Tag Archives: Love

A Beautiful Gift of Love and Hope

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My artist daughter, Sheri, recently presented me with an invaluable gift. It’s a brilliant renderning of a breath-taking scene and profound experience from August 2020. The story behind the painting compounds its beauty and meaning.

It had been ten months since the death of my wife, Linda. She had lived with the ravaging losses of dementia for at least a decade. Still adjusting to the loss of her presence, I was spending time at our home at Lake Junaluska, a place filled with joyful memories.

All the stages of grief were still in play, with varying degrees of intensity. Those who have experienced the loss of a spouse know that the grieving doesn’t follow a clear linear path. It zigs and zags, dips and spikes, ebbs and flows, with shattering sadness always nearby.

On that August morning five years ago, sorrow jarred me awake before dawn. It was one of those anxiety dreams, the details of which dissipated as I awoke. After drinking my morning coffee, I headed for a predawn walk around beautiful Lake Junaluska. As I walked westward peering into the fading darkness, the first glimmers of the new day began to peek from behind the hills behind me.

I turned toward the emerging light that began dispelling the night’s darkness.Gradually, bursts of brilliant radiance pushed through the fluffy clouds and greeted the mists gathering over the serene water’s gentle waves. The lingering shadows of night receded and the emerging light and beauty pointed toward the promise of a new day.

Awe snapped my grieving soul to attention. The haunting grief from a lost yesterday was wrapped in a new garment of pervasive beauty, relentless love, and renewed hope. Though loss and grief lingered, I felt part of something much bigger than personal loss. I was reminded that I am a participant in creation’s rhythmic dance of darkness and light, holding on and letting go, death and resurrection.

Wanting to capture the experience, I snapped a photo with my phone camera. The picture became the background for subequent blog posts. However, something was missing from the photo. It couldn’t capture the LOVE and belonging that accompanied the experience.

But the LOVE absent from the photo permeates the painting done by one birthed and nurtured by Linda. Sheri and her sister, Sandra, embodied that LOVE as they accompanied Linda and me on the “long goodbye;” and they continue to generously share that LOVE with me and others.

The painting has become a constant reminder of the LOVE, BEAUTY, and HOPE to which creation itself testifies.

Honesty: The Core of Character Matters

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 My grandfather, Dave Walker, was one of my heroes. He died at age 67.  He was a simple man who could neither read nor write; yet, he was perhaps the kindest, wisest, and most honorable person I have known. The memory of an incident during my childhood recently resurfaced.

I was about eight years old. Granddaddy asked if I would like to walk to the store with him about a mile away. He bought me a candy bar along with his purchase of a bag of flour. After we were almost back home, he counted his money in the change purse he carried in the pocket of his overalls. He discovered the clerk had given him a nickel more change than he should.

“We have to go back to the store,” granddaddy said. “I have to return this nickel.”

“But it’s just five cents,” I said. “He’ll never even know he gave you too much!”

“But I’ll know,” he responded.  “You’re only as good as your word,” he added.

The most frequently heard compliments at my grandfather’s funeral in 1961 were these: 

            “He was honest as the day is long!”

            “His word was his bond!”          

“If he promised something, you could count on it.”

            “He never lied; he always told the truth.”

            “You could trust him with your life.”

I’ve thought a lot about my grandfather during the current climate of runaway dishonesty. Lying is being normalized, justified, trivialized, and weaponized in high and low places. Distortion of truth has become a contrived means of achieving desired ends.

In the current political climate, character has been disjoined from policy, as though favorable policies override personal integrity. Without character-embedded honesty, however, promises related to policy are fickle, hollow, and manipulative.

Granddad considered honesty the core of character and dishonesty as symptomatic of a malignantly diseased character. He learned that from Jesus! “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much” (Luke 16:10).

Fred Craddock shared an experience while in the buffet line at an airport food outlet. Dr. Craddock saw the man in front of him slide a small pad of butter under his plate, hiding it from the cashier. The butter only cost five cents! A harmless or inconsequential dishonest act! But Dr. Craddock commented that he kept his eyes on his own luggage when that man showed up at the same boarding gate. Trust was gone!

Dishonesty is a deadly infection of the soul that poisons every aspect of life. It destroys trust, corrodes character, fractures relationships, undermines community, and subverts the common good. Lies are like termites eating away the foundation or malignant cancer cells destroying vital organs, within individuals and society.

