Just over a week ago I took a road trip north to the lake country of Indiana. Our extended family has a lake cottage at Webster in Kosciousko County and Sharon's folks live on Koontz Lake in Marshall County.
On a ferociously hot Thursday afternoon I climbed in the Miata, kept the top up and the AC, and headed north. Just north of Indianapolis I stopped for fast food and put the top down. Turned off the AC. And listened to songs like "In the Still of the Night" and Jerry Butler's "For Your Precious Love."
As the air began to cool and the sun disappeared, I found myself thinking of my brother Eric. We were about two years apart in age. Close as two peas in a pod. Thick as thieves. You get the picture. We'd begin most days by strapping on our pretend six-shooters. (These were the days when Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were cowboy heroes to most young boys across the United States.)
On his 5th birthday Eric was being taken to the Hershey chocolate factory on an outing. The road was wet. The car slid. In those days before seatbelts and airbags his head tapped the dashboard and he was killed.
I heard, as my Dad drove me home from school, that Eric had been killed.
I've never gotten over his loss. The hole in my heart has never entirely healed.
So as I was driving north through Grant County, where he is buried in the Jefferson Township Cemetery, I found myself crying. Not heavily. Not enough to make it difficult to drive. But my eyes were wet. My heart ached. My world, you know, has never felt the same since that accident...since I lost him.
There has been a lot of talk lately about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' "stages of death" (shock, denial, anger, etc.). People are now saying the stages she identifies make it look like some process you go through and then you are finished. You get a little certificate and then go on.
The truth is the work is never done. You never stop missing.
The Bible says the Lord is near to the broken-hearted. I find that a promise that keeps me going down the road...headed north.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Some Things Were Better.
Last week I headed north on Thursday afternoon. The family was gathering at Lake Webster in Kosciousko County, where our extended family has a cottage, and then at Koontz Lake in Marshall County (where Sharon's folks live).
It was a fiercely hot day. I drove with the top up on the Miata and the AC running into I got to Carmel/Fishers. Then, I stopped to pick up some fast food, put the top down, cranked up the stereo to play some favorite 1950's and 1960's "doo wop."
The fields were full of corn and soybeans. The sun dropped low. I drove through small towns whose names weren't all that familiar. You see I have never really done much driving up the east side of Indiana on highways like 13 and 37.
A couple of things happened to me as I drove north. The one thing I want to mention in this blog entry is the awareness that in some ways -some ways- life was better 25 and 50 years ago.
I thought of that as I drove through the small town of Point Isabel. Like many small towns I suspect it had more life before big box stores showed up in the county seat and pulled business out of those small, independent stores. Then, I noticed just north of town an abandoned, three story brick schoolhouse. There was fencing around it to keep troublemakers out. But the building was still standing...the closing evidence of the wave of school consolidations across the midwest back in the 1960's and 1970's. People said children would get a better education if they went to a school of 600 instead of a high school of 150 or 200. People said students would have better curriculum, advanced placement classes, and so on. In many ways that is true. No doubt about it.
But something has been lost. All across the midwest students were going to small schools where the teachers knew them and they knew the teachers. Out of those small schools came business leaders and astronauts and physicians and successful farmers and teachers. They may not have had the opportunity to take advanced placement calculus or beginning Chinese but those small schools, in those small communities, were often places where students were known, given a place to grow up, and allowed to be. You didn't need to be an athletic superstar to play varsity basketball or volleyball the way you need to be to play at a school of 1-2,000. You didn't need to have a extraordinary voice to sing a solo in the high school's annual musical or the Spring concert.
It is ironic, now, to hear people talking about the ideal size of schools. It is ironic to hear educators talking about reducing the size of schools so that students don't get lost and the staff know them well enough to coach them...in life.
So the music on stereo is up loud. Some group whose name I can't recall is singing "Since I Don't Have You." The sun is hiding behind the rows of corn to my left as I head north. The brick schoolhouse is left behind. And I realize that in some ways things were better in the past. Does that mean I have been overcome by nostalgia or am a dinosaur? Or is it possible we've left some good things behind as we keep trying to catch the next "new thing?"
It was a fiercely hot day. I drove with the top up on the Miata and the AC running into I got to Carmel/Fishers. Then, I stopped to pick up some fast food, put the top down, cranked up the stereo to play some favorite 1950's and 1960's "doo wop."
The fields were full of corn and soybeans. The sun dropped low. I drove through small towns whose names weren't all that familiar. You see I have never really done much driving up the east side of Indiana on highways like 13 and 37.
A couple of things happened to me as I drove north. The one thing I want to mention in this blog entry is the awareness that in some ways -some ways- life was better 25 and 50 years ago.
I thought of that as I drove through the small town of Point Isabel. Like many small towns I suspect it had more life before big box stores showed up in the county seat and pulled business out of those small, independent stores. Then, I noticed just north of town an abandoned, three story brick schoolhouse. There was fencing around it to keep troublemakers out. But the building was still standing...the closing evidence of the wave of school consolidations across the midwest back in the 1960's and 1970's. People said children would get a better education if they went to a school of 600 instead of a high school of 150 or 200. People said students would have better curriculum, advanced placement classes, and so on. In many ways that is true. No doubt about it.
