Suicide

      

The title sits all by itself … Alone, one word, Alone, not supported by any other words, Alone, with no direction but inward.  The statistics for suicide are frightening and depressing.  Please follow this link for some insight into the magnitude of the problem, an issue that is becoming worse in our society.  https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

A few days ago, a friend took his own life.  The despair he felt must have been overwhelming.  The warning sign was given late at night, when most were asleep, an ominous posting on social media.  A few years ago a young woman who had played violin at my wedding when she was a child, took an overdose of prescription drugs and died.  Both were victims of depression, a debilitating disease, and make no mistake, depression is a disease.  Both were talented and bright individuals and loved by many.  One was a middle-aged man the other a twenty-something young woman.  Probably the only thing in common between them was depression.

These beautiful human beings descended into a darkness so suffocating that they thought the only solution was to kill themselves.  They left behind families and friends that grieve and feel full of guilt.  The guilt that says, “Could I have helped, why didn’t I notice, what if I had been a better friend, a more caring lover, a more attentive parent.  The truth is that even if we met all those criteria, the depression would most probably have won and the result been the same.  Most of us are not trained mental health professionals and are not equipped to prevent someone from taking their own life.  The pain ends for the victim and begins for the new victims.  For the survivors are the new victims.

This link is to the story of Eric Kramer, an NFL quarterback who attempted suicide and lived to tell about it, something rare among gunshot victims.  https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2016/05/21/erik-kramer-detroit-lions/84657892/

Unfortunately, I have known a few friends and a coworker who have committed suicide.  Each time I wondered if I could have done anything, much self-examination told me there was nothing I could have done, yet that does not stop the feeling of guilt.  Why do I know this?  Because every damn day, every day, I think about doing the same thing.  And every day I look for a reason to go on.  I hang on by a thread, just a thread. All we can do is to become better listeners and observers.  Sometimes the depressed individuals exhibit behaviors that are warning signs and some will even threaten suicide, a threat that should be taken seriously.  Some people are good actors and hide their pain behind a bright and cheerful smile.  Compassion in American appears to be in decline, we have become a bitter, greedy, self-absorbed society, and the innocent suffer.  However there are people who care, help exists, if you or a loved one is thinking of suicide please call a suicide hotline like this one: 1-800-273-8255

Toys R Us

Nothing in a child’s life compares with the adrenaline rush of stepping into a toy store.  The news that Toys R Us is going out of business drove me into a fit of nostalgia so strong I thought I would descend into melancholy.  So many memories emerged from deep inside, they flashed by so fast I had to stop and hit rewind a few times.  Once second I encountered a memory from my distant childhood, the next a memory from my daughter’s childhood, and then my granddaughter’s first time in a toy store.

I have a memory of a small redheaded boy in a shopping cart throwing a temper tantrum that only a redhead could throw, over a toy that is lost to time.  I remember being with my great-grandmother and mother as we shopped in Wolf and Dessauer in Fort Wayne.  I do not remember the particulars of why I threw the tantrum and the memory is strange in that it is from the viewpoint of someone looking at me, almost as if someone else’s memory has been transplanted in my brain.  I suppose the memory took on a life of its own, trapped deep inside my brain with nothing to do but imagine.  

When we lived in Florida my daughter was born and it wasn’t toys that sent me to Toys R Us, but something more practical—diapers for my baby.  I would make a weekly trip to the store and immediately head to the back to where the diapers resided.  As time went by the diapers increased is size in proportion to my daughter.  At first, as I would head down the aisle to the diapers I would look at the toys and imagine my daughter playing with them someday.  Later as she got older, I would stop and purchase a doll or something educational and bring it home with the diapers—fathers love to spoil their daughters.

Recently I took my granddaughter to Toys R Us for the first time.  I smiled and relished in her delight as she scampered about from toy to toy, from aisle to aisle, overwhelmed with indecision.  Fifty-five some years after a little redheaded boy threw a fit in Wolf and Dessauer, his redheaded granddaughter had the opposite reaction.  I helped her make a decision and we happily left the store.   The loss of Toys R US will be to me as calamitous as the loss of Wolf and Dessauer.  As we bid adieu to Toy R Us let me say one thing.  Thank You!

