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“Where’s Mom? I Need Mom!”

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Barclay

Barclay

Barclay must have been begging for help during the night without a mother to hear his desperate pleas. Kay (Mom) has been out of town for a week.

When I approached his kennel this morning, there was an odor. But I thought to myself, that can’t be. Barq hasn’t had an accident in 18 months. His colitis is under control. I was just praising his habits to friends yesterday.

I opened the kennel door. Barclay rushed downstairs in a panic, leaving a trail behind him on the upstairs landing, down the flight of 18 steps, on the downstairs entry floor and carpet before I could get him outdoors Poor little guy.

So I’ve been cleaning up the mess, wiping the floors and soiled carpets, laundering his blankets, de-fumigating his kennel, bathing him, drying him, and brushing him out ever since. Barclay is resting comfortably now on the sofa while I go up and down the stairs wash doing the laundry.

On behalf of Barclay, I sent the following email to Kay, who this morning is with her six girlfriends at the retreat house in northeast Nebraska owned and operated by the Audubon Society.

He needs his mom badly. Bad mom! Bad mom!

“Where’s mom? I need mom!” he asks with those big brown eyes. “She’s in Nebraska with the birds,” I tell him. “Why is she in Nebraska, and what’s she doing with the birds? Does she like the birds more than me?” “No, Barq, she’s with her girlfriends at an Audubon sanctuary.” “What’s an Audubon? Is that like those fast highways they have in Germany? Is mom driving too fast? Will mom be safe driving?” “Yes, mom will be safe. She driving in a great big car today down to the Audubon river with her girlfriends.” “Car?! Ride in the car?!” “No, Barq, mom’s riding in the car with her girlfriends.” “Aw, Mom likes girls better than us? Why, dad, why? Is that why she wasn’t here last night to help me? Is that why you had to pick up my poop and pee – ‘cause it was a guy’s pee and poop? Is mom ever coming back? Are we alone here together, just the two of us, when only one of us can hear?” “No, mom loves you very much, Barq. No need to worry. She’s coming back on Monday. She’s driving back in her car….” “Car? Go for the ride in the car? Can we, Dad?” “Not right now, Barq, Dad has to continue to dry you out and comb you before we can do anything like that, and, besides, you’re not getting any breakfast this morning. Your stomach has to recover today.” “Mom would give me breakfast!!!” “No, she wouldn’t because you’re sick.” “I’m not a dick, Dad, I just don’t feel well. If mom thinks we’re both dicks and mom likes girls better than guys, do you think there’s a danger she might not come back, that she might stay with her girlfriends and the birds by the Autobahn?”

In short – we’re having a most exquisite Saturday morning.

– Gordon C. Stewart, lonely in Chaska, Minnesota, May 30, 2015.

JKF’s Birthday and Champagne

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It’s normal for a mother to think her newborn child sets the moon. But few, if any, look at their children and say that one day they’ll be President of the United States.

One is left to wonder how it was 98 years ago today in Brookline, Massachusetts when Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy gave birth to her second-born child, John. Rose and her husband Joe were Irish Catholic in a country whose political class was blue-blood Protestant. No Roman Catholic had ever run for the Presidency by the time Rose gave birth to John.

But some mothers and fathers have a way. Welcoming their children into the world with unconditional love, they also encourage great expectations. Love and excellence are not opposites; they go together like the soil in Champagne, and the coveted grapes the soil produces.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born to Rose and Joseph Kennedy 98 years ago. They could not have imagined their second-born son would grow up to become the 35th President of the United States of America. But he did.

Few, if any, mothers expect their child to become President of the United States of America. But if unconditional love and great expectations greet a newborn child, almost anything can happen, and, whatever it turns out to be, it will all be good.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, May 29, 2015.

Daily Riches: Today’s Need For an Alternative History (Richard Rohr)

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Richard Rohr is a favorite of Views from the Edge. We came upon this post on “Richer by Far” after its host, commented on “The Blogger’s Dilemma: Words and Silence.”

