HouseCalls

When bad things happen

jvhouse@nwwaucc.org — Thu, 15 Sep 05 20:07:00 UT

More than once since Hurricane Katrina hit, I've heard people ask why this had to happen. Often it's phrased "Why did God allow such devastation to occur?" It's an ancient question. Pat Robertson and others have given their concrete answers, saying Hurricane Katrina was God's punishing response to the human sinfulness of people in the Gulf Coast.

I don't find that helpful. I did find this blog entry by Chuck Gutenson, professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, helpful today:

Excerpt:

There were those who attributed the tragedies of September 11, 2001 to divine judgment, and there are now some voices attempting the same thing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. If and when you hear these claims being made, keep two things in mind. First, the connection between suffering and wrong doing is not nearly so easy to figure out, and those of us who seek to follow Jesus should know that. The bible and history are full of cases where the wicked prosper and the good die young. Second, Jesus gives no basis to think that those who do not suffer tragic circumstances are any better morally than those who do. In fact, he explicitly denies the connection. So, when you hear someone attribute the suffering in New Orleans to divine judgment on particular sins, feel free to quote God: Who are you to obscure Godâs designs with empty-headed words?

The whole thing is very much worth a read.

Pat Robertson and his Fatwah

jvhouse@nwwaucc.org — Fri, 26 Aug 05 12:01:00 UT

Andy Lang, a former member of the national staff of the United Church of Christ, has written a couple of outstanding posts on the latest absurdity from Pat Robertson, who called for the assassination of Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez.

You may want to read them here:
Blue in a Red State

From the outcry in most of the media, I draw comfort in not being alone in believing that for the leader of a nominally Christian organization -- someone who is frequently called upon by those same media to offer a "Christian response" to this issue or that -- to call for the assassination of a foreign leader is not only way out of line, it is, in fact directly against any of God's commandments, laws, teachings or precepts that I know of.

Andy has gone into much more theological detail than I have or will here. I find his posts compelling and, as usual with Andy, beautifully written and theologically sound. I encourage folks to read them.

Meanwhile, I'm off to Madeline Island in beautiful Lake Superior, where I get to preach on Sunday at St. John's UCC, have a birthday dinner with friends, and enjoy God's creation in a different and lovely spot. Lucky me!

Connections

jvhouse@nwwaucc.org — Mon, 23 May 05 01:37:00 UT

I've always been an indifferent journaller. You've probably guessed that by now -- especially since the last blog entry was posted in February!

This weekend was about connections. The first was a re-connection with a dear friend of long standing (we don't say "old friend" anymore, now that the first number in both our ages is a "5"). Jolene and I have been in and out of each other's lives since I was a sophomore in high school and she was a senior. We were best friends then and remained so until I went to college, she joined the Army, and we lost touch. We found each other again when I was out of college and unemployed and she was out of the Army, married, and the mother of a darling baby daughter. Miraculously, we had both come back to Eau Claire, our home town, and found each other again.

She saved my sanity in many ways in those days when we were all broke and barely scraping together the means to provide roofs over our heads and food on our tables. Saturday night after Saturday night, we were at her house, watching "Love Boat," playing dominoes, and eating nachos with cheese dip. The power of that connection, cemented in the experience of finding community even when there was no money to provide what the consumer society called "entertainment," cannot be overestimated.

About ten years ago, Jolene and I lost touch. She was going through a tough time, I had moved far away to Wyoming, and somehow the contacts I tried to make didn't connect.

About six weeks ago, a wedding invitation arrived. Valerie, who is now, impossibly, 26 years old, was getting married. I hadn't seen her or her mother in about 15 years. I had to go.

Of course, I was nervous. And, of course, there was no need to be. Jolene was as thrilled to see me as I was to see her. In the big clichÃ© that is often life, we began talking as though we had never been out of touch. We got caught up and vowed that we would never let so much time lapse again without seeing each other.

The weekend brought other connections, as well. The wedding was in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where I happened to live from the time I was two years old until I was ten days short of turning eight. I know I was ten days short of turning eight on the day we moved because that was the day my sister was born. It's always nice to have definitive markers for the changes in one's life.

I found the house we lived in and was amused to find that the block still looks like the block that was indelibly etched in my memory. There was the Quinlivan's driveway right across the street, the Mays' house on the corner, the blind alley I rocketed out of on the first day the training wheels came off my bike, only to run right into a passing truck. (I still remember seeing stars and birdies and coming to consciousness to see Peter, the neighbor whose house was next to that alley, standing on the other side of the street, waving his arms, and yelling "Smash up! Smash up!" I was fine, though I gave my parents a scare.)

It stuns me, sometimes, how clear those childhood memories are. I looked at the sidewalk in front of Sally's house on the corner, and remembered my dad telling me about the bad words about my brother that I wrote on that sidewalk in chalk when I was four years old. I looked at the lawn across the street and remembered learning to ride a bike there, knowing that the neighbors had lent us their yard because it was the biggest, softest expanse in the neighborhood. I fell down on that grass a lot!

