The way life is

Another Way to Look at It

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Willie Green was driving as we headed toward the truck-stop for dinner after church. It was my first Sunday back at my Student Pastorate in rural Kentucky after being away for my wedding and honeymoon in 1983. Seeing a political poster stapled to a telephone pole, I asked Willie,

“who won the election for Governor while I was away?”

In her tobacco-thickened bluegrass drawl she grumbled, “Oh, that Martha Layne Collins, did.”

“You don’t sound happy about it.” I replied.

“I just don’t think it’s right, her being a woman and all.”

It was quiet in the car for a little while. Then Willie said,

“But then, I didn’t think it was right having you be our pastor, either.”

A little nervous, I asked, “So how’s that working out?” She laughed and said,

“It’s working out great! I guess maybe that Martha Layne won’t be too bad a Governor after all.” 

Five years or so later, I was sitting at the kitchen table back home in Omaha visiting my parents. My Dad, who had always been my champion, encouraging me every step along the way in my education and preparation for ministry was reading the World Herald and said something about “that’s the problem with the economy these days, all these women going to work.”

“Um. Dad,” I ventured. “I thought you are really proud of me and the work I do.”

Dad put down the paper. I could see the cogs turning in his brain.

“Maybe the problem,” I said, “isn’t that women are working, maybe the problem is that the economy isn’t.”

“Well, that is another way to look at it.” Said Dad.

Last week I was at the county jail where I meet with some of the women for Bible study and discussion a couple times each week. “Any results yet on the election?” someone asked. It was Friday afternoon. I told them it was still not called for either candidate, but it looked like Biden and Harris were pulling ahead. The reaction among the women was mixed. What surprised me was two of the women, one young, one older, both said they didn’t want Biden and Harris because Harris is a woman, and “women shouldn’t be doing jobs like that.” I checked my watch, hoping it would tell me what year it is.  When it didn’t, I told the women the story of me and Willie Green and the election of Martha Layne Collins in Kentucky thirty-five years ago.

It turns out the women had discussed it with a man who did some other ministry in the jail, and decided they agreed with him that women aren’t fit for leadership, that women need to know their place and stay in it. Why? Maybe because they, like so many of the women I meet at the jail, have known nothing but abuse from men for most of their lives. Instead of having the gift of parents, teachers, pastors and professors, male and female alike, who cheered them on and encouraged them to aim higher, these women have been put down and pushed around and told they don’t count. But they do. I told them they do. I told them being a woman in no way makes them less than a man, and, in my opinion, Senator Harris being a woman in no way disqualifies her from office.

Women, like men, can and should do all that God has given them the gifts to do. God created all of us in God’s image, and God said, “that’s good.”

The day after I was at the jail, on Saturday, the election was called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I wasn’t particularly a Harris fan through the primaries, but when she spoke on Saturday as the Vice-President elect of our nation I broke down and sobbed great big, racking unexpected sobs. I think it’s right. I think it’s just right, her being a woman and all. And I suspect on Saturday afternoon God said something like, “it’s about time!” before saying, “now that’s really, really good.”

Pressing Matters

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My new spiritual discipline is ironing.

Mother ironed a lot.

She was ironing when the news announcer

broke into the afternoon programming

on our black and white Zenith portable tv

to say that J.F.K. had been shot.

I was three years old.

I remember the familiar, cozy-like smell

of sheets and shirts freshly pressed and hot–

steam rising in front of mother’s sad, sweet face.

 

The basement of the parsonage is cool.

It’s quiet and roomy and smells of years of clean laundry.

I set up Mike’s mother’s ironing board to use when sewing

but in recent weeks I’ve started ironing many things:

his handkerchiefs I used to simply smooth with my hand,

pillowcases, our COVID masks, the top part of top sheets

determined to fold over in odd little bits, our worn cloth napkins.

Under the iron, fibers fall in line

a quick spritz of water flattens the fate of recalcitrant wrinkles.

The hot, crisp smell promises all will be well.

 

As if I could iron out the wrinkles in my heart,

the folded over places in my mind.

As if the assassination of reason, the crumpling of decency,

the handkerchiefs heavy with sobs and snot from

demonstrators demeaned and detained by dictatorial bullies

could be spritzed and sprayed and fixed

with a hot iron and steam rising indignant off of sweet faces.

I am sad. I miss my mother.

Turn off the news.

Keep ironing, keep pressing on.

 

When Times are Tough and Hope is Lagging, Look UP!

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My Column for The Elgin Review, April 1, 2020

In my experience, sometimes manna from heaven looks more like a roll of toilet paper sailing over four stalls, trailing a beautiful white train behind it, than like some sort of bread miraculously provided for the people of Israel wandering out in the desert. If you aren’t familiar with the story of manna for the people of Israel, it’s in the book of Exodus in the Bible. It’s a story about God providing what God’s children need when times are tough and hope is lagging.

