"Skins may differ, but affection dwells in white and black the same." - William Cowper

My Two Years as a Tri-Delt

As I ponder 86 years of living I realize that I have had a wide variety of experiences that have my life highly interesting. One of those was the fact that I lived for two years in the Delta Delta Delta sorority house at 901 Richmond in Columbia. In the late summer of 1941, with $250 in the bank and a $250 Sears Roebuck Scholarship, I hitched a ride to Columbia two weeks before school started to find a job to earn living money as a student. I found a rooming house and began to walk the streets asking for work. I wandered into what I came to know as “Greek Town” and the maid at the Tri-Delt Sorority house hired me to mow the lawn and cultivate the shrubs. Apparently I did a good job, for she then had me do som painting and other odd jobs. The housemother came and asked me if I would like to move in as house-boy. I would live in the basement, fire the furnace and water heater, make salads, wash dishes, serve meals, and do whatever needed to be done. That meant free room and board, so I took the job.

The maid, Hattie Miller, and the cook, Beulah Gray, were black persons. I had grown up in an all white area of Southwest Missouri and had seen black persons only at a distance. I will always be grateful to both of them, for they were wonderful persons and treated me with love and respect. It was my privilege to have a close relationship with them and their families for the two years I worked there. This, I think, colored my relationship with persons we now call African American.

Once the girls move in I was told that I was expected to help serve lemonade and pastries at “rush parties.” I had no idea what they were, but I put on my little white monkey coat and followed directions. Another student, Toby, was there to help me. Several parties a day were held and we began to run out of drinking straws. Beulah and Hattie were gone, so Toby and I began to wash the straws between servings. But some had lipstick on them that would not come off, so we took a pair of scissors and cut them off. When they became too short to reach the top of the glass we discarded them. About that time Beulah came back and saw what we were doing. First she rolled with laughter, then cussed us out, and sent Toby off to the drugstore for more straws.

Living with 65 college girls overhead was a very new kind of experience for me. I had one brother and no sisters. I had grown up poor and they were all from affluent homes. But it was not their lifestyle that shocked me so much as the fact that they wasted so much food. They wanted and got the best, but often just nibbled at it and we threw it away. I started taking them the smaller steaks and keeping the big one for myself until Beulah caught me.

Hairpins were in vogue then, and they kept me running in and out of the girls bathrooms. Each of the two dorm floors had one bathroom with a “gang” shower and six laboratories. Hairpins would get into the drains, clog with hair, and Hattie would say, “Melvin, there are two clogged drains on the second floor and three on the third.” After a bit of experience, I had my response down to a routine. I grabbed my bucket and two wrenches, yelled, “Man on second,” and went to work. In a couple of minutes I could remove the catch pipe, dump the hairpins and gunk, and put it all back in order. I did have some interesting times when girls did not hear me call out, “Man on second.”

I had a nice little apartment, the best of food and a four hour a day job at the University

bookstore for spending money, making 35 cents per hour. What more could one want?  

"If a thousand old beliefs were ruined in our march to truth we must still march on." - Stopford A Brooke.

Theological (?) Statements I Decry

I grew up in a very conservative “Bible-Belt” community in southern Missouri. As I matured my common-sense approach to life caused me to begin to rebel against many affirmations I heard about religious views. College education and seminary added to my resistance against statements that are so often rather freely quoted as truth, when they are far from that and are in reality heretical to logical thinking and my understanding of Biblical truths. They can also be spiritually damaging to those who freely accept them as truth. I will list a few such statements:

·         God spared his life because He had something special for him to do. This is frequently heard after some disaster such as a plane wreck, when several or many die, but one or a few remain alive. The logical assumption then is that God has nothing for the others to do, so he caused them to be killed. I reject that.

·         Your little boy was so cute that God wanted him up in heaven so He took his life. A young family with a three year old son joined our church – new Christians and new members. Soon after that they were asphalting the street in front of their home and there was a long pile of gravel in the middle of the street as part of the process. Their little son had great fun running over that gravel, and was doing so when a neighbor came along in his car and ran over and killed the boy. Several well-meaning people used the phrase at the beginning of this paragraph to “comfort” them. They left the church and never returned, nor would I have.

·         This is the Word of God. The way this phrase is used and interpreted seems to imply that God reached down at some time years ago and dictated the words of scripture in some intimate way that gives each word a special and literal meaning. I with the reader would say something like this:  “These are the words of a few dozen persons, written thousands of years ago, by men (no women) who lived in a world they understood to be three-layered, with a heaven above and a hell below. Almost 2,000 years ago they were selected from any such writings by men (no women) who argued for three years about their authenticity. These words are useful to us today as we seek to develop our own understanding of our relationship to the Eternal.”

·         Daddy is up in heaven now looking down on all of us. How often we hear this in a time of death and a funeral. My first reaction is that if that literally so I’ve seen many occasions when Daddy would not be very happy about what he saw the family doing. Whatever the afterlife is like it is not a utopia just avove the fluffy white clouds through which we fly jet airplanes and shoot space ships, with Daddy snooping on us as we prepare to meet him there and explain what he saw. But one does not try to explain that at the graveside.

What do you think?

"Got no check books, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks - I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night." Irving Berlin

Saying Thank You

This morning I took some recyclables to the community site with the 20-foot long bins. A truck driver pulled in with an empty unit, and waited as I got out of his way. Before he left I climbed up on the truck step and thanked him for the good job he and others did to keep out city more clean, and to help the environment. He was most appreciative. We had a short visit, and I left with both of us, I think, felling a bit better about life.

For many years I have found it important and rewarding to me to personally thank others for their good works, embarrassing my family at times as I engage strangers in public places. I live such a blessed life and have a desire to express my gratitude to those who help make it so. Secker said, “He enjoys much who is thankful for the little things; a grateful mind is both a great and a happy mind.”

