A Part of a Family, Part III

So, who was this boy the Wynn's invited into their home, into their family? What did they find when they began to discover who I then was?

Ken and Bettye Wynn were in their late twenties at the time. They were idealistic, devout, and committed to their sense of Christian calling. They were loving, self-sacrificing, and generous. I never knew for sure what their income was, but I know that they were living on a very constrained budget. With their talents and education they could have easily had careers where they were making a great deal more money than they would in a second-fiddle role in a medium sized Baptist church. They had three small daughters and there would soon be a fourth. They never asked me to contribute to the family economy, and I am chagrined to say, I never offered to, though I had a considerable amount of discretionary cash because of my preaching junkets and part-time job. O the follies of youth!

Ken was devout, but easy going. He was great fun and had a gentle way about him. Bettye was charming, but her piety had a tougher edge to it than Ken's. We got on wonderfully together. They had a fine sense of style and their home was filled with beautiful things, antique furniture that no one then cared about, pictures, books, and music. Bettye was a wonderful cook.

Here were two people on a limited income who had determined to fill their lives with beauty and style. The girls were what little girls are in a well-ordered home, sweet and happy.

Their taking me into the heart of this family was fraught with Christian idealism and naivete'. They would soon discover what a complex and complicated human being they had taken on. I would soon discover that living as a part of a family was radically different from the life that I had lived for seventeen years. It is a testimony to their faith, patience, and generosity that it succeeded at all, and that it succeeded over a period of two-plus years is nothing short of astonishing.

During those years, I began to learn what it is to be a part of a family. I was challenged and by circumstances, forced, to begin to live in a world where my wants and wishes were not the center of everything. Gently, the Wynns began to exert a discipline upon my life. Schedules, commitments, obligations were to be honored. Doing things with the family in mind became a solemn responsibility. There were inevitable conflicts, and some of them were sharp, but their unfailing love supported and conquered me. They were remarkably forgiving.

After a breakup with a beautiful girl in my junior year, I went into a deep depression and found solace in music. My tastes had broadened to include folk and early rock and I would lose myself in the music and lyrics of Woody Gurthrie, Dylan, and the Seekers. I decided I would go back to a life of rambling around and music, like Woody. I used to sit on the porch of his old house in Okemah and play my guitar and sing. When school ended for the summer, I packed a knapsack, took two hundred dollars from my account (I had a part-time job and preaching honoraria), grabbed my Gibson guitar, and headed to I-40 below the bluff that Okemah sits upon. I was on my way to Boise, Idaho, where my father's brother, Ken, lived. My first lift took me all the way to Gallup, New Mexico. From there I was picked up by a drunk who had been in Gallup with his mistress. He took me north to Shiprock. He kept the needle on one hundred most of the way and I was grateful for the straight highway between Gallup and Shiprock. As I walked on highway 491, I watched the morning sunlight coming down the Shiprock. A Navajo man took me across the northeast corner of Arizona and the Indian Reservation to Monticello, Utah, where I cleaned up in a Sinclair station and had breakfast in a truck stop. I was walking on clouds with happiness. From Monticello, I got a lift to the Junction of U.S. 191 and I-70. From there, a trucker took me all the rest of the way to Boise. I had made the whole trip in twenty-three hours.

I called my uncle from a truck stop there and he came to get me. He and my aunt had no idea that I was coming. When I climbed into the front seat, the first thing he said was, "Get your heart broke by some old girl?" I stayed with them for two weeks, during which time my aunt's father was dying. I had known the old man for some years as I had visited Idaho on two other occasions with my uncle and aunt. We visited him on his death bed on the sage brush flat of Orchard, Idaho. He looked at me with his rheumy eyes and said, "Don't throw your life away, Tommy. Don't waste your life." It went home like a dart through my heart. I walked out on the desert. It had just showered and the smell of petrichore and sage filled the air. I decided I would return to Oklahoma and to the Wynns if they would have me back.

The Wynns had no idea where I was. I had left no note. I had taken the things that meant the most to me and that I could carry. They were frantic with worry for these weeks. In retrospect, I cannot imagine their anxiety, anger, and fear.

When Mr. Reed died in the ensuing days, we were suddenly on our way to Fayetteville, Arkansas where he would be buried. After the funeral, we returned to the family homeplace in Thackerville, where I phoned the Wynn home. Bettye answered the phone and when she heard my voice, she began to sob. "May I come back?" I asked. "You will have to talk to Ken and he is not home right now." When I later spoke to Ken, he was gentle, but firm. I would be welcomed back, but certain things would have to change. On the next day, my grandfather took me to Marietta where I boarded a Greyhound bus for Oklahoma City and Okemah.

