Theo of Golden - Reflections (2)

 

I am encouraged that Theo is 86 years old. It isn’t often that the center of a story is an old man or old woman, especially one who still has his or her faculties and who is engaged in a meaningful endeavor. As someone who is not that far behind Theo, Theo says to me, “It is never too late to make a difference in the lives of others.”

When I was pastoring, one of the decisions I made early on was to treat older people with respect by not letting them off the discipleship hook. In other words, I challenged them with following Jesus, sitting on the bench and growing moral and spiritual fungi was not an option. It disgusts me when churches have “programming” for seniors that solely consists of playing games, going to buffets, and attending estate planning seminars. (If they really want to have relevant programming, why not have someone come and clip our toenails?)

Theo does not wait for life to come to him, Theo pursues life. Furthermore, it is not so much about what Theo does, it is really about who Theo is. What Theo does is a result of who Theo is. 

Theo pays attention to people. He looks deeply into the portraits at the Chalice coffee shop; the eyes, always the eyes, then the fuller face, but always coming back to the eyes. Asher’s gift of capturing the eyes, and Theo’s gift of connecting with those eyes…a fruit of Allen Levi’s masterful brush. Asher sketches and paints with pencil and brush, Allen Levi paints with words.

Theo does more than pay attention to others, he acknowledges others, but he more than acknowledges others, he affirms others – he sees things in others that they do not see in themselves, and he helps them consider the possibility that they have treasures within themselves to give to others. In other words, as Theo affirms others they are given the opportunity to share their treasures with others, to be more open to others, to pass on to others what Theo is passing on to them. 

Theo presents the idea of sainthood to people of all walks of life and backgrounds, to men and women who have known suffering, hurt, disappointment, and despair; but who also have dreams and visions and desires, as latent and forlorn as they might be. 

Theo says, “Do you see what I see? Do you see who you really are?”

I think this is the Gospel. We’re told that Jesus came to declare the Name of the Father to us, His brothers and sisters. Our Father’s Name speaks to us of His Nature, His desire to draw us to Himself in love through our Lord Jesus (Hebrews 2:9 – 18).  For some reason we fight this. I know that when I pastored that many folks would much rather I treat them as miserable wretches than as the sons and daughters of God. Even though the New Testament uses the term “saints” more than any other word to refer to followers of Jesus, people fight that image – even when we make it clear that this is about us being in Jesus Christ and not in ourselves (2 Corinthians 5:14 – 21). 

Theo says, “Let me tell you what I see in your portrait. Now you look at it. Do you see what I see?”

The story goes that many sculptors rejected the block of marble that would become Michelangelo’s David, it had too many flaws. Aren’t we thankful that Michelangelo saw David within David? Aren’t we thankful that Jesus sees the image of God deep within us? Weren’t those folks who sat for a few minutes on a bench with Theo thankful for a new way of seeing themselves, of seeing who they really were? 

It is of course a process, but the process must begin somewhere, and in Theo of Golden it begins for many on a bench with an old man with a foreign accent and with a portrait which the old man had paid a price to give to them. 

Since the name Theo is from the Greek word for God, can we see the incarnational nature of this old Portuguese man? Can we see the treasure in the earthen vessel? Can we see Theo living in and through Theo? 

Perhaps more importantly, how is God living in us and through us to touch and affirm the lives of others? For no matter how old we are, no matter where we live, we can always look into the eyes of others and ask, “Do you see what I see?”

The Sacraments of Life (1)

 

I’ve been thinking about the sacraments of life.  I’ll be going to see Jesus soon, now whether that is today or ten or twenty years from now, I have no idea, but for sure I am closer to being in His Presence today than I was yesterday.

This is an exciting thought to me, because you see He is truly my Friend and I trust Him with my life…and with my death. What a fool I would be not to trust Him. 

When I pastored the First Congregational Church of Becket, MA, I used to walk through the cemetery on the church grounds and ponder the tombstones. I would read the names and look at the dash between the dates and wonder what the dash represented. If I could see into the “-” what would I see? If the dash were a movie, how would it unfold? 

We live in a community (to use the world loosely) of mostly retired people, and I am puzzled that they haven’t yet figured out that they are going to die soon and that many of the things they have thought so important all of their lives are not only not really important, but that in many cases are inimical to their welfare. If you were at an airport preparing to board a plane, wouldn’t you want to know the plane’s destination? 

