speaking schedule and past columns

Readers,

Sorry it's been over a month since my last email to you. Life has been coming at me fast with my current deployment to Beale AFB and my studies for a Master's in Creative Writing.

Florida readers: I'll be speaking in Cape Coral at the Island Coast High School on October 15 and Messiah Lutheran on the 16th. The next weekend, I'll be on the opposite coast in Brevard County at Trinity Episcopal. I've added a new paper in Lakeland FL. If I get an invitation, I might stop there between the two coastal stops.

New York readers: I'll be on vacation in New York the first two weeks in October, so if you are in that area, let me know and maybe I can stop by.

And wherever you are, if you'd like me to add your town on the schedule, please email me and let me know more.

Blessings,

Chaplain Norris

See my columns from the last five weeks below:



Strange twist of fate
8:10 AM, Aug. 19, 2011 |

The Waco Tornado remains the worst tornado in Texas history and up until the Joplin, Mo., tornado on May 23 of this year, it had been the 10th worst in the nation.

On May 11, 1953, at 4:20 p.m., my mother stood waiting for a bus in downtown Waco, Texas.

Fifteen minutes later, an F5 tornado touched down in the town to begin a 23-mile path of destruction that took 114 lives and injured 597 more. What happened in those intervening 15 minutes is the subject of this column.
Waco was my mother's hometown. On the day the tornado hit, she'd just finished her final exams of her freshman year at Waco's Baylor University. She'd also begun dating my father that semester.

My father came to Baylor that same year as an eighth-grade dropout to tell the Dean of Admission in a West Texas drawl, that "God called me to preeech, and I'm gonna need me an education."

In Southern Baptist academia, my father's "calling" easily gave him provisional admission.

My mother's parents vehemently protested their 19-year-old daughter dating a 27-year-old veteran, but their objections were nothing compared to the twister that tore the heart out of the downtown.

It came at the end of the workday, so the biggest loss of life occurred in the commercial district where my mother waited for her bus: 61 dead in a single city block.

But, it was what happened approximately 15 minutes beforethe tornado's touchdown that changed my destiny.

As my mother stood awaiting her bus, watching the gathering clouds and holding her skirt down in the finicky winds, my grandmother casually pulled her car alongside the bus stop. Through her open window, my grandmother called her daughter into the car.

Fifteen minutes later, now driving though blinding rain, they heard the radio bulletin announcing that a tornado had devastated the downtown area.
This story is part of the family lore I grew up hearing. My grandmother always would claim that she made the 15-mile drive from their farm on "a premonition." My father often would tell me, "God saved your mom from that tornado."
But I had questions for my family. Difficult ones. Had God really picked my mom out to live while allowing other would-be parents to die at that bus stop? Tough questions always have come easy for me; easy answers, not so much.

The most common two answers I hear people give are: "God wasn't finished with you yet" or "We can never understand God's ways." Both answers contain a piece of the truth, but when it comes to solving why some people die and others live, we are selfish; we want the big picture.

The truth is we'll never have the big picture, only God has that. The Apostle Paul observed that, "We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!"

So, I choose to focus on the part of the picture I know.

For you see, one might easily conclude from reading this story that my grandmother changed my destiny that day, but I'd rather think love changed my destiny.

Because two months after the tornado hit, my parents married; it would be love, not a premonition or a twist of fate that brought me into this world. And at the end of the day, love always will remain the miracle that trumps them all.


Prayers should come with a warning label
Aug 14, 2011
This past week, my mother sent an email to my wife, Becky, asking her to pray about an upcoming financial decision.

I stared at the email in dismay for a moment, thinking, I'm her son, the one employed in professional ministry. Shouldn't I be the first person she asks for prayer?

In the military, this is a serious infraction called bypassing the chain of command. Since she is my mom, however, I cut her some slack, and we both prayed for her.

I suppose my mom's request shouldn't have surprised me. She knows Mrs. Chaplain has a bit of a reputation as a prayer warrior. I use that term warrior because her prayers sometimes result in people getting hurt.

Several years ago, she prayed that our college daughter, Sara,would find a way to get more rest. Sara was a world traveler, an avid lacrosse player, and she was majoring in three subjects.

Prayer outcome: A week later, Sara broke her thumb, and it wasn't just an ordinary break. It required surgery and rehab. I guess the prayer worked. Sara dropped several extracurricular activities and lived a much slower life.
Simultaneously, my wife prayed to find more quality time with our then 12-year-old daughter, Nicole. The day after Sara returned from thumb surgery, Nicole broke her foot. The doctor prescribed no walking, and Nicole spent many hours with Becky during the next two months. Prayer request granted.
Then, about the same time, she started praying for me. Like my oldest daughter, I, too, had been keeping a hectic schedule.

Becky prayed I'd slow my writing schedule to spend quality time with family. Her prayer established a "target lock" on me sometime Saturday afternoon as I finished one writing project and was assembling my entry for a writing contest, all the while multitasking on a sermon in the midst of making travel arrangements for another cross-country speaking tour.

I grabbed my chest. Breathing hurt and the pain stretched from
my navel to my throat. I was thinking, heartburn, I'll be OK. But as a former hospital chaplain, I'd heard too many people sing the heartburn tune of denial, which later turned out to be their funeral dirge.

