’t interested in converting him because I thought he was going to Hell. I didn’t believe in Hell.
Time out…
Perhaps I should stop here and say more about why I don’t believe in Hell. One reason is that most of the Bible doesn’t. Proto-“Hell” was invented by Egyptian theologians of the Osiris cult in about 1800 B.C. According to their beliefs dead people went before a tribunal presided over by a panel of forty-two judges. Good people went to a good place, bad people were tortured and then annihilated. The most ancient of Jews rejected this notion. Their idea was that life in the here and now was the main game. Live well and virtue (plus a few divinely awarded creature comforts) will be its own reward. When you die…well, then you go to “Sheol”. To some Sheol was little more than a coma…to most it was oblivion. Ancient Jews did not believe in the later Greek invention that we call the “soul”.
Contemporaries of ancient Egyptians living in Mesopotamia to the east of what would become Israel believed in an underworld, but probably thought about it more geologically than theologically or eschatologically. A thousand plus years later Jews living in exile in Babylon in the sixth century B.C. were exposed to “Zoroastrianism” which was a dualistic religion that posited a good and bad god (or principle) at war with one another. Eventually some Jews combined their own tradition with Zoroastrian dualism and invented the notion of Satan as a rival of Yahweh. (Up until that time “satan” in Hebrew meant “adversary” in the legal sense, i.e., “lawyer”). In time some of these same Jews borrowed from Greek influences and the idea of Yahweh and Satan fighting over the souls of human beings bubbled up in their imaginations. Still other Jews invented the idea that instead of souls being the way that individual humans avoided oblivion, “resurrection” was the way into eternal life. How this worked was that when a human died, he or she went completely out of existence, but then later, God recreated the individual’s personality and planted it in a new and indestructible body that may or may not have had super powers. (Jesus in his resurrected body could float and appear and disappear at will). For good people the indestructible body meant that they could forever enjoy the rewards and pleasures of life in Heaven or on a renovated and improved planet Earth. For bad people it meant that they could be tortured eternally without having the escape hatch of a body that torture could annihilate.
First century Pharisees, including St. Paul, believed in resurrection. Jesus also believed in a resurrection of the dead, but may not have believed in Satan or Hell. Jesus used the word “Satan” as a metaphor for the temptation to do other than what love and courage required. Further, Jesus’ God would seem to have been far too compassionate to allow for a hellish abode of excruciatingly painful eternal punishment.
My own idea was that besides being unimaginably smart and aware, God was also a lover. I knew that the universe was beyond vast and that as measured by all of time and space humans were next to nothing. However, at the same time I believed that we were among the most interesting next-to-nothingness in the universe, that besides hoping and guessing God’s existence we had also reached out with our imagined stories about God many of which reflected our gratitude that we existed at all. It seemed to me that an unimaginably smart and aware God might know this and be charmed and maybe even love back. It also occurred to me that perhaps to God death might not be the hurdle to on-going love that it is to us humans.
This is a vague way of saying that I believed that with us humans and the God I just described that death did not come between us and that the love continues. And even if that love is only a one way street I think it continues for everyone.
Jesus told a story about how he thought things would end up. It’s the story about a primitive wheat farmer who had just harvested his crop and is threshing his grain, that is, separating the edible seeds from their protective husks. He uses what’s called a “winnowing fork” that mashes and scrapes the kernels against one another loosening the husks. He then scoops and throws the seed into the air causing the lighter detached husks to be blown to one side while the heavier seeds fall vertically to the floor. Jesus concludes by saying, “so shall it be in God’s good time. And the wheat shall go to the barn and the chaff into the fire.”
It’s easy to interpret this as a story about good people and bad people being separated into two groups, the good group going to Heaven and the bad people to Hell. But that’s really not what is going on here. The chaff may not be edible, but certainly it was useful as protection while the seed was growing. Hardwired instincts such as territoriality, selfishness, fear of strangers, flight and fight response…these husk-like instincts are not our best qualities, but they did served humans well during our evolution from tree shrews and lemurs to homosapiens. In a left-handed way they can still serve children growing up in pathological environments. I have worked with troubled kids who were food hoarders or brawlers because there were times in their troubled lives when privation or physical abuse were imperiling and they NEEDED to be food hoarders or brawlers.
Therefore, when Jesus spoke about separating wheat from chaff he was likely not talking about separating good people from bad people, but rather removing from each of us the chaff that we all have in our personalities that does not represent our “better angels”. I, for one, have never known a totally “wheat” person (even though I attended a seminary), nor have I known someone whose being was entirely chaff (even though I have worked in a maximum security prison). My hunch is that despite the fact that there are and have been some VERY “chaffing” people throughout history, EVERYONE will make it to the “barn” of a God as compassionate and involved with humans as the one that Jesus lived his life on behalf of.
So…I wasn’t trying to convert Rabbi Orauch in order to save him from a non-existent Hell. Nor was I trying to talk him out of a religious tradition that I regarded as bankrupt. Certainly there are parts of Hebrew Scripture that do not well reflect the God that Jesus was an agent of, but that is also true of the New Testament, e.g., “The Revelation to John”, and sections of pseudo-Paul that are misogynist or tolerant of slavery and other injustices. For the most part Reformed Judaism is, in its understanding of God and its living out of that understanding, a remarkably redemptive force for good. Much more so than conservative Christianity. Jews marched with King, did voter registration in Mississippi, provided financial and legal support of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and some even died as martyrs to the cause of civil rights. Southern Baptists and other conservative Protestant denominations were obstructionist or did little or nothing. Likewise there were many Jewish persons and congregations who were prominently involved in the anti-war movement of the 60’s and early 70’s as well as during the Reagan years. Again, many Christians stood on the sidelines or were supportive of a bellicose U.S. foreign policy.
Looking back on it now, I don’t remember why I wanted to convert Bob. Perhaps it was just to see if I could. Maybe I wanted him as a sounding board for a faith I was still just a little unsure of. Maybe I thought that even though his understanding of God was existentially rich, satisfying and redemptive, mine was even more so. Maybe I thought Christianity was a way for Bob’s theology and spirituality to be less weighed down by all of the Jewish ethnic baggage that came with it…the kosher stuff, having to deal with the artifacts of the holocaust, anti-semitism, being required to support Israel no matter what, etc.
I don’t know. However, one morning while we were having coffee I asked him if I could take thirty minutes to explain how I believed Christianity works.
“Are you trying to convert me”, he asked.
I thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I could be. But I’m not trying to SAVE you…save you from Hell or from erroneous beliefs. I don’t believe in Hell and I think that what Jews believe about God is largely on the money.”
“’Largely’”, he replied. “So you want to help us with the 10% we DON’T understand about God.”
At this point I was sorry I had broached the subject, but then figured what the hell…in for a penny in for a pound. “Yeah, there are some differences in what our respective traditions help us to see or at least appreciate and emphasize about God. I think it might be entertaining to talk about those differences.”
