Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Questioning Writings 013125

On my 21st birthday, during my cousin’s funeral, I learned it was good to disagree with those who seek to represent God. As we sang the comforting hymn “our God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come…” my aunt said, “I hate that idea; it’s not true for me or helpful at all.”

The battle-line was “time like an ever-rolling stream bears every child away; they fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.” Before the closing “Amen” my aunt leaned over to say, “My daughter is not and never will be forgotten!!!!” Grieving mothers, like all God’s creatures, need to speak their truth in love.

Soon, in addition to evaluating poems, God gave me the freedom to evaluate human ideas expressed in Biblical passages. Among the many views over the millennia of expressions I would question what was true in my experience, what was helpful and life-giving, what inspired beauty, compassion, equality, love, and what best expressed God’s vision for an abundant life for this planet. Sometimes a Biblical writer’s expression of God was “not true for me or helpful at all” but most of their insights transformed my life.

As Rainer Rilke taught me: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a foreign tongue. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Living the questions has been helpful and true for me.

What questions do you live into without simple answers? How have you found God encouraging you to seek what is true and helpful from the writings of others? How do tyrants who don’t allow questions without retribution seem anti-Christlike to you?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 6 Comments

Omnipotence 012525

I returned home from college for my 21st birthday. Our family spent the day burying my cousin who was senselessly killed at 24 when a speeding car ran a stop sign. That was the day I began to let go of God being omnipotent (omni=all, complete, total + potent=power, influence, effect).

How could an all-powerful and all-loving God allow my cousin to be killed? She was a devoted Christian on her way to teach aphasia stroke patients how to speak again; she had a lot to live for and a lot of empathy, compassion, joy, and love to share.

If God is an uncaring, greedy, manipulative, vindictive, authoritative tyrant then we need no further explanations. But if God is love, compassion, seeking beauty, joy and abundance for the whole creation, then something is wrong.  I knew in the depths of my being that God was loving; maybe I miscalculated the all-powerful part. It was what I’d been told, but was it true? Did it fit the God of the Bible and experience?

The funeral home death march was when I first heard the 20 horrible things people say about God — rehearsed lines in funeral lines (trying to protect God’s reputation or be helpful to you, but failing at both). “God wanted her with him” (so did we); “she’s in a better place” (being here with us was good enough); “God only takes the best” (wish she’d been a little worse); “God has a plan” (well this plan sucks); “God is teaching you a lesson” (the lesson will never be worth the cost because the teacher needs a better lesson plan)……. 

Nobody was being cruel — just thoughtless — mindlessly repeating what they’d heard even when it hadn’t helped them. Maybe there’s a better way; maybe we can find it together. One teaser from my friends I share with you — what if we replace omnipotence with amipotence — the power of love (Huey Lewis more than Celine Dion). Come and see.

What life experiences impacted your views about God? What answers do you seek for bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people? Where is one example of real love ever being controlling?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 1 Comment

Georgia Baptist 11/13/24

In 1980 my 23rd summer was spent experiencing a semester of Clinical Pastoral Education as a student chaplain. In days of yore when hospitals were not-for-profit, many were founded by religious communities. You didn’t have to be some flavor of baptist to be a patient at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta. I could stay Presbyterian and work there, too .

I encountered people of many faiths, personalities, and backgrounds when I entered a hospital room as their chaplain. My calling was to walk their path with them – not force them onto my path. It took weeks for me to grow from “I’m just one of the student chaplains here” to “I’m your chaplain.”

It was not easy for me to enter a stranger’s room uninvited. As someone else said, “I pray every time I visit a patient — sometimes out loud.” My worst fears were realized when I walked into one man’s room saying, “Good morning, my name is Wally and I’m your chaplain.” He bellowed from his bed, “Who let you in here? I don’t want a chaplain! I’m an atheist. Get lost.”  

I was so stunned I couldn’t move. Something happened that has only happened a few times in my life. My mouth started moving, but I wasn’t doing the talking. The words that came out of my mouth would never come from me alone. While my body was shaking my mouth asked, “What kind of God do you not believe in?”

The man began to tell me about the vindictive, judgmental, angry God he didn’t believe in. I said, “Wow…. I don’t believe in that God either.” After a few more exchanges, he invited me to sit down as he told me about his life and his father. We were united by a shared un-belief.

What kind of God do you not believe in?  What questions are you asking? How have you experienced a spirit speaking through you in ways you didn’t anticipate or control?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 1 Comment

Checkmate 110624 (100520)

{I wrote this on Oct. 5, 2020 for the church I served then. Recycling today…}

I’m not sure if it was 5th or 6th grade, but I remember the humiliation. I competed in my school’s chess tournament and I won each match until the finals!  The championship game was played in front of our entire class. My time in the spotlight ended in four moves.

Before it barely began, it was over; 4 moves — checkmate. While my classmates were spared the boredom of a long match, I was publicly defeated. Then it got worse. A friend said, “Don’t feel so bad, Wallis.  He beat everyone else like that. He learned those moves from the Encyclopedia Britannica. It’s called ‘Fool’s Mate’.”  After years of playing chess, I suffered the agony of defeat at the hands of a kid who looked up “chess” in an encyclopedia — making a fool out of me.

