Month: June 2020

Rich

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My Column for the Elgin Review June 17, 2020

Once upon a time there was a girl who didn’t like me. She made it clear to other girls that she didn’t like me and told them they shouldn’t like me, either. So, they didn’t. She didn’t know me, but she knew my father was a doctor so we had to be rich and I therefore, had to be spoiled and, as a result she didn’t like me. It took two years of me being ostracized by that group without my having any idea why, before she sought me out to apologize. “I hated you because your father’s rich. I told the other girls to snub you. Now, I know you’re actually pretty nice. So, even though your father’s rich, I owe you an apology.”

I was speechless. I accepted her apology but had no interest in then becoming friends. What I wanted to do was tell her about my father. I didn’t do it then, so instead I’ll tell you.

Daddy drove cool cars and had a snazzy sense of style. With Dad’s cool car and snazzy clothes, I understand someone thinking we were rich, and certainly we always had more than enough. We lived in a new, nice but modest, 1200 square foot brick ranch home. We took two weeks of vacation every year to camp and visit national parks. But the truth was Dad grew up dirt poor in rural Iowa and he never forgot what it was to be poor. He went through medical school courtesy of the U.S. Army and paid the country back by taking care of sick kids and soldiers in Sendai, Japan during the Korean conflict. Daddy once told me, “it didn’t matter the color of the soldier’s skin, or which nation’s uniform they’d been wearing, stripped down to their skivvies they were all just scared little boys wanting the war to end so they could go home.”

When I was seven Dad took me and my brother John to the bank and opened savings accounts for us and started giving us an allowance. A whole dollar each week! We were taught to give one tenth of it to the church, 5 cents to Sunday School and 5 cents in the sanctuary. We were taught to put one tenth of it into our savings accounts so we could one day go to college. We were supposed to save ten cents each week in piggy banks on our dressers so when we wanted to buy gifts for others, we’d always have money set aside to do that. The rest was ours to spend as we chose.

Dad did the same with the money he earned. When court ordered bussing came to Omaha and there was white flight from our neighborhood, Dad kept his medical practice where it had always been. “This is the neighborhood I serve.” When insurance companies started dictating what he should charge for different procedures, he rebelled. “I won’t charge more than seventeen dollars for an office visit, because that’s all I need to charge, and it’s all most of my patients can afford to pay.”

Dad was a musician, a physician, a philanthropist, a good friend. He was a bridge player, a faithful spouse, a fisherman and a thespian. He loved words (forever sending me to look things up in the big dictionary on our hearth), and books and gardening. He walked four miles each day with his best friend, Vic, and sang in the Symphonic Chorus. When dementia set in in his eighties, he still loved a nice Pendleton sweater, a cold beer, scaring his nurses with a rubber snake, and holding his great grand kids. Dad was man of faith, and he loved us kids and our kids and all kids. Nine years now he’s been gone, and I miss him.

I want to tell that girl, wherever she is now, I am rich, not because of money, but because Marshall Zahller was my Dad.

Happy Father’s Day to all the men whose children are rich in all the ways that truly matter because of them.

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Park Congregational Church United Church of Christ is worshipping outdoors during the month of June. You’ll find us masked, sitting under a grove of trees at 9:15 on Sunday mornings. We’d love to have you join us. You can reach me at beckyzmcneil@gmail.com and 402.540.5615My

The Way Things Are Done

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My Column for The Elgin Review

June 10, 2020

In 1989 we hung our baby’s cloth diapers on a clothesline in our backyard on laundry day. Without fail, when Adam’s diapers hung in the sun, our neighbors across the alley lit their trash on fire in a barrel they kept on their side of the alley. Burn barrels were against federal and state laws inside city limits by that time, but in the small, county-seat town a lot of people still used them. “We’ve always done it this way.”

We walked around the block to ring our neighbor’s doorbell to introduce ourselves. They knew who we were. (It was a small town. Everyone knew we were the preachers). Kindly, we asked if they minded not using their burn barrel while the baby’s laundry hung on the line 30 feet away. They said they minded. They burned trash whenever there was trash to burn. They’d “always done it that way.”

The only air-conditioning in our big old house was two window units on the first floor. One hot day our windows were open while Adam napped in his crib in the nursery. The smoke detector went off in his room. A gray stench and haze from the neighbor’s burn barrel filled his room.

“Could we set up a schedule?” We asked when we visited them again. “Would you burn your trash on Wednesday afternoons and evenings and on Sunday mornings when all three of us are at the church?” “No.” they said. “We’ve always burned trash whenever we want to. We’re not going to change how we do things now.”

A call to the police to ask if anything could be done was answered with, “It may be against the law, but it’s the way we’ve always done things.” Attending a city council meeting with a dozen church members who were also tired of burn barrels in town received the same response, “we’ve always done it this way.”

That’s when hang-up calls started in the middle of every night. We had to answer. We were pastors– people expected to reach us in an emergency at all hours. After two long weeks of that, the police called us at 2:30 one morning. Could I meet them at the church? Something seemed amiss. They saw a light flicker inside the building. I dressed, drove to the church, walked around the outside of the building with the officers, unlocked the doors and did a complete walk through with them. Nothing was amiss.

It turned out, one of the policemen working the night shift was our back-alley neighbor’s son. It was the way things were done.

