Monthly Archives: September 2020

Millie and Me – Goodbye to a Special Companion

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In the fall of 2009, our daughters, Sheri and Sandra, suggested we adopt a dog. Linda had just been diagnosed with Frontotemporal dementia and they assumed that a four-legged companion would be therapy for both of us, especially for Linda. So, they set out to identify the right companion.

At a local animal shelter, my son-in-law, Kyle, met a shy little Millie! She had been found wandering the street in the rain by a young boy and his mother. They were not permitted to keep a dog in their apartment, so they brought her to the shelter with the stipulation that she not be euthanized. She was estimated to be about eight or nine months old. They had already named her “Millie.”

In response to my question “What kind of dog is she?” the veterinarian replied as he surveyed her characteristics, “I see Chihuahua, Yorkie, terrier, and….Let’s just say she has a rich heritage!”

Though never weighing more than ten pounds, she was the alpha dog in every encounter with other canines and the “princess” when with family. She was reserved in the presence of strangers but feisty and fierce in defense of her space and family.

Millie quickly became a member of the family and Linda’s constant companion. Linda trained her, cared for her, loved her. Millie faithfully and persistently returned the love. They became almost inseparable. The bond of mutual love grew stronger as Linda’s disease progressed.

Early in the disease process, Linda and Millie took walks together and interacted in multiple ways. Millie seemed to sense the changes in Linda and always adjusted with empathy and added affection. She sensed when she was upset and frustrated and maintained her “non-anxious” presence in the most tumultuous times.

In the last stages of Linda’s disease, she lost the ability to respond to Millie. Yet, Millie remained faithful. She often positioned herself under Linda’s bed, especially when visitors came. She assumed the protector’s role, keeping her eyes fixed on the movements of the visitors.

Millie seemed to sense when Linda’s death was approaching. I don’t know how. Maybe she picked up on our feelings, or perhaps animals have a special sense at such times. After Linda’s death, she didn’t eat for three days. She frequently went to the door to her room and walked away with sadness in her eyes and her little tail tucked low. She was grieving!

We leaned on one another for comfort, support, and companionship. She had been part of Linda’s story for a decade. Now, her presence helped me feel Linda’s nearness. Maybe I did the same for her.

Millie gradually lost her hearing. Her vision diminished. Her dependency on me intensified. She followed my every move. When I returned to the house from errands or walks, she was waiting at the door.

In recent weeks, Millie’s declining health accelerated dramatically. In the early morning hours of September 16, she slowly drew her last breath. I quietly thanked God for her companionship with both Linda and me and for her bearing God’s own unconditional love and faithfulness.

Richard Rohr in his book, The Universal Christ, shares that he saw in his dog, Venus, the presence of Christ, the incarnation of the universal power of life and love. Some may want to quarrel with Rohr’s theology; but I’ll leave the quarrel to others. I just know that Linda and I experienced the power of unconditional love and gentle presence in Millie.

All creation originates in and is sustained by God’s love, and the divine presence permeates all life. The Psalmist declares in a prayer to God, “You save humans and animals alike” (36:6) and Jesus reminds us that God notes with compassion a sparrow’s fall (Matthew 10:29).

I know from my experience, especially in times of suffering and grief, nothing heals and comforts like gentle, loving, loyal presence. Sam Wells suggests that with is the most significant word in the Christian faith. It speaks of incarnation, the Word becoming flesh, Immanuel, “God with us.”

To the very end, Millie was simply with us in gentleness, loyalty, and empathy. I am ever thankful for the gift of Millie. Yes, she was an intimation of divine presence and love from which nothing in life or death can separate us.

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Open Letter to Senator Lindsey Graham

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Below is a letter I have sent to Senator Lindsey Graham who is my senator from South Carolina and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Dear Senator Graham:

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the process of replacing her has placed you at the center of the intensifying crises facing our country. Far more is at stake than the choosing of a member of the Supreme Court. Trust in the democratic processes and those who lead them has been eroding for years and has now reached a tipping point. Such trust depends upon the integrity, truthfulness, and commitment to the common good of people such as you who wield political power.

