Tag Archives: Memoir

Memorial Day Memories

Allow a post of personal privilege.

My Dad was a Navy vet of WWII, a “Tin Can Sailor” who served aboard a destroyer in the Pacific. His ship narrowly avoided diving kamikaze aircraft off Okinawa and later sailed into Tokyo Harbor as part of the fleet that would accept Japanese surrender. His ship was the 2nd in line and entered in full alert, the crew manning their battle stations, unsure if the promise of surrender was just a ruse. Growing up, I remember well the Japanese carbines and bayonets he had returned with as souvenirs.

I also remember well the Memorial Day parades down main street of small town America in the days of Ike and Elvis and my dad’s snappy new Chevy Impala with air-conditioning and a continental kit on the trunk. The American Legion led the way, bearing arms and carrying the flag, and there was my dad. A church had a big patch of grassy lawn right next to the general store, and that’s where the Legion ended up for a twenty-one gun salute.

“Ready, arms!”

“Ready, aim!”

“Ready, fire!”

Three times the squad fired blanks into the sky over the roof of the general store. As soon as the Legionnaires would march away, the young boys, including my brother and me, would rush onto the lawn to claim the spent shell casings. One of those boys I grew up with would later became a Major General.

I ended up a buck sergeant, E-5, and I spent Memorial Day 1970 in base camp near An Khe in the central highlands of Vietnam, waiting impatiently for the last couple days to pass before my return to Minnesota at the completion of my tour of duty. There would be plenty of friendly faces to greet my return: my fiancé (we’ll celebrate our 40th anniversary in a few weeks), Mom and Dad, my two younger sisters, but not my brother who was embarking on his own tour of duty in Vietnam. Our reunion would come later.

I remember my arrival in Fort Lewis, Washington, and the call home. Mom couldn’t talk, she just sobbed. After preliminary processing, I went to the 24-hour steak house and ate my welcome-home steak alone. After more processing, I was finally on my way to Sea-Tac airport and a standby ticket on a Northwest jet to Minneapolis. The plane was barely half-full, and a young woman asked to sit next to me although she could have sat anywhere. She bought me a drink and thanked me for my service and listened to my stories until I drifted off to sleep.

Readjustment was not difficult for me, but jet lag was. I remember waking up about 4 am and riding a bike around the deserted streets of Hopkins, Mn where I was staying with my fiancé who lived with her sister. The sunrise was glorious as the neighborhood came alive. But I was angry later when we visited a Sears store, and I saw plastic guns, replica M-16s, in the toy department. War was not a game for kids to play.

I also remember two events back home in Upsala. Dad took me to a regular meeting of his Lion’s Club. When I was introduced, they gave me a standing ovation. Bud, the small-town grocer, was the first to stand. I gave the eulogy at Bud’s funeral a couple of years ago. Two guys from Upsala died in the Vietnam war. The funeral for Jerry Kalis occurred that June while I was home on leave, and I attended in my dress uniform. I had attended the funeral for Jim Theisen before I entered the service.

Thanks for listening to my memories. Click here for a prior post about Memorial Day and here for more info about my service as a Ranger (LRRP) and the short stories I have been writing the past couple of months.

UPDATE: I HAVE CREATED A SEPARATE WEBSITE ENTITLED “LRRPS OF VIETNAM”, AND I HAVE ALSO PUBLISHED FIVE SHORT STORIES BASED ON MY NAM EXPERIENCE. THE SHORT STORIES, ENTITLED PROWL ARE AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK FOR $6.99 OR PAPERBACK FOR $9.95.

Bold, dark and intense

Regular followers of this blog know that the frequency of posts was slowing and has now virtually ground to a halt. I hope none suspect that my passion for “progressive, religious themes” has diminished nor my advocacy for LGBTQ interests in the church and especially the ELCA.

I claim busyness and business as my defense.

I have recently been extremely productive, albeit in different venues. My time has been consumed in unequal measure by a) the continued promotion of my published novel, b) the new project of writing a sequel to the earlier novel, c) finally penning a series of short stories based upon my Vietnam experience, and d) preliminary efforts at a non-fiction piece more closely related to my LGBTQ writing advocacy. With no less than three writing projects underway, there has been scarce time for the fourth estate, which is this blog. For those who deem this blog to have been an important voice, I apologize for the current silence.

