You might not know this but duck decoys don’t respond to ducks calls. I know this from experience because this afternoon I spent an hour and fifteen minutes calling a duck that was about two hundred yards away from me. The spot I like to hunt is close to a small dam and as you get close to the dam the current gets a little faster. Apparently the mallard liked the current because it moved around and dove in the same spot that entire time I was there. Yet no matter how much, or well, I called I couldn’t get a response from him. That’s because decoys don’t respond to duck calls. They don’t have the ability to hear the calls no matter how loud you call. I didn’t discover the mentioned duck was someone’s lost decoy until I was packing up and decide at the very least I would scare the stupid duck away from the spot it seemed to love so much. Seems decoys don’t scare either, so it didn’t move. Good news is that I know where I will be picking up a free decoy tomorrow.
I Need a Mental Break SO Here are My Thoughts on Visiting Someone Who is Mourning
My dad died yesterday at 9:26 a.m. in his living room with my mom, my brother, and me all touching him and his cat laying under his bed.
In the past 36 hours we have interacted with a lot of different people, pretty much all of them wonderful, and I know that we will have much more interaction between now and his memorial Monday evening. Grief is draining and stressful and I need to direct my mind somewhere else for a bit as a diversion. We are all pretty much emotionally ravaged here. As a minister I am used to visiting with people at their best and their worst moments so I thought right now as a way of zoning out for a little while I thought I would post my personal recommendations concerning visiting with someone who has just lost a loved one. Realistically this is just a way of me concentrating on something else for a few minutes. I need that right now.
Before I begin let me stress that visiting someone who is mourning is a wonderful thing. It is a good and honorable thing. I think whenever someone visits someone in mourning they have typically already done something good and caring. My thoughts are just practical ways I think we can be even more caring in our visits.
So here are my thoughts on what I try to do when I visit someone who is mourning:
- Remember who the vist is for – I know that might sound odd, after all you want to visit to tell your friends/family how much you love them, hurt for them, and share in their grief, but sometimes we can get can get so concerned with showing our love that we don’t stop to consider if it is actually being perceived as love or not. I like to ask myself “Why am I doing this?” This helps me to consider if my actions are about my need to show love or about the person I am visiting with receiving love. Am I talking because it helps them to drown out the pain for a little while? Or am I talking just because there is a lot of silence and I feel uncomfortable? Visiting or making contact with someone in grief should be about them and not us. So I try to act in such a way that it is really about them.
- Call or text first – Don’t just drop by. You might think you are good enough friends to just show up. That might be true, though it also might just be simply what you think, either way it is so much more polite to call or text first. Calling or texting first gives people a chance to be ready emotional and physically for the visit. It also gives people a chance to say “No” to your visit, which might be the best thing if they have just gone through 3 straight hours of visits. Mourning is stressful. That is part of its nature. Having people around can and does help. Yet for some of us (I am talking about my somewhat introverted self here) having people around for extended periods can sap our energy. I appreciate more than I can express the people who have come around, but still I need breaks. I know other people do to. Call or text. It is the caring thing to do.
- Figure out what the appropriate length of stay is – Basically two things concerning how long to stay. First, don’t walk into the house already making excuses to leave. “I’m sorry this will have to be a quick visit. I have another commitment but I wanted to drop by first.” Thanks but that might make me feel unimportant. Sorry to have been a burden on you. Second, don’t stay too long. The days following a loved one’s death are usually utter chaos. There is a lot to do when someone dies and all that activity falls on the very ones who are mourning. Don’t make it more difficult on the family by visiting forever, no matter how caring you think it is. Instead, actually make sure the length of your visit is caring. Sometimes the most caring thing is to say is “I know you have to be worn out, can I bring by (whatever) for supper, and then really visit with you tomorrow, or next week, at such and such time?” If I visit someone as a minister I like to have set times in my mind of how long to visit. If I suspect that there will be lots of visits I stay 10-15 minutes. If I suspect there won’t be as many visits I stay for 20-30 minutes. I then start to dismiss myself and only stay longer if it becomes obvious that they really want me to and need me to stay longer. The length of my stay has to be about their needs, not mine.
