Apophatica

When my brother, Trent, was in kindergarten, he was completely smitten over an adorable little girl named Katie Milligan.  She was always full of energy and was the kind of kid that everyone always doted over because of her infectious smile and endless curiosity. You couldn’t help but like her and, in our small school, she was everyone’s little sister.

I can’t honestly say that I remember the day clearly or how I found out, but I can recall Trent being sad about something and my mom explaining that one of his classmates had died.  The only thing I can recall thinking at the time was, how is it possible for someone so young to die?  Only old people are supposed to die.  Unfortunately, the cosmos didn’t operate the way I thought it should.

Katie’s dad, Mack, was a farmer and they lived out on a country road that ran between Holcomb and Kings right across from the cemetery where my grandparents would later be buried.  Perhaps Mack had nobody else to keep an eye on Katie and perhaps he just wanted some special daddy/daughter time as he shared with her what his work was like.  I can only imagine the panic Mack must have felt when he glanced over and noticed Katie was no longer sitting next to him on his tractor, nor the horror that rattled him to the core of his soul when he looked back and saw her tiny body that had been crushed by the rear tire.

There was a flurry of talk as is common for a small town and everyone developed their own opinion about the horrific tragedy as if they were somehow entitled to one.  Ultimately, there were two camps of thought: those who thought Mack was irresponsible for letting his daughter ride unrestrained in the tractor with him, and those whose hearts ached for him.  Most people had a leg in each camp. 

I can’t recall if people ran to the side of Mack and his wife to support them during this crisis.  I don’t know if anyone attempted to console or comfort them where no words could undo what had been done.  It seems to me that most avoided Mack and his family altogether.  Maybe this is just the faulty memory of a then eight year-old, but I think there is some truth to it.  Most were probably uncomfortable because they didn’t know what to say.  Others maybe were afraid that what ever bad karma Mack had summoned would rub off on them and the Angel of Death would come for their young, too.  Maybe they were uncomfortable around Katie’s mom who, with a history of mental illness, snapped with the death of her daughter.  It’s hard to say what the reason was, but my recollection is that they were alone as they lowered the little casket into the same ground that my ancestors reposed in.

—–

I’m sure there were other tragedies that rattled the small school’s teacher and student body, but most involved those who had moved on and made it at least into early adulthood.  People like my second cousin Karl who died at 22 when he crashed his homemade Ultralite airplane or when my aunt’s best friend, Greg, was killed in a car crash at 25.  Mostly, though I just remember fighting a lot and spending what seemed like the majority of my time in the principal’s office as a result of those fights.

Bullies were in great supply at Kings School.  With a student body of only about 250, there seemed to be a particularly high ratio of bullies.  I liked to think of myself as a bully-slayer (admittedly falsely altruistic and self-aggrandizing thinking indeed) and, as I continued to grow and become physically stronger, I would find myself toe to toe with them on a regular basis.  One such person was Justin Anders.

Justin and I could never seem to see eye to eye.  He was at least a year older than I was (I believe he was held back) and was an eighth grader when I was in seventh.  He was “dating” a friend of mine who had a certain affinity for bad boys and I was a bit envious.  A fair dose of jealousy combined with a misguided hunger for revenge led me to a fight at recess that left Justin with a fractured eye socket and orders from his doctor not to watch TV all summer lest the ultraviolet rays blind him in that eye.  As we sat outside the principal’s office glaring at each other – me with a venomous stare and him with a swollen eye – I honestly can’t say that I felt any pity for him.

As I ponder the enmity that I had for Justin for being a bully, a loser, and a down-right mean person, I am fully aware that I was far from innocent and that the lens I viewed him through was severely tainted.  Memory flatters the rememberer, but reality holds no judgment. 

Justin didn’t have a life that was any easier than mine.  It most ways, circumstance had dealt him a rather shitty hand.  His parents were divorced, his dad didn’t have much, if anything, to do with him, his mother was mentally unstable, and his step-dad had run over and killed his sister, Katie, with a tractor four years before.  There’s no question about it – life was rough for Justin Anders.