For about 20 years I was on the international boards of some major mission agencies, such as Heifer Project and Habitat for Humanity. When we had a large dinner meeting in a hotel dining room I would, after the meal, walk boldly in the kitchen and dishwashing area, and in a very loud voice so all could hear, say something like this, “I want you to know who you have been helping tonight. Habitat for Humanity, who helps the poor of the world build houses for themselves, has been meeting in your dining room. Your wonderful meal and service has helped us to do our work well, and I want to thank you for all you have fed. You have helped the poor get more homes. Thank you again!” By that time I was usually being escorted out of the kitchen, but I left behind a group of hard working people who had received acknowledgement for their labors.

In airports when I see some lonesome soul pushing a broom and a push cart, cleaning the waiting area, I go over and visit with them a few minutes, finding  out a bit about their life, and thanking them for keeping the area so neat. It seems to me that after that I notice a bit more push in their broom and a bit more smile in their face.

Much of my work at PET is sitting at the computer writing personalized thank-you letters to each donor. We receive about 20 donations by mail a week, and I write each one a thank-you letter, including some recent reports and photos about PET. This is not only a pleasant and proper thing to do, but is one of the key ingredients of successful fund raising. I now have name recognition with PET and donors especially appreciate a personal letter from me. Without those donors there would be no PET, and I want each of them to know they are appreciated.

This morning at the grocery store I was the only one in line at the check-out. I visited with the young woman clerk, a college student, and asked about her dreams for her life. As I left I said, “You are an excellent worker here and I know you will do good in the rest of your life. Thank you for your good work.” My parents taught me to say “thank you” 80 years ago, and I still find it a proper and satisfying thing to do.

"Destiny is carried out - fate is suffered." - J. Christopher Herald

Olga

The greatest tragedy in the world, century after century, is not the wars or acts of nature that kill and destroy humankind and the ecology. The greatest tragedy in the world is the loss of human potential through greed, neglect, and the grievous acts of fellow human beings. Bob Pearce, one president of World Vision, said, “I pray that my heart may be broken by that which breaks the heart of God.”

Every child born of God comes into this world with unique gifts and graces, with potentials far beyond our fondest imaginations, but most go to their graves with their music still half in them. The heart of God must surely be broken.

Olga is so far such a person. I met Olga in Antigua, Guatemala, at a distribution of wheelchairs for the poor. Olga is the kind of person that folks notice when she comes into a room. She is attractive, vivacious, outgoing, personable, and she is wheelchair bound. If you were looking for a person to hire as a receptionist or other staff member she is one you would want to interview. At the wheelchair distribution she was a great help, remembering names, comforting those waiting in line with disabled family members, and making sure things went smoothly. She is a people person.

When I went in the van to take Olga home I saw a bigger picture of her life and problems. She lives with her parents in a barrio built on a very steep hill. The four-wheel-drive van had great difficulty negotiating the rocks and ledges to her house. The house is a dirt-floored rental house built in a unique way. Apparently the builder planned to put wooden floors in the house but never did. There is a concrete threshold a foot high between every room, meaning that Olga is confined to one room or has to be lifted over each threshold.

The house is very small, almost barren of furniture, and unpainted. Well-meaning US friends have provided paint for it, but the family is afraid to paint it, lest the owner raise the rent when they see the nicer looking house, not an uncommon practice.

So, there sits Olga, born of God with great gifts and potential, but trapped in poverty and the circumstances of her life. Barbara and I and others have helped her begin to get an education, but the very act of getting to school is a major task. At age 30-plus she has finished the equivalent of high school and has done some college work. She has many folks who care about her but so far we have been unable to put together a “package” that would equip Olga to achieve her potential. We just know it would not be there in that dirt-floored, threshold blocked, unpainted little house at the bottom of that forbidding hill.

What is Olga’s potential and God-intended destiny – to be a doctor, nurse, teacher, business leader, florist, secretary? That is yet to be discovered.

We know that life can be better for the billions of Olga’s in the world. I have seen mission projects and programs that literally turn life around for such persons. Nationwide television recently featured Beatrice, the “poster girl” for Heifer International. About 14 years ago the family of Beatrice, living in rural Uganda, then too poor to feed their children adequately or send them to school, was given a goat. The goat had kids, gave milk and became the source of new health and income. Beatrice started to school, did exceptionally well, and with the help of Heifer is now enrolled in a major US university, making top grades. A goat is probably not the answer to Olga’s problems. What is? Who is?

"The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
and tenement halls
and whispered
in the sounds of silence."
Paul Simon

In His Steps

During my childhood our home had a very few books, but one that deeply impressed me was “In His Steps,” a best-selling book written by Charles M. Sheldon in 1896. It was a fictional but profound story about a local church whose congregation agreed, for one year, to make no individual or corporate decisions without first asking and obeying the question, “What would Jesus do in this situation?” The story unfolded into a dramatic and profound change in the social, business and community life of that town.

In the sermon that inspired the challenge, the minister included these words: “Is it possible for the church to sing with exact truth, ‘Jesus, I my cross have taken, all to leave and follow thee.’ If we can sing that truly, then we may claim discipleship. But if our definition of being a Christian is simply to enjoy the privileges of worship, be generous at no expense to ourselves, have a good, easy time surrounded by pleasant friends and comfortable things, live respectfully and at the same time avoid the world’s great stress of sin and trouble because it is too much pain to bear it – if this is our definition of Christianity then we are a long way from following the steps of Him who trod the way with groans and tears and sobs of anguish for a lost humanity; who sweat, as it were, great drops of blood, who cried on the upreared cross, ‘My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?’ Are we ready to make and live a new discipleship? Are we ready to reconsider out definition of Christian?”  

