New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Column for March 29-31


Column:

How I Became the Bomb-Dump Chaplain

A good friend once suggested that I start using the term "America's Favorite Chaplain" to promote my public speeches.

"No, I said. "I prefer the moniker, 'The Bomb-Dump Chaplain.'" His quizzical expression prompted a story from an earlier day.

In 1994, I took my first active-duty assignment at Onizuka Air Station outside San Jose, Calif. One day, our supervisor, James Young, informed the staff of an upcoming inspection from the Command Chaplain's office in Denver.

In civilian lingo, this moment would compare to a church getting a visit from their bishop or district overseer. During upcoming weeks, we worked diligently starching our uniforms and vigorously varnishing the prayer benches.

But the exhausting part was preparing something called our Unit Visitation Statistics. "The report," said Chaplain Young, "should include a count of all chaplain interactions with airmen on base."

"How do you define 'interactions'?" I asked.

"That's up to you," Young said, handing us the form. "Don't forget to record where your interactions take place."

Ours was a young and ambitious staff. We wanted to look as good as possible by generating as many numbers as possible.

So we busied ourselves crisscrossing the base for the next week. We'd stroll to the gym or the dining hall and greet all passersby – ping, ping, ping, – documenting forty pastoral visits in an afternoon without breaking a sweat.

Yes, like a lot of officers, chaplains can be competitive. Meaning, we were engaging in a practice that bureaucrats call "pencil whipping" – manipulating the stats with a simple slide of the pencil on a report.

Perhaps you've heard the adage, "Statistics don't lie, but statisticians certainly do."

Command Chaplain, Col. Benjamin Perez, arrived bright and early on inspection day and cloistered us in the chapel fellowship hall.

Perez was a short, fit, steely-eyed Texan, keen with anecdotes.

Trying to set us at ease, he suggested we not think of his visit as an inspection. "I'm only here to help."

Military folks will tell you to beware of the officer who begins his introduction with, "I'm from headquarters and I'm here to help." That officer is more likely to be a P.I.P., (pain in the patootie).

But as a good Command Chaplain—and Perez was among the sharpest— he saw past our manipulated stats. He saw the places we hid because he was looking for the forgotten airmen.

Holding our reports in hand, Perez posed his signature question: "How many of you have been to the bomb dump?"

The "bomb dump" is the unofficial name for the secluded place where hazardous explosive devices are rendered safe. The airmen there are not the celebrated "Bomb Squad," they are a forgotten group of isolated engineers who worry about public safety.

Now here's the funny thing — our base didn't have a bomb dump. Perez knew Onizuka was a Space Command base that tracked satellite trajectories.

Nevertheless, the trajectory of my military ministry would change that day in a somewhat slight, but significant way.

Perez was using "bomb dump" as a euphemism for the place populated by the forgotten people. He didn't care how many visits we were making to headquarters or the gym. He wanted to know if we knew the names of our cleaning staff. Could we recall our subordinates and their families by their first names?

His question was a not-so-subtle biblical inference to Mathew 25 where Jesus taught that caring for those of a lesser privilege — the prisoner, the sick, the immigrant — was the equivalent of caring for Jesus himself.

"Truly I tell you," Jesus said, "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'

Anyone working in the bomb dump might well be counted among the "least of these." That's why Perez considered visits made to the secluded and forgotten sides of the base to be the test of a real chaplain.

His question became the guiding reminder early in my career that while statistics remain a necessary tool, they aren't the mission. People are.

Perhaps one day I will become known as "America's Favorite Chaplain," but for now, I'll settle for being called the "Bomb-dump Chaplain."

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PS. I return from Honduras this week. If you're interested in joining us next year in Honduras, go chispaproject.org/volunteertrip. Contact Chaplain Norris at comment@thechaplain.net or 10566 Combie Rd.
Suite 6643 Auburn, CA 95602 or voicemail (843) 608-9715.

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Column for 22-24 March


Column:

Coloring the World with Hope

Do you ever find it helpful in risky situations to disregard worrisome thoughts and push yourself past tragedy, pain and danger?

Some call that approach denial. I call it exactly what I need as I rendezvous with volunteers in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Mostly column readers, these people arrive on a humid Sunday afternoon in answer to my challenge for help with the Chispa Project establishing a library for an inner-city school.