With the calm demeanor of a drowning rat, I asked my little prayer warrior to take me to the emergency room. Within a few minutes of arrival, I took my first nitroglycerin tablet and the pain subsided.

The short version of this story is I spent 23 hours of observation in the hospital cardiac ward. Diagnosis: heartburn from hell.

The prayer hit its mark with accurate precision, but fortunately it was only a warning shot over the bow intended just to wing me. My busy schedule slowed significantly, and my wife put another notch in her prayer belt.
Now my mom seems to be asking for a piece of this action.

Well OK, mom, I've forwarded your request, but first I must give you something medical folks like to call informed consent.

Becky's prayers sometimes take a circuitous route, and occasionally people have been slightly injured. But, so far, everyone's been OK in the end.
At this point, I should say to all of my readers that if you've read all of this, and you'd still like me to pass her your prayer request, be forewarned, I'll be asking you to sign a release form.




Norris Burkes: Blessed are the children

Even in death, 'Little preacher' keeps family faithful
Aug 7, 2011 |
Keeping your religion while single-handedly getting small children ready for Sunday school can be a challenge. I know because several years ago, while my wife was out of town, I struggled to get my kids dressed while simultaneously answering a call from the Texas hospital where I worked.

"Chaplain, we need you in the ER." Emergency room nurses know many colorful combinations of language, but I wasn't prepared for what I heard next.

"Please, it's a bad one."
The last sentence was redundant. ER nurses don't use the "P" word unless it is bad. A call to a neighbor found haven for my children, and a few minutes late,r I walked into the ER to hear the wails of family members.

My first thought was that it looked like an entire church was assembled in the waiting room. There were suits and scarves; hats and handkerchiefs; Bibles and bulletins. Only the pews and preacher were missing.

A triage nurse whisked me past the peripheral congregants and directed me to the designated grieving room. She whispered the score: "Drunken Driver 1, Kid 0."

Inside the room, I introduced myself, and the crowd parted enough to allow me access to a small, seemingly unbroken figure of a 9-year-old boy.

I distinctly remember thinking: Here is a little boy whose body was absent of the very thing that defines little boys -- movement and energy. Little boys are supposed to be wiggly and squirmy? After all, aren't they made of "snails and puppy dog tails?"
This was probably a boy whose life had been spent in everything but a stationary position. He had moved, yearned and inspired.

"He won't ever preach again," his uncle muttered.

"Preach?" I said.

"Oh, yes," he said, and went on to tell me how the boy spent countless hours playing church until his mom finally persuaded their pastor to let the boy preach at only 6 years old.

Child preachers were a part of this family's religious tradition, one that didn't squelch the religious interests of children. Children were a part of worship. They were more than just seen; they were heard by all congregants.

I imagine some would find fault with a system that placed religious expectations on this boy's life. But the critics would be compelled to acknowledge there are those who wait all their lives to find their calling, while this little boy knew his calling and expressed it until his last breath.
And after that last breath, the little preacher continued to inspire the faithful to worship, as the congregation remained after my prayer to sing "just one more song."

After excusing myself to pick up my children, I thought about my earlier efforts to practically drag my kids to church, while this little preacher was somehow able to drag an entire church family behind him.

I realized that in my anxiousness to get to church that day, I almost missed the joy of seeing the church do the work for which it is called. It may take a village to raise a child, but this was a day when I witnessed a child single-handedly raise the standards of a village.


I'm deployed stateside this summer to Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, Calif., where I am made increasingly aware that I don't exactly fit the military stereotype.

First of all, as I often joke, "Because I don't like tobacco, coffee, golf or beer, I don't know how I made it this far as a military officer."

Oh, uh, another thing: I don't do guns, unless you count the fact I qualified as a BB sharpshooter at junior high church camp. Impressive, huh?

Also, I don't have the physique you'd expect. My snow-white hair gives me the appearance of a retiree and my stomach threatens to hide the toes on my slumping 6-foot-1 frame. Not exactly a mean, green, fighting machine.

Truthfully, none of these differences prevents me from fitting in, but they sometimes make me stand out. Like you, my differences can leave me feeling awkward, like I don't belong. When I feel this way, I remind myself that God created us to make our own unique contributions to life.

Sure, it's a cliché, but the truism is supported by the popular Myers-Briggs psychological assessment test. This test identifies 16 distinct personality types using a combination of four pairs of letters:

•Extroverted or Introverted = E or I.

•Sensing or Intuitive = S or N.

•Thinking or Feeling = T or F.

•Judging or Perceiving = J or P.

For instance, Meyers-Briggs finds most military officers are INTJ. (Introvert, iNtuitive, Thoughtful and Judgmental.)

It's a rare combination of traits, but they have nearly a mystical sense they've been appointed to lead. They are practical, realistic, matter-of-fact folks who get things done. They have a clear set of logical standards and can be forceful in implementing these standards.

Uh, not me. Unlike most career military officers, I test out as an INFP, (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling and Perceptual), which means I depend more on feelings and perceptions than logic.

Meyers-Briggs says folks of my personality type tend be idealistic and loyal. We are curious, adaptable, flexible and accepting.

