The coffee shop may be the last place you talk openly about sex, but with Birdie as your friend, all things are possible. The table talk can be at the mid-range of acceptable decibels for a normal conversation in a public eatery, but just say the word ‘sex’ and every head snaps your direction. That snapping motion is not gender specific because every woman’s head turns too. There must be a special decibel for the ears that includes words that make for good gossip because everybody knows a noisy coffee shop is a fabulous place to catch up on the latest skinny.

Gossip’s so powerful, we’ve given thought to adding to our church website a special members-only page where the latest news can be added. No names would be used in this chat room, only initials. You know, of course, that whoever puts a patent on the software for this idea will make a killing because every church needs this. In fact, we’ve considered putting that idea on the table of our next missions committee meeting as a fund-raising idea for foreign missions. We could call the software, “Bear One Another’s Burdens.”

Birdie sat coyly across from me swirling her coffee spoon ever so slowly. The cream had just been added and for the briefest of moments there was the two-toned psychedelic look of dark roasted coffee giving way to the soothing effects of the cream. Birdie was over-spooning the coffee yet she was relishing the soothing circular movement of her spoon going round and round waiting for me to ask the question she so desperately wanted me to ask.

I followed my cue. “Okay, it’s obvious you have an agenda for our conversation. Why don’t we cut to the chase and you tell me what it is you want to talk about?”

“No games, preacher. Just questions. You’ve been to the seminary and you’ve even studied the subliminal where all the sick stuff from inside occasionally bubbles to the surface so here’s my question:  What gives with the sexual obsession of the faculty at Southern Seminary? It seems every time I pick up to read the latest news story involving one of their faculty, all I read about are goofy opinions about sex or procreation that are passed off to the rest of us as gospel. A while back, I read about their weird view on singles who wait until they’re in their late 20’s or early 30’s to marry. Seems they’re being disobedient to God by waiting. I also read where couples that choose to delay having a family until they feel ready sin against God by not having children early and often as a sign of their commitment to God. Pardon me, but it seems these are two ideas only men who feel threatened by sharing control in the bedroom would think up!”

The heads seated nearby turned suddenly because Birdie didn’t have a volume control on her voice. Even the hard of hearing are amazingly good at hearing when the word ‘sex’ and ‘bedroom’ are said.

“Birdie, you’ve raised the right question but could we keep this talk more private? You said the words ‘sex’ and ‘obsession’ in the same sentence and that group of businessmen sitting next to us even stopped talking about football. You’re talking loudly about the oldest sport known to man and you may need police protection getting out of here because the women look like they’re ready to slice and dice you.”

“Preacher, you know I don’t give a rat’s clacker about them and their sordid thinking.”

“Well, Sister, you have successfully put your finger on the central question. Why are those guys so obsessed with these weird views on sexuality and procreation? Notice who’s missing? Notice there are no women in the dialogue? Notice the Women’s Missionary Society hasn’t put out their own press release that says, ‘Amen, brother! Preach on!’ Only men are doing the talking here. But that’s not all … what’s so strange about those issues are how they link them to the numerical rate of growth among Evangelicals. ‘Fewer babies make for fewer Christians,’ they say. Wives need to submit to their husbands without resistance and bear as many babies as God gives them so the men’s quivers can be full … Lord, it’s even known as quiverfull theology, of all things! Pardon me, but I thought church growth came through evangelism, not procreation.”

Birdie jumped in. “On top of that, you’ve now got this bizarre discussion the seminary president’s zany speculation about an imaginary gay gene and that if we did learn that homosexuality is caused genetically would you choose to zap your child’s DNA to ensure they were straight? That’s not only ignorant and offensive; it goes against almost every other thing they’ve said about the ethics of genetic experimentation. I keep thinking about Nixon campaigning on a law and order platform only later to be forced into a corner where he said, ‘I’m not a crook!’”

“Hmm,” I exhaled. “Sex is weird enough on its own without the weird advocating for the weird.”

“Hmm…”

When Birdie entered the church office, she said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Where’s that pastor of ours who’s spent his meager salary on an extravagant vacation that most of us can only imagine?”

Birdie knew many of our church members had vacationed in Hawai’i. Many had cruised the islands on one of those monstrous cruise ships while others had flown directly to Maui or Kauai to play golf or lay out on the beaches until their skins turned toasty. But the idea of their pastor going where they’ve gone to play is a stretch of their imagination.

Most of our members know my wife’s mother was born and raised in Honolulu and since she can no longer travel to see us, it’s up to us to go see her if we’re to see her at all. It’s tough duty, but I love her enough to go see her as often as I can. I know our church members suspect I love my mother-in-law more than my own mother. I love them both, of course, and resent the implications of conditional love.