There are a lot of things in my life that, if granted the chance, I would do over.  Unfortunately, we don’t get do-overs.  As the rapper Eminem says, “We only got one shot.”  We merely get to do better the next time, God forbid, such a chance presents itself.  I was far too young to do things right when my life’s path intersected that of Mack and Justin.  I would like to think, though, that if I come across another Mack Milligan that I will put my hand on his shoulder and weep with him for all of the hopes and dreams that would never be.  For the brokenness that only a father can know at the loss of his little girl and that I would say nothing, just letting sighs too deep for words intercede where there is nothing that can be said. 

If I ever come across another Justin Anders, as much as I may be quick to judgment and anger at first, I hope that I will do things better.  I hope that I will extend an open hand of peace toward him instead of a clenched fist of hate.  I hope that I will take his hand in mind, look him in the eye, and say, “Yeah.  Life sucks sometimes, brother.  But it gets better when we face it together.”  Let it be so.  Amen.

The railroad tracks felt like they divided us from the rest of the world.  Running north-south along the eastern edge of town, they were the border between our tiny town and No Man’s Land.  Even one step beyond those tracks and you were no longer in Holcomb.  The Doan’s, who lived not even 500 yards beyond the tracks toward highway 251, seemed like foreigners to me. 

A few times a day, freight trains would roll from their stop at the intermodal hub in Rochelle carrying who knows what up north to farms and factories.  The trains rolled along behind the grain elevator that spewed out corn dust that would cover our house across the street and create a living hell for anyone with asthma. 

There were no crossing arms or lights because everyone was used to the trains.  They were as much a part of our small-town existence as the tiny post office and the sea of corn and soy beans that came up to the other side of the unmarked road that ran alongside the tracks.  Life was simple and there was no sense of urgency as folks walked from one end of town to the other.  Only the old and infirm bothered with cars to get around unless you were crossing the tracks and going out of town. 

It wasn’t necessarily a friendly town.  You wouldn’t find folks sitting on their front porch drinking sweat tea and waving at neighbors strolling by, but most everyone knew each other and would lend a helping hand when needed. 

There was no need for a crossing arm or lights and bells at the three crossings because, even though nobody could tell you what time the two or three trains would roll by each day, their schedule was as much a part of our circadian rhythms as going to bed and waking up.  It wasn’t even that people felt the need to be careful of the trains because there wasn’t really anything to be careful of.  There was no way that anyone would be in the path of one of these trains because such things just didn’t happen.  Except for when it did.

Sandy Stumpf was heading to work via the middle crossing that was next to Doris and Charlie Vogel’s red and white house.  Perhaps she was focused on what she had to do at work and perhaps she wasn’t completely awake yet, but although she noticed the train near the crossing and that the train was moving, she thought the train had already passed and was moving in the other direction.  Unfortunately, she was wrong. 

As a 10 year old boy, I was three miles south in a classroom in Kings when the driver’s side of Sandy Stumpf’s car was crushed by the reversing train.  The train dragged her car off of the road and deposited it in the Vogel’s back yard near the basketball court that they erected for the town’s youth.  Miraculously, Sandy wasn’t fatally injured, but she was pinned inside her car by the crushed driver’s side door leaving her mostly immobile.  More than the pain of being hit, the fear and panic of being trapped overwhelmed her. 

My grandfather, Jim Hilliard, had been chief of our modest volunteer fire department, but was since retired when he saw what had happened and went to Sandy’s aid.  My grandpa had an uncanny knack for finding the scene of the accident as it was ironically him who found his best friend’s truck in a ditch near a country road after his friend had suffered a fatal heart attack.

Sandy needed to be extricated from her car, so there was nothing in that sense that my grandpa could do.  As they waited for emergency vehicles and as the paramedics sawed into her car to get her out, my grandpa knelt next to her and held her hand through the process.  He couldn’t physically get her out and back on her feet, but he provided support and encouragement in a way that gave her the strength to get through her potentially tragic ordeal.  When Sandy was finally free of her car and received the treatment she needed and in the days to follow, both Sandy and other townsfolk called Grandpa Jim a guardian angel.  Many said, “If I ever have an emergency, I want Jim Hilliard to be there with me.”

Sandy would outlive my grandpa by a number of years as he died about two years later at the age of 57.  Many gathered at his funeral and remembered his strong spirit as another angel was taken home.  It wasn’t many years later after his funeral that Sandy would also find herself in a casket – the victim of murder by poisoning at the hand of her husband.  She wasn’t his first wife that had mysteriously turned up dead.  Such is life in a small town where angels and demons play on the same field and eat of what has been reaped from the same soil, but it is the angels that give us strength, even long after they have returned to that hallowed ground.

