STORYTELLING

NICU, NWM, Chicago, IL

"Where's the good?” the young father asked himself on the eve of his young daughter Kate’s third brain surgery after being struck by a car. Their story is related by Emily Smith in The Power of Meaning who posits that storytelling is one of the pillars of meaning in our lives. Anthropologist Mary Bateman notes that storytelling is an act of creation improvising like a jazz musician. Smith observes storytelling translates into an effort to make sense of the world and impose order on disorder, creating a coherent narrative.

The third surgery followed months of therapy and was scheduled to replace the piece of Kate’s skull that had been initially removed to ease pressure on her brain. Kate’s father found the redemption he sought shortly after Kate came out from under the anesthesia. Hospital staff began to enter the recovery room one at a time to introduce themselves. Most of them began by stating that “You don’t remember me but…I was the admitting physician when you came into the ER, I was the nurse with the operating team, I was the chaplain on duty that spent time with your parents, I was the social worker on your case, I was the nurse that cared for you for the first days after your accident.”

The last visitor of smiling faces was the nurse that worked with Kate during the long summer days of therapy. Kate’s father thanked the nurse for coming by to wish Kate the best, but remarked “There’s something else going on here, isn’t there?” The nurse responded that “for every ten kids we see with this injury, nine of them die. There is only one Kate. We need to come back and we need to see her, because she is what keeps us coming back to work in this place every day.”

The young father later reflected that this redemption “doesn’t make the crisis worthwhile, but it makes it worth something.” Psychologist Dan McAdams concludes that people rate their lives more meaningful when they have redemptive stories to tell about extraordinary events in their lives. These stories come from scars that have healed over wounds that make a lasting impact on the person’s life.

When a monitor indicated a slight blip of concern for my newborn grandson, he was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit at Northwestern Medical in Chicago. Thankfully, there was no problem, but the ensuing few days of cautionary testing were intensely stressful and bonding, although positive. The unit is locked and staffed with advanced technology and extraordinarily competent, nurturing specialists and practitioners.

We quickly got to know one of the senior nurses on the night shift who had returned out of retirement on weekends. She assured us that my grandson would be fine. I asked how she managed to keep it together all these years while working in this intense environment with premature infants and critically ill newborns. One in eight babies is born prematurely in the United States. The senior nurse responded that within the past few weeks, she was requested to report to the front lobby. When she entered the lobby a young mother introduced herself and then asked her twin daughters to introduce themselves. They told her that they were the preemie twins that she had nursed to health during their first weeks of life and they wanted to meet her and personally give her a hug of thanks. “That’s why I can get up and come to this place, even out of retirement”, the nurse replied with a smile.

Adam Gopnik observes in The New Yorker that when stories are told well they “levitate the room.” The emcee of The Moth where these stories are shared concludes that storytelling “is reaching out into the void and connecting with people and letting them know they’re not alone.” Kinda like a blog post.

THE DONUT HOLE

Lone Donut, Jamestown UMC, NC

I operate the PowerPoint presentation for our church contempory service on the first Sunday of each month so the regular operator can volunteer for another assignment each month. Seated at an elevated position at the back of the service gives me a unique perspective on the folks that attend. The service attracts a lot of young families with children which is great. There is always a hospitality table at the back which includes coffee for the adults and lemonade with donut holes for the kids and an occasional adult as well.

After the service had gotten underway this morning I noticed two young girls slipping in the back door. They were holding onto their youth Bibles and made a bee line direct to the basket of donut holes in focused anticipation. The first girl reached into the basket to retrieve her prize while the second arrived just in time to discover that there were none left. I glanced over to curiously see how they would both react. The girl with the prized lone donut hole pondered the conundrum for just a moment and then warmed my heart when she offered it to her empty-handed friend. I could observe that she too was in a quandary about eating the only donut hole left in the basket.

I fully expected them to possibly handle the issue like wise King Solomon when two women came to him demanding the same baby. He instructed them to split the prize in half and share which prompted the true mother to offer the baby to the imposter. But with childlike grace, the girls agreed to return the lonesome donut hole back into the basket. They then poured two glasses of lemonade and toasted one another for their selfless decision. After they were seated, the mother of one of the girls entered and plucked the lone donut hole from the basket without realizing her own daughter had left it for her. She then proceeded to join the girls with a nice hug for both of them.