 Would you trust your children with the man who hid the pad of butter under his plate? Would you hire him as your financial advisor or banker? Give him a key to your car or house? Buy a used car from him? Give him the combination to your safe? Vote for him? Provide him with the nuclear code?

Albert Einstein is reported to have warned, “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”

Character matters! Granddaddy was right: “You are only as good as your word!” He not only believed it; he also LIVED it. He was as good as his word. I would trust him with my life!

Granddaddy’s change purse

Choosing Leaders

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This election season challenges me to clarify the qualities of leadership that most closely reflect the core values of my faith, whether those being chosen are for government, the church, or institutions/agencies. Here are some qualities I look for. What’s on your list?

1. Personal Character and Temperament: truthfulness and reflections of “Fruits of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Leaders greatly influence the culture of the entity they lead. Power divorced from honesty, moral character, and mature temperament becomes manipulative, coercive, self-serving, and destructive, thereby thwarting the common good and inflicting suffering on others. 

2. Demonstrated Commitment to Justice as Equity, Fairness, and Enabling the Least and Most Vulnerable to Flourish as God’s Beloved Children. Developing and implementing policies that protect and enable the powerless to have access to God’s table of abundance strengthens the whole society. Merely protecting and advancing the privileges of the privileged fails the justice test and results in exploitation, inequity, abuse, and even death.

3. Proven Recognition of and Respect for the Inherent Worth, Dignity, and Wellbeing of Every Person. Leaders set the tone for how those they influence treat others. Using a biblical image, leaders are shepherds who know, defend, nurture, preserve, and guide others. On the other hand, “hirelings” fleece, exploit, abandon, deplete, and may even slaughter the sheep. The shepherd recovers and restores the weak; the hireling scatters and disregards the vulnerable. 

4. A Disciplined, Tough Mind and a Compassionate, Empathetic Heart. This is what Jesus described as being “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Leaders must exhibit both intellectual and social intelligence. Intellect without empathy humiliates and demeans; empathy without intellect risks enabling destructive behavior and being co-opted for nefarious purposes.

5. Compelling Vision for the Common Good and Sensible Strategy for Moving Toward the Vision. For me, the vision is defined in the biblical images of “the kingdom of God” and “the New Creation;” and it is embodied in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Components include these:

▪ the dignity and worth of ALL persons are respected, preserved and nurtured.

▪ the interrelatedness, interdependence, and mutual flourishing of creation is respected.

▪ the oneness and unity of the human family is reflected in actions and policies.

▪ service ranks above profits, restoration surpasses retribution, and hope defeats despair.

I realize that no one fully embodies these qualities, and they may seem idealistic and unattainable. Admittedly, they are more aspirational than concretely visible in our polarized, fragmented, and violent world.

Yet, we need leaders at all levels whose aspirations transcend mere self-interest, acquiescence to things as they are, and cynical scorning of such ideals as freedom, compassion, respect, and justice for ALL.
                

Trying to Make Sense of My Life

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I’ve spent much time in recent years remembering and reflecting on events, relationships, and stories that have shaped who I am. It says a lot about my station in life. I’m poignantly aware of having exceeded by more than a decade my biblically allotted “three score years and ten.”

A few colleagues and several family members, including grandchildren, urged me to share stories from my life and more than sixty years of ordained ministry. It has been a daunting, emotional, frustrating, and yet healing process.

Reliving past struggles, mistakes, failures, hurts, griefs, disappointments, and losses resurfaces unresolved guilt and regrets. The grace I have proclaimed for six decades has been put to a test as a lived reality. Accepting forgiveness for myself is sometimes harder than extending it to others.

But the process of remembering, reflecting, and writing has been predominantly a source of healing, thanksgiving, and hope. I am in awe of the ineffable mystery and resilience of life. Each person’s finite story is mysteriously interwoven into an Infinite Story with limitless connections and possibilities.

Seemingly inconsequential events, encounters, or decisions in retrospect were life-transforming. “What ifs” are part of remembering: What if I had not gone to that conference? What if I had said “no” to a particular invitation? What if I had not enrolled in that school, or taken a different class, or entered an alternative vocation?

Life is a mysterious combination of choices made and conditions prescribed, situations over which we have control and circumstances beyond our control, the “givens” of nature and the influence of nurture.

Life is simply too complex, too interrelated, and mysterious to be fully described. Memory never records the totality of any incident and recall always reflects current contexts as much as the event itself.

