Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

A Thankful Life  November 26, 2024

In 1955, he had a wife, son 6, daughter 5 and a blossoming business career in his insurance agency. He was on a second honeymoon at Sea Island, Georgia, enjoying the sun, sand, and sustenance. One morning in the shower his legs gave out from under him; he couldn’t stand up. A doctor told him he had polio and needed to get home right away. Commercial airlines were out of the question, but a private plane pilot was willing to take the risk of the infectious disease. During the flight, the man considered jumping out the door of the plane in order to skip all the pain and uncertainty that accompanied his dreaded disease.

Polio affects different people in very different ways. The man learned his polio was not fatal, but it was crippling; there was a good chance he would never walk again. The man didn’t give up. Day after day he went through the hard work of therapy as he tried to make his polio-ravaged muscles work. After almost a year, the man was able to walk home. Ten months after therapy, he and his wife had a third child who was 8 and 7 years younger than his siblings; I was that child.

I never knew my father before he had polio; I believe he lived a thankful life before polio, but I certainly know he did afterwards. My father taught me about being thankful and appreciative for all that God gives us in this world. He taught me that life itself is a gift, a gift to be treasured, appreciated, and shared with others — a gift to be responded to by serving the one who gave you your life, and who gives you your salvation from violence, fear, and death. My father’s motto was from Athens, Greece: “Leave your city better than you found it.” Through his civic leadership and charitable work, he did just that. I don’t know how much my father’s illness affected his outlook but I do know the joy he had in living his life fully until he was 92.

Who inspired you to live a thankful life? Where do you find the joy in loving, giving, and being thankful? How do you respond to the challenges and gifts you’ve been given by living your life fully?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Bookends 110824

One bookend of my ministry is Frederick Buechner. In seminary I read Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who. After retirement, when I was discerning becoming a writer I was led to “Writing for your Life” with Brian Allain. This online community still brings together incredible spiritual writers and publishers as a community of help to authors who often feel isolated. During Covid, a week-long, in-person conference I wouldn’t afford, was available on Zoom; I took 4.

Brian had an MBA from Wharton school of business. He worked in technology and high tech. He was contacted by Frederick Buechner’s family to make his writings and insights available online. His teamwork in technology introduced him to this spiritual writer. In retirement, he used his teamwork and business skills to help other spiritual writers. The reason you can receive a daily quote from frederickbuechner.com is because of Brian’s work. He brought spiritual writers together to write essays in “How To Heal Our Divides” and the sequel. 

My first Buechner quote from that first book I read continues to get quoted most holy weeks:

Pilate told the people that they could choose to spare the life of either a murderer named Barabbas or Jesus of Nazareth, and they chose Barabbas. Given the same choice, Jesus, of course, would have chosen to spare Barabbas too.

To understand the reason in each case would be to understand much of what the New Testament means by saying that Jesus is the Savior, and much of what it means too by saying that, by and large, people are in bad need of being saved. (Mark 15:6-15) ~originally published in “Peculiar Treasures” and later in “Beyond Words”.

Who are the spiritual writers in your life? Who has inspired you to discover and do “what is yours to do”? What is one bookend on your life to this point in your journey?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Tommy 102924

The first opera that spoke to me was “Tommy” by the Who. The wonderful words and moving music were in my native language of rock. In grade 7, after 6 nights of basement-blasting four sides of the LP, I’d spend 1 day in church and youth group. I noticed the same themes. Tommy, a “deaf, dumb, and blind boy”, seeking healing through the connection of “see me, hear me, touch me, feel me.” Jesus, healing the blind, deaf, and lame to open their eyes to see, unstop their ears to hear, get up and walk to follow and do something. Deaf/dumb/blind — blind/deaf/lame were drummed into my head by Keith Moon and the Rev. Dr. Bill Arnold.

Two sleeps ago, Michelle Obama helped me, a man, see, hear, touch, and feel the silent shamed struggles that all women go through. She opened her mouth to open eyes and ears to see and hear the cries of women who are suffering and dying today and whose healthcare is threatened by the future. She invited those with lame excuses to get up and do something. It’s not too late to spend the time of one quarter of a football game watching her full speech on YouTube.