For now, blog posts will be infrequent, self-aggrandizing, and promotional. Today, for instance, I announce the first literary review of the serialization of my Vietnam experience. Reviewer Sheila Deeth introduced her review of the first installment (Eleven Bravo) with these generous words:

With pitch-perfect dialog and stunning descriptions and commentary, he brings a time not too long gone to life and clears the way for a series of literary vignettes to come–short, but bold, dark and intense, so read it with a 5-star coffee.

And she concludes:

The writing is confident and clear, hauntingly honest, brutally true. The story completes a young man’s transformation and leaves the reader eager for the next installment.

For more background and the full text of her review, click here.

The Muse is Found

Regular readers of this blog may wonder where I’ve been. Posts have been nearly non-existent recently. Some have asked, “Have you lost your muse?”

Au contraire! I have been churning out page after page, but not for this blog. Since the first of the year, I have penned a pair of short stories, over sixty pages of a sequel to A Wretched Man, and made a good start on a non-fiction piece that grows out of this blog. More later.

For those of you who have succumbed to the eBook phenomenon, I’m moving that way myself as an author. Again, more later. For now, I have published a short story entitled The Woodsman as an eBook (all formats). From now until the end of the month, readers of this blog may download the eBook free of charge by using a coupon. Beginning in April, eBook downloads of The Woodsman will carry a slight charge.

Go here, and enter this coupon number: AD29N. Of course, you may choose to pay for it as a gesture of support. I have an ulterior motive in making the eBook free for a short time—I would like feedback. After you download and read, please offer your comments below, on the book page, and at Amazon; don’t forget to click on tags at the bottom of the Amazon page.

This short story is unlike this blog—no religious politics–but I hope there’s a bit of creation spirituality. There’s more than a bit of me and my dad in there based on many days spent amongst the oaks and maples of the Burtrum Hills in central Minnesota.

A Lutheran Christmas

Northfield and the greater metro area of Minnesota are extremely snowy this year … apparently the snowiest since they began keeping records, and more snow is on the way next week. Our cul de sac is shrinking as the snowbanks shoved to the edge by snow plows are over ten feet high and encroaching onto the roadway. This photo of daughter Karin, holding our granddaughter (Karin’s niece) was taken before the latest dump of six inches. Here’s a link to Karin’s own blog post with wood smoke, wintry remembrances.

We attended the last of three candlelight services at our congregation at Bethel Lutheran last evening. The music ministry at Bethel is always spectacular with unbelievable talent within our congregation. Last evening, Anton Armstrong, the conductor of the world renowned college choir at St Olaf and Bethel member, offered an a capella solo rendition of “Sweet Little Jesus Boy”, St Olaf choir soprano and Bethel member Rachel Dahlen offered several solos—as part of a women’s ensemble and also to cello accompaniment, and harpist Rachel Miessler offered harp preludes as well as a solo offering of “Silent Night” between Scripture readings. What is amazing is that different soloists and ensembles, including the full Bethel choir, provided music at the earlier two services.

On Thursday morning at the regular Bethel Men’s group, we shared personal Christmas stories and family traditions. For a group that is mostly Scandinavian, there were a variety of traditional family meals featuring dishes, besides Lutefisk, that were unknown to others (suet pudding??). Retired St Olaf baseball coach Jim Dimick remembered his Christmas away from home in the military, pulling guard duty late on Christmas eve, but the far off strains of “Silent Night” from a nearby chapel eased his homesickness and resulted in a a transcendent moment when he felt the strong presence of God. Reminds me of one of my favorite definitions of divinity: “God is what’s there when there’s nothing else.” Former Northfield High School choir director Wayne Kivell led the men in a harmonized closing of “Silent Night”.

A week ago, thirty-four Pearsons (my wife’s family) gathered at Green Lake Bible Camp in Western Minnesota. Brother-in-law Pastor Keith Pearson (Hector, Minnesota) is on the Green Lake Camp board of directors, and he made the arrangements. The photo is yours truly playing the role of Santa Claus, but my granddaughter Awashima wasn’t real pleased.

Here are a few other Lutheran themed Christmas notes.

Blogger Jim Kline apparently left an Illinois congregation earlier this year when the congregation voted to exit the ELCA. Jim found another ELCA congregation, which he joined on Reformation Sunday, and he reported on his own Christmas Eve candlelight service experience:

As the late afternoon service began, I noted that the light through the windows was slowly waning. As we progressed through the service, the familiar carols and prayers brought a sense of closure to me, culminating with the incredibly moving experience of the congregation singing “Silent Night” to the glow of our individual candles. The familiarity of this ritual, accompanied by communion, brought a sense of peace as I look back on the changes in my religious life during the past year.

