Posted at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Since I am retired, once a month or so, I volunteer to put in some time toward helping the staff out with pastoral care needs. While Marvin UMC is a big church (3000+ members), we are tilted toward the upper end of the age spectrum. Hence there are far more pastoral care needs to attend to than the clergy on the staff can possibly get done.
Each time when I set out to do this, there are usually 30 names or so to choose from. I try to see who has had some minimal pastoral care work in the last 30 days, and then I set out to write three people, call three people, and visit three people. I never really know who I am going to pick in these categories ahead of time.
One of the people I called had cancer. They were trying a stem cell replacement in their bone marrow. It's really dicey. I shared that I also was undergoing cancer treatment. They immediately opened up about how hard it was on them. Having to be in Dallas for 7 more weeks as they had to be within half an hour of the hospital if things suddenly went bad. It was like being in prison in some ways. They apologized for getting into so much detail about their condition with me, and said they knew I didn’t call to listen to their troubles, and what did I really want? I said I wanted nothing from them. I knew they were on our prayer list and just wanted to touch base with them. They were surprised. When I call people, I rarely know if anything is wrong or not. All I really know is that they haven’t been in church for a while.
Another person that I actually went to see, opened up about their fear that their child was an alcoholic. “Is pushing them down, really the best option?” That’s a tough one, because ordinarily the answer is, more often than not, a “yes” to that one. I said that this parent had to learn to become exceedingly well self-defined—to love their child, yes, but to not enable their child. I didn’t know where the conversation was going to go. I had never met this person in my life, yet I told them that in my last church that I pastored, we had an exceptional program in place to help women with their addictive issues.
When I volunteer every so many weeks, I never know what people I am going to meet or talk to, and it always surprises me that I might be the very person they need to hear an encouraging word from. In fact, I realize in those moments I am but a tool that God uses to reach out to others. That’s a very humbling position to be in.
Posted at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I am a veteran acting in over 20 plays. But for the first time ever this year, I was asked to fill in a role
for Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, put on by Tyler Junior College's Academy of Dance. Ballet, while performed on a stage like a play is, is nevertheless a horse of another color. Completely.
“How so?” You may ask.
Well, let me count some of the ways:
1) Tchaikovsky’s music is sheer genius. I don’t see how one man could possibly come up with so many memorable tunes. It is astounding and stunning. While musicologists, I suppose, would say that Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven are his superiors, nevertheless, there is a magical element in Tchaikovsky's compositions that blow me away. Mozart’s tunes are also so memorable. The only thing I can conclude is that all of these men were somehow such sensitive spirits that they were able to channel music that was coming to them from a higher realm. I just cannot buy that their genius in music was solely the product of some human initiative or intuition.
2) Our cast for the Nutcracker had over 150 people in it.
I’ve never been in a play with that many. Kids were everywhere. Stage moms were running to and fro trying to corral their little darlings, yet they and the two principals that we hired all did a really fantastic job. The coordination, the choreography blows me away. Choreography is my absolute weakest suit with doing anything on stage, and all these dancers poured their hearts out. I would smile as I watched them give their all, knowing that what they were doing, I could never do. I marveled at their art and their singular focus to give the very best. As soon as they came off stage into the wings, some looked like they wanted to collapse, but going out again under the lights, you would never know it. They were once again in character making a valuable part of the story come to life.
3) I never knew how noisy pointe shoes were till I was up close and personal with them on stage. Whoa!
4) While the principals were dancing on stage, people in the wings were shouting paeans of affirmation and applauding their every move. I was astonished to put it mildly. In the theater of which I am accustomed, you would never do that kind of a thing. But in this instance it seemed more like fans rooting for their favorite players out of the boards!
5) When I was conscripted to take the part I did, I was looking for a director who was serious, hard charging, impatient, demanding, somewhat sarcastic, trying to push and motivate her dancers to do better than they had ever done, with zero toleration for any miscues or mistakes. In fact, when I first met Carolyn Hanna , I thought, she can’t possibly be the director. She’s too nice, too pretty, too laid back, too comforting, too empathetic, etc.
Then I read about her.
She studied at Julliard? No way! Those people are too full of themselves, allowing the basic snobbery with which people who inhabit NYC look upon the rest of the world. Not Carolyn Hanna. But it was Carolyn Hanna. I came to understand that she was the bowsprit figurehead who would calm the turbulent waters of anxiety with her experienced insights, her subtle coaching that “You can do this.” Her calm, collected self-defining behavior imparted health and a greater resolve to do even better next time, to the entire cast.
6) Ballet is a wonderful artistic medium
that can stir all sorts of passion not only in the dancer, but also in the individual and collective audience member(s). If you’ve never been to one, put it on your bucket list. I still marvel at how the thighs of the ballerinos
look like football players, yet they are as graceful and energetic as any human being I’ve ever seen.
Posted at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Well, I have finally begun to accept the idea that no one is going to ask me to teach in seminary.
So, I have thrown out notes that I took over 40 years ago on courses like "Church and World", "Theological Method", "Systematic Theology", "Hebrew I", "Greek I" etc.
It was fun sifting through some of the notes and comments of my own teachers had put on my papers, but I can recognize that I probably should have done this long ago.
I had one binder that was probably 4 inches thick of notes and papers. I've whittled it down to two inches.
Posted at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
My gosh, I can’t believe it has been five years (to the day, no less). No one wants tomes; they want sound bites, hence the popularity of Twitter, which is being eclipsed by Snapchat (and now that I sent my youngest son one, he has sworn off that.)