But the biggest difference between most INTJs and us INFPs is we usually will care more about getting along with people than we care about whether a certain set of tasks were completed. A chaplain who cares more about people than programs? I'd say that's a value-added fit for the military.

The point is, you can't judge normal by what is normal for you.

Based on Myers-Briggs alone, it's a personality zoo out there, and we would need Noah's Ark to hold a pair of every different kind of normal creature.

So heed the Apostle Paul when he says, "Go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't."

Trust in his words and be encouraged to stick to what you are made to do.

For instance he says:

"If you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy; if you're put in charge, don't manipulate; if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face." Romans 12:4-8 (The Message)

To which I would add, I married an INTJ, so they can't be all bad.



My calling from God came early
Jul 24, 2011 | Comments


Callings have many beginnings, and if you'll allow some rambling as I near my 10th anniversary of writing this column, I'd like to share mine.

My most solid memories begin in May 1962 when my pastor-dad graduated from an Arkansas college. In the days after his graduation, he crammed all our worldly goods inside a plywood box he built atop a rusted boat trailer. He transplanted our Texas-born family to the opulent, and likely opiate, hills of Marin County, Calif. There, he enrolled as a ministerial student in Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

It was on this campus that I first conscripted my friends to play army with toy rifles and dirt grenades. We transformed the campus into a basic-training confidence course, spending hours fashioning forts in the overgrown summer grass, tumbling down ice-plant-covered embankments and storming the persistently under construction student housing area. Among my playmates was Rick Warren, not yet the famed author and pastor of the largest Christian congregation in America.

Then, in our unkempt thrift store coats, we concealed an armament of squirt guns, cap guns, stick guns and, if all else failed, a clicking thumb atop a shuddering index finger.

Demilitarization came twice on Sundays and again on Wednesdays when, dressed in suits and dresses, my family of five heaped into our blue, 1963 Rambler station wagon and joined the hymn-singing congregation my father pastored in a storefront church.

Once in the hardened pew, I laid my head in my mother's lap as her diaphragm emptied the operatic notes of "Amazing Grace." I heard her refrains as lullabies and preludes of peace before my father's sermon, a tandem that nearly always favored a 45-minute nap.

I found myself lost in the musical rhythm and hypnotic oratory of the church; some cynics even may say I was indoctrinated.

In fact, many a time I'd assemble a congregation of family members to play church, casting myself as the preacher, and my siblings as the church choir. Perhaps these early times would explain why, by the time I was in junior high, I was convinced my future role would be something behind a lectern: perhaps a lawyer, possibly a professor, probably a preacher.

It was no surprise to my friends that I enrolled at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 1975 and, at the same school where my parents met, I told my advisor that like my father and his grandfather, I was called to preach.

My advisor told me my calling was commendable, but it would be good if I had something practical to fall back on. So, three years later, and 17 years before Baylor approved on-campus dancing, I earned a bachelor of arts in religion along with a fallback degree in journalism.

Baylor provided no special-colored tassel for a 3.01 GPA, but four years later I would add a master of divinity degree from GGBTS, the same seminary where I premiered the characters of preacher and soldier. Fifteen months after that, I blended those roles into the real life of a pastor commissioned as a citizen soldier in the Air Force Reserves.

Next month marks my 25th year in military service, and this year added my 30th year to ordained ministry. The imagined childhood roles of soldier/preacher have come to pass. God truly is good and I remain beyond grateful to be called into his service.

speaking schedule and past columns

Readers,

Sorry it's been over a month since my last email to you. Life has been coming at me fast with my current deployment to Beale AFB and my studies for a Master's in Creative Writing.

Florida readers: I'll be speaking in Cape Coral at the Island Coast High School on October 15 and Messiah Lutheran on the 16th. The next weekend, I'll be on the opposite coast in Brevard County at Trinity Episcopal. I've added a new paper in Lakeland FL. If I get an invitation, I might stop there between the two coastal stops.

New York readers: I'll be on vacation in New York the first two weeks in October, so if you are in that area, let me know and maybe I can stop by.

And wherever you are, if you'd like me to add your town on the schedule, please email me and let me know more.

Blessings,

Chaplain Norris

See my columns from the last five weeks below:



Strange twist of fate
8:10 AM, Aug. 19, 2011 |

The Waco Tornado remains the worst tornado in Texas history and up until the Joplin, Mo., tornado on May 23 of this year, it had been the 10th worst in the nation.

On May 11, 1953, at 4:20 p.m., my mother stood waiting for a bus in downtown Waco, Texas.

Fifteen minutes later, an F5 tornado touched down in the town to begin a 23-mile path of destruction that took 114 lives and injured 597 more. What happened in those intervening 15 minutes is the subject of this column.
Waco was my mother's hometown. On the day the tornado hit, she'd just finished her final exams of her freshman year at Waco's Baylor University. She'd also begun dating my father that semester.

My father came to Baylor that same year as an eighth-grade dropout to tell the Dean of Admission in a West Texas drawl, that "God called me to preeech, and I'm gonna need me an education."

In Southern Baptist academia, my father's "calling" easily gave him provisional admission.