There are many kinds of prophets.  Some are real, actual prophets.  Some are false prophets who lie to achieve their own ends.  Some are delusional and believe that they are sent by God or that they are some sort of messiah.  Others are somewhere in between.  Vernon Howell was on that spectrum. 

Vernon had a rough childhood and some of the psychological effects showed.  He turned to his mother’s fundamentalist Seventh Day Adventist church, but was kicked out when he told the pastor that he had a revelation that he was supposed to marry the pastor’s daughter.  He then joined a reformist group that had splintered off from the Adventists and soon claimed that he had a vision that he was supposed to lead the group.  It was believed that he was having an affair with the 77 year-old widow of the founder of this sect and he gained support from her to take over the group. Understandably, her son, George Roden, felt that he was the rightful heir and challenged Vernon to a resurrection contest.  Roden exhumed a body to make it look like he had resurrected someone and Vernon told police about the incident.  When a third person came along and claimed to be the messiah and leader of the group, Roden killed him with an axe and was sent to a mental hospital.

Vernon finally took control of the group and engaged in many questionable practices including spiritual marriages, statutory rape of his “spiritual brides,” and child abuse.  Vernon had another vision that he was the incarnation of Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity and sent them back to Israel.  He felt that it was his duty to reestablish the Davidic monarchy in Jerusalem and so, adopting the Persian name for king Cyrus as his last name, he changed his name to David Koresh.  After a 51 day seige, Koresh and 80 of his followers were killed 22 years ago today (April 19th).

This was a very sad and unfortunate example of a psychologically troubled person with a messiah complex leading vulnerable people to their doom.  I won’t get into how well or poorly the FBI handled the situation or why those people were so easily manipulated, but it just goes to show how dangerous a false prophet can be.  Likewise, a real prophet can be conversely as healthy.

So what is a prophet anyway?  From the Old Testament, we tend to see them as a person with a message from God.  It was typically a message of doom and gloom and warning for a people who had chosen to go against the will of an almighty God.  Are there still prophets today or has their function changed?  I would venture to say that they do and it has.  Peter exemplified what a modern-day prophet looks like in the book of Acts.

In Acts 3, Peter and John come across a man who is carried daily on a mat to the temple steps where he can beg for money.  Instead of giving them money, Peter did what a true prophet does, he empowered the man so that he can have a good life of his own volition instead of based on what others provide.  The man was lame from birth.  We know that we have to be careful about reading these stories literally, because we lose the true meaning.  So, the man was not factually and physically unable to walk.  Instead, he was unwilling to hold himself up and face life with dignity.  In essence, he took it all lying down.

The man’s friends enabled him over the years and carried him on his mat so that he could continue to receive reinforcement for his complacency.  Perhaps his parents had taught him in a way that furthered his enablement and then his friends took over that role.  When Peter and John saw this, they knew what was going on.  Peter got down to his level, looked him in the eye, and empowered the man.  In essence, he told the man that he had worth and that his life mattered.  He put out his hand and helped him up.  Nobody had ever done this for him.  Imagine the feeling of dignity that he must have had when he realized that what everyone else had been doing for him out of pity, he could do himself because he mattered.  From that moment, he saw that he didn’t exist to have things done to him, but that he could affect change with his own life.

At first, the man clung to Peter, but he eventually stood up straight and let go.  How many times have we heard in the New Testament Jesus telling people to let go of him and to “go and do likewise.”  Through his prophetic words, Peter had not only empowered a man back to life, but he had also made a prophet out of this man.  Who better to spread a message of empowerment than one who was raised from the “dead” himself?

Understandably, the people were shocked at what had happened.  This man who for decades had been laying on his mat begging others to do for him, was full of life and vigor and determined to live his own life.  Peter asked them, “Why are you so surprised?”  Then he launched into a discourse about sin.  He challenged those who had witnessed this transformation to repent.  As individualistic westerners, we hear words like sin and repentance as something to do with the terrible things we do against God and how we need to seek forgiveness from them lest we be punished by a blood-thirsty God who is insatiable.  This isn’t what sin and repentance meant in the 1st century and it’s not what they mean now.