“Gary, just so you know, Christians have been anxious to have these ‘entertaining’ discussions with us Jews for a very long time. The problem has been that when we chose not to discuss or when for the Christians the entertainment became tedious or the conversation contentious, then what happened was that we got thrown down wells or stretched on racks or forced into ghettoes. This being the case can you understand why having a discussion with you about what our differences are might not be at the very top of my list of things I want to talk with you about?”
“Well, yes…”, I said, “but…”
He quickly added, “And you know, how do you think you’d feel if someday I violated our friendship by saying to you, ‘Gary, would it be okay if I took a shot at converting you to Judaism and in the process pointed out some of your fucked up religious ideas?’”
“Bob, you’re right”, I said. “And I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is to damage our friendship. Please forgive me.”
“I forgive you. Now…explain Christianity to me, I have a couple of questions.”
“Are you messing with me? Is this a test?”
“No. I don’t mind talking about our differences, but for the reasons I just mentioned I want it to be on my terms. So, go ahead…explain away. And don’t get your feelings hurt when after you’re done I don’t ask to be baptized. My kids would love adding Christmas to our calendar, but my mother would kill me.”
For the next thirty minutes I used a pen and paper napkin to detail the Bouman/Tillich way of explaining Christianity that I presented on pages 121-129. The reader will recall that it involved drawing a line on a piece of paper and allowing one end to represent a person as the best they could be, the other end as the worst. Because most people place themselves somewhere between best and worst, the supposition is that as over against God they feel guilt and subsequently “hide” from God in ways that turn out to be destructive. The role Jesus plays is to show people that they are loved so that they can come out of hiding and begin to live less destructive lives…lives that embody Jesus own advocacy of distributive justice, radical social inclusion and peace-making.
Bob listened carefully, asked a couple of clarifying questions along the way, and when I was finished said, “Nice job, but I don’t think people worry all that much about their own sin. Paul, Augustine and certainly Luther had robust consciences and for them your explanation would make perfect sense. However, I think that ordinarily you have to raise people to think of themselves as sinners, which, of course, the Christian Church does perhaps by way of perpetuating itself. In other words, if you teach people that they are sinners, tell them that sin damns them either eternally or, as your story suggests, in the here and now…and then if you say ‘Good news, folks, we have a solution to your damnation…well, then, it seems as though you are running a rigged game. See what I mean”, he asked.
“Yeah…”, I responded as I continued to chew on what he had just said.
“Plus”, he continued, “I don’t at all understand how Jesus was any more God than, say, Gandhi was, which is a problem because you said that only if God himself tells you he loves you is it going to be believable. But to me it’s not believable that Jesus was God so therefore him telling me that I’m divinely loved is still an open question.”
I thought a little more about this, then smiled and said, “Damn, where’s the Spanish Inquisition when you really need it?!”
“See!”, Bob said laughing and pointing his finger at me, “You’re nothing but a Torquemada wannabe!”
“Busted”, I replied.
But what was REALLY busted was my schema…my way of thinking about and telling the Christian story. I continued to use it…I taught it and preached out of it, but I knew that Bob was right and that therefore it was a flawed story. If Christianity was true there had to be more to it than what I then believed. I needed to go back to work. I needed to read more and dig deeper into who Jesus was and what he was up to and I made up my mind to do precisely that.
The economy under the late Carter, early Reagan administrations got really ugly. High fuel prices, soaring interest rates, the farm crisis and double-digit unemployment created a perfect economic storm in Cedar Rapids. Lay-offs and plant closings put several St. Stephen’s families in precarious financial straits. At a Church Council meeting in the fall of 1982 I proposed that we organize a congregational loan fund and job development team, the goal of which would be to prevent any family in the congregation from loosing their home or having to pull a kid out of college. It would work like this:
• Families with means would donate a lump sum to the fund or add a Loan Fund pledge to their annual contribution
• Families needing assistance would contact a fund administrator who would loan money at no interest on the basis of a handshake and the promise to repay the loan if, when and how it was convenient for the family to do so
• Members with influence in the community would use their business contacts to help unemployed members find new jobs
When I presented this idea I told council members that it would be difficult for Susan and me to donate to the fund, but that to help out I would be pleased to forego a promised raise for the coming year. I was being paid $12,000 annually which even with a parsonage was well below the recommended remuneration for a clergy person of my age and level of experience. However, St. Stephens was not a wealthy congregation and Susan and I were happy with our lives. We felt rich even though we lived from paycheck to paycheck. Besides, how could I accept an improvement in my financial circumstances when several of my brothers and sisters in Christ were suffering? It made no sense.
I’m not sure what kind of reaction I expected when I made my proposal, but what I received was a unanimous vote of support. “Let’s do it” said Dennis Oldorf and the next day he got the ball rolling with a check for $5000. Within a week we had had $12,500 in hand and several thousand more dollars pledged. In all we raised close to forty thousand dollars. The Church Council asked me to be the point of contact for persons needing loans and though I was initially reluctant I decided that it made good sense for the pastor to be aware of any serious problems members were having. The procedure for helping a family was simple…they would stop by my office and give me a general explanation of their circumstances and a specific assessment of their financial need. I would then call the treasurer and ask that a check be cut and sent to the family’s home. I asked the family in need to begin repaying the loan at such time as they felt they were able, and to simply put repayments into the offering plate. To preserve their privacy from offering counters I asked that they use the general pew envelope, keep the “Name” line blank and check the box marked “loan fund”. I concluded these meetings by saying, “We hope that things improve enough so that at some point you can begin to repay the fund, and we can use the dollars to help others. But we are not going to keep an accounting of what we loaned or you repaid. This is a ‘family’ matter and the congregation is doing this not as a matter of business, but of love and compassion. Thanks for allowing us to do for you what we know you would do for us under different circumstances.”
The Job Development Team led by Dennis with help from Marc Gullickson did a sensational job of helping laid-off people find new jobs or temporary work until their companies were able to begin rehiring. By 1984, when the economy finally got back on track, the results of the congregation’s generosity and networking were impressive. No St. Stephen’s family had lost a home and no child had been pulled out of college. Every adult in the congregation who needed a job had one. Together we had weathered the storm and we were all spiritually stronger for having cared for each other.
