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)

Life Islands  June 7, 2024

On Sunday evening, as I went into my hospital room, my parents went out. It wasn’t personal; it was business. They had been invited to dinner with the CEO of M.D. Anderson Hospital. I was left alone to listen to “Godspell” on a cassette tape while my youth group was performing it live.

One nurse sensed my sadness. She sat with me as I told her about my friends, my church, and what I was missing that night. Back then, on a slow Sunday, a nurse had time to be present for over an hour. Back then, I was admitted on Sunday for a surgery on Wednesday. I was 18 and healthy, and I needed something to fill the two days of waiting besides feeling sorry for myself.

On Monday my weekend nurse invited me to her weekday floor. Her patients were teenagers with cancer whose immune systems were compromised by chemotherapy. They lived in “life islands” for 3 months in a germ-free environment. Only sterile food and items could be passed into a plastic bubble that surrounded a bed, a chair, and a table. If I entered their space, I could kill them; if I were a companion through the plastic, I could help to heal their isolation.

Except for a few scheduled tests, I had two days of being teenagers together — strangers in a strange land. I wasn’t another cancer patient, parent, sibling, doctor, or nurse — I was someone new to listen, laugh, share, and care. Centering on their needs dispelled my self-centeredness.

Away from my private prep-school, I was becoming a chaplain without credentials. I visited 8 kids one on one. Soon enough I would ask myself: “Was a preppie preparing for a calling?”

How have you answered the question, “What is mine to do?” When has focusing on another’s needs taken your mind off your own? How have past situations become preparations for your future?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Mistaken Miracle June 5, 2024

As my parents and I left home, we were told the hole in my bone looked like cancer; my left arm would probably be amputated before we returned. MD Anderson in 1975 was gigantic even for Texas. One desk would take blood, X-rays across campus, questions in one room, more blood in another. We wondered how 3 days of disparate data could come together.

On D-day (diagnosis day) we toured the Johnson Space Center before our 3 pm appointment. We entered an auditorium of desks filled with 30 students in white coats. My X-rays lit a wall behind an examination table on a stage. Mom’s legs buckled and I helped her into a chair before she hit the floor.

I was invited onto the stage table. Each time I answered a question about a specific symptom, the doctor would nod at me, nod at the room, and 30 white coats would scribble. No severe pain during the day (notes); 2 am wake up with sore arm (notes); aspirin helped me sleep (notes); onset a month or more ago (notes). We 3 were asked to wait outside.

The brief silent wilderness of waiting, watching a hundred promenading strangers facing their own fears, seemed like hours. The auditorium we re-entered now contained only our two doctors. Finally we were told that it was a benign tumor called Osteoid Osteoma; they could cut it out next week. In the moment, the reality of bone surgery on me seemed more frightening than the unreality of cancer; that feeling was fleeting.

One of my parents’ friends told me it was a miracle. God had reached down from heaven and cured me of cancer by changing the tumor. At the time I didn’t say what I thought: “It was more of a mistake than a miracle — a premature diagnosis with insufficient experience.” Later I would wonder if God really reaches in to miraculously change reality for people. If God acts alone to rescue one person, then why does God withhold a miracle from another? Maybe we need better understandings of miracles and how God works with us in our lives.

How do you interpret the metaphor of miracle in the Bible and in your life? If God could, why wasn’t Jesus rescued from state sanctioned execution by the empire? When have you waited for God to change something in your life? Do you wonder if God is waiting for you? How have you been partners with God to bring healing and wholeness?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

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)

“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? 

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) · 1 Comment

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?

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?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

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) · 1 Comment

Anne Frank

My 1975 high school “field trip” covered 7500 miles and 21 countries. Our German teacher led 21 boys, 3 adults, boxes of couscous, and a ton of peanut butter for 8 weeks in 3 sleeper trucks across Europe. I recently found my daily journal. 

We toured Anne Frank’s Amsterdam attic where she wrote her diary of a young girl during their two years of hiding. My Friday August 1 entry was on the 31st anniversary of her last journal entry — 3 days before she was arrested, which led to her death in a Nazi concentration camp at the age of 15.

That night over a few beers a fellow eighteen-year-old asked me this question: “Do you think Anne Frank is in hell?” “What?” was the only reply I could muster at the moment. “In hell, Wally, the place of fire and torment where God sends you if you don’t believe in Jesus.” “What the hell are you talking about?” “Anne Frank was Jewish. She didn’t believe in Jesus. Do you think God sent her to hell?” 

The irony wasn’t lost on me that night, but I couldn’t find the words to reply. My friend was asking if God’s “final solution” was more barbaric than Hitler’s “final solution”. As millions of Jews (like Jesus was) prayed to God on their way to a few minutes in the gas chamber, was God sending them to eternal torment because they hadn’t addressed their prayers correctly? 

Up until then I hadn’t thought much about hell. I was raised to believe in a loving, creative God as I sought to follow the way of Jesus who welcomed everyone. Scaring the hell out of me to manipulate me into heaven had no hold on me. Thinking my religious ways of seeing things is the only way that counts and everyone else can just “go to hell” never sat well with me. Thank God I don’t have to look at life and death that way.

Anne Frank was sent to hell, but not by God; her “Gehenna” was Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Hell on earth is a consequence of our individual and societal choices when we choose a burning pile of garbage over God’s vision of love, peace, and justice now.

What were you told about the Bible’s teachings about hell? How have those understandings changed as you’ve grown?  Where have you learned about medieval ideas influencing current prejudices about judgment? What consequences do you see and fear coming from acting in the name of an arbitrary and vindictive power?