Bill Britton's avatarRicher By Far

“The political terms right and left came from the Estates General in France. It’s interesting that now we use them as our basic political categories. On the left sat the ordinary people, and on the right sat the nobility and the clergy! (What were the clergy doing over there?!) I think you see the pattern. The right normally protects the community and the status quo. The left predictably looks for change and reform, and there is a certain need for both or we have chaos. In history you will invariably have these two movements in some form, because we didn’t have the phenomenon of the middle class until very recently. The vast majority of people in all of history have been poor, as in Jesus’ time, and would have read history as a need for change. The people who wrote the books and controlled the social institutions, however, have almost…

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A Blogger’s Dilemma – Words and Silence

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Although no two days are the same, they divide themselves between up and down, loquacious and dumb, wordy and wordless.

Some days the words greet me in the morning. They pour out through my fingertips before I know what they’ll say. Other mornings the words play dead or hide-and-seek.

The words don’t come when the news is bad…when the world itself is too wordy, when the sacredness of words is profaned by jabber and chatter and pretentious prognostications about … just about everything. Some of those days and weeks I know enough to keep silent. On others I try to write and publish something here on Views from the Edge despite the inner voice that whispers “Shhhh! Not now. Maybe later the words will come. Shhhh!”

Although no two days are ever the same, they group themselves between “Not now; not yet!” and “Good morning! Today’s the day!”

Whether the words know when to be written is another thing altogether. Neither they nor the keyboard knows, and so some days I write in hopes they won’t profane the sacredness of words and silence.

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

 

Reunion after 50 Years

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Some will come we never knew
Others we knew well have died
Some faces have never changed
Eyes that smile or smiles that kiss

Age has bent and broken some
Motorcycles carry some
Others have three legs or six
Hair is gone or colored now

Eyes see less and ears have hair
Some wear aids and others should
Minds remember hearts recall
Or we cannot think at all

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, May 7, 2015

The Race to the White House 2016

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Ted Cruz, Ron Paul, Marco Rubio, and Hillary Clinton are taking their places in the starting gates for the horse race to the White House in 2016. Smiles and frowns all around, emails asking “Are you IN?“with a request for money from the partisan Yea-Sayers and Nay-Sayers. But the fact is that every horse they ride – conservative and liberal – is owned by Wall Street.

Painting of Governor Floyd B. Olson

Painting of Governor Floyd B. Olson

I’m not “IN” until a candidate rides a different horse into the starting gate. Until someone acts and sounds like Floyd B. Olson.

Click What would Floyd B. do? to find a candidate who puts them all the declared candidates to shame.

Floyd B. Olson was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. He was the first third party candidate elected Governor of Minnesota as the candidate of the progressive Farmer-Labor Party. Years later the Farmer-Labor Party joined with the Democratic Party to form the Democratic Farm-Labor Party (DFL).

“I am not a liberal. I am what I want to be — a radical,” said Governor Olson to the 1934 Farmer-Labor party convention. A radical is not an ideologue. It’s a person who insists on going to the root of things. Olson was the nemesis of Wall Street, a champion of the people.

The Farmer-Labor party, a loose and, at times, tenuous coalition of farmers, workers, socialists, isolationists and progressives, coalesced around the idea that working together they would bring about a fairer distribution of income for themselves and increase social justice for the larger society. – Russell Fridley, Minnesota Law & Politics.

If and when someone like Floyd B. Olson rides a different horse into the starting gate for the 2016 White House horse race, I’ll be IN with both feet.  Until then, I’m not IN.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, April 18, 2015.

Liberation Limerick

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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

The Choir – emblem of hope in a world at odds with itself

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Listen in on John Rutter, one of the world’s great composers, discuss the choir as “a kind of emblem for what we need in this world, when so much of the world is at odds with itself….”