Earlier this fall, I attended the Fond du Lac Episcopal Diocese annual convention where I met many new Episcopal friends including Bishop Russell Jacobus. Last evening, an ecumenical candlelight service was offered at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Fond du Lac. Bishop Jacobus presided over the Eucharist and the Rev James Justman, the local Lutheran Bishop (East Central Wisconsin ELCA Synod), offered the Christmas eve sermon. A combined choir from the host Episcopal parish, a local ELCA congregation, and the choir from Community United Methodist Church offered a choral concert just prior to the Eucharist service.

Merry Christmas to all and God bless us, every one.

Stonewall: Forty-one years and counting

This is essentially a reprint of my Stonewall post from a year ago. The response to the police raid on Stonewall, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, New York City, June 28, 1969 marked the beginning of the gay rights movement. For many, progress toward full equality and inclusion of LGBT folks seems slow; yet, for one like me who thinks like a historian, the progress since 1969 has been remarkable, and the same is true for the advances since this post first appeared.

In the last year, two major, mainline protestant denominations took significant steps toward full inclusion of LGBT folk. Following the encouragement of Integrity (an Episcopal LGBT advocacy group), the Episcopalians now offer “all the sacraments to all the baptized”. In practical effect, this means that the episcopate is fully open to gays and lesbians, and the year saw the election and confirmation of suffragan bishop Mary Glasspool, a partnered lesbian, to the diocese of Los Angeles. My own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) committed itself to recognize and affirm publicly accountable, monogamous, life-long same gender relationships and to allow persons in such relationships to be fully rostered as ordained clergy. There were also advances in Judaism, which already boasted an enviable record of inclusivity.

2009 & 2010 saw advances in LGBT legal and political rights: gay marriage became the law of Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington D.C.; partners of gay federal employees received expanded benefits; and the military policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t tell” appears to be in its last days. What will the next year bring?

The following is my post from a year ago under the heading “June 28, 1969: Where were you?”

Many of you probably weren’t born, so I guess this is a question for the baby boomers, like me. But, I encourage the young’uns to read along, anyway, to get a better understanding of who and where we are this Sunday, the fortieth anniversary of Stonewall.

Here’s my answer. I had just turned 21 and had just finished my army infantry training in the heat and amongst the snakes and spiders of Fort Polk, Louisiana, “Fort Puke, the arm pit of America,” we called it.

“If’n one of them coral snakes bites ya, here’s the proper military procedure,” droned the drill sergeant. “Spread yer legs to a comfortable military stance, put yer hands on yer knees, bend down at the waist as far as you kin, and kiss yer sweet ass goodbye.”

A few weeks earlier, over Memorial Day weekend, our battalion received back to back three day passes, a rare treat toward the end of our training. We were all headed to Viet Nam to become “grunts”, anyway, might as well allow us a good time. My new girlfriend of less than six months drove down from Minnesota — along with my parents, brother Mike, and his girlfriend — and we all camped out at Aunt Carol’s place in nearby Lake Charles. In front of a sultry red sun of dusk, under the bearded Spanish moss that hung from the live oaks that leaned over a dusty country lane, I had proposed, but the girlfriend had turned me down.

But now, three weeks later, I was back in Minnesota on a 30 day leave before departing for my one year tour of duty as an infantryman in Viet Nam, and the girlfriend had finally consented under my relentless urgings, and she allowed me to purchase an engagement ring. I needed that lifeline, that sense of commitment and belonging, that sense that there was a future beyond the jungles of Southeast Asia, and her assent to one day becoming my bride gave me that grounding. Lynn still wears that ring, today. I didn’t know then what a privilege it was to ask the one I loved to be for me; to hold my hand and keep my heart close; to send and receive trite, and silly, and melancholy missives; and to wait and to be there when I returned.

Bobby Dylan was singing and saying that the times were a’changing, but it wasn’t clear in what direction. Tricky Dick was in the White House. Dion was lamenting the losses of Abraham, Martin, and John: “but it seems the good, they die young,” and in my narcissism I knew the song was about me. I wasn’t much concerned about what was going on in Greenwich Village, NYC.

If there were any gay people in my life then, I didn’t know it. Oh, there was elderly Emil, a hapless figure who would buy the small town boys cigarettes, but we all knew not to go behind any buildings with him. Maybe some did, I don’t know. I suppose somebody had to be the source of the giggling about the comic old man. In hindsight, I know that an older cousin later died in alcoholic squalor, never fully able to come to grips with who he was, and I have a younger cousin who thrives in a long term relationship with Robert. Perhaps there is symbolism in the differences between the older and the younger. In a reunion with my younger cousin a few years ago, he laughingly recounted how he loved to come and spend time with us in Minnesota and with dear old Grandma Olga because she allowed him to dress up in girl’s clothes.

