New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
First column in June 2018


Column:

The Suspicious Neighbor Prompts Self-reflection

You likely saw the news last month about the white lady in Rialto, Calif., who waived at three black women carrying suitcases from a neighbor's home.

When the women didn't reciprocate the greeting, the woman called police to report a possible burglary in progress. Officers arrived to identify the women as legitimate rental guests in the neighborhood home.

I can't fault the caller's ridiculous logic because I made a similar report about a neighbor's home some years back.

Weeks before I purchased my two-story McMansion in 2002, the FBI raided my neighbor's home and arrested the owner, a Vietnamese man named Jimmy.

But when my moving truck arrived, I only knew the current occupant to be a hairdresser with limited English. Her junior high-age sons both played in our swimming pool with my son. However, as the sons aged, their family fights brought frequent visits from police.

Things moved to another level one day when FBI agent Steve Dupray knocked on my door with an IRS agent in tow. They presented their credentials and told me how Jimmy was on trial for robbing several electronics warehouses. When one of his victims died of a heart attack, Jimmy went to prison for 30 years, but Jimmy's common law wife remained in the home with his two sons.

Now the IRS was collecting evidence to take the house under the RICO Act. To accomplish that, they needed to stand in my bathtub and take evidential pictures over my neighbor's fence.

After their photo shoot, they reminded me to report any suspicious activity and then they left. My mind was a whirl. But watch the house I did.

One afternoon, I came home to see large suitcases being hauled into the home by those I guessed to be Jimmy's extended family. There were neighborhood rumors that Jimmy had hidden money in the walls, so I assumed they needed suitcases to haul their ill-gotten gain.

I contacted police, and law enforcement swarmed our cul-de-sac again. Soon they had one of the culprits in handcuffs.

An hour later, a knock at the door hinted I was right. Perhaps it was Agent Dupray with my reward.

It wasn't. It was a pretty young Asian lady from next door.

"May I come in?" she said in accomplished English.

I showed her to a chair and she quickly challenged why I called the police.

Looking into her cherub face, I wasn't sure why I'd called, but I tried to explain my suspicions.

"I think you're a racist," she calmly said. "You called because you saw a bunch of Asian people carrying suitcases."

"N-no," I stammered.

"Yes!" She insisted. "Those suitcases were carrying the dresses and tuxes for my wedding tomorrow."

"Then why the arrest?" I dared ask.

"Our best man had an outstanding traffic ticket, so now he can't be in our wedding."

She'd hooked my chaplain's guilt. I'd done scores of weddings, but I had yet to ruin one.

There wasn't much left to do but profusely apologize and eventually walk her to the door.

I spent several days soul-searching and hand-wringing. Had I been racist?

It's not a question I can easily answer, then or now.

But I do know it's a question I continue to face in everyday events. There is no final answer. I must constantly reflect upon my assumptions and prayerfully examine the subtle interpretations of race that I place on people.

Yes, I said prayerfully. Prayerfully, because as the prophet Jeremiah says, "The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out."

The prophet insists that we must ask God to "... search our heart and examine our mind."

Current events offer us much to self-reflect on about racism — the border wall, the shooting of unarmed blacks and even last week's cancellation of the Rosanne show.

Don't let the news intimidate you into being silent on the subject. Discuss, search and reflect on the changing meaning of racism and never hesitate to seek God's help in understanding yourself.


Finally, for those of you who like tidy endings, the IRS took the house and sold it to a wonderful Honduran American. Steve Dupray became a fan of my column and drafted me into the FBI Citizen's Academy, but that's a story for another day.

———

Reach Norris at comment@thechaplain.net, 843-608-9715, or @chaplain

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Memorial Day Column


Column:

The Sacrifice of the Routine

On September 18, 2011, I teamed with an Army sergeant I'd never met for the mission no one wanted. We were the death notification team who would drive to Rio Linda, Calif. to inform the unsuspecting family of Army Staff Sergeant Russell J. Proctor.