 In His Steps is about a group of people who made and lived a new discipleship. One hundred years later grandson Garrett W. Sheldon, in 1997, wrote another best seller, “What would Jesus Do?” The writing inspired a number of religious knickknacks, using the “WWJD?” symbol, and at least some discussion within theological circles. Included in the grandson’s book was this:    

“I believe the time has come for us to ask ourselves some hard questions. In this self-serving age when most of us are reluctant to forgo any luxury or desire, what, on a practical level, have we denied ourselves? What cross have we borne for Christ’s sake? What suffering have we willingly endured? God’s wake-up call for some of us might be to put aside an expensive vacation or new car and follow Him in giving to those in need. For others it might be to sacrifice our social standing in order to speak out against moral compromise. The ‘cross’ you are called to bear will probably be different from mine and from that of our neighbor’s.

If you are a Christian you have been called to embark on an incredible journey – How many are willing to accept that calling? How many would rather stay comfortably asleep, untouched by the world that is dying around us?”

Some once said to a friend, “Christianity has failed. It has made no real or significant impact upon the hatred, poverty and degradations of the world. After 2,000 years of effort, it has failed.” The wise friend replied, “No, Christianity has not failed. It has yet to be tried.”

Today’s Church, I might note, does not want to hear or read sermons like those of the Sheldons. Prophetic preaching and writing is cast aside in favor of popular and “feel good” preaching. Sin is a world verboten from the pulpit in today’s popular churches. Clarence Jordan once said, “We will just worship the hind legs off of Jesus, but we won’t do a thing He says.” Jesus is praised, but not followed. To do that would take us places we do not want to go.

“How can we profess faith in God’s word and then refuse to let it inspire and direct our thinking, our activity, our decisions, and our responsibilities toward one another?” – Pope John Paul II   

The Faithful Thing

In these times when prices of many items are sky-rocketing, and checkbooks and credit cards are hard hit, how do we manage to help our sisters and brothers in need around the world, who live of less than a dollar a day, and for whom prices are also rising?

We follow God’s plan for such times, as revealed in Scripture, in the early Church, in Christian tradition, and in examples of faithful Christians, our mentors.

The members of the early Church (Acts 2) also lived in hard times. But seeing the needs of others around them they “sold all their possessions and gave to anyone, as he had ned.”

We can do that. It is the faithful thing to do.

In the second century, the church had a rule: “If your neighbor is hungry and has no food at all, an you have none to spare, then you fast for three days and give your neighbor that food.”

We can do that. It is the faithful thing to do.

John Wesley had these rules:

“Work hard, and make all you can, as long as you do not hurt someone in so doing

Live simply, and save all you can

Give all you can, to help those who are less fortunate.”

We can do that. It is a faithful thing to do.

Some years ago, I went on a Church World Service tour in Central America. On the trip I had stopped the van to take a photo of two girls pushing back the green scum on a hog pond to take to their home two kilometers away. Eight kilometers down the road I took a photo of three girls pumping cool, clean water from a well CWS had drilled in a village. It was a vivid contrast.

I showed these two slides to a group in a church at St. Charles, MO. A lady named Holt came up and asked,” What does a well cost?” I told her that where I was then working, in Dominican Republic, a well cost about $1,000. She replied, “I will send you a check for $1,000 tomorrow. I have just retired from teaching and planned to go on a two week vacation to celebrate, but I think it is more important to stay home and think of people drinking cool, clean water than it is for me to go to Hawaii.” She sent the check and the well was drilled.

We can do that. It is the faithful thing to do.

We can look at the needs of others and balance them against our own wants. The price of this lady’s trip to Hawaii was that an entire village would go without potable water. She was unwilling to pay that price.

We can pass up paying another pair of shoes and feed five hungry children for a month. We can pass up a cruise and enable a family now living in a shack to have a decent home. We can drink one less soft drink a day and put a Nicaraguan student through high school.

We can do that, and things like that. It is the faithful, biblical and logical thing to do. Christians at their best have always acted like that, right?

“The difference between a rich man and a poor man is this – the former eats when he pleases, and the latter when he has food.” – Sir W. Raleigh

Eating Like John the Baptist

A recent field day at the South Farms of the University of Missouri in Columbia featured on its menu of offerings the opportunity to sample fried crickets. I well remember that as a child in Sunday school I read about John the Baptist, forerunner and cousin of Jesus, who lived in the wilderness and ate locusts and wild honey. My classmates and I approved of the wild honey, but gagged at the thought of eating grasshoppers.

Insects for human consumption are being considered for space travelers. Life support systems must be compact and light weight. Waste materials must be kept to a minimum, and anything that cannot be recycled must be returned to earth. An article by Gene R. DeFoliart, professor of entomology at the University of Wisconsin, reports that a closed system for space using the small beetle, “Segobium paniceum” has been proposed.

The natives of Algeria, according to the article, use locusts extensively. A 1991 report states that around Tougurt “every house and tent has prepared its store of locusts, on the average about 200 kilo for each tent.” In the Ksours of the Quad-Souf some 60 camel loads (9,000 kilos) are accumulated daily as a valuable source of food for the poor.

The locusts are first prepared by cooking them in salt water, then drying them in the sun. One writer suggests that they have a shrimp-like taste. A Peace Corps friend of mine who worked in Africa survived on a diet that included insects, and reported their having a nut-like flavor.

A wide variety of insects are used for food around the world, with the literature reporting them as “termites, locusts, grasshoppers, caterpillars, or just insects,” More than 200 species are known to be consumed – fresh, fried, or dried. DeFoliart article reports that in a 1974 survey in Mexico City, in which 12,300 people were interviewed, 93 percent considered that insects are “in the future” and that commercially produced insect products should be encouraged.

Scientist who test insects for nutritional value discover what birds have known for a long time. Nine Mexican insect species tested to have a caloric value superior to that of corn, which is known as a high-energy grain. In Zaire the crude protein of dried caterpillars averaged 64 percent.

Insects appear to be headed toward receiving a much higher status in the scheme of things. The Food Insects Research and Development Project was organized at the University of Wisconsin in 1986. Its aim is “to stimulate a wider awareness among food and agricultural scientist, government agencies, and the public that insects are a food resource that warrants serious investigation.

