Selected Ministerial Thought Pieces

Selected Ministerial “Thought Pieces” Bob Tucker, First Congregational Church in Houston (c. 1998) —more on the website (bobandmaggi.com)

Discernment It was a truism that the only way to get outstanding sound from a stereo system was to have big floor-standing loudspeakers. Now audio technology has made bookshelf speakers equal in delivering the thump of the bass and the tinkle of the triangle. Still, Consumer Reports warns, "Ideally, speakers should reproduce every sound exactly as recorded or broadcast. But every type of speaker alters music to some degree."

We have always recognized that the spoken word can alter reality. In the game of rumor, a message is whispered from one person to another around a circle. What was said to the first person and what the final person reports is not the same—neither in subtle nor in more significant ways.

Thwarted in obtaining truth through hearing, we emphasized sight—seeing is believing. But that certainty also has eroded. In one experiment, a person burst into a law school classroom, quickly 'assaulted' the professor and then ran out. Immediately the students were isolated and asked to write what they observed. The variance, both in describing the intruder and in relating what happened, was dramatic. I often wondered how those students, after that experience, viewed eye- witness accounts in court. Even the ever-so-realistic battle scenes in the movie Pearl Harbor were not real, being computer generated.

If we cannot obtain certain reality through the ear or eye, perhaps we can through the objectivity of the scholarly mind.

Currently, I am reading the bestseller John Adams by David McCullough. As interesting as his story is, I am aware there are other scholarly books on John Adams, books that have a much different perspective. Always, facts are selected, given various weight and then organized in a manner to serve the author's point of view.

This same process operates in the world of religion. The four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—are a prime example. Each author tells the story of Jesus from a different viewpoint, so that, even when referring to the same incident, there are differences in the reports. Can we ever know what is real and true, or must we forever remain skeptical? It is a poor life that allows skepticism to reign supreme. Yet, so much of what we experience is not what it presents itself to be. Thus, I find Emily Dickinson helpful.

Much madness is divinest sense To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness.... The discerning Eye, the discerning Ear, the discerning Mind, and a dash of the discerning Heart help me in wending my way through the days. Personal Convictions Her distress was evident. An encounter with a fundamentalist Christian neighbor—absolute certainty of convictions, numerous Bible quotations—left her frustratingly dissatisfied with her inability to articulate her convictions.

I was quickly drawn into her feelings, having often found myself attracted to such passion, certainty and clarity of belief and, at the same time, repelled by the accompanying dogmatism and inability to tolerate differing opinions. Out of self-protection, I began to articulate my own deep-core convictions.

Deep down, I feel I belong. I do not feel alienated from people nor from life. The angst of my early university years was fashionable not integral. I am not fighting parents and early upbringing. Often I do not like what I say and do, but such personal disappointment and disapproval do not undercut my sense of belonging nor make me wistful for another life. Deep down, I find I am grateful. Life is a gift, and I have been grateful in whatever circumstances I have found myself—from the years of having to daily boil the open ditch drinking water which first flowed through several Turkish villages to the affluent years in Houston. Situations change, but gratitude remains.

Deep down, I know I am responsible. I cannot shake off the conviction that I betray life by a singular emphasis on myself. The ancient who wrote, "If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, what am I?" expresses well life's balance. I am a responsible part of this natural world and the people who inhabit it.

Deep down, I find I tolerate ambiguity. The diversity of this world is endlessly fascinating: how people give shape to their personal lives, how needs get formed into institutions, and how new ideas tantalize our minds. For me, this has meant that finding and articulating my own beliefs— in order to not deny the convictions of others—was a most difficult task.

Such convictions are not the exciting variety, which makes me want to buttonhole someone, but they are the solid, steady beliefs that inform my days.

No Longer Plaster Saints No longer are Joseph and Mary plaster saints. That change took place because of the race back to the city park in northern Italy to find our young daughter, whom we had inadvertently left behind. Two vans with two families and seven kids floating in and out of each in ever-changing combinations made it easy for a child to get lost.