This was nearly the 30th such visit I'd made in my Air Force chaplain career, but it was the partner's first. As we drove the rural roads, I briefed him on the ways I'd seen these visits go.

I told my wide-eyed driver how I watched a father pound the kitchen table as he railed against the government policies he blamed for his son's death. I described waiting outside a darkened home for parents to return from a winning bingo game, only to find they'd experienced the loss of a lifetime.

I even recounted stopping a family in their driveway before they could go get their son at the airport. "He isn't coming home," I told them.

When we stepped onto Sgt. Proctor's front porch, we heard dishes being washed and the muffled sound of a television. We knocked and dogs barked. The sudden click of the porch light exposed us staring at our clipboards.

A 50ish woman greeted us with a stoic, but receptive tone. She graciously guided us inside a living area that displayed the pictures of her 10 children. By the time she'd seated us on the couch, she'd likely deduced the purpose of our visit.

My colleague cleared his throat.

"The secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret . . ." the sergeant paused.

He'd spent the past two hours memorizing his speech, but now his breath stalled in his throat between punctuations. He told the mother a roadside IED exploded in Iraq's Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, killing both her son and another soldier.

Of course, the Army would conduct an investigation. But in the meantime, my associate added, "The Secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family during this trying period."

Then, I asked a few questions, sounding more perfunctory than feeling, "Would you like me to say a prayer?"

She wouldn't.

"Do you have some family or friends you can call?"

She did. She would.

"Do you have any more questions for us?" we asked.

"No."

We finished in less than 30 minutes. When we stood to leave, we offered only handshakes and pledged our continued prayers.

We walked to our car where I released the exhausted breath I'd been holding. "Gratefully, that was pretty routine."

My comrade was walking a few steps ahead of me when he took an about-face movement and stopped me. He gripped my shoulder, testing the regulation against an enlisted person handling an officer.

"Chaplain!" I just got back from Afghanistan where I buried two of my men."

"But that…" he said cocking a thumb back toward the house. "That was the hardest thing I've ever done."

"That was not routine. I won't let it be. We must never let this day become routine."

I nodded, but he only released my shoulder when he clearly saw I understood.

I hope this Memorial Day you will stop and remember people like 25-year-old Army Staff Sergeant Russell J. Proctor. Take the day to pledge that you will never accept the cost of war as routine.

Find a moment to see these war deaths as personal because they cost us real people like Proctor – a brave man who won't be eating homemade ice cream or marching in parades this weekend.

We live in a great nation defended by a strong and heroic military. Every servicemember I know is willing to join Proctor in making the supreme sacrifice.

All they ask of us is that we will never see war as inevitable nor ever accept their deaths as routine.

-------------------------------------
Tell me about the service member you remember this weekend. Email comment@thechaplain.net, 843-608-9715, or @chaplain

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
column for 3rd week of May 2018


Column:

What Do You Hold Sacred?

At the time of this writing, evacuees on Hawaii's Big Island await a volcanic eruption that could send boulders the size of pianos flying through the air. The whole scenario has me wondering what sort of things would I bother to save if I had to evacuate.

Well, first I would, of course, rescue the three P's: people, pets and pictures.

After that I'd gather the kinds of ordinary things I've learned to call "sacred."

I'd save the Gerber pocketknife my brother-in-law gave me 35 years ago. I viewed it as the knife MacGyver carried to skin something, carve something or defend sweethearts against roving street gangs.

I know saving a pocketknife seems ludicrous but you can't always choose your sacred things; they choose you.

I'd also collect my 1979 Baylor University class ring. I bought the ring shortly after my roommate predicted that I'd never graduate because he didn't consider me "Baylor material."

Despite his prediction, I did graduate. After the ceremony, I gave the ring to my girlfriend, now wife, as a makeshift promise ring. She knew I revered the ring and, therefore, it was a sacred promise to her.

A few months later we traded it for a proper engagement ring. From that day forward, I've worn the ring as a consecrated reminder to keep my promise and finish what I've started.

