Getting Loose

Being Used

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.

Deborah Sue Thomason

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.

Shaking the Hand of the Man

I had begged Charles many times to go.

He would usally just look away and wave his hand as if to say, "Scram, Son, you are bothering me."

But today he actually called me to go. I was glad to have him.

Man, the place was crowded. Cars everywhere.

Even the meeting was crowded with guests and members.

The speaker spoke on autism, and that was clearly a topic that moved Charles’s heart as his beloved child is autistic.

After the meeting was over, since we have both parked our cars out back, I knew a short cut and asked Charles if he wanted to follow me to get to where he needed to go.

He consented, and after walking through a rat maze, we were getting close to the last door to push open, when out of the corner of my eye, I happened to notice a man sitting at a table who looked familiar. I thought to myself, "Naw . . . it couldn’t be him. Just a look-alike."

But Charles looked up and exclaimed, "Mr. President!" And walked over to him and greeted him profusely.

He recounted to him a story the details of which were familiar to the President.

And when the President asked him what he was doing now, instead if pulling out his prestigious work at a national level, Charles replied that he was the emeritus pastor of my church. And then he said, "I’d like for you to meet our senior pastor."

The President stuck out his hand.

I was flabbergasted. I shook it and said, "Mr. President, it is so very good to meet you."

Later, I thought, "Wow! How many people ever get to shake the hand of the President of the United States of America?"

I know I am the first one in my family ever to have done so.

The Good Physician

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.

Big Brother Alive and Well in the Bluegrass State

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.

Crazy

"This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy!"

That’s what she spoke as I talked to her in the chapel just before the general public was to enter. And indeed, she was right. Her husband of just a few years, dead at 36. So senseless. So stupid. So very crazy.

But that is what an addictive disease can do to you. It can make you act crazy. It can make the lives of the people around you that you love the very most, crazy. And it can come to a stark and senseless end. Way before it should have.

There are just no adequate words to say that will make anything better anytime soon. And some people say the most stupid things in an earnest effort at trying to be helpful, when silence and presence would do so very much more.

But my heart went out to her. Two grade school children whose daddy is gone. And though she may never be able to grasp this, though she will always wonder what she could have done differently, she really did do the absolute very best that she knew how to. She went the second mile. And the third mile. And the fourth mile. And the . . .

Sometimes, things in life are just tragic.

Kathryn

You learn a lot when you go to see someone, and just sit and listen. I love doing that very thing.

I had always known her as Kathryn. She has a rather serious look to her face. I know that she has traveled lots of miles so to speak in her journey of life.  She’ll admit it has been a pretty good one for her many decades.

But when she was much younger, she was Kate or Katie. I found that intriguing. All of a sudden a younger girl appeared who was full of life and activities that involved siblings and cousins—never mind whether they were first or second—they were kin and that is all that mattered.

She’s outlived two of the children she helped to rear. She has outlived two of her husbands, and some days are better than others.

She gets frustrated with her inability to precisely call a name or a date or a place, but the older I get, the more I sympathize.

But what really stunned me was that she was a Beckendorf. And that set of dogs is always related to each other through one way or another. Of course the one I knew the best was Harvey Beckendorf, a fellow clergyman. And then I found out there’s another Beckendorf who is pastoring a church in Beaumont under another name. I felt a kinship with her that I had not previously felt.

She was so appreciative of the visit. It made her day. She said, "You know, you can hardly find anyone anymore who cares about what it was like in days gone by."

But that is not me. I love to hear the stories of days gone by. I find myself, the older I get, ruminating around in my mind decades ago, reliving, dissecting, analyzing, wondering, puzzling about events that I feel certain most everyone else has forgotten about.  But somehow they linger brightly in my mind. Why that is so, I don’t really know.

Shantini

She pronounces it SHAWN-t^e-knee’, and I went to take communion to her 90-year-old mother.  Florence was deeply appreciative.  Shantini had been in church last Sunday, but did not want to “bother” me with a request to bring the sacrament to her mom, because I was leaving in just a few days.

 

And so she was very surprised when I unexpectedly showed up on her doorstep.

 

She was very gracious, accommodating, and in a few minutes was able to help her mother down the steps for communion.  We all used the Methodist Worship Book for I had brought three copies with me, and we went through the service for Holy Communion in a home.

 

Afterwards Shantini and I got into a very interesting discussion about Sri Lanka, as that is the family home grounds.  Well, while it may be called Sri Lanka (a Sinhalese name), for hundreds of years, it was called Ceylon.  The island (off the SE coast of India), is beautiful, but after having gained independence from England, the two predominant ethnic groups began to undergo civil turmoil.  The Tamils who tended to be the more educated, and who coalesced in the north and east, had been the ruling class for hundreds of years.  But at independence, the Sinhalese became rulers by sheer force of numbers of ballots at the ballot box, and things began to change precipitously.  Ceylon was thrown out, and Sri Lanka (a Sinhalese name) took its place.  One day, a decree was suddenly made that the Tamil language could no longer be spoken, and overnight most, if not all, Tamil students were kicked out of universities.  The world’s first suicide bombers made their appearance in Sri Lanka. 