Insects, Dr. DeFoliart suggests, offer a number of attributes, such as high food conversion efficiency as compared with traditional meat animals. They eat a wide variety of organic substances not efficiently used in conventional agriculture – wood eating termites, for example. They produce without the need for additional arable land, fertilizers, irrigation, herbicides, pesticides or expensive equipment.

Can we envision spiced Mormon cricket as an appetizer, a caterpillar burger as the main entrée, and chocolate covered ants for dessert? The connection between John the Baptist and travelers in space may be closer than we think.

“I say that it touches a man that his blood is sea water and his tears are salt, that the seed of his loins is scarcely different from the same cells in a seaweed, and that the stuff of his bones are like coral made. I say that a physical and biologic law lies down with him, and wakes when a child stirs in the womb, and that the sap in a tree, uprushing in the spring, and the smell of the loam, and the path of the sun in the heaven, these are facts of first importance to his mental conclusions, and that a man who goes in no consciousness of them is a drifter and a dreamer, without a home or any contact with reality.”

Donald Culross Pettie

Guardians of the Places Where We LIve

Dateline: A home in the woods of southern Connecticut

“Bioregional.” That is the word that is “in” in environmenatalism. It is a good word. It means that if we want to live a healthy life, and to insure a healthy life for the countless generations to follow, we must become guardians of the places where we live. This vision recognizes and celebrates our local connections with land, plants, animals, rivers, lakes and air, as well as our human community.

This vision affirms the statement made in 1854 by Chief Seattle, that “Every part of the earth is sacred. Every single pine needle, every shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of our race. You are part of the earth, and earth is part of you.”

“You do not weave the web of life, you are merely a strand in it. Whatever you do to the web you do to yourself. You may think you own the land. You do not. It is God’s. The earth is precious to God and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on the Creator.”

This vision shares the insights of Liberty Hyde Bailey, written in 1915: “So bountiful hath ben the earth and so securely have we drawn from its substance, that we have taken it all for granted as if it were only a gift, and with little care or conscious thought of the consequences of our use of it; nor have we very much considered the essential relation that we bear to it as living parts of the vast creation.”

The sacredness of the earth is intrinsic and inherent. It lies in our necessary relationship and in the duty imposed upon us to have dominion, and to exercise ourselves even aginst our own interests. We may not waste that which is not ours. To live in sincere relations with the company of created things and with conscious regard for the support of all persons now and yet to come, must be the essence of righteousness.”

Thomas Berry reminds us today that we are earth people. Political boundaries, devised by humans to allocate land ownership and legal responsibilities, have kept us from being connected to the earth. We tend to see our responsibilities ending at our property lines. The bioregional vision brings us back to the reality that our lives are joined in a living wholeness with all species of life.

The vision, says Berry, “… teaches us to see our continuity with the indigenous humand cultures who have loved these home places for thousands of years. Bioregionalism teaches us to craft life to the attributes of our special place. This leap changes our imagination, loyalties and action.”

A couple dozen of us gathered at a Connecticut woods home to plan and further the work of the North American Conference on Christianity and ecology. The mission statement of the NACCE state that its purpose is “to elucidate Christianity’s inherent ecological dimension.”

The home of our host and hostess for the weekend illustrates some of the complexities of the problem. This lovely home has no flowers, shrubs or garden because an overpopulation of deer will immediately consume such plants. As natural predators have been removed from the woods the deer population has moved rapidly upward. Our hostess reported that deer confront her on her lawn and stomp their feet at her, challenging her right to live on their turf.

The environmental challenge is a spiritual one, and the Church should lead the way.  

“Oh, Adam was gardener,

And God who made him sees,

That half a gardener’s work

Is done upon his knees,.

So when your work is finished,

You can wash your hands and pray,

For the glory of the garden,

That it may not pass away.”

-          Rudyard Kiplin

I Live in the Garden of Eden

The following post was written earlier in the season.

The rumble of thunder came from the southwest, and the weather channel verified that a prairie thunderstorm was within an hour of Columbia. I slipped on my garden shoes and went out to set the four eggplant plants fresh from the farmer’s market. On the way back after the setting I took out my pocketknife and cut three large heads of broccoli for Barbara to put into the freezer.

Four kinds of lettuce and two varieties of spinach have been producing crisp salads for several weeks, with some to share with neighbors. Asparagus was first to arrive at the table, then rhubarb and radishes. Strawberries are picked daily. Raspberries and blackberries have lost their blossoms and are plumping for harvest. Potatoes are in bloom. Sugar snap peas mix with broccoli and a bit of meat for a stir-fry. Cabbage is heading, and tomatoes are galf ball size. Green beans are climbing their pole trellis. Two trees are so laden with apples that supports will need to be added under some limbs. Melons, cucumbers and squash are heading for each other in the usual space-war they have in my small garden. Onions, scallions and garlic add their scent to the miraculous mix of mealtime medley. Add to that a large array of annual and perennial flowers, shrubs and plants, and a fair selection of birds, including our favorites, two house wrens, and I do feel that I have a right to the claim that I live in the Garden of Eden.

I maintain that Good intends for us to live in a garden – to grow, tend and enjoy one. It is sad to note that so many folkds deny themselves of that heritage and right and allow others to have that pleasure on their behalf. As I travel I see home and home where there is no garden in a sunlit space crying out for productivity.

My garden is a combination of the “square-foot garden,” the raised garden, and the composting garden. Our soil is heavy gumbo, requiring large amounts of compost (from clippings and leaves) and some horse manure from a nearby stable. I even clamim some clippings and leaves from nearby neighbors who set them out for trash pickup. I seldom pick up a hoe, mulching everything down with clippings, straw or compost. Little fertilizer is needed with fertile soil. Tomato worms are picked off by hand, and organic chemicals control cabbage loopers.