The Loan Fund was an example of faithfulness strengthening faith. Too often people think that it works that other way around. They believe that if they strengthen their faith a strengthening of their faithfulness will follow. I don’t think Jesus entirely thought that was true inasmuch as he frequently asked people to DO prior to their having a serious belief. For example:
• Peter, COME WITH ME and catch humans instead of fish
• To be healed of your paralysis STAND UP AND WALK
• Levi, COME FOLLOW ME
• Those who DO THE WILL OF GOD are close to me
• If anyone wants to be loyal to me they must first GET A CROSS AND CARRY IT WITH THEM
• COME ALONG WITH ME IMMEDIATELY AND DON’T WASTE TIME BURYING YOUR FATHER
• COME ALONG WITH ME IMMEDIATELY AND DON’T WASTE TIME GETTING THE REST OF YOUR FIELD PLOWED
• SELL YOUR PERSONAL POSSESSIONS AND GIVE THE PROCEDES TO CHARITY and then there will be room in your heart for God
• There is no one who has LEFT THERE MATERIAL POSSESSIONS BEHIND who will not receive much more back in happiness and connectedness to God
• Zacchaeus, who GAVE HALF OF HIS WEALTH TO THE POOR AND REPAID FOURFOLD THOSE HE HAD DEFRAUDED, will now experience a closeness to God
The above are paraphrased do-first-believe-later examples from Luke. There are even more in Matthew. Sadly, there are church goers who spend a lifetime studying Christianity, but never getting around to really living it. They prepare themselves intellectually, but never get their hands dirty or their backs strengthened or their courage tested by picking up a cross and following.
Still others have no interest in preparing for OR living out heroic Christian convictions. They are people who think that a Sunday morning commitment of their time, a one to three percent commitment of their income, a willingness to sing in the choir or occasionally teach Sunday School, a cross hung on their wall at home…that this and not much more is what Jesus lived and died to empower people to do. For these people Christianity is essentially protection from punishment in the afterlife and/or a hedge against the concern that death is oblivion. These people DO, in fact, make a contribution to the overall Christian enterprise in that they keep the organization chugging along. They sustain the incubator out of which come the one percent or less who become the “pinch of leaven in the loaf”…the mustard seed (an irritating weed that infested and subverted ancient gardens and fields), who make the world a more sustainable place. I’m talking now about the Martin Luther King, Jr.s’, the Dietrich Bonhoeffers’, etc., and the myriad anonymous heroes who in their own time and place have lived redemptive sacrificial lives.
This last point about lukewarm Christians being a necessary substrate or incubator for the development of Jesus-like persons who contribute much to the human enterprise is not one that I latched onto until fairly recently. I wish that I had seen some value in “arm’s length Lutherans” earlier in my ministry. It would have saved me a lot of frustration and wasted energy and might have rescued my career and perhaps even a marriage. As it was I thought of all parishioners as potential disciples who would leave all behind to follow. I believed that the Gospel…the story of God revealed in the life of Jesus…to have impact enough to radically change the world view of nearly anyone and to propel nearly anyone to a life lived in close imitation of Jesus.
I was wrong. In my own way I was literalist in the mold of Rev. Christiansen. Not that I believed in a real Noah’s ark, but apparently I DID believe the New Testament’s reductionistic bifurcation of persons into two camps…those who were hot and those who were cold…those who left everything to follow Jesus and those who did not and were unsaved. But it’s not that simple, because human beings aren’t that simple. Our genes play a role in the causes we choose and how enthusiastically we champion them. They may also predispose us to be religious or not. Our nurture influences which of our genes gets turned on and to what degree. Our life experiences shape our interests, view points, levels of courage and our freedom for maneuverability. Luck or lack of it can influences us as for example when a randomly impacting cosmic ray damages a single tiny chromosome and triggers the start of a cancer that can change our focus and/or ability to hear and respond to a religious message. “There are no atheists in a foxhole”, one wag has said, although some years ago a hospital patient shut me up with, “Don’t bother me with Jesus! Can’t you see I’m dying!”
So…in order to thrive Christianity may require or may make good use of all kinds of people who bring with them various levels of commitment. Who knows, maybe Christianity even requires non-Christians to provide goals and work for Christians possessed with missionary verve.
Throughout my career working as a parish pastor I never really got past the hot/cold classification of Christians and was always doing my darnedest to turn ice into fire. I wrote off and lost interest and empathy for those I decided were incorrigibly lukewarm. To be clear, I did not regard these persons as living outside of God’s love, nor did I suppose them to be in jeopardy of a positive afterlife experience if such a thing was part of the human future. I DID however believe that they were largely unsaved from the here and now experience of a genuine closeness with God, from a real partnership with God in making the world a happier place for others, and from a keen sense of what the deepest meaning of life actually is. To me the lukewarm were like clock-watching employees in a business…passionless drones who wanted a paycheck, but who also wanted to get by doing as little work as possible. I would have been content to give all of them their walking papers and condense the congregations I worked for into small, steel-hard cadres of passionate and compassionate exemplars of Jesus.
I didn’t, of course, excommunicate or aggressively run off the luke-warmers. However, I did work hard at St. Stephen’s and the other congregations I served, to create a Jesus cadre within the larger body of members. I would probably do the same again were I to go back in a time machine, but I would also give more of my time and energy to helping those meek and mild Christians who were probably doing the best they could. Does this mean that Jesus was wrong to demand so much of his followers? Was he being a jerk when he said, “sorry…can’t use ya…”, to the rich young ruler unwilling to divest himself of his entire wealth? I don’t think so. He and I had different tasks. He was starting a movement, I was working, or should have been working, to keep that same movement going. He was the revolutionary who needed tough, single-minded soldiers to challenge and supplant an ancient, entrenched paradigm with one that in part was utterly new and that in other respects had, until that time, been only been a dream. Without hardened troops Jesus’ vision could easily have been extinguished.
In my case, the Jesus paradigm was entrenched in cultures throughout the world and the real issue was actualization. For example, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, is today not a concept akin to the modern and nearly-impossible-to-wrap-your-head-around quantum theories of eleven dimensions and parallel universes. However, two thousand years ago it was nearly impossible to conceive, and embedding it in culture required that some courageous people not only promote it, but actually demonstrate it.
Today, most regard enemy loving as unpleasant, but doable. And some who have grown up in a culture influenced by Jesus’ vision actually DO love their enemies which accounts in part for the peace movement that put the breaks on the Vietnam War, and the anti-death penalty advocates who have made progress in eliminating capital punishment in many states. This being the case, the role of pastors today is two fold…to keep Jesus’ vision embedded, and to inspire and equip the few who will actualize the vision.
My personality may have made me better suited to being a first century disciple than a twentieth century pastor, but perhaps I’m giving myself too much credit. Or is it too little? Maybe the harder task is that of the multi-tasking modern clergyperson who both nourishes the tradition and shapes and empowers real heroes of faith. I did both, although I failed to have much enthusiasm for the former and perhaps did it poorly. Perhaps seminaries should have a course which clarifies this bipartite pastoral role and gives clues on how it can effectively be done. I would have benefited from such a course and so would the persons paying my salary.