The Wynn's received me back like the Prodigal Son that I was. It was an astonishing display of Christian love and forgiveness. I have not forgotten this and hope I never shall.

There were new rules, new restrictions, a new insistence that I consider others as more important than myself. Little by little I began to make progress in living with others and not living solely for myself. Their love supported it all.

My senior year in high school was one of the happiest of my life. I had settled down within the Wynn family, I continued to preach, and I was in a happy relationship with a beautiful, sweet girl who was a true soul-mate. I was popular at school, voted president of the senior class, and took part in the Thespian productions of the English department. I had some very fine teachers and won the regional academic award for art history as well as dabbling in drawing and painting.

After I began my freshman year at Oklahoma Baptist University, the Wynn's moved yet again to Woodward, Oklahoma to serve in the 1st Baptist Church there. I visited them, even had a room in their home for a time, but gradually we saw less and less of one another. I had met the woman who was to be my wife in Tulsa and was spending more time there when away from school.

In the ensuing years, my ties with the Wynns slowly dissolved. There was no bitterness or conflict. I was busy with my new bride and a new career as a pastor in the Tulsa area, and the Wynns were going through some very difficult times of their own. Over the years there were occasional letters and cards, but we lost touch the way people do in this life.

Only recently have I reconnected with members of the Wynn family. I am now in touch with three of the girls and indirectly with their father.

I have written these posts in order to pay my tribute to them for their love and kindness to me. The years I spent with them were formative in making me what I have become. They taught me in a profound way what it means to be a part of a family. They, thus, enabled me to enter with greater wisdom and tact my wife's family. I have also reconnected with the various wings of my own family through the years, and they played a role in this as well. Because of their example, they have enabled me to have my own family. Ours has been a home filled with beautiful things. Ours has been a home where each was expected to consider others as better than himself. Ours has been a home where love and forgiveness are paramount.

I owe much of this to the Family Wynn. I would here offer them my profound thanks.

A Part of a Family, Part II

The summer of 1967 found me in Ontario, California with my maternal grandmother and my aunts and cousins. I had spent summers with them from the mid-fifties on. Once there, I began to haunt record shops looking for old timey music. Through one of these I connected with a man who led a bluegrass band and began playing with them at jams held in his home. This band had cut a record with a label called "Rural Rhythm Records" and was slated to do another that summer. This looked like an early break into a music career. I began playing rhythm guitar and singing lead with this group. They really were an accomplished bunch of amateur musicians. We had a fine banjo picker, a female vocalist, a dobro player, while the leader played upright bass, mandolin, and flat-pick guitar. By this time I had memorized over a hundred songs as well as writing several of my own. Don't misunderstand me, these were not great songs. They were the standard, "you, untrue, blue" variety of country songs. But, some of the melodies were unique and quirky, and this is what record producers are looking for. I met the then owner/producer of RR and performed some of my songs for him. He was mildly impressed, probably in part because I was fifteen years old.

The leader of the band was one of the most disgustingly immoral men I have ever known. He was unscrupulous and manipulative. I was always uneasy with him and this increased as the summer waned. I came to believe he was stealing my songs and promoting them as his own. When I became convinced of this, I walked away. Full stop. This has always been my way of dealing with people I am convinced have betrayed me. I walk away...full stop. In one way, it has been easy for me to do this, given my frequently interrupted young life.

This is not to say I wasn't disappointed. I was crushed. We were weeks away from doing the record which would involve our covering standard bluegrass favorites as well as including one or two of my songs. I was also embarrassed because I had told people at home that I was about to cut a record with this band.

I quit my job, bought a plane ticket (my first), and flew back to Dallas on my way home. When I got home, my grandparents were dismayed. There was no work for me there and I had left a decent job, and they had enjoyed the peace of not having to worry about me and put up with my shenanigans. This only added to my depression and sense of failure.

On the first Sunday after my return, I rose early, cleaned up and dressed in my best music playing clothes, and asked my grandfather to drive me to church. My grandmother nearly floated above the ground she was so pleased.

When I arrived at the little Baptist church there were many whispers and nods. I tried to sing the hymns, which I did not know. I bowed my head when they prayed, stood when they said stand, sat when they said sit. I endured the sermon because my friend, the Rev. Spann was the preacher. He was the reason I was there. I needed a friend. He was a friend, a true friend who could be trusted.

At the end of the sermon he gave the customary Baptist "invitation" for people to come forward "to be saved." I found myself strangely moved and with great deliberateness, went forward.