When I later learned the correct term is “Scholar’s Mate”, I still felt foolish. Furthermore, I felt frustration that no one had warned me. Why didn’t my friends inform me about how he’d beat them? Was anyone really my friend? Why hadn’t I looked up chess instead of playing it? Why couldn’t I have lost earlier before the finals? How would I live with my public and private humiliation?

Maybe that’s one of my early calls to ministry. In this version of “Scholar’s Mate”, I study the Bible, commentaries, and the teachings of spiritual leaders more than many. I spend a lot of my time warning my friends. I am sensitive to listening for the pride and humiliation in others because of my experience. I learned life lessons from the consequences of playing childhood chess; thankfully the cost of those lessons was low.

God offers us choices and consequences in our lives. We are given the choice to learn lessons from our experience, or to ignore them. I believe God allows us to suffer the consequences of our actions, because “we not punished for our sin as much as we are punished by our sin.”  Some lessons are learned when the cost of our choice is low. Some lessons are delayed until the cost is greater. Sometimes we suffer the consequences of the choices of others.

How have your past life lessons impacted your present?  What are the consequences of your choices and actions teaching you today?  How do you open your heart, mind, and body to what God is trying to teach you in your personal checkmate?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

Shibboleth  103124

As a break from watching candidates’ speeches and interviews, we’ve been watching “West Wing” on HBO. That sentence may raise anxiety about my mental meds still working — they are. The season 2, Nov 22, 2000 Thanksgiving episode called “Shibboleth” is my favorite. I laugh at CJ’s turkeys; I tear up when President Bartlet entrusts Charlie with his carving knives passed from father to son; I am inspired by an obscure Biblical story from a catholic president’s character — the character displayed by the character portrayed.

A boatload of Chinese evangelical Christians arrive in California seeking asylum for being persecuted for their faith. How does anyone determine if they are sincere in their life-threatened beliefs or just saying pre-scripted words to get into this country? Bartlet cites the metaphor of “shibboleth”. In Judges 12:6 it was not just knowing the word meant “corn” or “river”. It was how you pronounced the word tested trust. The dialect difference between saying Shibboleth instead of Sibboleth let you know whose side you were on. 

There’s a man who bragged on tape he grabbed women’s genitals whether they like it or not because he’s the star…. who owes five million dollars to E. Jean Carol because an impartial jury believed legal evidence he sexually assaulted and defamed her whether she liked it or not….  who tried to use lies, intimidation, and violence to steal an election whether the majority of  voters liked it or not. Last night I heard that man promise: “I’ll protect women whether they like it or not.” That was the wrong speech — autonomous women needing autocratic patriarchal protection to make decisions for their lives. Maybe Sibboleth is a bunch of corn that floats down a river of shi…..bboleth.

Nine days ago, as a pastor and hospice chaplain I was interested in hearing the Vice-President’s answer to the CNN town hall questions on grief and her faith. “I pray every day; sometimes twice a day. I was raised in church to believe in a loving God, to believe that your faith is a verb — how you live your life, how you can serve in a way that is uplifting other people, caring for other people — that guides a lot of how I think about my work and what is important.” 

How do I know if that’s genuine or a script used to get in? Soon she said she called her pastor Amos Brown, the Sunday the president announced he would no longer seek the nomination. She said, “I just called him. I needed that spiritual kind of connection. I needed advice. I needed a prayer. There’s a part of the scripture that talks about Esther, ‘such a time as this,’ and that’s what we talked about. And it was very comforting for me.” Citing the Bible’s book of Esther and knowing Mordecai said to her, “Who knows if you’ve been placed here for such a time as this?” — that was true shibboleth for me.

What is your shibboleth? How do you determine who is genuine and trustworthy in your life? How do you measure yours and other’s words and actions?

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)

Could We Both Be Right? 10/23/24

Seventeen years ago when I was committed by the court to our psychiatric hospital, my psychologist sister arrived from Seattle as my first visitor. That morning I spent six hours of mania scrawling 43 pages on “Law and Gospel” which I commanded her to copy and distribute. She said, “Why don’t you trust me to do what’s best with this.” She was a check on my abuse of power.

As I returned to the floor, I told the charge nurse my sister had brought a suitcase with clean clothes. She made a phone call and said, “It’s not in the room yet. Check back later.” When I checked back, the nurse re-dialed the number and said, “There’s no suitcase in the room. Maybe you misunderstood your sister.”

After sitting in my stinking clothes for a while, I returned to the desk. “Ma’am, I know she brought a suitcase; I need clean clothes.” After dispatching an aid to investigate, the nurse explained: “If your sister had brought a suitcase, it would have been searched and placed in our storage room. It’s not there. Sit down. I need to finish these charts.”