That situation also makes it easy for me to understand how, in a caravan of families returning to Nazareth following a visit to Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph did not realize their twelve year old son was missing. I now shared with them that heart-pounding anxiety and fear-laden premonition while speedily returning to find one's missing child. Our daughter was missing for a half hour, their son for three days. Mary is recorded as saying, "All generations will call me blessed," but for Protestants, who cling so tightly to the Bible as the "very Word of God," Mary's assertion was never really followed. Not so for Roman Catholics. The Madonna is central both to devotion and to theology (her bodily assumption into heaven was made dogma in 1950, and it was then assumed that it was only a matter of time until she became co-redeemer [along with Jesus] of the human race). But since we humans often define ourselves over against our 'enemies,' we Protestants seldom mentioned Joseph and Mary, except in Christmas carols. I began to read their story in light of the travails common to us humans: an out-of-wedlock pregnancy; a man willing to overlook the scandal and adopt the child; living with the threat of the infant's death and the reality of his early adult death; bringing disgrace on the family by his making a public spectacle of himself; and that awful, fearsome anguish of a child lost. Flesh and blood, anguish and yearning replaced the plaster. What connects us humans, at the deepest level, is not our talents and successes but our needs and failures. Hearing a person tell of the latest accomplishment of a child, competency on the golf course, professional prowess, or good deeds leaves the listener defensive or hostile. But to sit with another and to mutually share anxieties and failures builds the bridges of our common humanity. For that reason, 12-step programs and group therapy are effective. For that reason, we need people with whom we can take off our masks and begin to meet each other as individuals. For that reason, I now honor Joseph and Mary who, in the midst of life's travails, endured, and helped give the world a God we address in family terms. "I Believe in the Resurrection of the Dead" Never was I comfortable with that part of the Nicene Creed. Although not believing that everything needs to be rational (and many truly important things are not), I could not accept belief that went contrary to reason. Yet, out-of-hand dismissal of this essential Christian belief was impossible. So, for decades, I lived between not believing and feeling the need to believe. This dilemma dissolved when I found resurrection an observable fact of life.

For too long, I thought a person's value depended on what that person added to the human enterprise. Sharing in people's defeats and deaths, and then watching individuals rise from their grief and despair caused me to realize that resurrection was ever before me.

The tenacity of the human spirit—living on in spite of the death of dreams, the death of ideals and values, the death of people—is resurrection. At least, that is what I have come to believe.

Given the multiple forms of human death we experience, it is easy to enshrine death in fatalism or resignation: "That's the way the ball bounces;" or "Life is just one damn thing after another."

Resurrection—affirming life—is not a denial of death, nor a dismissal of death, nor a passive acceptance of death, nor a defiance of death. Resurrection accepts the full reality, agony and terror death, but believes that life is even stronger and is the true reflection of reality. Surprisingly, when I tell others that they are resurrection people, they are uneasy with the designation. Living in the protective tombs of rote habit, frozen emotion and tightly proscribed thinking is a bondage not easily broken. But when the tombs are left behind, then the true power of words such as joy and hope is evident.

Resurrection is the affirmation of life even in and through death. I now gladly affirm: "I believe in the resurrection of the dead." Not as an abstract doctrine nor as proven fact, but as a genuinely true affirmation: light shines in the darkness, and life, not death, reigns "A Translator is a Traitor" "I disagree with you," and I ask, "About what?" I'm usually still puzzled after the person has described the disagreement, and I have to ask for further specificity. When I finally pinpoint the source of the other's disagreement, I often find that I am now the one in disagreement with that person's understanding.

No doubt, my own dullness of thought and fuzziness of expression leads to some confusion and dissent, but there is also misunderstanding existing in the ear of the hearer and the eye of the beholder. We all constantly respond to others, and to situations, through our own experience. A word that I find neutral is, for another, loaded with anguish. To an idea that I consider destructive or demonic, another responds with a shrug of the shoulder.

In scholarly circles the Italian expression, "traduttore traditore," literally means "a translator is a traitor," and it implies that it is impossible to translate without misrepresenting the author. That is true at every level. The artist on canvas or in musical composition or in words on a page struggles to translate a mental concept into physical form, and the physical form, to some extent, always betrays the idea. Then, if the physical form is communicated thorough a conductor, an interpreter or a translator, that person adds her or his own experience to the original creation. Finally, the physical expression takes another mutation in the mind of the observer.

The French philosopher Jacques Maritain once expressed his dissatisfaction with many of his books translated into English because "the translators who knew French did not know philosophy, and those who knew philosophy did not know French." Which leaves us with the possibility that a discussion in an American classroom on Maritain's philosophy might be passionate but miss the point.