I stepped out into the office hallway where I answered back, “Aloha!” The thought that I might be saying either hello or goodbye or both was beyond both Birdie and me so neither one of us were hung on the distinction.

When she came to my office, she said sweetly, “I sure hope you and your wife had a good vacation. As far as Hawai’i is from the mainland, I hope you felt like you left town and were able to relax!”

“Birdie, I only called the office twice and held my emails down to a couple dozen. I would call that a real getaway!”

“So what was the highlight?”

“I loved it all! You know me well enough to know I love the beach time we get. We did all the usual things folks do in Hawai’i, but there’s something we always do when we go. My wife’s dad died five years ago, so we paid our respects to his grave. And every time we go there from the day he was buried till now I can’t help but think he’s buried in paradise.”

“Preacher, tell me about that.”

“He’s buried in the State Veteran’s Cemetery on the far side of the island along with thousands of other vets who served their country. I loved the military honors that were a part of Dad’s funeral. But this veteran’s cemetery is different than most in that it’s located in a land that’s strongly tribal and ancient. So when we go to see Dad where he’s been laid to rest, there are signs everywhere of the Hawai’ian people who visit their loved ones regularly leaving beautiful flowers on most graves, trinkets of their lost one’s life and on national holidays, they even picnic on their loved one’s graves. Somehow it’s a beautiful and loving tribute that puts us mainlanders to shame.”

“That sounds so lovely … I wish I could see it for myself.”

“But the strangest part of all that is that my long-lost uncle who had walked out on his family thirty years ago is buried only 15 spots from Dad. I remember my uncle only vaguely from my childhood and knew he slipped out on all his troubles and disappeared from all contact. My mother-in-law had tracked him down a few years earlier for my Dad by asking about him at the VA in Honolulu using his Social Security number and learned he was living in the American Samoan Islands and living with a Samoan family. Later, he moved with his adopted family to Honolulu and was living as an adopted member of their family. When he died, they made all the decisions about his burial as though he was actually one of their very own.”

My in-laws attended my uncle’s funeral and were generously welcomed into this openhearted Samoan family. The next time we visited was for my wife’s father’s funeral and it was then I was introduced to this lovely Samoan family. They extended love easily and without any other reason than I was their adopted uncle’s nephew they opened their hearts up to include my wife and me.

All of this raises an interesting question to my notion that Dad has been buried in paradise because just a few steps away lies my wayward uncle. If Dad is in paradise, where’s my uncle? How does God call balls and strikes in such convoluted cases like this? My father-in-law was a good man. He loved his family and was faithful to his duties to God, his family, his country, and to every other commitment he might have made.

But my uncle was another matter. Never did I feel anything special with him, partly because he was so seldom around and partly because I knew his troubles would keep him from including me in his life.

Nevertheless, here they both lay. Both veterans loved their country enough to serve in significant ways through troubled times. Both had lived long lives. Yet there’s an indescribable difference to the quality of how they’d lived. And somehow they both ended up laying in a field of brothers in a place that is the essence of what paradise surely must look like.

Maybe there’s a sunny beach and a gentle breeze to stir the palm trees where God’s love is open and welcoming to all us wayward and weary travelers.

At least I hope so.

It was a beautiful day … bright sunshine and the barest of hints that winter had done all the damage it could do. Birdie and I were sitting in the front booth of the coffee shop in the warmth of the sun with no agenda other than to keep our friendship up to date.

She looked across the table, sizing me up. “Preacher, you’re a part of a brotherhood that’s mighty peculiar.”

“Just the guys? What about my sister colleagues?”

“You’re right about needing to include them. But I was being gender specific because, for some odd reason, the sisters don’t seem to be afflicted much by this issue.”

“Gosh, I have a lot of sick folks I need to visit. Don’t you think we could talk about this some other time?”

“I do not. Those sick folks do need your pastoral care, but even they can hold for this one. Sit here and answer my question. Why is it so many pastors destroy their families and do damage in the church over their lack of sexual boundaries? Why is it they can’t keep their zippers up and their hands off the women?”

“It’s not always with women,” I cautiously reminded Birdie.

“One subject at a time!” she flashed back. “Did you read about the good Reverend who was arrested the other night soliciting a woman of the night?”

“Are you kidding me? Who hasn’t heard it? His mug shot with his coiffed hair all mussed up in the morning papers made people forget Nick Nolte.”

“You dodged my question, Rev. Why is it some preachers can be pious on Sunday but, ‘Look out!’ during the week? I know it happens … I’m just curious how it works. You’re a counselor; help me understand this.”