The Mystique of the Antique

A quick stroll through my favorite Antique mall brought forth a wealth of emotion.  About twenty-five years ago, I discovered the pleasure of antique malls and antique collecting.  There is something calming about wandering around in an antique mall, surrounded by the relics of recent past.

I spy an old record album propped up against a stand.  It is set apart from the other hundred or so albums, set aside perhaps by another veteran like myself.  Navy Music is the title of the album.  I am a Navy veteran so of course the cover piqued my interest.  I picked up the album and read the cover.  The music brought back memories, mostly good, the bad faded away in the wash of time.  I thought about my roommates in Scotland, Chip, and Karl, from a time long ago, over thirty-three years ago, making my memories antiques themselves.  I placed the album back where I found it, but the memories remained, happy and sorrowful, old yet fresh.

The next booth contained two parrot figurines.  Now who had these parrots belonged too, what kind of person went into a shop and decided they just had to have the parrots for their house?  My imagination took flight and I thought of all sorts of bird-brained possibilities.  Perhaps a child coerced their mother or grandparent into purchasing the porcelain birds.  Mayhap an actual bird fancier purchased the beautiful statues, relishing in the beauty without the noise and upkeep.  Briefly, I considered adding the lonely and lifeless parrots to my non-collection of birds, and then thought better and wandered to the next booth.

Furs, jackets, coats, and stoles adorned the racks in the next cube of goods.  Who wore these items?  Were they rich, rich wannabes, posers, all the stereotypes crossed my mind.  What if a PETA person found this setup, would they have a conniption fit, buy all the furry items, and then have a bonfire.  A better ending would see the outfits bought by a local theater group.  Nothing of interest here, move on sir.

The next area revealed a shadowbox-like setting with a full arrangement of fifties furniture.  The family inhabiting the chairs and sofa were actually in my mind and not present physically.  The love, anxiety, and togetherness flitted through my thoughts until I saw the old television.  The television set evoked a time when my father and I ventured to the local drug store to use their tube tester.  We tested our tubes, a time consuming process for an impatient ten year-old and eventually discovered the bad tubes and bought the replacements.  We were so proud of fixing the television, a source of entertainment for our entire family.

Another exhibit contained numerous tools, some so old that I didn’t have a clue what they did.  A butter churn I could understand.  A scythe was either the implement of a harvester or the Angel of Death, neither of whom were there to demonstrate how to use the implement.  Most, if not all, of the items have been replaced by power tools.  Our time is much too valuable to be wasted on making things by hand.  Alas, the items made by hand seem to last decades longer than the ones made by machine.

The final booth was a potpourri of clocks.  One clock in particular jumped out at me and spoke to me of a time past, a time when my Father was alive, a time so long ago that the memories must be wound up on occasion to keep them viable.  A simple Miller Lite Beer clock brought back the occasion when my Father, Brother, and I went to the local bar when the Miller Lite Distributor was having a trivia night with loads of prizes.  A trivia buff, I had no problem defeating the legion of bar flies, okay two or three people, and we walked out with more items than we knew what to do with.  This particular type of clock had been in my procession for twenty some years until I gave it to the goodwill.  This might have been the same clock.  Regardless this clock contained my memories and that made it a treasure.

I left the antique mall feeling more melancholy then when I entered.  A mellow melancholy, be there such a thing, mellow because I felt both joy and sadness.  One brief trip conjured up the memories of my Father and my two roommates from Scotland.  All are deceased, yet they reside in my heart, and my memories, and as long as I am alive, they remain among the living.

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The Assault Rifle

Another day has gone by since the Feb 14 shooting in Florida and we are a day closer to the next massacre.  The right-wing nuts are still saying, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”  Which to me is an absurd line of reasoning and the part that galls me is we think the gun is some innocent pawn in the game of killing.  The AR-15 is an assault rifle.  It is not a toy, it is a killing machine designed for one single purpose –killing a human being.

A car driven by a drunk driver can be a killing machine, but that is not the original intent of the designers of the automobile.  The rifle was designed to kill and it really doesn’t care who pulls the trigger, be it a deranged maniac, a toddler, an estranged lover, or a soldier.