Jesus has given me, has given Vickie and me, many sacraments over the years. Certainly our gravitational sacrament is marriage. Peter writes that husbands and wives are “heirs together of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7). This concept of being “heirs together” or “joint heirs” is a legal concept we have to this day in English common law. We find the same language in Romans 8:17 where we see that we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” This idea of being “coheirs” or “fellow heirs” or “joint heirs” (all the same Greek word) means that we share fully and jointly, that what we receive cannot be divided. 

If you are married and have ever purchased real estate, depending on the state you are in you likely took title either as “tenants by the entirety” or as “joint tenants with the right of survivorship,” these are legal terms which in essence mean that you are joint heirs. Interestingly, the term “tenants by the entirety,” which can only be used of a husband and wife, carries with it the doctrine that a husband and wife are one person…certainly a Biblical understanding.

The recognition that we are joint heirs has been integral to our marriage, for we’ve realized that we cannot let “stuff” pollute our relationship. Yes, of course we’ve had our stupid and not-so-stupid disagreements; yes, we’ve gotten angry; but when these things have happened we haven’t excused them and we’ve realized the danger. In the days before cell phones, if we had a tiff before leaving for work, we couldn’t wait to get to our respective jobs so we could call and say, “I’m sorry.” 

Peter tells us that if husbands and wives have a messed-up relationship that their “prayers will be hindered.” That is, if I can’t talk to my wife then I can’t talk to Jesus – pretty serious, don’t you think? If we wouldn’t put rat poison into our water and then drink it, why do we poison our marriages and then wonder what happened? 

When Vickie and I talk about our lives, our marriage, a sacrament we always talk about is friendship. We have been blessed to have wonderful friends, some have gone before us, some we’ve lost touch with, some are still with us. Some of our friends are family, an especially sacred sacrament, which is to say that some of our family are friends. 

Our jobs have been sacramental. Our Lord Jesus has placed us both in jobs in which we’ve had wonderful relationships and have been able to serve others, and we’ve had the blessing of working together. An especially wonderful time is when she was CFO and I was COO of a firm; we worked for a wonderful man and had a wonderful team around us. 

Our vacations have been sacramental. Over the decades we have spent many weeks in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and often that has included friends and family whom we’ve invited to spend time with us. We’ve had folks from Massachusetts, Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, and Maryland vacation with us over the years, from Corolla to Waves, from the north to the south in the Outer Banks. One year we had three groups in one week; one from Iowa, another from North Carolina, and another from Virginia. It was perhaps the worst weather we’d ever had, but it was one of our best weeks.

Our Thanksgivings have been sacramental. O my, where to begin? We’ve had men and women from Australia, Belize, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Germany, Greece, Spain, England, and other parts of the world come together around turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, and so much more. One year we had people in and out of our home from Thursday through Sunday, some were sleeping on the floor. When the last one left Sunday afternoon I turned the kitchen faucet on and found that the well had finally run temporarily dry – but it didn’t happen until our last guest had left! 

One Thanksgiving in Virginia, a West Pont cadet from Belize played his bagpipes in our front yard (he was in the West Point pipe corps). On another Thanksgiving in Massachusetts, north of Boston, after the last guest had left Vickie and I discovered that we’d given all the leftover turkey away without knowing it – no turkey sandwiches that year!

That was also the year that when cleaning the oven, it got so smokey that Darby, our Lab-Shepherd mix, ran out of the house and refused to come back in until the air inside was clear. 

And speaking of Darby, our dogs have been sacramental to us, they’ve shared our ups and downs, our joys and some tragedies. Chris Ann (Cocker Spaniel), Mitzi (likely a Border Collie mix, but since a rescue from the streets of Richmond we don’t really know), Darby (another rescue, “Mommy’s dog”), Lina (a Basset mix), and dear Lily, our Boder Collie, dear sweet Lily. 

Well, these are some of the sacraments in my life…what about you?

What are you thankful for? Who are you thankful for? 