- Bring food but consider the portions and variety – Food is wonderful. It is awesome. It is a true help not to have to think about getting something to eat. It is even better when there are small portions of different varieties of food in containers that you have no interested in ever getting back. People bring big things because they want to make sure there is enough food for all the family that is at the house. It is easier to develop one large dish for everyone than it is to develop lots of small containers of food. The problem is that often grief reduces the appetite and suddenly the mourner is stuck with WAY too much food in really big containers. You don’t want to offend your friend by not eating completely, because after all you are truly thankful for what they brought. Yet, it can be a burden. Why not consider making lots of really small portions of a variety of different foods. Small portions can always be doubled up if someone is really hungry. Small portions can be frozen and eaten a week later when everyone has disappeared and the grieving really begins. Also, I know ham is the national grieving dish but really turkey is also good or maybe cold cuts. I promise these are just as good for grief as ham. Possibly consider bringing something specific that you know the mourner really likes, and probably won’t get because everyone knows you are supposed to bring ham. If someone brought a case of Diet Cokes to my mom’s house during their visit that would say a ton about them knowing us. Nobody ever thinks “Wow they have to be hurting, I am going to bring them some Diet Cokes”, but I promise for the Terrell house that would be the food item that was remember two months into our grieving. Or pulled pork BBQ sandwiches. That would be awesome food for grieving. Why are you bringing food? If it is really about the person grieving then make sure you bring food in the manner that is most helpful to them.
- Be okay with silence – I know silence can be uncomfortable, but when you visit someone that is grieving that is your problem not theirs. The visitor has to be the one who gets used to the silence, the mourner shouldn’t be responsible for putting up with random chatter just so a visitor feels more comfortable. In visiting a mourner hospitality reverses itself. We go to a mourner’s house to help make them comfortable, rather than them making us feel at home (something else on this later). You might need to talk to cover up the silence, but the family might just need someone to sit with them in the midst of their pain, rather than interrupting their pain by just making noise. I really like the concept of sitting shiva from Judaism and try to use much of it it in my visits. One of the customs of shitting shiva is that when someone enter’s the house of a mourner you enter with the mindset of remaining silent until the mourner initiates conversation. If the mourner wants to talk then you talk with them, if they don’t start talking then you sit in silence and are just present. If I begin to feel uncomfortable with the silence for some reason and I realize I am talking too much in response, I will often start forcing myself to slowly, silently count to a specified number before I say anything else. It slows down the conversation and leaves room for the mourner to say whatever he/she wants, or to say nothing at all. If I noticed they aren’t saying anything I go back to silence myself and just sit there with them. I always try to determine whether I talk or I remain silent based on what I perceive the needs of the mourner to be rather than my own needs. After all, the visit is about them, not me.
- Come with a story – The next two things are going to sound like I am saying the exact opposite of being silent. I mean both of these next two points to happen if a mourner initiates conversation. If you can, come with a story about the person who is being mourned. One of the things I love hearing right now is what my dad meant to other people and stories of things that happen when they were with him that I might not know about. Several people have come with stories of dad and I have loved and appreciated each one. Fun, sad, meaningful. I don’t care which. Just talk about my dad instead of some story you heard on the news. Usually I would love to hear about the bad service you had at the electronics store, but not when I am in mourning. Telling stories about the one they love is a wonderful way of helping the mourners, or in this case my mom, brother, and me, in their grief.
- Come with a question – Give the mourner a chance to tell their own stories about the one they lost. When I visit I like to come with a question in mind about the one they lost. I don’t mean by this a broad range question like “What did you like the most about your dad?” That is too much pressure and requires to much effort. Instead I usually try to come with a question about a story that I know a little bit about already. “Hey, I remember how cheap Floyd was, wasn’t there some story about the length he went to for a ‘watering can.'” In this case, this is a quick story of my dad going shopping with Pam and me. I love telling it because it reminds me of who my dad was. In this case he was the guy that drug Pam and me to three different stores to find a “water can” for his plants that was cheaper than $3. We spent $5 in gas before he decided to stick with the milk jug he had been using. This story gives me a chance to talk about my dad. Actually it does more than just giving me a chance to talk about him, it encourages me to talk about my dad. That’s good. I like to come to a house with a question that will enable to the mourners to talk as much or as little as they want about the one they love.
