Category Archives: Life

Verse – Me, Me, Me

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Some reasons are easily told
Why I am always so bold
To speak out the loudest,
To simply be proudest,
And all the attention to hold:

For I am the oldest of four
And no one can come through the door
Who’s nearly as great
Since I’m six foot eight!
However, I must tell you more…

I know that pride is the worst sin.
It besets me day out and day in.
But how can I fight it,
Or try to deny it:
I’m tall, dark, and handsome–and thin!

But most think one eighth of a ton
Is NOT slim, and that I’ve begun
To prevaricate,
And exaggerate,
And really I’m tall, bald, and dumb…

Okay, I admit that I’m fat.
My head is too big for my hat.
I apologize
for all but my size–
My parents at birth gave me that.

[5 limericks for Lent]

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 14, 2015

The Shoemaker brothers

The Shoemaker brothers

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elizabeth and the Pipeline Patriot

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Imagine your name is Elizabeth. You’re 64 years old. Your grandparents have left you and your sister an inheritance – farm land – in Storm Lake, Iowa. You and your sister grew up next door to Iowa in Nebraska and, though you now live in another state, you’ve looked on with pride as Nebraska put the screws to the Keystone XL pipeline.

You’re sitting at home. The phone rings. You answer. The voice on the other end represents an oil company from North Dakota.

After you finish talking with the man on the phone, you email your Nebraska high school girlfriends describing the conversation. It reads like this:

Another oil company – Dakota Access, LLC – is planning to run a pipeline from North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. They wanted to pay us $16,000 plus three years of crop damage for easement on our Iowa land.

I had a rather funny conversation with the young representative from Texas who was sitting in Storm Lake, Iowa contacting land owners and farmers. When I asked him if it was voluntary, he said, “We are told not to discuss that.” What? (I already knew it was, just wanted to see what he would say.)

So they are telling people that a pipeline is coming and not that they don’t have to do it. I asked him why landowners would want to do this and he said, “Well, for the compensation involved and…for the nation.” I laughed out loud.

Then we talked about the environment and Nebraska and the recent pipeline spill in western North Dakota, and how I thought our leaders better get it together or we were going to destroy the planet. At which time he said, “Maybe we should have a woman president.” He had me for a moment until he said, “21 days a month, my wife is the nicest person on earth.” Seriously. He is from Texas.

We ended the conversation with me suggesting a nice young man like himself should get into the windmill business and then give me a call back. He said he would take me OFF the list, with a note – don’t bother trying to talk to this lady again. Amen brother. (until it turns into eminent domain 😦

Happy Valentine’s day to all you women who used to be nice 21 days a month but now….skies the limit.

The conversation is real. It happened to Elizabeth while sitting at home in Princeton, New Jersey. Do I hear a vote for another Elizabeth for President?

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, March 12, 2015. Elizabeth’s email, sent originally to her dear friend Kay Stewart, is reprinted here with Elizabeth’s permission. The coloration of the text and the links have been added to the original.

Verse – After Wine

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after wine 
aboard ship

is the
rolling
of my
walk
from
the wine
or from
the sea

is the
full moon
on the
waves
weaving
webs
of silver
water

is the
love
we found
when younger
bright as
moonlight
rich
as wine

– Steve Shoemaker, cruising the Caribbean, March 12, 2015

“Wait a minute!” – Tributes to Fred Craddock

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Fred Craddock

Fred Craddock

Fred Craddock, one of America’s great preachers who died last Friday, was honored Sunday by CNN. Click HERE to see the CNN video and written tribute.

In this post on Views from the edge, two other preachers influenced by Fred Craddock share their stories.  The first came by email from McCormick Theological Seminary classmates and friend Harry Strong, recently retired, in Prescott, Arizona:

Fred may have been small in stature, but he was truly a homiletical giant! I still remember sitting with him and Barbara Brown Taylor in a preaching seminar back in 1985 at Kirkridge in eastern Pennsylvania. Fred was talking about the texts in Mark that made you want to interrupt Mark’s narrative and say, “Wait a minute … wait a minute! Mark, you can’t drop that sentence to the middle of the story and then move on!” One I especially remember was Mark 6:48  — “When (Jesus) saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by …” And Fred interjected: “Mark! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! ‘He saw them straining at oars … he came towards them, walking on the sea – and HE INTENDED TO PASS THEM BY???’  Where the heck was he GOING??!!

A second email arrived from Bob Young who once served as Pastor First Presbyterian Church in Enid, Oklahoma. Bob is no retired in Corsicana, Texas:

Fred Craddock lived a block away from me in Enid. I chaired the Fall Festival of Faith for the Council of Churches one year. Fred was our preacher. It was a treat to work with him. We met several times to prepare the liturgy for the services. He often preached at the chapel services of Phillips Theological Seminary where I was an adjunct. He ALWAYS — and I mean ALWAYS — left us as people who knew we had overheard the Gospel again. We laughed and cried and listened with wrapt attention. I hate to admit this, but one time, as he began to preach, I said to myself “I will not let him hook me today. I will just sit here and be stoic.” By the end of the sermon I had tears in my eyes. In my experience he simply could not be ignored. When he preached, barely visible behind a pulpit in that squeaky little voice, everyone listened. Amazing just amazing.