Over the intervening forty-plus years, I have looked at this experience through every lens available to me. I know it can be explained in purely psychological terms. I was a prime candidate for a "conversion." William James would have smiled wryly at it all and quietly explained it as typical. I would now agree with nearly everything he would have to say.

But, I would go on to say this: That was a watershed day in my life. It was the point from which the rest of my life would take its trajectory. I believe that I encountered God on that hot, July day. I believe he encountered me in that little village and in that ugly little building. I am what I am today because of that encounter. The rest of my life would be spent in living out that initial encounter and trying to understand its ramifications.

Well, I don't have to tell you, if you have followed this story up to this point, that I took hold of this new life the same way I had always taken hold of things: with hammer and tongs.

Soon thereafter, I would "surrender to a call to preach the Gospel," and in the tradition of earlier Southern Baptists, would become a "preacher boy." When I preached my first sermon later that summer the whole place was packed and they had to bring in folding chairs. From that point my preaching career was launched. I began to preach in some little place every weekend.

I was as ignorant as a box of bolts. I was a new convert. But, what I lacked in understanding, not to say wisdom and experience, I made up for with sheer exuberance, zeal, and personality. I had found my place and it had the commendation of God. I had also entered into a very dangerous place, spiritually and morally. It is but for the sheer and tender grace of God that I did not go down in a tragic shipwreck of faith and morals.

It was at this time that I met the Wynn family, the family I would come to live with in Okemah, Oklahoma. They saw my gifts, my potential, and came to love me. They also saw the lack of discipline and oversight in my young life. They were living in Healdton, Oklahoma at the time. Without notice of any kind, I would just show up on their doorstep, having hitchiked the fifty miles or so to get there. During this time they were "called" to Okemah and invited me to go with them. They spent an evening talking with my grandparents and receiving their permission for me to go. Mama and Papa were old and tired by this time, and, while it grieved them to see me leave, I am sure, in one respect, they were relieved to see me go. They also were hopeful that a better school and social situation could improve my future prospects. So, on that warm, sunny November morning, I loaded my rocking chair, my books, and my clothes into Ken Wynn's pickup and headed for a new life.

To be continued...

A Part of a Family, Part I

Just after my seventeenth birthday, I was invited to live with a family that I had become friends with during the previous months. This change involved my leaving my own family in southern Oklahoma. They were willing to accede to this change because they saw in it a chance for my own improvement. I will never forget the morning I left the old home-place. I loaded my few belongings and said good-bye to my grandfather, my "Papa." He was not one to demonstrate his emotions, but his eyes were red-rimmed and full of tears when I hugged him and said, "Bye, now."

The young, for the most part, are oblivious to feelings, except their own, and I was no exception to this rule. I know now something of the pain the old couple must have endured and the loneliness of that remote old house in my absence. I now have pain and regrets over the many sorrows I caused them, including this one. But, this same oblivion is what makes the young adventurous and daring, and I was nothing if not adventurous and daring. I was ready for a new start, a new life!

The family I moved in with were a Christian couple with three young daughters. They had moved to another Oklahoma town to be the music/youth director in a Baptist church there. The plan was for me to live in a little cottage behind their church-provided home, but soon, I was ensconced as a member of the family in one of the three bedrooms in the house. This, itself, posed a hardship on the girls, who had to room together in a smallish bedroom. I mention this only to reveal yet another aspect of this family's generosity toward me.

What did they find when they began to discover who I then was? I was warm, personable, gregarious, full of fun. I was talented, gifted, bookish. I was also wild, undisciplined, impulsive, given to extreme mood swings. I could be kind and gracious one minute and carried away in a towering rage the next. In many ways, I was a mess. And, I do mean a mess!

The fact is, I had been on my own in one form or another all my life. After my mother's death, my father traveled the country with me in the front seat of his 1951 Ford sedan. I was thirteen months old. We crisscrossed the country together as he tried to literally drive out his pain and leave his grief behind him. But, pain and grief like his cannot be evaded; they met him whenever he arrived at a new place. Finally, he needed to go to work and he took me to his parent's home, the one I would leave on that November day in 1968. There I lived like a little prince for the next four years. After that, I went to live with my father and his new wife. The next years would be hell on earth, and a part of that hell would be the long hours that I spent alone, even as a small child, while my father and his wife worked. In that loneliness I developed my own inner-world, a world where I could escape, a world where I was king. I would from time to time invite others into this world, but I was always the leader, the defender of my kingdom, and the sole arbiter of that realm. This continued into my early teens.

When I reached my early teens, my life with my step-mother had become so abusive, and her marriage to my father so volatile, that my grandparents feared for my safety and sanity. They pleaded with my father to let me return to them on the pretext that my grandmother needed someone with her when my grandfather worked at his night watchman's job. My father resigned himself to this and I was back at the happiest place on earth to me!