You know, I’ve often wondered how much grief the human population can present to God before he simply says, “OK, that’s enough!” when he observes how all we adults are managing His creation. But then our only salvation has to be when he watches our children and how they take care of one another and he wonders to the Trinity, “Well, let’s wait just a little while longer. Maybe this is the generation that will get it right.”

A GOD OF FORGIVENESS

War, KC, MO

It’s been said that America is not at war. Our military is at war; America is at the mall. Unless folks have someone directly involved in the military that is fighting our wars offshore, most of the rest of us muddle on dealing with our own realities of life. But like the homeless poor that walk among us, we cannot ignore our young men and women in harm’s way and our returning vets. Wounded Warriors is one organization that seems to have enough funding and motivation to carry on the banner for these military heroes who have been fighting our wars and then almost instantaneously are dropped back into the surreal reality of life at the mall. The adjustment can be overwhelming.

I recently listened to a soft spoken senior that had a long phone conversation with a close relative. The young man had recently served in uniform. He had obviously experienced the horrors of war that most of us will never fully understand. He’d been involved in a combat situation that had scarred his life. Someone had recently confronted him about the incident which was obviously very troubling. The horrific memory was eating away at the young man.

The elder man had apparently listened to the angst in the young man’s voice for some time on the phone. Then, knowing that this was one of those matters in life that cannot be undone, he spoke from the heart and simply told him that he believes in “a God of forgiveness”. When life overwhelms us with issues that are well beyond our human control, we have the hope and trust in a loving and forgiving God. We can turn these matters over to Him with the assurance that He knows our heart and He still has a good plan for our life. His understanding and forgiveness trumps all other human opinion.

After the two men hung up, the older man received a call back a few hours later thanking this man of faith for settling the troubled young vet’s life that night. And I've no doubt that our God of forgiveness spoke through the man to give this vet “the peace of God which transcends all understanding to guard his heart and mind” going forward.

THE PIT

Rooster Weathervane, Jerusalem
The Pit, Jerusalem, Israel

After sharing a last supper with his disciples, Jesus withdrew with them to a familiar place of refuge in the Garden of Gethsemane amid the olive trees. After nightfall descended on the garden, he was betrayed by Judas and arrested by the religious rulers called the Sanhedrin. The disciples deserted Jesus upon his arrest just as it was written that “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered”. He was then taken to the Palace of Caiaphas, who was the high priest at the time. The remains of this place have been discovered south of the Old Jerusalem city walls next to the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu. The church has a bright brass rooster weathervane on the roof commemorating the location of Peter’s three denials of Jesus before the rooster crowed at dawn.

The occupying Romans allowed the Sanhedrin to retain their power and wealth as long as the people remained submissive. But they had determined that Jesus’ words and actions were galvanizing the people around him. His turning over the tables of the temple money changers was a serious challenge to a very lucrative life that they enjoyed. They concluded that it would be better for one man to die than for the whole nation to be destroyed. When the high priest Caiaphas coaxed Jesus into saying that he was the Son of God, it gave them grounds to charge him with blasphemy since they had no interest in believing him. And it gave them grounds for sedition or rebellion as the self-proclaimed messiah, the return of the Davidic king, which paved the way for a Roman condemnation.

The Sanhedrin didn’t come to a final decision to put Jesus to death until daylight, which implies that he was detained somewhere in the dark hours of the night. And the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu was built over a rather macabre stone pit. This prison pit is located next to Caiaphas’ palace where the sham trial took place. It is quite probably where Jesus spent his last hours of the night before being led off to face Pilate. It could have easily been littered with filth, snakes and rats in total darkness. Our group descended into this pit where we read the lines of Psalm 88. Verses 6-9 read:

“You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.
Your wrath lies heavily on me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape.
My eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, Lord…I spread out my hands to you”.

Jesus was completely alone. His closest friends had deserted him. He had been cast down into a dark and desolate stone pit. His grief must have been unbearable as this isolation foreshadowed his ultimate destiny. And as he hung on the cross for the final three hours of his human life, the earth was cast into darkness beyond any natural explanation. It is said that during this time he endured an isolation even beyond the pit, as the Son was apart from the Father for the first time in eternity as he took on the sins of all the world.

