There are many interesting things about where I live now in Northeast Ohio. Heisley Park Senior Complex. Not assisted living. Apartment life, for folks 55 and over. Even so, I am one of the youngest people here. The place has many amenities, if you choose to participate. In fact, there are some who never leave the building except to go on doctor's visits, and yet still live very active lives. Even groceries and restaurant orders can be delivered right to your apartment. Personally, I can't see that. I am gone somewhere every day. Goodness, I haven't been to the Coffee Shop in the building in two whole weeks because they are only open from nine till noon and I am quite busy during those hours. But, if you are so inclined, you can stay put. Everything you need, including a workout room, is right in the building. Lots of activity, lots of enjoyments and lots of laughter.

    But along with all of that, just below the surface, is a sadness. Not a sadness of growing old, but rather a sadness of loss. Loss over a relationship that came apart, loss over a death that fractured a life-long commitment, loss over the failed love for family now gone astray. Since beginning our worship service, I am hearing more stories about the sadnesses that have marked lives. I suppose they now see me more as a pastor than just the guy who lives in apartment 227, which is something I knew would happen. My heart hurts for these folks.

    Years ago, I pastored a church in Geneva, Ohio, which is where my son grew up and where he lives today. Maybe twenty-five minutes away. I was there a considerable time and while there, I came to know Mac and Francine. Mac's first name was not actually Mac, but Mac was the first three letters, and the first syllable, of his last name. So, he was Mac. At 5'4", he was the tall one of the two. A very cute couple. Mac and Fran were very faithful in another church, but we got to knowing one another because of community involvement. He had retired early and, unable to sit at home, he became active in all sorts of community things. Especially the Food Pantry. I was the president of the board that oversaw the Pantry, so Mac and I saw a lot of each other. One of the first times we worked together was putting a rear axle on a hay wagon. (I don't remember why) My adjustable wrench slipped and I took some skin off my knuckles. Mac said, "Careful, preacher. Don't go losing your religion. Franny'll blame me!" Almost any time you saw one of them, you saw both. They were so close and so in love, even after five decades.

    Eventually, I resigned from the church and went to work at a large, local funeral home as staff clergy. I hadn't seen Mac and Fran for some time. I heard Mac had dementia, but Fran was determined to see to his needs. One night they walked into one of our funeral homes for a visitation. They both looked great and I gave Fran a hug and turned to Mac with my hand out. He took my hand in a friendly handshake, but his eyes were void of any recognition. Fran took him into the visitation room and sat him down, and then hurried back to me. "Pastor, I am so sorry! His dementia is so fast moving! It is like another part of him is gone every day. The doctor says he doesn't have long. When Mac goes away, will you handle the arrangements?"

    Well, of course I said yes. But his health was so good. I figured he would live for several more years. Three months later he was gone.

    Fran and their children came in and we worked everything out. It really helped that they had prearranged (everyone should) and we didn't have a great deal to do. Just some minor details. One of those details was the little poem or writing that goes into the memorial folder. Fran looked in the catalogue and looked and looked. "Nothing is right! Mac was my life, the light of my life. Nothing says that here." Then she turned to me and said, "Pastor, please find me something. Something that says something about our love!" I said yes and later fired up the internet. Still, having known them for years, I could find nothing that fit. I was as lost as Fran had been.

    Until about 2 AM. I can't explain how it happens. Maybe ask Miss Mary or someone you know who writes. But sometimes it will happen that your mind suddenly has a moment of clarity. So it was then. I got up and sat down at my computer and put together some words. It couldn't be lengthy because it had to fit the folder, and it had to say something. When Fran read it, she cried. Said it was perfect. I never told her it didn't come from a catalogue, that didn't matter. It spoke to her heart at her time of need.

    With my life in the place where it is now, that all comes to mind. Please, love your spouse, your children, your siblings, your parents with an unspeakable love. At some point it will slip away. One lady in my building told me of her great love and now her great grief, but I asked her if that love was worth the grief that followed. "Oh yes! To love like that! Yes, always."

    Love with an open heart. 

    I came across that little writing the other day. Marsha had kept it. It really isn't much, but Fran liked it, and that is what mattered.      

                                       The Light of My Life

When the winds blow,

I will think of you.

When the rains fall,

I will think of you.

When the snows blanket the land,

I will think of you.

And I will smile,

For you will be my calm,

On a blustery day.

You will be my sunshine,

On a dreary day.

You will be my warmth,

On a frosty day.

For you are the light of my life, even now.

It's funny. I have had this reaction before, but not to this extent. 