I'd also be certain to grab the New King James Bible that Susan Bradley, a parishioner, gave me in 1988. The Bible is the out-of-print Robert Schuller's Positive Thinking Bible that highlights the optimistic scriptures in blue.

The Bible is special because Susan was special. She and her husband, Bill, loaned us the down payment we needed between the sale of our first home and the purchase of our second.

While we weren't much of a risk, it was a lot of money. At the time, I knew Bill had cancer, but Susan kept her cancer a secret. A few years later, I read from her Bible while officiating at their funerals. The Bible is the tangible demonstration of a sacred trust.

Finally, I'd save my trumpet, a pawnshop purchase that's never worked well. The valves randomly shift and produce a sound similar to that of a wounded animal. The trumpet is not sacred at all.

What is sacred is the effort my wife made to buy it. She bought it to replace my boyhood trumpet that was stolen from the church where I was pastoring. She saw the heart-hurt the petty thief had caused, so she scrimped for six months on a newlywed budget to save the money to replace it.

I no longer have the breath to play the instrument nor the inclination to fix it, but I keep it for the determination she made to heal me from the painful loss.

Sacredness isn't limited to religion. In fact, it may even be sacrilegious to try to separate the sacred from the ordinary. Sacredness often lives in everyday spaces and within the things we allow God's love to permeate.

After I grabbed these sacred things, I'd let my plasma-screen TV and my computer go up in smoke. Besides, I'm insured, so I'd later do what any geek would do after a devastating fire. I'd buy a bigger TV and a faster computer.

-----------------------------

I'm curious - what sacred things would you rescue? Share your answer with someone special and then e-mail me at comment@thechaplain.net or leave a voicemail at ‭(843) 608-9715 ‬‬‬

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Column for 3rd week of May 2018


Column:

What Do You Hold Sacred?

At the time of this writing, evacuees on Hawaii's Big Island await a volcanic eruption that could send boulders the size of pianos flying through the air. The whole scenario has me wondering what sort of things would I bother to save if I had to evacuate.

Well, first I would, of course, rescue the three P's: people, pets and pictures.

After that I'd gather the kinds of ordinary things I've learned to call "sacred."

I'd save the Gerber pocketknife my brother-in-law gave me 35 years ago. I viewed it as the knife MacGyver carried to skin something, carve something or defend sweethearts against roving street gangs.

I know saving a pocketknife seems ludicrous but you can't always choose your sacred things; they choose you.

I'd also collect my 1979 Baylor University class ring. I bought the ring shortly after my roommate predicted that I'd never graduate because he didn't consider me "Baylor material."

Despite his prediction, I did graduate. After the ceremony, I gave the ring to my girlfriend, now wife, as a makeshift promise ring. She knew I revered the ring and, therefore, it was a sacred promise to her.

A few months later we traded it for a proper engagement ring. From that day forward, I've worn the ring as a consecrated reminder to keep my promise and finish what I've started.

I'd also be certain to grab the New King James Bible that Susan Bradley, a parishioner, gave me in 1988. The Bible is the out-of-print Robert Schuller's Positive Thinking Bible that highlights the optimistic scriptures in blue.

The Bible is special because Susan was special. She and her husband, Bill, loaned us the down payment we needed between the sale of our first home and the purchase of our second.

While we weren't much of a risk, it was a lot of money. At the time, I knew Bill had cancer, but Susan kept her cancer a secret. A few years later, I read from her Bible while officiating at their funerals. The Bible is the tangible demonstration of a sacred trust.

Finally, I'd save my trumpet, a pawnshop purchase that's never worked well. The valves randomly shift and produce a sound similar to that of a wounded animal. The trumpet is not sacred at all.

What is sacred is the effort my wife made to buy it. She bought it to replace my boyhood trumpet that was stolen from the church where I was pastoring. She saw the heart-hurt the petty thief had caused, so she scrimped for six months on a newlywed budget to save the money to replace it.

I no longer have the breath to play the instrument nor the inclination to fix it, but I keep it for the determination she made to heal me from the painful loss.

