March 2018 – Southwest Conference Blog

Walk About

It was 1955. She was 67 years old. She’d survived more than 30 years of a violently abusive marriage. She’d borne and raised 11 children and cared for 23 grandchildren. She’d grown up on and toiled on small farms and homesteads her whole life. She’d always found refuge in walking the great outdoors.

Now she could finally get away. She made her way from southern Ohio by bus, plane, and taxicab to the top of Mt. Oglethorpe in Georgia. On May 2, she started walking. She walked up and over mountains; across streams and rivers; across fields of neck-high weeds and tranquil meadows; through sun, snow, rain, and hurricane (literally). She walked through seven pairs of tennis shoes. She relied on the hospitality of strangers, on the generosity of nature, on her own strength.

“Grandma” Emma Gatewood stopped walking on September 25 after 2,050 miles, at the summit of Mt. Katahdin in Maine, where the first rays of sun touch the U.S. each morning. She was only the fifth person known to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail (AT), and the first woman to do so solo. By the time she finished, she was the talk of the country. When asked, for the umpteenth time by another reporter, “Why?”, she answered, “Because I wanted to.”

Actually, Emma Gatewood didn’t really stop walking. Nineteen months later, she set out again from Mt. Oglethorpe, summitting Mt. Katahdin 4-1/2 months later, the first person to thru-hike the longest trail in the world twice. She climbed six mountains in the Adirondack Range in 1958 at age 70. In 1959 she walked from Independence, Missouri to Portland, Oregon, re-tracing the Oregon Trail to commemorate the Oregon Centennial. She hiked the AT for a third time, in sections. She walked and helped build trails around her home in Ohio. She didn’t stop walking and traveling and exploring until one day in 1973 when she didn’t feel well and died a few days later.

It’s 2018. A few days ago, someone, having seen me walking home from church, asked whether I’d like a ride next time. No, thank you. I prefer walking, feeling the ground beneath my feet, hearing the soulful coo of a mourning dove, feeling the breeze brush my face, saying “hello” to a stranger, moving in this beautiful world at a pedestrian pace.

In the 1950’s, Emma Gatewood, and other social observers of the day, bemoaned the addiction of Americans to their cars. Today, walking is often seen as something to be remedied by a ride.

I’m inspired by Grandma Gatewood. The car will stay in the carport as often as possible. I’m going to get out of that insulated motorized bubble and get out into life. I’m walking. Maybe the more I walk (or bike), the simpler my living will become, little by little. And maybe someday I’ll even walk the John Muir Trail, because I want to.

(Check out—a walk to the library, perhaps?—Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail, by Ben Montgomery. It’s a spell-binding read. Emma Gatewood was his great-aunt.)

Thoughts and Prayers

by Tony Minear

“The hands, that help, are holier than the lips that pray.” – Robert Ingersoll

“You’re in my thoughts and prayers.”

These words are frequently my go to in a variety of settings: End of a hospital visit, “Thoughts and prayers;” As I say goodbye to someone I’ve visited with, “Thoughts and prayers;” After hearing of a recent tragedy, “Thoughts and prayers.” These words express my care and concern for the individual and their situation. I admit, they are not always descriptive of my future behavior. I, like you, forget.

The shooting in Parkland, Florida, like similar moments the past three months, brought these words to the lips of politicians, churches, and individuals. From the lips of others, came the words, “Thoughts and prayers aren’t enough. They never have been.”

Emily Reid has read the headline, “Among the deadliest shootings in history …” thirteen times already in her twenty years of life. She is not optimistic this will be the last time. Unless? Unless we do something. Unless we act. Otherwise, thoughts and prayers will never be enough.

This reality is expressed in the holiest of Jewish days, Yom Kippur. On the Day of Atonement, the sins which Israel committed before or against God were cleansed. The people stood before God clean. There was one exception. A wrong against a fellow human being remained if you had not sought out their forgiveness. That one would not be cleansed.

Neal Urwitz states, “At least in the Jewish Tradition, if you have not made things right with your fellow man, G-d will not answer your prayers. And if you have made the same prayers over and over and over again, and the same horrors keep happening, that’s not on G-d. That’s on you.”

Mass shootings are on us despite our prayers if we have not acted to make things right with past and future victims. We make things right by confessing our wrong of idleness and start to act in ways that will change our relationship to guns. Prayer can no longer be our pacifier.

What can we do? Below are some steps we can take now.

Reconsider our stance on guns by becoming aware of the various opinions surrounding this subject. What solutions are being proposed? Are they taking it to far or not far enough? Listen and read widely.
Host a small group of friends and family to look at gun control from a religious and spiritual perspective. A great resource is “Faith vs. Fear.”
Participate in a March for Our Lives this March 24.
Contact your senators and express your view on guns and ask them to find a solution that makes a real difference.

