Traveling the World with a Mug of Tea

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My Column for the Antelope County News 10.14.2020

While I was on vacation for two weeks, I sat with a black minister as he preached a gut-wrenching sermon to white America.  I traveled on a transport ship with a poor young woman from England as she was sent away to imprisonment in Australia for a crime she didn’t commit. I wandered rural Sweden with two men whose lives diverged and converged again in heartbreak and happiness. I stretched and dreamed and danced along with a middle-aged reporter who convinced a professional ballet company to let her perform in their production of the holiday classic, The Nutcracker.

While on vacation I saw the ghost of Emmet Till and ghosts of myriad other young, murdered, black children standing witness and inspiring courage to end their slaughter. And, on the same vacation, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, I watched as two family’s lives entwined for better and for worse. In the evenings Billy Crystal regaled me and Mike with his too true, righteously funny tales of aging. In the mornings I sat with an ancient song-writer singing of God’s faithfulness.

All these experiences took place from the comfort of the guest house where we stayed in the Black Hills of South Dakota. With a book on my lap and a mug of tea at hand, I traveled the world, thinking deeply, laughing, crying, empathizing, learning.  

Books open us to the whole world of ideas and experiences. Books allow us to travel places we will never get to go and to visit times we have never lived. Books help us to walk in the steps of, and live in the hearts and minds of people we otherwise might never understand. Books help us be more humane, as through them, we open ourselves to new ways of understanding our neighbors.

For the Good Book, and for all sorts of good books please join me in giving thanks.

A Lot to Learn

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My Column for The Elgin Review October 14, 2020

A girl in my high school had a crush on me. I didn’t get it. It was just six years after Stonewall. It was six years before the first known case of AIDS. In my insular little world homosexuality wasn’t something I was aware of. “Coming out” was something I read about on the society page of the Omaha paper when daughters of the wealthy were formally introduced as debutantes, ready to take their places in high society. Coming out back then had nothing to do with telling someone you were gay. My classmate wasn’t “out.” I just knew that being her friend felt complicated so I found ways to stay too busy to invest much in our friendship. Years passed before I understood why she seemed so hurt by me. I had a lot to learn.

My boys grew up in a different world after the worst of the AIDS crisis. Once, three years after Matthew Shepherd was brutally killed for being gay, when my boys were middle-school aged, I was putting laundry away in the linen closet outside their bed room when one of them was with a couple friends from school. I heard the boys say, “Oh! That’s so gay!” and they laughed and threw the term around loosely. This was “gay” and that was “gay” and it was clear that “gay” was decidedly un-cool.

After his friends went home, I asked my son about it.

“It’s just something we say.” He claimed.

“We don’t mean anything by it.”

I asked, “Would you say it around someone who’s gay?”

“No, Mom!” he insisted. “But I don’t know anyone who’s gay.”

A beloved member of our extended family, a member of the choir at church, his grandparent’s pastor, his own school principal who helped him adjust to life in his new school were all gay. I could see the cogs turning in his head as I “outed” people he loved to him.

“Is there anything un-cool about these people?”

“No. They’re all really kind to me.” He looked crushed. “I’ll never use ‘gay’ again to describe something bad.” 

“Good,” I said. “I’m glad.”

This past Sunday was “National Coming Out Day.” I’m thinking about the incredible people I know who are gay and “out.” I’m thinking about how much poorer my life would be without them. I’m thinking about their contributions to the churches I’ve served and the neighborhoods I’ve lived in. I’m thinking about the heartache many of them have faced, the cruelty many of them have been subjected to. I’m thinking about the ways the church, through bad scholarship and selective application of scripture has perpetuated the silencing and sidelining of beautiful children of God solely because of who they are attracted to, who they love.

I’m thinking we’ve come a long way since I was in high school. We’ve come a long way since my sons were in school. But we still have a long way to go. I’m “coming out” to say, we still have a lot to learn.

**

No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome at Park Congregational United Church of Christ. Ten miles west of Elgin on HWY 70 and ½ mile south. Worship is at 9:15 on Sunday mornings.  I love to hear from you. My email is beckyzmcneil@gmail.com

The Power of One

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My Column for The Elgin Review 10.7.2020

Sometimes all it takes is one person to restore another person’s belief in humanity.

Mike and I are just back from a two-week vacation in the Black Hills. Our plan was to hang out in a beautiful place and keep away from other people as much as possible to avoid the risk of COVID-19. It mostly worked except when we took the 1880’s train from Hill City to Keystone round trip.