If you have two football games of time, YouTube the same night’s radical rally at Madison Square Garden. To save time, the nine-minute 2017 documentary “A Night at the Garden” will be a revelation of the same words, themes, and location on Feb. 20, 1939. I learned from “Tommy” that power corrupts morality long before I learned it from Lord Acton.

A white christian nationalist called the Vice-President of the United States of America the anti-christ without any sense of earned respect or the two letters of John in the Bible. Another revealed how he sees all women: prostitutes supported by pimps. Tucker revealed radical racism without a border of decency. A deaf, dumb, and blind boy was too dumb to stay mute when he insulted 6 million American citizens from and in Puerto Rico days before an election that might be decided by a few thousand votes in a few states. A decade of indecency created this; when did this become ok?

The deception that he didn’t say it tries to blind us to the fact that the man who created, fomented, and sent this rhetoric into our land is same one who created, fomented, and sent an armed mob to violently overthrow our republic. The black maid Aibelene says to Miss Hilly in “The Help”: “Ain’t you tired, Miss Hilly? All you do is scare and lie to try and get what you want. You a Godless woman. Ain’t you tired, Miss Hilly?”

Two sleeps ago, when a squirrel was darting across the road back and forth as our car neared, my wife yelled, “Choose a side before you get run over!” Do you think it helped?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

Abortion Silence Oct 28, 2024

My public church sermons center on the Bible. Since the Bible is silent on abortion, so was I. My leading inquisitive youth groups included “God’s gift of sexuality” materials. Our safe sharing focused more on committed relationships (plus STD and pregnancy prevention) than abortion; however, any written submission to the “question box” was discussed. In private counseling I walked with christian women through problem pregnancies. My questions helped them make their best choices because I trust women to do what is right. These writings have been called “Reflections and Questions” because in my experience, good questions help people discover the best answers for their lives within them.

When I was an associate pastor, I befriended a female associate rabbi. We had most of the Bible (and issues playing second fiddle) in common. She asked me, “Do you know a reason rabbis don’t protest women’s health clinics?” I said, “I guess rabbis ask questions rather than scream shameful statements.” She said, “Nice try. It’s because we study Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures).” I asked, “What do you read there?” She taught me……

In the second story of creation, God forms the “earthling” out of the “earth” (Hebrew: Adam/man out of Adamah/ground). Genesis 2:7 — then “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being.” Life begins with the breath of life and ends when God’s breath leaves. In fact the name for God, Yah-weh (I am who I am), sounds like breathing. Yahweh — we breathe God’s name as long as we live. The possibility for life may begin at conception through gestation, but God tells us when life itself begins — the first breath of life.  

She then filled my silent reflection with more mundane Torah… Exodus 21:22-24 “When men who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and the woman is not harmed, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If the woman dies, then you shall give life for life.” Back when patriarchy viewed wives and children as property, causing a miscarriage was a monetary fine for the loss of a future possible child (not murder); the death of a woman was punished as taking a life; other harm to the woman was punished by equivalent recompense. The difference makes all the difference.

If you live in Missouri how will you decide on Amendment 3 to our state constitution that restores the reproductive rights an old law removed? How much do you trust women and physicians to make good decisions? How much do you trust outsiders seeking the power to control you? When have you experienced good intentions result in bad consequences?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

Dietrich Bonhoeffer  Oct 21 2024

My study of German language & history in college and my study of christianity in seminary came together in one hero: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. At the age of 27, January 1933, two days after Hitler was installed as Chancellor, pastor and teacher Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he warned Germany against “slipping into an idolatrous cult of the Führer (leader), who could very well turn out to be Verführer (misleader, seducer)” before his broadcast was cut off. 

I was transformed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 1937 seminal book “The Cost of Discipleship” (Nachfolge – following) which contains: “cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without taking the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” 

The “German Evangelical Church” (Deutsche Evangelische Kirche) revealed just how costly cheap grace can be. As they became the German Christian movement, the evangelical church followed Hitler’s demand (with the threat of violence) that Nazi doctrine be preached by all 18,000 pastors to unify the 45 million protestants in Germany — religion supporting fascism.