I sat down and pondered calling her “Nurse Ratched” although she hadn’t really earned the title. How does a manic mental patient convince the charge nurse that his reality is real? I recalled that Jesus asked powerful questions in response to challenges and arguments.

Believing it was my last chance, I stood at the desk and asked as calmly as I could, “Is there any way we could both be right? In fact, while you’re charting, would you chart that I asked, you ‘Could we both be right?’” Her frustrated face changed to pondering. She dialed a different number, smiled, and said, “Your suitcase was put on the wrong floor. I’ll get it.”

I abhor the dichotomy of 2 choices in a political election every 2, 4, or 6 years. I enjoy conversations where we can share our different desires and find ways to meet our goals. I love listening to different experiences, insights, perspectives, seeking solutions. I relish both/and (not either/or) answers, where we can both be right. But here we are with the civic responsibility to make a dichotomous decision.

How do you listen to needs and desires of others in reaching solutions? When have you experienced situations where “we both are right?” When have you had to make a clear choice?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 1 Comment

Our Ball  Oct 18, 2024

I have enjoyed supporting our town’s 2-year community college basketball programs. Men and women coming together to visit, smile, and cheer for our men and women players. Our seats are close enough to be heard by players and refs. Sitting right under the basket as an opposing player attempted a free throw sporting a tattoo that read “Keisha”, one fan yelled, “Hey Rodney, what you gonna do with that tattoo when Keisha dumps your ass?” That shot made him miss his shot.

While our players only last 2 years, our refs work our circuit for a decade. One ref grew up in the area, was a popular friend to many, and had family associated with the college. With so much possible bias, I was amazed how fairly he called the games. While my bias could skew my conclusion, fact was, the usual complaints were evenly distributed between the two coaches.

One scout for a 4-year college was invited to our watering hole after a game. When he saw the ref sharing in the revelry, he asked, “Do you always go drinking with the refs after your games?” “Only if we win” was the quick reply. But the line we never let that ref live down was the one time the other team threw the ball out of bounds and he called, “OUR BALL.” 

We kept laughing at “our ball” through that loss as we watched players shake hands with the other team. Our ego wasn’t shattered, because we knew one loss didn’t make us losers. We didn’t vow violent retribution to the other school; we used lessons learned and teamwork to get ready for the next game.

“Our ball” was funny until a losing president keeps repeating the lie that “our side” was peacefully protesting with one death while nothing happened to “their side”. (Ironic aside — Jan 6th  is the church’s annual “day of Epiphany”; epiphany means the revealing of one’s inner nature). “Their side” are law enforcement officers, 150 of whom were injured by beatings, pepper-bear-wasp sprays, and the trauma of 3 hours of hand to hand combat which resulted in deaths and suicides. “Our side” was a violent mob he summoned and sent to steal an election he lost. “Our side” includes 1,516 citizens charged with federal crimes — so far 1200 guilty, 1000 sentenced, 3 acquitted, and 12 dismissed. 

When you get to be the referee, whose side are you on?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 3 Comments

Project 1525  Oct 16, 2024

As a follower of the actions and teachings of the Jewish rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, my denominational flavor by birth and by choice is Presbyterian. “Presbyterian” is the New Testament Greek word for ELDER – “Presbuteros”. Elders seek together to discern God’s will in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Elders are not just old men; elders are men and women elected by churches because of their wisdom and their servant leadership to discern and do the ministry and mission of the church with others.

500 years ago, John Calvin of Geneva wrote his playbook. It was not called “Project 1525”; it was “The Institutes of the Christian Religion”. Because of sin, he did not trust one person with too much power. In his day the papal institution had total immunity to arrest and persecute any enemy who disagreed with their autocratic authority. They didn’t need the supreme court; they had the Holy Roman Empire – the First Reich (before Hitler’s Third Reich). 

Even more, because of sin, Calvin did not trust the masses to make informed decisions. His masses could be conned to believe anything. Before printed copies, they were told by their church in Latin what the Bible said without reading it themselves. Yet I don’t think he’d ever imagine social media today convincing the masses that outlandish lies are true. (Joseph Goebbles showed, “repeat a lie enough and a mass of people will believe it’s true”).

Rather than a top/down or a bottom/up system of church government, Calvin proposed something new. Elected elders would pray, share different perspectives and ideas, and come together to discern the best way forward. Our American experiment was so similar that King George III wrote “sister America has run off with a presbyterian parson.”

For 67 years I’ve been amazed how true those ideals are. As the pastor, I’ve had bad ideas that were corrected by the wisdom of teamwork. I’ve been against ideas our elders adopted that I was persuaded to support with transparent and transformative discussion and a majority vote. Brilliant ideas that weren’t there when we gathered came from a team of rivals working together. It would have been disastrous if I alone were in charge, or if we polled people on everything. 

Because we had a team of strong and wise elders, the church thrived when I went insane 17 years ago. I wonder, what would happen to our American experiment if a man with psychological problems, possible dementia, and a history of abuse to get his way became the sole autocrat? Who has been a team of wise elders of all ages discerning the best way forward in your life? 

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?