Speaking of seminaries, in 1983 I learned that Dr. Ted Liefeld had died of Alzheimer’s. Ted was a professor of New Testament studies and had championed me at the time that I applied for admission to Trinity. Much to his embarrassment Ted was once known as “the smartest man in Ohio”. He came by this title in the late fifties when the “Cleveland Plain Dealer” ran a series of articles on I.Q. tests and as a sidebar went looking for the Ohioan with the highest recorded Wexler I.Q. score. Ted’s wife read the series and unbeknownst to her husband sent them his test results.
When Ted learned what his spouse had done and that his score was the highest of the submittals he was hugely chagrined and discomfited. As was his style he expressed his irritation mildly, but was embarrassed by all of the attention and congratulations. Although that he hoped that his reputation for remarkable intelligence would fade with time, it never quite did and caused some people to be intimidated by him and others to challenge him in the way that upstarts challenged gunfighters in the Old West. Ted did everything he could to cause the intimidated to feel less so and the upstarts to feel victorious. To me his most remarkable quality was his gentleness and his kindness to one and all…students, other faculty members, secretarial staff…anyone.
If Ted had a noticeable deficiency in the classroom it was only that he relied overmuch on clichés. For some years before and after I arrived at seminary it was the habit of some students to play cliché baseball during his lectures. It worked this way. Each participating student ponied up two dollars and then based on their seating order (the person closest to the front in the first row was lead-off) had a time at bat. Cliches could be singles, doubles, triples, homeruns or outs. After three outs the at-bat went to the next participating student until each player had had their time behind the plate. If there was time enough during the lecture there could be, and often was, a second go-round.
After class the student with the most runs was the winner. Ties went to the player who had left the most men/cliches on base following their third out. Often during a Liefeld lecture a muffled cheer or groan would go up wear off when the student at bat had gotten a homerun or suffered the third out. At these times Dr. Liefeld would be distracted from his lecture and would look confusedly around the room before regaining his composure and continuing to teach. It was great fun and the consolation for losing was a terrific lecture by a very knowledgeable and gifted teacher.
While I was on internship Dr. Liefeld announced at a faculty meeting that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and would no longer be able to continue in the classroom. When I heard the news I was very saddened and thought about the book “Flower’s for Algernon”, by Daniel Keyes. It’s the science fiction story about a person with mental retardation who is given an experimental drug that makes him spectacularly intelligent, but only for a year or so. The effects of the drug slowly wear off and are not repeatable so that the subject, “Charlie”, must knowingly descend back into vacuity and imbecility. To have SUCH a facile mind and then to realize that he was loosing it was very painful for Charlie and must also have been so for Ted Liefeld. However, he lived out his descent with amazing courage and grace.
Upon my return from internship I literally bumped into Dr. Liefeld in the refectory following our Wednesday Eucharist celebration. Ted was still stopping by a small emeritus office the seminary had provided him with and he rarely missed the midweek communion service. After inadvertently jostling him in the line leading to coffee and donuts I apologized and then told him how sorry I was to hear of his illness. He thanked me for the condolence and for a note I had sent him shortly after hearing of his illness.
“How are you doing”, I asked.
“Oh…pretty well”, he said smiling. “I feel good enough, and there are some memories I’m losing that I’m not at all unhappy to say ‘good-bye’ to.” He paused and then very kindly said, “I’ll be sorry, however, to lose my memory of you. I have enjoyed and I still enjoy knowing you. You’re a very fine student and have a very good heart.” A lump immediately formed in my throat.
“I…ah…I really enjoyed your classes, Sir.”
“Thank you”, he replied, “as I recall, you did quite well.”
“You were very generous in your evaluation of the papers I was required to write”, I said.
“Oh, yes…you did quite well academically too. But I meant that you did well during my classes.”
What did he mean by this? Doing well in class and doing well academically…wasn’t that the same thing? I decided that I was dealing with an artifact of his illness and patiently replied, “Well…you were a very good teacher, Sir”.
“Thank you, but I was talking about something else. Don’t you remember the day in my Romans class near the end of the hour when you went on a tear and scored…what was it…four or five runs in the space of three minutes? I’ll never forget the look on Mr. Dalton’s face. He was so sure he had it locked up for the day. But then, of course, he had won the Monday before.”
“Oh, my God!”, I said, utterly astounded. “You knew all along.”
He smiled.
“How long? How long had you known?”
“From the beginning”, he replied. “I gave the idea to a student back in 1959. I swore him to secrecy, reimbursed him for his loses, and it took off from there. It got passed along from one year to the next by upper-classman who told lower-classman. The trick for me was to figure out who was playing each day, but usually student faces very quickly gave it away.”
“So did you rig it”, I asked.
“Well, yes…I did”, he said with a guilty smile. “Usually I let everyone have an equal number of wins, but once in awhile I admit that I skewed the outcome to a student who I knew to have a pressing financial need or who needed an emotional lift.”
I was completely amazed. How he could deliver brilliant lectures on the subtleties of ancient Greek or Coptic languages as they related to third century fragments of Pauline letters, and at the same time hold in his head who was playing cliché baseball that day, who was up to bat, what all the scores were and who needed a win…well…he HAD to have been the smartest man in Ohio.
“Will you keep it a secret”, he asked. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but it was a lot of fun for me and made it even more enjoyable to come to class each day. I loved teaching and passing along what I had learned, but doing it over and over again each semester… somehow cliché baseball kept my classroom experience from becoming stale. Promise you want tell?”
“Not for a long time”, I replied, “But it’s too good a story not to tell someday.’
“I suppose it is”, he said. “Kind of like the story of Jesus. Too good not to tell.”
“Yeah…exactly”, I said. We were at the head of the line and I added, “Hey, for this story and for the more important one, let me pay for your coffee and donut.”
“Certainly”, he said, with a smile, then inquired, “what was your name again?” As my eyes widened he quickly winked and his smile subtlety became a grin. I was so sorry to hear of his illness and a few years later his death, but I was so very pleased to have known one of the finest men in Ohio.
Susan was enrolled as a first year law student at the University of Iowa in August of 1982. She was every bit as excited about this new stage in her life as I had been when I began my studies at seminary. We were now what one of my pastoral colleagues called a “Law/Gospel” couple. “Law/Gospel” refers to the tension in the Christian story between biblical moral requirements, e.g., the Ten Commandments, and the apparent unconditional forgiveness and love of God reflected in the teaching and example of Jesus. Resolving this tension was not something that I had yet fully accomplished and I tended toward a bi-polar approach to the issue. This was readily reflected in my sermons some of which were thuggishly prophetic and law driven, while others were romantic, sentimental and gushing with grace. Still others were both. At this point in my theological development I tended to believe (or at least my official position was) that everyone, if loved enough, would necessarily choose to live a Christ-like life. I believed St. Augustine when he wrote, “Know that you’re loved by God and then do what comes naturally”.