Queers were deviates, so said the medical and psychological establishment. Fags were outlaws and security risks, so said the FBI, State Department, US Postal Service, as well as state and local law enforcement agencies. Homosexuals were sinners who had chosen the wrong path and needed repentance, so said the word from Christian pulpits. And these others, whoever they were, were mostly invisible:

a secret legion of people, known of but discounted, ignored, laughed at or despised. And like the holders of a secret, they had an advantage which was a disadvantage, too, and which was true of no other minority group in the United States. They were invisible. Unlike African Americans, women, Native Americans, Jews, the Irish, Italians, Asians, Hispanics, or any other cultural group which struggled for respect and equal rights, homosexuals had no physical or cultural markings, no language or dialect which could identify them to each other, or to anyone else. Wikipedia, the Stonewall riots.

When the eight police officers knocked on the Stonewall door at 1:20 a.m., June 28, 1969, and announced “Police! We’re taking the place!”, they didn’t know they were about to make history, any more than the bus driver who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat on the Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white passenger 14 years earlier. Spurred by the successes of the civil rights movement, the bra burning feminists, and the college students protesting the war, the response of the gay community of Greenwich Village to the routine police raid on the Stonewell Bar of Christopher Street, said Dylan was right, the times were a’changin’.

We all had a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn’t anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration…. Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us…. All kinds of people, all different reasons, but mostly it was total outrage, anger, sorrow, everything combined, and everything just kind of ran its course. It was the police who were doing most of the destruction. We were really trying to get back in and break free. And we felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We weren’t going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it’s like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that’s what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we’re going to fight for it. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren’t going to go away. And we didn’t.

Michael Fader quoted in the same Wikipedia article.

Will the occasion be noted from any pulpits this Sunday? Some, I hope, but only a few, I fear. Probably not in my own church, even though I know my pastor is willing, but the congregation isn’t ready. Not yet. But, someday, and sooner than you think. It’s blowin’ in the wind.

K Company, 75th Infantry (Rangers) Viet Nam

On this Memorial Day weekend, I’m thinking of my Viet Nam buddies from 1969-70. Luther “Jim” Doss and Will Koenig didn’t make it home, and neither did two friends from my high school, Jim Theisen and Jerry Kalis.

The mission of our outfit (K company, Ranger, 75th Infantry) was Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRRP: pronounced lurp). We worked in four man teams that were flown by helicopter into remote areas and dropped off in the jungle for reconnaissance. After four or five days, the choppers would return to pick us up. Because subterfuge was our primary defense, we would be retrieved by the birds ASAP in the event we were exposed. We played hide and seek well.

For 5-6 months, I worked with the same three teammates—Mark Estopare, Billy Powers, and Gary Heald—operating as R-18 (Ranger 18 or Romeo 18 according to the phonetic alphabet). We were stationed in the central Highlands of Viet Nam, in conjunction with the 4th Infantry Division, and lived in base camps near An Khe, Pleiku, and Ban Me Thuot when we weren’t in the field.

Mark was barely 18 and from St. Louis. I haven’t seen him since Viet Nam, but we have spoken by phone a couple of times. I understand he has had a hard time of it with PTSD.

Billy wasn’t much older and spoke with a Texas twang. I saw Billy in San Antonio at a Ranger reunion about three years ago, and the drawl was still there as well as his buoyant humor. He suffered a back injury from a work accident a few years earlier and was receiving worker’s comp. Still in Texas with grown kids.

Gary was the oldest at 23 (I was 21). Gary flew to Minnesota to be one of the groomsmen in my wedding in 1971, I had dinner with him in Los Angeles in 1987, and he was at the same Ranger reunion in San Antonio three years ago. We stay in touch via email. Gary grew up in Oklahoma but settled in California. Remarried with adult kids.