The next two years were idyllic. I was free to roam at will the woods and hills of southern Love County, Oklahoma. I had several rifles and shotguns along with other woodsman's gear: a Hudson's Bay axe, steel traps, a backpack, knives and hatchets of all sorts. When not in school, I was in the woods and on the Red River, in all weathers and at all hours, hunting, trapping, fishing, and just being alone. I learned woodcraft from my grandfather and uncles, from books by Daniel Carter Beard and Ernest Thompson Seton, and from experience- watching, listening, smelling, tasting, touching the wild world. I shudder to think back at some of my exploits, so dangerous and daunting they were for a boy. I once made a trek, through nine or ten inches of snow, that went on for about eight or nine miles, looking for furbearers and their den-trees. I returned in the bitter cold as the sun was setting in the clear reddened sky, my pant's legs frozen like stove pipes from the knees down in the sub-freezing cold. But, I remember, too, the sense of achievement and pride I had in that trek and the joy of coming home to my Mama's hot cooking. I know now that, though they had worried about me, they were proud of me, too.

During this same period, I made friends with two brothers, Eddy and Lonnie Foster, who were also enamored of the woods and woodcraft. We were inseparable, but I was still the leader, though both were older by two or three years. Together, we hunted with hounds- coons, possums, anything with fur on it. We became accomplished at it and were admired in the community for it. Together we made a camp on the spring branch belonging to my grandfather, and at my insistence, built a log cabin on the spot from trees we felled ourselves, notched, and rolled into place. It stood for years on the spot until it rotted away. I still have photographs of it in ruins.

But, despite the friendship, I was often alone in the woods and on the River... thinking. "...and a boy's thoughts are long, long thoughts." My life, though social and in some ways, gregarious, was still an interior life, a life of thinking, reading, exploring, doing...alone. My grandparents were people of the land and of the woods, so they were content to hold their breath and pray, and let me go.

In my fourteen year, I fell in love with bluegrass and old-timey country music. At the same time, my youngest aunt had married a guitar picker who began to teach me to play. I went at it with the same savage, manic fury that I went at everything. My fingers bled from practice in those early days. Little by little I began to be proficient. When I was good enough, I began to play with older pickers and singers at home dance-parties. A child musician-singer is always a wonder to adults, especially one that can perform without nervousness before a crowd. I was such a child.

Soon I was playing at county "hootenannies" and with adult, accomplished pickers. I even started a band of my own called the "Midnight Ramblers." There were three of us, but I was still the leader. The band finally failed because of territory battles between an older member and myself. Finally, I began to play and sing with an adult group, whose leader had been a Nashville session musician. With adults, I was willing to "keep my place," so long as they did not place too stringent demands on me. During this time, my grandparents let me go wherever and whenever I wanted; they could do little else without having me incarcerated. I was willful and wild. I was also popular, with girls and with adults, especially after they had had a few drinks. My group began to sneak me into venues that were strictly adult- bars, joints, VFW clubs.

During this period, my grades suffered and I was often half-there in class because of my midnight ramblings. I adopted cocky, brash, and adult airs. Even those in my family who loved me found me insufferable. They were worried about the company I was keeping and about my time on the road. I couldn't drive and had no car if I could have, so I hitchhiked around the county and beyond. Well they may have worried, and did. They warned me, pleaded with me, and threw up their hands in exasperation. I was on my own- though they were there to feed me, clothe me, and shelter me... and, I now see, to love me. It was a horrible time for them. When I remember my treatment of them, I am full of wonder and shame. There was already talk of "going to Nashville" and making a music career. This was enhanced by the fact that I had already begun to write my own songs.

During this time, I was befriended by my high school English teacher, the Rev. Clyde B. Spann. He was intrigued with my intelligence and, I think, my aplomb. He encouraged my reading and my writing, which I had begun to do seriously. He also prayed for me and remained a true friend to me despite my arrogance and country brashness.

Things were coming to a head in my life and the result would be "wondrous strange," not just to those looking on from the outside, but, even more so, to me, myself.

To be continued...

"Don't Worry about the Mule Going Blind" or A Life of Calculated Risk , further thoughts from Ecclesiastes

The human animal, like all animals, is beset with fears. We live in a world that can hurt us, physically and emotionally, and we learn this early on. Whether or not fear is intrinsic to our human nature or is a learned condition is something I will leave for the experts to argue about, but I know from experience that it is known early and continues unabated throughout life.

