53+ years ago, I married Deanna, a young woman I had met two years earlier, just a few days before we both graduated from High school. It was kind of like the old comment, "We went to different high schools together." Her school was some 25 miles away. We met at the skating rink here in our present home town. That building is now a paint store and a Chiropractor's office.
Deanna's mom wanted her three daughters at the skating rink every Saturday evening; sometimes on Fridays as well. It took a few years before I could get my mother-in-law to tell me how it was that they brought the girls in every week; not that I objected the fact. It was simple. She didn't want them dating boys from their home community. She really didn't trust them.
I've always been glad I met my wife for many reasons; our sons, our lives together and more. Right up at the top of my reasons for being glad is the fact that our romance and marriage led me to The Mennonite Church.
I was raised in a very "conservative" church that annually send thousands upon thousands of dollars over-seas to support missionaries places with indigenous Christian people who could have taught us more about Jesus than we ever have taught them. After all, some of the places were right where the Christian Church actually first began; places like Palestine, even Egypt where the Apostle Thomas formed probably the first Christian Church outside of Palestine. However, for all of the money we spent on foreign missions, that church had virtually no emphasis on carrying even a loaf of bread across the street to a needy neighbor -- especially if that neighbor wasn't a member of our own congregation or a sister church in the denomination.
I would often ask about that dis-synchronicity, but I my questions always were often answered with reprimands for questioning the doctrines, or with such as "You'll just have to pray about it."
So it was that in the final weeks of my High School Senior year I was seeking a better set of answers, although I didn't yet understand that I was looking for something totally different for a church. When we married just over two years after we met, we kind of experimented by alternately attending the denomination of my youth and a near-by Mennonite Church.
It didn't take long before I understood that HER church was the answer to those prayers I had been admonished to pray. Just a few months after our marriage, I experienced the joyful mission of helping clean up flood damage about 150 miles from our home. Finally, I had found the opportunity to carry that loaf of bread to a "nearby" someone in need. I had found an opportunity to be in mission here at home.
Years passed before I ever again attended the congregation of my high school youth. I ultimately became educated to a Master of Divinity degree from a Mennonite Seminary. While I never became a pastor, I have been in mission somehow ever since I became Mennonite. I've never gone overseas, and seldom have I even had to go across state lines to serve others. I seldom "preach" in ways that others think of, but I have had more joy in offering just that "cup of water" or loaf of bread to someone -- Christian or non-Christian -- who is in a painful situation.
There was a story I heard early in our marriage about St. Francis of Assisi (I believe). He took a younger brother at the monastery on a trip into town to preach about Jesus. They walked in one side of town, then to the opposite side and returned without stopping and without any exchange of words. As they were leaving town to return to the monastery, the younger brother said, "Brother Francis, I thought we were going to town to preach about Jesus? When do we start?"
St Francis replied simply, "We just did."
Now, 53 years later I am still married to Deanna, and I am still Mennonite.
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Jesus and God must weep deeply
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Sunday, December 3, 2017
Thursday, August 3, 2017
CONGRESSIONAL FACT-CHECK
It
has come to our attention time after time that the bulk of our Senators and
Congressional Reps have not read the bills on which they are voting.
How they vote comes down to what their party leadership tells them to do.
The
recent failed attempt to repeal Obamacare shows this problem for what it is. I
would bet that not even 50% of Republicans bothered to read the thousands of
pages involved in ACA. Democrats probably didn't fare much better here.
All
were deprived of the opportunity to read what they were voting on. Even at the
peak of the discussions, no one really knew the contents of the Republican
plan, because it was still being written.
Perhaps
there never was a "peak." With such lack of information, the whole
discussion was a low-point of American history. A form of demagoguery seemed to
be the code of the discussion from beginning to end -- perhaps unintentionally;
perhaps intentionally. Half-truths, misstatements and outright lies were the
rules of the day throughout the "discussions."
Thus;
a simple proposal for better government with less demagoguery:
The
Federal Government should be REQUIRED to establish and use its own "CONGRESSIONAL
FACT-CHECK" organization, parallel to GAO. Such organization
should employ no one who is not a speed reader; at hundreds of pages per hour
with comprehension levels well in excess of 80% to 90%. No bill, and no
amendment should be allowed on the floor of either HR or SENATE without a full
review from this group.
Congressional
Fact-Check would
compile a complete table-of-contents and index for each bill and amendment to
make it possible for Reps and Sens to check every statement/claim made by the
authors/signatories -- and all opposing statements -- to each bill/amendment
without having to rely on their party leadership.
This
would make it possible for discussions to be based on total disclosure rather
than verbal legerdemain.
All
statements -- public/private, in Sen/Rep chambers or in private/public hearings
-- SHOULD be accompanied by chapter-verse-and-line references so that all
involved in the discussions and the general public can check the actual facts
of the bills for themselves.
Until
this kind of thing occurs we will never achieve TRUE representative government.
ONLY THEN will we truly be able to hold lawmakers' feet to the fire and determine
if they are doing their jobs, and not just taking orders from someone different
from their constituents.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
An Exercise in Self-Stigma
Foreword: I subtitle this as a "Forensics Tourney
Version" of a post previously uploaded. This version came about due to my
new acquaintance with a High School girl in one of the classes I was teaching a
year ago. She was/is a leading member of her school's Forensics Squad; one of
the most remarkable students I have known. When she learned of my involvement
with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Health), she wanted to share with me the
script of her National Tourney piece. It had to conform to a strict 7 minute time
limit. A few weeks we had her present to our local NAMI Affiliate, and the
response was outstanding. Then I was asked to present my story at the next
meeting. I already had written "I CAN NEVER AGAIN CALL" about a year
previously, but I decided that if my young protege could confine to 7 minutes,
then so could I. This is the shortened version. The full version was perhaps
twice as long.