These somewhat abstract comments take on bone and flesh in every marriage, family, social and work setting where "communication is the problem." Because we make the common assumption that the other is "just like us," we miss the clues leading to misunderstanding. I think that the only way I could fully understand another is to place myself in suspended animation and make myself totally present to the other, trying to understand the perspective from which the other is speaking. Lacking that, I stumble along.

Actually, I don't feel too pessimistic about our ability to translate the thoughts and feelings of others, as long we understand there will always be some static and distortion in the process. And that gives you absolute permission to tell me, "I disagree with you.” Power Tends to Corrupt My luncheon companion expressed concern over his church's exceptionally talented minister and the genuine adulation of church members: "What might this be doing to him?" His concern was not unwarranted. Power over others, even if not coerced and even if used in genuine compassion and service, places a person in perilous straits.

The British historian Lord Acton gives the reason for such peril: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (written to a bishop regarding the 1870 promulgation of the doctrine of papal infallibility).

Power is so pernicious because its corruption of good intentions is so subtle and its consequences so destructive. Obtaining a position because of talent or knowledge easily leads to a person thinking all exercises in judgment and performance are right and obviously superior to that of others. A compliment feels good, but abundant compliments easily skew one's self-judgment, making even a friendly naysayer easily dismissed. The protective shell around a powerful person thickens steadily—an office behind secretarial staff, additional professional staff, those attaching themselves to the coattails of a rising star, and finally security—isolating the person from others. Of Jim Bakker, it was written that he had manufactured a business with an adjustable moral compass; if the ministry did something, then it must be ethical.

Power corrupting is not limited to the leader of a country, the president of a corporation or the preacher of a multi-thousand-member church. It is evident in parents' attempt to dominate in power struggles: "You do this (only) because I tell you to," and when children are used to meet parental needs.

There is the subtle corruption that is seen even in the members of church committees. Given an important task, one's own judgment, or the judgment of the group, takes precedence over organizational consensus because others just "don't understand things the way we do." All along the spectrum of human endeavors, Lord Acton's dictum is at work. The reason is that we humans are inveterate idol-makers, making idols of ourselves and idolizing others, an activity that infects church folk as well as national politicians.

Still, Lord Acton wrote that power tends to corrupt (only absolute power corrupts absolutely). Maintaining humility about oneself and avoiding arrogance toward others keeps corruption from slipping into automatic.

This is why those in power need our heartfelt prayers along with our accolades. Original Sin: The Only Cheerful Doctrine The Earl of Chesterfield's "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well" has accompanied many a child to school and into life. As a call to making the extra effort, perfecting the special project and striving toward the highest goal, much has been accomplished-far beyond many individuals' normal interest and diligence.

While true for some, for others this saying--translated into always doing one's best--has dogged their footsteps and blighted their lives. A child comes home with straight "A's" and one "B." Parents' eyes immediately are glued on the "B" and an interrogation begins on the reasons for the 'failure.' A winning soccer team loses focus as the other team quickly scores two goals. The coach's voice rises, along with the opponent's score, and the tongue lashing lasts through the half.

Externally, the worth-doing-well-and-do-your-best stare at us in bookstores with book after book proclaiming how to cook, how to make a million, how to find real love and how to truly know God. A beaming face on the dust cover and simple descriptions and prescriptions on the pages reinforce our awareness of personal limitations and failures. These external reminders cling to our internal worth-doing-well-and-always-doing-one's-best measuring rod, and they take their toll.

The British writer G. K. Chesterton turned the Earl of Chesterfield around when he wrote: "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

I like that. Chesterton shifts the focus from doing something well to doing something worthwhile. Living by worth-doing-well-and-doing-one's-best, I would preach only once a month (twice a year would stretch it in some peoples' eyes). Living by "doing something worthwhile" frees me to preach weekly, even when I am not at my best.

Tracking that same thought is another of Chesterton's provocative aphorisms: the only cheerful doctrine is—original sin. Bending down, he pulls this doctrine out of the trashcan of twentieth- century Christian theology. It is a doctrine that allows us to be imperfect, indeed that tells us we cannot be perfect. If, as the Gospel states, God loves us even if we cannot be perfect, then it should be possible for us to love ourselves even though we aren't perfect. It might even free us from demanding perfection from others. Chesterton is right again.