Sue’s law school career created a challenge to my “official position” and helped me to develop a greater appreciation for enlightened legal systems that were informed and shaped by democratic principles and built-in protections for minorities. Soon after Sue began her studies our dinner table and other casual conversation was less about church and theological stuff and more about what Sue was learning in Contract Law, Torts, Property, Civil Procedure and Criminal Law. It was fascinating! I especially enjoyed her teaching me about the development of common law and the history of the modern western legal system. She described it in such a way that it sounded like a long, difficult, often circuitous evolution in the direction of distributive justice and human rights for common people. It was disturbing to learn from her and from some of what I read in her text books how for a thousand years Church Cannon law and antiquated cultic biblical laws had stood in the way of a better life for European lower classes. It was even more upsetting to learn how some of those same laws had discriminated against nearly everyone who wasn’t a land-owning Christian male.
Luther had regarded biblical law as essentially undoable. “No human gets passed the first commandment ‘to love God and put none before him’”. To Luther biblical law served as a mirror which revealed to us our sinfulness and our need for God’s grace. The reformer viewed ordinary laws (civil and criminal) as a hedge against chaos and he regarded the German nobility who shaped and enforced the law as God’s agents. He referred to feudal rulers as “the left hand of God” ensuring with their swords an orderly world in which the church could perform its mission of salvation.
I somewhat bought into these notions as a seminarian, but Susan helped me to understand how unenlightened these ideas were. Ordinary law at its best was not simply a cudgel in the hands of the ruling class, it was potentially the “right hand of God” working to free and empower an enslaved underclass. Ordinary law properly crafted and enforced was anything but ordinary. It was a parting of the Red Sea, it was a sustaining manna, it was the pillar of fire that leads to a Promised Land. It was the Bill of Rights, the 14th and 19th Amendments to the constitution, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 respectively. It was any law anywhere in the world that worked against an unequal distribution of God’s resources, or a violation of God’s wish that all people be treated fairly, or the human tendency to disregard God’s penchant for peaceful means of resolving conflict. All of which meant that legislators and judges and lawyers were potentially the ministers of God’s overall desire that the world be a happy place to live where people lived in friendship with the environment, each other and with God.
Lawyers as ministers…it was an eye-opening realization for me, and it must have been an empowering notion for Susan. Up until that time I still somewhat bought into my mom and grandmother’s belief that “ordained ministry is the highest calling”. Susan was helping me to rethink all of that. In addition, her law school colleagues were so much more impressive than all but a handful of the seminarians I had known. If ordained ministry WAS the highest calling then who or whatever was doing the calling was either dialing a lot of wrong numbers or was getting lot’s of “no’s” from their first choices. I recall that Ed Fendt, the crusty President Emeritus of Trinity Seminary had said of our graduating class, “this is three years in a row that I care safely say,’God will give us no bishops from this bunch’”. Right as rain, Ed!
With Susan in law school my life became somewhat busier than it had been, but in a good way. Typically Sue would leave for Iowa City around seven in the morning and would return home between five and six each afternoon. This left me in charge of getting Matt up, dressed, fed and then dropped off at his daycare provider. I came to really enjoy the hands-on work of being a father. I liked getting Matt into a clean diaper, selecting his clothes, sitting with him and talking while he ate my French toast, and I especially liked picking him up at around three thirty each day and having an hour or so to play with him until it was time for me to get supper started. Matt and I had lots of adventures, many of them at nearby Bever Park. I’d draw up pirate maps in the morning, hide treasure in Bever Park woods during my lunch hour, let Matt find the map when he came home in the afternoon, then help him find the clues and landmarks that would lead to the leaf-buried candy bar and/or Smurf action figure. Most days we had much to share with Susan when she hurried into the house to hug us both.
When supper was over it was Susan’s turn to spend time with Matt while I returned to work for Confirmation, board meetings or new member calls. After Matt went to bed Susan usually studied until ten thirty or eleven and sometimes even later when she was preparing for exams. There was a fair amount of tension in each of our lives. If we had been coffee we would have been espresso. Although Susan would end up at the very top of her class she never seemed to have confidence that she had done well or even passed almost any exam she took. She was constantly fretting about failure.
Failure was not something that I worried about, but the six day, often eighty plus hour work week, the rush to get from one meeting to another, and the creative pressures involved in crafting a cogent, instructive and entertaining sermon, all of this kept my stress level pretty high. That said, I was enjoying my job enormously. I loved being a pastor and working for and with the people of St. Stephens. I have rarely been happier than in those years.
I think Susan was in her own way happy too. Because Sue’s father had been so critical of her and so emotionally unavailable…because Sue’s best childhood friends had come from very accomplished and prosperous families while Sue’s often out-of-work dad kept things financially precarious…because of this it was important to Susan to become successful in life. Being in law school must have provided her with some assurance that she would in fact make something of herself and keep the “wolves” away from her door.
As a sidebar to this, I’m sure that the fact that I made so little money and was occasionally at odds with some of the people I worked for, e.g., the Zillstroms, I’m sure that this was anxiety producing for Susan. It must also have been difficult for her to be thought of by so many as “the pastor’s wife”, a behind the scenes bit player in a drama that so prominently featured her husband, St. Gary. How was the relative experience of success ever going to be possible for her so long as I was stealing so much of the spotlight? It was potentially vexing, especially for someone who knew damn well that Gary was not quite so beatified as many of his parishioners imagined. In this I must have seemed to Susan a little like her dad who was outwardly charming, but privately anything but.
So as happy as we both were a crack was developing in our relationship that ten years later would end our marriage. Had I known then that this was the case…or had I realized how stormy the slight change in our emotional weather would finally become, I would have shifted my focus more away from my work and more toward our relationship. But…I didn’t see it coming or didn’t want to see it coming.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I would have done had someone told me that my choices were my marriage or my job. At this time in my life my ultimate concern was no longer the Christian story alone. It was also being a pastor. Who am I? Well, yes…I’m a beloved child of God, BUT I am ALSO a pastor who has so far been very successful in turning a dying congregation around. In addition I am the new president of the Linn County Ministerial Association. I am on the Planned Parenthood Board of Directors, the board of the local chapter of Big Brothers and Big Sisters, I’m a favorite of the Bishop and serve with him on Iowa ALC/LCA Joint Task Force On Peace and Reconcilliation…THAT’S who I am!!! I am protected from guilt and meaninglessness…sure…but I am ALSO protected from being just one more of the nameless, who-cares billions of common folk whom God loves. And finally I have the satisfaction and enjoyment that comes from being on God’s first string in the game of life!!!
To give up all of that for the sake of my marriage to Susan?! Well…it would have been a tall order. If it had been put to me in a straightforward way…”choose…job or marriage”…I would certainly have chosen marriage, because it would have been the next thing to impossible for me to walk out on either Sue or Matt. I’m too soft hearted. However, in a passive/aggressive way I was inch by inch, day by day making my choice for the church. Often, Luther’s words from his most famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress”, ran through my head…”Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also…” Once again the either/or character of Christianity as Pastor Christiansen had put it into my head to interpreted it…the either/or call to discipleship that Jesus, the organizer of a new movement, necessarily used as his strategy…and the failure to trust that because of God’s affection for me my life could never be any more meaningful than it already was…because of all this I was able to practically put my career ahead of my family.
