Category Archives: Life

The Mr. Bean-like Wedding

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The wedding I’m remembering took place in August, 1972 at Shalom House, the ecumenical campus ministry center at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater that housed a collaborative Roman Catholic and Protestant campus ministry.

The bride and broom were students active in the campus ministry. Max, we’ll call him, a counter-cultural jazz flutist with long hair down his back raised in the arch-conservative Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church, had become involved in the progressive protestant campus ministry. The bride, whom we’ll call Elizabeth, was raised Roman Catholic and was active in the Catholic Campus Ministry.

Because it was a “mixed” marriage involving at least one Christian tradition that viewed the other as going to Hell, Father Charlie and I officiated together at the wedding. Charlie, a much loved priest known for his light touch and quick laugh, and I were colleagues and best of friends.

Imagine the scene in the small Shalom House living room.

Father Charlie and I take our places at one end of the living room, followed by Max, who has replaced his normal attire of blue jeans and a tie-dyed shirt with the light tan polyester suit purchased just for this occasion. Elizabeth enters wearing a lovely traditional white gown every bride still wears, forgetting the ancient meaning of the symbolism. They’ve “known” each other, as the Good Book puts it, for quite awhile.

The mid-afternoon temperature is in the high 90s. There is no air conditioning. Max is sopping wet, sweat pouring from his nose and chin onto the new polyester suit.

It seems he’s in danger of fainting. “Don’t lock your knees,” I whisper to Max, just hang loose.” The whole room feels more than a little uptight. Wisconsin Synod Lutherans and Roman Catholics don’t share the same space, except at the drug store.

Because the guests are from war traditions, Father Charlie and I have printed out every word of the service. The bride and groom, and each of the 50 guests has a copy of the service. Every word of it.

Father Charlie’s and my words are in regular type; responses by the bride, groom, or congregation are in bold type. Charlie and I had agreed to alternate leading. But we have also decided that whichever one of us is not leading will help prompt the congregation in the bold type responses.

All is well until we come to the consent questions, the “I will” questions.

Charlie, reading the regular type, asks Max the question. Max responds: I will.

I ask Elizabeth, “Will you have Max to be your wedded husband, to live with him and cherish him, in the holy bond of marriage?”

The bass voice from next to me answers I Will! before Elizabeth can respond. I look at Charlie, Charlie puts his hand to his mouth, opens his eyes wide and says, “Oops!”

Father Charlie and I worked together for four fun-filled years. The day of Max and Elizabeth’s celebration of Holy Matrimony was a Mr. Bean kind of day.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 11, 2015

 

 

 

 

Verse – Yawn

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Mr. Bean, Rowan Atkinson

Mr. Bean, Rowan Atkinson

My preaching was very specific,
I was sure my words were terrific,
But the folks in the pew
Had a much different view:
“Your sermons were all soporific.”

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, 12/11/15

ANECDOTE FROM GORDON:

While preaching a sermon I thought was at least passable, a worshiper with dementia let out an audible “Ho-Hum” during what was meant to be a pregnant pause. It has the makings of a Mr. Bean skit.

 

Verse – Bending Down, Looking Up

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As readers of Views from the Edge (VFTE) may know, Steve Shoemaker, my poet colleague on VFTE has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His sense of humor remains strong. This verse recalls a moment with Steve and four other seminary classmates following a rare Cubs’ win at Wrigley Field in Wrigleyville, Chicago.

wrigley-field-2014

BENDING DOWN, LOOKING UP

A towering 69 year-old figure standing
six-feet-eight, Steve saunters slowly
through the post-game crowd outside
“the Friendly Confines” of Wrigleyville
like a watchtower on skates, looking
far and near for who knows what.

A very happy young woman as high
as he is tall pulls on his sleeve, asking
a question only he, bending far down,
can hear. He smiles but shakes his head
to whatever offer threatened to bring
him down to a lower happiness high.

Two years later at 72, he might be
looking again for the Wrigleyville fan
for something to ease the pain, settle
his stomach, give some relief from
the newly diagnosed cancer, a pill
or toke or two to raise him back up
to the watchtower, now six-feet-seven.

We who couldn’t hear the question
now smile, bend down low, and look up
beyond Steve’s lofty height with prayers
for courage, strength, whatever will keep
him tall in the game where everyone wins
and loses, and quite unexpectedly,
feels a gentle tug on an old shirtsleeve.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Dec. 8, 2015

Verse – Jackie was the most kind

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In 1969 I started Duke
to get a Ph.D. They gave me ten
long years to finish, but for me it took
a bit more time… I had a job, and then
two kids, and boy, could I procrastinate.
A great new novel to be read, a cause
to join, a film to see, a verse to write…

I hired two friends, good Joe, who failed because
he was too kind believing every lie.
But Jackie, who seemed sweet, looked in my eye
and gave me hell. And so I worked and wrote.
The Duke degree I finally earned, I note
four decades later, came because of two:
one nice, one mean–and finally I was through.