Posted at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Oh, she was w-a-a-a-a-a-y out of my league. But I had always admired her from afar. She was a cheerleader at Beaumont High. She went to the church I grew up in— Trinity UMC. She sang in our youth choir. For a period of time she was in MYF when Patsy Quested was there and Al Frost and others. She would volunteer as a junior high kid to work with the Vacation Bible School kids in the summer. In 1967 she was the Neches River Festival Queen. But I just found out last night that Debbie Thomason has died.
I do not know all of her claims to fame. What I remember was that she played the part of the girl, Luisa, in the Beaumont Community Players rendition of the Fanastaicks, back in the ‘60's. Until she landed that role, I did not really know that that troupe even existed. It shows you how sheltered I was. The reviews she got were raving. The first play I was in, For Heaven’s Sake, she was in as well.
I can’t get over that she has died.
She was one of Dean Martin’s Golddiggers and toured with USO. She was a charmer to be very, very sure.
I remember her parents, M. V. and Clarice. They seemed older to me as a child, and perhaps they had her later in life. I never really knew. What I did know was that she was larger than life—energetic, infectious, mesmerizing, coltish, stunning, beautiful, alluring.
I just can’t believe that she is gone.
Good bye, Debbie. I’ll see you down the road.
Posted at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Man it was very, very tender to the touch.
My first thought was, "Man, I do not remember banging my head this bad!" Yet there was a slightly raised place on my skull like from a concussion, yet it felt a little crusty. I thought, "What is up with that? Psoriasis?"
Then I noticed above my sideburn there was the same thing. Then I noticed I had some hives by my eye and lip and on my cheek. So I tried 25 mg. of Benedryl. Didn’t even phase it. So before I went to work, I got some Claritin to deal with the wheals. Still nothing. It looked like a pimple or two was trying to form by my lower lip. I thought, "Have I been eating all that fat or greasy of foods? What is up with THIS?"
Next I began to notice some recurring shooting of pain on my head on these spots. And I thought, "Man, what is up WITH THIS?"
I went to bed after having taken some acetaminophen (which I rarely take), but about by 1 a.m., the shooting pain woke me up. And I thought, "Man, What is UP WITH THIS?" I could not go back to sleep. I did not know what to do. I began to think, "Man, I wonder if I have the shingles?"
But then I thought, "Why it can’t be the shingles. I’ve already had that shingles shot that all the old folks are supposed to take." Another shooting pain occurred, and I thought, "Man, what IS UP WITH THIS?"
I went to a web site and just tried to use it like a recipe book. I have these symptoms, tell me what I got. But wouldn’t you know it, I could find no such site. I thought, "Man, WHAT IS UP WITH THIS?"
Now, just to touch the scalp area was painful. The right side of my neck was swollen. I looked at myself in the mirror, and I said, "MAN, WHAT IS UP WITH THIS?"
I began to focus on that maybe I did have shingles after all. Nothing else made sense to me. Of course, I went to the dark side for a moment, and thought maybe I have some weird stage four cancer that is erupting. And then I thought, "Well, no. That is unlikely. I just had a well man physical. Something would have shown up in the blood work."
The pain was getting greater. I thought, "I wonder if I have any hydrocodones left over?" Eureka! I popped two into my mouth at about 3 a.m. Within 20 minutes I was drifting off to sleep.
I made an appointment to see my internist. He is a neat, very knowledgeable, board certified kind of a guy. I love our give and take and verbal sparring. He walked into the room and I said, "I just want to see if you are as good of a diagnostician as I am."
Not taking to it kindly he said, "Listen up! I am better than you are."
I said, "I hope you are, but I just wanted to see if you are at least as good as me. I’m guessing Herpes zoster."
He said, "I knew that before I even came into the room."
I said, "Oh, come on, give me a freaking break. You may be a doctor, but you are not a wizard. Oh, I get it, you heard it from one of your technicians whom I told her that that is what I thought I had!"
He said, "Wrong, camel breath. When I saw on the chart that you had some pain on the right side of your scalp and on top, I said to myself, I said, ‘That dude has shingles.’ When I walked into the door and saw your face my diagnosis was confirmed!"
I said, "Well, you really are a pretty good diagnostician."
Then I sat down and shut up and listened as he lectured me.
Posted at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This is a very thorny issue. There is no black and white. Only shades of gray.
Apparently, the Board of Ordained Ministry (BOM) of the Louisville Area of the United Methodist Church is asking candidates for ministry to "friend" Kelly McDonald, not even on the BOM, in order to engage in "Big Brother" monitoring.
Now, to be fair to the Kentucky Annual Conference’s BOM, apparently a prospective "employer" can indeed ask for a FaceBook password (and other social media of its ilk)—just like they can ask for a psychological exam, testamentary evidence from former employers, a physical exam, etc. Of course, a "prospective employee" is not obligated to provide that password, but then neither is the prospective employer obligated to "hire" said prospective employee.
Of course, though, the BOM of the KY conference could do all sorts of workarounds without blatantly asking for "friending." And there is nothing to stop a person who is a friend, and also not under an obligation of any kind of confidentiality, from printing off what he or she reads in the content of a candidate who posted straying words or anathematized behavior.
Yet, for a prospective "employer" to demand such a thing invites all sorts of negative publicity, such as the attention of the ACLU. My experience is that bishops have an instinctual loathing of lawsuits and most will accommodate to a large degree to avoid one without violating conscience or integrity.
If there are "prospective employees" looking at the Kentucky Annual Conference and do not like what they are being asked to do, there are plenty of other conferences who have no such standard for employment.
It’s as simple as that, and as thorny as that.
Posted at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)