The USS Forrestal Fire

 The USS Forrestal Fire

My neighbor Hughey loaned me the book, Sailors to the End, the Deadly Fire on the USS Forrestal and the Heroes Who Fought It. This book has a special meaning for Hughey, for he served on the Forrestal prior to the tragedy of July 29, 1967, in which 134 men died and 161 were injured.

As is the practice with institutions, the U.S. Navy covered up the roots of the tragedy. From the flyleaf: “Sailors to the End also corrects the official view of the fire, providing evidence that the U. S. government compromised the ship’s safety by insisting on increased bombing despite the shortage of reliable [and safe!] weapons.” 

The author, Gregory A. Freeman, did a fine job of detailing the events and connecting us with the heroic sailors and pilots, but, considering that he is a journalist, he fell short – he did not ask the probing questions that begged to be asked. For there was a heroism that was not displayed, a heroism that, had it been displayed, may have saved lives. The heroism that I write of is that of asking hard questions and following them up with hard actions – in the face of a culture that discourages such questions and actions. 

The increased bombing of North Vietnam that the government insisted on, meant that the Forrestal was provided with out-of-date ordinance, bombs which did not meet safety standards on a number of levels, including having a high level of fire resistance. The sailors who were ordered to ship the bombs to the Forrestal knew there was a problem with the bombs. The sailors and officers who accepted the bombs on the Forrestal knew there was a problem. The doubts that were expressed were quickly covered up, orders were orders.

At the same time, two different teams on the Forrestal were bypassing electrical safety procedures in arming rockets on the fighter jets – and neither knew what the other was doing. Therefore, the safety features of the rockets were compromised not just once, but twice. These decisions were also made because of the pressure the carrier was under to meet the aggressive bombing schedule. Bypassing the safety measures meant the jets could be launched more quickly. 

The tragedy unfolded when, the day after the obsolete bombs were received by the carrier, a problem electrical circuit launched a rocket from one plane on the flight deck that hit another plane (which John McCain was in), which ignited a fire. As the fire suppression crews responded, one of the obsolete bombs on a plane exploded, killing many of the trained fire crew. Before the day was over, obsolete bomb after obsolete bomb exploded, killing and injuring sailors and pilots and blasting holes throughout the ship. The firemen assumed that the bombs on the planes were rated, per current standards, to withstand a fire for an hour or more, little did they realize that they running to their deaths. 

The electrical malfunction that launched the rocket occurred on a jet whose crew had bypassed the two safety protocols, had they been in place the launch could not have happened. Had obsolete bombs not been on the flight deck, the fire would have likely been limited. 

Freeman, the author, ought to have gone farther in his book, he ought to have asked the hard questions about Navy culture, about the cover-up, and he ought to have asked why we lack the courage to speak up in the face of danger, why we are trained and acculturated to go along to get along. He might have also asked why we simply don’t want to be bothered with the truth, not as individuals, and not as institutions. 

As much as we like to think that we live in a John Wayne culture (sorry, I’m not in tune with current actors and actresses so John Wayne is the best I can do), we are conformists at heart, our only question is which of the prevailing “cultures” we will conform to. 

And so we see professing Christians, across the spectrum, adopting the world and its ways and attempting to enforce tyranny on others as they align themselves with ideologies inimical to Jesus Christ, the Cross, and the Gospel. We see other professing Christians adopting a passivity that is inexplicable. I suppose some pastors think that if they don’t raise hard questions, including about the way we treat others, that they will preserve unity in their congregations, that if they don’t call their people to live as citizens of heaven first and foremost that all will be peaceful. 

If the bonds of a congregation cannot bear the challenge of difficult questions, if they cannot hold together amid the call to worship Jesus and Jesus alone, if they are so enfeebled as to not be able to consider difficult issues and obedient responses to Jesus…then what does such a people actually possess? Who are they? 

We load dangerous items onto our ships and we are afraid to speak up, to ask questions, to point out the lethal content of what we are inviting into our churches, seminaries, colleges, and other institutions. We have lost the capacity to be self-critical, just as our political, business, and academic leaders have abandoned self-criticism and honesty. On the other hand, we have sharpened our skills in ostracization and demonizing those who disagree with us – if it weren’t so tragic, we could applaud ourselves for becoming better at something.

What is beyond comprehension is that the Forrestal is on fire and we don’t even know it.