We have animal stories: a rat perched on my shoulder as I pulled midnight guard duty; a tiger silhouetted against the moon as he sauntered along the edge of our night location; and monkeys passing by in the treetops, sounding like the whole God damned North Viet Namese army crashing down on us as we hunkered to the ground, butt muscles tight, and lungs unbreathing. We have drinking stories, and drugs, too. Filipino bands singing rock and roll; movie stars and football players snapping photos of us and we of them; the Beatles partying late on the Panasonic bought at the PX; poker players with military script; and personal AO’s. We have stories of searing sun and monsoon rains. Ponchos. Poncho liners. Prick 25s. Rucksacks. C4. Fragmentary grenades. Smoke grenades. White phosphorous grenades. Later, Bronze stars with V devices. We have flying stories of door gunners and cobra gunships and hot LZs. We have mountain stories, river stories, hooches under triple-canopy jungle stories, and stories of elephant grass much taller than our head. In our stories, there are many faces with names long forgotten. We have shooting stories that come to us in the pale light between wake and sleep, and non-shooting stories, too, of young men from the north passing unknowing in front of our claymores and M16 muzzles, smokin’ and ajokin’ down the mountain, alive still and so were we. We became fathers and grandfathers with stories; I think they did, too.

This is a repost from last Veteran’s day.

UPDATE: SINCE PENNING THIS POST, I HAVE CREATED A SEPARATE WEBSITE ENTITLED “LRRPS OF VIETNAM”, AND I HAVE ALSO PUBLISHED FIVE SHORT STORIES BASED ON MY NAM EXPERIENCE. THE SHORT STORIES, ENTITLED PROWL ARE AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK FOR $6.99 OR PAPERBACK FOR $9.95.

Liberal and religious??

When I began this blog eight months ago, I chose the title, “Spirit of a Liberal”, and its theme, “a blog of progressive, religious themes” as intentional, in-your-face statements. I favor unfettered intellectual inquiry, on the one hand, but also embrace the mystery, on the other. I reject the hatred and bigotry clothed in Christian themes (“who wants to be lumped in with all the other Christians, especially the ones you see on TV protesting gay marriage, giving money to charlatans, and letting priests molest children?”) while accepting the moments of spiritual fulfillment in my own life. Calvin was mostly right; our rituals, symbols, and myths are just that, but he was wrong when he said they were mere symbols. We speak our unspeakable truths in our mythologies. We doubt, and we hope. The Old Testament book of Job, with all its uncertainties, is my favorite Biblical book; if only the editor hadn’t added a sappy, happy ending.

Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton and acclaimed author of Beyond Belief and other works, spoke of her own faith journey as a fallen evangelical whose academic pursuits conflicted with the unthinking literalism of her youth; yet, when faced with the death of her child, she found herself back in a church because it “spoke to my condition”.

I happened across a superb article entitled, “I am a closet Christian”, which marvelously expresses similar sentiments. Brooklynite Ada Calhoun shares her faith journey in the article, and her theme about religion in general and Christianity in particular is summed up in her line, “Not how it’s right or just, but how — and this may sound stupid, but it’s what I think about religion in general — it works.”

Here’s a longer statement:

All of us need help with birth and death and good and evil, and religion can give us that. It doesn’t solve problems. It reminds you that, yes, those challenges are real and important and folks throughout history have struggled and thought about them too, and by the way, here is some profound writing on the subject from people whose whole job is to think about this stuff.

The idea of an eternal community brings me comfort: I like the image of a long table extending backward and forward in time, and everyone who’s ever taken Communion is sitting at it. The Bible at the 1920s stone church where my husband and I were married was filled with the names of people in the community who’d married, been born and died. When my son was baptized in our church in a traditional Easter eve service, the light spreading from candle to candle through the pews of the dark church made me feel, at least for one moment, we were united in a sense of gratitude for new life and awe in the face of the numinous.

Please read the whole article.

Deja Vu all over again

“Deja Vu all over again,” is attributed to Yogi Berra. Somehow, it fits.

There is a news report about the experiences of a small town Wisconsin congregation of the ELCA that brings back memories. The experience of St. John Lutheran Church of Edgar, Wisconsin mirrors that of my former church, Gethsemane Lutheran of Upsala, Minnesota, twenty-two years ago.

Late in 1987, the Gethsemane council voted 11-1 that Gethsemane would not join the ELCA on the occasion of the merger that would go into effect on Jan 1, 1988. My wife was the one dissenter.

Emotions were high, members were polarized and lay leaders in both congregations wanted to vote quickly to leave the ELCA. St. John congregational council members held a meeting that first week [after the 2009 Church wide assembly] and voted unanimously, with one abstention, to recommend the congregation leave the ELCA.

Several high tension congregational forums were held at Gethsemane. Opponents of the newly formed ELCA attacked Lutheran Social Services (LSS) as promoting pornography. The ELCA didn’t take the Bible seriously enough, it was said, since the ELCA used a watered-down word “inspired” instead of “inerrant”.