I chose the phrase above, “inch by inch”, because it now seems to me that in the same way that geologic processes can put gradual pressure on a fault line…one tectonic plate moving little more than an inch or so a year in the opposite direction of an adjacent plate...in this way pressures were building in our marriage that would eventually lead to a relatively sudden seismic tearing apart of the foundation of our relationship. On the surface, the pre-quake days of our lives were fairly ordinary. There were lots of “sunny” days, some “cloudy” days…an occasional “storm”. But below the surface the stresses were building and when things finally gave way neither of us were equipped to deal with and mitigate the damages…least of all me.
But all of this was ten years away and the good news for all of us was that “above ground” there WERE many “sunny” days.
For her part, Susan chose family over career when in September 1983, she discovered she was pregnant. This was NOT a planned pregnancy. I don’t recall the details of our birth control strategy, but I do know that in one way or another we were anxious to avoid having another child at least until Susan had completed law school.
Adding to the inconvenience of the pregnancy was the fact that Susan became very sick during her first trimester. Sue didn’t have morning sickness. She had morning, noon and night sickness. She’d been miserable with Matt and the first weeks of her second pregnancy were no better and perhaps even worse. And thus, because the pregnancy was unplanned and because she was so sick thereby making the rigors of law school exponentially more difficult, Susan decided to have an abortion.
I was not in favor of this decision. Although I was a supporter of a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, and although I worried about over-population, and although as I indicated above I was on the board of the local chapter of Planned Parenthood, I nonetheless did not want Susan to terminate her pregnancy. I wanted the fetus inside of her…the potential baby to become actualized as my child.
We discussed the issue. My view was that we would probably at some time want another child…that there was no perfect time to have another baby (it was inconvenient during law school, but it would also be inconvenient while she was a busy associate)…and finally that there would come a time (Susan was thirty-four) when becoming pregnant would be more difficult. “Let’s do this”, I said, “while Matt is still young enough to somewhat relate to a younger sister or brother and while we’re living within the supportive bosom of a congregation that likes us. The birth will be at about the time your second year is finished…you’ll have the summer to be home with him…and in the fall I’ll back off a bit in my work and will be Super Dad. Honey, this can work!”
Susan didn’t think so. “Next summer is when I could do an internship that could lead to a job. If I try to do this I’ll be one of the very few in my class who don’t do an internship. Plus, Gary, you have no idea how difficult it is for me to feel this awful and even get out of bed in the morning, much less drive to Iowa City, keep from throwing up in class, and then study until almost midnight. I may want to have another child…I probably DO want to have another child, but not now. It’s just too hard and there’s too much at stake for me.”
This was the thrust of Susan’s argument and indeed she was so sick that it was impossible not to feel bad for her. But I was excited about having another child and it was difficult for me not to sulk about her decision to actually have the abortion. She made the arrangements with a clinic in Waterloo because she didn’t want anyone in Cedar Rapids to learn of the procedure. In the days before her appointment I told her that I loved her, that I still hoped that she would change her mind, but that if she didn’t I would never say another word to her about the decision she had made. I also reiterated that my opposition to the abortion was not about abortion per se…I told her that I thought the law allowing her to make her choice was a good one and that I didn’t believe that abortion was murder. Then as now I regard it as the destruction of non-sentient tissue that is simply a potential human being.
But emotionally I was excited about this potential child. I wanted it to continue the journey to humanness and therefore when she asked me to accompany her to Waterloo I declined. “Is it about being able to drive home”, I asked.
“No. They said that that wouldn’t be a problem. I’d just like to have you there for emotional support.”
“Well…because of how I continue to feel about this…I…I just don’t think that I would be a very good source of support.” I realized how caddish this sounded, but I could feel my heels digging in. I had been involved in the termination of one pregnancy and for mostly emotional reasons over which I was loosing rational ground I did not want to be a participant in another. Additionally, I believed that the best chance I had of getting my way was NOT to go with her. I could tell that the decision to have the abortion was not as easy for Susan as it may have appeared. During our discussions about this there had been more than a few tears that had fallen from her large blue eyes. I suspected that paradoxically my absence would well represent me as a disapproving “presence”.
On the day of the procedure Susan left for Waterloo content not to have to eat the breakfast they told her she shouldn’t eat. After dropping Matt at his daycare provider I went to my office and struggled to get passed the first paragraph of the next Sunday’s sermon. For two hours I accomplished almost nothing then went out for a walk. As I walked through fallen and brightly colored fall leaves I wondered how after today our future would unfold. Would there soon be a new member of our family? Would there soon be a ghost or specter that would haunt our relationship? By this I mean, would Sue love me less for not being more supportive, or would she worry that I loved her less because of her decision? And WOULD I love her less? I didn’t think so, but a year earlier I also would not have guessed that I would have been so opposed to her decision to end the pregnancy. So…who could know for sure.
When I returned to the office my phone was ringing and I ran to get it answering with a slightly out of breath, “Hello…St. Stephen’s…this is Gary speaking.” The voice on the other end said, “I’m coming home. With our baby. And I’m not feeling all that well. But I’m VERY excited.”
“Really”, I asked?
“Really, really. This was such a waste of gas. In the end I realized that I could never turn my back on this adventure. Never”, she said, and I could tell from her voice that she was entirely sincere.
In a very big way Susan had made a choice between her career and her family and it was her family that she had come down on the side of.
Andy, our second child, was born the following May. Matt had come a little early. Andy took his time allowing his mother to get through her finals. As we waited for his arrival we also waited for the crab apple tree on our front lawn to bloom. It usually did its pink and white fireworks early in the month, but this year it was not happening. We wondered if our tree was dying.
Early on the morning of the 15th Susan went into labor and we rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital. At around seven o’clock in the morning Sue gave a final push and the once potential, now fully actualized human baby entered the world and our lives. I had never really cared for the name “Andrew”, but it was his mother’s choice. I’ll get used to it I had thought. It’s funny, though, how within 30 seconds of his birth “Andrew/Andy” suddenly became and still remains one of my all-time favorite names.
I left the hospital at about ten thirty and drove home to give Sue a chance to get some rest. When I turned the corner onto Iowa Avenue, the street on which we lived, I was greeted by a crab apple tree that during the night and early morning had outdone itself with blossoms. “I’ve lived next door to that tree since it was a sapling”, said our neighbor, “and I’ve never seen it more beautiful.”
“It’s just one more of the many beautiful things in my life right now”, I replied.
“You’re a lucky fella”, my neighbor said. “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.”
I’m not sure if that was such good advice.