Therefore, writing a memoir requires a stance of vulnerability and humility in remembering and interpreting the circumstances, experiences, events, perceptions, and relationships that constitute one’s life. The process is risky and fraught with temptations for distortion and misrepresentation.

The book, Shifting Margins: From Fear and Exclusion to Love and Belonging is my attempt to make sense of my own life. It began with simply putting memories on paper, starting with my earliest recalled experiences and moving through seven decades. Reviewing journals and accumulated files of correspondence and other documents resurfaced forgotten events, transitional experiences, and relationships. The result was almost six hundred pages!

With the help of a skilled editor (who happens to be my daughter), identifying themes, and creating a coherent and readable manuscript followed. Reducing the manuscript by two-thirds became symbolic of my reality. Life’s experiences are narrowing. The circle of engagement and involvement is diminishing. Physical energy is declining. Cognitive functioning remains but with less quickness and retention. The end is far closer than the beginning!

After all this remembering and reflecting, I have concluded that perhaps the goal isn’t to make sense of life. Rather, it is to participate in its unfolding mystery with love, perseverance, and hope.

Whatever the stage, there are opportunities to give and receive love. There are challenges to confront with determination and courage. There is hope that our stories ultimately fold into God’s Story of Endless Love and Resurrection Life.

To order Shifting Margins, https://www.marketsquarebooks.com/store/p123/Shifting_Margins.html

“Betrayed with a Kiss and a Sword”

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Jesus asked the piercing question of the disciple-turned-conspirator: “Judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?” (Luke 22:48)

Why a kiss? Would not a slap or pointed finger or clinched fist be more appropriate means of betraying Jesus into the hands of his opponents? But, no! Judas betrayed with a sign of affection!

Upon closer reflection, however, Jesus’ question is appropriate for all who claim allegiance to him. We rarely, if ever, hear expressed outright hatred or denunciation of Jesus. Yet, we all betray!

Most often our betrayal takes the form of declared affection for Jesus. Here are a few ways we betray Jesus with a kiss:

  • Singing “O How I Love Jesus” while hating those who are different
  • Declaring “Jesus Is Lord” while prioritizing partisan politics above the common good
  • Claiming Jesus’ forgiveness but holding grudges and seeking vengeance
  • Affirming love for God while despising neighbors near and far
  • Singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children, All the Children of the World” while failing to provide all children with access to education, medical care, safety and love
  • Proclaiming “God is Love” with anger in our voices and hate in our actions
  • Assert that Jesus is ‘the way, truth, and life’ and refuse to obey his command to love one another as he loves us
  • Saying “Lord, Lord” and failing to do what he says, go where he goes, and welcome those whom he loves

Judas resides in all of us!  We, too, betray with a kiss!

But Judas wasn’t the only disloyal disciple present in the garden when Jesus was arrested. Luke tells us, “One of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear”(22:50).

Jesus responded resolutely, “No more of this!”

The kiss and the sword have much in common as forms of betrayal. History is replete with efforts to violently defend Jesus.

The Crusades were fought in name of loyalty to Jesus. Scientists were burned at the stake under the guise of protecting religious doctrine. Preachers used the Bible to promote slavery! Klansmen terrorized and murdered with burning crosses and prayers of devotion to Jesus. The Bible has been used as a sword of discrimination against women.

Defending Jesus with physical, verbal, and emotional swords is a pervasive means of betrayal. Could these be subtle contemporary examples of betrayal with swords?

  • Using Scripture as a weapon for exclusion, hatred, and discrimination
  • Promoting hatred of Muslims, immigrants, gays, and others in the name of defending the Christian faith
  • Applauding the Sermon on the Mount while defending possession of assault weapons as a “God-given right”
  • Proclaiming God’s preferential presence in “the least of these” while advocating public policies that damage the poor, vulnerable, and powerless
  • Increasing spending for weapons of war while decreasing support for education, healthcare, housing, and food for the under resourced

But the final word in the Christian gospel isn’t betrayal! It’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing.

In Matthew’s account of Judas’ betrayal, Jesus calls him “friend.” Judas’ kiss may have been betrayal, but Jesus’ response was one of steadfast love.

After admonishing the disciples against violence, Jesus healed the victim. The final word was/is healing, not violence.

From the cross, Jesus spoke the ultimate response to all forms of betrayal: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

Whether betrayed with a kiss or a sword, Jesus forgives, reconciles, transforms.

Moving from Grief’s Tears to Love’s Smiles

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It’s been three and half months since Linda’s death. The grieving continues!