What a relief not to have to be perfect! We don't have to continually measure ourselves against the always-do-your-best-and-be-perfect standards.

So, the next time you see those smiling faces on the how-to-do-and-be-your-best books, pass by with a smile on your own face. Chesterton's "the only cheerful doctrine-original sin" will do it for you. God is a Verb Once, blood flowing in the streets, bodies hanging from limbs, and individuals languishing in dark and dank dungeons resulted from people holding unapproved theological opinions. No longer. Today, theology has become so dry in content and so unrelated to everyday life that even at ministers' gatherings the subject is avoided. A core reason for such avoidance came to me from a strange source—Buckminster Fuller.

Fuller wrote that God is "a verb not a noun." Precisely. As a language, static nouns and adjectives dominate the English language—with verbs trailing behind. In contrast, Hebrew and other Middle Eastern languages are verb-centered. Verbs are action. Verbs pull nouns into action, rather than visa versa. "Faith," as commonly used, is a mental and verbal affirmation, such as a 'statement of faith.' Faith, in biblical terms, is tied to actions based on convictions. One's faith is the way one moves into the future even when the future is uncertain and unknown. An entrepreneur starting a company, a couple getting married, a student off to college, and a person joining a church all are living by faith--not mental convictions but convictions-in-action.

Each of us lives by faith every time we start the car and every time we enter into a new relationship. Religious faith is a willingness to risk moving into the future believing that God is present both in the act of moving and in the future that entices us. For example, we read that Abraham and Sarah "went out not knowing where they were going." That example of faith—a far cry from the static religious certainty that some seek and others demand—is what gets our blood moving and our feet dancing.

I am certain that my three years of graduate school gave me the ability, theologically, to run circles around Buckminster Fuller. Yet, it was this non-theologically trained person who had a far better grasp of the essential drama of theology than I did.

For God, to me, it seems is a verb not a noun, proper or improper; is the articulation not the art is loving, not the abstraction of love. Yes, God is a verb, the most active, connoting the vast harmonic reordering of the universe from unleashed chaos of energy.

Buckminster Fuller built more than one home in which we humans can live. Maintaining Ideals She vividly described that moment of utter dismay. Her children were nonchalantly and contemptuously talking about children at school who were less privileged than they, and it struck her that they were talking about herself, for when a child she was one of 'them.' Even more startling was her realization that she herself had slowly, subtly adopted that same attitude so prevalent in her affluent segment of society.

A chemist, receiving basic training in California during the Korean conflict, knew that the programmed messages given to him and others concerning Chinese troops possibly landing on the California coast were absurd. However, with only filtered news from the outside world, he found himself emotionally responding to what he mentally knew was an absurdity. A young graduate, imbued with the exciting knowledge that the Bible was an enticing mixture of history and poetry, metaphor and myth, found herself as minister of a church whose members frowned on any but the most prosaic expression of traditional beliefs. Competent and compassionate in carrying out her ministry, she nevertheless found herself incrementally conforming to others' expectations, and her passion ebbed.

The story of the erosion of dreams and values is not new, nor is it exclusive to the three individuals mentioned above. For all of us—the ideals that we bring into marriage and the raising of children, our convictions concerning the conduct of our professional life, the ethics by which we set standards for our personal behavior, and even the values we hear in church and then try to apply—are worn away and ground down over time. How we keep our idealism and passion alive and not have them absorbed into cultural expectations is a perennial human problem. To partly offset this, I rely on a statement and a story.

Helpful to me is Ralph Waldo Emerson's statement: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Keeping alive to life- sustaining consistencies, and wrestling with the foolish consistencies, keeps me aware of, and somewhat resistant to, such erosion.

Also helpful is an old story that clings to my mind. A new preacher came to a community and said, "Remember." The words that followed, recalling golden times and esteemed values and virtues, were gladly embraced. The same message, repeated weekly, became routine and wearisome, even meddlesome. Soon no one came but the speaker. "Why," he was asked, "do you continue to preach that which no one cares to hear?" He replied, "I came to remind others. I continue, in order to remind myself."