Bonhoeffer and others resisted Hitler’s control of the church with their “Confessing Church Movement.” In 1934 the Barmen Declaration (written by theologian Karl Barth) said that Christ is the Head of the Church, not the Führer (leader). The Barmen Declaration remains in our presbyterian church’s “Book of Confessions” in case that question ever came up again. 20% of church leaders took the risk of following Jesus. God only knows why 80% chose Hitler as their Führer (leader) instead of Yahweh. Popular rarely equals righteous.

After leading underground seminaries (forbidden to speak in public), on the 10th anniversary of his radio address about a dictator on day one, he was imprisoned as an enemy from within. Four weeks before Germany’s surrender, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in Flossenbürg Concentration Camp on April 9, 1945. His last book, “Letters and Papers from Prison” was published seven years later to inspire future generations.

If you’d like to learn more, Home Brewed Christianity is in the midst of an excellent online course and podcast called “The Rise of Bonhoeffer”. There’s a new movie about him coming soon. What bells of the past do you hear ringing today? What risks are you taking with your secret ballot?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 1 Comment

Delusions 101424

During my seminary class in pastoral care the professor said, “My first assignment in Clinical Pastoral Education at a mental hospital was to talk the patients out of their delusions. All of us failed that assignment; some of us took longer to give up. If you’re under the delusion that a rational argument will sway a delusional person, then I can give you the same assignment.”  I’m reflecting on that lesson on this 17th anniversary of my being committed to Mid-MO mental hospital after my first (and only) Bi-Polar One manic psychotic break with reality. 

On this day in 2007, when I called my sister to inform her that I was in charge of resetting the economy like the Jubilee Year that Jesus proclaimed, fifty years of being my sister and thirty years of being a psychologist came together in tears. After I hung up, she called my wife to inform her I was manic and nothing could talk me down. She told her to shelter our son safely in another home, to have someone with me at all times so I didn’t disappear, and to pray that I would do something bad enough to get committed for treatment, but not bad enough that I ruined the rest of my life. That was a very fine line to walk, but that prayer was answered fully.

Medication treated my delusions, counseling helped me deal with stressful antagonists, spiritual direction taught me practices for grieving, and nine months of disability let me rest to return to ministry in my old church as a new pastor. I can only imagine the damage I might have done if I had enablers who gave me power as they tried to say my delusions were real. I am glad for those who challenged my lies, and for our rule of law that allowed a judge who was and is my friend to sign my committal papers to get me the help I needed to be who I am today.

What is your experience with a person struggling with mental illness and seeking mental health? Describe a time you struggled to rationally talk another person out of their delusions? Who has helped you grow into a better person?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Kris Kristofferson 09302024

On my 15th birthday, 2/2/72, my older brother Baylor gave me the album “The Silver Tongued Devil and I” by Kris Kristofferson. He said words matter and these words are creatively and carefully chosen. Oh….. and…… “If you want to know me,” Baylor said, “I’m ‘The Pilgrim Chapter 33’” – from the rockin’ of the cradle to the rollin’ of the hearse the going up was worth the coming down. Two years later I was on the front row to hear Kris and Rita sing “Jesus Was a Capricorn” and “Why me Lord?” During the 3rd of six concerts I attended I helped Kris sing some words he was too drunk to get out by himself; future decades were better.

The song that celebrates what’s good about humanity is “Here Comes that Rainbow Again”. Someone on YouTube put stills from “The Grapes of Wrath” to Kristofferson’s words and music — it’s worth your while to watch. (search YouTube – Kris Kristofferson – Here comes that rainbow again (1982))

So many of his songs form the album of my life, but my vocation comes from “To Beat the Devil” (on his “Me and Bobby McGee” album) — you see, the devil haunts a hungry man; if you don’t wanna join him; you gotta beat him. I ain’t sayin’ I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothin’; then I stole his song. And you still can hear me singing to the people who don’t listen to the things that I am sayin’ prayin’ someone’s gonna hear. And I guess I’ll die explaining how the things that they complain about are things they could be changing, hoping someone’s gonna care. I was born a lonely singer and I’m bound to die the same, but I’ve gotta feed the hunger in my soul. And if I never have a nickel, I won’t ever die ashamed, ’cause I don’t believe that no one wants to know.