When I was a brand-new young missionary in Zaire, I’d been in our home for a week or so when I decided one of the things that I really needed was some fabric to make curtains for our windows. Pastor Efefe and the school’s driver agreed to take me to the city ten miles from our village where I could do some shopping. I’d selected my fabrics and was standing in a long line waiting to pay for my purchases when my gut clenched. Zairian food was not something I was yet accustomed to and my GI system was in full revolt. My need was urgent.

Bashfulness and modesty be damned, I turned to Pastor Efefe and asked in French “where is the restroom?” His eyes widened to match mine and he said, “we have to go to the church offices here in the capitol.” Grabbing the driver by the arm, we made quite a scene leaving the store. The clerk hollered from behind the counter, “Hey, where are you going? We’ve already cut the foreign woman’s fabric” And Pastor Efefe yelled in a loud, clear voice, “She’s got the runs! We’ll be back later.”

This is how bad my situation was; I wasn’t even humiliated.

We made it to the church offices, and Pastor Efefe pointed down the hall to the rest room. Never in all my days, neither before or since, have I ever been so thankful for a toilet. Sweet, sweet relief quickly turned to horror however, when I realized there was no toilet paper in the stall. There was nothing, and there was no one else in the restroom to ask for help. Minutes ticked by. I was contemplating tearing my cotton dress off a few inches above the hem and using that instead of paper when Pastor Efefe’s voice rang out from the hallway outside the restroom door. “Madame Le Pasteur” he hollered while opening the door, “en haut!” which means “up!” And there, like manna from heaven came that most blessed roll of toilet paper sailing through the air above me. I was saved.

It’s a funny story that came back to my mind because of the current toilet paper hoarding that’s going on due to Covid-19. Remembering the story now reminds me that God is always at work finding a way to provide us with what we need. Even when what we need is humbling and oh, so very human.

My friends, look up. We won’t always be in this situation. A day will dawn when this crisis is past and a brighter future is ahead of us. Look up! God’s help is on its’ way.

Park Congregational Church is worshipping by Zoom these days. Contact me at beckyzmmcneil@gmail.com and I’ll help you connect with us for worship.

 

Snow Angels and other prayers

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They shuffle in, the first two with hair disheveled and bad dye-jobs, locks matted from too much time in their bunks. Faded florescent pink sweats hang baggy on their tattooed frames. Younger than my boys, I guess. Twenty-two, twenty-three perhaps. Another, older, rounder, with a short-auburn bob finds her place at the end of the table, quietly pulling out her chair. The fourth carries a thick red-leather, red-letter Bible in her willowy hands and wears her hair piled on top of her head. Her granny-glasses have lenses so thick her eyes precede her into the room, reminding me of a grasshopper–a very pregnant pink grasshopper. Her stomach swells taut against her sweatshirt, revealing her inside-out belly button below. She talks without stopping to breathe. At the end of this short parade comes a slim, tall woman with curly dark hair cropped like Peter Pan’s, slouching. There’s an energy of anger pulsing just beneath the surface of her skin. A thin blue vein beneath her eye twitches in time to her heart beat. Intelligent eyes silently claim, “I don’t belong here” as she curls, like a fetus onto the rolling chair.

The women of the county jail are a motley crew.

I carry with me, on my coat and in my hair, the crisp, fresh smell of snow.

“We have snow!” I say, with the delight of the first blanketing of a season, when the crisp, cold freshness is still novel and exciting, and driving on ice and through snirt (snow mixed with dirt) hasn’t yet grown wearisome and disgusting. “It’s so pretty out there.”

Without windows, the women were unaware of the hushed beauty pillowing the landscape on the other side of the cinder blocks surrounding them.

“I love snow!”

“I wish I could see it!”

“The men may get to go outside to shovel it.”

“I’d love to see it falling from the sky.”

“I’d make a snow angel if I could.”

Five of the six of us laugh.

It is my first visit to the jail to share Bible study with the women. I didn’t know they couldn’t see the snow.

Around an oval conference table in a nondescript interior room, they tell me their stories. Meth and Crack and a parole violation. Dealing in several counties, and jail time awaiting in each one.

Grasshopper starts talking. Five babies taken away, but this one, this one, she is determined, this one, her sixth, (is she even twenty-five?) this one will be born drug-free. She’s going to give this baby the life he deserves. She knows God is with her always has been always will be she just needs to trust in Jesus and get back to church and doing what the Gospels teach and not listen to the people who are always trying to lead her astray and she may have had the other kiddos taken from her because of drugs but not this one because this time she’s getting into the Word and following the Way and she’s not messing up again no way and if the baby daddy doesn’t want to support her and wants her to get messed up again she’ll just leave this time that’s all there is to it because she knows she’s God’s precious child and so is this baby and this time it’s all going to be alright so she’s actually happy to be in jail because it means less time to be tempted to backslide and turn her back on God which she isn’t going to do this time. No way.