- It is okay to be served – I know this might sound odd but sometimes the best, most caring thing you can do is to let someone else serve you. I know I earlier said mourning reverses hospitality, but sometimes the most hospitable thing you can do for someone is to allow them to serve you in the midst of their own time of need. When I go into someone’s house who is mourning I will sometimes let them fix me something to eat if I perceive that that is what they actually need most right then. Why, well because it can be overwhelming to have everyone else doing something for you and you not be allowed to do anything for anyone else because they are trying to protect you. I know it feels nice and serving to tell someone who is grieving “No you just sit down and I will take care of everything, what can I bring you,” but sometimes the greatest act of service is to say “Why yes a scrambled egg sounds wonderful right now,” and then eat that scrambled egg with great enjoyment and gratitude for the mourner who just served you. Every now and then the act of service is to be served.
I am sure there are other things I could post about this but these thoughts have been enough of a distraction for the moment and I need to get back to working on a video of my dad for Monday. Thank you to all of my dad’s, mom’s, brother’s, wife’s, kids’, and my own family and friends who are helping us grieve. Y’all mean the world to us and have been more help than I can express to you. Your notes, messages, texts, calls, and other things have been wonderful and needed. What you have done by helping us mourn is a good thing in and of itself. Thank you.
31 Days/2 – Mystery Gifter
Not to beat a dead horse but I am only going to mention gifts this time because it happened again today. For sometime now Pam and I have had a mystery gifter at church. I know that mystery gifter isn’t really a title but I don’t know what else to call this person. Tapestry doesn’t “pass the plate” for offerings. We really don’t make a big deal about money because we don’t really need a lot of money to do what we believe God has called us to do. So contributing to the church via our online mechanism is mentioned in our church bulletin and we have a small offering box on the back table just in case someone prefers to give cash or a check.
For a while now someone, or several someones, have been putting random gifts in the offering box for Pam and me. They have generally been small but very meaingful gifts. Little things that say that this person or persons knows us. Pam has received a “Mr. Darcy” keychain & library socks and I have received a two “widow’s mite” coins and a bumper sticker that I had mentioned to some people that I thought was fun. I will admit that I have felt a little weird about these being put in the offering box but that’s just really me being stupid (you see I have some hangups about a few “pastoral” things). Still I have very much appreciated each of the gifts, and I know Pam has as well.
That person, or persons, has struck again. Today I was surprised with an audiobook. C.S. Lewis at War, which is a dramatic audio concerning Lewis’s wartime BBC readings that eventually became Mere Christianity. I don’t know who to thank but I sure do hope that whoever gave me this knows that I appreciate it greatly. Whoever you are thank you. Your gift was well time today and I am thankful for you.
I promise I don’t plan on mentioning any further gifts for the rest of the month.
31 Days/2 – Gift Payments
I think better when I am doing two things. The first is that think better when I am regularly involved in challenging conversations with those I love and respect. Pam and I have the best, challenging, conversations. Really you should hear our bedtime conversations. They usually involve us sharing a quote with each other from whatever we are presently reading and then discussing that subject with each other. It is wonderful “pillow talk.” I do the same with friends around coffee or lunch (except that isn’t “pillow talk”, because that would just be plain weird. This is one of the things I loved about working at Parkview Baptist Church in Baton Rouge. I was in an office suite with people who held the best conversations. Over the past seven months I haven’t had as many such conversations with friends. Life was hectic and I was doing my best to just to stay a float. Thankfully one of the reasons for the busyness has ceased and life is back to at least a sense of normality.