Mike’s a train buff. His dad worked on the Union Pacific when Mike was little. Mac died when Mike was fourteen so early memories of riding the rails with him are especially fond. We stopped by the station where signs were posted to stay six feet apart. Sanitizer stations marked the entrances. Plexiglass shields protected souvenir buyers from sales folk and vice-verse.  Comfortable that precautions were in place, Mike ordered our tickets.

Before the conductor yelled, “all aboard” and the engine let out its’ distinctive first “whoosh” of steam, I was already steamed. We were surrounded by people without masks, standing too close to each other on the platform. When we boarded the train, the windows were closed against the chill of the day. On our car every seat was full and only two other couples wore masks. Grandma and grandson wore theirs onto the train, but when they sat down two feet in front of us, they took them off.

The scenery was breathtaking, but I was holding mine (well, trying to) that whole first hour. When we stepped onto the platform in Keystone while the engine switched to the other end of the train to make the return trip, once we were finally socially distant from others, my first words to Mike were,

“I hate people.”

“Oh, Becky. That’s not true. You, of all people, do not hate people.”

I assured my beloved, “Oh, indeed I do.”

“How hard is it to err on the side of caution and wear a mask?” I snapped.

“I hate people.”

Back on the train for the return trip, I was by the window and I opened it despite the chill. With air whooshing in I felt safer.

At the first crossing out of the Keystone station, a lanky young man with a buck-toothed grin in a floppy hat stood outside a white van and waved with great enthusiasm as the train passed. I and others waved back. Surprisingly, the same man stood waving at the next crossing and the next. The older man, at the wheel inside the van, waved too. Fourteen crossings, more than an hour of driving and stopping for the same train. Fourteen times, the young man with the grin and special needs, waved and shared his grin with us. The older man (his dad?) had the route down pat. Perfectly timed. They’d done this routine a gazillion times before. The old man racing the train, stopping and parking again and again and again so the young man could wave and grin as we rode by. 

I wept a little and whispered to Mike,

“I don’t hate people anymore.”

**

If you’ve soured on your fellow humans, if you find yourself wondering where’s the good in this world, I hope you’ll find your way to worship with us at Park Congregational Church ten miles west of Elgin on Highway 70 and ½ mile south where God has never failed to show up to show us self-giving love every time we gather. Worship is at 9:15.

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

Gifts to Each Other

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My Column for The Elgin Review July 29, 2020

We were in the same work-group, side by side on our knees pulling weeds from a flower bed in front of Child Saving Institute in Omaha during a regional church meeting years ago. I was living in Lincoln and chose the Child Saving Institute project because I was adopted through the agency as a baby. My ties to the place were deeper than the roots of the weeds we were pulling. He was from one of the Omaha churches. As we worked in the hot sun, we got acquainted. He was gregarious and funny. He wore kindness like cologne and had a smile that lit his face, spontaneously lifting my spirit.

In the way conversations have of traveling from one subject to another, as we moved from weeding to mulching our conversation came around to my youngest son’s Asperger’s Syndrome. Ben was in middle school then. Middle school was better for Ben than grade school, but there were still challenges. I was concerned about the possibilities for Ben’s adult life. I don’t remember the details of our mulching conversation. What I remember is Merlin listened with kindness and then joyfully told me he had Asperger’s Syndrome, too.

Earlier, with glee, Merlin told me his love story about meeting and marrying Tami.  He told me about his Ph.D. and his work. Here, in the flower beds in front of the agency that had been my first home, the orphanage where I was gifted with my family, was an embodiment of hope that my youngest son might one day live a rich and full adult life—might marry, could have a meaningful career, could be a beloved, contributing member of his community.  Merlin was the first adult “Aspie” I ever met. Generously, he offered to talk with me any time. He was eager to meet Benjamin, and promised me to be of whatever help Ben might need mapping out his future.

Merlin was a gift to me from God. Merlin and Tami moved away from Omaha years before Mike and I moved back to the city so my friendship with him has been mostly through Facebook. If you’re a parent, you know the deep appreciation I feel for this man who took keen interest in my son. When Ben graduated from High School, Merlin was one of his cheerleaders from afar. When Ben graduated from college, I didn’t have to see Merlin’s smile to feel him beaming from hundreds of miles away.