Bonnie weeps. When she finds her voice she says she misses her fourteen-year-old boy. She feels so guilty. She really messed up and he’s the one who’s paying the price. “A boy needs his mother. Mine really loves me.” She says. “I really messed up this time” and again she weeps.

Five of the six of us weep.

Stoney silence from Peter Pan.

We feast on stories shared from our lives and from God’s good book. Grasshopper sings, “Jesus Loves me.”

Five of the six of us sing.

Our hour draws to a close. Teeth are starting to chatter and blue goose bumps have risen on the bare thighs of the bleached blonde girl wearing prison issue pink shorts instead of sweats.

I ask how we can pray for each other. “For my boy.” “For this baby” “For my boyfriend” “For me and my court date on Wednesday.”  I ask them to pray for me and my churches and for my six kids.

Peter Pan unfolds her long limbs and uncurls her lips and for the first time speaks very quietly saying, “Pray for my daughters, they’re 16 and 17 and live in Detroit where I am a social worker with a Master’s degree. Oxycontin got me here and I want out.”

Six of the six of us pray.

I step into the blinding brightness of sunlight bouncing off freshly fallen snow.

A holy dance of longing and liberty moving me.

Ordinary People

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My Column for The Elgin Review January 22, 2020

It was the coldest night of the year and the OB nurse reported to my insurance company she didn’t care what their current policy was, (dismissing new mothers and babies 24 hours after birth), she wasn’t about to send me and my 5lb 2oz baby boy into sub-zero temperatures. If the insurance company wouldn’t cover an additional night in the hospital for us, she would! The insurance company relented and allowed us to stay a second night.

Benjamin entered the world just before midnight on January 22, 1992.  He was three weeks early. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and ¼ of the placenta had died. If Ben hadn’t come when he did, odds are he would not have survived. Things didn’t immediately improve for poor Benjamin after he was born. Though he was not identified as a preemie, he was a tiny, tired little fellow. He was far more interested in sleeping than he was in eating.

After that “extra” night the nurse’s pleading gained us, I awakened in the hospital on the 24th with a high fever. A uterine strep infection kept the two of us in the hospital for the next week. Ben nursed lazily and my fever did a number on how much milk my body was making. When we finally went home, Benjamin, after a week in the hospital with me, was still considerably smaller than either of his brothers were when we took them home as newborns.

Five weeks later, Benjamin still hadn’t topped six pounds, so the pediatrician put him back in the hospital for “failure to thrive.” Unable to tolerate formulas, Ben was given bottles of my milk mixed with a high calorie supplement that cost $60.00 per day. In 1992 $60.00 per day was a fortune for a young family. Our insurance company said they would not cover it. “We don’t cover nutritional supplements” the customer service representative calmly told me. “But, it’s a prescription from his doctor and without it he will die.” I melodramatically, and truthfully, explained. She, still calmly, said she was very sorry, but that was their policy.

Fortunately, our insurance was through my denomination’s pension fund for ministers and the plan’s administrators went to bat for us and the insurance company relented. Ben received the supplements he needed. And now, as he turns twenty-eight years old this week, he’s six feet tall, still skinny as a rail, healthy as a horse, and living a good life in New York City.

I do not remember the names of the nurse, nor the pension fund administrator who effectively lobbied the insurance company on Benjamin’s behalf. But, on his birthday I give God thanks for them. They stepped up and spoke up on Ben’s behalf. Who knows? They may have saved my youngest son’s life.

What’s the moral of this story? There are at least three. #1. Happy Birthday, Benjamin! You are worth the worry you put us through. #2. Trouble with health insurance is not new in this country. It’s about time we make sure folks can get the health care they need. #3. God uses ordinary, everyday people, like OB nurses and pension fund administrators to save lives.

Everyday God uses ordinary people to make the lives of others better. For all of you who step up and speak up, thanks be to God!

Fear is a Trickster

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My Column for The Elgin Review June 26, 2019

We moved to a suburb of Detroit, Michigan when my sons were entering first, fourth and fifth grades. In Ohio where we’d lived before, my older boys walked the block and a half from our house to Lincoln Elementary School. My youngest son, because he had special needs, took a bus across town. In Michigan we lived about a mile from the boy’s school. They were, by then, old enough and easily able to walk a mile to school. I’d done it growing up in Omaha, their Dad walked to school in Cleveland and there seemed to be no reason for my boys not to do it in Michigan—except—there were no cross-walks, no crossing guards and two four lane roads between our house and the school. When I asked why not, I was told, “well, nobody walks to school anymore.”