When I got home and checked my email, I found a new blog entry from another connection. This is Keith Snyder, a person I've never met, but whom I know from years of trading posts on online message boards. Keith is an artist -- a writer, musician, filmmaker, and genius. I love his work and his sense of humor. Five months ago, he and his wife welcomed twin sons into their lives. The blog entry he wrote today blew me away. See if it touches you, too:Keith Snyder's Blog.

I was stunned by the elegant simplicity of the first stanza. Blessings to you,
Jeanny

News from Emily

jvhouse@nwwaucc.org — Thu, 3 Feb 05 22:23:00 UT

I've called my oldest niece "Emily the Fabulous" ever since she was a little tot. Her advent into our family, like that of every first child of the next generation, was a source of great joy and blessing nineteen years ago next Sunday. She's lived far away from me in New York State her whole life, but summers and Christmases and other visits have kept us close.

One summer, when she was three and in her dinosaur-loving phase, I bought her a set of sheets covered in brightly colored dinosaurs. She fell in love with them on the spot, took them outside and made parachutes and tents and all kinds of things out of them before she put them on her bed. I think she still has them, come to think of it.

She graduated from high school last summer and decided to take a year off before college. Wanting to make it a year full of different and powerful experiences, she chose a variety of ways to engage her heart and lively curiosity. She worked full time on a presidential campaign this fall and learned what it meant to invest her heart and soul and nearly every waking hour into a cause that she believed in with the full intensity of late adolescence/early adulthood.

A couple of weeks ago, she took off for Ghana to work with a volunteer organization there. The one stipulation she made to the organization was "No teaching!" She had no training to teach and wanted to do something that she felt she could do well enough to help people. Of course, they put her in a classroom right away with 2-9 year olds! She's now moved on to a different experience and sounds much more enthusiastic about that.

Already she is having experiences that will shape her life -- living with a Ghanaian family, rising early and trying to carry huge containers of water on her head like the Ghanaian women do (and spilling most of it), learning that receiving hospitality graciously may drive you past your comfort level.

My grandfather used to say, "That sound you hear is doors closing behind you." I've remembered that, and wanted to make sure that the doors closing behind me had opened onto a great new experience and I'd walked through it with my eyes open and my senses alive to something new.

In seminary, I went on a study tour to Nicaragua. I was there for just three weeks, but it was an important and life-shaping experience. I never forgot what I learned from my contacts with people there; those people -- peasant men and women at a brick-making cooperative, a ring of children who were thrilled that a norteamericana could talk to them in Spanish, mothers whose sons had disappeared, and many more -- have found places to live in my heart. I try to remember to bring them with me when I go places and see through their eyes. I'm not always successful at that.

Emily the Fabulous will have many people enter her heart and mind during these months in Ghana. She will always carry them wherever she goes. She's a long way from the three-year-old who fell in love with the dinosaur-print bedsheets. But the magic in her eyes from that moment has never left; it has only intensified as she has soaked up the world around her. That's a blessing beyond measure.

Late night on retreat

jvhouse@nwwaucc.org — Mon, 31 Jan 05 01:00:00 UT

Iâm here at Pilgrim Center for a conference staff retreat. As usual, Bob Mutton and I stay up long past everyone else, talking about work, life, everything. I go to the car just before 1am to pick up pre-sleep reading material, and the January night air is perfectly cool, though not cold, and clear. Without a coat, I feel a bit of chill, but night's clarity and silence compensate.

Suddenly the outside lights go out and I realize they are on timers and have reached their limit. I've not yet reached mine.

Suddenly, the path to the lake is too dark to travel in winter's icy uncertainty, so I return to Oakmound Lodge and its safe deck overlooking Green Lake. For a few minutes I stand coatless on the deck, looking at lights across the ice, wondering which are the Heidel House, where we stayed last year and the year before. I think of writer SJ Rozan and her winter blog entries, describing the ice of New York's rivers and the natural landscape of the city, and I glory in my landscape, so dearly familiar and so new as I look at it in winter's early morning light. I wonder if summer's lushness would allow me to see the lake so well as I can see it through winter's nudity. I feel the cool air and relish sensation. I'm such a winter person.

And most of all, despite the messes I've been party to this week, the personal and church conflicts with family and friends, in tonight's evening prayers and in the absolute stillness of this January night on the lake, I find peace.

Wishes

jvhouse@nwwaucc.org — Sun, 9 Jan 05 20:51:00 UT

I wish the Packers had an offense.
I wish the Packers had a defense.
I wish the Vikings didn't have either.
I wish the Vikings didn't have both.

