Embarrassed yet proud of fearless child

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

"Why haven't you written about how you feel about your first-born getting married this month?" my wife asked.

"I'm not sure," I said, partly humming the words from "Fiddler on the Roof."

Is this the little girl I carried?

Truthfully, Sara is marrying a great guy. I'll admit to being somewhat silent about it, however, as it'll be a ceremony that strains our family traditions. It's at a campsite beside a mountain stream.

Honestly, her nonchurch wedding is a bit embarrassing to explain, but she's never been shy about embarrassing me. She's done it most of her life.

With tongue-in-cheek, please allow me to define embarrass.

First of all, she's always embarrassed me with her smarts.

I remember struggling to help her younger sister multiply fractions when she proclaimed, "Dad doesn't know fractions. I'll teach you."

"Big Sister" was on a competitive math team.

Her talent also has embarrassed me a bit. I'd hoped she'd inherit my singing talent, but she didn't. And those judging her singing competitions seemed oddly grateful.

Her energy always has been a source of embarrassment.

She's not yet old enough to rent a car, but she's visited 41 countries in the past five years. When she's home, she works double shifts to make enough money to explore more countries.

The girl always has made me look bad. Especially with her integrity.

Anytime a waitress would try to apply the kid's discount, "Miss Honesty" would proclaim, "No, Dad, we're paying adult prices now."

Thanks a lot, kid.

Even her faith has proved embarrassing.

When it came to instilling a faith in her, I tried to shelter her from the expectations I grew up with concerning church four times a week. Nevertheless, I proudly watched her join a church, help start a college ministry and teach underprivileged kids.

Sacred texts tell a story of a boy named David who also had a talent for embarrassing his family. One day he brought a care package to his brothers who were part of the Israeli Expeditionary Force facing a Special Forces unit headed by Goliath.

Goliath had drawn a line in the sand, daring anyone to fight him. When no one would fight, David posed an embarrassing question: "Why is all of Israel cowering in their tents?"

Then, as if to shame his brothers into fighting, David volunteered to face the giant with only his boyhood slingshot.

His cowardly brothers showed their bravery by dressing him for battle and pushing him out of the tent. David refused the traditional protection, and his brothers sent him out alone.

Kids. You can't tell them anything. It's embarrassing really.

Well, if you don't know the rest of the story, you might want to pick up the "Veggie Tale" video. Suffice to say, David wasn't alone. God was with him, and the little runt felled this giant with just a slingshot.

Embarrassing.

Like David, my daughter has embarrassed me hundreds of times by living the answer to Spencer Johnson's question, "What would you do if you weren't afraid?"

She and her fiancé, Warren Schaefer, have fully engaged their generation as they leave the tent of tradition to face many of the giants that terrorized previous generations. They are giants that we weren't smart enough, or brave enough, or loving enough, to overcome. Her generation will conquer stars and diseases, prejudices and poverty and other unimaginable challenges.

So, go ahead, Sara. Take your turn felling those giants, and I'll be proud to be embarrassed some more. You're my hero.

Oh, by the way, I'm glad to see that you are keeping some family traditions. Your mother says you're registered at Target.

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Norris Burkes is a syndicated columnist, national speaker and author. He also serves as an Air National Guard chaplain and is board certified in the Association of Professional Chaplains. You can E-mail him at Norris@thechaplain.net or visit his website at www.thechaplain.net

Melbourne Visit + column: Forsaking one to save all

Dear Readers,

I will kick off the distinguished lecture series at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church at 10:45 a.m. Sept. 20. The church is at 50 W. Strawbridge Ave., Melbourne. He also will preach at the 9 a.m. service that day. Call 321-723-5272 for more info. Map at http://tinyurl.com/holytrinitymelbourne



Forsaking one to save all

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

Do you remember that song "Torn Between Two Lovers" by Mary MacGregor?

In the song, MacGregor whines that she's torn between two lovers and admits that "lovin' both of you is breakin' all the rules."

While I know what it's like to be torn between the love for a good mushroom burger and a breakfast burrito, I've not experienced MacGregor's predicament.