“Well … think about it. Most pastors are still a work in progress despite what the seminary says when they confer the degree. Did you know all about driving once you earned your driver’s license? I sure didn’t! Being a pastor is more about being and less about doing than most laypersons can imagine. Some are great at doing and lousy at being. Some can charm folks and get them to do what they want. The magic of it is, they can get them to do what they want while getting folks to enjoy it. That turns into manipulation unless they rise to their higher selves - which is uncommon in most of us.”

She didn’t respond, so I continued.

“I’m guessing their calling was in response to their need to manipulate people using charm and other self-serving skills. And what works with people in general can become a finely tuned skill with women in particular. Charm becomes a specific skill. A charmer becomes good at reading people and seeing quite clearly which women need something they think their pastor can provide. The problem is obvious in that it’s not the needs of the women they are attending to.”

“Why is it some women are so attracted to ministers?” Birdie asked with a sly twist to her smile. “Of course you realize I meant all those other ministers. You’re on the high end of most ministers I know.”

“Of course, I won’t argue with you over that.”

“Birdie, most of us work alone. We don’t have a good understanding of ourselves, and we think every time we speak we’re speaking for God. Surely there’s enough in that formula to explain a certain amount of weirdness.”

“And I won’t argue with you either.”

“Most pastors don’t know how to tend their own selves. They take care of everyone else and weekly worry about saying a good word from God, but they don’t recognize the sickness of their own souls. They work alone and don’t have a good system to deal with their own sickness. Some overeat to fend off the lion that’s devouring them. Others have well-kept secret lives they don’t want anyone to discover, and when those secrets are exposed some of them end up on the 10 o’clock news. Some are simply salving their unconscious selves, the part of them that’s largely unknown to even them, by sexually coloring outside the lines they preach about. Whenever I hear a preacher go off on a sexual tirade about the sins of the flesh I worry. Most obsessions are out in plain sight if you pay attention. Remember Nixon’s speeches about law and order? Even Ted Haggard was known to preach hard in opposition to homosexuality.”

“Hmmm … you mean to tell me they don’t know what they’re doing?”

“No! God forbid I would never suggest they’re innocent. They know exactly what they’re doing. They just don’t know why they have to do it. The reasons for why this is so danged important to the point of being an obsession leaves most of them clueless.”

Birdie sat with that for a moment. Then she turned to me and asked directly, “And what are you doing to take care of yourself to keep the lion from devouring you?”

Dang! I’m busted.

[This story was originally published in Baptists Today, February 2007]

“Pastor, I just love that ice cream parlor where there are more choices than the mind can fathom. Know what I mean?”

“Gosh, I wish you hadn’t said that … I hate the feeling of saliva running down my chin, but some things are worth it. A good ice cream cone with my favorite flavor is one of life’s little sins I can’t seem to forgo.”

I love Birdie for how she embraces all the good things in life … a wholesome hug,a hearty laugh when a good joke is told, a good piece of pie, a good slab of ribs, a cool day in the fall, the feel of the cool water of the swimming pool on a scorcher, making sure the neighbor kids know her name and feel welcome on her front porch.

Birdie is a woman who embraces life itself as a good gift from God and doesn’t waste her time worrying about whether it is deemed okay by those who don’t seem to have as much fun as she does. “Life’s a gift and too much of a good thing to not enjoy. I don’t like being around people who don’t enjoy this good gift from God called ‘living.’”

“Doesn’t the ice cream parlor have a lesson to teach us, Reverend?”

“Hmmm … that gluttony as a sin has been way overblown?”

“I’m glad you’re not my accountant … we’d be doing time in jail by now! When I walk in and see all those flavors, sometimes I order the time-tested favorites I know I love. Other times, though, I want to try out a new flavor just because it’s there. Isn’t there a lesson here for us?”

“Some flavors are better than others?”

“Rev, how did you get out of seminary? I’m talking about how the world is made up of all kinds of folks … tall ones and short ones … skinny ones and fat ones … darkskinned ones and fair-skinned ones. Pop Quiz, Preacher: Does God love them all?”

“Of course! God loves them all because that’s what God does.”

“Does God love them when they have freckles?”

“Absolutely! Maybe them more than others!”

“Does God love the left-handed ones as much as the right-handed ones?”

“God, my dear sister, is ambidextrous and loves them equally.”

“Then why do some churches refuse to accept members who are gay?”

“That’s a tough question, Birdie, but from what I read, it’s because they think homosexuality is the worst kind of sin.”

“Are you saying God doesn’t love gay persons? Are you suggesting we’ve at last named a group of persons God doesn’t love?”