I was at the funeral he preached for a Phillips faculty member who had battled cancer for years. Still gives me goose bumps. A very fine, humble, amazingly gifted and faith-filled gentle man. I have been rereading Cherry Log Sermons and the book of his “parables.” Whew!

Quite independently of each other, Harry and Bob each ended his email by calling attention to Fred Craddock’s Cherry Log Sermons.

Thank you, Fred, for your long ministry of thoughtful humor and tears. “Well done, good and faithful servant….Enter into the joy of your Lord” [Matthew 25:23].

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, March 11, 2015.

Like beads on a string

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This morning’s StarTribune carries a number of stories Views from the Edge ties together like beads on a string. The string is our culture’s addiction to violence.

Bead #1: Madison students protest shooting [Section A,  p. 1 & 5, reprint from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and local Madison high school students marched to the State Capitol where “about 1,500 protested the death of Tony Robinson, 19, who was shot and killed by a Madison Police Officer Friday night.” Tony Robinson was black; the officer is white.

“Madison Police Chief Mike Koval issued an apology on his blog,

Reconciliation cannot begin without my stating ‘I am sorry’, and I don’t think I can say this enough. I am sorry. I hope that, with time, Tony’s family and friends can search their hearts to render some measure of forgiveness.

Protesters honored the urging of the Robinson family that protests be peaceful.

Bead #2: U of Oklahoma kicks fraternity off campus for racial chants [p. 3, re-print from the New York Times]

No sooner had that nation observed the 50th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama than University President David Boren shut down the local chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University of Oklahoma. Boren ordered members of the fraternity to remove their things from the frat house by midnight at which time the house would be closed.

The closing came after videos showed a group of young men in formal attire “riding a bus and singing a chant laden with anti-black slurs and at least one reference to lynching.”  A student group calling itself the Unheard Movement had posted the video on YouTube and identified the men as members of the local SAE chapter.

The video contains this message: “This video contains language that is offensive, disrespectful and unacceptable. Even after 50 years after the events that occurred in Selma, Alabama, we will have a reason to march. We as a people have come a long way, but yet still have so far to go.”

Bead #3: Boy shoots girlfriend, kills self  [Twin Cities & Region Section, p. 1]

The 14 year-old girlfriend, who’d been shot in the chest and face, was later alert enough to tell investigators her 15 year-old boyfriend had been “playing” with the gun when it went off accidentally.  After the gun went off, the distraught boyfriend ran outside with the handgun. He was found face down with the gun nearby. According to the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office “there are no additional suspects being sought and no specific concern to public safety with regard to this incident.”

The string: American culture’s addition to violence, racism, and guns, and the increasing number of Americans who are joining “the Unheard Movement” to say “Enough!”

 

 

 

Just a bunch of hypocrites

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“It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.” – George Whitefield (1714-1770)

Many folks who remain in the churches have learned to live with poor sermons. Others have heard them and moved on.

William Sloane Coffin memorial photo

William Sloane Coffin memorial photo

One of those who had given up met one of America’s great preachers one day in a casual encounter.

“I don’t go to church any more.” he said, “They’re just a bunch of hypocrites!” To which William Sloane Coffin replied, “You bet. We are! And there’s always room for one more.”

William Sloan Coffin’s sermons always gave offense. As Chaplain at Yale, it was his pulpit that sparked and led the campus civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War. It was Coffin who presiding at the burning of draft cards. It was this offensive preacher who co-founded Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam and served as leader of SANE/FREEZE, America’s largest movement for global nuclear disarmament. Coffin became Senior Minister of Riverside Church in NYC, one of the nation’s great preaching churches built for Harry Emerson Fosdick, the pacifist preacher thrown out of his previous congregation for sermons that status quo maintainers found offensive.

In the parlance of William Sloane Coffin, the well known statement that “the church is a hospital for sinners; not a museum for saints” [variously attributed to Augustine of Hippo, St. John Chrysostom, Abigail van Buren, and others] might be re-rendered “the church is a hospital for hypocrites; not a museum or a mutual congratulations society for the sinless.”

In a future post Views from the Edge will reflect on the American religious landscape in light of Whitefield’s observation and this retired preacher’s search for a new church home.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, March 7, 2015.

Nullify ALL Gun Laws! Seriously?

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Rep. Tom Hackbarth (R), MN House of Representatives

Rep. Tom Hackbarth (R), MN House of Representatives

The same MN State Representative who made the news for 1) packing a loaded gun in the parking lot of Planned Parenthood and 2) berating a constituent who  asked his support for Governor Dayton’s proposal to raise taxes on the wealthiest Minnesotans (click HERE for the CBS new story), is making headlines again.