If you need a weapon for self-defense, and in today’s messed up society that might be the case, then get a shotgun or pistol.  An assault rifle is not needed unless a platoon of miscreants is coming up your driveway.

Assault rifles were banned for a time during the Clinton administration.  Guess what … the world did not invade the USA because we were under-armed.  I am all for hunters having their rifles and shotguns.  I am for pistols and revolvers for personal protection.  I don’t think the average person needs an assault rifle any more then they need a Rocket Propelled Grenade or Stinger missile.  Although given the current state of moral deficit and willingness to accept NRA blood money, who knows what will be legal the day after tomorrow.

The Preacher in Me

When I was thirteen years old, I heard a sermon at the small Primitive Baptist Church I attended with my great-grandmother.  The congregation took a break for lunch and I ventured outside to play with the other kids, of which there were only about five.  I remember, very distinctly, thinking that I wanted to be a preacher when I grew up.  Then the shyness which I was afflicted with, or gifted with according to some, gathered itself up and strongly protested, saying there was no way I would could get in front of a crowd and speak.  The shyness won the battle, but not the war. 

Another forty or so years would pass by before I gathered up the courage, or should I say the Holy Spirit’s inspiration overcame my shyness, and I preached my first sermon.  I was amazed and perplexed that I spoke so easily, no hesitation or nervousness.  What I discovered is that when you speak the truth, speak in love, and speak with humility, then like Paul, you can speak with a voice given power by the Holy Spirit.

Before I traveled on my first mission trip to the Dominican Republic, I had a feeling, a tugging at my brain, perhaps my conscience that fed in me a desire to do something for others, to participate in something greater than myself.  And so I overcame my natural inclination to stay home and watch television and ventured forth with a group of people I did not know, to a land I knew nothing about.  That venture changed me and changed me forever.

On the second mission trip, I had an epiphany.  I encountered a force of love so strong it brought me to my knees and made me cry in joy and ecstasy.  The life-changing event happened at the church we were building and it was so powerful I hid from my companions.  Perhaps that was why Jesus wandered off to be alone with the Father, because it is so overpowering and emotional that you don’t want others to interrupt.

Upon my return, I entered into a process to become an ordained Deacon, even though I wanted to be a priest.  Alas, I seemed to have been misguided, I did not complete the process, nor was it a good experience.  After a few years of meditation, questioning, and praying, I concluded, rightly or wrongly, that God did not want me to be bound to the church, because the church has rules.  Where there are rules there must be enforcers, where there are enforcers there is power, and power corrupts.  Better to be beholden to God and not the church. 

What God wants I believe is someone preaching like a prophet, free to say what the Holy Spirit wants me to say, following sometimes a proscribed doctrine rather than a prescribed doctrine.  Seek and you shall find.  Look for the truth in all things.  If it comes easy, then it is probably a false truth.  Isn’t it easier to judge someone and call them names rather than help them?

While I was going through the process to become a Deacon a friend asked me how I felt about the mentally ill.  I confessed that they scared me.  I was being truthful, I did not know how to cope with mentally ill people, and I was ignorant.  But ignorance, unlike stupidity, can be cured with education.  With the help of my wife, who is a social worker, I took some online classes to learn about various mental illnesses.  Then I volunteered as a non-denominational worship leader at a local home for the mentally ill. 

After the first couple of meetings, my preconceptions were challenged and I changed.  I wanted to talk about meditation and one man told me he couldn’t because if he calmed his mind the voices would come in and say things.  I did some research and corresponded with a psychotherapist and found out that was true.  Over the months, the meeting evolved into a session where we read the scripture, sing, and talk.  Talk about all subjects.  The mentally ill are like most people, what they desire is to be heard, to be listened to, and cared for by another human being.  They desire love more than all else.  What I also discovered is that they know they are mentally ill, they remember a time when they weren’t, and they grieve for their current condition. 

So today, I am a preacher, a minister, and a follower of Jesus.  The path has been long and arduous, I have been crucified and resurrected, and I will not be still in the face of evil.

