The annual report
says I’m alive,
but my most memorable
recent dream
is of a portico
that’s unattached,
that leads nowhere, that needs
to be rebuilt.
The parts no longer fit
together. They
may still look strong and sound,
but lie there in
the dirt and will not move.
The contractors
I hire all do their best,
to no avail.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 26, 2015
Sweep, Vacuum, Dust
(with presbyopia)
We’re not in a health club–we have no cool shirt.
We don’t go to yoga–nor live in a yurt.
In our house, we clean,
And try to stay lean,
But now with our old eyes, we see much less dirt!
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 24, 2015
The day after Earth Day the world is returning to business-as-usual. Which opens the door to a commentary on the nature of the human species within the order of nature, and the way religion supports or belittles the Earth.
Two days ago we posted about a curious and rather humorous dream of Jesus as a patient in the hospital (Jesus in the Hospital).
Some readers likely stopped reading when they saw the name Jesus. Others like or are neutral about or curious to read the story. Yet another group is distraught or confused by the thought of Jesus as a patient in the hospital; it might be okay for him to appear in the dream as the doctor, but the thought of Jesus as a patient seems over the top.
The picture of Jesus in a hospital bed is a day-after-Earth-Day issue, an every day question of how we see ourselves, the world, and Eternity.
A Jesus who was never sick a day in his life, a Jesus without bodily functions, pains, and hungers, a Jesus who didn’t feel the hammer slam his thumb at his carpenter’s bench, is a not one of us. That Jesus is a figment of imagination.
The theological tradition of the church has always insisted on the full humanity of Jesus. His humanity was only half the Chaledonian Formula (fully divine-fully man), but Jesus’ humanity is the starting point for any claim to the formula’s other half: the divinity of Christ. From roughly 70 C.E. until now fanciful representations of Jesus have diminished Jesus’ humanity. The historical Jesus is, in effect, obliterated by a dualism that views spirit and matter as mutually exclusive, as are immortality and morality, eternity and finitude. Jesus wears flesh and blood the way an actor playing a part assumes a costume to draw an audience into the play. In these versions of Christian faith, the bodily Jesus is a disguise for God, but not fully human as we are.
According to Hebrew Scripture the human species is of the earth. The human being is named “adam” (Hebrew for “earthling”). We are one with the dirt, the earth, nature. Likewise, our end is dust. “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes” we say at the end, as we do every Ash Wednesday to remind ourselves before the end.
Strangely, the dream I had the other night didn’t seem strange at the time. A friend who knows the Byron who appeared in the dream wrote that she laughed and laughed because “I could totally hear you and Byron having that conversation” about whether a member of the church staff had visited Jesus in the hospital and whether to announce his hospitalization from the pulpit and pray for Jesus in the morning prayers.
The day after Earth Day I still don’t know what prompted the dream. What I do know is that the dream wouldn’t have come without a deep sense of Jesus as flesh and blood, an “adam” like us. Only a deeper appreciation of our complete oneness with nature will open our eyes to the real Jesus, the real us, and the sacredness of creation. Matter is not evil; matter is sacred.
Jesus in the hospital is a game changer – a view of human frailty and mutual dependence in a world that too often confuses the goal of religion as the escape from mortality, the soul’s release from the prison of material existence. This dualism is notably errant and it is dangerous to the planet.
Earth is in the hospital. Will we work and pray for healing – a kind of planetary resurrection? Or will we go back to a deadly dualism – business-as-usual – the day after Earth Day?
– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, April 21, 2015.
Well, everyone liked him, but she
had only been 16, (“Almost
was 17!” she still would say),
when he met both her parents first
and said, “Yes, I am 25,
but can I take your daughter out?”
They made him wait six months, and have
what then was called a double date,
and bring her back by ten. But when
she was in college and told them
it’s his ring on her finger, then
they almost made her stay at home.
He promised she would graduate,
and so they set their wedding date.
In spite of strong parental fears,
they have been married for ten years.
[For M and K, whose life has been
only somewhat like this.]
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 23, 2015
Jesus is in the hospital.
I had one of those nocturnal throw-back dreams retired people sometimes have.
It’s a Sunday morning. I’m the Senior Minister just returned from being out-of-town. The other ministerial staff and I are robing for worship. Though I’m the preacher for the morning, I am totally unprepared. In addition, I remember that we are scheduled to receive new members from the new members class during worship. I ask Byron (a wonderful former colleague who shows up in the dream) for an update. He is clueless. He fears the members of the class haven’t been notified. Perhaps no one will be joining, though the reception of new members is clearly listed as part of the morning Order of Worship. We wonder how to handle an embarrassing situation.
Then Byron says, “Oh…and I just learned Jesus is in the hospital.”
“Which hospital?”
“I think it’s Star,” he says.
“What’s Star? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Oh,” says Byron, “it’s a private wing of Christ Hospital for public figures concerned about their privacy.”
“When was he admitted, and why? What’s the diagnosis?
“I don’t know; I just learned of it a moment ago from John (the custodian).”
“Well… what should we do? The congregation’ll be shocked, but we should announce it. We should remember Jesus in the Prayers of Church, don’t you think?”
The idea of Jesus being in the hospital didn’t strike me as that strange in the dream, but it did pose its own kind of curious scenario. I’d never imagined Jesus sick. I wonder if Jesus was ever in the hospital? There was something strangely comforting about the thought of Jesus in the hospital, one of the flock for whom we could pray.
Dreams, they say, are ways the subconscious works on things the conscious mind dares not address. What if Jesus had died in the hospital?
– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, April 20, 2015.
You’re reading a blog post. Blogging is talking. Sometimes it’s downright t-a-l-k-a-t-i-v-e. Chatty. Pointless. Silence is to be preferred to word pollution.