However, I saw it more than a few times while I served as a pastor in the late '80s. One particular case came to my attention when our deacon chairman came into my office telling me he'd noticed Deacon Mike's car parked all night at the home of a married woman.

She was a woman in our church who'd become lost on a mountain of marital difficulties. Mike had made more than one rescue attempt. But now, it seemed, he'd become lost himself, and I suspected he was in need of a good Sherpa to guide him home.

"This isn't good," I thought, picking up the phone to call the woman.

Deacon Mike answered the phone.

In a quick exchange, I asked Mike if he would leave her house and meet us at his own home. An hour later, we were on his doorstep. Finding the door ajar, we pushed it open to see the deacon lying in a fetal position with an unopened Bible clutched to his chest.

"Mike," I said softly, trying to enter his world without breaking it, "we need to talk."

"Damn it!" he screamed. "I haven't done anything wrong!"

"We didn't come with stones," I explained. "We just want to listen."

After a few more expletives, Mike started talking. Mostly, he kept blaming the woman's husband for being away from home so much. He also blamed the man for her debt-filled life brought on by his selfish indulgences.

The thin strand of rationalizations revealed a complicated truth. This wasn't the hormone-driven coveting of another man's wife. This was a good man intent on rescuing a distressed damsel from the slippery ice. Problem was, he found himself sliding full speed toward a disastrous drop over an icy cliff.

Caught up in playing the hero, Mike was in a heady place.

I pointed to the suitcases spread about the floor and asked Mike whether he really was ready to pay the price for her rescue.

"If you leave your family to help her," I told him, "you'll all go over this cliff. It will be a lifetime before they will be able to have faith in anyone again."

Mike had to make a choice. Like a Mount Everest adventurer who must leave an injured climber to save the rest of his party, Mike had to choose between rescuing this woman or protecting his family. The price was too great. He would have to release the one he'd come to save.

As hard as that is, that's the nature of slippery slopes. Fortunately, Mike had friends to bring him back from the edge and eventually he aborted his careless rescue attempt. He altered his path. He grabbed hold of his own family and made it safely down the mountain.

The last time I saw Mike, he'd been to counseling and rediscovered his calling. He'd continued to serve as a deacon for several years after I left.

He'd changed. No longer simply Deacon Mike, he'd become Sherpa Mike, helping others find their way around their own slippery slopes.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard chaplain. Write norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net. You can also follow him on Twitter, username is "chaplain," or on Facebook at facebook.com/norrisburkes.

Coming to Brevard & my last two columns

I'm coming to Brevard next week to kick off the distinguished lectures series at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church beginning on September 20, 2009 at 10:45 a.m. The church is located at 50 West Strawbridge Avenue in Melbourne. He will also be preaching at the 9 a.m. worship service.



August 29, 2009


God gives out phone numbers

NORRIS BURKES
SPIRITUALITY

I was on the hunt for fried chickenduring my lunch hour from the hospital where I worked as a pediatric chaplain a few years back when my cell phone rang.

Because my policy was to never, ever, give my cell number to a patient's family, I was totally oblivious to the likelihood of a serious call during lunch.

I cheerfully answered the phone.

"Chaplain, where is he?"

"Sarah?" I asked.

"I mean . . ." Sarah stammered. "Eric's in Heaven, right?"

Sarah was the mother of a little boy who had died in our hospital a few weeks prior. For some reason -- I didn't really know why -- there was something special about this close-knit family that caused me to make an exception about my cell phone rule.

"Yes, I feel certain that he is in Heaven," I declared, shifting gears from fast-food to food for thought.

When I asked her to tell me more about what was going on, she told me she was having nightmares about her son smothering. Her sobs continued and churned an ocean of grief. The swells came through the phone like waves threatening to drown both swimmer and rescuer.

Then she asked something that can't possibly be answered definitively by anyone on this side of the celestial.

"What was it like for him after he died? What's he feeling now?"

The Bible contains many references about Heaven, but Sarah was not looking for Biblical authority, she was looking to share in another parent's deepest hope. Living inside a pain that was raw and brutal, she was trying to make it through her personal Hell on Earth, one day at a time, one prayer at a time, one phone call at a time.

I tried my best to answer her question, but given my current whereabouts I opted to add a bit more through a later e-mail.