The second thing that helps me to think better is writing on my blog. I’m not a great writer (just ask Pam who generously read all my M.Div & D.min papers and corrected them), but I do believe that regularly writing something on the blog helps me to think deeper about the things going on around me. It helps me to observe the world, rather than just walking through it. I write about the things that I have spoken with Pam and others about and things that I’ve seen or heard about that make me wonder. That’s where I believe my problem has been lately. The thing that I have been thinking about and talking with Pam the most about over the past six months is something that I don’t believe I can write about at this moment. I’m not “vague booking” here. I’m talking about my dad’s cancer. It just isn’t my place, at the moment, to write down any of my thoughts concerning his illness.
What has happened instead of writing about this is that I have basically stopped posting anything on my blog. I’ve maintained this blog for 10 years and I don’t want to stop writing on it. I enjoy posting things, from the meaningless to the at least meaningful to me. So I have decided to steal form my genius wife and do one of the 31 days things that she does with many others each year. The goal is to get me back to writing about something. I believe it would be stupid of me to try posting 31 days in a row after basically not writing anything for months. Therefore, I am going to try something every other day. We’ll see how that works. This will still probably be too much after this break. Succeed or fail, hopefully the attempt will help me to get back into the groove of writing something regularly.
Today’s post has to do with this photo of Thule Commuter Bicycle Panniers.
This is what I received as payment for the wedding I officiated last Saturday. I use italics on the word “payment” because I tell members of Tapestry that they don’t need to pay me anything for doing their wedding. I ask that they cover my expenses if the wedding is somewhere other than the Point region, but other than those expenses there is no need for them to pay anything. You see, I LOVE doing premarital counseling. I really enjoy helping couples think through what a good marriage looks like. I regularly tell young couples that I don’t care that much about the ceremony (really I’ll do anything they want as long as it is moral and ethical) but I care a great deal about their marriage. So I focus on the marriage instead of the wedding. I usually do around five 1 1/2 hour sessions of premarital counseling (if you want to see what we normally talk about you can view them in reverse order here). I don’t want to ask young couples who are a part of Tapestry to pay for that, nor do I want to ask them to pay for the time writing the ceremony or doing the ceremony. So I do the opposite. I ask them not to pay me anything and tell them that I am doing their wedding as a friend.
But most people still want to give me something to say thanks. I’m okay with that. Saying “thanks” is a great thing. So what has often happened are gift payments for me officiating the weddings of people connected to Tapestry. I LOVE this.
First, I love it because it is so much more relational than a check. The gifts usually reflect who the couple is and also my relationship with them. Take the above photo above as an example. This is a couple who loves to bike and with whom I have had a lot of conversations concerning good quality bicycle panniers. They have loaned me various panniers for me to try out, in hopes of me determining the next set of bicycle panniers I should purchase (when you have two kids who like to bike you tend to “lose” any nice bicycling equipment you might own). When they gave these panniers to me I smiled so much that my face hurt. I have received many such gifts. From journals, to Chuck Taylor All-Stars, to a single fishing lure that had a World Vision fishing kit sponsorship attached to one of the hooks. These gift payments are some of best pay I have ever received, because they reflect a knowledge of who the couple is and who I am. They are so much better than a check.
The second reason I love these gift payments is because they make me feel like an old time, small town pastor. Seriously, it is like someone stopping by the house and saying “Pastor, I want to thank you for that ceremony and thought you could possibly use some eggs or a slab of beef.” It really floats my boat because I think gift economies are pretty cool and very inline with the kingdom of God. One day I hope someone gives me a chicken or a goat … though I have no idea where I would keep such a payment.
Anyhow the above bicycle panniers have been used multiple times since the wedding last Saturday and I am very thankful for them.
I'm Back … I Think
I haven’t posted anything on my blog in 2 months. This is the longest time in between blog posts since I started blogging in 2005. I don’t really like this lack of blogging. Life was far busier than it normally is for me and the majority of my energy was focused on making it from day to day trying to be a decent follower of Christ, husband, dad, son, friend, and employee, rather than blogging … or for that matter fishing, running or riding my bicycles. Thankfully life has calmed down.