Many benefits are mine because of our garden. The first is spiritual. To co-create with God is a rich blessing. I have never lost the excitement of seeing a bean plant burst through the soil. There is a deep mystery as to how the pole bean plant discovers and reaches for the trellis. Wes Jackson says that the genetic information stored in that bean seed, if it were typed out on paper, would fill a huge room.

The second benefit is emotional. Although I am retired my volunteer work on international boards causes me to spend day after day in “heavy” meetings, and I leave emotionally spent. But I go back home to my garden and there the world comes back into perspective. There is something about being surrounded by the creative work of God that is reassuring, and that announces to my soul that all is well in the world.

There are also physical benefits. Anyone can garden, even it if it is just a flowerpot. Nursing homes are beginning to enable residents to have small garden plots on their own. Pharmacies do not sell garden seeds, for they know that the more people garden the less medication they will need.

Other benefits include the feeling of self-satisfaction one has by producing for oneself. Gardening is environmentally helpful as energy is not needed to ship food long distances. Food is fresh and one knows what chemicals have been used. Gardening is a neighborly thing to do. When we are gone our neighbors harvest our produce for their own use.

A soft rain is now falling. My eggplants have been baptized by God herself, and I live in the Garden of Eden.   

"A man, to be greatly good... must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own." - Percy Bysshe Sheley

My Cardboard Brothers and Sisters

I've met them in many countries, these cardboard brothers and sisters of mine. We seldom spoke to each other, maybe just a nod, a universal language. Some were embarrassed by their situation, as was I, realizing that members of my human family were forced to live in dire circumstances.
In San Jose, Costa Rica, where we were attending a language school, we saw him every morning on our way to classes. He lay asleep alongside a vacant building in the main part of town. His house was very simple - a flattened cardboard box beneath him and one above, pulled like a blanket over him. His bare, swollen and scared feet tuck out beneath, and the hand of the arm that served as a pillow stuck out from the other end of the cardboard blanket. I never saw his face, but if I had it would have been the face of one whose life had become as cardboard, rejected and piled alongside a building, to one day be picked up and hauled away. And who will be there to say, as he is buried, that his life, like his cardboard home, once contained something valued by society? And who will be there to say that it is still valued by the Father of my brother?
In New York City my brother had builit a rather nice house of flattened cardboard boxes, in an abandoned lot behind an abandoned building in an abandoned part of the city. It was all of cardboard - the roof, the walls, the floor and a door. It even had two rooms. Why two rooms I do not know, except that it gives a man a feeling of pride to have a two room home.
It was not a bad house, until the rains and the cold came. Then it would begin to fall apart one piece at a time. First the roof, from the weight of the water. Then one wall, and then another, until it was a soggy mess, lying on the ground. Few would know that it was ever a house. And alongside it lay its builder, in a drunken stupor, his house and his dreams in a shamble. Few passing by would know that he, too, was something and somebody of value and use. His life had been like his cardboard house, falling apart one piece at a time, valued until no longer useful, then cast off.
In Haiti it was a small little village of cardboard houses, perched atop a craggy and isolated hill, for it was a leper village. I stumbled upon this "suburb of shame" (shame on a world that still allows this happen) as I took an early morning walk while working in Haiti for Habitat for Humanity. Here in tiny houses made of cardboard, plastic and tin lived six or eight families, members of each showing severe signs of leprosy. As long as my mind remains alert I shall always remember those dear sisters and brothers, cast aside by society as their fingers began to rot like the cardboard of their decaying houses.
I frequently take flattened cardboard boxes to the local civic recycling center, where they are baled together and made again into useful items. We receive new boxes that are stamped "Made of Recycled Materials." Is it no the task of our society to do just that to our cardboard sisters and brothers, before it is too late?

"Man rises higher in the scale when he comes to look upon his whole community as his family." - Mohandas K. Gandhi

My Bus Brother

On a crowded bus in San Jose, Costa Rica, March, 1986:
My brother and I rode together for many blocks, our hands grasping the overhead rail of the swaying bus. His hands were thick with the calluses of hard work, with broken nails and a missing finger. His arms were deeply tanned and scarred. The top of his head came to a bit above my shoulder, and our bodeis frequently touched as we sought to keep our balance on turns. We had never met before, and will likely never meet again on this Earth. Our only conversation was a simple "Bueno dia" and a few words about the weather as I sought to practice the Spanish language I had come to Costa Rica to learn.
As we rode I put together his story in my mind. He had been born into a poverty in rural Coasta Rica when I was about ten years old. He married a senorita from a neighboring community and they began to raise corn, beans and children. His farm was too small, and the competition from imported corn and beans was too severe. They were forced from the land and moved in a barrio in San Jose. Two more children were born for a total of five. Tiwce dirt-floored lean-to's of tin  and tar paper were addded to their small house. A simple wire provided electricity for one light bulb and a radio. A home-made mud stove with space for two cooking pots stood in the corner of the room used as a kitchen, burning the pruned coffee plant wood brought home by a son.
His job at the sawmill paid the equivalent of about $2.50 US a day. The last child was born with a birth defect and the mother cannot work. My brother has a third grade education and both his sons have had to quit school at the age of 12 to help support the family. One works on a coffee plantation, pruning the plants for $1 a day, while the other washes dishes at a restaurant for a similiar wage. With a family income of about $900 a year for the support of seven persons, they live with pride, dignity and poverty.
The blue jeans he has one today, scurbbed clean, pressed, and with many patches, are one of the two paris he owns. The other he reserves for church and special occasions. Each night his wife washes and irons dry his work pair. His father was poor, he is poor, and his children will be poor. No amount of hard work has changed that, nor will it change it.
Beside him I stand - educated, affluent, and with children who are educated and affluent. I have money in the bank, a more than adequate home, and a secure future. Had he been born in a farmhouse in Missouri, and I been born in a farmhouse in Costa Rica, he would be me, and I would be him - and we would still be brothers.
A Jewish proverb asks the question: "When is it the light of day? Is it when we can see a camel coming and know it is a camel? Is it when we see a tree and know it is an olive tree? When is the light of day?" The sage answered: "It is the light of day when you can see someone coming and know that they are your brother or sister."