My mother's parents vehemently protested their 19-year-old daughter dating a 27-year-old veteran, but their objections were nothing compared to the twister that tore the heart out of the downtown.

It came at the end of the workday, so the biggest loss of life occurred in the commercial district where my mother waited for her bus: 61 dead in a single city block.

But, it was what happened approximately 15 minutes beforethe tornado's touchdown that changed my destiny.

As my mother stood awaiting her bus, watching the gathering clouds and holding her skirt down in the finicky winds, my grandmother casually pulled her car alongside the bus stop. Through her open window, my grandmother called her daughter into the car.

Fifteen minutes later, now driving though blinding rain, they heard the radio bulletin announcing that a tornado had devastated the downtown area.
This story is part of the family lore I grew up hearing. My grandmother always would claim that she made the 15-mile drive from their farm on "a premonition." My father often would tell me, "God saved your mom from that tornado."
But I had questions for my family. Difficult ones. Had God really picked my mom out to live while allowing other would-be parents to die at that bus stop? Tough questions always have come easy for me; easy answers, not so much.

The most common two answers I hear people give are: "God wasn't finished with you yet" or "We can never understand God's ways." Both answers contain a piece of the truth, but when it comes to solving why some people die and others live, we are selfish; we want the big picture.

The truth is we'll never have the big picture, only God has that. The Apostle Paul observed that, "We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!"

So, I choose to focus on the part of the picture I know.

For you see, one might easily conclude from reading this story that my grandmother changed my destiny that day, but I'd rather think love changed my destiny.

Because two months after the tornado hit, my parents married; it would be love, not a premonition or a twist of fate that brought me into this world. And at the end of the day, love always will remain the miracle that trumps them all.


Prayers should come with a warning label
Aug 14, 2011
This past week, my mother sent an email to my wife, Becky, asking her to pray about an upcoming financial decision.

I stared at the email in dismay for a moment, thinking, I'm her son, the one employed in professional ministry. Shouldn't I be the first person she asks for prayer?

In the military, this is a serious infraction called bypassing the chain of command. Since she is my mom, however, I cut her some slack, and we both prayed for her.

I suppose my mom's request shouldn't have surprised me. She knows Mrs. Chaplain has a bit of a reputation as a prayer warrior. I use that term warrior because her prayers sometimes result in people getting hurt.

Several years ago, she prayed that our college daughter, Sara,would find a way to get more rest. Sara was a world traveler, an avid lacrosse player, and she was majoring in three subjects.

Prayer outcome: A week later, Sara broke her thumb, and it wasn't just an ordinary break. It required surgery and rehab. I guess the prayer worked. Sara dropped several extracurricular activities and lived a much slower life.
Simultaneously, my wife prayed to find more quality time with our then 12-year-old daughter, Nicole. The day after Sara returned from thumb surgery, Nicole broke her foot. The doctor prescribed no walking, and Nicole spent many hours with Becky during the next two months. Prayer request granted.
Then, about the same time, she started praying for me. Like my oldest daughter, I, too, had been keeping a hectic schedule.

Becky prayed I'd slow my writing schedule to spend quality time with family. Her prayer established a "target lock" on me sometime Saturday afternoon as I finished one writing project and was assembling my entry for a writing contest, all the while multitasking on a sermon in the midst of making travel arrangements for another cross-country speaking tour.

I grabbed my chest. Breathing hurt and the pain stretched from
my navel to my throat. I was thinking, heartburn, I'll be OK. But as a former hospital chaplain, I'd heard too many people sing the heartburn tune of denial, which later turned out to be their funeral dirge.

With the calm demeanor of a drowning rat, I asked my little prayer warrior to take me to the emergency room. Within a few minutes of arrival, I took my first nitroglycerin tablet and the pain subsided.

The short version of this story is I spent 23 hours of observation in the hospital cardiac ward. Diagnosis: heartburn from hell.

The prayer hit its mark with accurate precision, but fortunately it was only a warning shot over the bow intended just to wing me. My busy schedule slowed significantly, and my wife put another notch in her prayer belt.
Now my mom seems to be asking for a piece of this action.

Well OK, mom, I've forwarded your request, but first I must give you something medical folks like to call informed consent.

Becky's prayers sometimes take a circuitous route, and occasionally people have been slightly injured. But, so far, everyone's been OK in the end.
At this point, I should say to all of my readers that if you've read all of this, and you'd still like me to pass her your prayer request, be forewarned, I'll be asking you to sign a release form.




Norris Burkes: Blessed are the children

Even in death, 'Little preacher' keeps family faithful
Aug 7, 2011 |
Keeping your religion while single-handedly getting small children ready for Sunday school can be a challenge. I know because several years ago, while my wife was out of town, I struggled to get my kids dressed while simultaneously answering a call from the Texas hospital where I worked.

"Chaplain, we need you in the ER." Emergency room nurses know many colorful combinations of language, but I wasn't prepared for what I heard next.

"Please, it's a bad one."
The last sentence was redundant. ER nurses don't use the "P" word unless it is bad. A call to a neighbor found haven for my children, and a few minutes late,r I walked into the ER to hear the wails of family members.