Two photographs in The Wood of Our Lady, Dennis Aubrey’s Via Lucis post, give reason to talk about talkativeness. Open the link and scroll down near the bottom to see two capitals: 1) two figures with their heads in their hands, weeping, and 2) what Dennis calls “The Punishment of the Talkative”.
The weeping figures of 12th century Église Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativité strike a chord of familiarity. How many times a day does the news cause us to put our head in our hands in despair? But “the punishment of the talkative” capital evokes no such sympathy. It strikes us moderns as barbaric, the art of a Christian first-cousin of ISIL with grotesque figures excising the tongue of the talkative. Yet it served to remind the worshipers in the 12th century, as it still does in its startling way, that talkativeness is no virtue. Words are sacred. Dennis Aubrey puts it this way:
Perhaps the most famous capital represents the punishment of the talkative, presumably by excising the tongue with tongs. I don’t know if this condemns lying, calumny, or verbal abuse, or if it is a more generalized censure of chattiness or language in general. While this punishment somehow seems fitting for the slanderers who fill our public lives, I would prefer these thoughts of Voltaire, … les anges m’ont tué par leur silence. Le silence est le just chatiment des bavard. Je meurs, je suis mort. “The angels have killed me with their silence. Silence is the just punishment for the talkative. I’m dying. I’m dead.”
It was poet Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, whose first published book (1918) was titled The Madman, who used words to say, “I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerative from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”
Thank you, Dennis Aubrey and P.J. McKey for bringing the teachers to light.
– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, April 20, 2015.
It’s sexist, demeaning, though hard to explain
That a positive adjective can be a pain:
The papers we scan
Don’t say Jane’s handsome man,
It’s always Joe Blow and his lovely wife, Jane.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 16, 2015
On Snoring
I wake and my lips are all chapped,
My sinuses completely stopped.
Breath through my nose is what’s missing.
My biggest regret: no kissing.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 15, 2015
What I believe
and state firmly
does not matter
nearly as much
as my actions
in revealing my
character.
Who I am
can be seen:
much more clearly
by observers
than learned by
hearers or readers
of my words,
so carefully chosen.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 12, 2015
Minnesotans are known for Minnesota Nice, a phrase that describes Minnesota’s Scandinavian culture of civility. Sometimes Minnesota Mean lies just below the surface. Other times civility and gentleness pervade a person’s character. John Skogmo was Minnesota Nice at its best. There was no meanness in him.
Minnesotans also don’t like fanfare. That Minneapolis is called “the little apple” refers not only to the city’s size compared to “the Big Apple” but also to Minnesotan’s disdain for big splashes, big stages, and floodlights. ‘Ego’ and ‘Minnesotan’ belong together in the Thesaurus as antonyms.
Working back stage behind-the-scenes is what Minnesotans are about at their best. John Skogmo’s obituary, laced with subtle humor, is a great tribute. John was a man without guile; his faith was the foundation of the quiet stature universally recognized by his family, friends, church, and work colleagues.
Obituary, published April 12, 2015 [highlights added by VFTE]
John Gunderson Skogmo died April 4, 2015 of cancer. Born in Fergus Falls, MN, July 15, 1947, to James Bertram and Joyce Shirley Skogmo.
John found his calling at age nine, reading his father’s issues of Kiplinger’s financial magazine. He became fascinated with compounding interest and saw the benefits of delayed gratification. As a teenager he ran a concession that sold popcorn, cotton candy, and caramel apples at local events. At the end of the day he laundered money-at the kitchen sink, to get the sugar and grease off his cash intake. He used his earnings to buy shares in the Security State Bank of Fergus Falls and was frequently excused from school to attend shareholders’ meetings.
After graduation he left for the Cities to attend Macalester College, where he received a treasured liberal arts education. He earned a J. D. from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1972 and went to work immediately in the three-person legal department at Northwestern National Bank. Except for a summer at the Cornell University School of Business as a 1978 Bush Foundation Fellow and the bank’s temporary displacement by the 1982 fire, John spent his entire career at the corner of 7th and Marquette, as NWNB became Norwest and then Wells Fargo. He was fortunate to work in several departments before finding his true home in 1989 in Wealth Management, where he applied his stellar relationship skills to helping individuals and families. He was set to retire in June 2015 after 43 years with the bank.
John Skogmo’s volunteer work, much of it behind-the-scenes, helped assure the solvency and stability of some important organizations. As a trustee of Macalester College, he reinvigorated the Alumni Fund at a critical juncture. He worked with Artspace to maintain affordable housing and workspace in gentrifying neighborhoods and was instrumental in establishing the Cowles Center. He served as president of the Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library and was appointed by the city council to the Minneapolis Community Development Agency.
His proudest achievement was his long-term service to Westminster Presbyterian Church as a deacon, trustee, elder, and treasurer. John’s was the voice of prudence in many crucial financial decisions, and his steadfast leadership earned respect for Westminster’s endowment as one of the most wisely managed church funds in the country.
He was predeceased by his parents and a grandniece, Lily Irene Martyn, and is survived by Tom Morin, his partner of 32 years and husband of 1 year; his sister, Shirley Nelson; niece Sharri Martyn and her daughter Claire; nephew Trevor Steeves (Jana) and his children, Elizabeth (Kyle) and Joshua; half-brothers Phillip Skogmo (Yukiko) and David Skogmo (Linda); two aunts and many cousins. Memorial service on Friday, May 1, 2015, at 3:00 PM, at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1200 Marquette, Minneapolis. Reception following at the Minneapolis Club. Memorials preferred to Westminster or donor’s choice. No Flowers Please. www.Washburn-McReavy.com Edina Chapel 952-920-3996.
– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, April 13, 2015
Views from the Edge 