Thank you, Dennis Aubrey, for this thoughtful reflection concluding with and the extraordinary Gretna Green Starling Murmurations video. All the best to you and PJ.
In your photography and writings I find a conversation partner who lives at the razor’s edge between belief and disbelief, joy and despair, the heights and the abyss of nothingness, and the honest search for hope and truth beyond the illusion of inevitable progress.Gordon Stewart
I received an email from a reader the other day commenting about our post on “Death in the Wood of Ephraim” from August 2012. When I went back to review the post, I saw the quote above from our colleague and friend Gordon Stewart. Now Gordon is one of those people who we never would have found if it had not been for WordPress. We have corresponded for years and he gave a sermon based on one of my other posts, which moves me every time I hear it. Gordon has a gift for words, both in using them and appreciating…
Like a child piling blocks
Your words construct new dreams,
Towering poet.
Gentle and strong, as trees
Bend gracefully in wind,
You stand – and I bow.
One of the great pleasures in life has been the unexpected friendship with Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama.
Ko, as his friends called him with great affection, and his wife Lois, a native Minnesotan, came to Minneapolis following retirement from a distinguished teaching position at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. I knew him only by reputation: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Professor of World Christianity Emeritus; cutting edge Asian liberation theologian and leader in Thailand, Singapore, New Zealand, and the United States; author of Water Buffalo Theology, No Handle on the Cross, Three Mile an Hour God, Mt. Fuji and Mt. Sinai, among others; pioneer in Buddhist-Christian intersection and inter-religious dialogue; spell-binding keynote speaker at the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi, Kenya.
The friendship that developed, if friendship can be defined to include mentors and those they mentor, great minds and ordinary ones, people of stature and those who look up to them, the wise and the less wise, was particularly impactful because my father had been an Army Air Force Chaplain in the South Pacific in World War II.
During the March, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, the planes came from my father’s air base. Though my father rarely spoke about the war, there was a certain sullenness that would come over him whenever I would ask him for stories. Now, after my father’s passing, I was learning from Ko what the war had meant to the 15 year-old Japanese boy being baptized in Tokyo while the bombs dropped all around his church.
The pastor who baptized him instructed him. “Kosuke, you are a disciple of Jesus Christ. You must love your neighbors…even the Americans.”
For the rest of his life Ko pursued the daunting question of what neighbor love means. Who is the enemy? Who is the neighbor? Are they one and the same? Late in his life, before he and Lois moved from Minneapolis to live with their son in Massachusetts, he had come to the conclusion that there is only one sin: exceptionalism. At first it struck me as strange. Can one really reduce the meaning and scope of sin to exceptionalism? What is exceptionalism, and why is it sinful?
At the time of our discussion, the phrase “American exceptionalism” – the claim that the United States is exceptional among the nations – was making the news. It was this view that led to the invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the unexamined belief that the Afghanis and the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms as liberators – that captured in a phrase the previously largely unspoken popular conviction that America is exceptional.
In this American belligerence Ko heard the latest form of an old claim that had brought such devastation on his people and the people of the world. The voices from the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Defense, though they spoke English, sounded all too familiar, impervious to criticism and restraint on the nation’s military and economic adventures.
Nine years ago today, on Hiroshima Day, 2006 he spoke to a small crowd at the Peace Garden in Minneapolis at the exact hour the bomb incinerated Hiroshima. His voice rang with a quiet authority that only comes from the depths of experience. Here’s an excerpt from that speech:
“During the war (1941-45) the Japanese people were bombarded by the official propaganda that Japan is the divine nation, for the emperor is divine. The word ‘Divine’ was profusely used.This was Japanese wartime ‘dishonest religion’, or shall we call it ‘mendacious theology’? This ‘god-talk’ presented an immature god who spoke only Japanese and was undereducated about other cultures and international relations. Trusting in this parochial god, Japan destroyed itself. “
“Then,” he said to make his point to his American listeners, “dear friends, do not trust a god who speaks only English, and has no understanding of Arabic or islamic culture and history. If you follow such a small town god you may be infected with the poison of exceptionalism: ‘I am ok. You are not ok.’ For the last 5,000 years the self-righteous passion of ‘I am ok. You are not ok’ has perpetuated war and destruction. War ’has never been and it will never be’ able to solve international conflicts, says Pope John Paul II.”
Two paragraphs later, Koyama spoke in terms that speak to the policy of drones and other advanced military technology:
“In spite of the remarkable advances humanity has made in science/technological [sic], our moral and spiritual growth has been stunted. Humankind seems addicted to destruction even with nuclear weapons and biological weapons. Today there are 639 million small arms actively present in the world (National Catholic Reporter, June 30, 2006).Fear propaganda always kills Hope. Violence is called sacrifice. Children killed in war are cruelly called a part of the ‘collateral damage’.”
