A Journeyman's Training, Part I

So how does a Southern Baptist preacher boy become an Anglican priest?  It's a long story, as the old saying goes, a story that covers forty-five years of spiritual pilgrimage.

I was baptized into the Christian Faith by the Rev. Clyde B. Spann at the Thackerville Baptist Church, Love County, Oklahoma in August 1967.  Very shortly after that I began to speak in churches as a Baptist "preacher boy."  I was as dumb as a sack of hammers.  Dumb, but educable, as one of my friends used to say.  But, I was a winning personality, with a natural ease before a crowd and a gift of gab.  I had always been an avid reader, with a thirst for knowledge and my daddy's steel-trap memory.  Rev. Spann, who was also my high school English teacher, began to put books in my hands.  One of the most important of these was W.T. Conner's Christian Doctrine.  Little by little, I began to understand something of the Christian Faith I was trying to preach.  I also memorized long passages from the Bible.  My public speaking skills were being honed to a sharp edge.

As I entered Oklahoma Baptist University in 1970, I read myself into a very high Calvinistic theological position, indeed, an almost hyper-calvinist position.  These were the days of great foment in the Southern Baptist Convention and its institutions of higher learning, with men and women teaching in the universities and seminaries things contrary to the faith held by most Baptists.  Under this perceived attack on my own faith, I began to read the work of the founders of Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.  This work was grounded in a high view of the Bible's inspiration, as well as a solidly Reformed theology.  This helped me to survive the subtle attacks on the Bible's trustworthiness that was the daily classroom diet at OBU at the time.

In time, I tired of the battle and decided to attend the Moody Bible Institute.  Here, I was plunged into an environment that was just the opposite I had known in Oklahoma.  At MBI the emphasis was upon evangelism, Bible teaching, and missions, all based on the unquestioned authority of the Bible.  Little by little, I began to suffer from a overload of this emphasis.  Here we were, in the middle of one of the world's great cities, a treasure house of history, art, and culture, and it was as if nothing existed but the enclave at 820 North LaSalle Avenue.

And then I discovered Francis and Edith Schaeffer.  I began to devour their books.  Here is what I had been looking for and had failed to find both at OBU and at MBI.  Here was a faith that affirmed on every hand the Bible, but simultaneously celebrated the goodness of creation and of creation pursuits.  It was only a matter of time before I had read myself out of the Bible college ethos.

But, Chicago also did something else for me.  In the loneliness and homesickness of that bleak Lake Michigan winter of 1972-73, I was broken in a way that I had never been before.  My practical Christian work assignment from MBI meant that every week I traveled on the subway to preach to the denizens of a run-down hotel on the North Side of Chicago.  Here I began to learn to love the people I was preaching to almost as much as I loved preaching.  I spent many hours at the Art Institute and began to love in a deep way the great art of the Western canon.  I began to read outside the fundamentalist box I had been nurtured in.  When I drove away from Chicago in the Spring of 1973, I was a different young man from the country boy who had arrived nine months earlier.  Theologically, I had come to understand that the creation mattered and that creation pursuits like art and work mattered as much a salvation pursuits like preaching and teaching.  More importantly, I had come to see that people matter.

For the next 33 years I would work out the implications of all this in pastoral ministry in two Baptist churches.  During the earliest parts of these years, I would be a trenchant critic of much that I have come to embrace.  But, little by little, I would come to have doubts about it all.  The doubts were the result of seeing two central things clearly:  What we were doing was not working and what we were trying to do had already been done.  All of this would be the result of two influences.