When I first arrived in Ohio, I was actually very sick. Last August I was in the hospital for three weeks. A combination of things, but all are manageable. In fact, I was starting to feel pretty good just before Christmas, but COVID then took me down. Took me three weeks for that, but since I have really started to feel better. I feel better now than I have in years. However, I still have the dreaded 'follow-up appointments' to deal with. Last week I had four, but not another one until November.

So last week I walked into my cardiologist's office, and I was walked back to a room by a young lady I had not met before. I sat down and she started asking the regular questions while reading my chart. All was normal until she got to allergies. 'Demurral?' 'Yes.' 'Morphine?' 'Yes.' 'Pork products? Wait. Pork? You're allergic to pork?' 'Yes ma'am.' 'Does that include bacon!?' 'Yes ma'am. And most hotdogs and pepperoni and processed lunch meats.' 'What?!? You can't eat pizza, either?' 'Only vegetable pizza, and then only if the vegetables are not fried on the same griddle the meat is fried on.' 'So, you have never had PORK?' 'Actually, I started having reactions to it at around 55 years of age and it has just gotten worse.' It was like I had just told her my only child had died in a horrific accident. She looked at me with horror and compassion. She was stunned. Like I said, never had that intense of a reaction before.

It was a bit of drive home and I thought about her reaction. It was, actually, quite funny. But at the same time, it says something about who we are. What is normal for us and our loved ones, must be normal for everyone. As a people, neither the Jews nor the Muslims eat pork, but they are not 'us.' They aren't normal. My family opened gifts on Christmas Eve. My best friend's family opened gifts on Christmas morning. They weren't normal. Some people do not eat meat at all and some cannot eat most kinds of bread and some cannot eat peanuts, and they are not normal.  If they are not like us, something is wrong.

And it extends to religion. If folks go to a different church than ours, they are really missing out. If they are a different denomination, they are really misguided. If they don't go to church at all, they are not normal.

And yet, people not eating certain foods or opening gifts on the right day or someone who has bread or peanut or pork allergies...well, that really isn't a big deal. But, in the religious spectrum, it is different. We feel sorry for them and their eternal souls. We feel pity, we feel sadness. However, do we feel badly enough to actually go to them and initiated a conversation about God? Does our feeling of sadness galvanize us into action for the name of Jesus. Or do we just shrug it off, or maybe just invite them to church and let it go at that? People don't need church, they need Jesus. 

Why do churches get smaller and smaller? Because the people in the church are not sharing. It is not the pastor or even the Elders. It is the folks in the pews.     

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Every year in Holland, Michigan is the Tulip Festival. I am not a flower guy, but it seemed like a really good idea for Marsha. Lots of color, people moving around, lots of activity. Very good for someone who has suffered a couple of strokes. So, we made plans to drive up. Just north of Holland is Muskegon, Michigan. There you can board a fast lake ferry and cross Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The trip takes two and a half hours. (This was my part of the trip. I am not a flower guy, but I am a water guy.) So, the plan was to drive up on Monday, spend the night, board the ferry on Tuesday morning and go to Milwaukee, spend the night, board the ferry and cross back on Wednesday to Michigan, spend the night and go to the Tulip Festival on Thursday and return home on Friday. Seemed like a good idea.

The trip up on Monday was made on the roughest paved roads I have ever been on. But you allow for construction when you travel in areas that have rough winters. The motel was fine. On Tuesday the boat crossing was a lot of fun and the motel in Milwaukee was OK. Then, however, it all began to unravel.

I got Marsha situated in her room and then, suddenly, she announced she was going down. I grabbed her, but there was no way I could hold her dead weight. All I was able to do was let her down softly. She couldn't move her legs and I, fearing another stroke, called 911. She was not happy about that, but she couldn't move. EMTs got there quickly and transported her to the nearest hospital. It was just after dark and diving the car to the hospital was an experience. I don't see well at night and I was in a strange city. I kept thinking how I was going to explain to our son how I managed to misplace his mother in Milwaukee. In the end I arrived at the hospital where I sat with her all night, first in the ER lobby and then in an ER room. They finally determined it was not a stroke. She was dehydrated and had an infection. She was released just before daylight (so another trip in a strange city in the dark) and we managed to get two hours of sleep before we needed to get back to the dock for the ferry. I dozed most of the crossing and when we got back to the Michigan motel, we were both so tired we could do nothing. 

The star of the trip, though, was to be the Tulip Festival. Up on Thursday and in the car. And it began to pour rain. Not a sprinkle. Not a drizzle. A Noah's ark rain. We drove around Holland a bit, but Marsha didn't want to get out and neither did I. So, we left the next morning for Ohio on a beautiful day. The whole trip seemed like a bust. When I talked to my son to tell him of our misadventures, he said, "You know, you could have saved a lot of money by staying in Ohio and getting rained on and taking Mom to the hospital." Smart aleck.