The fact of fear drives us to seek security in a variety of ways. We protect ourselves and well we might. Whether it is seen in a provident concern for financial or physical security, or the avoidance of people and things that may harm us, we spend a lot of time, money and mental energy creating safe places and comfort zones in our lives. We play it safe.

This is right and good...up to a point. Where it becomes a problem is when it gets in the way of a life well lived, a life fully lived. Thus, for some, the fear of travel and of travel in airplanes is so profound that they refuse to travel. How sad this is and how impoverished their lives compared to those who have seen other lands, tasted other foods, and engaged with other peoples in their own cultures. I am glad that I grew up on the Southern Plains and on the Red River. My childhood was spent in some of the richest historical spots in the United States in terms of the saga of the American West- Young County, Texas and Love County, Oklahoma. But, I am also glad that I have walked the streets of London and Paris by myself and have seen the Southern Alps of New Zealand. I am the richer because of this. I am also less inclined to think that, as much as I love my native country, ours is the only good, beautiful, and culturally rich place on earth. It is not safe (in an absolute sense) to travel, but it does make for a richer, fuller life.

Ecclesiastes in chapter 11 urges his readers to a life of calculated risk. While the Wisdom Tradition of the Bible (Proverbs, Job, the Psalms, along with Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, and the Sermon of the Mount and James in the New) counsels caution and safety in many areas of life, e.g., "In the multitude of counselors is safety," it also challenges us to avoid playing it so safe that we do not open ourselves to the surprises and blessings that come from taking calculated and deliberate risks.

Thus, the writer says, "Cast your bread upon the waters, and after many days it will return to you." It is generally conceded by scholars that what is being urged here is an investment in goods carried by merchant seamen. Travel on the sea has always been hazardous and risky, and this was especially so in ancient times. The land-locked Israelites seem in particular to have had an aversion to the sea, see Jonah and Psalm 107. So, such counsel as is found here is contrary to human nature and its propensity to play it safe.

Another picture from the Bible comes to mind. It is that of Jocabed, the mother of Moses, placing her endangered little son in an ark of bullrushes and setting him afloat on the Nile, only to have him returned to her as his wet-nurse. The child is risked, he is saved, and he is returned to his mother.

We must try to live our lives with such a resolve: To risk ourselves in a manner that will ultimately enrich us. This calls for a courage, a daring, that is intrepid and undaunted. Whether we think of giving ourselves in service to others who may not appreciate us and may actually hurt us, or the giving of our financial resources to worthy projects, or simply trying new things that will stretch and improve us, such action calls for courage.

The fear factor at this point is compounded by two things mentioned by the Preacher ("Ecclesiastes" means preacher or questor {Eugene Peterson}).

The first group of things are those inevitable things that take place in the world that can literally blow away or smash our lives to pieces. (This would include all the metaphorical things that can do the same.) "If the clouds are full, they pour out rain upon the earth; and whether a tree falls toward the south or the north, wherever the tree falls, there it lies. He who watches the wind will not sow, and he who looks at the clouds will not reap" Vv. 3,4. Rain, winds, falling trees... these are things that can and do happen in the world and they can wreak havoc in the lives of those who happen to be in the way.

The point is, we must never let what might happen get in the way of our living. If we do, we shall not live fully and richly. The fear of catastrophe is an impediment to a fully-lived life. Let us be undaunted in the face of storms (literal or metaphorical). Life is worth the risk. The old timers I used to know had a saying that fits this. "Don't worry about the mule going blind, just load the wagon!" Don't worry about the "what ifs," the "could happens," just live!

The second thing that may abridge a fully-lived life is speculation about the purpose of God in our daily affairs. This is a chronic problem among people of faith, especially people of Biblical faith. They are constantly wondering "What is God saying in this?" "What is God's purpose in that?" Pastors are regularly confronted with the anxiety and even the neuroses of the faithful in this regard. To this Ecclesiastes says, "Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of a pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things" V 5. Astonishing! And, liberating!

The fact is (and this, unfortunately, is not "known" by many people of faith) we do not really know at any given moment what God's intention is in the details of our daily lives. We have some understanding of the larger, over-arching purpose of God from such texts as Romans 8:29-30 and Ephesians 1:3-14. And I want to emphasize that even this understanding and knowledge is based on faith, not on things that are provable from observation of the details of our lives. But, in terms of the daily details of our lives, we cannot declare with any certainty what God's intentions are. I lost my mother at age thirteen months. Why? Because of sin in her life or my father's life? The thought is repellent. Because God wanted to teach us a lesson? No less repellent. Because... Oh, quit! We do not know and cannot now know. My poor father wasted nearly half his life brooding over such questions. And those "church-people" who presume to declare the "whys" and the "wherefores" of such events are arrogant no-nothings who remind me of Mark Twain's censure of a certain minister, "He was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity, that he might fill it!"