“Well …”

“Well, my foot! Every church I’ve ever been a member of, no matter their theology, no matter what they thought of the end times or open or closed communion or mixed bathing not even what they thought of the pastor’s sermons, all of them — every last one of them — have had members who were either gay or lesbian. The church may have ignored that fact and not made a big deal about it. They may have had members who lived with the secret of their sexual orientation, but we all knew it and chose to not make a big deal out of it. In fact, I always thought that was the least interesting thing about them. Every one of them loved Jesus as much or more than I. Most of them were dedicated church members who simply wanted to come and worship and find a community of believers where Jesus was the focus. Are you telling me there are churches that don’t have such members?”

“I wouldn’t say that … but I can guarantee those same unwelcoming churches are filled with straights with sexual habits the church won’t even consider when it comes to ‘churching’ them. There are gluttons and gossips to beat the band. Why is it we’re so obsessed with sexual orientation? The Bible’s only got a handful — not two handfuls mind you — of passages that even mention it.

“If this was so contentious with Jesus, why didn’t he speak to it?” Birdie pondered. “Seems he said quite a lot about the piety of religious leaders who pick on the powerless and parade around like peacocks. In fact, I think they killed him for it. He said something powerful about the beam in our own eyes.”

“Standing up for those the church picks on can be risky business,” I reminded her.

“Churches need to beware of letting their homophobia turn the law of love into the law of hate.”

“Unwelcoming churches have done a serious thing by hanging out the ‘Gays Aren’t Welcome Here’ sign. Jesus didn’t give us any options as I read my Bible,” Birdie said quietly. “I can’t see where he gave us any other choice than to choose to love them. I may not understand or agree with this all-powerful thing in their lives, but I can choose to love them.”

“Amen, Sister.”

When young lovers stand before God and family and friends to say their vows of commitment to one another, it’s not uncommon that someone reads from Paul’s love chapter: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal … Gosh, those are great words! So inspiring, so romantic, and yet often so untrue. Most of them look more like the little boy wearing his father’s shoes or the young girl playing with her mother’s makeup. They are “projects of love” we might say. The foundation for a marriage has been laid, but the verdict of their vows is not yet certain.

But Paul’s letter on love only gets worse: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. See what I mean? The first handful of years after the wedding are often like a dark comedy where each tries vainly to not only figure out who this person is they’ve married, but who they are too.

Like most ministers, I give the couples that come to me to marry them several pre-marital counseling sessions together. We plan the wedding but we also talk about some important concerns designed to keep the couple together long enough to survive the early years.

I also give them a warranty for their wedding that’s only as good as their willingness to avail themselves of it. In issuing them a warranty, I make them a deal:  “Call me before you call a lawyer.” I figure once a lawyer has been hired, it’s usually too late to save the marriage.

Last week Birdie told me about her long marriage to Earl. “Reverend, when Earl and I got married we were two fools in love without much else going for us. We went through some bumpy years before we finally learned to quit fighting and to love one another.”
I actually love the time I spend in pre-marital work with a couple. It may be my best work as a pastor, but it’s only a hopeful wish of helping them succeed in building a marriage. I believe in the hopefulness of what Paul wrote to help believers strive to keep the commandment to love one another. But in reality, it only describes the love they hope to grow into. There’s no way they can know all they will know while their love shines so brightly. There’s no way they can become what they are only beginning to discover about themselves and each other. What they learn after the wedding is there’s a life ahead of them that will seek to crush the selfishness out of them and will help them learn who they are and what limits they have but haven’t yet discovered.

Instead, I’ve come to think about the love chapter’s claims after a couple has proven they’re up to it. Give them a few decades together until their kids are pushed out of the nest and grandchildren are on the scene to guarantee the next generation is established. Let a couple settle into those last stages of life together to see what love is really about like the two tottering adults who lean on one another to get by. They’ve learned to love to the point they finish each other’s sentences as if they share even their thoughts with one another.

When I look over the heads of our congregation, I see a good number of gray heads. Some of them are widows or occasionally a widower, but others are long-married couples. The oldest among them are a fragile blessing to observe. I visit them when they go to the hospital. I watch them stand vigil for one another praying that the day of separation by death won’t be today. They help each other get along in life when the other cannot go without the other’s support. Sometimes they are half of what they were, but together they form two halves of the same whole.

And now Faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. Maybe that’s the kind of love Paul was describing.

Birdie knows all about this as she and Earl had a 43-year marriage until Earl died a few years back. They had their share of speed bumps but they found a way to hang together through the rough spots.

I’m performing the marriage for Birdie and Earl’s grandson soon so she stopped by encourage me. “Brother Pastor, when you meet with my grandson and his fiancé next week, would you help them get it right? You know how much they love one another … give them your best!”

“Birdie, you know better than most how mysterious the whole endeavor of marriage is. I will do my best, but the mystery’s in their hands.”

Dedicated to Delbert and Libby who taught me to love.