CHRISTMAS AFTER THE FLOOD

Covenant Reminder, Chicago, IL

There are accounts scattered throughout ancient cultures of a great cleansing flood which destroyed most of mankind that had devolved into an unredemptive state of depravity. The great flood in the Old Testament Genesis account is one of these significant accounts of divine retribution where God had become so aggrieved that he set out to destroy all creation. Fortunately, Noah and his family found favor in the eyes of our Creator and the future destiny of mankind was secured—but not until all others were lost. God subsequently established a covenant with Noah and his family to never again flood the entire earth and the rainbow was designated as an eternal reminder. Later He established a covenant with Israel to be the means of salvation for all nations.

We then fast forward to the good doctor Luke’s New Testament account of a new covenant for all people through the birth of the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ. Every birth is a miracle of life, but this birth was God in the flesh. One of my favorite contemporary Christmas songs asks, “Mary did you know when you’ve kissed your little baby, you’ve kissed the face of God”? After all, Messiah means “God with us”. Thankfully, it would seem that God took on a radically different mission this time. Instead of destroying His creation, He chose to personally provide for its redemption, while still leaving us in a broken world that tests our free will choices every waking day of our lives. The divine presence within human flesh that entered the world in Israel over two thousand years ago not only taught us mortals how to live with unconditional love, but willingly went to the cross as a blood sacrifice to save our spiritual souls. And the cross has remained as an eternal reminder since that very Black Friday.

GETTYSBURG REDEMPTION

God's Side, Internet Domain
Gettysburg Cemetery, Internet Domain

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. --–President Abraham Lincoln’s address at the dedication of the Soldier’s Cemetery in Gettysburg, November 19, 1863

This July 1 to July 3 marks the passage of 150 years since 165,000 men of the US Army and the Confederate force faced one another in 1863 across a farm field around a Pennsylvania town named after James Gettys. More than 50,000 would be causalities in some form and around 9,000 would be killed as the ravine dissecting the field was said to run red with blood on those three days. That somber statistic represents six times the carnage encountered years later on D-Day, June 6, 1944, on the beaches of France. The contentious issue of slavery was at the epicenter of this civil war and had been deferred during the eighty seven years after Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The new coalition of states was supposedly united in the cause of freedom from tyrannical rule and the “self-evident truth that all men are created equal”.

Thomas Jefferson had actually drafted and submitted legislation to Congress to begin abolishing slavery in America, but it was defeated by only one vote. As president he introduced legislation to end the importation of slaves, but it would seem that he was later resigned to the culture of his time and pressing the absolution cause would undermine his credibility to influence any other cause. He later wrote that “we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and Heaven was silent in that awful moment! But it is to be hoped it will not always be silent and that the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail”. Jefferson the politian began to “kick the can down the road” (sound familiar?) and talked about postponing a resolution for the next generation.

People defending slavery in those days used biblical scripture to make their point. Slavery was an integral part of first century culture as Jesus walked the dusty roads of ancient Israel. But his primary mission was to secure redemption for all mankind. Cultural norms such as slavery and the subordination of women were left for future generations to resolve—even though they did not reflect God’s heart and will. Later, in one of his letters to the early Christians at Ephesus, Paul writes “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear…Masters, treat your slaves in the same way…remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites”. Slave owners were quick to quote the first line of this passage. Redemption infers buying back from captivity by paying a ransom. In Old Testament times, the lives of mortal sinners were redeemed by animal blood sacrifices on stone alters. Jesus redeemed the lives of all mankind with his blood sacrifice on a brutal Roman cross. Thousands of Americans redeemed the deferred American dream of freedom for millions of slaves with their blood sacrifice on the battleground of a Gettysburg farm field.

The contentious battle ended on a hot and humid July 3 day after the Confederate army was repulsed in an extraordinarily dicey decision by General Lee to challenge the center of the Union defenses. Picket’s Charge seemed to be doomed from the outset and it is said that cannon shot left human extremities, guns and knapsacks tossed into the clear air above a dense cloud of smoke and dust. Years later when General Picket was asked why his charge failed, he replied “I’ve always thought the Yankees had something to do with it”. And perhaps heaven was not silent on this day.