However, I was struck by something during the trip. Milwaukee is a rough town, kind of run down. I am sure there are nice areas, but I have been there twice now and have not seen those areas. The hospital they took Marsha to is a city hospital, and they tend to be burdened down with indigent cases. We waited in the lobby a long while. Some of the people there were in withdrawal because they hadn't gotten their fix for the night. Some were falling down drunk. Some were there just to be able to be inside for the night. People everywhere. People with failing lives, just wanting their next bottle or injection or pill. As I watched all of this misery around me, it occurred to me that they didn't even know they were in misery. They were just living life as usual.

Then I took a long look at the professionals who were handling these cases. Competent nurses and aides, smart young people checking folks in, police officers and security personnel treating everyone with respect and two or three young doctors going from one to the next. All of the professionals and all the patients were in a ten year range of each other. Marsha and I were the oldest people there. As I looked around, I wondered what the difference was among these people.

Society will tell you it is white privilege. The poor were slaves, after all, held down by their white masters. Except, the professionals were about evenly split between white and black. Others would say that the economic divide keeps the poor poorer and the rich richer, but that doesn't explain it, either. Some would say it was bad parenting, but we all know some who have good children and then a troubled child. Some would say it came down to gender confusion, but that is just the current, nonsense cause of the day. 

So, what is the reason?

I don't really know. Some were driven to do well, some just were content to fail. I suppose it comes down to attitude, but how is a good attitude generated? What makes one look to the future and another look for the pleasure of the moment. The desire to have a reason to live?

There can be a lot of things that triggers a good response. But I see life differently from the world. I would love to introduce you to this doctor I know, two veterinarians, several nurses, teachers, a football coach, a lawyer, a few dynamite homemakers, a couple who have gone out and started their own businesses, a Marine, one who is a successful relator, several tool and die makers, a man who can make works of art with bricks and his brother who is a master carpenter and several others who are successful in their own fields. People who were in a church I pastored? Yes, sort of. Kids in my youth groups who were taught to love and respect the Word of God. And almost all of those kids will be in church somewhere this Sunday.

Proverbs 22:6 "Raise up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." The world would scoff, but I speak from my own experience.

Be faithful.

I miss pastoring a church. I really do. And I hope to never pastor a church again.

Uh....what?

It is true. 

Consider your typical church. People in leadership positions who, with the best of intentions, feel a church needs to adhere to their ideals. The businessperson feels the church needs to be run like a business. The politically minded person feels the church needs to be run like a political endeavor along political party lines. Younger folks feel the church should follow their ideals and concerns and the older folks should be quiet and let the future happen while the older folks feel like the church should follow their ideals and the younger folks should be quiet and respectful. In any church situations there are tidal forces at work all the time. And the typical way a congregation handles these differences is to form a committee. Then, of course, there are the bullies who try to intimidate and the schemers who try to go behind everyone's back to get what they want.

So, what is the pastor's job? Almost any church will say that the pastor's job is to see to the Spiritual needs of the church. The congregation will handle the rest. But that doesn't work. The pastor is drawn into every controversy. People come to the pastor to see what he (or she, as the case may be) thinks about the 'problem.' The music is too loud so could you tone it down? The church is to dim (or to bright) so could you fix it? The grass needs cut, don't you think? The curtains in the restrooms are tacky, so we need a committee. The pastor goes into his first church feeling he is going to be the Spiritual leader and instead finds he is an administrator. And with all of this, he has to be careful not to overstep his bounds. This is why most pastors don't make it five years.

So, while I miss pastoring a church, I hope to never pastor a church again. (Notice I didn't say I will never pastor a church again. After dealing with the Lord for half a century I have come to see that if I say 'never,' He will create a situation where 'never' becomes a necessity.) However, I am pastoring right now, just not a church. 

Janet broke her arm playing with the granddaughter. Patty has personal issues and needs to be comforted. Rosa had some serious surgery and is struggling to bounce back. Bert is conflicted. Neil is trying to maintain his cool around silly people. Suzy is working hard to do her job in spite of her cancer. These are people who live in my building. I lead a weekly worship service. Some of these mentioned come, some don't. But I consider them all a congregation. As yet, no one has refused prayer. Even the lady who rejects Christianity in favor of a reincarnation theology, allowed several of us to gather around her in prayer when her husband died. I have been in the ministry almost forty nine years, and I am finally getting to minister 100% of the time.

For me, the ministry has been an awesome privilege. I have help people, I have impacted people and I have made some really close friends. But the responsibility and the juggling act often takes away the enjoyment. But here, now, it is different. I am having fun!