Seeking reminders, I treasure those persons, books, and places where I am 'reminded.' The Color of Wheat, The Color of Dawn Christians have always looked to Jesus as a human embodiment of the divine. Understanding and articulating the nature of that embodiment has taxed minds for centuries. The most widely- accepted formulation is the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.), which describes Jesus both as "God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father" and "made man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate."

This Creed, created by and for the church, stands independent of my opinion of it. Yet, knowing the history of its composition, I generally find the words stultifying rather than evocative. What does draw me into deeper identification with the person and passion of Jesus is the imaginative imagery of poetry.

Recently my imagination was captured by the words of a song from Amahl and the Night Visitors. The three Magi come to the hut of a widow and her crippled son to rest on their way to find "a child the color of wheat, the color of dawn" (and Amahl's mother sings, in counterpoint, that she knows such a child [her own] "the color of wheat, the color of dawn." It was during a memorial service that these words (sung because the deceased had directed the musical at church) latched themselves onto my brain. Apt images, like sparklers, arouse my imagination and, like fireworks, brilliantly illumine the darkness. Verbal descriptions flatten the experience. Like a sparkler, for me, "child of wheat" conveys the earth from which wheat arises, the food that nourishes us, the broken bread around which the human and Christian communities form. Also, I find human suffering, anguish and death through the absence of that which nourishes. So, "child of wheat" conveys, in my imagination, the fullness of the human experience and the universe of which we are a part, and of which Jesus is fully a part.

Like a sparkler, "a child the color of dawn" speaks to me of the freshness of each new day, the morning light that follows night's darkness, the hope and rebirth of wonder of the human spirit. The phrase also speaks to me of the resurrections following our many deaths.

What language do we use to think and talk about the deepest realities of our lives: our convictions and our hopes, our beliefs and our actions? At the times of deep heaviness—times when we are against the wall with grief or betrayal or despair or death—how do we articulate the scouring of our spirits and the tenuously fragile tracings of hope that seem almost too good to be true? How do we speak of Jesus as the one who touches the fullness of our human experience and, yet, whose person, actions and words became a channel for our realization of the divine in us and in this world?

Never did I expect a religious revelation at a memorial service. In the midst of the darkness of the loss of a friend, I experienced "the color of dawn." Human Hormesis The saltshaker delivered a disastrously large white mound on top of my food as the top popped off. Although I did not know it at the time, I personally experienced chemical hormesis (the observation that a chemical can have a beneficial effect at a low-level exposure and an adverse effect at a high level). A minute quantity of fluoride in our drinking water helps prevent tooth decay while a large amount is deadly. Chemists' concern is that governmental regulatory agencies, in totally banning too many chemicals because of their toxicity in high doses, deprive us of their real benefits when used in small amounts.

At times, I suffer from human hormesis. There are individuals whose presence and sparkling conversation I truly enjoy, for a time. However, given longer exposure, their delightful energy, unceasingly expressed, exhausts me. Another's fascinating hobby, elbowing out any other topic, makes me dream of being somewhere else. Still another's initial refreshing frankness begins to make me wonder if the person can begin a sentence without the word "I." The engaging, scintillating mental quips of another eventually turn into an exhausting conversational one-up- man-ship. Hormesis sets in when I feel my patience ebbing and my spirit flattening.

At times, I suffer from convictional hormesis. The person, newly converted to Christ, church or a social cause, has a delightful energy, an engaging excitement about a newfound truth, and a genuine desire to have me join her or him in that new passion. Homesis sets in with the increasingly insistent statements of the real blessedness that will come when I also embrace that person's newfound truth. At times, many times, I suffer from political hormesis. My eyes light up when a politician articulates a vision for this nation. But, then the constant cant, "The American people want" (when I know that the American people always seem to want precisely what the politician wants), effectively causes my eyes to glaze over.

Alas, at times, I suffer from personal hormesis. Generally, I find myself not such a bad person to live with. Having spent a lifetime in developing certain interests and personality traits, I find the inner conversation and the outer actions interesting and worthwhile. Then I catch myself repeating old static ideas, often defensive over inconsequentialities, continuing to allow old and unresolved angers to seep 'unobtrusively' into conversations, and repeating far too often my hard- won convictions—to the detriment of admitting new realities.

