Religion – South of Town: Notes and Scenes from Texas' Upper Gulf Coast

To My Fellow Methodists

My most direct connection to Jesus is through my mother, Lovie Westbrook Fowler, who was a member of Hornbeck Methodist Church as a child and the Hornbeck United Methodist Church when she left her old hometown to come to our area where she lived her life out in a nursing home in Angleton.

My father grew up closer to fundamentalist evangelical churches in his childhood. But my mother and he had me kneeling at the altar of our small Methodist church in Jacinto City to be baptized before I was six.

Like many of the young people in the 20^th century, I drifted away from the church, but God and my mother kept calling me back, forgiving me, welcoming me, and allowing me to feel needed.

The United Methodist Church was always with me. Even when I tried to ignore it. Even when I advised others that it was out of touch with the 20^th Century, that it was anti-science, that the people who went there were mostly hypocrites.

Now in my 79^th year, I see more clearly the need to make disciples of all the world.

In the 20^th Century our parents fought wars, they suffered economic depression, but they helped each other when neighbors were victims of weather events, crimes, or hatred armed with weapons of war. United Methodists were always teaching the stories of Jesus: stories of love, generosity, and kindness.

We need the church more today even than in the days of my youth.

We need the stories of Jesus.

When I consider the issue that confronts us and challenges our unity in the UMC today, I think about my mother, and I try to think how she would have decided.

I think she would tell me that God, through Jesus, has told us to love one another. To be fair in our dealings. To make the circle of love as big as we can, never to cast out people we do not understand – people like tax collectors and sinners. Our job is to help make the circle bigger. To love mercy, to do justice, and to walk humbly with our God.

She would tell me that we do fairly well with mercy.

But she would tell me that we have a lot to do yet to meet the requirements of justice and humility.

She would say that we have a responsibility to love one another and to inform everyone of their right to full participation in God’s community through our church. And that we must remain United Methodists. Not just Methodists. Not Global Methodists. But United Methodists.

We must honor love wherever it exists in a world affected too much by hate. We must eliminate those parts of our discipline that make us the judges of the relationships people enter into to express love and commitment in their shared lifelong journey toward sanctification and perfection. Not one of us is there yet. We cannot judge others. Thankfully, it is not our job.

We should not ask how people express their love just so we can judge them. We should not require that people be classified as L, G, B, T, Q. or cis. We should welcome all God’s people into our membership, FULL membership. Let all who qualify for ministry become ministers of the word. Let all who qualify become leaders in our congregations.

While we must always require love, we should never appoint ourselves to make judgments about the expression of love between people who commit to living their lives together in peaceful, loving relationship. We should celebrate when we find those places where love exists. And we should offer the sacred services of the church to all who require them for the fullness of their lives in Christian community.

I have remained a member of the United Methodist Church even though our Book of Discipline includes prideful, exclusionary passages aimed at the people we now refer to as LGBTQ, etc. I stay because I know that the Discipline clearly is not always inspired by God. It only gives us some agreed upon rules about how we will work together to achieve God’s purposes on Earth. We make mistakes in foundational documents. They can and must be corrected.

If some would choose to leave our church family because we make those corrections, I feel certain that God will lead them back some day and that the United Methodist Church will thrive and continue to provide leadership in a world that hungers for the word of God. That is our job. And I hope to be able to continue doing that work with you as members of a vibrant and open United Methodist Church.

2020 – A SILENT GENERATION LAMENT

The cohort of Americans born between 1928 and 1945 has been called the Silent Generation. I didn’t know that I was a member of the Silent Generation until I wrote the piece below and I looked up “generation” in Wikipedia to see if I was indeed a boomer myself or, maybe, even an undeserving member of what they were calling the Greatest Generation. I found out that I am stuck in between the two. We are hardly noticed by the folks who try to generalize about the behavioral characteristics of people born in certain age cohorts.

I was late coming to the Silent Generation so my adult years were spent with talk everywhere about “boomers.” Marketing and media primarily addressed their needs and preferences. I heard so much about boomers that I subconsciously identified and, in any case, I was very nearly one myself since you could say that I was born on the cusp. But as I read more about those years between 1928 and 1945, I could see how completely my life was in the grip of that history.

What follows is very long. If you decide to read it, you will see that it is laid out like a poem. If it reads like prose to you, at least stop for a beat to think before going to the next line. Each bit of our history is loaded with plenty to think about. Yes, Truman and Eisenhower may not excite you. Ozzie and Harriet may bore you. But the kids who first learned about the world from floor model radios and small black and white screens had much to think about. And we have much to regret.