You, President Trump, and Senator McConnell are now the decisive leaders who will determine the timing and process for filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court and the integrity with which the process unfolds. Your personal character and the integrity of the Senate hangs in the balance. You unequivocally declared in 2016 that if a vacancy occurred during the presidential primary season the naming of a replacement would be made by the person elected in November.

 Senator McConnell, with the full support of the Republican caucus in the Senate, blocked the duly nominated Judge Garland with the rationale that no Supreme Court nominee should be approved in an election year. The decision to move forward in replacing Justice Ginsburg with less than two months remaining before the election is rank hypocrisy and Machiavellian duplicity.

By creating the precedent of blocking President Obama’s nominee, you and Senate Republicans sowed poisonous seeds of cynicism and exacerbated the dysfunction of the Senate. Whatever rationalization you use to justify reversing that principle when the president is of your own party, you will further undermine your own personal integrity and our trust in the Senate and those of you who occupy the position.

I appeal to your personal sense of integrity and fairness, and your commitment to the ideals of our democracy to delay consideration of a replacement of Justice Ginsburg until after the election. Doing so will send a signal that personal character still matters to you and your Republican colleagues; and it will be one step toward restoring trust in you and our democratic institutions.

 As a person of faith, I am reminded of the words of Jesus, “What will it profit a person if he/she gains the whole world and loses his/her soul.” You and your colleagues may gain this Supreme Court seat; but doing so at the cost of your character and integrity will eventually destroy you and further weaken the credibility of our democratic institutions. Providence and history will not look kindly on such action. Neither will voters in the upcoming election.

Sincerely,

Kenneth L. Carder

Relationships Break Down Racial Barriers*

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In June 1962, when Linda and I loaded our few belongings in a U-Haul trailer in Watauga, Tennessee, and headed to Gaithersburg, Maryland, so that I could begin seminary, racial tensions were intensifying. Politicians fanned the flames of hatred, bigotry, and division.

George Wallace, a staunch segregationist, had just been elected governor of Alabama. He angrily stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama in an  attempt to block the admission of two Black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Racial strife dominated the daily news.

Linda and I grew up in the segregated world of eastern Tennessee. I had no relationships with African-Americans and no experiences across the boundaries of race and ethnicity.

I had been appointed as student pastor of the Hunting Hill and MacDonald Chapel Methodist Churches while attending Wesley Theological Seminary in the nation’s capital. The two churches were located within 2 miles of one another on Darnestown Road. Hunting Hill was a former Methodist Episcopal Church, and MacDonald Chapel was part of the MEC South. The Methodist Episcopal Church had split into the two denominations over slavery in 1844.

The two denominations reunited in 1939 to form The Methodist Church. As a concession to the MEC South, the racially segregated Central Jurisdiction was formed for Black members.

Located on the same road and between Hunting Hill and MacDonald Chapel was Pleasant View Methodist Church, whose members were African-Americans.

So within two miles on the same stretch of road, three churches represented the history of the United Methodist Church’s struggle with racism.

As I drove past Pleasant View Church one weekday afternoon, I noticed a car parked beside the Parish Hall. I had not yet met the pastor. Perhaps this was my chance. What followed changed my life and approach to ministry.

I met The Reverend Tom Barrington, the pastor of Emory Grove and Pleasant View Methodist Churches. I was twenty-three years old, a seminary student, and a part-time pastor. He was in his mid fifties with a seminary degree and thirty years’ experience as a full-time pastor.

He greeted me with a warm smile and firm handshake. I learned that he was originally from the South — North Carolina as I recall. I immediately felt at ease in his presence and was impressed with his graciousness. It marked the beginning of my first friendship with an African-American colleague.

Soon, I confronted the institutional racism in The Methodist Church. Even though Reverend Barrington was far more experienced and educated than I and served full time, my annual salary exceeded his by $300!

During one of our subsequent informal conversations, Reverend Barrington mentioned that he wished he had enough boys to start a scout troop. Since we had an active scouting program at Hunting Hill, I suggested that his boys join the troop. His response exposed my naivete.