I’m at the age where I want to revisit the touch and smell of a little baby. So on those wondrous days when we mark the birth of a church baby through a child/parent dedication, I get the sweet privilege of holding the baby in my arms as we say the words of a litany that describes our holy calling together. It’s holy because we hold a life in our arms as we speak and it’s holy because the power and privilege of raising a child is one God gives us through creation and procreation.In a strange and wonderful mystery, we hold the future in our arms if you consider all that is held in the potentiality of what might happen in the one we hold so tenderly. Utterly amazing!

Parents and church join together to say the words of commitment that we will come together to pledge to God and to one another our faithfulness to that calling. “This child,” we say grandly, “will be loved. This child will be given the holy gift of our faith. We pledge to God to make it so.”

So I take the baby in my arms and walk into the center of the church talking to the child as I walk. The child doesn’t know what I’m saying because all words are gibberish to her – probably because she doesn’t know any language other than warmth and love and the sweet exchange that occurs when old eyes look deep into her fresh new eyes that are just now embracing this world outside the warm wet womb. In that moment I talk to the child as if she understands every word I’m saying.

Sitting on the aisle not far from the front row sits Bonnie, a woman who loves this church with a pure heart … a woman who is herself a grandmother and perfectly prepared to love this child as one of her own. I point out across the aisle from her sits Jack watching her with a wisdom that knows to love with a kind word meant to warm the soul. Near the back sits Charlene, a woman who ran our daycare center for two and a half decades. As one of our charter members, she raised her own children here. Now her children have kids who have grown older and one of them is even ready to birth her first great-grandchild this winter. Charlene has a grace and a goodness about her that I want this child to know. Charlene sees the world as an adventure. She has a generous faith in this ever-perilous adventure called “the church.” These and many more are the saints who will love this child unconditionally.

I always pass by the Middle School and High School kids who usually sit together. I want them to know they’re included in this high holy moment. Sophia Lyon Fahs once wrote, “Every night a child is born is a holy night.” I want them to know life is a gift from God and to understand that if I live right, a few years from now it’ll be their baby I’m holding out to the church to love.

My friend Birdie works in the nursery to love on babies regularly. One day I told her I appreciated how faithful she was to teaching Sunday School to the Infant Class. “Sunday School? Is that what I’m doing? I thought it was my job to hug the babies, change their little diapers and feed them when they were hungry! I thought Sunday School was when we sat around a table and had a boring discussion about anything but the Bible.”

“You know what I mean … you’re teaching them about God when you do those things. That’s the lesson for them. They need to know when they come to church someone will hug them and whisper sweet things in their ears and look deep into their eyes with pure love. If that happens, we’ll be doing the best thing we can do. We’re loving them like God loves all of us.”

“Not bad Mister Tall Steeple pastor. Maybe we should put up a sign in the churchyard:  ‘Free Hugs and Sweet Words!’ Maybe that would bring in the lost and lonely from our neighborhood.”

Indeed. When we dedicate a child to God, a holy hush descends upon us and calls out our better natures. I think holding a baby in our arms melts all our cynical defenses and forces us to love. Young wet eyes alive with wonder remind us of what we’ve forgotten and call us to remember there’s a price to growing older. We’re given a sacred gift whenever a baby clings to our finger and holds tight with a gleam in his eyes that says, “I’m here! Love me! Be someone I can trust!”

“Preacher, it’s Advent again. Tell the people God loves them. Remind them that Jesus was born just like this. The five little fingers of God wrapped tightly around the world with eyes drinking it all in as though it was the first day of creation. Walk Jesus around in the Sanctuary and introduce him to us so we’ll remember to welcome him with the promise we’ll love him and be there as followers upon whom he can rely to tell the world of his love.”

Indeed.

“Rev, I’ve been reading a lot about the God-Ticket lately. You don’t suppose our politicians have enough gall to claim God’s endorsement for their political views, do you?”

“Of course they do! Seems in politics, like in most bad religion, that the more ludicrous the claim, the more someone will try to sell it.”

Birdie and I share in common a deep love for politics. At heart, we’re both true political junkies. Funny how our deep interest in the church is not too far from our interest in politics. Not hard to do when the Baptist cardinals are hard-wired to the right wing of the Republican Party.

“Birdie, one of my seminary buddies has gone one farther than even Jerry Falwell would consider doing. It wasn’t enough for him to hang the biggest danged flag you’ve ever seen above the choir loft. Heck, lots of preachers do that! By the way, do you think they order those jumbo flags from ‘Fundies-R-Us?’ Preaching on July 4th in an election year was too tempting for a fool like him and he did something so blatantly stupid the IRS is now after him. He’s even made their investigation easier! All they had to do was order one of his videos of the service offered on his website. I’ll bet he added them to his list of ministry contributors!”

