Author: danefowlkes

“According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.”
~G. K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)

I am not a traveling salesman, but my vocation lends itself to a goodly measure of mobility. My most recent journey included the small West Texas town of Anson in Jones County. Having spent my childhood on the Gulf Coast, driving through the vast expanse of West Texas feels like journeying to a foreign land, stepping back through time, returning to my travels across the Kaisut Desert of northern Kenya. Dust regularly rises and settles, turning back on itself like flour vapors migrating this way and that as chef tosses and flattens pizza dough into the desired consistency. I once saw so many towering dust devils on the lonesome stretch from Pecos to Fort Davis that I lost count of them. At times it seems like one drives great distances simply to go from one furnace blast to the next. Approaching Anson, the parched landscape gradually gave way to a smattering of paved streets and correspondingly few mottled buildings situated around an aged courthouse. The town, originally called Jones City, was built in anticipation of the arrival of the Texas and Pacific Railroad. Investments were made and stores and hotels opened, but the railroad went further south. Jones City was declared the county seat in 1881, but the name was changed to Anson in 1882 without much opposition since Anson and Jones were the same man. A physician, San Jacinto veteran, publisher, founding member of the first Masonic Lodge in Texas, Jones was President of the Republic of Texas and Texas’ Ambassador to the United States. He is buried in Houston and there is no record of him ever traveling near the county that bears his name.

I arrived 45 minutes early for my appointment, so I crisscrossed the small town, more or less to kill time. I came across a couple of second-hand shops that looked like they contained third or fourth-hand items, a post office, two churches, a Dollar General store, and a weathered billboard advertising the Cowboy Christmas Ball at Anson’s historic Pioneer Hall, but the images that held my attention comprised a large set of murals on the south side of one of the buildings southwest of the Courthouse Square. Large painted letters below the murals indicated that they were provided by a grant from a foundation in Wichita Falls. I sat and studied through my driver’s side window what promised to one day be an incredible array of paintings. Each separate section contained distinct figures depicting the history of cotton industry in the area. While the outlines were distinct, there was very little color on the whitewashed wall, only a pale patch here and there. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was time to move to my meeting, and I decided to ask the man I had come to see about the status of the paintings. I navigated the one way streets to the east side of the square, parked, and walked inside. I shook hands with my new acquaintance and accepted his offer to sit near his desk. We engaged in the usual small talk between strangers meeting for the first time, which included references to weather and current events. Somewhat in passing I mentioned the murals-in-process and stated that I hoped to return to see the finished product. My host smiled and told me that what I had seen actually was the finished product. He explained that the outdoor paintings were completed a decade earlier, but unlike the well preserved Post Office mural “Cowboy Dance,” the exposed pigments had fallen victim to the West Texas sun and what I saw was the faded remainder of the vanishing artistic depiction of Jones County history. Other murals in Anson were in much better condition, one paying homage to cattle brands and another to Dr. Pepper. While I had initially thought the murals held promise, they would soon be nothing but a footnote to a small town’s memory. 

It is important to know whether you are coming or going. In a way that is hard to describe, the faded murals remind me of testimonies I’ve heard through the years. Testimony time in church has always been curious to me. Irrespective of age, one adult after another would share her or his faith story by recounting what had happened long before, at times including details as to the date and time they encountered the Savior. Each narrative was unique, the one common element being a distinct encounter in the distant past. I listened carefully, at times spellbound, only to wonder later what difference the historical event was making in the testifier’s present and what impact it might have on his future. There is no such thing as standing still with one’s relationship to Christ. We are either going or coming, growing or declining; at times, it is difficult to detect which way we’re facing. The hallmark of Christian experience is a growing faith.  

“but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” 2 Peter 3:18

“Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God.” Hebrews 6:1

When you stop growing, you start dying. At any given moment in time I am either a masterpiece in process or a fading image of what I once was, the ghost of what I was intended to be. The choice is mine.

“Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

We made our annual trek in a rented minivan for family vacation–four adults and three children. On any journey of length it’s helpful if the passengers get along and fortunately we do, but even for the most congenial and heartiest of travelers there comes a time for stretching legs and releasing energy. On the second day of our trip we did just that and made an unscheduled stop in Pensacola, Florida at the Naval Air Museum. We unfolded ourselves, coaxed legs into action, and walked inside without knowing what to expect. The cavernous metal building was filled with different types of aircraft strategically placed to tell the story of flight from Kitty Hawk to the Blue Angels. While our grandchildren quickly rediscovered their land legs in the shadows of every conceivable mode of air transportation suspended by cables from high up metal girders, my wife and I walked at a more age appropriate pace and attempted to take it all in. As grandparents are want to do, we looked for ways to maximize the experience for the kids and our gaze settled on what a sign innocently designated as a flight simulator. With two boys to corral, this was just the thing to occupy a twelve year old and seven year, the only problem being that the height of the youngest required an adult to accompany them. With their father out of sight pushing their younger sister in a stroller somewhere across the museum, the lot fell to me to ride with them. My wife paid for tickets and I climbed inside with the boys. I was as anxious as they were for the simulated flight until the door closed and I remembered my extreme claustophobia. Too late to formulate an excuse to exit, it dawned on me that being in a simulator meant that I would be trapped inside a box for who-knew-how-long with no way to escape with pride intact. While my grandsons laughed and prepared for the “flight”, I frantically looked around for a way out and spied a red handle on the ceiling in front of me with a sign next to it that read “emergency stop.” It might better have been labeled ‘Panic Button.’ I fought the almost uncontrollable urge to jump up, slam my fist into the red handle, and claw my way out of the cage. I was too young to be buried alive. I gave myself the pep talk of a lifetime, attempting to convince that the struggle was all in my mind; I guilted myself to get a grip, to fight through the cold sweat and gritty panic. The box swayed and swerved in sync with the images on the screen in front of us, and as we slid from side to side I sat face to face with fear. Fear is an ugly thing, especially when it is your own. 

Quite honestly, I am unafraid of most things. I do not like snakes, especially a green mamba dangling overhead from a thorny acacia tree while preaching in Tharaka, Kenya. I have a long term dislike of the dark that was forged at an early age, but I am not terrified of shadows. What I do fear is being trapped with no way of escape. It may be relinquishing control, or some other psychosomatic influence, but the bottomline is that fear alters my perception of reality. “We’ve known for a long time that fear and anxiety can disrupt cognitive processes,” says Stella F. Lourenco, PhD, a cognitive psychologist at Emory University in Atlanta. An example is the person who fears losing control over her car because she perceives inclined bridges as steeper than they really are. Again, the mere thought conjures up memories of driving across the Rainbow Bridge near Port Arthur as a teenager. Fear convinces that everything is what it seems to be, even though the perception is far from true. 

As the flight simulator heaved and bucked and I fought to regain breath, I remembered something I had read and decided to fling my hopes upon it: Fear not, for I am with you (Isaiah 41:10). An accurate translation is “Do not continue being afraid because I am with you.” Fear is conquered by recognizing distortion and then focusing on reality. Face your fear and know that God is working gently behind the scenes to bring you to the light, strengthening you in the process.

“I was flying somewhere one day when all of a sudden the plane ran into such a patch of turbulence that it started to heave and buck like a wild horse. As an uneasy flyer under even the best of circumstances, I was terrified that my hour had come, and then suddenly I wasn’t. Two things, I remember, passed through my mind. One of them was the line from Deuteronomy ‘underneath are the everlasting arms,’ and for a few minutes I not only understood what it meant, but felt in my nethermost depths that without a shadow of a doubt it was true, that underneath, undergirding, transcending any disaster that could possibly happen, those arms would be there to save us if my worst fears were realized.” (Buechner, The Eyes of the Heart)

Fear fabricates an altered state of reality, and acknowledging it is a crucial step back into the light of who we are, and, correspondingly, who we are not. See yourself and immediate context as God does, and stride or limp or crawl forward, hand in his.

Listening-while-living is an art form worth learning. Life seems at times like a succession of converging and divergent tragedies, at once interconnected and then again, disparate. Unfortunately, our earthbound perspective is linear and we strain to see ahead and behind without the ability to focus properly on either. We do not realize that this “right now” perspective is actually a grace gift. Jesus expresses it eloquently: 

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

In other words, we have right now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Surrender this moment. Celebrate this day. Create this memory. Love immediately and passionately. Do what lies at hand and you just may find the dividend is eternal.

(From the introduction to Ordinary Glory)

In Brennan Manning’s autobiography, All Is Grace, Manning made famous a statement he preached for more than fifty years: “God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.”

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold

Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.” 

(Shakespeare’s Sonnet Number 73)

Summer comes both too soon and too late. In my childhood, summer came too late. Always anxious for the end of the school year, I savored the beginning of long days of leisure, until less than half way through the summer they became too long and too leisurely, leaving me longing for school again. But now, summer comes too soon, signaling with it too many changes in the ones I love and in myself. This past week, each of our grandchildren strode past a new milestone and I realized somewhat helplessly that this will be a summer of tremendous change for these precious ones. They are taller, smarter, wiser, and nearer maturity than ever before. Summer forms a rite of passage, movement from not only one grade to another, but an exchanging of innocence for a lesser amount of naïveté.