"I don't know for sure what Heaven's like," I wrote. "The Bible tells me God prepared it as a 'place not made with hands,' so it's probably more than we could ever imagine. And if it's made by God, then Heaven must be made of the best of us, of who we are, of all our hearts can collectively imagine.

"Sarah, you cared for Eric every hour of every day for eight years. Your love formed a cocoon of Heaven for him right here on Earth. God has done no less for Eric by creating an eternal Heaven designed by a mother's love and a father's care.

"When I think of Eric in Heaven, I see him in a place where his lungs are filled with the freshest air from the most pristine mountain peaks. It is a place where he needn't struggle to find his legs. He can walk and run and jump. He can dance with butterflies and sing with angels.

"He can talk and hear and understand. He knows the joy of a million rainbow waterfalls. He knows a father who loves him and is filled with the presence of his mother's lullaby to comfort him."

After sending the e-mail, I resolved to amend my phone policy about not giving my personal number to patients.

God knows who needs to talk and when. I think God knew I needed to talk to Sarah as much as she needed to talk to me.

So, God mysteriously gave her the number -- via my big mouth.

Now, I have a new cell number policy: "Never, never, never give a patient your personal phone number, unless of course, it's God's idea."





Do's and don'ts of your faith is a short list

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

In 1979, I sat in Dr. Richard Cutter's early morning Greek class at Baylor University praying my professor would call on someone else to translate the homework passage from Plato.

My prayers were answered when he called on John.

John was more clueless than I was in this second-year Greek class, but he took a gallant stab at translating the passage.

After five agonizing minutes, Dr. Cutter thanked John and interrupted our naps with seemingly the most random of questions.

"How many of you think crap is a bad word?" he asked the class comprised of mostly Baptist ministerial students.

A few brave souls from the conservative South raised their hands, while the rest of us stared forward with wide-eyed incredulity.

"A freshman girl came to me after class last week," he said, introducing his reason behind the question. "She told me that she was offended by my occasional use of the word crap because her East Texas upbringing taught her that it was an expletive."

Cutter told us he'd apologized to the girl, but explained to her that his upbringing on a Kansas farm taught him to understand crap as a common word.

For him, the word was a homonym, a word having the same spelling and pronunciation, but with different meanings. Offering an example, he explained that a Baptist deacon in Kansas might use crap to describe the proposed church budget as well as the piles scattered in the pasture next door.

Hoping his heartfelt explanation had convinced us, he repeated his polling question. "How many of you still think that crap is a bad word?"

We cowered in silence. It was our second year with Dr. Cutter, and most of us recognized the sound of him loading both barrels.

"Good," he said, taking our silence as approval.

"John," he exclaimed pointing to the unfortunate translator, "that translation was a bunch of crap."

The questionable word is much more accepted now, but what Dr. Cutter was so colorfully illustrating 30 years ago is something called a regional sin. These are sins that may offend the sensibilities of the local community, but would not be offensive in other communities.

Regional sins are helpful to avoid when teaching in a university with a national reach, but the girl's question illustrated that there is a downside to paying them too much heed.

The downside is we, like Dr. Cutter's inquisitor, sometimes use our list of regional do's and don'ts to define and measure the faith of others. When we do that, our faith vision blurs, and we start seeing ourselves as doubly better than others.

For instance, while being able to say, "I don't cuss, drink or chew nor date girls who do" may be a good health practice, it says nothing of your quality of faith.

Faith is better understood when you leave the regional list of do's and don'ts at home and replace them with their true elements.

Moses did a pretty good job of that when he summarized the hundreds of do's and don'ts in Jewish law with the Ten Commandments. Later, Jesus introduced a more portable expression of faith that found acceptance in all regions of the world.

He taught that faith should "hang on these two commandments:"

1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart.

2. Love your neighbor as yourself.

No more long lists of complicated regional sins. Just two.

Multitasking Jesus' short list can still be pretty difficult. But if it were easy, it wouldn't be valuable.

His list is valuable because it comprises the gold card of faith accepted in faith communities worldwide.

And that leaves me an ending I won't resist. As they say in the old commercial, don't leave home without it.