Brooding and fretting about the purpose of God in the daily troubles and threats of life will only impede daring, risky living.

What we are called to at such a point is faith in God himself. This, too, is a risky thing. Faith always is. One thinks of "Pascal's Wager." I also think of the people of faith described in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. Here are people who risked everything because of their faith in God. They forsook their homelands, they sacrificed fame and fortune, they offered up their very lives in faith. They were undaunted, intrepid, fearless, and courageous. And all of these things were borne of their faith in God.

Jesus calls us to a such a faith and to such a fully-lived life, promising life and abundant life to those who forsake trust in themselves, their own plans, their own devices in order to trust in him.

Armed with such faith, it is possible to live a different kind of life, a life of faith that is undaunted before the "could happen" things of life, a life undiminished by fruitless, futile questions of what God's purpose is in this or that thing. This is the fully-lived life.

It is such a life that is promised in the word of Jesus, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

Billy Carlton Overton and the Lost Cow by E.D. "Shinbone" Smith, Bomar, Oklahoma, formerly Indian Territory, or "IT"

They used to be this old boy down in Love's Valley named Billy Carlton Overton. He had lived down there all his life and was kin to old Sob Love that the Valley is named for.

Old Sob was a character of biblical proportions, and I ain't exaggerating a thang. He was married to six different women. The story goes that he would sit with a Winchester '73 rifle on the north bank of the Red River at a crossing there and when he would see a wagon coming over with a good lookin' woman on board, he'd shoot the husband and let him float down the river and take the woman as a wife. That's what they said. I couldn't say, but I do know for a fact that I have been to the Love family cemetery and seen the six graves of the wives of old Sob and ever'one of 'um said, "wife of Sob Love, aged about 33 years of age." Some folks said that "Sob" stood for "son-of-a-bitch" and that was that.

Anyhow, old Billy Carlton was a nephew of of Sob and lived his whole life out in the Valley. Farmed and fished and generally got by on a shoestring, if you know what I mean.

Well, one week a cow of Billy's come up missin' and he worried and fretted about it for a spell. Wadn't nothing he could do, either. So he decides to take matters in his own hands and go to the church to announce his loss and ask the people there for their help.

Now, Billy, he wadn't much of a churchman, if you know what I mean, so ever'body was kinda surprised to see him show up on Sunday. Some of 'em was praying for him to git saved and hopin' that the Lord had prepared his heart for the Gospel.

Now, they allus had the announcements at the end of the service, so old Billy says, to the preacher,

"Preacher, I have somethin' to say at then end. I have lost a cow and want the people to help me find her."

He said this with a loud voice, because old Billy couldn't hear hisself fart, he was so hard of hearing.

And the preacher said, "That's jist fine, Billy," and that was that.

So Billy set through the whole service, down to the altar call, and he didn't go up front either, to the consternation of several people who were praying hard for him to see the light.

The preacher finally said the last prayer and began the announcements...

"Mary Lou Smith and Glen Hutchins is getting married next Saturday in the church here..." the preacher began.

Well, Old Billy couldn't hear the details and thought the preacher was talking about his cow, so he hollers out

"Yessir, and the way you can recognize her is she has all the hair pulled outa 'er tail and one tit missin'!"

Crazy for God: How Then Shall We Live? Part III

And then Monday comes, and with it, a new week A new week with new challenges and expectations. A new march of days that will test our faith, hope and love. And with the week comes a whole new assortment of fears, anxieties, and doubts. Life is, after all, life. We are expected to live it, and we are expected to live it as Christians.

How shall we live it? And, how shall we live it without lapsing into the extreme of spiritual craziness on the one hand, or despair or apathy on the other?

Let us live in freedom. Most spiritual insanity, in my experience as a pastor, comes from guilt, fear, or insecurity. People ridden by such things live in a state of dis-ease. When the dis-ease becomes acute enough they lapse into degrees of insanity: disease. The proclamation of the Gospel in the weekly service of God by the faith community declares freedom. We are freed from guilt by the promise that Christ's blood has answered every demand posed by our sins. We are freed from fear by the proclamation of "Fear not! I am with you." We are freed from insecurity by the assurance that our lives are in the hands of a God who works all things according to the purpose of his will and, therefore, is working everything together for our ultimate good. This is a part of the freedom announced every week as the Gospel is placarded in Word and Sacrament. We live best when we live in this freedom. It is ours. It is not something that we must yet achieve. It has been given us in grace. We must affirm it and live in it.