Today, Hiroshima Day, 2015 I wish I could break bread with Ko and my father to discuss the meaning of it all, and share with Dad the haiku poems published in The New York Times following Ko’s death, written in his honor by his colleague at Union, Peggy Shriver, testaments to hope in belligerent times:
Smiling East-West spirit,
You move with sun and Son,
Shining Peace on us.
+++++
Like a child piling blocks
Your words construct new dreams,
Towering poet.
+++++
Gentle and strong, as trees
Bend gracefully in wind,
You stand – and I bow.
“Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves…” [Genesis 11: 4]. No further comment needed.
Building of the Tower of Babel – Master of the Duke of Bedford
The headrest’s too short, if you please,
The seat-width is always a squeeze,
But more than my weight,
My six feet and eight,
Means there’s never a space for my knees.
One plane had a restroom so small,
I could not use it at all,
The ceiling was low,
And to sit was a show,
For my legs were clear out in the hall.
My poems I never can Tweet,
I know many folks find it neat–
e e cummings could do it,
He’ a much better poet,
But my verses take much much longer to wreet.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, July 17, 2015
Click HERE for the Poetry Foundation’s bio for e.e. cummings.
The lamp once was a beacon. Now the hand
holds high a searchlight, torch, a burning flame
exposing all the exiles, all who came
unasked in search of liberty. Our land
is full, our steel gate closed. Those who demand
a chance to live in freedom now will name
our border guard lady Mother of Shame:
the rich protected, refugees are banned.
“No sanctuary here, no room,” she cries
with rigid lips. “No welcome at our door
for homeless masses struggling to rise
above the hunger, pain, disease and war
in lands where they were born. Compassion dies.
I send the poor back to El Salvador.”
Steve (Shoemaker) and Alexander Sharp, ordained clergy advocates for the medical use of marijuana, wrote a guest commentary published by the News-Gazette to set the record straight on medical marijuana. Click Weeding Out Editorial Inaccuraciesto read their critique of editorial’s mischaracterizations of the Journal of the American Medical Association study of the medical use of cannabis.
Our home for four weeks is 14 miles west of Anaconda, Montana. Last Friday evening we go to Barclay II for dinner (the restaurant, not the dog).
Like lots of things in these parts, exterior facades count for little. Barclay II doesn’t look like much from the outside but it has a great reputation for steak and seafood. Behind the scruffy door is an upscale restaurant.
The proprietor, Tammy, comes to the table to greet us. We ask what they’re known for. “The tenderloin is the most popular,” she says. “I see from the menu it comes with crab legs. Are they Snow Crab or King Crab?” I’m not so big on Snow Crab; I love King Crab. She answers, “King Crab.”
When the wait person comes to take our orders, I order the tenderloin “between medium-rare and medium”. The waitress notes exactly what I say. When she returns, the tenderloin is precisely as requested. In downtown Minneapolis, Murray’s Steak House is famous for its Silver Butter Knife Steak, so named because you can cut it with a butter knife. Murray’s is good. Barclay’s, in downtown Anaconda, is better. The tender-est, most flavor-ful steak I’ve every eaten anywhere in the world.
THE WORST-HAIRCUT EVER
The next morning we’re again in downtown Anaconda in The Coffee Corral coffee shop when Kay reminds me I need a haircut before stepping into the pulpit the next morning at St. Timothy’s Memorial Chapel where I’m privileged to preach the next three weeks. It’s Saturday.
I leave Kay in search of the barber shop. The barber pole is not spinning; the sign on the door posts the hours: Monday-Friday. It’s closed. Next door is a beauty salon. I really need a haircut. I go in to the scene of six women seated in a semicircle having their nails done.
“Good morning,” I say, “Do you do men?” Several of the woman roar with laughter. “I mean…do you cut men’s hair?” Again they laugh. “My wife says I need a haircut; wadda ya all think?” Three of them nod Yes; three nod No. The stylist answers Yes and says she can do me at 1:00.
I return at 1:00. The stylist and I exchange a few pleasantries, ignoring the young bridesmaid who’s all dressed for an afternoon wedding, waiting to have her hair done. I take a seat in the stylist’s chair. She asks me what I want. I answer, just “a trim,” meaning leave it the way it is but take maybe a quarter of an inch, at most. I tell her that once I take out my hearing aids I won’t be able to hear a thing. She smiles, laughs, and says, “No problem. That’s great!” I take it she’s not a big talker, or maybe, God for bid, she doesn’t like men.