C. S. Lewis in his classic A Grief Observed writes that grief is like a bomber flying overhead. At times you are only faintly aware that it is there. Then, without warning it drops a bomb, shattering your world once more. The sobbing and disorientation return.

Those waves of grief come unexpectedly, like a sudden bolt of thunder on a clear day! They are triggered by a site, or fragrance, or a rediscovered memento, a reminder of an experience from the past.

Painful images of Linda’s diseased-induced distress, anguish, confusion, disorientation, and fear open the floodgates of grief’s tears. They trouble me, sometimes torment me!

Experts remind us that the memories with the most painful emotion attached to them are the hardest to heal.

Those negative images accompanying our journey with dementia are difficult to dislodge from my memory.

But healing is happening!

Our daughter created a collage of photographs of happy times over our sixty years together.

Collage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The collection of joyful images sits in my sunroom where I spend much of the day. Other photos are attached to the refrigerator.  Two months ago, those photos brought tears, too. They reminded me of what had been but can be no more.

Yet, something important has been happening.

The painful images from the last few years are slowly being balanced by memories from six decades of love and laughter.

Our new community chaplain, Kathleen Miko, stopped by this week for a visit. Since she had not known Linda, I pointed to the collection of photographs and explained why they were there.

Kathleen observed, “I notice that you smile every time you look at those photos.”

I hadn’t realized that gradually grief’s tears are being replaced with smiles of gratitude for love shared.

I know that more bombs of sadness will fall, waves of grief will come crashing over me.

Yet, grief’s tears are slowly giving way to love’s smiles.

 

“Glimpses”

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A week has passed since Linda’s death and I have begun the process of adjusting to the new norm without her physical presence. Though the house is vacant and quiet, the reality of the love we shared for sixty years remains.

One of the most comforting and profound experiences of the last week has been a poem written by our daughter, Sheri, which she shared at both of Linda’s memorial services. I learned that she wrote the poem over the ten years of Linda’s disease and that she would write a new stanza every time her mom entered a new phase of dementia.

Each stanza represents a stage in the long journey and chronicles the progression of the losses experienced, including the present reality of her absence and our anticipation of resting in the loving arms of God in whose presence Linda now lives.

I share the poem with Sheri’s permission.

                     Glimpses

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of a future reality that will come to be.
A lost word, a confused look,
An expression I mistook.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of the mom who still knows and loves me.
Embarrassed by her lapse and my forgotten name,
I brush it aside because I love her all the same.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of the mom she used to be.
A smile, a giggle, a twinkling of the eye
Remind me of a taken-for-granted time now gone by.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of my mom slipping away from me.
I try and try to connect once again
To little avail, though; this is how it’s been.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of where my mom will one day be.
In the arms of the God who loves her so much,
In the arms of the God she did always trust.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of my mom happy, as she is meant to be
Cradled in love and joy and peace
After all these years, she is finally free.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of a world without my mom physically
Close in my heart she will always be
Until that very day God cradles me.

(Written by Sheri Carder Hood)

The Ugliest Word

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Ugly

During an interview in the 1950s, the famed journalist Edward R. Morrow asked Carl Sandburg, “What’s the ugliest word in the English language?”

I know a lot of ugly words! Many are considered profanity and aren’t spoken in polite company. Admittedly, those crude words have become more acceptable in public discourse and popular entertainment. I won’t mention them here. You know them, I’m sure.

But the Pulizer prize winning poet didn’t select a profane word. This master of the use of words chose this as the ugliest word: EXCLUSIVE! 

Well, I’m not so sure about that! Many find the word and its implication quite attractive. After all, we seem to prefer

  • to live in exclusive neighborhoods,
  • drive exclusive cars, eat at exclusive restaurants,
  • vacation at exclusive resorts,
  • attend exclusive universities,
  • occupy exclusive leadership positions,
  • shop at exclusive stores,
  • be inducted into exclusive organizations,
  • be part of an exclusive religion,
  • worship an exclusive God,
  • belong to an exclusive church.

I suspect that the ugliness or beauty of the word depends on whether we are among the included or the excluded. The included have power, privilege, prominence, prestige. They determine who is in and who is out.

But if you’ve ever been among those who are excluded, you know how ugly the word is! Being excluded stings, embarrasses, devalues, demeans, rejects, isolates, marginalizes, coerces, bullies. It hurts to be excluded!