We lived in Michigan more than a year when I began to hear why “nobody walks to school anymore.” Twenty-five years earlier, two suburbs over, there had been a kidnapping and murder of a child on his way home from school. Tens of thousands of school children had safely walked to and from school for generations before that tragedy occurred, but since then, fear of a similar crime taking place kept a whole generation of school kids from knowing the pleasures of walking to school.

Fear is a trickster. Fear is a natural and needed response, bred into us to keep us safe, but it can also be irrational. Fear can paralyze us and keep us from life’s pleasures. Fear can separate us from our neighbors. Fear can motivate us to take up arms when the arms themselves are a greater threat to us and those we love than what we were originally afraid of. Fear can deceive us into giving up our liberties and freedoms under the guise of security.

One of the more frequent admonitions in the whole of Christian Scripture is “Do not be afraid.”

The Bible was written over a span of 3400 years give or take. Those were years in which people had true and legitimate threats to their safety on a near daily basis and yet again and again the writers of the Jewish and Christian faith stories tell us, “Be not afraid.” God is with us and for us and will be with us no matter what happens in our lives. The one who created everything continues in creative love to make all situations new. No matter what, God’s love is with us. When we know that to be true, we have nothing to fear.

We need to be wise and prudent. We need to take appropriate precautions. Danger is real. Harm happens. Some people do evil things to others. But, live fully. Live boldly. Practice hospitality. Let the kiddos walk to school. Most people are kind and good and loving. Most people want to help others. Most people want the best for each other.

At Park Congregational Church everyone is always welcome. Have no fear, you are welcome here.

My Season of Unfortunate Events

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My Column for The Elgin Review in Elgin, NE published November 6, 2019

This past Saturday I stood precariously perched with my left foot on the edge of the bathtub and my right foot on the lid of the toilet trying to maneuver myself to get one foot out the window and the rest of me to follow. Laughing, I thought, “I guess this is just my season of unfortunate events.”

The parsonage is half a year older than I am. The house has reached its’ sixtieth birthday, and I will in February. By sixty, things begin to wear out. On Saturday morning, it was the door knob mechanism on the bathroom door, after my shower, with me stuck inside the bathroom. The good news was Mike was home from Lincoln and could come to my rescue and I had taken clothes with me into the bathroom before my shower so I wasn’t trying to climb out the parsonage window wearing only a towel.

My husband is handy and by the time he left to go back to Lincoln on Sunday afternoon, the door was back on its hinges with a new door knob set and all new innards and should be good to go for the next sixty years. The whole episode cost us some time, some muscles stretched in interesting ways from climbing out (me) and in (Mike) the window and less than ten bucks for the new hardware at Bomgaar’s.

The season of unfortunate events, of which I hope Saturday’s climb out the bathroom window was its culmination, began with a speeding ticket on my commute back to Antelope County from Lincoln a week ago. I stopped in Stromsburg to stretch my legs and forgot to turn my cruise control back on when I returned to the highway. The audiobook I was listening to was really good and my foot got too heavy on the pedal and a highway patrol woman was sitting right there on the west side of Highway 39.  The good news was I wasn’t in Antelope Country so it won’t show up in the newspaper (why am I writing about it here?), and, while expensive and inconvenient, I have money to cover the ticket.

The second of the “bad things come in threes” unfortunate events started Monday.  I am one of the unlucky ones for whom the new Shingles vaccine knocked me out. Tuesday morning after the vaccine on Monday afternoon I was kaput. Low grade fever, chills, a really sore, itchy arm and oh boy! I was tired for most of the week–even still on Saturday as I climbed out the window. The good news was it wasn’t a bad week for me to be under the weather. I had time to cozy up in the parsonage, do some reading and a lot of sleeping.

The writer of Ecclesiastes in the Bible said, “For everything there is a season.” Some seasons last a long time, some are fleeting. Some seasons leave us in tears, and some leave us laughing. Some seasons find us living high on the hog, and some leave us broke, or broken.  That’s the way life is. None of us is immune to going through times of sorrow or testing and none of us live without joy forever.

No matter what season you find yourself in. No matter where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome at Park Congregational United Church of Christ where this past weekend they laughed with me over my season of unfortunate events. At Park Church we’ll laugh with you, cry with you and share all of life’s seasons with you in the love and grace of Christ.

We’re ten miles west of Elgin on HWY 70 and ½ mile south. Worship on Sundays is at 9:15 am. Set your cruise control and head our way soon.

I love to hear from you. My email is beckyzmcneil@gmail.com