My first thought was that it looked like an entire church was assembled in the waiting room. There were suits and scarves; hats and handkerchiefs; Bibles and bulletins. Only the pews and preacher were missing.

A triage nurse whisked me past the peripheral congregants and directed me to the designated grieving room. She whispered the score: "Drunken Driver 1, Kid 0."

Inside the room, I introduced myself, and the crowd parted enough to allow me access to a small, seemingly unbroken figure of a 9-year-old boy.

I distinctly remember thinking: Here is a little boy whose body was absent of the very thing that defines little boys -- movement and energy. Little boys are supposed to be wiggly and squirmy? After all, aren't they made of "snails and puppy dog tails?"
This was probably a boy whose life had been spent in everything but a stationary position. He had moved, yearned and inspired.

"He won't ever preach again," his uncle muttered.

"Preach?" I said.

"Oh, yes," he said, and went on to tell me how the boy spent countless hours playing church until his mom finally persuaded their pastor to let the boy preach at only 6 years old.

Child preachers were a part of this family's religious tradition, one that didn't squelch the religious interests of children. Children were a part of worship. They were more than just seen; they were heard by all congregants.

I imagine some would find fault with a system that placed religious expectations on this boy's life. But the critics would be compelled to acknowledge there are those who wait all their lives to find their calling, while this little boy knew his calling and expressed it until his last breath.
And after that last breath, the little preacher continued to inspire the faithful to worship, as the congregation remained after my prayer to sing "just one more song."

After excusing myself to pick up my children, I thought about my earlier efforts to practically drag my kids to church, while this little preacher was somehow able to drag an entire church family behind him.

I realized that in my anxiousness to get to church that day, I almost missed the joy of seeing the church do the work for which it is called. It may take a village to raise a child, but this was a day when I witnessed a child single-handedly raise the standards of a village.


I'm deployed stateside this summer to Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, Calif., where I am made increasingly aware that I don't exactly fit the military stereotype.

First of all, as I often joke, "Because I don't like tobacco, coffee, golf or beer, I don't know how I made it this far as a military officer."

Oh, uh, another thing: I don't do guns, unless you count the fact I qualified as a BB sharpshooter at junior high church camp. Impressive, huh?

Also, I don't have the physique you'd expect. My snow-white hair gives me the appearance of a retiree and my stomach threatens to hide the toes on my slumping 6-foot-1 frame. Not exactly a mean, green, fighting machine.

Truthfully, none of these differences prevents me from fitting in, but they sometimes make me stand out. Like you, my differences can leave me feeling awkward, like I don't belong. When I feel this way, I remind myself that God created us to make our own unique contributions to life.

Sure, it's a cliché, but the truism is supported by the popular Myers-Briggs psychological assessment test. This test identifies 16 distinct personality types using a combination of four pairs of letters:

•Extroverted or Introverted = E or I.

•Sensing or Intuitive = S or N.

•Thinking or Feeling = T or F.

•Judging or Perceiving = J or P.

For instance, Meyers-Briggs finds most military officers are INTJ. (Introvert, iNtuitive, Thoughtful and Judgmental.)

It's a rare combination of traits, but they have nearly a mystical sense they've been appointed to lead. They are practical, realistic, matter-of-fact folks who get things done. They have a clear set of logical standards and can be forceful in implementing these standards.

Uh, not me. Unlike most career military officers, I test out as an INFP, (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling and Perceptual), which means I depend more on feelings and perceptions than logic.

Meyers-Briggs says folks of my personality type tend be idealistic and loyal. We are curious, adaptable, flexible and accepting.

But the biggest difference between most INTJs and us INFPs is we usually will care more about getting along with people than we care about whether a certain set of tasks were completed. A chaplain who cares more about people than programs? I'd say that's a value-added fit for the military.

The point is, you can't judge normal by what is normal for you.

Based on Myers-Briggs alone, it's a personality zoo out there, and we would need Noah's Ark to hold a pair of every different kind of normal creature.

So heed the Apostle Paul when he says, "Go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't."

Trust in his words and be encouraged to stick to what you are made to do.

For instance he says:

"If you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy; if you're put in charge, don't manipulate; if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face." Romans 12:4-8 (The Message)

To which I would add, I married an INTJ, so they can't be all bad.



My calling from God came early
Jul 24, 2011 | Comments


Callings have many beginnings, and if you'll allow some rambling as I near my 10th anniversary of writing this column, I'd like to share mine.

My most solid memories begin in May 1962 when my pastor-dad graduated from an Arkansas college. In the days after his graduation, he crammed all our worldly goods inside a plywood box he built atop a rusted boat trailer. He transplanted our Texas-born family to the opulent, and likely opiate, hills of Marin County, Calif. There, he enrolled as a ministerial student in Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

It was on this campus that I first conscripted my friends to play army with toy rifles and dirt grenades. We transformed the campus into a basic-training confidence course, spending hours fashioning forts in the overgrown summer grass, tumbling down ice-plant-covered embankments and storming the persistently under construction student housing area. Among my playmates was Rick Warren, not yet the famed author and pastor of the largest Christian congregation in America.

Then, in our unkempt thrift store coats, we concealed an armament of squirt guns, cap guns, stick guns and, if all else failed, a clicking thumb atop a shuddering index finger.