"I'm Back and Rarin' to Go!" Shinbone

Mr. Deahl and the Bees by E.D. "Shinbone" Smith, Bomar, Oklahoma, formerly Indian Territory or "IT"

J.A. Deahl was my near neighbor for over twenty five years.  He was a stocky feller with a grim face that always surprised you when it broke into a grin; you wouldn't have thought that face had a grin in it, let alone such a grin.  He had been through the worst part of the Pacific conflict during the War, so there was a lot to be grim about.  But, like most of them boys that went off to the War, he came home, married, raised a family, and went to work.  He didn't set around feeling sorry for himself and he seldom talked about his war.  But, it had marked him, for sure.  There was always a brutality about him, whether it came to raising his kids, or getting rid of a passel of cats on his place.  As a neighbor he was fine and dependable, minding his own business, and willing to do anything in the world for you, like most of us in the community.  He was shy about conflict with anybody, especially his neighbors.  Still...you wouldn't want to mess with him.

When J.A.'s kids was young- there was six of them- a feller from over around Pilot Point, Texas bought the place next to J.A.'s.  Now, this feller was an amateur bee-keeper and he placed his hives on the fence line right up next to the Deahl place.  After a while there wadn't a day went by without one or more of them Deahl kids getting stung by bees.  This went on for a while and finally Mizz Deahl laid down the law:  "If you don't go an' talk to him about them bees, I'm goin' to."  So, reluctantly, J.A. went to visit his bee-keeping neighbor.

He found him out with the bees.  He stood watching for a spell until the man noticed him, standing there.

"Howdy!  What can I do for you?"

Quietly, J.A. said, "Purty day.  Them bees is workin' fine."

"Yessir, they are.  What can I do for you?"

"Lot of blossom this year.  That'll work good for them bees and for you, I reckon."

"Yessir," said the neighbor, "it shorely will." And after a pause, he said, "Look, you can see I'm busy.  Is there something I can do for you?  I ain't got time to stand around and natter."

"Well..." drawled J.A., "actually, I was wondering if you could move them hives?  Them bees have been stinging my children, and the old lady is kinda miffed about it, not to mention the kids.  I thought maybe you could move them hives away from the property line."

Now the neighbor jist stood there for a few seconds, glaring at J.A.

"Jist who the hell do you think you are, I ask you, coming over here on my land and giving orders about my property?"

Quietly, J.A. said, "I don't believe I was giving orders.  I was trying to be polite and neighborly.  I'd jist like my kids to be able to play in their own yard without gettin' bee-stung."

"You can jist go straight to hell.  And, while you're at it, you can git off my property," the neighbor said, with husky anger in his voice.

"Sorry you feel that way," said J.A. "Adios."  And with that he turned and slowly walked back to his place.

When he got home, he went to his shop and looked around for a few minutes, then went to the house to get the keys to his pickup.

"Where're you going?" the Missus asked.

"I'm going to Marietta to see a man about some bees."

Before Mizz Deahl could say, "Do what?" he was out of the door and on his way.

When he got to town, J.A. went into Woodson's Hardware and Feed.

A young clerk asked, "What can I do for you today, J.A.?"

"I need a yard of that zinc hardware cloth, an eight foot extension cord, a roll of solder and a can of flux, and a jar of honey if you've got any."

"You will have to go next door for the honey, J.A., but I'll have these other things ready for you when you get back."

When he returned with his honey, everything was bagged and ready, the hardware cloth rolled into a tidy roll.

"Watch them sharp ends on that wire, J.A., they're boogers," warned the clerk, sucking on his thumb where one of the "boogers" had got him.

"Ain't they though," said J.A.

"What are you up to, making a chick brooder?"

"I'm a going into the bee-keeping business," said J.A., and before the clerk could comment, he had gathered his parcels and left.

When he got home, he took his stuff to the shop.  With the hardware cloth he made a cylinder approximately eighteen inches tall by twelve inches across.  He cut the female end of the extension cord  off, split and stripped the wires and soldered them to the bottom of his cylinder.  He plugged in a longer cord and carried the business end of it out to about twenty feet from the fence line where the neighbor's bee hives were.  Then he rolled a wooden cable spool to the same place.  He went and got his cylinder with its cord and the jar of honey.  Taking off the lid to the honey jar, he placed it on top of the spool and then he placed the cylinder on top of that so that the jar was in the middle of the wire cylinder.  Then, last of all, he plugged the new cord into the longer cord leading back to the shop.  He looked at the whole thing for a minute and then called the kids.