But something has been lost. All across the midwest students were going to small schools where the teachers knew them and they knew the teachers. Out of those small schools came business leaders and astronauts and physicians and successful farmers and teachers. They may not have had the opportunity to take advanced placement calculus or beginning Chinese but those small schools, in those small communities, were often places where students were known, given a place to grow up, and allowed to be. You didn't need to be an athletic superstar to play varsity basketball or volleyball the way you need to be to play at a school of 1-2,000. You didn't need to have a extraordinary voice to sing a solo in the high school's annual musical or the Spring concert.
It is ironic, now, to hear people talking about the ideal size of schools. It is ironic to hear educators talking about reducing the size of schools so that students don't get lost and the staff know them well enough to coach them...in life.
So the music on stereo is up loud. Some group whose name I can't recall is singing "Since I Don't Have You." The sun is hiding behind the rows of corn to my left as I head north. The brick schoolhouse is left behind. And I realize that in some ways things were better in the past. Does that mean I have been overcome by nostalgia or am a dinosaur? Or is it possible we've left some good things behind as we keep trying to catch the next "new thing?"
Killing Applause.
Whatever you may think of the opinions of the politicans who stood on the stage at the recent GOP presidential debate, it was stunning to hear the audience break into applause at the mention that more than 234 persons have been executed in the state of Texas during Governor Rick Perry's tenure. An audience of soccer moms and suburban middle class folks (a good many of who, I presume, attend church most weekends) cheered the killing of 234 persons? Really?
Study after study shows serious problems with the way that the death penalty is carried out. Cases of mistaken identity are not that unusual (which led the State of Illinois to halt executions), and there is evidence that some innocent persons have been put to death. Studies show the penalty is applied disproportionately so that minorities are more likely to receive this most extreme of all penalties. Some who should know also say that capital punishment does not serve as a significant deterent to violent crime. Finally, the cost of applying the death penalty -when you factor in legal appeals that often go on for years- can exceed the expense of putting an individual in prison for life with no possibility of parole.
Oh, there is one more thing: it seems impossible to me for a Christian to cheer the death penalty while claiming to follow Jesus Christ. Jesus said we are to turn the other cheek when struck. Jesus told his disciple to put down the sword. And Paul encourages us to overcome evil with good.
Truth is I believe Christians are called to be pro-life. For me that means opposing the death penalty and opposing abortion in most cases. It also means supporting government policies that will enrich the lives of children and encourage a republic where there is life, liberty and the opportunity to pursue happiness.
Long ago Baptist preacher Will Campbell, who has been friend of the Black Panthers and served as a chaplain to the KKK down south, was asked to go on public tv to debate the death penalty. Will listened to a proponent of capital punishment make a lengthy opening statement, and then Will simply said, "I think it's tacky."
I don't know what it says about us that a washed up, well dressed room full of middle class and upper income types cheer the death of 234 individuals. Maybe it says we are afraid. Maybe it says we have somehow lost the connection between our political views and our souls. The next time Christians are tempted to cheer the killing of men and women they might want to open the New Testament, hang out with Jesus, and listen for the voice of the Galilean.
Study after study shows serious problems with the way that the death penalty is carried out. Cases of mistaken identity are not that unusual (which led the State of Illinois to halt executions), and there is evidence that some innocent persons have been put to death. Studies show the penalty is applied disproportionately so that minorities are more likely to receive this most extreme of all penalties. Some who should know also say that capital punishment does not serve as a significant deterent to violent crime. Finally, the cost of applying the death penalty -when you factor in legal appeals that often go on for years- can exceed the expense of putting an individual in prison for life with no possibility of parole.
Oh, there is one more thing: it seems impossible to me for a Christian to cheer the death penalty while claiming to follow Jesus Christ. Jesus said we are to turn the other cheek when struck. Jesus told his disciple to put down the sword. And Paul encourages us to overcome evil with good.
Truth is I believe Christians are called to be pro-life. For me that means opposing the death penalty and opposing abortion in most cases. It also means supporting government policies that will enrich the lives of children and encourage a republic where there is life, liberty and the opportunity to pursue happiness.
Long ago Baptist preacher Will Campbell, who has been friend of the Black Panthers and served as a chaplain to the KKK down south, was asked to go on public tv to debate the death penalty. Will listened to a proponent of capital punishment make a lengthy opening statement, and then Will simply said, "I think it's tacky."
I don't know what it says about us that a washed up, well dressed room full of middle class and upper income types cheer the death of 234 individuals. Maybe it says we are afraid. Maybe it says we have somehow lost the connection between our political views and our souls. The next time Christians are tempted to cheer the killing of men and women they might want to open the New Testament, hang out with Jesus, and listen for the voice of the Galilean.
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