What movie, poem, album, concert, or song comes to your mind remembering Kris Kristofferson? How do words and music challenge you and inspire you in your life?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Healthy Congregations 092424

For several decades I’ve been trained in and I’ve been a consultant for “Healthy Congregations”. I’ve helped churches apply insights from Murray Bowen’s and Rabbi Ed Friedman’s family systems theory to open their eyes to how a community system functions. The leader’s response to anxious situations determines whether the system promotes health or destructive chaos. I’ve seen various churches “from both sides now” based on the leader’s style.

Today I received a bookmark from Peter L. Steinke’s healthycongregations.com to remind me of the seven responses that promote health in anxious situations. To promote health……

  1. Focus on managing self, not others
  2. Focus on strength, not weakness
  3. Focus on challenge, not comfort
  4. Focus on integrity, not unity
  5. Focus on process, not content
  6. Focus on system, not symptom
  7. Focus on direction, not condition

You may have questions about or want clarification for some of these brief reminders (my mantras). I’d be happy to share insights on the importance of each one, along with stories where each focus promoted health, or where each “not” allowed cancers to spread like a pandemic in a church. 

If you’ve been in any flavor of a religious community, where have you seen the level of maturity of the leader lower the level of anxiety in that system? How might you apply the seven foci of an effective leader in choosing the person you want to lead your community, your state, or your nation? 

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Miracles 091324

After my post “With God on Our Side” on Sept. 4, I’ve been asked if saying “God saved Trump from assassination” breaks the 3rd commandment – You shall not use God’s name in vain. Was it a miracle? I don’t know. I’m glad he wasn’t another casualty of our children whose parents arm better than combat soldiers. Trump did turn to lie about a misleading graphic as the shot only hit his ear — did it help him listen? I don’t know.

I do know this from comforting those who grieve. God doesn’t stop a bullet, grab the wheel from an impaired driver, or pull the innocent off a cross. God allows our choices and God allows us to suffer the consequences of our choices. God grieves with us even when we take no responsibility for our deeds. 

I do know this from personal experience. When God acts in my life, I see a transformation; I see a change, an improvement that lasts more than a few hours. We all see hope, joy, love, peace, resurrection, compassion, justice, empathy whenever God acts in our world and lives..

I do know this from scripture. God tells Elijah: Don’t look for me in enormous earthquakes or violent winds, or consuming fires. I’m not there. Listen for me in the silence, the still small voice. (1 Kings 19).

Maybe, maybe God’s action was in the small act of our nation’s president Biden getting Covid. When Covid forced him to stop “running” and listen to the still small voice of God and advisors to focus on the remainder of his presidency and pass the mantle to Kamala Harris, was that a miracle? I don’t know. But I wonder. Do you see any signs of transformation, resurrection, hope, joy, unity, empathy, and love? That’s usually a good sign God’s involved.

When have you been transformed by God acting through your suffering beyond your control? What signs do you look for to see God at work in the world? When do you listen in silence to the still small voice of God?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

With God On Our Side 090424

My deepest theological roots were watered by the poetry of Bob Dylan. As a youth I spent hours each day in the presence of two-sided LPs by BD, JB, K3, AG, S&G, and PPM. Meanwhile, each unrhythmic Sunday sermon was sort of listened to one time only. Baez’s rendition of Dylan’s song “With God On Our Side” inspired a lifetime of resisting religious justification for the conquest of violent victories. “If God were on our side, he’d stop the next war.”

As I matured, I learned that the third commandment was not about childish cussing. Using the Lord’s name in a “wrongful way” (or in vain) was more about misrepresenting God. Thou shalt not use God to justify actions that actually go against God’s desire for us. Thou shalt not say God is on our side and against them — when we proclaim “there is no them”. Thou shalt not use God’s name to justify violence, oppression, racism, sexism, pyramids over tables, to name a few.

Later still I was taught that the worst wars and most violent acts in human history have been done in the name of God — and the times aren’t changing today. The song “With God On Our Side” revealed the importance of learning lessons from history instead of ignoring or distorting history; after all, every LP has 2 sides. How many times can a preacher proclaim the all-powerful prefers “his” politician? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

Which song lyrics have influenced your beliefs and impacted your life? What songs inspire you,, lift you up, and bring you joy? Which genre of music spoke to each age and stage of your life?