"He prayeth well who loveth well, both man and bird and beast." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

An Expanded Lord's Prayer in Response

L: Our Father, who is in Heaven,
P: And in every particle of Creation,
every stone and tree,
every bird and bee,
every food producing field,
and in all the farmers' labors yield.
L: Haollwed be Your name.
P: Yahweh, Mother, Creator, Great Spirit,
we honor your name and draw near it.
L: Your Kingdom come, Your will be done,
on Earth as it is in heaven.
P: May love endure,
and hearts be pure,
may all wars cease,
with hate's release,
may all the gruits of God's creation,
be shared equally by every nation.
L: Give us this day our daily bread.
P: Grown in the gift of Earth's rich soil,
raised into grain by the farmer's toil,
Ground by the miller's turning wheel,
then baked rich brown for our own meal.
L: And Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
P: Our debt to the seed that died in the ground,
to yeild the wheat berry long and round,
our debt to the miner, machinist and more,
who made possible the machines that fill our store.
L: And lead us not into temptation
P: The temptation to eat more than we need,
to yield to wants and nurture greed,
to clamim as our own another's share,
to staore away without a care.
L: But deliver us from evil.
P: From evil thought and evil act,
from evil plan and evil pact,
That adds to the destructive toll,
of that which kills the human soul
 L: For Your is the Kingdom, and the power,
and the glory, for ever and ever.
L: There is none other. You are the One,
revealed in creation, in Spirit and in Son.

“Tis not the dying for a faith that’s so hard, Master Harry, every man of every nation has done that. ‘Tis the living up to it that is difficult.”  - William Makepeace Thackery

A Personal Creed

At age four score and five I began to sort papers, deciding which to keep and which to throw. Here is a keeper, written in 1981. If you’ve not written your own statement, do it.

I believe in God, the Creator,

Who created all things to be good.

I believe that God loves all the children of creation equally,

and intends for the abundance of the creation

to be used for the joy and welfare of all the family.

I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Way and Life,

I believe that in obth His preaching and His ministry

He has clearly laid out the challenge

of being faithful stewards of that portion

of the world’s wealth for which we are responsible.

I believe that much is expected from those to whom much is given.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

and that it quickens the trained and compassionate Christian conscience,

I believe that the activity of the Holy Spirit

is exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ

who consistently cast His lot with the needs of the poor and the powerless.

I believe in the Church of Jesus Christ,

and that it is given the happy opportunity of bringing together

the human needs that exists in God’s world

and the resources God has provided to meet those needs.

I believe in men and women, created in the image of God,

and capable of establishing God’s Kingdom on Earth.

I believe that women and men can,

by yielding to the guidance of God,

create on Earth a social order which shall allow all persons

to live out their God-given gifts

and to share in the abundant life God has promised in Jesus.

I believe that those persons

who are responsible stewards of their material blessings,

and share generously as they recive,

know the joy of being full partners with God here on earth,

and prepare themselves for the judgments of eternity.

"It is quality rather than quantity that matters." - Seneca the Younger.

The Quality of a Church

It has been said that the quality of a nation is not to be measured by its gross national product, by the size of its military or the number of its victories, by the grandeur of its cities, by the scientific achievements of its universities - or by any other such measures. The quality of a nation is to be measured simply by oberviing how it treats its children, its handicapped and ill, its elderly , its homeless, and thos in prison. That alonge measures the quality of a nation!
It is equally trued that the quality of a church is not be measured by the magnificence of its building, the value of its stained glass, the number of pipes in its organ, the size of its budget or membership, or the pupit prestigue of its preachers.
The quality of a church is not to be measured by how well it sings the Hallelujah Chorus - but in how well it hears and responds to the cry of a dying child in a faraway land.
The quality of a church is not to be measured by how good, upright and law-abiding are its members - but in how it ministers to those in prison.
The quality of a church is no measured by how well dressed are its members at a service of worship - but in their generosity in clothing the naked of the world.
The quality of a church is not to be measured by the size and value of the homes in which its members live - but by what thaye are doing to make sure that the rest of the world is decently housed.
The quality of a church is not to be measured by how many of its members tithe their income - but by what they do with their total income.
The quality of a church is no tbe meaured by the health care it provides its pastors - but by what the church is doing to provide health care for all.
The quality of a church is not to be measured by what its preachers say about poverty - but by what the poor say about that church.
The quality of a church is measured not by the amount of food on the table at a pot-luck dinner - but by who is really invited to eat.
The quality of a church is measured not by the beauty of its sanctuary and stained glass - but by the beauty and generosity of its spirit.
The measuring stick of Jesus was simply, what have you done about the poor, the naked, the lonely, the sick they hungry and imprisoned, the rejected neglected and disenfranchised of the world?
Nothing else was mentioned.

" I was hungry, but you did not give me anything to eat. I was thirsty, but you did not give me anything to drink. I was a stranger, but yo did not welcome me. I was naked, but you did not give me any clothes to wear. I was sick and in jail, but you did not take care of me." Matthew 25: 42.