Heather Martin, Executive Director Protect Minnesota issued the following news release today, March 2, 2015:

PROTECT MINNESOTA STRONGLY OPPOSES CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO NULLIFY ALL GUN LAWS
Proposal would jeopardize public safety

SAINT PAUL — HF 1289, a proposed constitutional amendment introduced by Rep. Tom Hackbarth today, is a serious threat to public safety in Minnesota. Cloaked in a nice-sounding name, it is a brazen attempt to fool the public by misnaming a constitutional amendment that would nullify every gun law on the books in Minnesota. “This is not a ‘right to bear arms’ amendment. This a ‘nullify-all-gun-laws’ amendment,” said Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota: Working to End Gun Violence.

“I am incredulous that the same people who passed a law last year to get guns away from domestic abusers are now proposing to repeal that law, and all Minnesota gun laws, by constitutional amendment,” Martens said.

The proposed amendment reads, “The right of individuals to acquire, keep, possess, transport, carry, transfer, and use arms, including firearms, knives, other weapons as well as ammunition, components, and accessories for any of them, for defense of life, liberty, self, family, and others, sanctity of dwelling, and for all other purposes, is fundamental and shall not be denied, infringed, or curtailed. Any restriction must be subjected to strict scrutiny. Registration, mandatory licensing, special taxation, fees, or any other measure, regardless of type, manner, or purpose, that suppresses or discourages the free exercise of this right, is void.

Sec. 2. SUBMISSION TO VOTERS.

(a) The proposed amendment must be submitted to the people at the 2016 general election. The question submitted must be:

“Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to protect the right of individuals to keep and bear arms?”

Protect Minnesota will be urging all Minnesotans to voice their strong opposition to this proposed amendment.

How a ballot question is worded often determines its passage or defeat. The proposed MN Constitutional Amendment has nothing to do with the hotly debated Second Amendment right to bear arms of the U.S. Constitution. It’s something else.

My, oh, my, oh, my! Salute the gun manufacturers and pass the ammunition!

M&R Photography

Slender, cross-eyed, and handsome

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The Rev'd George Whitefield

The Rev’d George Whitefield

“It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.” – George Whitefield (1714-1770)

A preacher’s search for a new church home following retirement is often an exercise in sin, a prolonged, prideful discontent with the state of the churches one visits.

George Whitefield seems to have spent his whole ministry offending and displeasing, although the huge crowds he drew outside the church walls lead me question how offensive or displeasing his sermons were.

An honest word from a real human being 

Perhaps the photograph of this heralded Anglican priest, “the Father of the Great Awakening,” and this PBS documentary description of him illuminate why the preacher who offended and made his hearers displeased with themselves drew the crowds.

“Slender, cross-eyed and handsome, George Whitefield was an Anglican priest and powerful orator with charismatic appeal.”

While others were reading their sermons from prepared manuscripts, George knew that good preaching is different from a public reading at the book store. He memorized his sermons or spoke extemporaneously with gestures considered too dramatic by the more stoic New England preachers. But one suspects there may have been something more to his success. Perhaps his eyes communicated a real human being, someone unable to hide behind being merely slender or handsome, a man whom frail and vulnerable human beings didn’t mind hearing an honest word that offended and or made them displeased with their own posturing games of pretense.

In honor of George Whitefield, a recently retired pretentious Presbyterian preacher worshiped at a nearby Episcopal Church. The word from the pulpit was deliciously real. He didn’t commit the preacher’s sin. He’s going back next Sunday.

How do you know?

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How do you know you’re a writer? Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Virginia Wolff might have “known” because other writers, publishers, and Broadway and Hollywood producers heaped praise on their writings. But the operative word is might. Existential knowing is a different sort of knowing.

Like great athletes, composers, and musicians, great writers are rarely satisfied with their work. They are always reaching beyond themselves. Often they operate from the depths of depression, despair, obsessed with death, the dark depths of the human psyche and the world’s instinct toward self-destruction. Some of the greatest – Hemingway, Wolff, Sylvia Plath, and Edgar Allan Poe – do themselves in.

How do you know you’re a writer? Some would say you “know” it existentially by the ebb and flow between times of creativity and nothingness. When I feel down and the well runs dry as a bone, I know existentially…I might be a writer.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN Feb. 28, 2015, inspired by tour of Ernest Hemingway’s home in Key West, Florida.

Brothers

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Our Dad would take a bathroom scale
in both his calloused hands and squeeze
200 pounds. He said his boys
should also press their weight. To fail
meant hearing yet again how he
when in the Navy chinned himself
a hundred times a day. His laugh
at photos when he was skinny
before he read the Charles Atlas
booklet reminded each of us
of Dynamic Tension. We’d take
a towel and pull and tug to make
each tiny bicep that we had
grow big to be as strong as Dad.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 27, 2015