WORDS

Words                                Delton  1-13-18

California Forest Fires have set a scene that is reflected in the community of people. Instead of flames imagine words – spoken, written, electronic.  Heroic, cowardly, frightening, offensive, charming. 

This writing is focused on the force that words have on individuals, families, communities, nations and the global zone.

 

 

 

This very day news media, and conversations are noting a forceful leader using irresponsible words to inflame and confuse people of all persuasions.

 

 

 

Words behave much like fire. Easy to start. Difficult to manage or extinguish. It takes fuel to feed a fire. Winds to fan the flames. 

 

 

 

The community is sometimes dry like a forest in drought. A dangerous fire burns down to the bed rock and takes many long years to recover soil for producing new productive plants or ideas. 

 

 

 

When the smoky fog of fire tinged words comes upon our community I want to be like a shower of cooling and calming water. The temperature lowers and we can think more deliberately with friendship and time for one another. This is small scale and personal.

 

 

Clergyperson as Actor/Actress

At University I did one Shakespeare play as well as “Night Must Fall” – a crime play, in which I acted the part of The Inspector.

 

 

The next acting scene was a surprise that came during the first appointment of Methodist ministry. I learned that much of the life work of a clergy person is to be an actor.  That sounds so artificial and distant from people. However, the truth is that when one is in front of an audience of parishioners week after week, part of the task is entertainment.  As in a tavern, there needs to be some reason that brings people back.  I learned to be a presence when terrible things happened to people, and a religious ceremony is needed.  Let me share one story of how my  beginning training school for an acting career taught reality.

 

 

The first parish was at International Falls.  Most people were related one way or another to the Paper Mill business.  The congregation I worked with were loggers and service providers. The office people and management types went to a higher class Congregational church or were Catholics, Lutherans or Fundamentalist Christian. 

The hospital was a central place of interchurch dramas.  Pastor W was a hard-nosed Baptist who would use hospital calls on the ill folks to do his missionary work. The sicker the people the more vulnerable they were to his offensive style. If he could get them saved that was victory for him even though they never went to his church. The rest of us had no good way to counter act him because it is a free country.

 

 

Methodists were know as welcoming anyone to the love of Jesus, so I was called when the medical staff was uncertain of who to call for an emergency. 

 

 

Joan and I lived about 2 blocks from the hospital in a primitive house, typical of many homes in The Falls at that time. Pastoral counseling of drunk people or a homosexual fellow had to be done in the small living room of the house. I admired Joan for managing a household under those circumstances.  I had to sometimes pretend that I knew what I was doing. 

 

 

One day a call came from the hospital saying that a member of a church family had been injured out in the woods.  Even me as a new arrival knew what that meant. Working in the woods meant cutting trees down, shaping them into the right length and hauling them by truck to the pulp wood storage area just outside to the east of town by the rail road tracks. I also knew what it meant to deal with “Widow maker trees”. The logger when cutting a tree might not notice that up there another tree might be leaning on the other trees and could fall as a death dealing surprise upon the logger below.

Leaving home, I braced myself to take on the role of a young pastor whose farm background had not really prepared for the big woods up North.  I was an actor. The curtain had gone up. There was no script. This was no director in the wings to whisper the lines or signal where and what to do.  Life and death in the balances. The Doctor, Nurses and medical staff knew their business.

 

 

Upon arriving at the hospital, I was ushered to the vicinity of the room.  As I recall, it was one of the Stillar boys who was in trouble and it did not look good. These were big people especially the men. The room was crowded so I had to push my way in. When the Pastor was called everyone understood that serious things were happening. It made no difference that I was a little stick of a person, a young one at that, new in town as well. 

 

 

Once in the room I was in charge. Now to carry off this drama well.  Speak up even though a person knows not what to say. The ancient weight of religious ritual was upon me. Look around at the people with eye contact strong. Say the ancient words of the faith. Act like the pastor and priest, the shaman and medicine man of centuries of tradition. Keep the words brief. Allow for silence. Come close to the man who life is ebbing. Identify with him.  “ I commend you in the name Jesus. God the Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit.”

 

 

“The Lord giveth. The Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” . 

Then the Nurse takes charge. I withdraw from among the Stillars. Sobs. Touching each other. A whispered “Bless you” I leave the room and then the hospital. 

 

 

What had just happened? A powerful drama had just taken place. I had been an actor in the Drama of Life and Death. No one is adequate.  The roles are ancient.  Civilized society needs actors to fulfill roles that go back thousands of years.

 

Delton Krueger      written on 1-5-18

Giving Myself a Fright

Today a sudden Faith turn happened and I was not aware of it until arriving at home several hours after it came into focus.

 At a church service the entire service was given over to a choir and orchestra performing The Messiah, an oratorio by George Frederich Handel from 1741 using the wording of the King James version of the English Bible from 1611.

The reader likely does not know what I am talking about. This is 2017 in America and accustomed to communicating in instant technology.  Why use something written in 1611? Because some people understand this to be the authentic Bible.

Words change meaning meaning within weeks now. Musical forms have changed radically. Think "Rap" or Blues. Religion of today is hardly recognizable in 1741 cultural lore. The change of all religions is continuing as well.

As this performance was going on I gradually realized that this was an attempt to shape my mind and my mind was attempting to blank it out. The problem is that I was trying to '"think about" what was going on. Others were apparently accepting this traditional music and wording.

Am I the strange one or is the Methodist church now a strange cultural organization with the agenda of grasping for a long gone way of understanding life and the Christian religion?

So why do this? The people in charge have an agenda that I do not understand. It certainly is not leaning into the future, unless the future is strictly entertainment in order to please people and help them give money.

This demands more thought and consideration. I will write more on this in due time.

Sunday, December 10, 2017   Del Krueger

 

Surviving Elders Among the Exiles

The Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament in the Christian Bible) speak in several places about the people being in Exile.  Jeremiah in chapter 29 speaks of the Elders who had been taken off to Exile at Babylon along with the Priests of the Hebrew people. One translation speaks of the "residue of the Elders..."

 

In the 21st century the process is that Exile comes to the Elders of the Faith of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. With global communications and unlimited sharing of ideas as well a commodities and money, there is no remote place out of reach. We stay in one geographic place and the culture comes upon us and changes constantly.

 

The situation today is Exile for Elders in a foreign culture.  This form of Exile is comparable to that which is spoken by Jeremiah. As an Elder in the Christian religion I search for anchoring points in Western culture. Being an older age Elder means being a survivor - part of the residue. 

 

This is not a complaint. No, my writing is a step in gaining a voice in a culture that seems no longer interested in traditions that are separate from Entertainment and Commodity Exchange lubricated by money. 

 

This is an experiment in using contemporary culture and its technology to find a better way of human life. I observe the confusion among so many citizens who search for meaning in life.  Elders are seldom seen as reliable sources for useful thoughts and information. 

 

This begins a continuing conversation. 

Delton   dkrueger@visi.com