 

I had no idea about the turmoil, and wished I had made Shantini’s acquaintance much earlier in my stay to glean more of her perspective.  Shantini’s mother kept interrupting her narrative telling her in Tamil that I was a busy man and had other things to do besides learning this piece of obscure history.  But I loved it, and I thirsted for more of the Shantini's story.  Who knows?  Maybe she might have taught me a little of their alphabet--a very distinctive lettering that I've not seen elsewhere.

 

On another day, Shantini took my partner and me through the Southall section of Ealing—it is like the “Little India” section of London.  There one can find a Punjab flavour of India, that very multi-cultural country, and the Southall section conveys a representative flavour of that part.  As an example, here is the largest Sikh temple outside of India in Southall.   While in Southall, we got some mango,tea, and spices.   

 

Shantini was most gracious, accommodating, and had a very infectious smile and a winsome personality.

BABS

Dave and Marian were very generous to invite us over to their house for a supper.  Again, very English . . . but then what would you expect?  I am in England for crying out loud!

He's a Methodist, don't you know, and she's an Anglican, don't you see?  But they have a great marriage, and a generous heart.

The first course was carrot soup.  It tasted great, but I could have never identified it as carrot.  It was so yellow like there was a lot of butter or food coloring in it.  I kept asking if there were such things as yellow carrots.

"Well maybe there are . . .  but I've never seen one!"

"So you just blended those kind of carrots that grow In the ground and are orange when you pluck them up?"

"Why, that's the very ones."

"But this soup is so yellow.  Did you add some yellow squash to it?"

"Yellow squash?  Why not at all!"

"So it's just carrots, is it?"

"Isn't that what I just said?"

"Why, come to think of it, I believe you said the very thing!"

But it was great whatever it was.  And that was a huge hurdle for her to cross.  I tend to like only raw carrots.  I'm just not a fan of cooked carrots unless they are candied in some way.  And I don't mean just that thin gruel of a sugar glaze.  I mean candied like a think, browned barbecue sauce.

Dinner was great, their back yard was delightful and the gardening evident, but what was superb was BABS.

Now for those of you who do not know, I love barbershop quartet singing.  Not that I am in a group or anything, but I love the very close harmony.  I wish the church in the village could somehow manage to pull off a song once a month.

At any rate, Dave, who happens to be part of a barbershop society group, had this recording of the American group who had won a gold medal in BABS.  They were phenomenal to put it mildly. As I was listening to the introduction by the American chap, I started laughing. 

Dave wanted to know what was so funny. 

I said, "That bloke doesn't have an accent!"

"Doesn't have an accent?"  And then he could see what I meant.

A song that really focused the difference between American and English cultures' use of the language, was using a version of George & Ira Gershwin’s, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”

They highlighted the way we say and use different words and expressions—tomato; potato; loo, bathroom; queue, in line; diversion, detour; etc.  It was a lot of fun sitting with our British hosts and laughing about how differently we use our common language.

The Golden Triangle

A friend of mine, Ted Campbell, a Beaumont boy, asked me what was distinctive about Southeast Texas.  This is some of how I responded:

    Houston claims to represent SE Texas, but as anyone from the Golden Triangle knows, it just ain't so.  The ethos of Southeast Texas truly is much more likely to be found within the confluence of the Trinity, Neches, and Sabine rivers that wind and twist through its very soul.

    At first I wanted to say that what is distinctive is its geography.  But that is not  accurate.  Even though a geologist could map out the convergence of the piney woods with the coastal plain, what is distinctive is much deeper than what can be seen or touched or heard.

    I think that at root and core, what is distinctive is an intangible nexus of the raw bounty this land had to offer in making a fortune—or at least a way of life—from fishing in the waters of the bay or gulf, to the timbers of its mighty forests, to the fertile land yielding a rich bounty of rice, or the drilling for black gold and its many spin-off industries.  Long before derivatives were some arcane financial component to a corporate back page, it was alive and well in Southeast Texas with its magnetic siren call beckoning to those looking for a higher wage, a better standard of living, than could be found from its contiguous geographic cousins.  It was a call that few could resist.

    The promised yield was nearly mesmerizing.  The opportunity for a better life was appealing.  The conjoining of the rich and poor, the black and white, the educated and the uncultivated, provided a rich brew that bequeathed to the residents of Southeast Texas, a malt in which friendships could be forged, in which ideas could be distilled, and in which memories could be sifted endlessly—whether through the turbulence of parsing junior high alliances or the sophisticated pastiche of people bent on improving not just their economic lot, but the very heart of their social fabric as well.

    The environment, the context that engenders southeast Texas is unique to itself, and yet like so many other areas, is a rich loam from which could be fashioned and formed lives that made a difference—contemporaneously, as well as historically.