“Preacher, how could someone be so proud of excelling at ignorance?”

“Ego, my friend, ego. My old buddy has more ego than any three ministers I know, and that says a lot. He was born with it … had it when he entered seminary. He already knew more than his professors in class before he entered the classroom. He was only there to get his ticket punched. It’s mighty hard to teach someone who doesn’t see the need to learn.”

“Rev, what did he do? What happened on July 4th that would get him in trouble with the feds?”

“He was preaching on the God-Ticket. Pure and simple, he was telling people what issues God was concerned about in this election year. You can guess what all was on the list. All the usual stuff … no real surprises. But when he said if we loved God, we would vote the God-Ticket, ‘Shazamm!’ the President’s picture flashed on the Jumbo-Tron behind him. Mind you, he never said the President’s name. He’s just smart enough to not tell us we ought to vote for W. But the whole time he was describing the God-Ticket, a montage of pics of the President filled the screen almost as if God was putting on the slide show Himself.”

Birdie looked puzzled. “Not too smart … but not totally stupid either … just mildly so. I give him three Floridian chads out of five for effort.”

“Wait, that’s not all. He closed the loop of logic by implying there was also an Anti-God-Ticket. Can you see it coming? The issues on the Anti-God-Ticket were all the ones supported by Senator Kerry and the Democrats! And guess who’s picture mysteriously popped up on the screen as soon as he said the magic words? Nobody ever named the Senator but his picture was three stories high behind the preacher’s sparkling smile. When you’re too full of God, you can make Balaam’s jackass look smart! In fact, the whole donkey world is elevated whenever a preacher with a massive ego enters the pulpit. Certainty is a powerful thing!”

“Birdie, they say beauty’s only skin deep but stupid goes down to the bone. Of course, the tragedy is now he’s claiming the Feds are after him and he’s playing the victim. Claims he only did what God told him to do and claimed his freedom of speech. Interesting that he wants to have the protection of the government for freedom of speech but not willing to abide by the separation of church and state.”

Birdie’s face just started melting. I wasn’t sure whether she was laughing or crying. She put her hand over her mouth and tried hard to keep from bursting out in her laughter but she couldn’t help herself. She laughed so hard her sides shook up and down and the tears started flowing.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said apologetically.

“Don’t give it a thought,” she said when she could catch her breath. “I was envisioning the irony of all those tax cuts offered to all the rich, upper-crust of our society and how little difference it made to the rest of us poor working wretches. I can’t help but snickering about how helpful it will be when your buddy’s church has to pay taxes on all they take in every Sunday as payment for the sin of showing us the picture of the candidates God wants us to vote for. I appreciate their generosity!”

“Nice to know my preacher buddy’s thinking of all of us in such generous ways! Birdie, do you need me to tell you how to vote?”

“Preacher, are you feeling frisky? Just help us love Jesus and we’ll figure it out on our own.”

The funeral home was packed because “Uncle Jimmy” was a man people counted on in life. He was a well-respected leader in the community and the community gathered in droves when he died.

Uncle Jimmy was a true salesman. He entered the diner and had to go around to nearly every table before he could sit down. He seemed to know everyone and often had a hearty “Hello” to offer them all as if they were his best friends. People loved him for his friendliness. He sold cars down at the Buick house thus explaining why LeSabres and Regals dominated the streets in town.

Birdie and Earl had known him when he was a young man and had helped him get started. It was widely known that Birdie respected some men more than others. Uncle Jimmy earned his respect because he was equally respectful of both men and women. Most men are obvious in the way they insult women by being sugary sweet to them without offering them the same sense of respect they offer freely to men.

Birdie was dressed for respect. She wore an elegant black dress appropriate for the level of respect she felt for “James” as she called him. Even the faux pearls and matching earrings were in sync because they picked up the silver-blue highlights of her hair. As she passed by Uncle Jimmy’s open casket, the highlights of her hair glistened in the blue and pink lights that shined down on him like a divine light.

“James deserves a good send-off,” she whispered to me as she passed by on her way to her seat in the back. While some might have thought she was encouraging me to do a good job, I understood her to mean she looked like a million bucks in his honor.

The somber-serious funeral director escorted the family to their seats as the time to begin the funeral neared. The entrance of the family was like the maestro stepping up on the podium. It was the theater of small-town drama at its best.

What was obvious was that Uncle Jimmy was not going to be around to see the birth of his first great-grandson. Jimmy’s oldest granddaughter was so pregnant with child she waddled gingerly down the aisle and carefully lowered herself down to the folding chair that groaned under her bulging weight. When the gravity of her body seemed to relax and settle, so did the crowd. She was full with child and the whole town seemed to hold its breath when she made her way into the room.

