Donald Trump Has Ended His Candidacy

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Views from the Edge published this piece April 1, 2016. Perhaps tonight Mr. Trump will use the national spotlight to announce to the world that he’s not a politician. Never was. Never will be. He’s too good to stay in this race.

Gordon C. Stewart's avatarViews from the Edge

Orange hair and rude speech are colorful. When a presidential candidate speaks off the cuff in street language, he’s colorful. Like the class clown in junior high school, he’s entertaining. In class, or under the big tent of the three ring circus, the clown captures everyone’s attention. You never know what he’ll do next. He’s colorful.

But sometimes clowns go too far; they push the boundaries of propriety. When a clown offends the crowd, he becomes not only colorful but odoriferous, and nothing can empty a room like an offensive odor. When a clown pretending to be a world leader, wise and substantive, declares that women who have abortions should be punished, but he’s not yet sure how, everyone in the crowd – pro-life and pro-choice alike – is offended by the flatulence.

Today Donald Trump announced the end of his campaign for the GOP nomination. Speaking from the steps…

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When caught with a hand in the cookie jar

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How will Donald Trump present himself in tomorrow night’s presidential town hall meeting?

A) Attempt to compare himself favorably with Bill Clinton, alleging worse comments to Hillary’s husband on the golf course?  It’s just what guys do when guys are alone, and Bill’s more lewd than I am.

B) Allege, as he has already, that Hillary has had a relationship/relationships outside of marriage? “Hillary is no angel!”

C) Apologize in the manner of the evangelical advisor, declaring that the event in 2005 was before he had a spiritual awakening, and that the issue now is forgiveness for a past indiscretion?

D) Make eyes for Moderator Martha Raddatz . . .  or Anderson Cooper?

E) Come out as a recovering sex addict?

F) None or some of the above? “None of the personal stuff matters. It’s about Making America Great Again! It’s about restoring America’s right to grope the world again. It’s about winning again. All the complainers and accusers are losers! They’re all pussies!”

The question now is not how big are his hands, but how big is his base?

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN 55318

Fall

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Leaves are falling. The sap is finished running. Flowers fade — red,  green, yellow, purple falling into brittle brown.

Each season reflects the eternal motion of the seasons we sense within ourselves. Over a lifetime we move from the temporary wrinkles of the newborn babe to the well-worn lines and wrinkles of aging. We love to look at babies; old folks not so much.

In 1857 Adalbert Stifter pondered this in Der Nachsommer (The Post-Summer) published in English under the title Indian Summer:

“Great beauty and youth capture our attention, excite a deep pleasure; however, why shouldn’t our souls gaze at a countenance over which the years have passed? Isn’t there a story there, one unknown, full of pain or beauty, which pours its reflection into the features, a story we can read with some compassion or at least get a slight hint of its meaning? The young point toward the future; the old tell of a past.”

Fall is the favorite time for many of us. At my age, I no longer wonder why.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN 55318

Time is what we have

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“What is time?” asked the 11 year-old son of his father.  Finally, the father, who was supposed to know about such things, offered the briefest of answers. “Time is what we have.”

The answer  begged for more explanation, but it spoke out loud the frailty and wonder of the human condition. What is time? It’s what we have but, like everything else mortals have, or think we have, time runs out. Time is like the sand in the hour-glass. It sifts slowly through the funnel from top to bottom until there is nothing left. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

The relation of time to eternity is the relation between mortality and immortality. Our hour-glass contains eternity but it does not define it or confine it. We experience eternity in the now of time as we look at the heavens on a starry night, feel a gentle breeze or the rush of a mighty wind, or watch the shorelines of human construction eroding, pushing back the illusion of ownership and control of nature and of time.

My poet friend and Views from the Edge colleague Steve Shoemaker is coming to the end of his time. After many decisions that prolonged his life far beyond the original prognosis, he opted last Saturday to give way to time. Steve chose to spend whatever days are left at home at Prairie Haven on the plains of Illinois.

The news came less than a week after five old friends who call ourselves the Dogs traveled from Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, and Minnesota to gather one last time with Steve at Steve’s room in the care center. We barked and growled watching the first presidential debate. We laughed. We sang some hymns. We prayed with and for Steve, Nadja, and their children, Daniel and Marla. We prayed for ourselves. The time was right.

