Sweeping Up Gratitude

First course of a simple, home cooked Thanksgiving meal at Brent and Heidi's house

We felt blessed having oldest son Brad from Pittsburgh join us for a Thanksgiving gathering yesterday with second son Brent, his wife Heidi and our three local grandchildren ages four, seven and nine. Our conversations were free of political or other debates and we avoided football and other media entertainment altogether. Just being together was entertainment enough.

After a leisurely and delicious meal together I made the mistake of telling the youngest grandson about a silly, made-up game that was popular at our house when our sons--his dad and his uncle--were about four and six, one we called "Sweep up the Person!".

To play, I would pretend to be a powerful, giant vacuum cleaner, and they were to find and touch the right "switch" to turn it (me) on, that being some body part like my nose, forehead, ear, elbow, knee, etc. When the right "button" was pushed, I would pursue the button pusher with a mighty roar and draw him fiercely close to me in a big squeeze (Daughter Joanna, who came almost eight years later and who with her husband and three children now lives eight hours away, got in on this much later).

Our four-year-old grandson found this game endlessly fascinating and fun, and almost wore his grandfather out with repeated requests for "Sweep up the Person!" The element of suspense, coupled with the fun of the chase and the joy of being wrapped up in a big grandfather hug combined to keep us occupied for quite some time.

Proves that the funnest things in life really are mostly free, gifts for which we can only say "Thank you, Thank you, Thank you".

God is good. And every expression of gratitude is a prayer.

Photo by Brad.

A New Light for Hanukkah

A menorah

The December 2003 Readers Digest carried a true Hanukkah story by Joe Fitzgerald called “A New Light.”

It was about the Markovitz’s, a Jewish family who lived in a Pennsylvania suburb where one Christmas season they were awakened at around five in the morning by the sound of glass shattering. They ran downstairs to find the window broken where they had their illuminated menorah, a Jewish candelabra, which was now damaged and lying on the floor.

Theirs was one of the few homes in their neighborhood that didn’t display traditional Christmas decorations, and some person or group apparently felt a need to express their intolerance by destroying this symbol of their faith.

Hanukkah marks the event when, as tradition has it, Jews returned to their temple in Jerusalem after their exile and found it desecrated, and then went about to reconsecrate it as a place of worship. To do so they needed, among other things, to keep a lamp lit day and night in the temple. Unfortunately, they had enough consecrated oil for only one night, but decided to light the lamp anyway, and according to the Hanukkah tradition, it kept burning for eight nights, a miracle the Markowitz’s celebrated each year.

Some of the many neighbors who were outraged at the crime committed against them got their heads together to decide how to show their support.

The next evening when the Markowitz's turned on to their street they saw an extraordinary sight, something like a modern Hanukkah miracle. Nearly every home in the neighborhood had an illuminated menorah in their window, as if to say, “If you want to bring harm to one of us, you will have to attack to us all.”

Sometimes When it Rains it Pours...... Blessings

November 1 shocker: Discovered that our roof was leaking.

November 11 accident: I got in the path of another car as I pulled out of Hamlet Drive on to Rt. 42 going to work. Had looked both ways, but should have looked north a second time to note that someone had just pulled out of Bill's Muffler's down the street and was heading in my direction. Only my pride got hurt and both I and driver of the other vehicle were able to proceed without needing our vehicles towed. Our 2001 Hyundai Accent was on its last legs anyway.

November 15 colonoscopy: I won't go into details here, but after the usual grueling prep, the actual procedure was without incident. Once I was injected with some kind of powerful drug through my IV, I was out cold, and it was as if it was all over in an instant. The good news is that there were no polyps, and I experienced little pain or discomfort afterwards. Am told I'm good to go for another ten years.

November 17 engine failure: As Alma Jean drove our Accent home from Keezeltown Sunday evening after dark, its 12-year-old engine totally froze up, and she had to have help from some caring passersby to get the car off the highway. Thank God for Good Samaritans.

November 19 towing away of our old car: After giving us a decade of dependable service, I actually felt some sadness seeing the vehicle we owned since it was a year old towed away to its final resting place.

November 19-20 roof project: Had a great crew of men replace the shingles and some of the plywood sheeting on the north side of our house. Got some lifetime shingles this time, and the results look great.

Sometimes when it rains it pours, but at least our roof isn't likely to leak. Besides, our troubles seem so few and our blessings so many in light of all of the recent devastation in the Philippines and in the Midwest.

"The distance from bad to good is not very far."

- Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov

Photos by William Ross, Gemeinschaft Home graduate and a great roofer, builder, painter and general repair person.

Walmart Can Pay Employees Fair Wages Without Raising Prices

I'm not critical of the fact that a Walmart in Cleveland is again promoting a Thanksgiving food drive for some of its needy associates, an idea initiated by some caring co-workers. Sharing is always a good thing, wherever and whenever it happens.

But the scandal of this is that the world's largest retailer and most profitable corporation is netting some $15 billion a year while its associates, some of them getting less than 40 hours a week, are earning at or just above minimum wage. Walmart remains a family owned business, with the Walton family controlling over 50% of its stock and raking in most of these profits.

According to Scott Keyes on the thinkprogress.org website, Walmart’s President and CEO, Bill Simon, admits that most of its one million associates average less than $25,000 per year (the federal poverty line is $23,550 for a family of four). Keyes also notes that when the Washington DC city council recently passed a living wage bill requiring a minimum of $12.50 per hour, the chain threatened to shut down its new stores if the Mayor didn’t veto the bill. He did.

