My Conversation with Caleb

While down at the condo pool, I received a phone call a bit ago from my son Caleb, who is at Hillmont Camp again, where his father's parents are retired directors. His grandparents are Free Will Baptists, and it is to the FWB church in Dickson TN that they go on Sundays and Wednesdays.. Here is part of the phone conversation from today:

"Hey Mom, how ya doin'?"

"How ya doin' Cabie?"

Exciting so far, huh???

Then , "Mom, mom, I saved you the bulletin this morning ...you will LOVE it!! It's got the Statue of Liberty and the American Flag on it...we sang America and America the Beautiful."

Me: "Oh, well America the Beautiful is good---the words are so real." And I also reminded him that we usually could always find something edifying in a sermon if we listened for it. And that it is Memorial Day and people in the congregation may be thinking about loved one who have died in the military. I also asked if his grandparents could hear him...no, they had just left Captain Ds and he was at the car.

C: "Wait a minute, we didn't sing America the Beautiful....and the sermon was on how we want to be remembered...and he said people should remember us for how much we loved Jesus and the church. He talked about how good the institutional church is."

At this point, I could tell he knew that I agreed with the Jesus part and the church part, though I wouldn't have said the church thing the same way. And I also reminded him that we usually could always find something edifying in a sermon if we listened for it. And that it is Memorial Day and people in the congregation may be thinking about loved one who have died in the military. (I DO try to be encouraging in a motherly way.)

C: Yeah, I think that about Jesus...be remembered for Jesus...but..." (He knew I knew what he meant.) "In Sunday School, all the imagery was about war "(this he said with disgust) He and I both honor those who serve---we remember Clinton Cox, our father and grandfather, who served in WW II. But we also know that Daddy and Paw-Paw would be see the problem here too.

At the time of the phone call, I had been reading Michael Slaughter's book Change the World. Sort of a coincidence (God working anonymously as Anne Lamott would say) since much of what Slaughter writes about Caleb would agree with. I told him about the book and Slaughter and Caleb said "Cooooool...it's neat that a mega church pastor would talk like that."

When I got off the phone, I gave God thanks for a 19 year old son who knows how to pay attention to the important things, who knows who Jim Wallis is, who takes his spiritual life very seriously, and who isn't rude (I hope) to the people of his grandparents church. In fact, he really likes the preacher. And I am thankful for a son who can disagree vehemently, but still likes the folks with whom he disagrees.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. Last Sunday, when he and his grandparents walked into church, he asked an older man there whom he knew, "where's the red? Don't we celebrate Pentecost here?"

At which the man laughed and said, "no, we're Baptists." First Caleb asked me if Methodists are the only ones that celebrate Pentecost...and then if there were any Baptists that celebrated Pentecost. I told him about American Baptists. Caleb also told me that a bit of Methodist bashing went on then (I am certain that it must have been done in love...I hope) and of course Caleb had to tell me all about it.

Changing the subject slightly, I worshiped at the middle service at Platte Woods this morning. The church musician is Walter Bryant, a great jazz keyboard player and arranger. Steve Breon preached on simplifying and prioritizing our use of time. Walter played My Sweet Lord for the prelude and then a very talented woman sang, with Walter and his combo playing, the Rolling Stones' Time is on Our Side..which really fits....he and I had a discussion after the service about using popular contemporary songs "as is"...instead of gerrymandering them up to be explicitly Christian. Not that that is always bad, but maybe we are supposed to turn our ear to the radio, and despite some of the ugliness and language, hear that God shows up in the strangest places. Caleb and I have had several discussions about this and agree with Walter.

I think this is enough. And it's time to go watch or listen to the Cards game.

PS: Googling around for a picture, I see that White American Baptists are not the only Baptists who celebrate Pentecost. There are several websites of African American Baptists of many ilks that do. One example is at this site for Sharon Baptist Church in Richmond VA: http://www.thesharonbaptistchurch.com/index.php?p=1_15_Ecumenical-Calendar-

The New District Office

We are moved! The Heartland North District office has moved to its new location in the house on the north side of Platte Woods UMC. The house has been renovated, mostly, by Rev. John Howard, associate pastor at First Kearney UMC (that's him a few months ago taking a picture of some others who were painting, as I took a picture of him.) In his former life, he was facilities manager for Veterans Hospital in KC. He took on this project lock, stock and barrel (literally). Although there were several other volunteers I especially thank Terri Huffman) it was John who painted with them, got the mold in the house removed, arranged the carpet layers and mini blind installation, painted, installed locks, cleaned, worked out financial details with Platte Woods, got a marvelous sign made for just off the north parking lot of the church, took out a wall, emptied humidifiers countless times, worked with Coni, our bookkeeper for the paying of bills and did all sorts of other things to get the house ready. It is very beautiful. Please come see us! You feel as if you are in the woods, sort of, and you are sort of.