This granddaughter was the one who lit up Uncle Jimmy’s world. The first couple of grandkids had been boys and while grandsons were nothing to sneer at, when Jennifer was born, she became his favorite. Uncle Jimmy loved her and she loved him back.

Jennifer grew up and got married. Uncle Jimmy bought them a car for their wedding and off they went in it when the rice was thrown at their big send-off. What they didn’t know as they drove out of town was that Uncle Jimmy’s doctor had given him a medical report that included cancer.

So while he was laughing and making a fuss over his granddaughter’s wedding, he was holding back a piece of sadness that only he and his wife knew.

Months later, he was unable to get to the car dealership. He was too tired, he said, and the loss of weight had made him gnarly and weak. Unlike some who suffered the same, Uncle Jimmy never lost his hope or his quick wit. He may have been hurting but he never let on that he felt bad. He always had a good word to share with the many people who stopped by to see him.

Jennifer came by after the honeymoon. The day she told him she was pregnant, he mustered up the energy to take her down to the diner for a celebration. They sat in the booth in the back so they could have a little privacy. Uncle Jimmy was never happier, he told her. It was then he broke the news that he was sick unto death.

The closer she got to the due date, the weaker he got. They were headed in different directions it seemed. She grew larger and he withered away.

Uncle Jimmy died on a Friday and Thelma, his wife, planned his funeral for the following Monday. Jennifer’s doctor had meanwhile determined she should deliver by Caesarian and they set the date for Tuesday. Uncle Jimmy’s big departure was on one day and Little Jimmy’s arrival was the next day. Jennifer had no question about what the baby’s name would be.

Life in a small town is a sampler for the whole range of emotions one can feel. There’s no place to hide and no secrets kept for too long. As I stood to “say words” over Uncle Jimmy’s life, I knew there were two strong tugs on both ends of the spectrum of life.

I read the words as if they were penned just for this occasion. “I am the Alpha and the Omega…”

I drove by Birdie’s house the other day and found her out in the front yard waging her annual war against the dandelions. She was dressed in old army fatigues. A pith helmet topped her outfit and she had in her hand a spray bottle of some mysterious toxic potion marked threateningly with a skull and crossbones. The toxic look on her face I had seen before. I couldn’t help but stop the car and yell out to her through my open window, “If we’d sent you to Vietnam, we might have won!”

Birdie is our resident historian for the early days of the church. She was a young woman when she and Earl became one of this neighborhood’s first residents. They moved here in the post-war boom days when the GI’s returned from saving the world from tyranny. She and Earl were newly-weds … love birds who built their first nest together in the suburbs.

Birdie and Earl had helped start our church back then with a handful of other young families. Most of them were 20-something’s with only a handful in their 30’s. After the long struggle at war, the joyous welcome of the troops back home resulted in swarms of children and they were as numerous as Birdie’s dandelions.

“Back then,” she told me one day, “if you had grey hair, you were considered ‘Methuselah’s kin.’ We thought of anyone older than 40 as ancient. We were just a bunch of eager young pups trying our best to build a good church.”

“Strangely,” she told me, “there was one prominent grey-haired woman named Miz Lydia who was wise and wonderful and loved our rambunctious young church with all her heart. She was a faithful tither and was an anchor in the meagerness of those early days.”

In the early days, the church was like all those young couples. It had more bills than bucks. After a particularly long finance committee meeting where the committee labored over which bills to pay and which bills to hold, Miz Lydia grew tired. As she left, she said to the last group of committee members who had stayed late to see if more could be done, “I could write a check to get you kids out of this mess if I wanted. But if I did, you wouldn’t learn anything.”

She was right. She could have taken care of their problems with the stroke of her pen. But where would they have been at the end of the next month? Miz Lydia had a country wisdom that knew the difference between being a faithful partner and making the church dependent on her.

“When I look back on those days now, Miz Lydia became my hero as a woman,” Birdie said. “I began to watch her. I watched how she handled herself with all of us. What she had as a woman, I wanted more than anything. All I know is that when I was around her, something in me thrived.”

“It took me a while to realize what was happening, but I discovered that she was teaching me how to be a strong, vibrant human being. Once I figured out how precious she was to me, I made more of an effort to make sure our paths crossed in the doing of church. I spoke to her every time I could. I tried to be around her so I could see up close what made her tick.”

“I became as curious as a kitten about her every move. She was beautiful in my estimation and I wanted very much to soak in as much as I could. When you think about it, she was a gift from God giving me an idea of who God might be leading me to become. In the end, I realized that I had a hunger and a thirst for knowing who I was that was deeply rooted in the same soil that made Miz Lydia so magnificent in my eyes.”