I believe our black, brown and indigenous neighbors who tell us of abuses of power by police in their towns and cities. I believe it is the way things are done. Not everywhere and not all the time, but, when police power was mis-used against me years ago, I lost sleep. Protestors across our country and around the globe are testifying in the court of public opinion telling us that when police power is mis-used against black, brown and indigenous people, far too often, they lose their lives. Too often it is the way things are done and it needs to stop.

Scripture warns against those “who speak peace with their neighbors, while mischief is in their hearts.” (Psalm 28:3b). Those who are sworn “to protect and to serve,” must pay attention to what is in their hearts. Ours will be a better world when that’s the way things are done.

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Park Church is worshipping outdoors during the month of June. You are welcome to join us on the church lawn at 9:15 am wearing a mask. I love to hear from you. Beckyzmcneil@gmail.com and 402.540.5615.

 

White Flags

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My Monthly Column in The Antelope County News

June 10, 2020.

Rev. Dr. Rebecca Z. McNeil

“Somebody’s father, somebody’s mother, somebody’s brother, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s child, somebody’s grandpa, somebody’s lover, somebody’s best friend, somebody’s coffee-drinking pal, somebody’s fishing buddy, somebody’s co-worker, somebody’s aunt—” For every white flag planted in front of First Congregational Church the past month, I have said, out loud, “somebody’s someone.”

Covid 19 memorial

I do not know the names or the stories of the Nebraskans who have died from COVID-19 this spring but I know they were loved and I know they are missed by somebody who is our neighbor.

When we started our memorial in front of our church building on May 6th, we planted ninety-one flags for ninety-one Nebraskans who died too soon and quite possibly alone, apart from their families in an isolation unit in a hospital cared for by heroic nurses and physicians. As I write today, one month later, there are one hundred ninety-six flags whipping in the wind in front of the church building.

On Friday afternoons at 3:00 pm, we’ve been ringing our church bell. It tolls once for every Nebraska life lost to this dread disease. Last Friday it took over twenty minutes to toll our bell that many times. We toll the bell at 3:00 pm on Fridays because it was at 3:00 pm on a Friday when Jesus drew his last breath and died. Though we may not know them, according to our Christian faith, those who have died are to be like Christ to us.

All of us are tired of social distancing. All of us are uncomfortable wearing masks. All of us just want life to get back to normal, but for one hundred and ninety-six Nebraska families and counting, their new normal includes a gaping hole of grief where once was somebody special. We owe it to them and to their loved-ones’ memory and to our own loved-ones, to remain diligent and careful so we can stop planting white flags in the church yard.

 

Getting by with a Little Help from our Friends

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My column for The Elgin Review 5.24.2020

“Each of us is just one tragedy away from needing to rely on the goodness of others to get by.”

I was raised on good conservative values of hard work and self-sufficiency. I was a good student, I worked hard, I waited to marry until I had my college degree, I completed two more degrees, I waited to have children until I’d been married several years so we could provide for the kids, I lived within my means, I put money into savings, I drove carefully, I abided by the law, I voted, I saw the dentist twice a year, brushed my teeth twice a day and flossed (more often than not). Yet there I was in my therapist’s office wrestling with the truth that, for the sake of my sons, and myself, I had no choice but divorce. “I can’t possibly divorce.” I said. “I can’t earn enough money on my own to pay all the bills and he isn’t earning enough to rent a place of his own and then pay child-support on top. I can’t work full-time and take care of the boys. I live far from my family. I just can’t. I can’t stay married but I can’t divorce, either.”

That’s when my therapist said my sense of self-sufficiency was really only an illusion. We all need each other to get by. Maybe if we’re Bill Gates or Warren Buffett we’re not one tragedy away from needing the goodness of others to survive, but since most of us aren’t either of those two gentlemen, the truth is, despite all our hard work and good planning, life sometimes throws curve balls that leave us unable to do it all ourselves. That’s part of being human.

This past week I helped a friend who suffered a cascade of calamities. A job didn’t work out in a town she moved to just to take the job. Without the job she couldn’t afford her house. In the middle of looking for work she suffered a serious health problem—without health insurance, because that had been tied to her job. The health condition means she can’t drive the car she has a lease on that she can’t pay for because she no longer has a job, and she can’t get a job right now because of the health condition and so on. She found herself needing a ride to her home state to apply for housing assistance and to see if she can figure out a way to get on her feet closer to home.

She reached out to me out of the blue. I hadn’t heard about her cascading calamities. Why did I drive as far as I drove, wearing an N-95 mask for hours on end (because she couldn’t survive COVID-19 on top of everything else) to help a friend I hadn’t heard from for over a year? Because she needed help. Just like I needed help years ago when I had no choice but to divorce my husband and raise our boys on my own. Except, I didn’t raise them on my own. I raised them in a community with great neighbors and great friends and a congregation and my brother and a whole host of others who helped us. Helping each other is part of being human, too.

During these difficult COVID-19 days, let’s all look for ways to help our neighbors. And, when we need it, let’s not be afraid to reach out for some help for ourselves. Chances are, anyone you ask for help has needed help themselves, too.

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Park Church is still worshipping via Zoom. You are welcome to join us for worship at 9:15 on Sunday mornings. Contact me for the connection information at beckyzmcneil@gmail.com or 402.540.5615