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Considering Matthew Shephard

We went to the University of Missouri choral union and chamber orchestra’s performance of “Considering Matthew Shephard” last night. Incredible music, miraculously performed, took us to a shared experience of being united with sighs too deep for words. You can listen to an original 2016 recording, or watch a PBS special about this opus by Craig Hella Johnson.

25 years ago, Tuesday October 6, 2018, between the Snowy and Laramie Ranges of Wyoming, Matthew Shephard was tied to split-rail fence, beaten severely and left to die in the elements because he was gay. 18 hours later a fellow student riding his bike found him; he thought it was a scarecrow.  Matt remained in a coma on life support for six days until he died. 8 years later, Johnson’s words and music would ask: When a hate crime is committed, what does it mean to be a victim, a parent, a community member, a perpetrator? How do we learn to find hope in hopeless situations?

In 2019, when I listened to Matt’s parents Judy and Dennis speak in profound ways, I knew I could no longer keep silent.  For over a decade of quiet conversations with pastors and Bible scholars, I had worked with a group called “Freedom to Serve” seeking ordination of LGTBQ persons called to ministry in the church. Now this act of violence and hate, along with Fred Phelps saying he got what he deserved, gave voice to my compassion, even if it meant upsetting misguided opinions of people I loved.

If I had to choose one word to describe the peasant Jewish rabbi Jesus, it would be “compassion” — to suffer with — to acknowledge another human’s suffering and feel motivated to alleviate it. Jesus taught his followers: “be compassionate, as your Father in heaven is compassionate.” If someone claims to follow Jesus and has no compassion for the suffering of others, I question the road they’ve taken. 

Words and music stirred up my compassion last night. I needed it. Compassion fatigue is rampant. I am exhausted by a rewarded compassionless spewer of deception, hate, and division. The continued suffering of Israelis and residents of Gaza and Ukraine deplete me. Sarcasm and silence reveal signs of burnout. From the God of Abel who continues to hear my brother’s and sister’s voices crying out from the ground for justice, I seek the energy to speak.

What events in your life gave voice to your silence? How is compassion fatigue affecting you today? What do you feel called to do about it?

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Restoration

My wife, Nancy, grew up in the Macon (Missouri) Presbyterian Church. This Sunday they are celebrating the restoration of their Tiffany Glass stained glass window of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well from John 4. Using a variety of glass techniques, Louis Comfort Tiffany (the son of the famed Tiffany jeweler) created incredible works of art from 1878 to 1933.

At just the right time, when the church was built 120 years ago, they installed this Tiffany Glass window. Over time, the window deteriorated and the church is working to raise $70,000 to restore it. For such a time as this, I was called to serve as the part-time pastor just in time to celebrate the return of the woman at the well and the second coming of Jesus in art. You can join the celebration Sunday at 2 pm.

The restoration of this window coincides with my retirement restoration to pastoral ministry — serving one church and a community of people I am growing to love. Nancy is being restored to the home of her first third of life. Once again, John’s woman at the well — the other gender, immigrant outsider, uncertain character, wrong religion — the longest most meaningful theological dialogue with the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth — is the woman who births restoration.

What places in your life are being restored? How has timing affected great moments in your life? Among those you least expected, who is calling you home? 

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Split Second

We’ve just returned from visiting the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If we visited it 1.5 billion years ago, we’d cross flat land and a river. If we visited a thousand years from now, we’d see one yard cut larger than today. I guess we went at just the right time – “be here now”.

Staring five miles across to the south rim and one mile down to the Colorado River continuing creation, you can see layers of history in diversified art. Since our little planet was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, we were seeing over one fourth of earth time.

Brian McLaren writes in his book “Do I Stay Christian?” – “the universe isn’t in a hurry by human standards. It has been unfolding and expanding, diversifying and beautifying in its current form for 13.7 billion years. If we compressed the universe’s whole existence into one year, our planet doesn’t even form until September 11. The first forms of life don’t emerge on Earth until around September 30, and no multi-cellular organisms evolve until December 14. The dinosaurs rule the earth from December 27 to 30, and the first humans don’t appear until December 31 at 11:39 p.m. Jesus comes on the scene at 11:59:56, which means that all of Christianity has existed for a mere four seconds. Four seconds!”

We are small infants who need this creation and each other to survive. We have the ability to destroy our species all by ourselves. We have the ability to be partners with the creator and all other creatures to save it. In the split second we have to decide, what will we do? Where are you called by a creator to do love for this creation and all creatures in it?

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Good Enough

I’m always looking for a good daily devotional. Allow me to share with you one that was shared with me. “Good Enough: 40ish devotionals for a life of imperfection”, written by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie last year. 

I figure, when I underline half the preface the non-Roman numeral pages must be meaning-full, too. 

Pg xi – Truths to start loving more:

  • We are made for interdependence.
  • We are fragile… and so is everyone else. But we can learn to live beautifully inside our limited bodies.
  • Yes, our stupid, imperfect, ordinary lives can be holy.
  • Life will break your heart, and there’s nothing wrong with you if you know that.
  • Sometimes joy and laughter and absurdity are the exact medicine we need, but also we need actual medicine. We love actual medicine, too.