Last week, Merlin posted a picture of himself beaming from inside what looked like a clear plastic robot head. He was in the hospital in California where he worked as a speech therapist in a nursing home. The funny looking contraption on his head was an Italian invention being used to keep Merlin off a ventilator. He had COVID-19. Merlin joked about the sounds his robot head made. They sounded like flatulence and it made him laugh. I laughed when I read his post.

Yesterday afternoon I received word Merlin died. The Italian flatulent robot-head apparently was no match for this dread-disease. I’m not laughing today.

Until now, other than John Prine, whom I’ve heard live in concert, those who’ve died from COVID-19 have been far-away strangers to me. I’ve been fortunate and thankful it hasn’t been as bad as I feared it might be.

Ben’s brother, my middle son, is awaiting the results of the COVID test he took last week. He’s been under the weather for days in Pittsburgh, PA where he lives. This morning COVID-19 is not far away, it’s close to home even though we don’t have many cases here in Antelope County. Will you pray with me for a vaccine, for effective treatment, for Dan and all who await test results, for those who are ill right now, for Tami and all those who’ve lost someone they love?

Thank you for doing everything in your power to be safe and to keep each other safe. We are God’s gift to each other. Just like Merlin was to me.

**

Park Church is going back indoors for August as long as Antelope County doesn’t have a spike in COVID-19 cases this week. You are welcome to join us for worship 10 miles west of Elgin on HWY 70 and ½ mile south or via Zoom at 9:15 every Sunday morning. I am always interested in hearing from you. Beckyzmcneil@gmail.com.

 

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.

 

Every Life Deserves a Lifetime

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My column for The Elgin Review 7.15.2020

Driving south on Highway 14 there’s a billboard north of Elgin’s city limits with a sweet baby on it. The sign says, “Every life deserves a lifetime.” In smaller print it says, “pro-life.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be pro-life. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in 1983 wrote and spoke of the consistent ethic of life, teaching that all human life is sacred and to be protected.

I wonder if it’s easier for us to agree with the Cardinal when protecting life is no real inconvenience to us? Putting up a sign, standing in a life-chain, buying a “choose life” license plate requires of us little effort and no real inconvenience. If that’s being “pro-life” it’s easy.

It’s more difficult to affirm that every life deserves a lifetime when it’s someone we love who is facing an unplanned pregnancy and is in no position to raise a child. It’s more difficult to affirm that every life deserves a lifetime when study after study proves that what actually works to diminish abortions is not changing laws, but paying to provide a social safety net and easy access to birth control and health care. When poverty decreases, abortion rates decline—but to make that happen, we have to decide that caring for the poor is a priority worthy of our tax dollars.

It’s more difficult to affirm that every life deserves a lifetime when Capital Punishment is what is being considered and the lifetime is that of one convicted of a heinous crime, or when our nation’s military is engaged in endless wars, leaving dead children and civilians who are foreigners as collateral damage. Do foreigners also deserve a full lifetime?

Being pro-life is easy when it requires nothing of us, when it’s as simple as voting for the candidate who claims to be pro-life, and putting yet another bumper sticker on the back of the van or truck.

I wonder, if we’re pro-life why is it difficult to affirm that Black Lives Matter? If we’re pro-life, why are we willing to sit quietly by while our justice system serves up death in too many instances to unarmed people of color?

And, even closer to home, I wonder, if we’re pro-life why aren’t we doing everything in our power to make sure we aren’t spreading a potentially deadly virus to our neighbors? Why aren’t we, at a minimum, wearing a mask every single time we’re out in public? Why aren’t we bending over backwards to keep our neighbors and loved ones safe? Why aren’t we foregoing the night at the bar, the baby shower for our niece, the picnic with our friends, when by not getting together we can keep each other and our community safer from a disease that is deadly to some?

If every life deserves a lifetime, maybe we need to be more willing to be a little inconvenienced, a little uncomfortable, a little bored and lonely for the foreseeable future.  Maybe we need to be willing to be taxed in one way or another.

Or maybe, it’s only a billboard and we don’t really mean what it says at all.

**

Park Church is back to worshipping outdoors at 9:15 on Sunday mornings as a result of the up-tick in COVID-19 cases in Antelope County. You are welcome to join us for worship on the church grounds, or via Zoom. Those worshipping in person are wearing masks and maintaining 6 foot distances between families. I welcome your comments and questions. Beckyzmcneil@gmail.com 402.540.5615

 

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.

**

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.

**

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.

**

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