Let us offer only thoughts and prayers if we are willing to act.

A teacher’s perspective on the lunacy of arming teachers

guest post by Samantha Fox

I am a third-grade teacher at a moderately poor school. I deal with troubled children on a regular basis but as Rebecca Berlin Field of Douglas S. Freeman High School in Virginia wrote, “Nowhere in my contract does it state that if the need arises, I have to shield students from gunfire with my own body. If it did, I wouldn’t have signed it. I love my job. I love my students. I am also a mother with two amazing daughters. I am a wife of a wonderful man. I have a dog that I adore. I don’t want to die defending other people’s children; I want to teach kindness and responsibility … and art history.”

I also am a mother of two wonderful children and a wife to an amazing husband and have a dog I adore. I want to teach love and understanding, to discourage bullying, and create opportunities for children that their parents may not have had. I challenge anyone to call me a coward when I teach 25 active and sometimes angry 3rd graders 5 days a week, but I am not trained to fire a weapon nor could I ever fire one even if trained.

It is madness to even to suggest that teachers be armed. New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of 28.3 percent. In 2005 a 17.4% hit rate. New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate in 2007 (and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away). Yet our President wants to arm teachers after a simple training course. There is greater likelihood that an innocent student will be shot than an arm gunman. MADNESS at an extreme.

Guns have no place in schools. Cameras, stronger security maybe but the real answer is to eliminate bullying, to teach our children to respect all students. And the place to start this lesson given President Trumps tweets and comments is from the top down.

I want teachers and parents to speak out against this lunacy.

Billy Graham and Our Desperate Need for Civility

by Ryan Gear

If the past two weeks have taught those of us in the religion world anything, it’s that Billy Graham is an even more controversial figure that we realized. After his death at 99 years old on February 21, a plethora of news articles and blog posts weighing in on his legacy flooded social media. It’s an understatement to say the reviews are mixed. That is likely the case among the readers of this blog, as well, and differences of opinion should be respected.

I grew up in a conservative evangelical household, and Billy Graham was an important part of my childhood. I actually came to faith in Christ while watching Billy Graham on television. I was only 11 years old, and while some may question an 11-year-old’s ability to make such a decision, my conversion experience was real, and it changed my life.

After 29 years of maturing faith, however, I hold different views than Billy Graham on some important issues, and I found myself conflicted since his death. The most oft-repeated criticisms cited his secretly taped 1972 conversations with President Nixon, his ambivalent relationship with the Civil Rights Movement, and his opposition to gay rights (although there is some question as to whether it was Billy or his son, Franklin, who was behind more recent political statements as Billy aged).

To his credit, Graham did assist Martin Luther King Jr. in small symbolic ways, he apologized profusely for his conversation with Nixon in 1972, and I wonder if, given health and time, perhaps he would have softened on his social views. While I wish Billy Graham would have been more open-minded, in his day, he was actually a moderate evangelical, at times expressing views that were not conservative enough for his base of supporters.

When the news of his death was announced, I expected a mixed reaction, but I was surprised by the extremes. The responses ranged from adulation and thankfulness to polite disagreement, and I would have to say, to revulsion and even hatred. The most derisive reaction, however, came from a Teen Vogue author who tweeted:

“The big news today is that Billy Graham was still alive this whole time. Anyway, have fun in hell, b*tch…” She continued, “‘Respecting the dead’ only applies to people who weren’t evil pieces of sh*t while they were living.”

When I encounter words of this nature, I assume that the person speaks from a deep place of pain, and I wish this writer peace and healing. I do not know her personal story and what lies behind her comments, so I choose to empathize with her. I wish that she had been able to show more empathy to Billy Graham. Anyone is free to disagree with Billy Graham’s views, but I also must ask if this tweet supposed to represent some kind of goodness in contrast. In my view, when one tweets “Have fun in hell, b*tch” to someone, that person cannot claim the moral high ground.

More troubling, this comment seems to be indicative of where dialogue in our culture is headed. The coarsening nature of society is obvious to anyone watching, and as Pew Research recently pointed out, we have become more polarized over the past 25 years. Talk radio and cable news hosts have been lobbing verbal bombs at one another since in the 1990’s, and our nation is now as divided as it’s been since in the 1960s. The most recent presidential election only widened the gap and pushed the rhetoric to new a low. I don’t even bother reading the comments under social media posts anymore, because the immaturity and rancor are often discouraging.