I set the hearing aids on the counter. She asks a question I can’t hear. As hearing-impaired people often do when we can’t hear something, I smile and nod my head. I should have reached for the hearing aids.
Within seconds I’m back in Vince’s Barber Shop in Broomall, Pennsylvania at the age of five. Vince’s old electric clippers are shearing the sides of my head like a sheep shearer shears wool from a sheep. At age 72 I don’t have much left, but I’m told I have beautiful hair, even if it’s white. The clippers are clipping; the hair is flying in one-inch clumps. This is not a trim! I’m being led to the slaughter. I close my eyes, as though in prayer, pretending it’s not as bad as I expect.
I should have prayed!
Mortimer Snerd and Edgar Bergen
She finishes “the trim” with scissors and holds up the mirror to show me her handiwork. I pretend I’m an actor, looking at the unrecognizable head staring back at me. It’s Mortimer Snerd, ventriloquest Edgar Bergen’s dummy who made me laugh as a kid, and, as Mortimer often did, I smile a stupid smile, and say, “Yup”. There is nothing else to do.
ALWAYS CARRY CASH
“How much do I owe you?” “Ten dollars,” she says. “Do you take American Express?” “No,” she says, “we only take cash.”
Oops! I take out my wallet. No cash. I go into my pockets and find three one crumpled dollar bills. She agrees to let me go up the street to the coffee shop where Kay is using the internet. “I’ll be back,” I say, assuring her I’m not skipping town. I don’t tell her that her haircut is only worth three dollars.
Kay also has no cash. But she remembers the cylinder of quarters she keeps in the Prius. We count them out, 38 quarters, just enough with my three ones to cover the cost and leave a $1.50 tip, and return to the Beauty Salon.
She’s doing the hair of the teenage girl dressed in her bridesmaid uniform. I think of bridesmaids’ dresses as uniforms ‘cause, like Army recruits, the poor bridesmaids have to wear what their recruiter makes them wear. There is no freedom on wedding day. I just hope the poor soul sitting in the stylist’s chair doesn’t open her eyes to see Mortimer staring back from her bridesmaid uniform.
LESSONS FOR LIFE
Thirteen (13) little hours offered the best and the worst, the joys and, as the old hymn “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” puts it, “the burdens of the day.”
I’ll take back to Minneapolis three life lessons learned in Anaconda:
Pay no attention to the exterior appearance of anything, especially a restaurant. It may hide the best tenderloin steak you’ve ever tasted anywhere.
Carry cash!
If you’re a guy who ventures into a beauty salon next door to the closed barber shop and some women laugh loudly when you ask if they do men, run for your life. You may turn into Mortimer Snerd!
“Yup!” Life is like that. I smile and remember the tenderloin. Kay tells me my hair will grow out again.
“The living God is related to the categories and formal arguments of our abstract thinking as fire is related to paper.” Arthus Bogel
“Great science, which we once considered an ‘enemy’ of religion, is now helping us see that we’re standing in the middle of awesome Mystery, and the only response before that Mystery is immense humility. Astrophysicists are much more comfortable with darkness, emptiness, non-explainability (dark matter, black holes), and living with hypotheses than most Christians I know. Who could have imagined this?” Richard Rohr
“I am … reminded of the humility of those early theologians who knew that when we seek to speak of God we do so only out of the glimmers of understanding that sparkle amid the vast background of uncomprehended mystery….” Robert J. Russell
“In a recent sermon [Rev. John Buchanan] writes that the science that many Christians had felt over the centuries to be…
Ever have one of those days when you wonder what in the world you were thinking?
After eating at The India Spice House, I stopped in at the adjoining grocery store. A box of Bourbon-flavored biscuits made in Oran caught my eye. They looked good. I confused Oran (in Algeria) with Oromo, the identity of the Ethiopian Muslim men who had prayed for my friend Phil in the ICU Waiting Room two nights before. “That’s great,” I thought to myself. “The biscuits will make a nice gift.”
Gift to Muslim prayers
At the hospital I handed the box to two Oromo brothers holding vigil in the ICU Waiting Room. No words were exchanged. They accepted the gift, smiled, and nodded.
Only on my way to visit Phil in the ICU did it dawn on me. Muslims don’t drink! Even if the biscuits were made in Oromo instead of Oran, Bourbon-flavored anything is unacceptable, even disrespectful, however unintentional.
I returned to the Waiting Room. They smiled broadly. “Good!” said the one who speaks English. The other repeated his word with raised eyebrows. “Good!” We shook hands the way brothers do on the street in the hood. All was well! Salaam, Shalom, Peace was everywhere in the room.
Views from the Edge 