Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Bone Bank    June 10, 2024

The surgeon explained he would cut out the benign tumor in my arm, and screw in a replacement bone. I asked, “Where do you get the new bone?” “Oh, we have a bone bank with healthy tissue donations. Otherwise, we’d have to take it from a larger bone in you.” 

On the phone my aunt had so many questions about the bone in the bank. What’s the history of the person? Will you get some traits from him? How did his family decide to donate his bones when he died? Could it be a woman’s bone?

They started an IV don’t-care-drug and wheeled into the OR. My surgeon patted my shoulder and said, “Mr. Landrum, we’re about to do begin. I just have to go to the bank first.” “That’s ok doc,” I slurred back, “you don’t have to check on dad at the bank. He can afford this. His check’s good.” Since I didn’t remember any of it, after the successful surgery, the surgeon told my parents he went to his knees laughing so hard.

Three years later, when her 24 year old daughter was brain dead from a car wreck, my aunt’s family chose to donate all her organs to help others. Their painful decision didn’t just help make a surgery less painful, it saved several lives. Years later, she gave me a bumper sticker that reads: “Don’t take your organs to heaven; heaven knows we need them here.”

When have you received a gift from a stranger you couldn’t thank? How do you live a generous life of thankfulness? Who do you talk to about organ and tissue donation for yourself and your loved ones?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Playing Jesus   June 3, 2024

As a high school senior, before I was to play Jesus, I was John the Baptist. In front of God and the hundreds in worship, accompanied only by my friends, I sang “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord”. I belted out my solo as I paraded down the aisle to promote our youth group’s coming production of “Godspell”. As we rehearsed “It’s All for the Best” I was transformed from John to Jesus, but I never got to play Jesus on stage. (And no, I’ve not been trying to play Jesus ever since).

A fortnight before the production, I went to the doctor because I had a sore arm. I was joking with the x-ray technician, before he changed his demeanor. The x-ray revealed a hole in my left humerus bone. I sensed something was wrong when we went from being humorous to a serious humerus. The doctor said it looked like bone cancer and we should go to MD Anderson Cancer Center to get their insights. He said it might take a month to get in, but we flew out the next day to stay with cousins in Dallas while dad tried pulling strings in Houston.

Two days after the production, the cast gathered to call me in the hospital. It was the day before my surgery. One teenager after another got on the phone to ask, “How are you doing?” The 20 questions never got creative, but the meaning of their compassion grew with each voice. I don’t really remember what we said, but I’ll never forget that they called.

The lesson for my ministry was this: my presence was more important than my avoidance stemming from worry I might say the wrong thing. A simple phone call from a lined-up youth group provided a healing balm such as I would never have imagined before my experience. 

When have you received a simple act of caring you will never forget? Where have you sought to show your caring to another person? How might you look for opportunities to bring compassion to the world?

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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? 

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

My Best Friend May 3, 2024

In 1979, my father captured the best picture of my best friend and me. We are celebrating all we have learned at our graduation from Atlanta’s prestigious Emory College and Business School. With all our knowledge, we can’t figure out the puzzle of our hoods. How do these things work? Later in life I’d learn, “Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.”

Jeff and I met the first week of college. We were randomly placed in a group to tour all the fraternities during rush week. After all the visits, he invited five from our group to pledge Sigma Chi as a unit. “What if we’re not invited?” I asked. “We will be,” he said. I don’t think he was risking “one for all and all for one”; I think he had inside information. Accepting his suggestion changed (and may have saved) my life.

I liked to double-date with Jeff. I knew we both treated women with respect — not some conquest. Like most college students, I left my childhood church behind, but Jeff invited me to re-enter church with him. 

The summer after he was elected president of our fraternity, we were roomies in Vienna, Austria. Although it was a “study abroad”, we spent more time experiencing the culture, seeing the sights, and traveling by train than we studied. On the way west, we joined three fraternity brothers for a month-long incredible journey — driving all over England and Scotland together.