Demilitarization came twice on Sundays and again on Wednesdays when, dressed in suits and dresses, my family of five heaped into our blue, 1963 Rambler station wagon and joined the hymn-singing congregation my father pastored in a storefront church.

Once in the hardened pew, I laid my head in my mother's lap as her diaphragm emptied the operatic notes of "Amazing Grace." I heard her refrains as lullabies and preludes of peace before my father's sermon, a tandem that nearly always favored a 45-minute nap.

I found myself lost in the musical rhythm and hypnotic oratory of the church; some cynics even may say I was indoctrinated.

In fact, many a time I'd assemble a congregation of family members to play church, casting myself as the preacher, and my siblings as the church choir. Perhaps these early times would explain why, by the time I was in junior high, I was convinced my future role would be something behind a lectern: perhaps a lawyer, possibly a professor, probably a preacher.

It was no surprise to my friends that I enrolled at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 1975 and, at the same school where my parents met, I told my advisor that like my father and his grandfather, I was called to preach.

My advisor told me my calling was commendable, but it would be good if I had something practical to fall back on. So, three years later, and 17 years before Baylor approved on-campus dancing, I earned a bachelor of arts in religion along with a fallback degree in journalism.

Baylor provided no special-colored tassel for a 3.01 GPA, but four years later I would add a master of divinity degree from GGBTS, the same seminary where I premiered the characters of preacher and soldier. Fifteen months after that, I blended those roles into the real life of a pastor commissioned as a citizen soldier in the Air Force Reserves.

Next month marks my 25th year in military service, and this year added my 30th year to ordained ministry. The imagined childhood roles of soldier/preacher have come to pass. God truly is good and I remain beyond grateful to be called into his service.

Speaking schedule and past columns

Readers,

Sorry it's been over a month since my last email to you. Life has been coming at me fast with my current deployment to Beale AFB and my studies for a Master's in Creative Writing.

Florida readers: I'll be speaking in Cape Coral at the Island Coast High School on October 15 and Messiah Lutheran on the 16th. The next weekend, I'll be on the opposite coast in Brevard County at Trinity Episcopal. I've added a new paper in Lakeland FL. If I get an invitation, I might stop there between the two coastal stops.

New York readers: I'll be on vacation in New York the first two weeks in October, so if you are in that area, let me know and maybe I can stop by.

And wherever you are, if you'd like me to add your town on the schedule, please email me and let me know more.

Blessings,

Chaplain Norris

See my columns from the last five weeks below:



Strange twist of fate
8:10 AM, Aug. 19, 2011 |

The Waco Tornado remains the worst tornado in Texas history and up until the Joplin, Mo., tornado on May 23 of this year, it had been the 10th worst in the nation.

On May 11, 1953, at 4:20 p.m., my mother stood waiting for a bus in downtown Waco, Texas.

Fifteen minutes later, an F5 tornado touched down in the town to begin a 23-mile path of destruction that took 114 lives and injured 597 more. What happened in those intervening 15 minutes is the subject of this column.
Waco was my mother's hometown. On the day the tornado hit, she'd just finished her final exams of her freshman year at Waco's Baylor University. She'd also begun dating my father that semester.

My father came to Baylor that same year as an eighth-grade dropout to tell the Dean of Admission in a West Texas drawl, that "God called me to preeech, and I'm gonna need me an education."

In Southern Baptist academia, my father's "calling" easily gave him provisional admission.

My mother's parents vehemently protested their 19-year-old daughter dating a 27-year-old veteran, but their objections were nothing compared to the twister that tore the heart out of the downtown.

It came at the end of the workday, so the biggest loss of life occurred in the commercial district where my mother waited for her bus: 61 dead in a single city block.

But, it was what happened approximately 15 minutes beforethe tornado's touchdown that changed my destiny.

As my mother stood awaiting her bus, watching the gathering clouds and holding her skirt down in the finicky winds, my grandmother casually pulled her car alongside the bus stop. Through her open window, my grandmother called her daughter into the car.

Fifteen minutes later, now driving though blinding rain, they heard the radio bulletin announcing that a tornado had devastated the downtown area.
This story is part of the family lore I grew up hearing. My grandmother always would claim that she made the 15-mile drive from their farm on "a premonition." My father often would tell me, "God saved your mom from that tornado."
But I had questions for my family. Difficult ones. Had God really picked my mom out to live while allowing other would-be parents to die at that bus stop? Tough questions always have come easy for me; easy answers, not so much.

The most common two answers I hear people give are: "God wasn't finished with you yet" or "We can never understand God's ways." Both answers contain a piece of the truth, but when it comes to solving why some people die and others live, we are selfish; we want the big picture.

The truth is we'll never have the big picture, only God has that. The Apostle Paul observed that, "We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!"

So, I choose to focus on the part of the picture I know.

For you see, one might easily conclude from reading this story that my grandmother changed my destiny that day, but I'd rather think love changed my destiny.

Because two months after the tornado hit, my parents married; it would be love, not a premonition or a twist of fate that brought me into this world. And at the end of the day, love always will remain the miracle that trumps them all.