The piece is a personal project. It was completed during the 2020 election campaign and before the Biden-Harris election results were known. Although it is a hopeful sign, it doesn’t really change much. Having lived through alternating and descending stair steps down into Trump hell, I know that it will take more than a single presidential election to get us heading onward and upward again. But we must continue the struggle.

Bible Verse of the Day: C’mon Man!

“There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.”

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭6:16-19‬ ‭NIV‬‬

https://www.bible.com/111/pro.6.16-19.niv

The Democrat party couldn’t have done a better job of picking one to scold and instruct DJT.

Homeward Bound, Kyle Albertson and the St. Luke’s United Methodist Church Virtual Chancel Choir

Something unbelievably beautiful from the St. Luke’s Sunday morning service: Homeward Bound.

St. Luke’s is doing some remarkable things with technology to reach their congregation during the days of pandemic distancing. Click the link and you will hear a most amazing voice, an outstanding choir, and a beautiful arrangement of Homeward Bound. (This is not the Simon and Garfunkel song.) And the solo part by Kyle Albertson is very moving. And, yes, he is a member of St. Luke’s who sings opera professionally.

He’s pretty good. He has done cover at the Met for a guy named Bryn Terfel.

In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed
When the sparrows stop their singing
And the sky is clear and red
When the summer’s ceased its gleaming
When the corn is past its prime
When adventure’s lost its meaning
I’ll be homeward bound in time

Bind me not to the pasture
Chain me not to the plow
Set me free to find my calling
And I’ll return to you somehow

If you find it’s me you’re missing
If you’re hoping I’ll return
To your thoughts I’ll soon be listening
In the road I’ll stop and turn
Then the wind will set me racing
As my journey nears its end
And the path I’ll be retracing
As I’m homeward bound again

Bind me not to the pasture
Chain me not to the plow
Set me free to find my calling
And I’ll return to you somehow
Bind me not to the pasture
Chain me not to the plow
Set me free to find my calling
And I’ll return to you somehow

Lockdown Days 128-131: Venturing Out – Just a Little

Those “coronavirus walks” are a thing of the past. The heat-humidity index has regularly pushed up to 106 and even higher in the afternoons. Without the neighborhood walks, there can be no more chance meetings with old friends, no more handovers of delicious tomatoes from a neighbor’s backyard garden.

Notwithstanding the heat, I cannot resist a chance to shoot a few pictures when occasions present themselves. Friday morning, I looked out the window and saw that a neighbor had one of those celebration signs in the front yard. I went out to see what the occasion was and it turned out to be for their 50th anniversary. When I heard voices outside later, I gathered up the camera with the wide angle lens and sped out to see if I could get a picture of them.

It was a low exposure risk with a high payout in terms of a chance to help them celebrate their big day. We visited (from a proper distance) and I learned that their kids had arranged for the sign – a nice alternative to the kind of super-spreader parties that usually accompany the 50th.

I had received a call a few weeks ago to see if I could take a few photos for the drive-by kickoff for the virtual Vacation Bible School compassion camp. There will be some Zoom meetings and each child received a yard sign and an activity kit for the price of a donation to the local food pantry.

We were all checked in properly with a brief personal health and exposure quiz and temperature check and then we were given matching red masks and t-shirts with the “Be Loved, Be Kind, Be You” camp motto. Each team got a bottle of hand sanitizer and all the equipment for their stations.

God knows (really) that we need to teach children about compassion and generosity while those principalities and powers (aka DJT) glorify selfishness with daily tweets that are followed by millions.

And, in case anyone wanted to make fun of a kid for signing up for compassion camp, we had this bouncer assigned to deliver a Wesleyan quadrilateral to his mid-section. He wasn’t taking any guff off anybody.

So, there you have it friends. It was my nineteenth weekend in lockdown and it was a blast. What isn’t there to love about celebrating an anniversary with a neighbor and taking pictures for a Compassion Camp for kids?

Compassion Camp has to be an improvement over the vacation Bible school I attended when I was a kid. There were so many things they tried to teach me. But there was only one truly unforgettable experience and that was the “goat milk and unleavened bread” simulation they required us to force down one time before we could enjoy punch and cookies. It was to help us understand something we read from the Old Testament. It must have had something to do with goat milk and unleavened bread.

Buttermilk and graham crackers, I now know, are nothing like goat’s milk or unleavened bread. Although the crackers are clearly unleavened, they are nothing like bread of any kind. And crumbled up in buttermilk, they seemed designed to set off an eight-year-old’s gag reflex. And we sang “Tell Me the Stories of Jesus.” A man who could turn water into wine would never have done that to a child. That’s not what he meant by suffer.

There is just too much time for memories when you have been locked in for so long.