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Jury Duty May 31, 2024

During seminary I was summoned for jury duty. Without question, I was immediately scratched by one side. I asked a friend the rejected playground question of my childhood: “Why wasn’t I picked? What’s wrong with me?” My friend said, “Probably your seminary address; lawyers figure ministers are strong-willed thinkers. They want to be able to sway a juror to see things their way.”

I lived under that baseless theory for thirty years until I was summoned with 60 people for jury duty. Even though I made sure I proclaimed my vocation was ministry, I still was one of “the chosen” — though I wasn’t fully convinced I wanted to be.

The trial wasn’t a white-collar crime; it concerned violence. Various body-camera views from officers called to the scene were edited and shown. One victim testified the violence wasn’t that bad; her son was really a good boy. The accused man took the stand to have his say.

We the jury seemed to spend more time in the break room while the lawyers and judge met, than we did in the courtroom. I almost finished the book I had been invited to bring in the summons letter.

The judge gave us written instructions about options the law gave for various degrees of guilt or innocence. I was elected jury foreperson because I had a career of running meetings where every side was heard. That was the first I learned how the other jurors  reacted to what they heard. After clearing up three questions, we became unanimous in deciding the severity of the crime. We ordinary people in an alien environment made a decision that led a judge to sentence a man. I was disturbed (and made a little afraid) by the man’s eyes looking to blame everyone in that room (except himself).

I received a gift I wish more jurors could receive — confirmation that dispelled uncertainty. In the parking lot, an observer told two of us we had made the right decision. When we were out, the defense made sure the body-cam footage was highly edited so we didn’t hear officers mentioning previous encounters. Other evidence was suppressed as too prejudicial. She said, “If you research his past cases and sentences, you’d learn this wasn’t his first time, and I hope you helped make it his last. Thank you for your service.” I was thanked for playing a part in a system of justice that worked.

What roles have you played in our system of justice? When you say the Pledge of Allegiance — with “liberty and justice for all” — who does the “all” include? What does the promise of “liberty and justice for all” mean to you?

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My Gang  May 24, 2024

My high school church youth group was my gang. Our initiation was professing shared beliefs. When I felt out of place elsewhere, I was welcomed and supported by them. I only dated the girls in the gang. I could be their leader when I felt like a nobody elsewhere. Our perspectives weren’t limited by poverty; we were made myopic by our neighborhood of white wealth. We went door to door, not with threats, but with invitations to help us collect magazines and newspapers for Louisville’s new recycling center; we sought to preserve God’s creation. We invaded our streets by cleaning up dozens of homes destroyed by the 1974 tornado. Our “West Side Story” was “Godspell” where I was to perform the role of Jesus.

Our church allowed our group to talk about almost anything. We asked deep questions with complex answers as we began to evolve beyond a childish christian faith. We ate, laughed, traveled, and played together. We role-played in situation games to learn about ourselves, others, and life. We couldn’t come to a moral consensus when one older brother fought in Viet Nam, and one older brother objected; we still supported each other.

Maybe my experience helps me understand the pressure adult gangs feel to normalize white christian nationalism in their religious or political groups. I have to confess that in my youth group I doubt I would have put truth over tribe, because of my stronger desire to be liked and accepted. My explanation cannot be an excuse.

How have you felt accepted by a religious, social, or political community? Where was your vision limited by your gang? When have you felt pressured to put tribe over truth and how have you responded?

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Sharing Life May 22, 2024

This reflections and questions journey paused for a journey with my sisters (one by birth, one by marriage). They shared a stranger’s home, sights, meals, and memories with Nancy and me.

The night our mother would have been 99 we had dinner beside her chair that was emptied 26 years ago. We four allowed her spirit to fill the space with stories, sayings, teachings, laughter, and tears. Some stories needed only the first sentence by one to be completed by another. Since mom was an only child, we orphans are the ones who keep her living alive.

I have one person in the universe who shares with me a lifetime of memories, loves, trials, joys, and griefs, but in different ways than I do. Our mother’s mother experienced the death of her husband and her brother within months of each other. She quipped, “Now the only two people in the world who think I’m perfect are gone.”

Like my mother, our son is an only child. How will he find ways to keep the fires burning? I have been told and I truly believe that people can be alone without being lonely. That is not my experience, however. I am thankful for a lifetime of sharing support with the mutual admiration society that is my sister and me. 

Who is the person who has shared your life with you the longest? How do you celebrate that relationship? Where do you demonstrate your gratitude? 

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“Are There Any Women Here?”  May 8, 2024

Seminary was an inspirational practice of one small society of shared study, service, and support seeking to live into the good news that Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed as the empire of God. Most of our twenty-something class were twenty-something ourselves. One third of our class were women, which set a new record. 

Presbyterians began ordaining women as ruling elders in 1930. As we entered seminary in 1979 Presbyterians had been ordaining women as teaching elders (ministers) for 23 years (all my life) — as short or long as the distance to “9/11” from today. Most churches were supporting my classmates with the high cost of seminary (and the personal cost of their beloved calling). 

Yet, the women had stories of stumbling blocks placed in their path of following the way of Jesus. Some men justified their prejudice with biased biblical babel, reciting a few verses they used to keep women (and God) from having a choice. The struggle meant that the most gifted and talented in my class were the ones who had persevered through the obstacles. 

When we experienced together a new movie called “Life of Brian” and the scene that asked of the bearded stoners “Are there any women here?”, we laughed until we cried. Four years later, I cried as we compared job interview stories. While churches actually asked me about my calling, my gifts for ministry, what I loved about serving God, my hopes and dreams for the church…..  some of my friends were actually asked, “What do you wear under your robe?”, “Can you lock up the church at night?”, “Do you have a preacher voice?”

When have you been made to feel “less than” another person? What has diminished your freedom to choose? How has overcoming obstacles strengthened your abilities? 

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My First Best Man  May 6, 2024

When I finished four years of Emory college in Atlanta, I started four years of seminary studies at Union in Richmond, I had been dating a high-class underclass-woman for a year. After two years of long-distance romance, she graduated and we planned our wedding to be in the seminary chapel.

I called Jeff to invite him to be my best man and see if he could schedule our wedding date around his world-traveling business trips. He asked, “Are you sure you want me to be your best man?” Puzzled, I said, “Of course I want you. You’re my best friend!”  “No Wallis, do you want a gay man standing beside you at your seminary chapel wedding? Would that be allowed?” 

I quickly responded, “I’m not asking you because you’re gay. I’m asking you because you’re you. You’re my best man because of what you’ve done to become my best friend.”

In the silence before he said “I will” stand beside you when you promise “I will”, I did not ask the question I could have — but wondered if I should have. I did not ask, “How did the church you loved and brought me back to harm you so?” Instead, I silently grieved my friend’s pain.

Soon enough though, I got back to planning my first wedding. I got back to seminary studies to learn how to follow and serve my Lord Jesus as an unfinished person in an unfinished church. I got back to becoming the pastor God called me to try to be.

How have you (or someone you love) been hurt by a church in the name of God’s love? Where have you received healing and wholeness? In what ways does your community invite your transformation in your unfinished life? 

Video of the blog above
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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? 

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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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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?