Do unto others…

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It’s not often we follow up of Steve’s poems. But today’s post (“Verse – Indiana”) on Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) merits further comment on Holy Saturday.

some so-called Christians change the
Golden Rule:
“Do unto others what hate did to you.”

Steve and I are both Presbyterian ministers. We’re Protestants. We’re not proud of it; it’s just who we are. At this point in his life, Steve restricts his social commentary to poems and verses.

Here are the earlier stanzas of of “Indiana” that succinctly set the Indiana religious Freedom Restoration Act in its ironic historical context:

To America came the Protestants.
In England they could not live
as they would.
They were despised by ruling residents
and fled to freely worship their own God.

Conservatives want to preserve the past,
forgetting which side they were on…
They now
discriminate against those who resist
and say, “To your beliefs we will not bow.”

Tomorrow Steve will celebrate Easter in Illinois. I will celebrate Easter in Minnesota. The symbol of the stone rolled away will be front and center. There can be no hate at the empty tomb. Governor Pence and legislators, pay close attention. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It’s hard to believe they didn’t know what they were doing, but in the sense in which the prayer from the cross was uttered, they really didn’t know`1.

 

Disciples of Christ opposed Indiana RFRA

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Before the national hubbub about Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) leaders sent this letter to Indiana Governor Mike Pence urging him to veto the the bill.

March 25, 2015

The Honorable Michael R. Pence
Governor of the State of Indiana
200 W. Washington Street, Room 206
Indianapolis, Indiana 46204

Dear Governor Pence,

We write with respect to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). We urge you to veto the bill.

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has been headquartered in Indianapolis for nearly 100 years. Although Butler University is no longer affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), its founder, Ovid Butler, was a Disciple and a noted abolitionist. The college, in keeping with our values, admitted women in a time when that was rare. We are the church that founded Christian Theological Seminary. Our offices are located on North Meridian. Our Indiana regional offices are located in Indianapolis as well.

Every two years our general assembly, a gathering of over 6000 people from across the United States and Canada, is held in a US city. In 2017 it is scheduled to be in Indianapolis as it was in 2009 and 1989. Like so many other host cities, we find Indianapolis to be a hospitable and enjoyable location for our people. Many of our leaders are citizens of this city, and we take particular pride when our selection process makes it possible to bring the assembly to our home town.

However, the recent passage in the state legislature of the RFRA bill is distressing to us. It is causing us to reconsider our decision to hold our 2017 gathering in Indianapolis.

Purportedly a matter of religious freedom, we find RFRA contrary to the values of our faith – as well as to our national and Hoosier values. Our nation and state are strong when we welcome people of many backgrounds and points of view. The free and robust exchange of ideas is part of what makes our democracy great.

As a Christian church, we are particularly sensitive to the values of the One we follow – one who sat at table with people from all walks of life, and loved them all. Our church is diverse in point of view, but we share a value for an open Lord’s Table. Our members and assembly-goers are of different races and ethnicities, ages, genders and sexual orientations. They have in common that they love Jesus and seek to follow him.

We are particularly distressed at the thought that, should RFRA be signed into law, some of our members and friends might not be welcome in Indiana businesses – might experience legally sanctioned bias and rejection once so common on the basis of race.

We are following closely the progress of this legislation. It will be a factor in whether we continue with our plans to hold an assembly in Indianapolis in 2017. We urge you to veto the bill.

Respectfully,

Sharon E. Watkins  Julia Brown Karimu, President    Ronald J. Degges, Pres. Gen.Minister & Pres.     Div. of Overseas Ministries    Disciples Home Mission

After Governor Pence signed the bill, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) took further action reported by The Huffington Post. Click “Disciples of Christ Church Threatens a Boycott Over New Law … that Allows GLBT Discrimination” to read the story.

Sometimes disciples of Jesus stand up for the rule of love. Do I hear hands clapping for the Disciples of Christ?