Soon after this picture, while I was away, five friends met with Jeff. They said, “You know you’re gay, we know you’re gay, everyone knows you’re gay….. why don’t you just say it?” When he told me, I thought “apparently I’m not everyone.” For whatever reasons, I had no idea.

When have you learned something new about someone you thought you knew? Who invited you to deep friendship, a renewed faith, living your best life? How has a best friend impacted you? 

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

Covid Contemplation

Last Monday I went to a funeral; last Wednesday I got Covid-19 — for a second time. This variant had harsher symptoms. Thankfully, I had my vaccinations and boosters and I qualified for Plaxlovid that keeps it from getting worse. 

Some friends were surprised that Covid is still around. They were unaware that at least 600 people a day still die of Covid and 3000 a day are hospitalized. It’s no longer a pandemic that affects all of us, but it sure affects those real people, their families, and friends.

During my lying around, I recalled giving part-time pastoral care to a church at the outbreak of Covid. This is the fourth anniversary of when I was forced from taking homebound communion, leading nursing home services, and visiting people at home to writing notes or making phone calls — lots and lots of phone calls. Not going in person was now the loving act.

Maybe it was fever fog or Covid brain, but it dawned on me that I was prepared for phone counseling back in 1979 when I was 22.  I was a Psychology major at Emory and I entered seminary to do pastoral care in a church. My mentor suggested I volunteer with “Contact Richmond” which was a 24-hour, 800 number, phone counseling service in the basement of a church near my seminary.  Since I learned to pull all-nighters in college, I took the 11 pm to 7 am shift every Thursday.

I contemplated changes in technology that makes phone counseling from a church basement a dinosaur. I grieved the changes that haven’t occurred in access to affordable and available mental health services. I reflected on some of the phone calls I received 45 years ago. One man called every month or two; he was bi-polar and when he was off his lithium and manic we’d talk for three hours until he was tired out. I guess I was being prepared for being bi-polar too.

What earlier experiences in your life prepared you for a challenge now? How has grieving in the past strengthened you for griefs today? When have you been surprised by skills you’ve been given you weren’t seeking?

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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)

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.
Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 3 Comments

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?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Brian’s Song

When I was fourteen I watched an ABC movie of the week called “Brian’s Song”. I was moved by the music as I was drawn to the interracial bonds Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo shared, the vast differences in their personas, and the struggles and griefs that were surmounted. The narration opens with Coach Halas saying, “Earnest Hemingway once said, ‘Every true story ends in death.’ Well…. this is a true story.” His closing narration is: “When they think of him, it’s not how he died that they remember, but rather how he lived…. how he did live!!!!”

When I heard the movie was going to be re-broadcast (you couldn’t choose when to watch something then), I grabbed my new Craig “T-stop” cassette tape recorder, held the microphone to the TV mono speaker, and made an audio tape of the music, and some of my favorite speeches that I listened to many times. “To Sir With Love” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” were the only other movie music and speeches I recorded on audio while they re-played on TV.

I once was too ashamed to share that about myself, but I learned during classes with Suzanne Stabile that a “2” on the Enneagram feels other people’s feelings, while having no sense of their own feelings. She also told me that my embarrassment was because male “2s” have a hard time in our culture — at least it’s not as difficult as what female “8s” face.

Maybe I was being prepared by a loving guiding hand in my life-long vocation — the times I’ve spoken out for and worked for racial justice, visited those recovering in hospitals and rehab centers, led youth groups, and the years I spent as a hospice chaplain and minister to grieving families. I’ve appreciated a variety of personas, orientations, views from points, rather than homogeneity. I’ve worked with media across cassettes, 8-tracks, slide/tape shows, video, CDs, DVDs, digital, powerpoint, and streaming. My spirituality has been transformed alongside changes in technology.

On July 6, the actor who played Brian Piccolo, James Caan, died — every true story ends in death. I will remember knowing him through his many magnificent roles throughout my life for which I am grateful. 

What movies had an impact on your life in your youth? How has technology changes affected your way of living? What do you appreciate about James Caan’s lifetime of work on stage and screen?