That Rainy Day Money

I ponder today about the problem of the vast amounts of "rainy day" money held by our congregations. Most of this is never reported outside a small circle, and never really discussed. For some 30 years I worked with congregations, mosley small in membership, across the mid-West. Often I attended regular board meetings and sat through the business session before I made my presentation. At some each individual organization within the church made its fianacial report - the Sunday school, the cemetery association, the trustees, the women's and men's groups, the memorial fund, etc. I was aghast, often, at the amount of God's money stored away against, as they put it, a "rainy day."
This column is triggered by the fact that a friend and pastor of a small congregation recently told me that his church had around $50,000 tucked away with no visible purpose for it. I am also remembering a relative who died and his memorial money went to tht fund in his church. He was a well known and popular man, and several thousand dollars were given. A few years later I inquired about how it had been spent and found that it was still in the bank. "We cannot thing of anything we need," was the reason given. Legal? Yes, I suppose so. Morally and spiritually defendable? Not at all!
First, it is my understanding that money given to the church is give for the "Glory of God and for His purposes." We even say that in our prayer upon receiving the offering when we ask God to guide us to use this money for "Your will." With billions of God's people suffering and dying for lack of resources, how can we possibly say it is within His will to tuck away any money at all for a "rainy day" future?
I grew up when the Church talked and preached about sin - the sin of commission (doing what was against the will of God) and the sin of omission (failing to do what God wanted us to do). If we keep money in the bank that could feed a hungry child, or house a homeless family, or heal a dying person, we are guilty of the grievous  sin of omission. We have failed to act within the will of God. Each day thousands of God's people die becasue we Christians keep money in our bank accounts that could heal and save them. That is serious talk, but true. Is it the equivalent of murder?
Jesus spoke clearly about this in the parable fo the last judgment in Matthew. One group has used their resources to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the lonely and those in prison, at attend to the needs that were on the priority list of Jesus. They went to their reward - heaven. The other group had neglected to care for such needs and were sent to their "eternal damnation." They were guilty of the sin of omission. Their failing to do what they should have done had caused suffering and death.
Just suppose all of the 850 United Methodist church in Missouri turned in all their tucked away "rainy day" money. How big of a pile would that be? Millions. Wh would decide what to do with it? I'd like to help.

"The world is going to be a battlefield or a brotherhood. The choice is not optional; it is inescapable." - G.R. Jordan

The Confessions of an Ecu-Maniac

I grew up during the hard-scrabble times of the Great Depression. My biggest pay was $1 a day, shocking wheat or pitching hay. But usually I received no pay for we worked as neighbors, helping each other. Our community, farm and town, was made up of Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians, those of other faith groups, and those with no declared faith.
We took no thought of doing things together - threshing, banking, baling hay, filling silos, shopping, going to school, fighting Fires and grasshoppers, or pitching in to help in a crisis. It was the natural, logical and common sense thing to do. We survived because we did things together. On Sundays we split our ways and entered separate buildings to celebrate out faith.
When I began to work in the larger Church I transferred that logic to the work. I have almost absolutely refused to work with or for any work that was not of a cooperative nature. Some of my peers began to call me an "ecu-maniac." I proudly accept that title.
The word ecumenical comes from "oikoumenikos," which means "God's world is all one world" or "All things are in common." In my logic it means that life is a lot better if we work together than if we compete.
We are ecumenical at PET(http://www.giftofmobility.org/) in the most full and broad sense of the meaing of that word. The wonderful volunteers at PET come from a wide variety of faith groups, secular groups, individuals and business groups. They all go into the same bank account. PET itself is not Democrat, Republican, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Agnostic, Liberal or Conservative. It is simply an instrument of God to serve God's needy.
I close with a great story that illustrates ecumenism:
Ray Truhn, a PET volunteer from Michigan, was in Uzbekistan distributing PETs and wheelchairs. A mother came in carrying a handsome boy of ten years. He had polio when he was two and she had been carrying him since. The boy tried out a child-sized PET and was absolutely exuberant with his new mobility.
Ray told the mother how to care for it, and then he reports, "She looked me in the eye and said, 'Ray, there are five things we Muslims think you have to do to go to Heaven, and the most important one is to go to Mecca. But because of what you have done for our boy, you do not have to go to Mecca."
That Muslim woman and that Christian man unwrapped religion and revealed it in its truest form (Matthew 25: 31-46). God's world needs more of that.

"Down in their hearts, wise men know the truth: The only way to help yourself is to help others." - Elbert Hubbard.

My Addiction

Forty year ago I developed an addiction which I have been unable to break, nor have I tried. I became addicted to the idea and work of gathering from the resources of the affluent USA and delivering those resources to persons in dire poverty in what we call the "Third World," where some 2 billion souls live on less than $2 a day, and half of them on less than $1 a day.
My mentors in that work have been Jesus Christ, John Wesley, and host of more contemporary peers.
My addiction started when, in 1968, I raised the money, purchased and delivered 25 bred dairy heifers to Costa Rica, a project for Heifer International. The heifers were delivered to a Catholic high school near Ciudad Quesada. The youth were taught how to care for dairy animals, and, if they passed the course, were given a heifer for their own. They passed the first female offspring on to another youth, and the chain went on. When I saw what the proct meant to the youth the idea became and addiction. I was hooked for life. http://www.heifer.org/
Since then my life has focused around that lifestyle in one way or another. In 1986, gleaning money from friends, I made a 1,000 mile walk for Habitat for Humanity (http://www.habitat.org/) from Americus, GA to Kansas City, MO. Baraba and I took the $70,000 raised to Costa Rica and started Habitat there. We started the Festival of Sharing which meets at Sedalia, MO, in October each year and provides around $1 million in mission resrouces for Missouri and the world. Six other states picked up the idea.
In a really fun project, we gathered 16,500 stuffed animbals and sent them to Russia for children in hospitals suffering from the effects of the Chernobyl fallout.
My training and experience in agriculture enabled me to purcahse and ship for Hiefer International well over 1,000 beef and dairy heifers, goats, jacks, fillies and hogs.
Working with ACTS container after container of used hospital equipment was gathered and shipped to the Republic of Georgia to rebuild their devastated hospital system. I was priveleged to fly there with a load of iodized salt and medications and see the equipment in use.
Some 1,500 good used and new sewing machines have been donated, inspected and sent to missions. An equal number of used typewriters went around the world. More than 100 new bicycles went to Zaire for rural pastors, paid for by local men's groups. Hundreds of tons of good used clothing and shoes have gone across the sea, with that now focused in the rural areas of Nicaragua.
This list could go on and on. Now my current project is PET (http://www.giftofmobility.org/), in addition to some of those mentioned above. I am addicted, and I praise God for that. It is a lifestyle I commend to you.