* * *
I presided at a lot of funerals when I was a pastor. None were more memorable than the funeral of the wife of my internship supervisor, Dick Trost. Shirley had died in her new home in Oregon from a virulent cancer that killed her soon after her diagnosis. Because she was from a prominent Lutheran family (her brother was the Director of the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva), and because Dick himself was well known and highly regarded it was going to be a large funeral. Shirley therefore suggested that it be held in their old Iowa City parish in order to centralize the event and make it easier for family, friends and colleagues to attend. Dick called and asked me to do the funeral sermon.
It was a tall order. I wanted to do a good job for a lot of reasons the most honorable of which is that I really liked and respected Dick and felt terrible about what for him was an enormous loss. Dick and Shirley were an epic couple and as much as Dick loved being a pastor Shirley enjoyed being a pastor’s wife and a mother to her five children. I wondered how Dick would handle having his best friend suddenly disappear from his life.
The funeral itself was sad but grand. There had not been such a crowd at Zion Lutheran Church since the city showed up to see the adulterous Vicar. Folding chairs had to placed in the aisles next to the pews, in the narthex and even in the fellowship hall where speakers were set up to allow the late-comers to at least hear the service. Several clergy co-presided including the local Bishop. Other bishops had bit parts, reading scripture or saying prayers. Dick’s many clergy colleagues who were in attendance processed in their white albs and red stoles which symbolized the death of a saint. The full choir was there even though it was a work day afternoon, and there were also instrumentalists present from the University of Iowa School of Music.
We processed in to “A Mighty Fortress” all of us following behind the simple, but elegant hand-made pine coffin that a former parishioner had lovingly crafted for the event. The church service itself was lovingly, moving and triumphant. The sermon was fine, the music was extraodinary, Dick himself said a few words and stole the show. (He is such an eloquent speaker!).
The burial took place south of Iowa City near the Amish town of Kalona. There had at one been a “country church” that was a satellite of Zion, but it had long since been consumed in a fire. What remained was the small rural cemetery located on top of hill that looked out over the rolling Grant Woods Iowa countryside. It was a very picturesque and charming place to be laid to rest.
The casket was lowered directly into the ground. The presiders did a brief committal service from the Book of Worship and when that was done Dick approached the open grave holding a bouquet of a dozen yellow roses. He reminded those assembled that his family had been steeped in German tradition a part of which was the burial custom of tossing a handful of dirt onto the lowered casket. He and his children then did as much, he invited others to do the same, and then finally he gently dropped the roses onto the casket and said, “Farewell, Shirley, until we meet again.” Tears immediately filled my eyes and began rolling down my cheek.
Then suddenly the crowd began to stir as Emma Stump elbowed her way through the mournful throng in order to be the first to follow the family’s lead and throw a handful of dirt onto the coffin.
Sixty year old Emma Stump was not a member of Zion. She referred to herself as an “ecumenable”. She attended every church, temple, cathedral, synagogue and whatever the Unitarians call their buildings in town. She rarely missed a potluck, church wedding reception or funeral especially if the announcement said, “a luncheon will be served in the fellowship hall”. Emma had mild mental retardation and was a complete pain in the ass. In my later life I would spend seven years working on behalf of people with mental retardation and one of the things I learned from this was that cognitively challenged people are just like people generally. Some are terrific human beings, others are fine, still others are a pain in the ass. Emma was a pain in the ass.
Following my second Sunday as a Vicar at Zion four years earlier she had invited herself home with Susan and me for lunch. Following lunch she took a nap on our couch. At around four she bestirred herself and asked for a snack. At six she wanted to know what we were having for supper. At that point I offered to take her home and she looked at me as if I had crapped in the punch bowl. “How come? Aren’t we going to have supper?”
Susan and I looked at each other and Susan offered, “We need a little family time, Emma. I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“You got roast beef. I really like roast beef. And some more of them cookies too.”
Well, that was Emma, and it was Emma at Shirley Trost’s funeral who was shoving people this way and that in order throw dirt in a hole. Once at the graveside she picked up a clod or maybe it was a rock and BANGED it down onto the pine box. Then she began recited scripture, but it was nothing that I could ever recall reading. It went something like this…
“Blessed are them which cometh unto the fleshpots of Egypt from whence the salvation untooth thy prophets shall meet upon the rosey shore and thine wrath shall rend forth from the Philistines and…” Well…you get the idea.
It had up to that point been such a wonderful and moving celebration of a God’s love and a really terrific trust in that love that I did not want my memory of it to be besmirched by Emma. And so I turned to look out over the rolling Iowa landscape…free now that the service of was over to allow myself the luxury of my own sadness and tears. Then suddenly I heard, “AWWWWWPHF…YEEEEEEEEEE…”, followed by a heavy THUNK! And then gasps from the mourners.
I turned around and Emma had disappeared. She was gone! She had completely vanished and it wasn’t until I saw the downcast eyes of nearly everyone around the grave that I realized that Emma was down inside the open tomb. She had fallen in! The ground next to the hole had given way and she had tumbled in.
The pastor standing next to me had also not seen what had happened because he too had turned to avoid watching Emma preach, recite, pray…whatever the hell she was doing. Looking at me he scrunched up his brow quizzically and inquired, “Did she throw herself in?”, thinking that Emma might regard this as an appropriate gesture of grief under the circumstances.
I have NEVER had such a HUGE swing of emotion in my LIFE!!! One moment doing all I could, but failing, to fight back the tears, and the in the next moment doing all I could to keep from falling on the ground, doubled up in paroxysm of laughter! Once again I turned my back on crowd to stare out over the panorama. Sue later told me that if I had thought to fool the crowd about what I was doing, my shoulders shaking up and down completely gave me away.
No one wanted to help Emma out of the hole, because no one wanted to be associated with the event. A bishop signaled to two of the funeral home employees who were standing thirty yards down the hill by a small grove of trees smoking cigarettes and waiting for crowd to begin heading back to their cars. They came running and eventually and somewhat indelicately extracted Emma from her predicament. No more dirt was thrown by mourners although I heard one in the crowd say as Susan and I were leaving, “I felt like coming up and throwing a handful of dirt on HER.” In a very un-Christ-like way, I started laughing again.
Emma was in no way embarrassed by the debacle and was near the front of the line back at the church for the late afternoon supper. “Are you okay”, I asked when I ran into her near the cake table.
“Presbyterians make better potato salad than Lutherans”, she said accusingly.
“Yeah, I know”, I said, “We’re all aware, but we’re working on it.”
She looked around and then leaned in and whispered, “I think more mustard.”
“AHHH…”, I replied also looking around as if she was Ethel Rosenberg handing me the secret to the hydrogen bomb. “More mustard”.
Later I saw Dick also talking to her with a generous smile on his face. She said something, he laughed. She said something else and he nodded thoughtfully. Finally, he patted her on the back and gave her a hug. If she had messed up his wife’s near perfect funeral you could not have told it by him. Dick was quite a guy.