In this freedom, let us work. "Six days shall you work" is not a sentence to drudgery, but a charter of liberty. We are made for work. We are only happy if we have good, sensible work to do. Whatever our work, be it on an assembly line, in an office, on a work site, in a study writing, or in a studio painting, we are engaged in God's own work in the world.

In this freedom, let us play. The play instinct is endemic to the creation. The lambs and puppies all play. The Psalmist celebrates the play of the whales in the sea. Children play and so do their adult counterparts. God has wired us to play, just as he has to work.

In this freedom, let us engage in fellowship with others. We can never be happy or healthy if we are solitary. We are social, even as the Trinity himself is social. We must cultivate our social relationships: in talk and listening, in laughter and mutual tears, in telling and hearing stories, in acts of help and words of encouragement. And, I am not simply talking about Christian fellowship! We must cultivate fellowship (a shared life) with every human person that will permit us to do so. The human qualities of compassion, shared goals, empathy, outrage, humor, etc. are not the sole province of people of faith. Sadly, people of faith (especially the CFG types) are often lacking in these things. This is what made Mark Twain comment, "Heaven for the climate, hell for the company!" Let us nurture friendships, inside and outside of the community of faith.

A caveat here. There is a type of CFG religion that sees such relationships with those outside the faith as a means to an end. We befriend people in order to convert them. There are even books and programs described as how to do "Friendship Evangelism." This is pernicious and mercenary! Rightly, do those who unmask such motivation in Christians despise them for it. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves, not to use them or to manipulate them, but for themselves alone.

In the freedom of the Gospel, let us engage in other acts of mercy and help. Let us be rich in good works. Let us be generous. Let us act kindly and compassionately. Let us seek justice and right in our dealings with others. Where possible, let us intervene to prevent and alleviate suffering and unfairness.

In all this, let us live in an environment of prayer. Let us live in praise, for the new day, for the glories of creation, for the blessings of work, play, and friendship. Let us pray for others in their needs, weaknesses, and sins. Let us pray for ourselves in the face of the same things. Let us live in prayer. He who lives in prayer, lives in God. He has bid us come, he has dissolved every impediment to our coming, he loves our fellowship, he delights to engage with us and to answer our prayers.

Let us, in this freedom, live in wonder. "Every day is a god," Annie Dilliard reminds us. And for us who believe, every day is a wonder and a wondrous gift from the God who made it all, directs it all, and will one day redeem it all and bring it into a glory unimaginable to us now. To live in such a "theater of glory" (Calvin) and not be full of wonder is tantamount to being blind, deaf, and utterly senseless. It is one the tragedies of CFG religion that it is so self-absorbed that it cannot appreciate the dappled light upon a trout stream or the chuckle of a six-week old infant who has just discovered laughter. Shame.

Let, us, finally, live in hope. Let us live in hope of the next Lord's Day when we will again experience heaven on earth in covenant renewal. And let us live in hope of the final, great Lord's Day that will usher in an eternal state of rest and peace, unknown and unknowable to us now. In that state, sins will be forever expunged, hopes fulfilled, injustices and violations rectified, "for God himself will wipe away all tears from their eyes."

Then we shall be where we would be.
Then we shall be what we should be.
Things that are not now, nor could be,
Then shall be our own.

This, too me, is the ideal life. It is life that is alive and that lives! It is the categorical opposite of the craziness I have earlier critiqued. It is a reality to me, in that I have experienced it. It is an aspiration to me, in that I never, alas, experience it perfectly. It is a worthy life and a worthy aspiration. Won't you join me in living it and breathing out after it?

Crazy for God, the Alternative, Part II

So... What constitutes a sane Christian spirituality? How do we live lives devoted to the Christian God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and yet avoid the "craziness" I have castigated in my earlier post?

Of course, there are those whose think any religious faith, if it is a serious faith, is crazy. I know such people, know where they are coming from, yet continue in my contrarian position: that faith, serious faith, in the God described in the early Christian creeds, is credible and humanizing.

And such faith is is lived out, not solely in my own mental and emotional world. It is not a private faith. It is not a private spirituality. It is public, and that, in at least two ways.

First, it is a public faith in the Church's historical declaration of that faith in the creeds. The Church has declared from ancient times, "I believe...we believe..." What follows is a declaration of faith that is rooted in the historical reality of Jesus Christ and his works. From this historical faith we move to other articles of faith that logically follow this faith in Jesus. This is not an experience, or a feeling, or a self-generated idea. This is the ancient and timeless faith of Christians in community throughout the ages.

Secondly, the faith of Christians is a faith declared and experienced week by week in their public gatherings throughout the world. It is in community that Christians declare and experience their faith. This happens when the following elements are present.

The worship of the true and living God in liturgical sharing.