Pg xv – A Blessing for a Joyfully Mediocre Journey

  • Blessed are you when you realize there is not enough – time, money, resources.
  • Blessed are you who are tired of pretending that raw effort is the secret to perfection. It’s not. And you know that now.
  • Blessed are you who need a gentle reminder that even now, even today, God is here, and somehow that is good enough.
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Re-Entry

During my retirement from full time ministry (but not from discipleship), I was a hospice chaplain, I served two churches I love as a bridge associate pastor and a bridge pastor, and I would drive and “preach and run” at various churches on various Sundays.

Last Spring I went through the certification process of being a substitute teacher. I always loved my years in youth ministry (relive my younger days?) and I wanted to support public school educators who face enormous unwarranted pressures.

I read in a devotional that “if you watch the clock for the end of the day, you may not be living your passion”. It dawned on me that I had been watching the clock for the end of EACH HOUR at school! I loved the kids, the staff I worked with, and the incredible ways our schools plan and function, but I missed what is mine to do.

I missed growing in faith with a community. As wisdom reveals: “Spiritual growth is solitary work that cannot be done alone.” While school was out for summer, the Macon Presbyterian Church (my wife’s home/childhood church and the closest “out of town church” to where we live) called me as their part-time pastor. I’m still “retired and not required” but we have a community with whom to serve, teach, and grow in love of God and love of people. This week opens the next adventure of partnership with God and others to reconcile the world.

Now a fifth person told me they missed these reflections and questions. I had thought as long as five people listen, I’ll practice writing some more…. so….

When have you realized that something you were doing was not “yours to do”? What led to that insight? Where have you found that place in your life where “what the world needs and what you love come together”? (@ Frederick Buechner) What is your community of service, support, challenge, change, love?

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Whopper War

A seminary summer in Clinical Pastoral Education was at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta. In three months, I encountered more situations than in three years of ministry. My peers and I received supervised reflection on our pastoral care that helped us mature three years in three months.

One encounter was not with a patient but with another student chaplain from an evangelical college. Here’s the verbatim between me (M) and the other chaplain (OC).

M: I just had a Burger King Whopper for lunch and I’m a happy man.

OC: Wait until you have a Hardee’s burger; you’ll change your mind.

M: I’ve had a Hardee’s burger; I just prefer a whopper.

OC: Oh you couldn’t; Hardees makes the best burgers, period. Maybe they didn’t cook it right that day.

M: Actually I’ve had several Hardee’s burgers. It’s not that I don’t like their burgers; it’s that I like a whopper more.

OC: I don’t believe you. If you really had a Hardee’s burger, you’d know they’re the best. They’re the only way to go.

M: (Long pause) I’m confused.  Are you calling me a liar? Are you saying I don’t have your permission to have my own taste? Or are your refusing to acknowledge that it’s possible I could prefer something you don’t? “Have it your way.”

Actually I didn’t say “have it your way” then, but I couldn’t resist the irony now.

A few days later, that guy visited a bed-fast patient — talk about a captive audience. He tried every manipulation he had to get the man “saved” — with his limited definition of what “saved” meant to him. When he was questioned in “group” if that was ethical for a chaplain, he said: “If I don’t save them; they’ll go to hell.” That’s a lot of responsibility — to be in charge of who goes to hell and Hardee’s.

A week later he quit the student chaplain program and entered Pharmacy School. I hope and believe God has used his gift of exactly seeing things one way to save lives as a pharmacist. 

18 years later, Burger King began using the ad line “if you ask us, it just tastes better.” No royalties came my way.

Where do you see signs of only seeing things “my one way” in the media, politics or religion? How do you respond to the growth of white Christian nationalism in our midst? How do you receive different perspectives from other people?

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How Did You Meet?

I love to hear stories about how people met a significant person in their lives. Today I’ll share mine.

A few months after moving to the church I’d serve for 24 years, I was asked by Susan and John to officiate their wedding. I met with them for several sessions of pre-marital counseling — mostly my questions about their expectations on a variety of relationship and family systems topics. 

At their outdoor wedding rehearsal I met the pianist, Nancy, and discussed the wedding music. She had written a piece in high school, and Susan, her best friend from first grade, made her promise to play it when she got married. Almost 20 years later she was going to fulfill that promise by playing her composition for her best friend’s wedding the next day.

At the rehearsal dinner, Nancy shared that she was divorced from a man she’d helped put through seminary before he decided he didn’t want to be a minister or her husband. I didn’t share that I was privately separated from my wife. After our divorce a few months later, I asked Nancy to go see the musical “Ain’t Misbehavin’” at our auditorium. 

I gave Nancy my “Letterman Top Ten” reasons why we shouldn’t date. While she was not a member of my church, her sister and brother-in-law were church leaders and their daughters were the center of our youth group. Susan was her brother-in-law’s sister, so they are aunts to the same two girls. I didn’t want to mess up my friendships with all her family in our church if our relationship didn’t work out. We ignored the top ten list; it worked out.