“Son,” he remarked, “do you want trouble?” “You may get run out of here if you try that. I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

I insisted that I ask the scout master, George Righter, if it would be okay to have the boys from Pleasant View join the troop. Much to the surprise of Reverend Barrington, George and the assistant leaders welcomed the new members of the troop without fanfare and minimum resistance.

Months later the Women’s Society of Christian Service (now United Methodist Women) of Pleasant View invited the women from MacDonald Chapel to a time of conversation and fellowship. Within a matter of weeks, the Methodist Men had a similar gathering. Barriers began coming down as relationships were formed across racial barriers.

Hunting Hill and MacDonald Chapel entered into a merger agreement during my last year as their pastor in 1965. Included in the agreement was expanded fellowship with Pleasant View and the possibility of them joining in the formation of the new church.

Suggestions for names for the newly formed church were received. I had placed in the suggestion box the name Fairhaven, from Acts 27.

Fair Haven was a temporary safe harbor amid a storm as Paul continued his journey to Rome.  The name seemed an appropriate image for a church — a place of nurture and renewal for a community on the journey toward God’s reconciled community of justice and love.

In 1968, a transformative step on that journey was taken when the members of Pleasant View became part of the new church. While racial strife and division dominated the media, three strains of Methodism’s division came together in a congregation on Darnestown Road in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

In September 2008, Linda and I shared in a Homecoming and 40th Anniversary of Fairhaven. Following the service, a woman approached me.

“I want to apologize to you and thank you. You likely don’t remember me, but you may remember my father,” she remarked.  After sharing his name, she reminded me that the family left the Hunting Hill Church in disagreement with the merger between Hunting Hill and MacDonald Chapel and the growing fellowship with Pleasant View.

She added, “I have returned to this church for the very reason my parents left it. My family is part of this church because of its diversity.”

Little did Reverend Barrington or I realize at the time that a small group of Boy Scouts, a women’s meeting, and a gathering of Methodist Men would be seeds from which a flourishing multi-racial congregation would spring forth.  What we did realize, however, is that relationships matter!

Fifty-seven years have passed since that fateful day that I drove into the parking lot of Pleasant View and met Tom Barrington. Tom died in 1966. He never knew the impact he had on a young, naïve seminary student from East Tennessee.

Today, Fairhaven United Methodist Church stands as visible testimony to the reconciling power of the gospel when embodied in relationships of compassion, justice, and hospitality.+

September 27, Fairhaven will celebrate homecoming by Zoom with the theme “Through it All God Remains Faithful.” I will be giving thanks that those three small membership congregations demonstrated to a young pastor from the segregated South that relationships across racial barriers are the soil out of which grows new life.

*This is the third in a series as I engage in the coming months on a pilgrimage of remembering sixty years of ministry and life with my deceased wife, Linda. When possible, I will be visiting the communities where Linda and I lived and served.

Pilgrimage to Seminary*

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Linda and I departed our native East Tennessee in June 1962 for seminary. Both of us wanted to live and study outside our native South.  Having been offered a scholarship and an appointment as student pastor, Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., seemed the right choice.

The school had moved from Westminster, Maryland, to the campus of American University in 1958. The location was part of the curriculum as the seminary intentionally claimed the Christian gospel’s witness in the public arena.

Where else could a student take a class on “The Prophets” and be assigned attendance at Congressional hearings on poverty or Pentagon briefings on the Vietnam War?

Or, what better place for a naïve young man from the Jim Crow South to be required to walk the streets of a ghetto within site of the US Capitol and interview residents on their impression of the Methodist Church located up the street?

One comment from an interviewee shaped my practice as a pastor, bishop, and seminary teacher. “They don’t do nothin’ up there but have church.” I learned that you don’t really know the local church apart from the neighbors’ experience of it.

The seminary faculty members all had pastoral experience and were deeply committed to the formation of congregations that embody the gospel.

Seminary education can take place in isolation from the surrounding world! Not at Wesley! World events were not only in the news media. They were in the classroom, subjected to rigorous biblical and theological reflection.

The Bay of Pigs! Build up of war in Vietnam! Assassination of President Kennedy! Martin Luther King and the March on Washington! Civil Rights legislation! Selma March! Campus unrest! Black Power!