The confession and forgiveness of sins through the proclamation of the Gospel.

The proclamation of the Word in preaching.

The renewal of the covenant of grace in the sacraments.

The reunion with one another in Christian love.

The blessing of the living God upon the week to come.

Each of these and all of them together ensure a real and vital Christian faith and help to preserve us from the insanity of religious mania. Let me try to unpack each one with a few comments...

We meet for worship. We come together to share our delight in the beauty and glory of God. We come together in the presence of God to acknowledge him in his works of creation, provision, protection, and salvation. We come together to delight ourselves in his faithfulness and love.

This is a communal act. It is not an act of private devotion. It is an act of shared devotion. This is what makes the singing of hymns important. In hymn singing we are expressing our faith, love, and hope in a united act of worship. We are taken out of ourselves. We are saved from ourselves- our moods, troubles, tragedies. We are forced to consider the larger reality, not just of God, but of our being a part of a historical continuum that has existed for centuries and exists now in the worshiping community.

This same principle is what makes liturgy important. The liturgy is, once again, the community acting, speaking, thinking outside the narrow confines of personal failure and victory, sorrow and joy. It is the community joining together in all these things, and others like them, yet doing so in a shared experience of wonder, love, and praise in the presence of God. In the liturgy this shared faith and experience becomes a shared language as we speak together of God and to him.

This shared experience is never more profound and poignant than in the confession and forgiveness of sins. When we publicly and in unison confess our sins and weaknesses, our sorrow and resolve to repent, we are reminded of basic truths and experiences shared by all who join us in this act. The basic truth is we are are all a sorry, tragic mess. In liturgical, shared confession there is no place for one to consider himself better than another. And there is no room for one to consider himself worse than his brother, his sister. We are confessing together, "We have sinned." We are saying to God, to the world, and to one another, "We are miserable sinners." Though sobering, there is something profoundly joyful, even humorous about this.

When we are told in the Gospel that God has mercy on sinners, that he will forgive sin, that he has no delight in judgment, but delights in mercy, we find a corporate, communal relief and joy. Because we have been honest to God, because he has responded in an affirmative "Yes!" through his mercy in Jesus, we can, together, start over. We are, together, given a new beginning, a beginning like the first fresh day in Paradise!

In that freshness, we are ready to hear God speak and he speaks to the gathered faith community in the reading and preaching of his Word, the Bible. As forgiven souls we can hear him speak to us in correction without despair, in instruction without discouragement, in affirmation without pride, and in hope without presumption. This is what preaching is in the hearing community. It is the speech of God informing and fortifying us for a new week in the world.

Having spoken to us, God calls us to share in the mysteries, the rituals of the family. This is the meaning of the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. Every family has its rituals and the family of God is no exception. In baptism, we are together reminded that our inception in this family is marked by this ritual. We have put on the family dress. We have been clothed with the family insignia. Being dressed for dinner, in the Eucharist we are brought to the family table for a family meal where our Lord presents himself to us as the bread and wine of our sustained life together. Both are marks and seals of his covenant of grace, his pledge to remember us in mercy and faithfulness. And these are shared mysteries. It is not just "Jesus and me," but Jesus and us, and more, Jesus and all who share our faith in heaven and in earth!

In all these acts of worship, humility, and renewal, we are aware of the persons around us. They have faces that we can recognize from a block away, they have stories that have become ours as ours have become theirs, they have graces that encourage us, and they have sins and weakness that aggravate us. But, they are our people, our family. Each time we meet together we are aware of our love for them. Each time they disappoint us, we are challenged to forgive them. When they move or die, we are grieved at our loss of them. When new people appear, they are welcomed in love and anticipation of our shared life together.

Having received our worship, having forgiven our sins, having spoken to us in his sure Word, having renewed his covenant with us in family mysteries, having strengthened us in a revisitation of love, God does more. He sends us out under his benediction of grace and peace to live like real human beings in the world and in a new week replete with possibilities! "The LORD bless thee and keep thee, the LORD make his face to shine upon thee. The LORD be gracious to thee and give thee peace." Whatever the week holds, whether triumph or tragedy, we face it together in the assurance of God's blessing, care, protection, presence, and peace! Not a bad way to start a new week!

Now, it should require no special pleading to make the case that this approach to Christian spirituality is a healthy, happy, and holy alternative to the CFG ("Crazy for God") condition I have denounced earlier. Augustine prayed, "Lord, save me from that evil man, myself!" We need to be saved from our personal evils, but we also need to be saved from our tendencies toward insanity, especially religious insanity. The weekly, communal worship of God is his most important means to effect this aspect of our salvation.