Sacredness isn't limited to religion. In fact, it may even be sacrilegious to try to separate the sacred from the ordinary. Sacredness often lives in everyday spaces and within the things we allow God's love to permeate.

After I grabbed these sacred things, I'd let my plasma-screen TV and my computer go up in smoke. Besides, I'm insured, so I'd later do what any geek would do after a devastating fire. I'd buy a bigger TV and a faster computer.

-----------------------------

I'm curious - what sacred things would you rescue? Share your answer with someone special and then e-mail me at comment@thechaplain.net or leave a voicemail at ‭(843) 608-9715 ‬‬

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Reply "yes" if you get this


Column:

Editors,

Please confirm that you are getting my email again. Reply "yes."

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Mother's Day weekend 2018


Column:

Norris Burkes
Spirituality Column
May 12 2018
649 words
Ph 916-813-8941

Failure to Launch

I was only six months into my first pastor's job in Hopland, Calif., when I contemplated quitting.

As I considered my pastoral responsibilities, I had to admit I had an uncomplicated life. I was a full-time graduate student driving 90 miles every weekend to preach two sermons in a country church. Not a bad gig, as they say.

But on April 12, 1981, I began to feel a dissonance between my academic world and the rural working life of Hopland. I remember the date precisely because I'd anticipated the day's events for months.

That was the Sunday Navy test pilot Bob Crippen flew the Space Shuttle Columbia into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Astronaut John Young, who walked on the moon in 1972, commanded the mission.

I stepped to the podium that day overflowing with optimism. Nothing would extinguish my unbridled enthusiasm except, as it turned out, Bob, my volunteer music director.

I asked if he'd seen the launch.

"Oh, that's NASA nonsense produced in a Hollywood studio."

Too stunned to reply, I turned to greet the arriving congregation. I tried to pump up their passion for America's return to space, but no one seemed moved by it.

After church, I tried to reignite discussion at the potluck by telling them how the shuttle was the first re-usable spacecraft. The orbiter would launch like a rocket and land like a plane, but still no one had any energy for it.

As Becky and I drove home to our little student apartment, I turned our commute into a pity party.

I railed about the ignorance and high illiteracy rate of my church members. I couldn't even get them to follow my scripture readings, much less have them sing from a hymnal. We had only one member with a full-time job. Since most were unemployed, our offerings looked more like God's tip jar than a collection plate.

I nitpicked more, telling Becky that these Hoplanders weren't even good Baptists. As a Baylor graduate, I knew a good Baptist did not smoke, drink or chew – or date girls who do. These folks did all those things. The shame of it all!

I was racing a fast high horse called "Pretty Petty Preacher."

Over the next several months, I began believing my slanderous slime. Finally, 13 months after I'd accepted the job, I gave my two-week notice.

Sometime before graduation, a therapist helped me come to grips with my failure to launch. My seminary life overlooking San Francisco's exclusive North Bay was an alien universe next to the practical lives of Hopland folks.

While my congregants were trying to make ends meet, I was inflating my self-importance in philosophical student discussions of neo-Kierkegaardian existentialism. (I don't know what this is.)

Hopland was being overrun by the inflationary 1980s, but I was busy debating urgent issues like transubstantiation and consubstantiation. I had little time to sit with parishioners who were losing their lumber-industry jobs.

The academia of theological graduate school placed me into a useless orbit, lost in space, circling the moon of elitism and irrelevance.

God has a funny way of discomfiting the proud. Two years after my resignation, it was déjà vu all over again. I accepted a full-time pastorate in the unincorporated rural community of Brentwood, Calif.

I had a little trouble locating the church because traffic slowed as plowing tractors whipped up a localized dustbowl. Finally, I found 25 grandparents waiting on their newly minted seminary graduate and much-humbled pastor.

Eventually, new houses sprang up in Brentwood and the growing community added its first stoplight. Our membership role grew accordingly through baptisms and births. We helped with a 7-pound, 3-ounce addition of our own.

Fifteen years later, the Air Force sent me into an ecstatic orbit when they assigned me to be the launch chaplain for Cape Canaveral (1999-2002).