I'm not really a football fan. I am, however, a Packer fan. It doesn't occur to me to watch football games in which the Packers aren't playing. Because I try to watch every game in which the Packers are playing, I know a few names of football players on other teams, and even some of the positions they play. My brother, who is both a football fan and a Packer fan, alternates between thinking it's kind of cool that I've come to love the Packers in my middle age and rolling his eyes at my ignorance of the sport in general.

I know a few things, a few rules. When I moved to Wyoming and decided to start following the Packers because it was a link with home, I bought The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Football Like a Pro, which helped with the rules and penalties. And I have a few trusty internet sites with football glossaries on them so I don't have to be really, really, really stupid when I talk to people who know what they're talking about.

I wonder if my relationship with the Packers and football is like some people's relationship with Christ and his church. I have friends who don't go to church, who have never said much about what they believe, even though I've asked, but who forward to me and to a list of their friends every chain e-mail that asks for prayers or has a spiritual theme. It always touches me when they send these, almost as if they're acknowledging that we have something to share, even if it's somewhat vague and ephemeral.

They say in Wisconsin that Green Bay Packer football is its own religion. I can't say that they're wrong. So here's another wish:

I wish more people knew as much about and were as passionate about their Christian faith as they do and are about the Packers.

That kind of Spirit is something I'd love to experience.

Novocaine

jvhouse@nwwaucc.org — Tue, 4 Jan 05 20:19:00 UT

I've been fighting a toothache for over a month now. I started popping ibuprofen for it in Orlando at the national UCC Search and Call conference, continued in Dayton at the Great Lakes Regional Church Start Event, went on to De Forest for a couple of meetings and La Crosse for Diane Martin's installation, kept up the "Vitamin I" during a flight to Bangor to be part of our in-care student, Burt Williams', mid-career review. Finally, home for a couple of days, I got into the dentist, who, of course, could find nothing wrong. He adjusted my bite a little and sent me on up to my family gathering for Christmas. The tooth didn't get better.

After a great Christmas punctuated by ibuprofen dosings, I came home, ready to face a dreaded root canal. On the way to the dentist, in a hurry, I failed to do what every kindergartner learns to do when crossing the street -- look both ways. The third call I made after the car in the far right hand lane hit me was to the dentist, cancelling the root canal.

Both drivers were ok; both cars badly damaged. My wallet will be lighter for the cost of a ticket for "failure to yield."

I spent a few days nursing a stiff neck and some wounded pride, waiting for the rescheduled dentist appointment. Today was the day.

It's amazing how much a problem that doesn't show up on an xray can hurt! It's those hidden pains that creep up and smack us much of the time, it seems. In dentistry, at least, they can give you Novocaine to numb you up and help the professionals help you. That's what they did today. And, of course, I ended up with the puffy jaw, lopsided lips, and inability to drink without dribbling for which Novocaine is so renowned.

The problem with Novocaine is that it takes its own sweet time wearing off. And as it wears off, it starts to itch. It's not an itch you can scratch; it's just a "Hello! I'm your mouth coming back to life!" itch. One of those tingly, kind of painful itches that signals a change.

Novocaine is not the only thing that numbs us. The images of disaster in Asia sweep over us, too unimaginable to process. They get added to the images of violence and war, poverty and despair that confront us from every side. It's hard not to be numbed by it all. If we really let ourselves feel it all in all its force, I don't know that we'd be able to get up and walk around in the world.

We can't let ourselves live in that numbed state, though. We have to let the Novocaine wear off, even though the wearing off itself may bring discomfort. We must allow the images and stories of hurting people around the world to enter into our consciousness, stir our hearts, provoke our tears, evoke our empathy, and move us to compassionate action. To do less is to be less than fully alive, less than fully present to the world God has given us.

The Novocaine wore off my tooth about 5:30. It's about 9:00 now. My tooth still hurts, but I'm convinced that if I live with it for a while, it will get better.

So will the world.

Seeing the old year out

jvhouse@nwwaucc.org — Thu, 30 Dec 04 13:44:00 UT

2004 wants to go out with a bang, it seems.

Catastrophic destruction in Asia with the earthquake-spawned tsunamis, massive loss of life, fear, anguish, loss -- I watch it all on CNN and cannot begin to comprehend the enormity of it. They'll need donations of money for weeks and months and years to come, so I'm thankful for organizations like Church World Service, through which the United Church of Christ often works, which partner with local grassroots organizations to help with rebuilding long after the organizations that mobilize for immediate assistance have pulled out. Any offerings you make through your churches can be sent to the Wisconsin Conference, where they will be forwarded on to Church World Service.

The war in Iraq continues to bring destruction, suffering, and death on every side. As always, we pray and work for peace.

It's been a crazy year in so many ways. As we bid farewell to 2004, let us look forward in hope to the promise hidden in days yet to come. I love these lines from Emily Dickinson on the subject of Hope:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.