I can already see the pained look on the faces of my chemist friends as I have taken their precisely-defined word and playfully transferred, and then expanded, its use to label the delightful-and-toxic aspects of my existence. Others, perhaps, will even find in this article an excess of hormesis. A Reflection on Life and Death Leaning on the waist-high fence – attempting to mentally blot out the uncomfortably close traffic rushing by behind me – I peered in the tiny cemetery shoehorned into the bustling city. Carved into a newer tombstone was the name, Jeannie Safos, with no date but with these words:

Oh, sparkling universe Oh, what a heavenly show! But yet to really know I’m still unfathomable Depths below!

Spotted from the New Mexico highway as a white spec on a high bluff, a single sign pointed to the narrow road that took me up to the Angel Fire Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Initially built by a father as a memorial to his son slain in Vietnam, it evolved to become a Congressional- commissioned national memorial, even before The Wall in Washington, D.C., was built. The executive director told me of the hesitant, fearful footsteps of people entering the Memorial, the remembrances, frequently tearful, and the firmer footsteps as veterans left to return to their cars, and to their lives.

The next day, large repetitive highway signs announced the new Indian casino now operating. Wandering among the machines, I observed the unblinking eyes, expressionless faces and assembly-like fingers inserting, pushing—pausing for the spinning to end—and then fingers again inserting, pushing and pausing. Twice coins spilled forth with wins. No joy was evident as the coins were scooped into a bucket and then became part of the repetitive motion of inserting, pushing and pausing.

Acedia is one of the seven deadly sins identified by the medieval church. That Latin word is usually translated as ‘sloth’ but is better translated as ‘apathy.’ Acedia is uncaring boredom, the generic shoulder shrug of ‘no problem’ couldn’t care less indifference (perfected as a teenager and then frequently used the rest on one’s life, often without the shrug), and the expressionless tedium of those at the gambling machines. Acedia points to death-in-the-midst-of life. Jeannie Safos and the veterans’ firm steps help me draw the distinction. Book Burning Teddy Roosevelt, when finished with a page in a book, would rip it out and toss it on the floor. I found it easy to picture the vigorous Teddy doing that. At the same time, I found myself cringing at such a cavalier treatment of a book (almost a sacrilege). In contrast, I could immediately produce a day of guilt over a miniscule accidental tear on a page.

No such guilt overtakes me today. Although rarely done, I have been known to tear out a critical page or chapter while discarding the rest of an unimportant book.

What caused the change was my assigned responsibility to rapidly dispose of the roughly 2500 books reposing in the library of a seventy-five-year-old junior high boys' boarding school in Turkey. I was helping to close down the school, and the library contained the unwanted books of missionaries who, as they departed Turkey (or life itself), left their books to lighten their journey. Current teachers claimed A hundred or so more recent books, but no one was eager to take the complete set of Charles Dickens with its crumbling covers and eye-straining type, nor Wendell Willkie's (1940 Republican presidential candidate) book One World.

First dispirited and then frustrated, I finally became, by necessity, a relentless, pitiless and zealous book burner.

The change from dispiritedness to zealotry came about because burning books turned out to be a ponderously difficult task. The outside cover of the books would burn without too much difficulty, whereas the edges of the solid mass of pages were only slightly singed. Ripping the books apart helped but, after a few dozen books, my finger muscles gave out. Increasingly frustrated and exhausted by the book burning effort, I finally dug trenches and buried the books. (I sometimes wonder if, in some future millennium, archeologists will dig up that horde and if they will wonder what secret 'Dead Sea scrolls-like' sect lived in that area and what persecution caused them to bury such treasure.)

Necessity is often looked on as 'the mother of invention,' but Thomas Paine also wrote of the "calamitous necessity of going on." The necessity of 'going on' with the closing of an institution turned me into a book burner.

In the long years of my life, knocking books off the high pedestal of respect on which I had placed them was not the most serious erosion of values I have experienced. Although traumatic for me, that experience has made me more sensitive to other times - far more serious times - when I allowed personal desire or inconvenience or laziness or the requirements of the organization to become the 'necessity' that all too often overcame the values and virtues which I knew to be true and right. A Textual People The board president, back from a recent conference, repeated the figures he had heard: words and presentation make up 37% of what is communicated. Body language makes up the remaining 63%. True as that might be, it tends to too easily dismiss the true importance of words in our lives.