[St John in Edgar] held two congregational forums, on Oct. 18 and Nov. 1. The Oct. 18 forum was particularly nasty, with many members reported to be “yelling and screaming” at one another.

At the January 1988 Gethsemane annual congregational meeting, a motion was made to rescind the action of the Council (which was probably unconstitutional anyway), and the vote was approximately 60% to stay ELCA and 40% to leave. Many of the conservatives quit the council and quit service positions such as Sunday school teachers.

What happened next was a surprise to many. St. John members voted 106-67 on the proposal to leave the ELCA, but failed to achieve the required two-thirds by four votes. That night the council and other congregational leaders met and resigned their leadership positions. The one exception was the deacon who had earlier asked his colleagues to slow down.

New leadership emerged at Gethsemane, and members stepped forward to replace those who had resigned from the council, to teach Sunday school, and to accept other responsibilities. While the conservatives stopped giving benevolence, others dramatically increased their financial support of the congregation.

[The first Sunday worship after the St John vote] was another surprise: 145 people showed up for worship — the most that had been there since [the assembly]. “We had people come back who had stopped coming at least since the Oct. 18 meeting,” [Pastor Sowell] said. With a shortage of Sunday School teachers, the result of the previous week’s resignations, six people volunteered on the spot to teach, Sowell said. Since that time, “dozens and dozens” of members have stepped forward to volunteer for various roles at St. John.

A refreshing spirit of hope and “can do” lifted Gethsemane in the next several years despite the departure of most the conservatives who formed their own Free Lutheran congregation.

“The next Sunday I saw such warmth in the people that were left. We’ve seen a real consensus of people who really wanted to make this work.”

In the 90’s, Gethsemane took on a building project to replace their 100 year old building. Half the necessary funds were raised during a fund drive, and the balance on the mortgage is now nearly paid off on the brand new church building that went into service in 1997.

[T]he situation at St. John was “like a death and resurrection experience.”

“I have grown so much because of this,” [Pastor Sowell] said. “I have been carried by the prayers of my former congregation. People have called me out of the blue to say, ‘I’m praying for you.'”

“I am sure St. John is not only going to survive, it’s going to thrive,” Sowell said.

Based on my own experience at Gethsemane, I’m sure Pastor Sowell is absolutely correct. Good luck, Pastor Sowell, and the rest of the reinvigorated congregants of St. John’s. We’ll be praying for you. Check out Gethsemane’s website and see what’s happening at a congregation that survived and thrives still.

Rest in Peace, Char Taylor

For those who noticed the lack of posts on this blog for the last week, I have been out of state for the funeral of my sister-in-law, Char Taylor. Char passed after five difficult months following complications of surgery. Finally at home in Green Valley, Arizona under the care of hospice, she passed quietly with her husband and three adult children with her.

A dozen of us from Minnesota and two more from Iowa (Char’s siblings, their spouses, and Char’s nieces and nephews) gathered in the Tucson area for a long weekend in a bittersweet family reunion centered around Char’s funeral. Author Elaine Pagels wrote the following in her book Beyond Belief, which seems apropos:

—the soaring harmonies of the choir singing with the congregation; and the priest, a woman in bright gold and white vestments, proclaiming the prayers in a clear, resonant voice. As I stood watching, a thought came to me: Here is a family that knows how to face death.

Here was a place to weep … here was a community that had gathered to sing, to celebrate, to acknowledge common needs, and to deal with what we cannot control or imagine. Yet the celebration in progress spoke of hope; perhaps that is what made the presence of death bearable.

Rest in peace, Char. We will miss you.

Veteran’s Day: Thinking of Viet Nam teammates on Romeo 18

On this Veteran’s Day, I’m thinking of my Viet Nam buddies from 1969-70.

Mark was barely 18 and from St. Louis. I haven’t seen him since Viet Nam, but we have spoken by phone a couple of times. I understand he has had a hard time of it with PTSD.

Billy wasn’t much older and spoke with a Texas twang. I saw Billy in Kansas City at a Ranger reunion about three years ago, and the drawl was still there as well as his buoyant humor. He suffered a back injury from a work accident a few years earlier and was receiving worker’s comp. Still in Texas with grown kids.

Gary was the oldest at 23 (I was 21). Gary flew to Minnesota to be one of the groomsmen in my wedding in 1971, I had dinner with him in Los Angeles in 1987, and he was at the same Ranger reunion in KC three years ago. We stay in touch via email. Gary grew up in Oklahoma but settled in California. Remarried with adult kids.