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 7, 2015

Dueling Presidents: Obama and Falwell

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President Obama speaks from the Oval Office during prime time, seeking to calm a jittery nation following terrorist attacks abroad and in California. I questioned the wisdom of devoting so much of a speech on national security to domestic relations with our own Muslim neighbors …until this morning I watched Jerry Falwell, Jr., President of Liberty University, urging his students to apply for conceal-and-carry permits so that they could “end those Muslims.”

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/74836735/us-college-president-tells-students-to-carry-guns-to-end-those-muslims

The media describe Liberty University as “a leading evangelical Christian college” in Virginia. It’s not. It’s a poor excuse for a university or college, a right-wing fundamentalist school led by the son of Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, an arch-conservative fundamentalist religious-political movement to take back the country from liberals… you know…people like Jimmy Carter.

Three days after telling his students to buy guns and on the eve of President Obama’s Sunday evening address to the nation, Falwell tweeted that his reference to “those Muslims” was meant only for those Muslims who commit acts of terror. But Jerry, Jr. is not stupid. The deafening applause from the Liberty auditorium was still ringing in his ears.

President Obama and President Falwell both know we are shivering. Only the non-preacher President represented the spirit and ancient counsel of Baruch: “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God” [Baruch 5:1-9; 2nd Century BCE].

We can freeze ourselves to death wearing living in the garment of sorrow, affliction, and fear. Or we can take it off to put on the warm garment of beauty – the glory of God shining in mutual consolation, hope, and steadfast determination to live in peace with our neighbors.

If you can imagine Jesus telling his students (disciples) to apply for conceal-and-carry permits, pack some heat, and put an end to anyone, you’re making that Jesus up. You don’t get to make Jesus up in your own image.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemies.’  But I say to you, love your enemies. Pray for those who hurt you. If you do this, you will be true children of your Father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on good people and on evil people, and he sends rain to those who do right and to those who do wrong. If you love only the people who love you, you will get no reward. Even the tax collectors do that. And if you are nice only to your friends, you are no better than other people. Even those who don’t know God are nice to their friends. So you must be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” – Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Gospel According to Matthew 5:43-48, NCB.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian minister, would-be disciple of Jesus, Chaska, MN, Dec. 7, 2015

 

You are not entirely alone. Ever.

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With votive candles lit in remembrance of loved ones, we entered the softly lit church at dusk. We sat in silence until the piano and violin soothed the gatherers with Fantasia on Greensleeves, arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Imagine yourself there with a candle.

After readings from Frederick Buechner, Mary Oliver, Romans 8 and a brief homily, Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel provided the music for worshipers to come forward to place our candles on the altar.

As the teenage daughter and her 9 year-old brother returned to their pew in front of us, it was apparent they’d experienced a devastating loss. Perhaps a grandparent? A cousin? A pet? The brother, half her size, threw his arms around his sister with great tenderness, sharing a vulnerable moment of deep grief. The father’s hand stretched across the pew to hold them both.

I learned later the reason for their grief – the death of a close friend two months before in a murder suicide that killed her friend, classmate, and teammate, two other children, and their parents. They’d had a normal dinner together the night before the tragedy no one had anticipated or imagined.

votive-candlesTonight the friend was there to deal with her grief. There was something profoundly sacred about the church tonight – a community of the grieving like no other community. Real. Unvarnished. Reverent. Open. Prayerful. Tender. A healthy vulnerable community of mutual need and faith lighting candles, bearing witness to an inexplicable grace greater than the darkness that had fallen upon us.

Members of the Trinity Mental Health Initiative (MHI) Board of Trinity Episcopal Church, founded two years ago, hosted the service. The note in the bulletin read:

“MHI was birthed in the sorrow of personal loss, and with the intent that no one should have to be alone in the terrible helplessness and sadness that comes with some deaths. … We invite you to open yourselves today to both sadness and possibility, and to know that you are not entirely alone. Ever.”

I wish the sorrowing world could have been there.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 6, 2015.

 

 

 

 

Grandma’s Miraculous Mood Change

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In her old age – I know we don’t use that term anymore but she was old no matter whether you called her a “senior citizen” or the more current “older adult” – my 88 year-old Grandmother came to live with us. “Us” was my father, mother, two brothers and I, the five (5) of us and Grandma in a small three (3) bedroom home in Broomall, Pennsylvania.

Grandma also shuffled back and forth between two other places – my rich Uncle Harold’s palatial home on Long Island Sound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Harold’s summer cottage in Rockport, Massachusetts, where Grandma and Pop (Grandpa’s children called him “Pop”) spent their summers.

Letitia Sophia Campbell Stewart (“Sophie”) felt welcome in our little home and would settle in during her stays with us. Everything  would be fine for a month or two. She sort of seemed to like my mother, although no woman would be quite good enough for her Kenneth or her Harold, and both daughters-in-law knew it.

My mother was more than gracious, much more attentive to her needs than Rene, and they got along just fine. But there were times when something like a boulder would come crashing through the picture window into our living room, hit Grandma in the head, and turn her into a whining old goat. She became self-absorbed, self-pitying, annoying and quite unlovely.