When news arrived only days later that Steve had opted to end further medical treatment to go home, the conversation with my 11 year-old son years ago and Steve’s verse “When to Stop Praying” (April 2, 2016) came quickly to mind. The prayer now is for an end of striving. An end of pain. “Pray for my peace, not my life.” The end of time.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, October 5, 2016.

 

 

 

 

A gentle pastor faces death

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Next Monday five old friends will visit Steve Shoemaker at the rehab center in Champaign-Urbana. Steve’s humor remains in top form despite the cancer that has limited his mobility and chunk the weight of his 6’8″ frame from 240 to 187 pounds.

Thinking about Monday’s visit, originally planned around the first presidential debate, I recalled a story about Steve jumping into a swimming pool dressed in a tuxedo after a wedding. It was locked in the Views from the Edge “draft” folder because we couldn’t convert the original piece from tpyepad to this platform. Today, in honor of Steve, we “converted it” for posting. The words belong to Bill Tammaeus, former columnist at the Kansas City Star.

The first time I boarded an airplane after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was to fly to Champaign-Urbana, Ill., at the invitation of the Rev. Steve Shoemaker to speak to a YMCA gathering at the University of Illinois.

I knew I needed not to avoid planes after experiencing the death of my nephew Karleton, a passenger on the first plane to hit the World Trade Center on 9/11, and Steve’s invitation to speak made it necessary to get back on one.

I’ve been thinking about Steve a lot recently after learning that he has developed pancreatic cancer, which is expected to kill him within a few months. I follow his almost daily thoughts about that now on the CaringBridge.org website. Which is where I learned that the newspaper for Champaign-Urbana, The News-Gazette, just published this terrific story about Steve. [Aside: VFTE republished the News-Gazette story]

You can get a good sense of the kind of sweet, thoughtful man he is, a man whose Christian faith issues in much concern for life’s downtrodden people.

Steve first got connected to my family through my North Carolina sister, Barbara, and her husband, Jim, who are my late nephew’s parents. They became friends with Steve and his wife Nadja when they were neighbors in the Raleigh-Durham area.

Later Steve performed the wedding ceremony for some of Barb and Jim’s children, including Karleton.

I still laugh at the memory of Steve and Jim — fully dressed in tuxedos — diving into a swimming pool in joy at the wedding reception when Barb’s and Jim’s daughter Tiffany was married. It helps to know that Steve stands about 6-foot-8 and made quite a splash.

From that News-Gazette story, here’s a taste of Steve’s theology: “God has his eyes on the sparrow and not the eagle, on the people who are hurting. That’s the God that makes sense to me.”

God’s eye is on the sparrow.

 

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, March 9, 2016

When Things Go Bump in the Night

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Children feel safer when a parent reads them a story and tucks them into bed. The things that go bump in the night are not quite so scary. Mommy or Daddy says not to worry. They’re right there to make sure everything will be alright.

In some ways we are children till the day we die. We feel anxious about our security. Fear still grips us when the sirens blare in the night.

Sometimes children are exposed all day long to the threats to their well-being. They need a parent’s or grandparent’s reassurance. They need the security of knowing that Mommy or Daddy is stronger than whatever might go bump in the night.

As we grow older we learn the difference between real and false reassurance. We know that there is no one to tuck us into bed anymore. But nostalgia for fairy tales and for the parent who will make us safe lingers on. And the candidate who both scares us during the day with stories of the boogieman and tucks us into bed with a fairy tale about himself as the hero gathers the children to himself.

The nightmare is just a few winks away.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, September 22, 2016

 

 

What every New Yorker knows about Donald Trump

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For a good dose of both truth and humor, click What every New Yorker knows, a Washington Post piece about the presidential candidate whose name we ruefully deign to mention.

Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, September 22, 2016.

Obituary – read to the END!