To sin, as you have likely heard in others’ sermons, is to miss the mark.  This is not a good/bad dualistic “X” in the sand that God has put down daring us to undershoot it.  To sin is to live a life other than that which is truly us.  It is to be anything other than ourselves.  We all have a meaning that lies at the depth of our being that we are meant to be true to.  Anything that is done contrary to who we really are is “missing the mark” and makes us suffer.  Sin is corporate as well as individual.  When we repent (literally, change our minds) we get a new mindset for ourselves that spreads in encouragement to others.  This is what empowerment is all about.  It’s encouraging others to live lives that are true to themselves and reassuring them that they will experience great peace and joy when they do so.  It’s reminding them that they matter and that they, too, have the power to change the world.

Some people are hurting.  Most of us are.  This is part of being human.  Some feel hurt more deeply than others and have a hard time seeing past it to where there is hope, dignity, and strength.  There is a Japanese saying for when a child gets hurt that goes “ittai, ittai, tondekke!”  This means, “pain, pain, fly away!”  When the man who couldn’t see beyond his own hurt came face to face with Peter, Peter said, “ittai, ittai, tondekke!” and the man was empowered and saw his worth.  That’s what we have to do as modern day prophets.  Sometimes we have to kneel down with someone who is hurting or feels conquered by life and show them that they matter.  Sometimes we even have to look in the mirror and do that for ourselves.  Enablement will only create a life of suffering and encouragement to live a life other than that which is true to ourselves, but empowerment will bring people back from the dead and let them live fulfilled lives for the first time.

On April 19th, a “prophet” died.  But on April 19th another prophet was born.  And on the 20th, 21st, etc.  All of us have the potential to be prophets if we merely chose to empower instead of enable.  If we choose to live lives that are true to ourselves and encourage others to do the same, we speak the very words of God and bring life into existence in co-creation with our Creator.  It takes a spiritual journey within to know who you really are, but ultimately, all you have to do to kindle hope in the world while having an enriched life is just be yourself.

I hereby excommunicate you, Owen Strachan, from the universal church of Jesus Christ.  There will be no surrender on progress and spreading the extravagant love of Jesus.  We will not give an inch to those who would look their fellow human beings in the eye and be haughty enough to assume that they can tell them that they are not good enough or somehow more of a sinner than themselves.  You have misrepresented what the gospel stands for and impeded the liberation that Jesus spoke of.  Instead of freeing the oppressed, you have proven only to add to the weight of their shackles.  Instead of giving sight, you have managed to continue blinding the masses from your pulpit of judgment.  Therefore, by the power vested in me by the church, your license to preach the gospel and membership in the church universal is hereby revoked.

What!?  What do you mean I don’t have the authority to tell you that you can no longer share your opinionated message within the church?  Is this not what you did to Rob Bell?  You speak for yourself Rev. Dr. Strachan.  You may very well represent the majority of your denomination within the Southern Baptist Conference, but you do not represent the entire church, so please do not speak as if you do.  There are many issues that you and I will never agree on.  Yet, we are both (as is Rob Bell) ordained to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is indeed troubling when we are claiming to preach the gospel, but are preaching different messages.  Is it an unsettling truth, but true nonetheless.

Neither you nor I can claim to represent the hundreds of thousands of congregations and millions of Christians here in the U.S. alone.  As much as we both have strong convictions that we wish everyone else would open their eyes and see, in the end we can only speak for ourselves.  The church is big, diverse, beautiful, and very broken just like the people that it is comprised of.  We serve the same God from different perspectives.  As much as I disagree with your position, I respect you as a human being who is fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of a very big and very loving God.  May we all serve that God well from our different positions and despite those differences, may God redeem the simple words that come from our human mouths and use them as God wishes.  When all is said and done, may our words edify and encourage those whom God has called us to serve and not make them any more broken than they already are.  After all, it is God’s church and may God’s will be done – not ours.

My grandparents’ house was only about 200 yards from the house I grew up in.  Our house wasn’t much to look at so I would hang out at grandpa and grandma’s more often than my own place.   At 16, when my girlfriend wanted to come over and watch movies, going to grandma’s house (grandpa had died four years previous) with her big screen TV was a much better option than our place.  So, I rented some VHS tapes and went to her house to wait for my girlfriend to arrive.