"Y'all git in the house for a while."

"Oh, Papa, do we have to?"

"You do like I told you."

"Yessir!"  And one by one they retreated to the house.

Going to the porch, J.A. told the Mizzus to keep the kids in the house.

"What are you up to?" she asked, but J.A. said nary a word.  He jist set down in a rocker on the porch and stared at his contraption.

After two or three cigarettes, the dead bees in and around the wire cylinder were about six inches deep.
Directly, he heard a shout and watched as the neighbor came and gripped the top wire of the fence, staring in horror at his dead and dying bees.

"Deahl!  D-e-a-h-l!" he wailed, "What in hell are you doing?  You are murdering my bees!"

"Deahl! Deahl!" he kept calling, while muttering to himself, "Oh, damn, oh damn, oh double-damn!"
By the time J.A. sauntered out to the bee killer, the neighbor was in tears.

"What do you mean," he sobbed, "You are murdering my bees!"

Quietly, grimly, but finally with that surprising grin splitting his face, J.A. said,

"Oh, no, this ain't murder.  Them bees is committing suicide!"


By nightfall, the hives had been moved to the other side of the neighbor's place.

I loved old J.A.  He was fine feller.  But, you wouldn't want to mess with him.

On Writer's (Painter's) Block or On the Normality of Dormant Periods in the Creative Process

My dear friend and patron,

So, you have not yet got the painting.  Neither have I.  Nor can I promise a date.  (I shouldn't have been so optimistic when you called last month.)  I would send you your deposit back, but I don't have the money- either.

The fact is that I am in long period of creative dormancy, commonly called "block," i.e., "writer's block," "painter's block," et cetera, ad nauseum.  I have learned to avoid the term, "block," though; it sounds so much like a complaint of the lower bowel.  It is not a disease, though it causes dis-ease.  It is more like the fallowness that the earth goes through each winter.  It is part of the natural flow of things.  Or the natural unflow of things.  The river is frozen, and while the current still runs deep under the ice, the surface is lifeless and impenetrable. Sorry that you were the one to get caught on the floes.  If it is any comfort, I am here with you, trying not to mutter and cuss, waiting for the rifle-shot cracks that signal the breakup and the coming of spring.

There are plenty of reasons for this winter.  You may remember that your commission was given when I was in the midst of a turbulent career-altering set of circumstances.  These were things that I had no control over.  Believe me,  I was black and blue before I finally gave up and admitted this.  Then there was the move.  ("First, the shove, then the move," I had almost said.)  Eight months later I am still looking for painting supplies that were before so organized that I could have found them in the dark.  Then there was the "settling in"- deceptive phrase.  Who can adequately describe the fears, anxieties, four o'clock in the morning terrors, humiliations, embarassments, intimidations, and countless little daily insults of settling in to a new and strange place.  It's more like "unsettling in." Add to this the work load of my daily job, the new things and people to learn, the sheer exhaustion at the end of the day.  There is little doubt that all of this has knocked my inner-life into a bumper-car experience of disorientation.  And when the inner-life goes, the creative life goes with it.

You may well accuse me of bitching and whining.  I will not argue with you.  Though I think that I am simply trying to explain to you what I have already explained to myself:  that is, how I got to where I am and why you have not yet got your painting.   I can go on and knock something out for you,  but I won't be pleased with it and neither with you.  Be patient with me as I am trying to be with myself.  We are not talking here about laziness, or procrastination, or unethical dilly-dallying.  We are talking about creativity and the tug and tow of its tides.  As Victoria Nelson has written in her book On Writer's Block, "The creative experience can and must be guided, but it cannot be controlled" p. 35.

So, again I plead, be patient with me and try to remember how much you (used to) love me.  The painting will come.  Of that I am sure.  Unless I am hit by a bus or felled by one of the many medical foes of a sixty year old man who loves tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, and barbecue.