Another Week of Violence and Another Rant

Here we go again, another week, another school shooting.  This is not a normal society.  This is not a civilized country.  This is not a Christian nation.  This is the result of a brainwashed, heartless, and morally bankrupt society.  A country where the self-righteous religious fundamentalists will cry about abortion and remain silent about the carnage on our streets and in our schools.  A country where the president worries more about supporting racism than he does about helping the mentally ill.  A country where our politicians accept money from the NRA and then like puppets on a string, refuse to address the issues.  A country where the standard cliché and catchphrase has become thoughts and prayers.  What have we become?  Where do we go from here?

The rich, insulated in their gated communities, fat off the spoils of other people’s labors, could care less.  The rich, who never seem to have enough, have engorged themselves in a wealth of hypocrisy.  The rich, twice in the last one hundred years have driven this country and the world downward into a depression and a recession.  Then they have the audacity to blame the poor, always the poor, those eternal scapegoats, those who cannot defend themselves.  Only the poor commit violence.  I imagine the group in Mar Largo is having a prayer session and laughing it up with their God Mammon.

Ask yourself, who wins from this violence, who wins from selling weapons?  Not the poor freaking hillbilly that owns fifty rifles and shotguns because he thinks that will save him from enemy.  Who is the enemy?  The military-industrial complex wins and they rule the country, just as Eisenhower warned us in his Cross of Iron speech.  We did not listen then and we will not listen now.  Where do you think ISIS got their weapons?  They didn’t grow them, but that is the subject for another rant.

In the end, at least until he is a radioactive cinder, Putin wins.  His puppets will destroy this country and at the same time convince us that it is our own fault.  HE is correct though, it is our fault; our arrogance and our hypocrisy are driving this country to the brink of the abyss.

We are not a Christian nation, not even close.  If Christ set foot one foot in this nation and preached for the safety of immigrants, for the rights of women, for the abolition of guns, what do you think would happen?  I know what would happen, he would be beaten, thrown in a private prison, and crucified.  It is a never-ending story.  

Oct 8 Sermon on Violence

Violence

The sermon today is about violence.  I could go on and on for hours like a Fire and Brimstone preacher, however Father Matthew said to keep this under an hour.  So fifty-nine minutes it is.  I think I just caused a violent reaction amongst a lot of you.

Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, many times in the last few years have we heard this phrase uttered from the lips of politicians and now-a-days, more-often-than-not tweeted.  Sandy Hook, Columbine, Las Vegas, and many more tragedies that we have watched play out on the Internet and on television.  Jesus Wept is the shortest verse in the Bible.  The New Testament was written close to two millennia ago and I am here to say that Jesus has not stopped weeping. 

Even in the Gospel we read today about the vineyard and the absent owner.  Violence abounds even to the point of killing the owner’s son.  When Jesus talks about the owner, he is referencing God.  We know that Jesus is the owner’s son and he was crucified.  We live in a violent world, a world full of trials and tribulations and peace seems but a distant dream.  Will the Lord come back to remove the tenants from the vineyard (Earth).

In one of the most famous stories of the Bible, Jonah is sent to Nineveh to proclaim the word of God and demand repentance.  The King of Nineveh took this to heart and proclaimed ”Let everyone call urgently on God.  Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.  Who knows?  God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

God was pleased and changed his mind about destroying Nineveh.  However, Jonah wasn’t pleased and became angry with God.  The ensuing conversation between God and Jonah is very good and I would encourage all of you to pick up your Bible and read and meditate on the dialogue between Jonah and God.

Violence has been a part of man since Cain slew Abel.  Wars have been almost non-stop since we were cast out of the Garden.

The United States has boasted that we are a peaceful nation.  How so?  I read an article that said we have been at war 93% of our short existence.  I found that hard to believe but when I did some research, I was dismayed to find it true.  If you take into account the major wars, it doesn’t seem like we have truly been at war that much.  But if you look at all the Indian wars, the small conflicts overseas, rebellions, and such the facts are true.

It seems we revel in war.  If you resist you are labeled unpatriotic and may be thrown in prison.  If you protest you are labeled as un-American.  Our movies and television shows are full of violence.  Video games promote violence.  Violence breeds violence!