Prayers should come with a warning label
Aug 14, 2011
This past week, my mother sent an email to my wife, Becky, asking her to pray about an upcoming financial decision.

I stared at the email in dismay for a moment, thinking, I'm her son, the one employed in professional ministry. Shouldn't I be the first person she asks for prayer?

In the military, this is a serious infraction called bypassing the chain of command. Since she is my mom, however, I cut her some slack, and we both prayed for her.

I suppose my mom's request shouldn't have surprised me. She knows Mrs. Chaplain has a bit of a reputation as a prayer warrior. I use that term warrior because her prayers sometimes result in people getting hurt.

Several years ago, she prayed that our college daughter, Sara,would find a way to get more rest. Sara was a world traveler, an avid lacrosse player, and she was majoring in three subjects.

Prayer outcome: A week later, Sara broke her thumb, and it wasn't just an ordinary break. It required surgery and rehab. I guess the prayer worked. Sara dropped several extracurricular activities and lived a much slower life.
Simultaneously, my wife prayed to find more quality time with our then 12-year-old daughter, Nicole. The day after Sara returned from thumb surgery, Nicole broke her foot. The doctor prescribed no walking, and Nicole spent many hours with Becky during the next two months. Prayer request granted.
Then, about the same time, she started praying for me. Like my oldest daughter, I, too, had been keeping a hectic schedule.

Becky prayed I'd slow my writing schedule to spend quality time with family. Her prayer established a "target lock" on me sometime Saturday afternoon as I finished one writing project and was assembling my entry for a writing contest, all the while multitasking on a sermon in the midst of making travel arrangements for another cross-country speaking tour.

I grabbed my chest. Breathing hurt and the pain stretched from
my navel to my throat. I was thinking, heartburn, I'll be OK. But as a former hospital chaplain, I'd heard too many people sing the heartburn tune of denial, which later turned out to be their funeral dirge.

With the calm demeanor of a drowning rat, I asked my little prayer warrior to take me to the emergency room. Within a few minutes of arrival, I took my first nitroglycerin tablet and the pain subsided.

The short version of this story is I spent 23 hours of observation in the hospital cardiac ward. Diagnosis: heartburn from hell.

The prayer hit its mark with accurate precision, but fortunately it was only a warning shot over the bow intended just to wing me. My busy schedule slowed significantly, and my wife put another notch in her prayer belt.
Now my mom seems to be asking for a piece of this action.

Well OK, mom, I've forwarded your request, but first I must give you something medical folks like to call informed consent.

Becky's prayers sometimes take a circuitous route, and occasionally people have been slightly injured. But, so far, everyone's been OK in the end.
At this point, I should say to all of my readers that if you've read all of this, and you'd still like me to pass her your prayer request, be forewarned, I'll be asking you to sign a release form.




Norris Burkes: Blessed are the children

Even in death, 'Little preacher' keeps family faithful
Aug 7, 2011 |
Keeping your religion while single-handedly getting small children ready for Sunday school can be a challenge. I know because several years ago, while my wife was out of town, I struggled to get my kids dressed while simultaneously answering a call from the Texas hospital where I worked.

"Chaplain, we need you in the ER." Emergency room nurses know many colorful combinations of language, but I wasn't prepared for what I heard next.

"Please, it's a bad one."
The last sentence was redundant. ER nurses don't use the "P" word unless it is bad. A call to a neighbor found haven for my children, and a few minutes late,r I walked into the ER to hear the wails of family members.

My first thought was that it looked like an entire church was assembled in the waiting room. There were suits and scarves; hats and handkerchiefs; Bibles and bulletins. Only the pews and preacher were missing.

A triage nurse whisked me past the peripheral congregants and directed me to the designated grieving room. She whispered the score: "Drunken Driver 1, Kid 0."

Inside the room, I introduced myself, and the crowd parted enough to allow me access to a small, seemingly unbroken figure of a 9-year-old boy.

I distinctly remember thinking: Here is a little boy whose body was absent of the very thing that defines little boys -- movement and energy. Little boys are supposed to be wiggly and squirmy? After all, aren't they made of "snails and puppy dog tails?"
This was probably a boy whose life had been spent in everything but a stationary position. He had moved, yearned and inspired.

"He won't ever preach again," his uncle muttered.

"Preach?" I said.

"Oh, yes," he said, and went on to tell me how the boy spent countless hours playing church until his mom finally persuaded their pastor to let the boy preach at only 6 years old.

Child preachers were a part of this family's religious tradition, one that didn't squelch the religious interests of children. Children were a part of worship. They were more than just seen; they were heard by all congregants.

I imagine some would find fault with a system that placed religious expectations on this boy's life. But the critics would be compelled to acknowledge there are those who wait all their lives to find their calling, while this little boy knew his calling and expressed it until his last breath.
And after that last breath, the little preacher continued to inspire the faithful to worship, as the congregation remained after my prayer to sing "just one more song."

After excusing myself to pick up my children, I thought about my earlier efforts to practically drag my kids to church, while this little preacher was somehow able to drag an entire church family behind him.

I realized that in my anxiousness to get to church that day, I almost missed the joy of seeing the church do the work for which it is called. It may take a village to raise a child, but this was a day when I witnessed a child single-handedly raise the standards of a village.