Cheers and jeers,

Rabbi Tbone

In Lent

The way is long.

The climb is hard.

Upwards.

But pain

Pulls down-

Body and spirit

Pull down

On the upwards climb.

The summit is yet ahead.

I cannot see it.

Others

Who have been there

Tell me it is ahead.

They tell me:

"Keep on!"

This I know:

The mists part

From time to time.

I glimpse

The landscape below.

I have inhabited

That landscape

For many years.

I have known its parts.

Parts I know well.

All its parts

I have loved.

Knowing it well

Does not mean

I know it whole.

(We can love completely

Without knowing wholly.)

Even now,

In the glimpses

Through the mists,

I see its wholeness

Without knowing it whole.

The way is hard.

The climb is long.

There is joy in the pain.

There is peace in the downward view.

Holy Saturday, 2012

A Letter to Former and Present Members of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, Columbia, Missouri

Dear Friends,

I learned today that you have called a new pastor. I am pleased about this and wish you and him every blessing in your new life together.

It was my joy to serve you as your pastor during some of the happiest as well as some of the darkest days of your history. I thank God for this. In His good Providence those times prepared all of us for the work we are now doing and shall be doing in His Church and Kingdom.

Kathy and I want to thank you for your generous gift upon our leaving Columbia, for all of the help that you gave us in our move (and in working on the house), and for all of the kindnesses you have shown to Emily since our departure.

We are settling in to our new responsiblities, to life in the city, and to life away from each of our children. We have found grace in time of need and much joy in our new work in the church and school here.

We join to wish you a very blessed Advent season and a Merry Christmas!

In the unbreakable bonds of the Gospel,

Thom and Kathy

I am a Western Man

I am a Western man. My temperament, the shape of my mind and soul, have been crafted and formed by the land and sky of the American West. It has taken me most of my life to figure this out. I lived for twenty-three years in the mountains and hollows of West Virginia and it was there that I began to suspect the truth of my nature. While beautiful in the extreme, I was never quite at home there. I suffered from what Larry McMurtry has called "sky deprivation." I always felt a depressive, claustrophobic angst while living there. There were too many trees, too little sky. When traveling back to Oklahoma and Texas on visits, I always found my spirits lifting when we crossed the Mississippi, just as I experienced the opposite as we drove past Morehead, Kentucky, returning.

I had a brief love affair with England during the early 90s. We almost moved there in 1991. It was only after a visit to my family burial plot in southern Oklahoma in 2005 that I realized what had attracted me to the North of England. Apart from the blistering heat, the landscape- with its pastures and woodlands, and its enormous sky- was very much like the landscape of certain parts of Yorkshire.

When we moved to central Missouri in 2007. a new peace settled into my soul. I would sit for hours in the early mornings, the late evenings, and the nights, drinking in the unbounded sky. Upon our return to Texas this year, my joy in the Western landscape has been completed. The landscape of childhood is the landscape of the soul. My return to my childhood landscape has been a return to my deepest and truest self. It has been a return to an inner peace that had long evaded me.

My love for the Western landscape, however, goes deeper. As a child I traveled thousands of miles across the whole landscape of the American West. From Fort Worth to Los Angeles, from North Texas to Idaho and Montana. This was because I was placed in the care of family who lived in these places. In 2009,my daughter, Kate, and I drove from Columbia, Missouri to Yuma, Arizona. I was revisiting places I remembered from my childhood travels (and one adolescent "March hare" hitchhiking trip, when I thumbed my way from Okemah, Oklahoma to Boise, Idaho in twenty-three hours). In the Panhandle of Texas, the high plains of New Mexico, and the deserts and mountains of Arizona, the bones of the earth are laid bare under an omnipresent sky. It was good to see it all again.

So, the landscape and skyscape of the West is etched into my nature as surely as my mother's and father's genes.