My father was a police officer in Fort Wayne.  I was raised around guns and violence.  As far as I know he was only shot at once and when he recounted the event to me I was horrified.  When I was about nine years old, I received a BB gun for a present.  I went out in the woods with a friend and I saw a cardinal perched in a tree.  I took careful aim and with the first shot, I bagged my first and only kill. 

I approached the small bird, lying in the snow, blood oozing out of his small body and I was overcome with a feeling of utter shame.  I cried at the taking of his life and I have never been able to “hunt” again.  For my thirteenth birthday, I received a 22-caliber rifle.  I did not hunt, but I did shoot targets.  This did not stop me from trying to kill a big husky that was attacking my little hound dog late in my teenage years.  As I reflect on those episodes, I understand the difference between violence caused by anger and violence because of a lack of compassion.

During the period of my life when I lived in Miami, I was called to jury duty for a murder trial.  When twenty-eight of us were marshaled into the courtroom for our initial questioning, I was shocked.  Why?  Because the first question asked by the defense attorney was, “How many of you or how many of your family, have been victims of violent crime?”  Over half the hands went up and those people were dismissed from the jury.  Over half … think about that.

Our early church, before Constantine was pacifist.  Origen said that Christians "do not go forth as soldiers.”  Tertullian wrote "only without the sword can the Christian wage war: for the Lord has abolished the sword.”  Clement of Alexandria wrote "... he who holds the sword must cast it away and that if one of the faithful becomes a soldier he must be rejected by the Church, for he has scorned God."

This changed in the time of Constantine - the Council of Arles in 314 said that to forbid "the state the right to go to war was to condemn it to extinction,” and shortly after that, Christian philosophers began to formulate the doctrine of the Just War.  We haven’t stopped since.

Violence, most of the time, is a result of anger.  Why the anger?  I am not immune, you are not immune, we are all human and we all experience anger.  Jesus himself overturned tables and whipped the moneychangers in the temple.  That I suppose could be called righteous anger.  My anger is more the,” Did you see what that idiot just did.  He ran a red light, the moron.”  Hank taught me to say, “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” whenever I had a bout of road-rage.  I confess I have called out the Holy Trinity more times on the road than I have in church.

This though is the key to reducing violence.  The violence exists in each one of us because we are not at peace with ourselves.  So how do we become more peaceful?  WHEN we come to the realization that CHRIST, exists inside each of us.  We need to recognize the Christ in us as illustrated by  Thomas Merton.

Oh God, we are one with you.  You have made us one with you.  You have taught us that if we are open to one another, you dwell in us.  Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts.  Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection.  Oh God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is in Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit.  Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love.  Love has overcome.  Love is victorious

Now I would like us all to do a little exercise.  I promise you this won’t last long.  Please take ahold of the hand of the person on each side of you.  Then close your eyes.  Take a deep breath and hold it, feel your heart beat, feel the touch of the people around you.  Slowly exhale.  Now together say, I recognize the Christ in me.  Now open your eyes and looking around say, I recognize the Christ in you. 

That wasn’t hard was it?  How did that make you feel?  I think, I believe, that for a bit anyway, Jesus stopped weeping.

Anger management, is I think, a major factor in reducing violence.  Remember though, that there are some that would manipulate our tendency to violence for their own ends and if anyone tells you to hate, resist. 

When we stop for a second and realize that Christ is in each one of us, how can we hate.  Removing our anger is probably not entirely possible, but reducing our anger to manageable levels is.  It takes practice and it takes commitment.

Christ is the cornerstone upon which our church is built.  Christ is about love, peace, and even righteous anger.  But I am here to tell you if your anger is based on greed, envy, pride, hate, and racism, it is not righteous.  If you want to get into a fight because someone cut in line at the movie theater … it is not righteous.  If you want to fire photon torpedoes at the guy in front of you who is driving to slow, it is not righteous.

John 16:33 “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world, you will have tribulation.  But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Today, when we pass the peace, I would like us to say Shalom to each other.  Mean it, own it, and let the Shalom of Jesus pass from us and through us.  Let the Shalom of Jesus reside in us and radiate from us.