The Margins

Our family is completely under the spell of the Wicked soundtrack at the moment. Every time we get in the car, the cries arise from the back seat: “Put on Wicked!” “Wicked, please!” “Put on the starting part!”

The kids have their favorite songs and lines, and I am amazed at how many of the lyrics they now know. Mercy was walking through the kitchen the other day and I heard her say under her breath: “Don’t make me laugh! They were pop-ley-er!” Aaron loves “Loathing” and asks for it by name. And yesterday I overheard Mercy playing with her new Cinderella doll dancing around and singing: “I am that girl…” Hilarious.

I used to think that my landscape-narration abilities and silly car games did a pretty good job of entertaining the young ones on long drives but I believe I have met my match. The kids will literally sit, at total attention, through the entire soundtrack. This could bode well for the long trek home next week.

The storyline of Wicked is filled with ironies and reversals, and the story drives home how stark the contrast can be between perception and truth. There is a line in the first or second song where the citizens of Oz are celebrating the death of the “Wicked” Witch (and not so subtly themselves) singing: “And goodness knows, we know what goodness is.” Anyone who has seen the show knows how patently untrue this is.

I read some things last week online about the moral failure of a religous leader and the ways certain people quickly moved to distance themselves from their previous alignments with this individual. I was struck by how those people who had publicly supported and affirmed this controversial individual pre-failure seemed to display some serious errors in judgment in that process, and yet now appear to show so very little charity to one who was their “superstar” for a season.

The musical, Wicked, is built on the themes of goodness and wickedness. From the seat in the audience (or a seat in our van on any given day), the message is clear how things are so often not what they appear. And we do well to slow down before we join the Ozians in their chorus.

Fellow Fuller grad and Scriber, Patrick George McCullough, posted some great links to blog posts, articles and even some audio related to David Scholer and his passing. I found many of his links helpful and wanted to share them.

The other day I went into the bathroom with Aaron, and I automatically reached up and flipped on the light switch.

“No, Mommy!” Aaron said, as he reached up and turned off the light.

Just as I was about to argue the wisdom of him using the bathroom in the dark, Aaron moved his hand to the left and flipped on the middle light switch. This turned on a warm, dim overhead light.

“It’s like a sunset!” Aaron said happily as he turned to do his business.

Though I have limited time for pleasure reading these days, I have a handful of blogs that I tend to check every day. They range in style and substance and for different reasons I appreciate their daily offerings. The other day I was scanning headlines and I came across a link to this blog on the BBC website. It is an online diary of those working in a slum clinic in Sierra Leone.

Our dear friend and pediatrician has traveled to Sierra Leone repeatedly as part of medical teams serving children there, and the last time that she and her family stayed with us in our apartment, her youngest daughter, who accompanied her on the most recent trip, showed me photos from the trip on her Facebook page.

A personal connection to a person or place always has an impact upon our ability to sustain care or concern for something that may not directly touch us. My friends’ commitment to Sierra Leone, the stories they have shared and pictures I had the chance to see, helped to give me that.

I made it through about four entries before I had to stop to simply think and pray, and my day was different as a result of what I had read. And I wondered how it would be for us if we all had a blog like this as part of our daily reads.

It was with a heavy heart that I received the news yesterday that David Scholer had passed away. Dr. Scholer was a truly remarkable man, remarkable most in his kindness, gentleness, and humility. A brilliant mind is not always fueled by a generous spirit, but David Scholer was that beautiful example of when it is, and his life, one marked by pain and challenge these last years, was one so generously lived toward service to others.

I remember during my undergrad years at North Park hearing over and over again about his “Women, Bible and the Church” class, and I always regretted not taking it. At Fuller, I thought surely I would have the chance to take his Fuller version of that course, but sadly again, that opportunity never came.

While I may not have directly sat through his teaching in the classroom, I know that my life in ministry has been deeply impacted by his work. How many times I have heard: “I was on the other side of the women in ministry issue until I came across David Scholer’s work on the subject…” or something to that effect. Many, many people credit him and his scholarship as crucial in their acceptance of women as fully gifted and called to serve and lead in the church.

I have always felt a debt of gratitude for that.

Just last week I was, for the first time in my years in ministry, put in a position where I was asked to defend my right to preach and teach. The very fact that this felt so awkward and unusual for me speaks volumes to the levels of affirmation and acceptance I have received throughout my calling, and again, I owe much of that to the ministry of David Scholer.

I of course ran into David and his wife, Jeannette, on occasion during my years at Fuller, and they always extended such kindness to me. One particular afternoon comes to mind as an example of this.