I suppose this means that I will begin to blog (as well as run, bike, and fish) a little more often. I’m not going to do it right now because I am watching the Packers/Bears game and this basically meaningless post is the best I can do while watching the game. I, however, will tell one brief story.
This past week I bought a new pair of waders for duck hunting. I am pretty pumped about them because they are breathable and I was able to get a great deal on them. Two days ago I decided to pull them out and let a little of the “new wader smell”escape from them. Mhmmm I love that “new wader smell.” So I sat them on couch in our living room to air out. That was fine and dandy till Montana, our female basset hound, decided she needed to go pee at 3 a.m. In the dark it is amazing how much these waders looked like someone just randomly sitting on my couch. I didn’t scream when I caught their “sitting” figure on the couch, but I may have come close.
A Good Father's Day
Today I gave money through World Vision Microloans, along with all the “threads” of Tapestry, to help a man buy an Ox as a way to honor those who have fathered us, called my dad to tell him Happy Father’s day, received a call from Adam (who is working at a camp), went fishing with Noah, ate one of my favorite meals cooked by Pam, and received my own personal pack of Pecan Sandies.
All in all this has been a fantastic Father’s day.
Being Offered A Beer
While I was not raised in church, when I became a follower of Christ I pretty quickly became a part of a Southern Baptist church in Alabama. There is a lot of a specific culture that goes along with such churches. To be honest it is easy to criticize much of that culture because I have been on the inside of it and still have a lot of links to that culture (after all, I am a Southern Baptist minister). Yet the reality is that with all the flaws of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) it still represents so much of how I understand the good news of the kingdom of God. I am a fan of Southern Baptists . I love the racial diversity that is now so much a part of who we are, even though we started out with very undiversified rationales. I also love the diversity of styles of church that are manifest because of the fact that Southern Baptist believe in a very limited number of essentials to faith. These essentials are known as the Baptist Faith & Message. Anyhow there are many others things that I could mention that I love about Southern Baptist but that isn’t the point of this post.1
Instead this post is about something that isn’t Southern Baptist belief but is generally SBC and Evangelical church culture (at least in the South). Te cultural element I am writing about has to do with the reality that as an Evangelical minister I was rarely offered a beer by the people I spent time with, until I moved up North and started a church from scratch with people who weren’t raised in church or at least in a Southern Baptist church. This isn’t a condemnation on the church (well maybe it is, but I’ll let you decide that), rather it is me jumping on myself. The Baptist Faith & Message has nothing in it concerning drinking alcohol. There’s a pretty good reason for this and that reason is that there is nothing in the Bible against the responsible use of alcohol. Yeah there have been SBC resolutions about alcohol, but if you know the way Baptist churches work (the local autonomy of the church is very important to us) then you know as Granny Hawkins from “The Outlaw Josey Wales” would say that those resolutions are worth “doodly squat.”2 They are words that make someone feel good at the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting, but don’t have any effect on the churches (though they do have some effect on the convention employees). The point is that a statement against alcohol isn’t a part of basic Southern Baptist faith, though it generally is against typical Southern Baptist culture.
And being engulfed in that culture is why I believe I wasn’t offered a beer. Not because people in the churches in which I pastored didn’t drink beer, I know that many did, but because people in the churches I ministered within knew the basic Southern Baptist culture and therefore knew that you shouldn’t offer the church’s pastors a beer, even if you had them in the fridge. The reality is that in every other church I have ever ministered in the nature of the ministry required me to spend the vast majority of my time with people who were already in the church, thus knowing the basic Southern Baptist culture and therefore not offering me a beer.
The fun thing is that I don’t even like the taste of beer. I much prefer sweet tea and Diet Coke. My Diet Cokes not only tickle my taste buds, but they also usually come with free refills, and that tickles my cheapness “taste buds”.