Sometimes God has a funny sense of humor.

Reach Norris Burkes at comment@thechaplain.net, 843-608-9715, or @chaplain

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
question about word count and deadline


Column:

Ma'am/Sir

Two questions

1. I have always submitted 600 words, but what is your preference for word count? 500 or 600 or 650 or 700?

2. I have always submitted column on Wednesday at noon EST. What is your desired deadline? Tuesday or Wednesday?

Finally, I've chanted my email host, so please notify me immediately if you've not got my emailed column by noon EST on Wednesday. Call or text 916.813.8941 This is a different number than the one I give readers.

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Column for first week in May 2018


Column:

The Percentage Question

In the years I spent behind a pulpit, I made a conscious effort never to know anything about the contributions made by my parishioners.

However, in the early 80s, I made one exception while pastoring a church in the rustic California town of Hopland, Calif.

It was there on the first Sunday morning of every month that a very curious thing regularly occurred. Before service began, someone would surreptitiously place an unmarked envelope containing two $20 bills in the offering plate.

The pattern struck me with an insatiable curiosity to uncover the identity of this mysterious benefactor. Why would this person work so hard to remain anonymous and forgo their tax deduction?

I focused a hawk eye on the altar table where the collection plates waited. Like most small churches our plates were more like "God's tip jar," littered with kids' coins and sprouting a few dollar bills. However, there were no clues pointing to our donor.

One Sunday, I had a chance conversation with Mrs. Ruth, an elderly lady who taught our children's Sunday school class. She mentioned the difficulty living with the inflation of our decade. She paid $200 a month for her 600-square-foot hotel room on the edge of town, and her rent was increasing.

"It's hard to get by on my monthly $400 in Social Security," she said.

The amount resonated with me because my part-time church salary was the same. However, the big difference was that my wife brought home an additional $1000 from teaching in a private San Francisco school.

As I listened to Mrs. Ruth talk about her budget, I reconsidered the offering-plate mystery. It was likely that Ruth followed the Baptist teaching to give 10 percent of her income to the church. Many other evangelical churches as well as the Mormon church also practiced this tough teaching.

I thought about how Mrs. Ruth always arrived early to prepare her classroom. Motive and Opportunity, I deduced. To quote Sherlock Holmes' Shakespearian phrase, "The game was afoot."

On the next Sunday, before anyone arrived, I checked to confirm that the offering plates were empty. When Mrs. Ruth came early for her class, I reexamined the offering plate and found the unmarked envelope.

I wasn't a math whiz, but I did know that ten percent of $400 is $40.

The woman, literally poor as a church mouse, was giving what she believed God required of her. Her sacrifice broke my heart and inspired me to be a more generous person.

To this day, I have never again examined the personal contributions of my parishioners. However, I did research the charitable contributions of the world's richest people. Forbes Magazine recently reported that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has given $55 million to charity since 2000. Jeff Bezos of Amazon donated $68 million in the past 18 years.

Impressive, right? Jesus wouldn't think so.

One day he was sitting with his disciples watching the rich contribute large sums to the temple. Out of nowhere, a widow appeared gripping two small coins called "mites," the smallest of currency. Without fanfare, she slipped the coins into the collection box.

Jesus pounced on the moment to make a point to his disciples, "The truth is that this poor widow gave more to the collection than all the others put together. All the others gave what they'll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn't afford—she gave her all" (Mark 12:41ff).

Jesus probably still sees colossal contributions shamefully paltry sums next to the generosity of folks like Mrs. Ruth. Bezos will never miss the donations he made that comprised only 0.1 percent of his income. Zuckerberg shows a bit more charity, giving 2.9 percent of his revenue.

By Jesus' standard, I claim the privilege to have known a woman far richer, far more influential on an eternal scale than Bezos or Zuckerberg. Recalling folks like her should inspire us all in our everyday giving, whether it's to a church or to a charity.

----------------------------------------

Reach Norris Burkes through email at comment@thechaplain.net, by phone 843-608-9715 or on Twitter @chaplain.

 

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