Sunday Wrapup--April 29, 2012

Today's paper carried the obituary of a man whose first name was Stanley.  He was 89.  I only met him once, but feel that I knew him through the kind words about him that I heard from his wife.  Kathy was a Farmer's Market customer, faithfully buying one of my bouquets, week after week, always with a smile and a short visit.  At our first meeting of every market season I greeted her with a hug.  She was special.

Once she invited me to her home to take the beautiful ferns from her porch, since she and her husband were about to leave for their winter home in Arizona.  She also showed me the beautiful landscape they had created in their tiny backyard.  That's when I met her husband, a tall, courteous, smiling man.

I learned from Kathy that they had lived earlier in northern Kansas and had moved to Hutchinson when they retired.  This was about halfway between the home of their son, who stayed on the home farm with the family's business of manufacturing "silencer" cattle handling equipment (Picture a "catch" that operates silently instead of with clatters and bangs.), and the home of their daughter, who lived near Wichita.  Kathy had been a teacher during her more active years.  Within the last year or two they had sold their beautiful house and moved into their own apartment in a retirement home.

Kathy told me once that her husband reads his Bible every morning, and then rides his bike for 12 miles.  I also remember Kathy telling  me about a guest they had in their home--someone who had come for a week of special events in their church.  He couldn't eat onions, and Kathy puzzled over how to make dishes tasty with that limitation.

From the obituary I learned several other details about Stanley.  He was a fourth generation farmer-stockman, and very active in community and church work.  He and Kathy had been married for 64 years.  In Stanley's 80th year, he had set out to ride his bike 24,902 miles, equal to the circumference of the earth, by his 86th birthday, and did so.  Stanley had once played basketball for Kansas State University.

My favorite pieces of information about Stanley came in the last two sentences of the obituary:  "Stanley's relationship with Jesus Christ was most important to him as he lived his life as a born again Christian.  Stanley will be remembered for his quick smile, gentle way, and quiet words of wisdom."

Knowing people like Stan and Kathy is part of the pleasure that makes the work of going to Farmer's Market worthwhile, even when it doesn't make a lot of money.

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Our fourth "son" is getting married this month in Japan.  He lived with us for nearly a year as an exchange student, beginning in the summer of 2001--an ethnic Korean who lived in Japan.  On Facebook, Jae's sister posted a picture of Jae and his bride-to-be.  "She's tall," I told Hiromi.  I know how tall Jae is, and she is only a few inches shorter.  They're both formally dressed in the picture, but Jae's hair is still a touch wild, just as it was when he lived with us.

Hiromi carefully analyzed the photo for clues to whether she is Japanese or Korean.  "Korean," he decided, after he saw how tall she is.

Jae works as a journalist for a major TV network.  His family lives near the area in Japan devastated by last year's earthquake and tsunami.  Their lives were not disrupted in a major way, but their church group was involved in providing aid to those who lived in the most severely stricken area in the prefecture "next door.".

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I woke to the glorious sound of rain during the night.  We had about 1/2 inch before we left for church.  Most of the rest of the day was relatively calm, and this evening we're seeing some sunshine.  More rain is a possibility tomorrow evening and night--this time, with some severe storm chances included.

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Grant and Clarissa keep seeing evidence of armadillos digging in their yard.  In search of grubs and earthworms, they scoop out holes several inches across and four or five inches deep.  That's not a problem everywhere, but if it's in a regularly mowed area or a garden, it's not much more welcome than a big cow walking over a lawn right after a big rain, punching holes in the turf, or a woodchuck digging in the garden and uprooting vegetables.  I know more about cows than I do about woodchucks.

Prairie dogs are our closest woodchuck equivalents--much smaller, however, and always living among others of their kind in a colony--usually not near a lawn or garden.

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For about a week in 2010, Joel and Hilda entertained Nanami, a staff person from the National Museum of Ethnology in Japan.  Last week we got an English version of her publication on the research she was involved in while she was here: Caregiving Among the Amish.  The book contains a picture of Joel and Hilda in Hutchinson at the Et Cetera shop (an MCC fair-trade and used-goods outlet), with Jane W. and Melody W.  Another picture was taken in Dwight and Karen's living room, with homeschooling in progress.

I found the homeschooling perspective fascinating--an admirable aspect of caregiving--exactly on-target, in my opinion, as is more apparent to homeschoolers and thoughtful foreigners perhaps than to many more tradition-oriented conservative Mennonites.

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We have two weeks of school remaining.  The race toward the finish is on.

In our Home Environment class we spent several days last week working in David and Susanna's yard, helping them carry out their landscaping vision, and adding our ideas and help where needed.  They've added a double garage to the west of their house, with guest quarters upstairs.  A wide, mostly glass-walled breezeway provides access between the addition and the original house along the back of the house, and a patio forms a wide apron along the breezeway.

Among other things, the students helped construct stone walls, lay out stepping stones, move perennials from one area to another, work in soil ammendments, and plant newly-purchased shrubs and perennials.

David and Susanna speak ruefully about all the work ahead--too much, it seems sometimes, for people nearly 60 years old.  I wish we could run the class again soon enough to help them with the water feature they envision, and tackling other parts of the area around the house.  These projects would provide marvelous learning opportunities for the students.  For now, we are concentrating our efforts at the east end of the house, partly reaching around to the south side.

It's a delight to see the students work with enthusiasm, skill, and care.  All this would not be possible without David and Susanna "working ahead of us" to see that the necessary supplies and prep work are ready before we get there.  