 
When you’re getting old as I am, summer always comes too soon. No longer a rite de passage, it morphs into a time of remembering and for realizing that the time for remembering will all too quickly fade away.  What does one have as the years diminish? We’re left with memories, some good and some bad, and with other things that can’t be fully recalled– experiences of which the details are gone but the vague recollection brings either warming joy or chilling tear. One might call this bittersweet–old enough to nod to life out of self-assurance, yet no longer young enough to be excited about the advancing of age. We have no taste for admitting that a chasm of aging lies ahead of us, let alone exploring its significance in our lives. This is a tragedy because aging is a defining spiritual issue, and what I strongly suspect is that this uncharted territory of aging holds far more potential than most are transparent enough to benefit from. The process, if we explore it honestly,  may actually hold spiritual gifts that accompany the aging process itself. There are spiritual treasures here that we must explore. Remembering is the threshold to becoming. 

“All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.” ~ Helen Keller

Huddling by candlelight is not necessarily romantic. My wife and I reclined on pillows in the dark hallway because Mother Nature was taking a howling swipe at us. Although definitely not the right setting for romance, it would have at least been peaceful were it not for our neurotic dog.

Misha has been a member of our family for only a few months, but is already ensconced as a couch potato of the highest variety. My wife gave her to me on my 56th birthday, and we both marveled at the time at her ridiculously low price. Registered Rhodesian Ridgebacks normally sell for a thousand dollars or more, making Misha’s $100 price tag a mere pittance. Born six years ago, she has been used for breeding all her life and the story we were told is that her fifth and last pregnancy was brutal. None of the litter survived, so her breeders were looking for a home where she would be well cared for and loved. The three of us meshed almost immediately, but my wife and I have since gained a better understanding as to why Misha was not strong breeding stock. 

Our first clue came during a deafening thunderstorm. Misha paced back and forth panting, then attempted to wedge her 72 pound frame into the two foot space behind my wife’s embroidery table. The second clue materialized as we watched Misha react in abject terror when she encountered our cats. Ailurophobia is not a desirable trait for Ridgebacks originally bred by Afrikaaners in Southern Africa for the purpose of hunting lions. Suffice to say that a breeding dam afraid of her own shadow and terrified of cats comes up short in the desired DNA department. Daughter of Simba and Nala, granddaughter of Sidboarani Ruffion Muskit Ridge, great granddaughter of Zyon King of Kalahari, Misha Kalahari is an adorable companion, but a lousy champion of canine ferocity. 

The image of Misha cowering before our Siamese and Calico came to me the other day when I caught myself relinquishing hope in the shadow of inevitable battles over what and Who constitutes truth. Created in the image of the Almighty and recreated by the resurrected King of Kings, how dare I bow beneath the weight of worry and fear? Vocal minorities and savvy political charlatans claim the upper hand, all the while powerless to overcome He who has already overcome. A defeated believer is an oxymoron; Christianity was never intended as a defensive posture. Jesus says as much when he declares that the gates of hell will not prevail against his Church. The better translation of “the gates of hell shall not prevail” in Matthew 16 is “shall not withstand.” The Church marches relentlessly forward and the forces of evil cannot withstand her onslaught. “Think about the picture here. Jesus says the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Now tell me, how do gates prevail? When have you ever seen gates on the march? They don’t attack. They fortify. They are there to hold their ground. That’s all. Hell is not on the offensive, brothers and sisters. The church is on the offensive. The church is marching into all the hells in this world, ready to reclaim every square inch for Christ. And when we storm the gates of hell, Christ promises that we cannot fail” (Kevin DeYoung). Make no mistake about it, we are at war. “Moral relativity is the enemy we have to overcome before we tackle atheism” (C. S. Lewis). The great news about the Good News is that the battle is the Lord’s and we are on the winning side. Fulfill your birthright; advance under the banner of our victorious King.

Is opposition to defining homosexual practice and transgender identity as normative tantamount to racial prejudice? Certain voices, even within the Christian community, would have us think so. In a brief but bitter sermon at the United Methodist Church’s General Conference morning worship service, Bishop Sally Dyck of the Chicago Episcopal Area said The United Methodist Church has “a category of humanity we call incompatible with Christian teaching.” For nearly 45 years the denomination has judiciously stated that it believes “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” According to “Good News” magazine, when delegates at the 1972 General Conference introduced the phrase into the Book of Discipline they wanted to make clear it was the practice of homosexuality they found incompatible, not people who are identified as such. Bishop Dyck went on to say, “I don’t believe LGBTQ people are any more sinful than I am. I know not all of you think the same way. I’m not here to argue with you.” However, Dyck went on to say, “Our church is structured on racism. … Racism is in the very air we breathe as we do our work together.” And then she cried out, “Why is racism not declared incompatible with Christian teaching? Why isn’t racism incompatible with Christian teaching!”