I feel fairly guilty about this office thing, since when we decided to take up Platte Woods on its offer of this house as our office, I had no idea that I would be going off the district. The district has put money into the house and John has put his heart and soul into the house. One of the joys of being where we are now is that we get to see the Platte Woods people so much. Steve Breon, senior pastor there, came by this afternoon and said something like. "this house is so you" (meaning Susan) and it certainly does feel like home. It feels like home too, because among other things, Barbara senses this feels like home, too.

I have no doubt that God will lead the district to find many ways to use the house and its grounds (the "park-like setting" as I have described it). I do wish we had moved earlier because the stress level when all three districts were together was very high---not that we didn't get along but we were so cphysically lose together, and there is such tension at times in the superintendency that it is good to be in a peaceful place. Selfishly I wish this had happened sooner because then I would have gotten to enjoy it longer, and my own stress level might have been lessened.

This does NOT mean that the call on my life is lessened to return to the local church and to McMurry in particular. I do have another month plus of the ds work, though, and it looks like I will be dealing with "issues" until the very end, which is okay---that is what I am supposed to be doing, and I will be glad to live out every one of my days as ds. And I am glad that it will be in the funky house next to PW, with trees all around, and a contented Barbara, the keeper of my sanity, in the other room.

Bible Given, Bibles Received

Today, I was packing books at the District office for the good men from McMurry to come pick up on the 22nd---I will be gone Monday thru Friday next week to the Festival of Homiletics in Nashville, so my time is short. As I got through packing Wesley's journals, and assorted other Wesley books, I reached for the next shelf down which held several of my bibles. I have packed those bibles (some of them) ten times (maybe 11 or 12) in moves. Today I was struck by the inscriptions in the front page of each and I realized we have had our own little Gideon Society right in the Hale/Cox family giving and receiving bibles right and left. Here are more about the bibles in this picture taken this afternoon, numbered from left to right:

Bible 1) The Rainbow Bible with color illustrations and a cool cross metal bookmark. This was given to me at Christmas by my parents in 1962--I was eight. KJV of course (Not in the picture is the tiny white "bible" somebody gave me when I was born. ---that would have qualified as my first Bible I think)

Bible 2) The white genuine leather Bible I received at Christmas from my parents in 1965--presumably I needed a more grown up and prettier Bible by then. It looks like someone has used it a lot---that someone was me. KJV of course

Bible 3) The Living Bible New Testament which was my brother Sam's gift to me upon my graduation from eighth grade in 1968. This was the very first of the Living Bible bibles to come out and man, he was really hip giving it to me, graduating me on to creative renderings of stories I had heard in the KJV. I now was growing into teenagerdom, (in my high school days anyway) using a PARAPHRASE instead of a TRANSLATION! It brought out my biblical wild-child.

Bible 4) The Jerusalem Bible that I bought myself when I was a freshman in college. This was about the same time I saw a traveling company do Godspell at SIU which was one of those mountain top experiences--remember it was 1973. Somewhere I had been to a study or heard a sermon from a Catholic priest around Carbondale someplace who used this translation and I really liked it. It may have been Hugh Muldoon??? I used it for several years and still use it for reference (and reverence).

Bible 5) A beautiful small tan Bible I received in 1977 when I was ordained as a deacon, as some of us oldies were before the new (new?) ordination process. I was ordained by Bishop Leroy Hodapp in the Southern Illinois conference. And he inscribed it. It really looks beat up too---I used it for preaching quite a bit early on and I dropped it a big water puddle one time when I was getting out of the car and it got soaked and the pages still show it.

Bible 6) This Bible was my maternal grandmother Granny Hale's last Bible, given to her in 1984 when she was eighty by one of her grandsons. It is full of notes on scripture and notes from the preacher's sermon. She was Gospel Assembly and had very long white hair and lived until she was 97. She was widowed during the depression with four children, the oldest, my mother, in high school. Anyway, she loved the scripture; she also, as most children of her generation did, memorized poetry at school. And she wrote on the inscription page, which was really a place to record a marriage, these words:

My heart will keep the courage of the quest, And hope the road's last turn will be the best.

--From Henry Van Dyke's poem Life.

Granny actually made a change from the original poem. She changed "hope" to "know."

Bible 7) An NIV version that I gave my mother Christmas 1988. She was in lay speaking training at that time and I thought she would like it. I was gifted back with it in 2000 when she died.

And there are more Bibles we all gave each other that are in assorted place. I just hope that when I am gone, that Cana and Caleb will both enjoy and thank God for this Bible giving thing that has gone on in the family. And will still be reading their own as well.