Today is our 30th wedding anniversary. We came forward during Sunday worship to exchange our vows and rings. The date was chosen as the Sunday before a bi-state youth event I was leading; it happened to be Valentine’s Day.

For the past thirty years, I’ve had my answer to the question: How did you two meet? I simply say: “We met the night before I married her best friend”…. then wait for a response.

What are some stories you have about how you met significant people in your life?  How did your past set the stage for and prepare you for those meaningful relationships?

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The All-American Smile

I was sixteen when I saw the movie “The Way We Were”. One scene has stayed with me for 50 years. Hubbell Gardiner’s college professor praises and reads his essay to the class. It was entitled “The All-American Smile.” Maybe the scene was the beginning of a life-long dream to have anyone appreciate my writing in school, church, or online.

The words that the screenwriter set in the late 1930’s are what have stayed with me for five decades. “In a way, he was like the country he lived in. Everything came too easily to him, but at least he knew it.” Sitting in the dark theater beside my date, I knew that everything came too easily to me. I couldn’t take credit for the “pre-natal brilliance” of choosing my family of origin. I couldn’t change my birthright. So that night I vowed to remain aware of it.

When I read memoirs sharing personal struggles about how to overcome this, or how to overcome that, I think that my memoir title would be: “How to Overcome an Easy Life.” I’ve sought ways to be aware of, grateful for, and responsive to what I’ve received in life. My ministry has given me the privilege of compassionately walking beside individuals through their suffering, finding meaning in the struggles I have, and seeking inclusion, liberty, and justice for all.

Today on the Web I discovered I’d remembered the quote verbatim, but I also learned the next line: “About once a month he worried that he was a fraud. But then most everyone he knew was more fraudulent.” Guess I should have kept paying attention that first night.

What have you received from others in your life? What struggles do you continue to face today? What has come too easily to you? How do you practice an awareness of gratitude?

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Safe Space

During a decade directing church camps for youth in disequilibrium we sought to provide safe spaces. Jr & Sr High youth were going through seismic shifts emotionally, physically, relationally, and spiritually. At church camp, youth and adults could take a week to try on new ways of being in the world without the pre-conceived notions of who they were at home, school, or church; we became more than any of us had been before.

Three sacred spaces stick with me today. 

The challenge course game field was where we played. The “New Games” rules were: play hard, play fair, nobody hurt, everybody win. Amidst uncharted challenges, inclusive games, and lots of laughter, we built a community out of seventy strangers, rivals, and a few former outcasts.

The quiet tree was on the trail to our campfire where each cabin prepared nightly worship. The quiet tree was where you stopped talking as you became fully present to a grace filled presence. In that space, I’d finally decide how to interpret and share a meaning of an event of the day. The best teaching moments came directly from our experience.

The steps that led down to the cabins provided a third sacred space. Any camper could talk to me on the steps. We were safely in the open and everyone respected the privacy of a step conversation. Steps along the journey of family, friends, faith, sexuality, spirituality, and stances were explored.

Where are your safe spaces along your journey? 

How are you challenged to evolve? 

When do you play and laugh? 

When does silence reveal meaning to experience? 

Whom do you trust to fully listen to you?

Where do you find community for your disequilibrium?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Apart From into A Part Of

During my childhood Tuesdays “our” maid, Pauline, shined our home and brightened my life. Many weeks mom would trade days with Pauline’s Friday employer to prepare for crowded cocktail carousals. I remember Pauline’s laughter, her chess pie, her discipline, her love, and her riding the bus to the west end of Louisville. Like Psalm 103: “as far as the east is from the west.”

I remember Pauline crying only once. The second Tuesday of April I was home from fifth grade to watch a long funeral procession on our colored TV. I recalled being home from first grade on the fourth Monday of November to watch another funeral on our black and white. Pauline watched the funeral with us, soaking her white apron with her tears. I was baptized into her grief as she invited me in by hugging and holding me.

Twenty years later, the thickest book on my shelf was “A Testament of Hope – The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.” Unlike so many books around it, I actually read this one — moved by his poetic, prophetic preaching. That year, during our annual meeting, the fourth week of April 1988, I was given the Mexico, Missouri “NAACP Drum Major for Justice Award”. 

I was astounded. I had attempted to answer Dr. King’s call, but I hadn’t accomplished much. And why an award from the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP? I asked the leader, “Why me? I’m not a C in the NAACP!” She said, “Honey, we’re ALL colored by God — there’s just a variety in the pigmentation.” I realized this award was not one more benefit of my privileged life. I was not apart from others; I was a part of a community sharing a vision of skin tone bringing no power, stigma, fear, or hierarchy. I accepted the appreciation for being part of a kin-dom where everyone equally strives side by side for the betterment of all.

Eleven years ago tonight I was invited to speak when our town’s community gathered at 2nd Baptist Church to remember, celebrate, and be inspired by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I invite you to discern if those words have something to say today.

What is your experience of moving apart from into being a part of whatever “the other” is in your life?

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