"God plus one is always a majority." paraphrase of Romans 8:31b.

Two Work Here

Dateline: A road by the coffee fields near Alajuela, Costa Rica, where I walked each day preparing for my 1986 1,000 mile walk for Habitat.
The dark green and waxy leaves of the coffee plants parkeld in the tropical sun as I took a long walk through one of my favorite spots in the world. I do not care for coffee as a drink, preferring tea. But I love the simple people who prune and pick the coffee, and this valley whoe contour-planted shrubs are as lovely as any garden landscaped by professionals.
Water gurgled through the irrigation pipes that skirted the road. A flock of bright green tropical birds took noisy flight from a flame-tree as I passed by, scolding me for having disturbed them. Two bright-eyed chidren, playing in a front lawn, giggled at my effort to speak to them in Spanish, and fled into their little home. Their moether ceased her mopping to glance at the stranger in their midst, and smiled a cautious smile. A half-grown puppy stood guard by a banana tree to make certain that I ddid not leave the road.
Than, to my left, a leant-to shop caught my attention. It was perhaps ten feet wide and 40 feet long, made of crude lumber and tin. The front had no wall, and as I stepped inside I saw wooden bedsteads for sale. They were hand carved and a bit crude, but sturdy and with a unique air of elegance about them.
The carpenter came to the front, and I explained to him that I was not there ot buy, but was interested in him and what he was doing. This brought forth a tour of the shp. He used rough lumber, with the bark still on two sides. His tools were simple, and the work very laobr intensive. With great pride he showed me a corner shelf he was making for his wife.
I asked how many worked in the shp, and he replie,"Dos." Two worked in the shop. I looked around for the other person. Smiling, he pointed to himself and said, "Uno" (one). then pointing upward toward the heavens he said, "y Dios," (and God). He and God worked in the shop. Reaching for a piece of rough lumber, he said "Dios." God provides the materials. Pointing to a finished bed he said, "you y Dios." (I and God). God made the wood. He made the beds. Two worked in that shop.
His theology was simple yet profound. Pondering it as I left the shop my mind went  back to the Old Testament and I relected upon how our spiritual forefathers saw the hand of God at work in all that happended. Since was near Christmas I remembered how the oby, Jesus, had played in a carpenter's shop much like the one I had just left. His father, Joseph, was also able to see the hande of God at work in what was happening around him.
Sophistication and "progress" tend to lead us away from this feeling of relationship with the eternal. How many work where you work? Is God included in the count?

"No writing is good that does not tend to better mankind in some way or other." Alexander Pope

A Brother I Never Met

I have a beloved brother in Christ whom I have never met, no will I. He died in 2006. Let me tell you our story.
Some 25 years ago I was riding in the low mountains of Guatemala with Fred Harder, field worker for Heifer International. Fred pointed up toward the mountains and said, "Go home and send me a grain mill that I can take up the mountina in my jeep for Cesar Maes. Fr. Cesar Maes was a prist from Belgium pouring out his life for the Indian people of San Jose, an isolated village in the high mountians near Mexico. These very primitive people chopped the soil with hoes, scattered the wheat seed by hand, cut the crop with scythes, and flailed out the grain. The carried it two days across the mountinas to have it ground into four, giving half the grain for the grinding.
I came home and purchased a 20-inch stone mill with the equipment and engine, and sent it to Fred. In due time I recieved a gracious thank you from Cesar, reporting the the mill was a glowing success, and the they wanted three more for other villages, but could now pay for them with the profits from the first mill. I had them sent.
This started a friendship by mail with this amazing man of God. Working patiently with the people, he began to bring innovative and practical changes in to the lifestyle. He develped a simple cook stove with a chimney to replace the fire on three stones on the ground inside the house. At one time he proudly wrtoe that there were 260 chimney pots in the village, the name give the new stoves.
He inspired the people to dig and build by hand, with shovels and wheelbarrows, a large lake for fishing and recreation. The climate was cool, so he went back to Belgium and brought trout eggs to San Jose, hatched them, and soon the lake was teeming with trout. Cesar found a way to raise mushrooms at the altitude, and introduced them to their diets.
His innovative ways inspired me, but it was his love of his people that causees me to regret that I never took the time to visit this dear brother in Christ. In his last letter he wrote:
"Every face is charming, for people who keep looking long enought. For 25 years I have been looking at Indians. Their faces become more attractive day by day. Time gnawed 25 years away in San Jose, a relatively small community on this earth. There was never any regrets that my living space was limited to this spot. Besides, I found that Bach at 10,000 feet is no less moving than at sea level.
There are a lot of different faces. It is difficult, even for a talented photographer, to take a nice picture of a an ulgly face. Love never sees an ugly face. The faces of michievously smiling brats are nice, as are those of young girls that due to hard experiences look too old for their age.
There are other bright spots; mules loaded with freshly ground wheat, the water lillies, a family in a rowboat on our new lake, the vegetable gardens, the thousands of young trees, enthusiastic catechists, a fixed house for a widow, the chimney pots, stars filling the night sky, a pair of crutches for a cripple, the first carp fingerling, somebody shouting when he catches his first fish ever, playing children screaming with fun, the pride of a peasant harvesting potatoes in the dry season after a rain, the mysterious fireflies, a mothe lovingly looking back at the baby on her back, the amazing endurance of toddlers. Even the hummingbirds want to fratenize, asking for a gallon of sugar water a day.
I see elderly people singing as they die. I would like to die in the same way."
He did.

Introduction

I like to write. The problem is that I don't know what to do with it after I write it. That's what brings me to this blog. I think some folks may be interested in what pastors and missionaries do. Maybe not. I'll be posting these frequently for a while. Let me know what you think. If you like it, there will be more coming. Thanks for reading.

Mel West