But, there is more to it than this. My people are Westerners. My great-grandfather, J.C. Smith came from northern Georgia, first to Texas and then to Indian Territory before the turn of the 20th Century. He was a horse and mule trader and farmer. My maternal grandfather, A.T. Brown, began his working life as a ranch foreman, a horseman and cattleman. They both lived in Oklahoma before statehood when it was still a "wild and wooly" place. It marked them both, and though different in size and temperament, they were neither of them men you would "mess with"-if you had good sense. They were Western men. And while they owed much to their Anglo-Celt heritage and blood, the West had imprinted them early and left them marked for their whole lives.

My daddy was the inheritor of all this. From childhood, he collected the stories and the songs of this region and its people. Imbued with with a voracious curiosity and an infallible memory, he stored away the history, the myths, and the lore of these Western people. Charming and humble in the presence of others, handsome and cheerful, full of interest and humor and compassion, the people would open to him their hearts and their memories in a way that they would not and had not to anyone else. When in his late twenties he began to hunt and collect arrowheads, his love for and interest in the West compounded. This he passed on to me.

Not that I was a willing recipient at first. Like all young boys, I was caught up with my own "long, long thoughts." But he was insistent without being overbearing. Part of this was unintentional, being the overflow of his own enthusiasm for the matter.

Item: I began learning to read as my daddy would stop to read to me the cast iron historical markers of Jack and Young counties, Texas.

Item: I began to love old and strange tools and relics on a visit to a Mr. Weldon in South Bend, Texas. He had a room filled with Indian relics, cowboy gear, and snakes and lizards preserved in glass apothecary jars lining the walls. I was five or six at the time.

Item: I began to have a sense of American history and the struggle of the Western settlers on a visit to old Fort Belknap, north of Graham, Texas. I can still remember the cold, misty November day, and the displays in the fort's museum as daddy read to me the various explanations and went on to explain that dark things had occurred in and around this fort on the Salt Fork of the Brazos. This was in 1957.

Item: Daddy took me to the Cooke County Public Library in Gainesville, Texas when I was seven or eight and got me a library card. The first books I checked out were about the men who won the West, and about the tribes who lost it. I became a young ethnologist and even went through a time when I resented my daddy for being "a white man."

He had infected me with the germ he was victim to. I would never get over it.

The second most formative influence on my "Westerness" was my daddy's younger brother, Kenneth. While serving in the U.S. Air Force, he was stationed in Mountain Home, Idaho in the 1950s. While there, he met and married Nora Reed from a little railroad town called, Orchard. Having no children of their own, they took me into their hearts. It is because of them that I saw so much of the American Rockies. We camped in the mountains, fished in the streams and lakes, hunted jackrabbits and trapped badgers on the sagebrush deserts, and reveled in it all, the beauty and grandeur, the starkness and fastness.

It is they who took me to Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons, to Yellowstone, and to the Snake and Salmon Rivers. It is they who traveled hundreds of miles out of their way, so that a thirteen year old boy could see Charlie Russell's studio and home in Great Falls, Montana. Once they took me into the mountains north of Boise to meet a family living without electricity and other conveniences in a cabin by a rushing stream. The father and husband was aged and had been a hunter and trapper from the early days of the 20th Century. We ate a fine meal of fried chicken and produce from their garden cooked on a wood stove by their spinster daughter. The raspberry's cultivated by that stream were the finest I have ever eaten and the water was cold and sweet. The stories, if anything, were even sweeter. I was formed and molded by these experiences and by their own enthusiasm for the West. They are still in Idaho, still in love after fifty-plus years, and still enthusiastic about the history, the landscape, and the promise of that big country.

Since my maturity the West has been one of the defining realities of my mind and soul. I have a wall of books testifying to this. My collections- of songs, of stories, of people, and of things- all connect in some way with this country. While I live, I wish to live here, and when I die I wish to be buried here in the family plot on the tip end of Love County, Oklahoma, formerly "IT" or "Indian Territory."

And, yes, I still have my daddy's arrowheads.