* * *
I was still ruminating on the conversation that I had had with Rabbi Orach and was still bothered by my inability to make sense out of the two natures of Jesus. For my way of telling the Christian story to be cogent it was necessary that Jesus somehow be both God and a human. Jesus had to be a human because inasmuch as he invited folks to imitate him he had to be normal enough to be imitatable. At the same time, however, he had to be God. Why? Again, because inasmuch as our sense of imperfection caused us to fear and hide from God, only a God who loved us enough to die for us could effectively bring us out of hiding.
However, the more deeply I allowed myself to consider the two natures issue the more convinced I became that Jesus could not have been God. God inspired…yes! Opened up to God’s wishes…yes! A remarkable servant of God…yes! A theological savant…yes! God incarnate…not so much.
Another issue that struck me as I thought about all of this was the question of how introspectively self-conscious the average person actually is. Said differently, how guilty do most folks feel. How many really DO regard themselves as significantly less than the best persons they can be? Certainly Paul and Augustine and Luther had robust consciences. But does everyone? Not in my experience. I think that I have a fairly well developed super-ego, but at the same time I’ve known people who could flat-out kick my ass super-ego wise.
Likewise there are also people I have known who seem genuinely to regard themselves as impeccably without blot or blemish. They do not seem guileful enough to be hiding from God as “futurists”, “naturalists” or “trivialists”, and in the presence of a confessional formula like, “I confess that I have sinned in thought, word and deed by what I have done and left undone …”, simply shrug, smile and say, “got it covered.”
So…my soteriological theory (my how God saves theory0 had a couple of big holes in it and I needed to go back to work. I decided to do this by learning as much more about Jesus as I could, and to that end I read many scholarly biographies of Jesus, much about the history that was an important antecedent to Jesus’ life, and a lot of books and other materials that described the politics, sociology, and economics of first century Palestine. Here’s some of what I discovered:
• A little more than a 160 years before Jesus was born Israel, under the leadership of a priestly family named Maccabeus, was successful in a military revolt against their Greek overlords. This revolt occurred because Jews wanted their political independence and because they were concerned that Greek culture was watering down their Jewish-ness.
• Subsequent to the successful revolt Jonathan Maccabeus was crowned King of Israel and established what cames to be known as the Hasmonean Dynasty. (“Hasmonea” is a word that means “respected ones”. It was a title not the family name).
• A few years later in 150 B.C.E. King Jonathan claimed for himself the additional role of High Priest. No one in Israel’s history had ever been both king and high priest and this move infuriated the aristocratic and wealthy priestly family whose last name was Zadok. The high priest job had belonged to them and their descendents going all the way back to the reign of King Solomon 750 years earlier. In opposition to this usurpation they formed a kind of political party that became known as the “Sadducea” party (based on the name “Zadok”). Eventually, in an attempt to placate the Sadducees a later Maccabean/”Hasmonean” king allowed the Sadducees to control the 70 member legislative body known as the Sanhedrin AND be in charge of the temple and all of the sacrificing done there. (Because Jesus hated the temple and sacrifice system the Sadducees were largely responsible for his death).
• Another faction who hated the combining of the king and high priest roles was a group of pious men known as “Pharisees”. The word “Pharisee” means “separated” which is close to what “holy” also means in Hebrew. (A “holy” person separates him or herself from conventional attitudes and behaviors which are at variance with God’s will). Pharisees were mostly aristocratic laymen who were well represented in the Sanhedrin. When the Sadducees were given control of the temple and the lion’s share of representation in the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees were outraged and severed their allegiance with the Sadducees. In time they became fierce rivals especially after the Pharisees decided that temple sacrifice was not as important as living a life that was in strict compliance with cultic rules for prayer, fasting, diet, dress and Sabbath observance. Pharisees were also at odds with Sadducees insofar as Pharisees regarded ALL of the books of the Old Testament as divinely inspired. By contrast the Sadducees believed only the Pentatuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) were unimpeachable. Finally, because the notion of life after death (either by way of resurrection or the soul’s immediate translation to Heaven) was a product of later books of the Bible (Third Isaiah, Enoch and the Wisdom of Solomon), the Sadducees didn’t buy it, but the Pharisees did. Jesus was probably deeply influenced by the Pharisees. He may have been taught to read in one of their schools. He may actually for a time have been a Pharisee. However, he eventually broke with them over what it truly means to be compliant with God’s wishes.
• Yet a third group upset with the Hasmonean Dynasty’s King/Priest model was the Essenes. The Essene movement was begun by an unknown priest (probably a Zadokite) later known to his followers as “the Righteous Teacher”. The Essenes established a monastery in the eastern Judean desert and like the Pharisees dedicated themselves to a scrupulous obedience of the cultic laws regarding prayer, fasting, diet, dress and Sabbath observance. Several daily ritual baths were also a part of their piety. Unlike Pharisees, however, Essenes dedicated themselves to the ascetic life. The first century Jewish historian Josephus writes, “The Essenes hated riches and it is a law among them that those who join must let whatever they have be shared with the whole of the order.” In this the Essenes are reminiscent of John the Baptizer and his student, Jesus, both of whom made use of ritual washing and both of whom called upon wealthy persons to share with the poor most or all that they had.
• During the reign of the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus (135-104 B.C.E.) Israel expands its borders to incorporate Samaria and the non-Jewish eastern kingdom of Idumaea. The Idumeans are forced to convert to Judaism and many Idumeans and their descendents become reluctant Jews. During the reign of the next Hasmonean king, Alexander Jannaeus, Galilee and parts of modern day Jordan and Syria are annexed to Israel.
• Alexander Jannaeus is succeeded by his wife (76-67 B.C.E.) and following her death sons Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II fight for the throne and cause a civil war that lasts for four years.
• In 63 B.C.E. the Roman general Pompey intervened in the civil war and established Israel as a vassal state of Italy. He arbitrarily selected Hyrcanus II as over against his brother to be the puppet king. About this time a wealthy Idumean (reluctant Jew) by the name of Antipater was appointed governor of Judea by the puppet king. Later (47 B.C.E.) Antipater’s son, Herod, was appointed governor of Galilee where, with Roman help, he brutally put down a revolt of pious Jews who were upset with Rome’s occupation of Israel. This endeared him to the Italians.
• In 40 B.C.E. Parthians (Persians enemies of Rome) invaded Israel, ousted Hyrcanus, Antipater and Herod and put Hyrcanus’ nephew, Antigonus, on the throne. Herod fled to Rome and talked the Senate into declaring him King of Israel. With Roman forces to back him Herod returned to Israel and eventually defeated and killed Antigonus and thereafter began a thirty-three year reign of terror in his own country replete with new and very heavy taxes, illegal expropriation of peasant land, and a heavy handed secret police who “disappeared” suspected dissidents.
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