Now up here in Wisconsin when someone finds out that i don’t like beer they generally respond by saying “that’s just because you’ve never had a good beer” and then they offer me whatever beer they prefer. I’ve tried a lot of different beers since moving up to Wisconsin and the result has been that I am even more sure than ever that I don’t like beer. Thus I still don’t drink alcohol but I am now regularly with people who don’t think anything of offering the Southern Baptist preacher a beer. That wasn’t true at one time in my life in ministry.
That’s real the point of this post and it is about me no one else. I don’t know if all my friends who are Evangelical/SBC ministers are regularly around people who aren’t so entrenched in the culture of their church that they would never offer their “preacher” a beer, or not.3 I suspect some are and some aren’t. What I know is that until I moved to Wisconsin I spent most of my time around “church people.” People who knew the cultural expectation and weren’t going to even acknowledge the existence of alcohol, let alone offer me a drink. I loved and still love these “church people,” but the reality is that I should have been spending far more time than I did with people who weren’t “church people.” I regret now that I didn’t spend 70-90% of my time around non-church people. While I know God did some good through the ministries that I was fortunate enough to lead, I do wonder how much more good would have been done if I was around people who were constantly asking me if I wanted a brewski.
I think this is one of my new measures whether I, as a minister, am spending my time with the right people or not. If I am not regularly being asked if I would like a beer or something else,4 then I am probably not spending my time with the people I need to be with. Waitresses and waiters don’t count. That would be cheating. I think this may be my new question for my friends who are Southern Baptist ministers, or if I ever get to ask a question of a SBC candidate for president of the convention, or if I ever have fellow staff members at Tapestry. We’ll begin the meeting by asking “When’s the last time you were offered a beer by someone you were spending time with?” If it hasn’t been recently then I’ll ask “Are you sure you are spending your time in the right manner?”
- For example, the Cooperative Program. I love supporting mission work through the CP. [
] - Interestingly looking up the Granny Hawkins quote I saw a quick link to the etymology of “doodly squat” and basically since doodle and squat are both slag terms for excrement the phrase “doodle squat” is basically crap squared. Not important, but it made me laugh. []
- This excludes my friends who are Lutheran, who are probably offered a beer at ever church potluck. []
- I have been offered pot at least twice in the past year. []
The Problem of Good
I am presently reading a few N.T. Wright books in preparation for an online course he is leading. One of these is his new book “Simply Good News” which I am really enjoying. It is an easy read that I highly recommend for anyone. In fact, if you were at Tapestry this past Easter Sunday the message you heard me deliver was heavily influenced by this book.
Anyhow I just read the following section discussing the flip side of the problem of evil in regard to God. Wright wrote:
The problem [of evil] is well known, and we’ve met it already. It’s not simply that, as in the Woody Allen quote, God seems to be a bit of an underachiever (as though he were the CEO of a company that’s not doing as well as its shareholders expected). It is that in this world of beauty and power, of sunsets and starlight, there are multiple layers of violence, bloodshed, and apparently wanton destruction. There are small creatures, rather a lot of them, who live as parasites inside other larger creatures and whose sole raison d’etre appears to be to eat them alive from within. I won’t go on: the problem, as I say, is well known.
In fact, the problem can also work the other way. Theologians have written about the problem of evil, but atheists less regularly about the problem of good. If everything, including my brain and emotions, is the result of random collisions of atoms, why do we find ourselves in such awe and delight at so many things in the world? Can it really all be explained as a legacy of our evolutionary biology? That seems to take reductionism to ridiculous lengths.
(pp.136-7)
I like that. There are things that I have gone through and been through with others that I love and respect that have lead to me asking “Where are you God?” Yet there are so many more moments of beauty and truth that lead to me saying “Wow God!” The “problem” of good speaks of a Creator and reminds me that we are not on our own. I remember this as I am sitting at Emy J’s watching it rain and preparing for Sunday.
On This Day In 1945 Dr. Bonhoeffer Met His Lord Face To Face
On this day in 1945 the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazi’s as a result of his faith in Christ. If you have ever been to Tapestry there is a good chance that you have heard his words quoted. His writing has been hugely influential in my life and faith. Thank you Dr. Bonhoeffer.