Grandma was out on a date and so I let myself in from the garage.  The entry from the garage opened in to the family room with a set of steps going down immediately to the right of the entry.  I had many nightmares as a child about being dragged by some unseen force down those steps so I was quick to turn on every light I could and get away from the steps.  After I turned on the light, the steps were soon out of sight and out of mind as my focus went down through the kitchen and into the dining room beyond.  The phone had not rung, but the answering machine came on and my grandpa’s voice was saying, “Hello?  Hello?  Anybody home?”  If such a thing is possible, I was both scared and at ease at the same time.  I felt like there was something watching me from the dark dining room and so I swallowed hard and said “Grandpa?”  Of course I received no answer, but the answering machine then went off and there was dead silence.  Remembering that I was standing next to the dreaded basement steps, I darted over by the couch to turn on the lamp.

I am neither a believer in ghosts nor an unbeliever.  I simply do not know.  The scientific part of my mind says that energy cannot be destroyed and only dissipates and since our thoughts and bodies and minds are all made up of energy, it is perfectly reasonable that we should live on in some way beyond our physical death.  On the other hand, things that go bump in the night are intriguing, I guess, but somehow implausible.  But there is more than one way that the dead can haunt us.

Chief Seattle spoke these famous words as his people were being killed and scattered from their homeland because the “White Chief” wanted them for his own people.  These are words that, regardless of what happens after we die, should always haunt us:

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon our fathers for centuries untold. . . . The son of the White Chief says his father sends us greetings of friendship and good will.  This is kind of him, for we know he has little need of our friendship in return because his people are many.  They are like the grass that covers the vast prairies, while my people are few: they resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. . . . There was a time when our people covered the whole land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea covers its shell-paved floor, but that time has long since passed away with the greatness of tribes almost forgotten. . . . When the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the white man, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your childrens’ children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. . . . The White Men will never be alone.  Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless— Dead— I say? There is no death.  Only a change of worlds.   – Chief Seattle

I do not know what happens to us after we die, but I do know that we leave a legacy that will either haunt or bless those who come after us.  We tend to run from the things that we do not know and act as if they wil hurt us.  Perhaps they will.  But how can we appreciate the light if we never sit in the dark?  If you are ever in the Cascade Range overlooking a dark valley with the wind whistling through the trees and you feel someone looking at you from behind one, instead of running scared, perhaps try asking for wisdom.  We can benefit from our fears by embracing them and letting them teach us.

God has made it clear that he does not tolerate homosexuality.  God has made it clear that he does not tolerate Muslims.   God has made it clear that he does not tolerate transgendered people, liberals, people with tattoos, etc, etc.  Any Bible-believing decent Christian knows this and therefore will also be intolerant in the name of the Living God in whom we live and breathe and have our being.

The problem is, God is unseen.  Nobody has ever heard the audible voice of God and been able to know exactly what God does or does not will.  God has so many unknowable facets within a cloud of mystery that can only be embraced, but never fully understood.  Despite the fact that we cannot fully know God nor God’s will, we are quick to give attributes to our incomprehensible creator that typically put us at odds with those who we can see and feel and be in relationship with.

Megachurch pastor Rick Warren shunned his son for being gay and stuck to his guns to save face within a congregation to whom he had preached intolerance of homosexuality.  Warren defended God’s rules even until his son committed suicide.  Leelah Alcorn was told by her mother that being a male feeling like a female was strange and unacceptable in God’s eyes and a mere anomaly that would eventually pass.  And so it did, along with Leelah when she took her life in hopes of liberating others with the same predicament.  Deah, Yusor, and Razan were gunned down by a neighbor who couldn’t accept that Muslims would take the parking spot that he wanted.  All of these are obviously simplifications to very sad and very serious relational breeches, but in the end the point is the same: Many people would rather defend the honor of an invisible God who is mostly created in their own image than to simply love those who are right in front of their eyes.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/31/us/ohio-transgender-teen-suicide/

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/guns-chapel-hill-myth-american-vigilante

So?  Where do we start?  I always spout my ideas, now it’s your turn.  How do we get people to let God be God and stop creating a God that was never meant to exist?  How to we get people to quit alienating the very people they are supposed to be protecting in the name of untenable arguments supposedly decreed by an embellished anthropomorph?  How do we convince people to love the seen and embrace the unseen? Perhaps we can learn from the dying and their regrets to learn what not to do before the damage is irreversible.

http://www.aarp.org/relationships/grief-loss/info-02-2012/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying.2.html