I'm deployed stateside this summer to Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, Calif., where I am made increasingly aware that I don't exactly fit the military stereotype.

First of all, as I often joke, "Because I don't like tobacco, coffee, golf or beer, I don't know how I made it this far as a military officer."

Oh, uh, another thing: I don't do guns, unless you count the fact I qualified as a BB sharpshooter at junior high church camp. Impressive, huh?

Also, I don't have the physique you'd expect. My snow-white hair gives me the appearance of a retiree and my stomach threatens to hide the toes on my slumping 6-foot-1 frame. Not exactly a mean, green, fighting machine.

Truthfully, none of these differences prevents me from fitting in, but they sometimes make me stand out. Like you, my differences can leave me feeling awkward, like I don't belong. When I feel this way, I remind myself that God created us to make our own unique contributions to life.

Sure, it's a cliché, but the truism is supported by the popular Myers-Briggs psychological assessment test. This test identifies 16 distinct personality types using a combination of four pairs of letters:

•Extroverted or Introverted = E or I.

•Sensing or Intuitive = S or N.

•Thinking or Feeling = T or F.

•Judging or Perceiving = J or P.

For instance, Meyers-Briggs finds most military officers are INTJ. (Introvert, iNtuitive, Thoughtful and Judgmental.)

It's a rare combination of traits, but they have nearly a mystical sense they've been appointed to lead. They are practical, realistic, matter-of-fact folks who get things done. They have a clear set of logical standards and can be forceful in implementing these standards.

Uh, not me. Unlike most career military officers, I test out as an INFP, (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling and Perceptual), which means I depend more on feelings and perceptions than logic.

Meyers-Briggs says folks of my personality type tend be idealistic and loyal. We are curious, adaptable, flexible and accepting.

But the biggest difference between most INTJs and us INFPs is we usually will care more about getting along with people than we care about whether a certain set of tasks were completed. A chaplain who cares more about people than programs? I'd say that's a value-added fit for the military.

The point is, you can't judge normal by what is normal for you.

Based on Myers-Briggs alone, it's a personality zoo out there, and we would need Noah's Ark to hold a pair of every different kind of normal creature.

So heed the Apostle Paul when he says, "Go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't."

Trust in his words and be encouraged to stick to what you are made to do.

For instance he says:

"If you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy; if you're put in charge, don't manipulate; if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face." Romans 12:4-8 (The Message)

To which I would add, I married an INTJ, so they can't be all bad.



My calling from God came early
Jul 24, 2011 | Comments


Callings have many beginnings, and if you'll allow some rambling as I near my 10th anniversary of writing this column, I'd like to share mine.

My most solid memories begin in May 1962 when my pastor-dad graduated from an Arkansas college. In the days after his graduation, he crammed all our worldly goods inside a plywood box he built atop a rusted boat trailer. He transplanted our Texas-born family to the opulent, and likely opiate, hills of Marin County, Calif. There, he enrolled as a ministerial student in Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

It was on this campus that I first conscripted my friends to play army with toy rifles and dirt grenades. We transformed the campus into a basic-training confidence course, spending hours fashioning forts in the overgrown summer grass, tumbling down ice-plant-covered embankments and storming the persistently under construction student housing area. Among my playmates was Rick Warren, not yet the famed author and pastor of the largest Christian congregation in America.

Then, in our unkempt thrift store coats, we concealed an armament of squirt guns, cap guns, stick guns and, if all else failed, a clicking thumb atop a shuddering index finger.

Demilitarization came twice on Sundays and again on Wednesdays when, dressed in suits and dresses, my family of five heaped into our blue, 1963 Rambler station wagon and joined the hymn-singing congregation my father pastored in a storefront church.

Once in the hardened pew, I laid my head in my mother's lap as her diaphragm emptied the operatic notes of "Amazing Grace." I heard her refrains as lullabies and preludes of peace before my father's sermon, a tandem that nearly always favored a 45-minute nap.

I found myself lost in the musical rhythm and hypnotic oratory of the church; some cynics even may say I was indoctrinated.

In fact, many a time I'd assemble a congregation of family members to play church, casting myself as the preacher, and my siblings as the church choir. Perhaps these early times would explain why, by the time I was in junior high, I was convinced my future role would be something behind a lectern: perhaps a lawyer, possibly a professor, probably a preacher.

It was no surprise to my friends that I enrolled at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 1975 and, at the same school where my parents met, I told my advisor that like my father and his grandfather, I was called to preach.

My advisor told me my calling was commendable, but it would be good if I had something practical to fall back on. So, three years later, and 17 years before Baylor approved on-campus dancing, I earned a bachelor of arts in religion along with a fallback degree in journalism.

Baylor provided no special-colored tassel for a 3.01 GPA, but four years later I would add a master of divinity degree from GGBTS, the same seminary where I premiered the characters of preacher and soldier. Fifteen months after that, I blended those roles into the real life of a pastor commissioned as a citizen soldier in the Air Force Reserves.

Next month marks my 25th year in military service, and this year added my 30th year to ordained ministry. The imagined childhood roles of soldier/preacher have come to pass. God truly is good and I remain beyond grateful to be called into his service.