Grandma was attached at the hip to Harold, 15 years older than my father. She hated the separation. Harold was the family hero, the nationally recognized Washington insider, the wealthy provider. Aloof and cold as ice but kind…if that makes any sense. Which meant he didn’t pay attention to his mother when she was at our house. Out of sight, out of mind.

Grandma became morose. “Was there a letter from Harold?” “No, Mom. I’m sorry. No mail today.”

“Harold never writes. He hasn’t called. Harold doesn’t love me. I’m just a burden. Why doesn’t God just take me. I’m of no use to anybody anymore.”

One day my mother couldn’t take it anymore. “Ken,” she said, “we have to do something or she has to go to Harold’s.”

Dad suggested taking Grandma to the doctor. She liked the doctor in Broomall.

“Sophie, what’s going on?” asked the doctor, who’d already been briefed on the boulder. Grandma repeated the script. She was a burden to everyone. Pop was gone. She was alone. “I don’t know why God doesn’t just take me!”

“Well, that’s not a problem. WE can take care of that,” said the doctor. “Really?” asked Grandma. “You bet. We can take care of that right now. I have gun out back. We can just go out back and end your misery right now.”

“O, doctor, you wouldn’t do that!!!” said Grandma.

Grandma came home as though the boulder had never hit her. The whole world had been lifted from her shoulders. She flashed her beautiful smile again and told us how much she loved us. But she continued to leave her leave her mark in the living wherever she sat, leaving my mother to ask why God hadn’t taken either Grandma or her, and I asking when I could get my bedroom back.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 5, 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Visit to Grandma’s

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When I was 13 my parents put me on a flight from Philadelphia to Boston. My paternal grandmother, recovering from a near fatal heart attack, needed a live-in caregiver at the summer cottage in Rockport, Massachusetts. My grandfather had died three years earlier.

When we learned of her need, there was an extended family discussion. The doctor said she needed someone with her for the next month.

Who would stay with Grandma? Who could go stay for a month?

Motif #1, Rockport Harbor

Motif #1, Rockport Harbor

Grandma insisted on going to Rockport when released from the hospital, and she did, all by herself, though she remained bed-ridden on doctor’s orders except for necessary short trips to the facility and the kitchen.

Shall we say Grandma was…just a tad stubborn, and her stubborn independence was a worry for the whole family. She wasn’t safe and shouldn’t be alone.

My cousin Gina would have been the most likely candidate, but Gina had married a MacDonald. Grandma – of the Campbell clan, the mortal enemy of the MacDonalds – had refused to bless Gina’s marriage to Norman, and would have nothing to do with either of them. Did I mention she was stubborn?

Partly by process of elimination and partly by reason of her grandson seizing the chance to live up the road from Old Garden Beach and the Headlands in my favorite place in the world, I boarded the plane and stayed the month in Rockport.

I took the train from Logan Airport to Rockport, suitcase in hand, walked the mile from the train station up Atlantic Avenue beside Rockport Harbor and turned left onto Harraden Avenue. It didn’t occur to me that it was odd for a 13 year-old to be on his own on his way to an onerous responsibility. Old Garden Beach, the Headlands, and nightly trips to Bearskin Neck and Tuck’s for ice cream were on my mind more than Grandma.

Grandma Stewart was in bed when I opened the picket fence gate and walked in the cottage’s unlocked door. We greeted each other with outspread arms, Grandma’s eyes big as saucers, flowing with tears.

“We’ll be safe,” she says. “I have a gun.” She points under the bed.

I pull out a revolutionary war rifle weighing about 10 pounds. There’s no ammunition. Just an old revolutionary war musket, like the ones the authors of the 2nd Amendment had in mind.

Revolutionary War rifle - requires only 13 steps to fire.

Revolutionary War rifle – requires only 13 steps to fire.

“Grandma,” I say, “I don’t see any bullets. Is it loaded?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “It’s heavy. We’ll just hit ‘em with it!”

The rifle stayed under the bed long after my month playing long-distance nursemaid and body guard to Grandma from down at the beach during the day and from candy and ice cream shops on Bearskin Neck at night. I was the family hero.

Poor Grandma! Poor America! Wouldn’t the founding fathers be proud!

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, December 5, 2015

?

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Me: God, Why?
God: No, I ask the questions…
Me: Ok, what are your questions?
God: Don’t ask.

  • Steve Shoemaker, from Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, Dec. 5, 2015

Up in Arms

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How many people have to die before we get it?  Howard Beale captures the feeling following the San Bernardino shooting and all the massacres that came before it:

Isn’t it time we had a reasonable conversation about what the Second Amendment meant by “arms”? The strictest constitutional interpretation would lead in one of two directions: 1) every citizen has a right to a single shot rifle, or 2) every citizen has a right to “arms” — as in the weapons of war, like the bombs that failed to detonate in San Bernadino.

How many people have to die before….?