Jesus must have considered exclusive to be an ugly word and an evil practice. At least, he redefined who’s in and who’s out. He turned the tables on the excluded and the included.

The excluded became the included: the nobodies, the poor, the disreputable, the powerless, the sick, the imprisoned, the vulnerable!

Those who considered themselves the exclusive found themselves on the outside– religious legalists, political power brokers, the rich, the morally pure, the piously judgmental.

In God’s upside-down kindom, no one is excluded from the reach of divine compassion and presence. Those we exclude from our circles of compassion, justice, and hospitality are the very ones at the center of God’s circle of hospitality.

If exclusive is the ugliest, I wonder what the poet would consider the most beautiful word in the English language?

I don’t know about you, but a word that comes to my mind is WELCOME! When combined with ALL, the beauty is magnified: ALL WELCOME! WELCOME ALL!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book on Its Way!

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PrintThis week I sent the final draft of manuscript, Ministry with the Forgotten: Dementia through a Spiritual Lens, to Abingdon for the their review and editing. The book is the outgrowth of the journey Linda and I have been on for more than ten years.

Dementia is seen in our society almost exclusively through a medical lens where the focus is on symptoms, lost capacities, and grief. Such a narrow lens contributes to the current fear, stigmatizing, and marginalizing of people with dementia.

The book seeks to broaden the lens by locating dementia within God’s Story of creation, liberation, restoration, incarnation, and salvation. We are all more than our limitations, capacities, and losses. We are beloved children of God, created in the divine image, redeemed by God’s grace, and incorporated into a new community.

I am honored that the Foreword is written by Warren Kinghorn,  a psychiatrist and theologian, who teaches in both the Medical School and Divinity School at Duke. His short Foreword is worth more than the book itself!

The book should be available by August. The royalties from its sale will go to support ministries with people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia and those who care for them.

I Won’t be Attending General Conference But . . . .

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UM-General-Conference1920x485-1024x259I’m going to miss an important event in Methodist history–the called session of the General Conference in St. Louis, February 23-27.

A lot is at stake as delegates wrestle with ways to deal with the important matters of homosexuality and the interpretation of Scripture. The decisions made will chart the denomination’s future for decades.

Missing the conference makes me sad! I feel some guilt for my absence.  Although as a retired bishop I have no official duties,  I do feel responsible to be present in support of colleagues and delegates.

I know from previous General Conferences that significant things happen apart from the formal sessions. Old friendships are renewed and new ones formed. The vast diversity of the denomination is on full display.

Great music! Outstanding preaching! Challenging speeches! Profound worship!

I’ll miss all of that!

I must forego the experience. But, I’ll be pursuing my current primary vocational calling, care-partner for my wife of 57 years.

What I will be doing seems small and insignificant when compared to the history-making decisions. Nothing I will be doing will get publicity or make the history books.

I’ll be doing little things–holding Linda’s hand, combing her hair, feeding her, brushing her teeth, assuring her she isn’t alone, just sitting quietly as she sleeps.

There are important connections between what I’ll be doing and what’s happening in St. Louis.

We both will be doing sacred work!  Both will involve strong emotions, including grief and disappointment. God will be present with us!

Both have to do with what it means to love! Who to love! How to love! What it means to love faithfully, as Christ loves us!

Love isn’t an abstraction for me. She’s lying in the bed nearby, with her hand in mine. Love, in the final analysis, is an embodied practice rather than a pontifical pronouncement.

I hope love isn’t an abstraction in St. Louis. May it be embodied in

  • ears that listen attentively,
  • tongues that speak tenderly and truthfully,
  • hands that clasp and serve joyfully,
  • arms that embrace hospitably,
  • hearts that beat compassionately,
  • minds that exhibit the mind that was in Christ Jesus,
  • actions that manifest the breadth of God’s love and justice.

I won’t be trying to convince Linda that she is wrong, or less than, or inadequate, or sinful, or outside the norm.

Instead, I will be trying to empathetically enter her world, see the world as she is seeing it, assure her that she is valued amid her confusion, and loved unconditionally by God and by me.

I genuinely pray that what happens in St. Louis will be akin to what will be happening in our home, and in the countless homes across our world as people seek to love one another as Christ loves us, regardless of

  • race,
  • ethnicity,
  • political affiliations,
  • theological perspectives,
  • sexual orientation, or
  • physical and intellectual capacities.

I won’t be physically present in St. Louis, but I’ll be watching and praying. . . . and continuing to love!