Meanwhile, I'll just keep vetoing Walmart.

 And here's a petition to all of the retail giants who can't even wait for Black Friday to start raking in Christmas profits: Give your workers a break on Thanksgiving Day, or we will boycott you during this entire holiday Season. 

Don't Call Me "Reverend" And Don't Label Me "Clergy"

I've been a licensed or ordained minister since 1965, but I've never been comfortable being referred to as "Reverend" or a member of the "clergy".

In the first place, there's simply no Biblical precedent for either of those labels being applied to certain believers who are to be elevated above the rest. There are of course respected congregational offices like pastor, overseer, elder, bishop, deacon, evangelist, and teacher, to name only a few, but these are functional descriptions of how people serve, not titles separating professional "clergy" from "laity".

The Greek form of the word "laity" in the New Testament is "laos", which simply means "people", or "the people of God".  There is no suggestion in scripture that when someone is appointed to some church office that he or she is no longer a part of the laos. This is in contrast to some denominations where the ordained clergy cannot even be considered members of the congregations they serve, but have their membership in the district council or presbytery to which they belong.

One of the published studies that made a big impression on me years ago was "The Christian Calling" by Virgil Vogt, then a member of Reba Place, a Mennonite intentional community. He makes a clear case that all believers are "called", and all have fundamentally the same "calling", that of continuing the ministry Jesus began here on earth through his Body, the church. Our differing gifts merely shape how and in what setting we carry out that one calling, not the nature of the calling itself, for which we are ordained in our baptism.

This has been a defining and liberating concept for me: Our gifts differ, and our assignments are varied, but our status is the same, and our calling is one--to love, honor and serve God together in communities of faith we call the church.

Church historian Charles Jacobs, in The Story of the Church, writes:  "In the beginning most of the work of the congregation was done by people who had no official position.  It was voluntary service, freely rendered.  By the middle of the third century, it was done by the professional clergy.  Between clergymen and laity there was a sharp distinction.  The clergy, too, were divided into higher and lower grades. In the higher grades were bishops, presbyters and deacons; in the lower grade sub-deacons, lectors, exorcists, acolytes and janitors.  All of them were inducted into office by some form of ordination, and the idea of local organization had gone so far that in some churches even the grave diggers were ordained.  Thus the work of the Church was passing out of the hands of the many into those of the few, and these few were coming to be regarded as belonging to a higher class."

So please just call me Harvey, a pastor, counselor and a forever member of the laos, the people.

Beautiful Far Beyond Average

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

In a study conducted by researcher Judith Lanlois and a colleague at the University of Texas at Austin some time ago, she found that when it comes to faces, the more "average" someone’s features, the more attractive they are judged to be. The bad news is that few of us are exactly average in the way her study suggests.

Lanlois used a computer to construct faces that were a blend of several dozen people in a way that created an average of such features as nose length, chin prominence, and the size and shape of the forehead and mouth. The more faces that went into the composite, the more the result represented the average population of male or female college students from which they were drawn.

When other students then judged the attractiveness of the composites and then of the individual faces, without being told which was which, they invariably found the composites to be more attractive than the real individual faces that went into them. An interesting find.

I once gave some high school students in a religion class the assignment of bringing me a picture of a face they thought might do for the face of Jesus if he were to appear as a human being today. I got quite an interesting assortment, ranging from pictures of handsome movie stars to those of average American males of various races.

The picture that really got my attention, however, was the wrinkled and aging face of Mother Teresa, taken from the cover of Time magazine. What better image to represent what a modern Jesus might look like?

Beautiful way beyond average.

Focus Less on Control, More on Influence

Most of us have come to realize that trying to totally control others is futile, even with our children. But by maintaining a positive relationship with people, regardless of age, our influence can be ongoing and powerful.

Not all of our efforts to influence work equally well, however.

For instance, an often used but least effective strategy is to complain and criticize. Somehow we've gotten the notion that to motivate people to do better we must first make them feel worse.

Examples:
"Why can't you ever hang up your clothes? This place looks like a pig pen.""
"Even your little sister/brother can do a better job of cleaning up than you do."
"Shame on you! That's the sorriest piece of work I've ever seen."

Not only are such attacks exaggerations and untruths, they just don't work well, and often have a reverse effect.

A second and more effective way to influence is to make polite requests, to turn our criticisms and complaints into respectful wishes. If we maintain good relationships with people, they are much more likely to change through our simply expressing our needs and wishes.

Examples:
"Please hang up your clothes or put them in the hamper. It makes the room look so much better."
"I'd really like you to put all the dishes in the sink or in the dishwasher when you're finished with them."
"I wish you would give this another try. Here's one way I think it could be improved."

Of course, in the case of children, and sometimes even adults, reasonable, agreed upon consequences may need to be in place if reasonable requests aren't honored, but to clearly state one's wishes or expectations is always worth trying first, rather than resorting to demands or threats.

A third and sometimes even better way of exerting influence is to affirm positive steps, even baby steps, in a desired direction, as in the use of frequent "I like it when..." statements.

Examples:
"I really love it when you hang up your clothes or put the dirty ones in the hamper. It makes things a lot easier for me, and makes your room look really good."
"I always like it when you put your dirty dishes in the sink or the dishwasher. Makes me like you better, too!"
"I so appreciate it when you put your best efforts in the projects your doing. That way I can see you're really trying to do your best."

There are two ways of getting a chick out of an egg, someone has said, one way is to try to apply pressure on the shell, and the other is to provide the right kind of steady warmth over time.