“What I think was going on was biblical. Miz Lydia was older and wiser than anyone in the church. She knew some of us were watching her and she let us. It wasn’t her money that helped us most. She understood she was the best gift she could give us.”

“God’s transformation of us, it seems to me, is a handed-down way of living. Jesus called it ‘the Way,’ and it’s usually regarded as something each of us gets from some real-life human being as a gift of God’s goodness.”

“Birdie,” I ventured, “is it possible that God might want to do that with all of us in some way?”

“Preacher, you’re smarter than you look. Everybody’s got to have someone to teach them who they are. I’ll bet even you have your heroes. Can’t you recall someone who made you better than you could have been on your own? I’ll bet if you work hard enough, you’ll remember who that was for you. When you do, be sure to say a word of thanks for them.”

“Who knows? Maybe someone’s watching you right now. Scary, isn’t it? Just don’t get paranoid on me, Preacher.”

 [Originally published in Baptist Today]

The power of the storm was awesome. Here in the Midwest, the storms flex with all God’s terrifying power. And with all this open sky, you can even see them coming! Thinking about this jerked me back to a storm I experienced as a student at Baylor a hundred years ago …

I was home when the storm blew in. I remember turning on the radio when the emergency sirens started screaming. The radio stopped playing music it could relay the reports coming in from the storm trackers following a tornado just north of Waco. The sky was turning a greenish shade of gray and the trees were whipsawing back and forth. The voice of the storm tracker was excited as he described the storm he was followed.

“Now let’s hear a report from Randy, our weather tracker calling in from the excitable side of this storm… Randy, where are you?”

There was the distinct sound of wind blowing on the radio. A nervous voice jumped in. “This is Randy and I’m out by the old Connally Air Base. I can see the tornado bumping along Lake Shore Drive. Fortunately I can follow it along without getting in harms’ way. Man! You should see all the ruckus this storm is making!”

“Randy, Buddy here… What kind of damage are you seeing?”

“No houses but I saw it plow through a warehouse and it peeled off the roof like an Aggie barber gives one that’s high and tight. But there’s not too much in the way of housing out this way. But you and I both know that once the tornado climbs up the hill out by the Community College, it’ll hit a housing area and no telling what it’ll do then.”

I happened to live just up that hill and around the corner. I turned up the volume.

“Randy, tell me what you’re seeing right now.”

“Well, it’s spinning like one of those tops we used to play with as kids. It’s like a nasty, dirt-filled funnel going here and there and just when you think you know where it’s headed, it suddenly turns in a new direction as if it’s saying, ‘You can’t guess where I’m going cause I go exactly where I want to go and there ain’t nothing you can do about it!’”

When Randy said he could see the buildings of the community college just up the hill, I jumped up and looked out the big plate glass window of our little house. I could see the clouds hanging lower than ever. I could even see them swirling. On a normal day most clouds swirl around but always in slow motion, so slow you’re tempted to turn your head away before you notice its movement. Not this cloud. Not this day. I could see the clouds circling above. Lightning suddenly flashed and the trees blew back and forth as the storm approached. My breath grew short and shallow. My eyes widened.

Buddy jumped in. “Randy, where do you think it’s headed?”

“Danged if I know. Right now, it’s headed up the hill skipping over the treetops as it climbs …” Suddenly there was a long, silent pause. you could still hear the crackling of Randy’s open mic.

“Randy! You still there?” Silence.

“Randy?” Nothing.

While I could sit there and worry about Randy, I thought instead about me and the approach of a tornado storming down my street. My Daddy taught me to “be prepared,” so I did what any other scaredy-cat would do, I pulled the couch over on the floor and crawled under it!

Now please don’t write me telling me what a danged fool thing that was to do. I know the weather experts tell you to get to the hallway that’s lined with doors or to go down in your basement (something unheard of in Waco), or about half a million other better ideas than to turn your couch over and crawl under it. In the moment, of course, I couldn’t think of anything better to do than that. All I knew was the wind was picking up and the sky was greener than gray and the trees were bending so far the limbs scraped the ground. Then I heard Randy’s shrill voice yelling frantically, “Buddy, send the Calvary! That storm’s turned my direction! I’m a goner! Tell my wife I love her…” Then silence.

The sound of my office door opening woke me up, and I was sitting in my big leather pastor’s chair. Drool was running down my chin and the reality that someone who was rapping on my office door peeked in. It was Birdie.

“Pastor, you were napping, weren’t you? How sweet! I’ll bet you were dreaming some pastoral dream involving goodness and light and all God’s love for the sheep of your pasture.”

I wiped the drool off the bottom of my turkey neck before it hit my shirt collar. “Hardly, I was dreaming about how I need to confess my sins and get right with God.”

“Good! A pastoral dream suited for a man of your calling!”