Dyck may have inadvertently stumbled over the crux of the matter. Is opposition to the practice of homosexuality and transgender identification equivalent to racial prejudice? Racism has historically been defined as prejudicial thought and acts against a specified ethnic group. The people group under consideration may stand in the minority or majority, but the common denominator is ethnic definition. Gender prejudice is an equally significant, albeit separate issue. Males dominating females in any capacity is rightfully considered gender inequality, standing in opposition to the equal footing described and prescribed by Scripture. However, sexual preference is a different issue entirely. In no way does sexual preference qualify as racism or gender bias. ‘Common sense’ definition of racism is nonsense. Follow the logic. If sexual preference defines, then who is to say paedophilia is wrong, or beastility, or necrophilism, the list goes on, ad nauseum. Well intentioned though they may be, those who introduce the race card into the debate over sexual practice, are amoralists of the most dangerous variety–wolves wearing sheepskins. To step away from biblical morality is to tumble headlong in a moral free fall into an abyss far darker than any can imagine. 

According to many reports, the Obama administration issued a sweeping directive telling every public school district in the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity. The letter to school districts went out Friday, adding to a highly charged debate over transgender rights in the middle of the administration’s legal fight with North Carolina over the issue. The declaration contains an overtly ominous tone as it describes what schools should do to ensure that none of their students are discriminated against. The presidential directive does not have the force of law, but it contains an implicit threat: Schools that do not abide by the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law could face lawsuits or a loss of federal aid. Herein lies the issue: “the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law.” The executive branch of government was not established to interpret law, yet the current president acts as if he sees himself as the supreme Supreme Court justice. 

While this was happening, eight states filed a brief Siding with North Carolina in its legal fight with the Obama administration. And in Fannin County, Ga., a sparsely populated area bordering North Carolina and Tennessee, hundreds of people marched to a school board meeting in order to insist that the district adhere to traditional, anatomical standards in defining sex. Tim Moore, the Republican speaker of the North Carolina House, said, “We all have to wonder what other threats to common sense norms may come before the sun sets on the Obama administration.” Make no mistake about it, we are in the midst of an all out offensive by those that would rewrite what common sense, anatomy, and Scripture dictate. Only days before the intrusive directive, the United Methodist Church’s greatly anticipated 2016 General Conference opened with colorful pageantry and an evangelical message from Bishop Warner Brown, president of the Council of Bishops. Brown challenged the General Conference to heed the words of St. Paul: “So let’s strive for the things that bring peace and the things that build each other up” (Romans 14:19). “Today, in this place, in this important time, by the power of God’s Spirit, may we once again collectively sing [the African phrase]: ‘Jesu Tawa Pano’ ̵ Jesus, we are here for you. Not any other agenda. We are here for you. Therefore, let us go! God is with us, the transformation of the world has already begun. Therefore go, make disciples in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!” Who could argue against such powerful preaching; however, the day was not without controversy. Shortly before the conference convened dozens of LGBTQ advocates gathered in the convention center to participate in the unauthorized ordination of Susan Laurie, a prominent leader in the movement. Although the act of ecclesial disobedience grants Laurie no official standing in the UM Church, it does add to the list of infractions that threaten to splinter the worldwide denomination. Later that day the same advocates disrupted the celebration of Holy Communion during the conference’s opening worship service. As the elements were shared with delegates and thousands of observers, Laurie and other protesters opened alternative “Queer Communion stations” (not my description) where delegates and others could receive Holy Communion. 

The moral fiber of America is unraveling because we (believers) have opted for glitz and glamour rather than walking the narrow path as salt and light. Tragically, Christians have lost our voice, perhaps because we’ve no use for salt these days and no longer distinguish light from dark. Who could have anticipated a time in which anatomy no longer defines gender, and common sense is considered biased. When Christians chime in with those who oppose biblical morality, the curtain threatens to close on all of us. Though their causes differed widely from the current moral chaos, it may be time to reenact a page from the legacy of Gandhi, King and Bonhoeffer. If there has ever been a time for civil disobedience in America, it’s now. Doubtless, many will disagree with these thoughts, and in anticipation of those I conclude with much of the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Roman church:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four–footed animals or reptiles.24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.26 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. 29 They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30 slanderers, God–haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.

(Romans 1:18-32 | NRSV)

The moral fiber of America is unraveling because we (believers) have opted for glitz and glamour rather than walking the narrow path as salt and light. 

My prayer for this day:
Merciful Lord,
You not only hold all things together; You are Everything. All of life finds its meaning and purpose in You. You alone define joy; hope is the inevitable consequence of abiding in You. Unveil the mystery of union with Christ in quiet moments of reflection and raucous action benefitting the hurting and at risk in my sphere of influence. Create in me not only a clean heart, but a thirsty one that will not be satisfied with alluring substitutes. I do not seek to be successful but to remain faithful. I will not fall prey to the temptation of expedience; my mind finds peace in knowing You and learning to detect You in the commonplace. Transform routine into reverence and the familiar into worship. And should You so choose, find rest in me as I rest resolutely in You.