An Exercise in Self-Stigma
"Forensics
Tourney Version" of
I CAN NEVER AGAIN CALL
I was in my brother’s town, and I couldn’t call to say, “Hi,
Ron! We’re here.” He had died 5 days earlier, and his funeral was the next
morning. That was a final line of sorts on my own story of self-stigma, and
serves as my jump-off point for a general discussion on stigma.
I
am an Adult A.D.D. That’s not an illness; not even a “disorder” as “Attention
Deficit Disorder” implies. Neither is it deficient attention. It’s
more like I’m over attentive to all stimuli, and it’s genetic. We ADD people
are hard-wired that way. Perhaps the “deficit” for us lies in how our
“condition” is handled by others. Until recently, we were seen as flawed. Many
people, including therapists, sometimes believe that we need to be “fixed.”
That
cannot happen. For me, meds never worked, and early-on most professionals
categorically denied that ADD could exist in adults; if it existed at all.
I
started Kindergarten in 1949 when the “Humane Mental Health Movement” was
barely underway, and I graduated High School in 1962. Back then few
professionals knew of ADD and it wasn’t until the late ’60’s that teachers and
principals knew much of it. What we now accept as ADD was boiled down to
behavior; good kids, bad kids and those who wouldn’t apply themselves. They
knew “mental retardation,” but I was a bright kid with a volatile temper, so I
was in trouble a lot.
Before
I proceed, I want to state clearly that I do not blame others for what happened
as result of being ADD I don’t want anyone to feel badly because of what I am
about to say. I simply want to acknowledge it and use it as a teaching point.
The past is done, and mostly I am reconciled with it.
At
school I fought a lot; such that a black eye on campus was mine, or I had given
it. I was shunned and/or goaded into more fights. I felt unaccepted and on the
outside of everything to the point that a few years ago a past classmate
commented, “I’m afraid we didn’t treat you very nicely in school.”
With
very notable exceptions I even stood alone with teachers.
Ultimately,
even now as an adult I expect “the other shoe to drop” every time I leave home.
As
a teenager, I protected myself by pulling so far away that at my 50-Year High
School Reunion, one of my classmates commented, “Jack, I remember you as a quiet
boy.” Little did he know that
despite being quite talkative I had no one to talk to.
I
responded, “The only reason I kept quiet was that if I didn’t, someone would be
there to knock me down.”
Even
in my family of origin, I seldom felt secure. From childhood I remember little
beyond conflict. If it wasn’t my dad getting into it with me or an older
brother, it was two older brothers fighting. It matters little where the onus
for that may have lain. That is just how I experienced life.
Despite
the fact that as a toddler I was doted on by my older brothers and sisters, I
just didn’t feel unconditionally loved, and I pulled away even from them. I
decided that some of my family really didn’t like me; especially Ron.
I
saw “signs that proved” my belief. Despite the fact that when we were little,
Ron and I were nearly inseparable, in time I came to avoid him. If I was traveling
on business, passing literally within two miles of his house, I made a point
not to disturb him. It hurt badly at first, but since I reasoned that was the
way he wanted things, I began to “reconcile” myself to what I thought was
reality. I would pass by; in tears at first. Besides, he was a busy physician.
Well,
wouldn’t you know it? Just when I think I’ve got it down pat, my machinations
start to break down.
When
our school in Oklahoma held a 100 year celebration a few years ago I avoided
checking to see if Ron was going even though we would travel the same highway.
I was reconciled to my old classmates, so I thought it didn’t matter if he were
there not. When someone said they saw him, I struggled with my response. Should
I maintain my status quo and not “bother him?”
To
my surprise, before I could decide, he looked me up in the crowd and gave me a
warm, loving hug; the warmest family hug I had known for many years.
My
inner response? “I didn’t know!”
From
that time, I began to reconcile to Ron, and would make special effort to stop
for lunch with him as I drove past. I hoped that without fanfare, in time I
would be able to put things such as I’ve written here into the distant past.
Then,
a couple of weeks before Ron died I had a phone visit with Glen, Ron’s best
friend, whom we consider a part of our family. Glen told me of when he and Ron first
met in the Eighth Grade.
“Jack,
I don’t know if you know this, but when Ron and I became friends he knew you
were treated badly at school. He made a point to say, ‘We’re going to be
friends, but you need to know that Jack’s a part of the package, and that’s the
way it will stay.’”
Glen
said he had seen many times when someone treated me badly and Ron followed up
later, confronting the offender and telling him to stop. Ron was a “big man on
campus,” and most people listened to him.
Glenn
finished, “You may not know it, Jack, but Ron always had your back.”
I never knew, and that’s “the rest of the story.”
I
began planning a stop at Junction City on May 2, a planned visit to the State
Capitol for the annual NAMIWalks, Kansas. I wanted to find a way to say, “Thank
you for looking out for me even though I never understood.”
BUT,
the cruel turn of fate was that my self-stigma became the final line of our
relationship.
I
can never again stop to have lunch with my brother. I can never again call him,
visit him or write him.
I
can never tell him, “Thanks, Ron.”
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