The notion that such events had nothing to do with theology and the church was totally foreign to life at Wesley Seminary, at least in my experience during those three years.

Education and formation were integral to my seminary experience. Contrary to current practice, psychological evaluations were done as part of the orientation process at Wesley. The purpose was to identify personality, psychological, and emotional qualities that may need attention.

A clinical psychologist and faculty members with appropriate training were available to provide support in addressing identified issues. As we were told, “We are here to help prepare you intellectually, spiritually, and psychologically to be the best pastors you can be.”

One incident captures the impact those three years had on my own education and formation. It happened during my second year in the class called “Sermonic Clinic,” a required class in the practice of preaching.

The professor was Dr. Earl H. Ferguson. He was known as a tough professor whose critique of sermons could be brutal. We called the class “Fergatory!” When it came my turn to preach, I used an Easter sermon I had delivered in one of my local churches.

I preached on the resurrection and promptly experienced the crucifixion when Dr. Ferguson delivered his critique before the whole class. He found nothing positive in the sermon. I failed to define what I meant by resurrection or explain how it provided forgiveness for the past, strength for the present, and hope for the future–the three points. My delivery was wooden, dispassionate, and “boring.”

I was crushed by the evaluation. I left for home immediately after class. I burst into tears when Linda greeted me with “How did it go?” I had failed! I tossed and turned through the night before returning to campus the next morning.

Upon arriving on campus for a first period class, I entered the underground tunnel connecting the classroom building to Oxnam Chapel and several faculty offices, including Dr. Ferguson’s.

Suddenly, I heard that familiar voice, “Kenneth! Wait up!” It was Dr. Ferguson.

“That hurt yesterday, didn’t it?” he commented.

“Yes, it hurt very much,” as I choked back my emotions.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you; but we need to understand one another. I assume you are here because you have been called to preach. I am here because I have been called to make you the best preacher you can be.”

Then he did something I had never experienced from him. He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Kenneth, I believe in you!”

Suddenly, this brilliant man put his arm around me and continued, “And I’m going to hold you to it.” While he held me in compassion, he held me accountable to my calling.

I asked if I could preach another sermon. Though it was an improvement and his critique included some positives, I had more work to do (and still do).

Thereafter, I took every class I could from Dr. Ferguson. He was a Tillich scholar and one of his classes was “The Meaning of Love.” The basic texts were Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving and Paul Tillich’s  Love, Power, and Justice. I still have the notes from that class and the term paper I wrote, “Masochism and Sadism and Their Theological Formulations.”

Ten years after graduating from Wesley, I wrote to Dr. Ferguson and thanked him for what he taught me about preaching AND the meaning of discipleship. He had retired and moved to Maine. His response includes this paragraph:

Your letter warmed an old man’s heart on a cold winter day in Maine. Teaching and preaching are like shooting arrows into the air. You’re never quite sure they hit any targets. Then, someone takes the time to write a note or letter to say ‘thank you.’ You realize that something you said or did made a difference. Thank you!

Here are a few arrows shot into the air by Wesley Seminary that landed firmly in my understanding of the gospel and practice of ministry:

  • There is only one gospel, with personal, social, and cosmic implications
  • Education and formation are inseparable components of ministry
  • Knowledge and vital piety belong together
  • A congregation that neglects its community isn’t the church
  • God is as concerned about what happens in politics as in religion
  • Justice and evangelism are conjoined twins, not adversaries
  • The world is God’s preoccupation, not the institutional church
  • “God’s kingdom will come. Join it or get out of its way!” (Quote from Professor Lowell Hazzard,1965.)

Whatever effectiveness I may have had over five decades of ordained ministry, I owe much of it to Wesley Seminary during three life-changing years, 1962-65,

*This is the second in a series as I engage in the coming months on a pilgrimage of remembering sixty years of ministry and life with my deceased wife, Linda. When possible, I will be visiting the communities where Linda and I lived and served.

 Photo: Copyright, Wesley Theological Seminary, 2020. All rights reserved. Used with permission.