Here is what gives me hope, however— I am convinced that there is a large, middle majority of Americans who would like to see a greater sense of maturity that actually helps us solve the problems we all face. In a word, we know that we need a greater sense of civility. Civility is more than politeness. Civility is the willingness to work together, even with those with whom we disagree, for the benefit of society. Civility is the act of speaking out, protesting, and expressing our convictions but in a constructive way. It is the opposite of the pithy, one-liner insult that is now considered a “win” on social media platforms. Insults, like the cycle of violence, only lead to more insults. Civility gets results.

The lack of civility in our society has reached a tipping point. The solution to a bad guy with an insult is not a good guy with an insult. Violence won’t put an end to violence, and insults will not help to offset the daily half-truths and outright conspiracies propagated by radio and cable TV commentators. We teach our children not to engage in vicious smears and name–calling because we know that behavior does lead to any solution to the problems we face and it only breeds more distrust and chaos. We need civility.

It starts with you and me. For those who desire to follow Jesus, we would do well to remember His words in Matthew 5:22:

“But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”

The word “fool” is more literally “empty headed,” or “idiot.” It is a dehumanizing term, an epithet that allows the offender to dispatch of the one derided as though the person is less than human, worthless. The root word implies someone worthy of being spit on. Jesus’ words are clear— dehumanizing language is a much more grievous sin that many of us realize. In fact, dehumanizing language creates a form of hell that we are forced to live in. Does anyone doubt that we are seeing it’s effects on our society now?

In contrast, in the next two verses, Jesus instructs us:

“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

Here, reconciliation takes precedent over worship. Right relationships are even more important than a religious act. Notice that Jesus also demands that we are sensitive and intentional to actually know when someone has something against us. Apparently, we should actively search for ways that someone might have something against us and then seek to reconcile with them.

This is a picture of civility, and for the sake of our society, those of us who desire to follow Jesus should start leading by example. After Martin Luther King Jr., Billy Graham was likely the most influential religious figure of the 20^th century, and his death further revealed our society’s incivility and polarization. Regardless of our feelings about Graham, perhaps his death can become part of a redemptive story, a move toward civility in our society that begins with followers of Jesus.

American Idol

Guest post by Jay Deskins, a Disciples of Christ pastor recently relocated to Tucson; a current Bethany Fellow.

It all started when a tyrant king ruled over the colonies of the East coast of North America. The early European Americans were unable to arm themselves in the protection of their land, liberty, and safety. The climax of this control was the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770. A group of unarmed protestors were shouting down the British soldiers, who were sent to police the colonies, and began to throw stones and snowballs at the soldiers when the soldiers pointed their muskets towards the crowd and killed five of the crowd. Between that event and countless other stories of the oppressive government forcing itself on the homes, lives, and liberty of the civilians, it is no wonder that our country’s founders added the second amendment to the constitution.

However, now in the 21st century, we have similar situations. Unarmed people being shot and killed by a policing force, unwelcome seizures of property, and the rise of tyrants. And yet, what remains? The call to arms.

As a Christian minister, I can’t help myself in seeing that the American gospel of the second amendment is antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Guns have become the golden calf of American society; an idol worshipped, even above the words and promises of our ancient scriptures.

Idols are those objects that we create that become our focus. An idol is that which gives us hope. The golden calf of ancient Israel was created when Moses went up to Mount Sinai for forty days, and when the people feared the worst for him, they created a new god that they believed had liberated from slavery in Egypt. Out of fear, lack of focus, and lack of vision they created the calf.

An idol goes places where we think God will not. There are shouts for our schools to be armed because God is not allowed in schools. When our understanding of God is that of a divine presence that is far off and away, a conclusion can be drawn that we have to invite God to our world. But the fallacy here is that if our God is in all places at all times, then our God is absolutely present in school. Since when do we have the right to deny the presence of God?

In 2018, it is more clear than ever that we have built a new golden calf, and in it we have hope, we have promise. One that liberated us from the throws of the tyrant king, one that gives us great hope that will liberate us once again. One that gives us ultimate protection in the face of evil. One that, when the God of our faith seems absent, and that has been cast out of our public sphere, is always present. One that promises equality for all. But, this, this is not good news for us.

You see, the good news is this: the God of Christian worship is not one that calls for self-protection, rather calls us to give our lives. The God of Christian worship is not one that calls for the armament of God’s people, rather calls us to turn our weapons into tools for work. The God of Christian worship is not one that says an eye for an eye, but rather turn our cheek.

God calls us to build relationship, and we can’t do that when we place an idol between our neighbors, or between us and God.

It is time. Let us as people of faith reject this idol. This isn’t political. This is faith. Where is your faith?

Let us throw our idol in the fire, melt it down, put it in the river, and drink it. All of them.