We are a textual people.

Just before the Pilgrims landed on Cape Cod in December, 1620, for that first, lethal winter, they drew up the Mayflower Compact: “We, for the glory of god and advancement of the Christian faith, and the honor of our king and country, having undertaken a voyage do covenant & combine ourselves together into a civil body politick.”

As a country, we had a textual beginning. The Continental Congress passed a formal resolution on 2 July 1776 (two days later language was finalized and the document was made public): "These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States." The United States was founded as a textual nation; we were 'written into being.'

The defining moment of the Civil War, in the minds of many, was the address given by Lincoln at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield. That battle remains clear in our memory because of Lincoln's words, just the opposite of what he stated: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." Apparently Lincoln's body language did not impress his audience, for the reports on the speech gave it little importance. However, his words—"that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth"—now are a textual statement describing the purpose and result of the war.

I know not the body language of Nathan Hale, but the text of his words still echoes: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Having the text, absent the body language, is true for all of the remembered statements sprinkled throughout America's history (to offer another example the passionate, "Give me liberty or give me death").

The most important personal relationship that most of us have begins in the text, "I take you," which is then repeated and affirmed in our wedding ceremony—a textual event.

Interestingly, the gospel writer John made the advent of Jesus a textual event: "In the beginning was the word."

Of course, body language and facial expression are important in the believability of a person's words. When they clash, we feel there is a discordant note, some hypocrisy present. No doubt, it is also true that acceptance of a presentation made at a business meeting is very dependent on the presenter's body language. But, in acknowledging this, we never should be discount the importance of text, the power that Helen Keller found: "That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, set it free!" Bible as Meeting Place Viktor Frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist and Nazi death camp survivor, developed a form of therapy known as 'logotherapy.' In the camps, he observed that the probability of survival increased significantly if a person had a purpose for life. (Frankl's logotherapy stood in contrast to the prevailing therapy of airing a client's past to deal with a current malaise.)

Actually, we know the truth of Frankl's observation from our own experiences. When we are in love, immersed in work, or captured by a dream or a religious commitment, we find that energy flows, days come alive, and we are enticed into the future.

I have found that even a simple mental model or picture can work in the same way—drawing together discordant elements that vex mind and spirit so that an empowering understanding springs forth. This happened when I formed the concept of the Bible as 'Meeting Place.' Generally, people go to the Bible to receive the authoritative words of inspiration, knowledge, moral precepts and proof texts. Unfortunately, though, viewing the Bible in this way imparts the dangerous toxin of biblical literalism. Such belief makes creation a seven-day affair, allows a bush to burn but not be consumed, and permits an axe head to float on water. I believe that most people, not wanting to discredit the Bible and yet not being credulous enough to believe such absurdities, hold the Bible in two separate, watertight, compartments.

Understanding the Bible as 'meeting place' gives me a mental image that helps me take the Bible seriously, if not literally. Instead of the Bible being that to which I go for answers, the Bible is the place where I bring my questions, experiences and convictions in order to converse with those whose questions, experiences and convictions are recorded there. For example, as I struggle to share my difficulty in finding language to talk about the profound experiences of my life, so I hear Moses describe his own imaginative way (the burning bush) of speaking about his deep experience. I bring my frustration with contemporary worship and converse with Micah who, after lashing out at the worship of his day, said, "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (I converse with Moses and Micah, believing that they, not living in this century, have something to learn from me.)

Actually, I believe this is how the compilers of the Bible want us to view scripture, as a conversation and not as dogma. That is why they recorded two versions of creation in Genesis and two views of the conquest of Palestine in Joshua and Judges. That is why the story of Jesus, being so rich and so vital, could only be told in the interactive conversation among four different, and sometimes conflicting writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Conversations at this meeting place (Bible} are about the meaning and purpose of our lives, about the sin and guilt that burden us down, and about that which can transform our lives.

Wicca Striding rapidly to the outdoor pool—to minimize the bite of the November chill on my unclad body—I stopped suddenly, momentarily forgetting the cold, mesmerized as I was by the well- tattooed body of the lifeguard. My question, "Do you mind telling me about the tattoos," received a ready reply. She proudly pointed to her massive upper-chest shoulder-to-shoulder Wicca tattoo, to the sentimental tattoo which matched her daughter's (the family that tattoos together...), and to a couple of smaller tattoos added when she was in a more playful mood. She said my questions were a relief from the usual non-verbal and often disapproving oblique look she gets from others.