I had come onto campus to collect my Hebrew coursework toward the end of my degree. Mercy was maybe one, and Aaron was already big in my belly. I was weary and frazzled, and a bit frustrated as it had taken me several tries to hunt down this particular professor and our coursework, and Mercy was becoming fussy. My hunt had eventually led me to the office where Jeanette works, and my heart sank as I saw through the windows that everyone in the office was gathered for some sort of celebration.

“Great,” I thought to myself. “Now I get to try and maneuver a squirrely child and my own awkward self through this nice gathering, and I’m not even sure who in this office I am supposed to talk with or why my Hebrew papers are here in the first place!”

I opened the door and quickly apologized for the interruption and said I was happy to come back later (which actually was not true since I had driven in from L.A. and was not sure when I could make it out again). Jeanette reassured me that it was no trouble, so I asked about the elusive prof and her coursework. A staff member got up and started looking, and David looked at me and said: “Please, sit down and join us for some cake.”

I was hesitant to sit but in reality was happy for an excuse to get off my feet. So at David’s urging, I sat in their circle, and he continued to lead their time as if no interruption had taken place: as if my presence was in no way awkward or strange. Everyone was kind toward Mercy too, and that discomfort that can come from bringing a little one into an adult setting was relieved. I ate some cake, Mercy played, and I even got a hold of my Hebrew assignment by the end.

David will be remembered and celebrated for so many things. I will remember his gentle hospitality that afternoon, and I will celebrate a man who was so very good at making sure someone on the outside was given a seat at the table.

Saturday was one of those near perfect days. We drove to Garibaldi, a sleepy fishing town just north of Tillamook, and hopped aboard an old steam train that chugs along the coastline up to the little resort town of Rockaway. The train ride was delightful, and I am fairly certain that Aaron never closed his mouth for the forty-five minutes that that train moved. Elijah was perhaps the most amusing passenger, though, as he insisted on standing up on my legs and leaning out over the bar as far as he could possibly stretch, the way our dog used to behave in the back seat of our Volvo station wagon when a window was open.

I hadn’t thought through our destination and had failed to pack appropriate swim gear for the kids. This was, of course, of virtually no concern to them. Doug and Sarah took the big kids out to frolic in the surf, and by the time I joined them with Elijah, they had settled along a quiet little inlet where all three fully submerged themselves in the shallow waters.

I had packed a full change of clothes for each child, but of course no towels. So by the end I stripped each kid down and sent them over to Doug where, with a broken bucket some other child had cast off, he gave them a “shower”. Of course the change of clothes I packed for Elijah happened to include the pair of pants that just barely fit over his ample thighs, so it was quite a sight to see Doug and I wrestle his wet, chubby body back into clothes.

Like all good Oregon coastal towns, Rockaway has more ice-cream and taffy shops than anything else, and so before we boarded the train home we lined up on benches outside of one and ate our fill of Tillamook’s finest.

A funny moment came as we were boarded and settled on the train for the ride home. Moments before the train was ready to pull out, I looked at Doug and asked: “Where is the bucket with the wet clothes?”

We realized that we had left it sitting one one of the benches outside of the ice cream shop so Doug jumped out of his seat and went flying across the street to recover the sandy, soaked clothes we had stashed in the shower bucket to carry home. It was that movie kind of moment where Doug was running, the train was preparing to pull out and we wondered if he would have to leap aboard a moving train.

On the ride home, Aaron resumed his stance on the bench with his Daddy with his face pressed into the wind. At one point Doug kept trying to get my attention about something. Finally I realized that my son had fallen asleep, standing up on a moving train.

The train wound its way along the shoreline, passing through other small towns, past camps, and even along the highway. And every time we would pass behind a row of houses or through a railroad crossing where cars waited, or behind a cluster of fisherman or clammers, people would wave. The urge is nearly irresistible, whether you are on board or on the ground. People of all ages and every walk of life would stop what they were doing and wave.

I thought about that yesterday morning when I stood up in front of Doug’s mom’s congregation and preached for their two services. It was a sermon that I preached first for my home congregation in Los Angeles, and then later re-worked a bit for a church in Simi Valley. When we were in Seattle last weekend, I preached yet another version of it in my home congregation, and now here I was with the same text and most of the same message to share with another family of faith.

The message for each community was of course different; the congregations all very unique. And yet the Word was the same for each. It is incredible to consider how the scriptures, the good news of Jesus, the presence and work of the Spirit rest at the center of so many communities of faith, filled with people of every age and race and station. I do not usually preach a sermon more than once but doing so these past weeks has brought home to me this reality of how a worldwide community has gathered throughout history around the same set of stories we preach, or hear preached, every week.

“Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you.”

From a poster in the hallway at the United Methodist Church in Tillamook, Oregon

Today we made a little trip into Portland to escape the Tillamook rain. We enjoyed a spur of the moment lunch date with a dear friend and her son in Northeast Portland, complete with bubbles and mud puddles and dirty, happy kids. After lunch we drove by my old house and through the changing face of MLK and our old hood. Then we met up with Doug’s sister at OMSI but ended up opting instead for a long walk along the river and across the Hawthorne Bridge when the sun made a stunning afternoon appearance.

Portland is a great city for walking and people watching, and the kids loved all the people and dogs and crossing the river on the bridge and watching out as bikes whizzed past around them. We ended our trek with delicious Umpqua ice cream on the waterfront, and the guy who scooped our ice cream got a two dollar tip from Doug for his generosity. I am pretty sure my cone alone could have fed a family of eight.

A sober moment came as we came up from the bridge crossing and walked along the beach. A man emerged from the beachfront holding a big clipboard thing, and he stood there strangely as our family passed. Doug was the last to pass him, and I heard the two of them exchange a few words before Doug caught up to us and said to me: “Get the kids to the other side.”

“Why, are they doing a d-r-u-g b-u-s-t?” I had sensed that the clipboard man might be with the authorities even though he wore no uniform, and there was a shady group of teenagers not far from where he stood that looked like they were dealing.

“No, they are about to bring up a d-e-a-d b-o-d-y.”

We walked quickly urging the small ones along, and as we looked back we saw a team in plain clothes lifting a body wrapped in white plastic from water’s edge.

The kids remained clueless, but Doug, Sarah and I were of course fully aware of what was going on behind us. When we made our way back after ice cream, there were kids playing and people swimming in the spot where the authorities had been.

After dinner at Red Robin, we made the journey back to Tillamook. The boys slept soundly after the day’s adventures while Mercy sat wide-eyed listening to the Wicked soundtrack that Sarah had loaned to us for the drive, clutching the Red Robin balloon Aaron lost in his sleep.

The night before we left for our trip north, we had the amazing privilege of seeing the Los Angeles production of Wicked with our very dear friends. Many people had told us how incredible this show is and we had heard over and over again how we just HAD to go and see it. Of course, nights out at the theater are not the norm for us, so while we had both shared a strong desire to see the show, we did not have any real, concrete expectation that we would.

Well, it surpassed even my highest expectations which felt surprising considering all the hype. The night was magical, and the next morning I just could not help myself from showing a few YouTube scenes to Mercy. The flying monkeys and the big talking Wizard head certainly caught her attention, but her imagination was most captured by the relationship between Glinda and Elfeba as they sang a sad goodbye to one another.

Wicked tells “the untold story of the Witches of Oz”, and the friendship between the two witches really turns the story of the Wizard of Oz on its head. And so it was interesting the other day when Mercy stumbled across the Wizard of Oz book in the van that good friends had loaned to us for our trip. It is a book filled with pictures along with the text, and so she sat in her carseat while we drove, flipping through the story.

At one point, Mercy started asking me questions about the Wizard of Oz story and I was answering them according to the original text. Mercy was growing increasingly agitated in the back seat. Finally she cried out in exasperation: “But Mommy, you are not understanding me!” “Mercy, what am I not understanding?” I asked, genuinely confused. “But Mommy, the witches LOVE each other.”

And then her frustration made sense. She was trying to make sense of the story I was telling her but it was in such clear contradiction to what she knew to be true based on Wicked. And I was stuck. I could not get the one story across without violating the other.

Last night during bath-time, Mercy had me tell her the Wicked story three times. For my daughter, a green-skinned, misunderstood friend has captivated her far more than a little Kansas girl and her dog.

This past weekend I was talking to a dear friend who has known me for most of my life. She is one of those people I have always admired deeply: her life has been a strong witness and inspiration to me. We were talking about a story I shared in my sermon that morning, and we were wrestling together with the reality of intense pain and hardship in the lives of those we love in spite of our deepest, most fervent prayers for God to intervene and work or heal or provide.

I have often heard people make comments about how “once we’re in heaven we’ll understand” or something to that effect when considering that endless question of why such horrible things befall the most faithful, generous people. But when I was talking with my friend, I said to her that I’m not sure we will really ever know. I said that I don’t necessarily expect that we will be given some key or answer sheet to lay down next to the events of our life. I am not sure we get or need that in the end.