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Rev. John Richard Vogel Jr. Obituary
VOGEL, JR. Rev. John Richard Vogel, Jr. died suddenly and unexpectedly of natural causes on Saturday, May 28, 2016. He was 75. Services will be on Tuesday, June 7 at 11 a.m. at St. James United Methodist Church, 5540 Wayne Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri 64110, with a visitation at the church immediately thereafter. Dick was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in June 1940 to John Richard Vogel and Anna Watson Vogel. In 1948, the family moved to Normandy in the St. Louis, Missouri area, where he spent the remainder of his childhood. Dick graduated from Normandy High School as valedictorian in 1958, and attended the University of Michigan, initially intending to pursue a career in engineering. After a short time, he changed his course of study to philosophy and religion, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1962, and remaining eternally loyal to the Wolverines. He also obtained a master’s degree from Depauw University and a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School in 1966. Dick relocated to Kansas City that year to become the minister at Troost Avenue United Methodist Church and an integral part of the United Methodist Church’s Inner City Parish. He served at several churches during his career, including Central United Methodist Church, Kairos United Methodist Church, and later St. James United Methodist Church. As a minister, he was well regarded for performing countless numbers of weddings for couples throughout the area. Dick also worked for many years as the Executive Director of the Kansas City Mental Health Association. In the early 1980s, he transitioned into the financial services industry, and went on to a very successful career focused on life insurance sales, primarily with Northwestern Mutual Life. For many years, he could be found on the tennis courts or the restaurant at the Rockhill Tennis Club, of which he was an active member. At the time of his death, he was somewhat officially retired, although would likely admit he had a difficult time removing himself completely from the business of churches and insurance. He is survived by his wife, Mary Tracy Smith; a sister, Virginia Simmons; a son, David Vogel, and his wife, Maureen Mannion Vogel; a daughter, Emily Vogel, and her wife, Carly Evans; and four grandchildren, Mia Vogel, Connor Vogel, Kate Evans, and Sam Evans. He was preceded in death by his parents and a son, Mark Vogel. Dick was a wonderful father, brother, friend, colleague, and pastor, who worked very hard and dedicated significant portions of his life to helping those less fortunate. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to Della Lamb Community Center, Grand Avenue Temple United Methodist Church, or any other organization that helps those in need, as well as to the Yale Divinity School Class of 1966 50th Anniversary Scholarship Endowment Fund.

His family also believes that he would want those who respect his memory to agree they will never vote for the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.
Published in Kansas City Star from June 2 to June 5, 2016

Which song for today?

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Steve Shoemaker is hospitalized in Illinois.  CaringBridge and FaceBook, which have kept us up-to-date on his journey with terminal cancer, have been silent since Thursday. Steve’s last post on FB read “another set-back, fall-back, back-slide,” posted with a photo of his book “A Sin for Each Kind of Day.”

Waiting for news, Steve’s verse “A Song for Each Kind of Day” (posted on Views from the Edge on On April 12, 2012) came to memory.

One Hebrew word for “god” was “jah.”

(It was a time of many words

for god–and many gods.) To say

“hallel” was for all to sing praise,

so HALLELUJAH meant “Praise God!”

(or “Thanks to you, oh God!”– for some

words could be truly translated

more than one way.

And so, a Psalm, or Song, that offered thanks or praise

might well be paired with a lament:

a cry of pain from one who prays

for help, relief, from gods who sent

disaster. (But, of course, some Psalms

wisely acknowledged that some wrongs

were caused by those who sang the songs!)

There is a Psalm for each one of our days…

[Steve Shoemaker, April 12, 2012]

Today Kay and I are far away in Minnesota, but our hearts are in Illinois. Your prayers are invited. Just close your eyes. Sit quietly. Speak the name “Steve”. . . .[be still]. . . . Then “Nadja” . . . .[be still] . . . . Then “Shoemaker family”. . .  [be still] . . . .Then “Jah”. . . and leave the rest there.

There is a psalm for each kind of day. Today, it’s Psalm 46.

— Gordon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edward Albee

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Edward Albee, whose death was reported tonight by the NYT and The Washington Post, was my favorite playwright.

A line from “The Zoo Story” became one of the few texts committed to a memory not given to memorization:

“Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.”

Albee’s line begged for sustained reflection. It described my life experience.

Life is not a straight line. It’s jagged. Sometimes it doubles back on itself. It coils and uncoils, breaks, and appears again from nowhere. We don’t go a short distance “correctly.” and those who have gone a short distance “correctly” (playing by the rules of social convention), often wonder whether they have been anywhere at all.

The NYT and Washington Post articles are worth the read. Edward Albee was not straight, but he understood that the deeper human issues transcend sexuality. They are intrinsic to the human condition.

Receiving today’s news of his death at home in Montauk, Long Island, I bow with thanksgiving for the gift.

RIP.

  • Gordon C. Stewart