Wicca? My last real contact with Wicca was three short paragraphs, and an accompanying picture of Stonehenge, in a book on world religions. Intrigued, I decided to fill in gaps in my sketchy knowledge.

She spoke of the rich tradition of witchcraft that traces itself back, in an 'unbroken line,' from the pre-Christian times of the Druids. It was a "Give me that old time religion," but spoken in a way alien to its use by Christian preachers. Quickly, she cleared out some underbrush by denying Wicca's belief in black magic. Finally, she gave a personal testimony about the way that Wicca helped her pull her life together, gave her a community and friends, and was a dependable source of renewal. More than anything, though, it was obvious that she treasured the community that gave her a sense of 'place' in life.

My shivering body brought that quick course in Wicca to a quick end. Then, swimming the repetitive laps gave me time to reflect on that brief, but informative conversation.

I realized that seldom do I hear such a succinct and clear statement on why a person is a member of a church. Probably, I thought, such clarity is the mark of making a choice, in contrast to moving unthinkingly along a well-trod spiritual path. With choice, a person consciously moves away from something as well as moving toward something, thus giving clarity and purpose.

I again realized how important, truly important, is the community that a religious group provides. American life, with its strong emphasis on individualism, makes finding a community, a place where one belongs, critical. A community provides humans who wish you well, healing from life's assaults, and security from which to venture into the unknown days.

I was pleased that the lifeguard found a community for the coldness she had found in life. My coldness at that moment required a hot tub. "And Not a Drop to Drink" The radiant smiles of person after person on the sidewalks of the South Dakota farming community repeatedly 'shouted' at me news I already knew. During the night it had rained—a long, gentle, soaking rain. Growing up, as I did, in a water-abundant city, I gave little thought to water, other than the delight of swimming. Then, for six years, I lived in a marginal-rain farming community whose livelihood was so very dependent on rain. Never since have I been able to take water for granted.

Thus, with only a moment's reflection I found myself nodding in agreement with the statement of a former World Bank vice president, "The next World War will be over water." Although in the Middle East it is control of the land that makes the news, always driving that conflict is the control of the limited and, therefore, extremely precious supply of water. Ariel Sharon, a general during the 1967 war, said that the war did not start on June 5th with the clash of arms, but two-and-one-half years earlier when Israel's neighbors voted to divert the waters of the Jordan River. In 1994, after signing the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, the late King Hussein of Jordan said that the only thing he could see that would bring those two nations again to war would be a fight over water. Turkey's damming of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, rivers that then flow southward through Syria and Iraq, and the threat of restricting the water released has significantly decreased those countries' anti-Turkish' rhetoric.

We need not go half way around the world to find stories of conflict over water. On the western edge of this country, water pushes politics. Los Angeles, with limited rainfall and wells, 'grabbed' the Owens River Valley water (two hundred miles away) in the 1920s. A shooting battle erupted. Then, the city took water from the Colorado River, two states away. (Courts are now restricting LA's right to some of that water.) There was even an attempt in California to buy water from British Columbia, a plan stopped by the government of that Canadian province. Texas is not immune from conflict. A howl of protest arose with the proposal to massively siphon off the rapidly depleting Ogallala Aquifer to serve the water needs of the state's northern cities.

The world's surface fresh water is unequally distributed. The Great Lakes contain about twenty percent of the world's total, and Canada is home to more fresh water than any country in the world ("the Saudi Arabia of water").

Water is life-giving in birth and life-sustaining following birth. Symbolically, water denotes spiritual birth in baptism and freedom from slavery in crossing the Red Sea. (Symbolically, too, 'the new birth of freedom' that is America was often portrayed as stemming from the crossing the 'waters of the mighty Ocean' by the hardy Pilgrims.)

Squeezing this essential resource is industrial pollution, agricultural runoff (both often accumulating for decades) and the ever-increasing demand of growing populations. This may bring about on land, as well as on sea, the reality of Coleridge's words in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, "Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink."

Dark visages and smiling faces became, for me, a barometer of the psychic health of that small farming community. All indications are that the world will discover that reality as well.