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Recently I awoke during the night with a silly mental picture that made me chuckle to myself.  First, some background.  My parents raised 12 children--all of them with the policy of not leaving church meetings for drinks or bathroom breaks.  I'm sure there were rare exceptions, but we would never have dreamed of getting up and making an exit without first asking permission.  Usually we would not be allowed to go even then.  I think my parents correctly ascertained that such activity often has a lot more to do with a desire for diversion than a biological need.  I still can't believe my eyes when children take off with nary a nod to the parent sitting right beside them, especially for nothing more than a drink.  I sometimes see high schoolers who grew up that way continuing the diversion right through high school.

Our students have a break roughly every 45 minutes in which to take care of the biological beckonings.  How can there possibly be a need more frequently than that--except on rare occasions when there is an unpredictable malfunction?

During church, requiring specific permission each time seems reasonable to me.  That way, the parent can give guidance about when it might be more or less appropriate--at the end of a song or speech, for example, rather than right in the middle, or while everyone is standing anyway, and the visual distraction to others is minimized.   While some moving around during church is necessary with babies and toddlers, too readily accommodating a child's distractability in a group gathering actually imposes a distraction on everyone else in the audience.  That is no courtesy, and seems child-centric in an unhealthy way.  Big caveat: Biological variations exist.  Perhaps all the children who can't survive a church service without a bathroom break are the same ones who can't make it through the night without wetting the bed.  Now THAT  would be an interesting survey--difficult with no voluntary participants, however.

Back to the ridiculous nighttime mental image--Perhaps what is really going on when children are unable to sit through a service without a trip to the back (especially without asking permission to to so) is that they enter the sanctuary with a concealed device that randomly and mechanically triggers an ejection maneuver, propelling them out of their seat and prodding them to the end of the bench and down the aisle.  This possibility is a more entertaining thought than the common sense one above.

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A number of years ago people in our church once found in their mailboxes a paper "exposing" the use of occultic symbols by Proctor and Gamble--a company that produces detergents and many other common household items.  No one seemed to know who had placed the papers in the mailboxes, and someone asked Hiromi if he did it.  He was involved in mind-controlling-cult awareness at the time, which was probably why he was asked.

Hiromi would consider such a thing a major violation of  ethics, and in response, he made a public request during announcement time at church, saying simply that he wished people who put things in the mailboxes would always identify themselves when they do so.  Many others expressed similar sentiments to us afterward, and I believe there was at that time public affirmation of that policy.

A short time later, at the sewing, I brought to our quilt a clipping from the Hutchinson News--an article that exposed the Proctor and Gamble story for the falsehood that it was.  Shortly thereafter, another anonymous paper appeared in the church mailboxes--an apology for spreading the inaccurate Proctor and Gamble story.  The episode was sufficiently embarrassing to the "mailbox stuffers" to insure that they will never do so again, I believe.

Today a fat collection of stapled-together writings exposing the "errors" in the teaching of a well-known counselor appeared in the church mailboxes.  (I'm actually not sure if every mailbox had one, but I know of no reason ours would have had it if others didn't, and I do know that it was present in some other mailboxes.)  The original writer of the material was identified (someone from another state), but the distributor of the materials was not.  I don't know who was responsible for the distribution, but I do know that apparently no one on our leadership team had knowledge of it ahead of time.

Hiromi sadly looked at the bundle of papers printed on both sides and said, "It's not even any good for scrap paper."

I feel indignant, in spite of having had to laugh at Hiromi's pertinent observation.  I like to think that I have considerable capacity for examining various angles of an issue, and I believe the counselor in question is not off-limits for having his beliefs and techniques evaluated with discernment.  I do, however, have a very limited tolerance for undercover lobbing of salvos against someone without being willing to be open about having done so--so much so that I may not take time to read through the long document--a pity, perhaps, because there might be some truth there, and someone spent a lot of money to get the copies made.

It's no doubt easier to maintain my indignation as long as I don't know whether one of our own dear church brothers or sisters might be responsible.  That's an important issue for the anonymous informers to ponder.  Love for each other extends to cover errors of judgement, and I love our church family enough to be willing to extend forgiveness for mailbox stuffing errors.  Also, if a person has a long record of being generous toward others and careful about their conclusions, their concerns are likely to call for careful consideration on my part.  I would pay attention out of loyalty to and respect for my brother or sister.  If, on the other hand, the stuffing was done by someone I don't even know, especially something written by an author I already know to have a history of voicing criticism of others in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is false, I feel no obligation to waste my time with the material.

I'm happy to give everyone mailbox stuffing privileges as long as people who do so identify themselves with the material they distribute--at least as long as they don't use them for non-paper items that make the box so full that I can't get the weekly announcement sheet into a box when I need to.

I'm curious if other churches have ready-made or even unofficial policies about what goes into their church mailboxes. What are they?

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Recently, in a surprising development, I had occasion to see the behind-the-scenes workings of a non-church board.  I do not serve on this board.  The glimpse reinforced something I referred to a number of weeks ago--the necessity for board or committee members to operate with integrity and with a focus on service.  In the group workings I learned about, there was a notable lack of the characteristics I idealize--in all except one person, whose actions displayed honesty and humility.  This person also had a clear sense for the obligations and limitations of operating within existing protocols, but seeks to improve them where they are inadequate.  He operates by board decision but, if asked, will not pretend to support something he believes is indefensible.  He does this without revealing a lot of specifics about who did what when board decisions were made.  I admire this.

When I'm on the receiving end of what seems unfair (the case in this situation) it makes all the difference in the world if one person in authority is willing to say "This is wrong, and we must do better than this."  Hope is possible where truth telling is possible.  Truth telling should go in every direction--to those we work with, to those over us, and to those who must follow our lead.  A truth-failure in any of these links can cause enormous pain for others involved.