Along with my daughter, Sara, Chispa director, I meet them at the airport where they'd flown in from across the U.S. From the terminal, Chispa employees bus us to the safety of a rural retreat center run by a Honduran cadre of Presbyterian women.

As we unpack, I can't help but feel pride in my group. These well-seasoned travelers are fully aware of why this project shouldn't work.

Murders occur so frequently here, that the Peace Corps pulled out in 2012. The traffic is horrendous, motorcycles dart in front of cars like stray dogs and overloaded trucks menace the roadway. Roadside-trash buildup is stifling.

Education is so grossly underfunded that school staff must ration toilet tissue. Language and cultural differences raise the bar discouragingly high.

Nevertheless, we awake Monday to board our bus to Maradiaga School. During the drive, Earl Monroe of Montgomery, Ala., tells me he believes Chispa to be "a perfect pay-it-forward project because we should see the immediate effects."

An hour later, a school guard admits us through into a walled compound.

Sara explains how each teacher will receive a portable library that will rotate between classrooms every month. But first, we must prepare reading corners appropriate for these new books.

Our group scatters to survey classrooms and divide project pieces among us. Terri Young of Sacramento, Calif., quickly notes the "flow" and says she's "…feeling blessed to be a part of something that makes books so accessible to the children throughout the school."

Soon, we use two projectors to splash mural outlines onto corner sections of the walls.
Volunteers pencil-trace the projection, painting inside the pattern with bright primary colors that bring inspirational book characters to life. Kathleen Chobot of Charleston, SC, declares the mural to be "the first step in a thousand-mile journey."

Outside in the breezeway amidst noisy recess games, children surround us, smiling with unrehearsed gratitude. Theirs are broad, cheeky smiles that go for miles and miles.

They hug Annette Pollard of Myrtle Beach, SC, so often they delay simple movement. "I've always said that if I can get 12 hugs each day, I've had a great day. I got that amount in ten minutes."

The first two days pass quickly as we assemble and paint book shelves, code each book with a sticker, and pack the portable libraries into plastic tubs.

As we administer the tedious inventory task, Sherry Brakane from Glen Carbon, Ill., sees our effort as "one tiny thing to bring more color to their world." Her husband Terry adds, "Just because we can't do everything doesn't mean we can't do anything."

The school suspends classes on Wednesday while Sara trains the teachers in methods that will encourage students to read.

The value of the teaching seminar is quickly noted by our volunteers. Katie Doyle, Chispa board member and retired librarian from Denver, Colo., observes that "We are improving the education that's already in place by investing in teachers." Bob Smith of Walterboro, SC, pinpoints it. "The students seem eager to learn, but I'm most impressed that teachers are so receptive."

On the last two days, Chispa hosts the library inauguration, a sort of all-day birthday party where children rotate among classrooms for hands-on fun with puppets, experiments and storytelling.

In one class, a little girl reads "Peppa Pig" aloud to Laurie Mullinax of Charleston. "The girl turned each page as fast as she could," Laurie tells me. "Reading is the spark of learning."

As the week draws to a close, everyone gathers in the courtyard where children dazzle us with a cultural dance in swirling dress. On a final note, they unfurl a banner spelling out their gratitude:

"Thank you for making our school a better place to learn." The banner is bracketed with two U.S. flags.

Why did we do this? Deny our fears and push against the worrisome odds?

Lisa Dobeck of Sacramento suggests that "You never know how touching someone's life will change them, but you do the right thing because that's what your heart tells you to do."

Melissa Rush of Charleston adds a benedictory thought. "The end result proves it's worth the risk. We need to risk it for the children. Risk being afraid. If the children can read a book and see something beyond their neighborhood, I can put up with discomfort. We come for a week, but they have a lifetime."


If you're interested in joining us for our next trip, visit chispaproject.org/volunteertrip. Contact Chaplain Norris at comment@thechaplain.net or 10566 Combie Rd.
Suite 6643 Auburn, CA 95602 or voicemail (843) 608-9715.

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Editing instructions and photos for upcoming column


Column:

I'm sending my column in the next email. It is over 850 words, but ican be easily reduced if you remove the extraneous quotes of people not from your area.

Photos – I'd suggest you use this photo of the banner mentioned in column

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ANndJ8%5FKlwcbvQc&cid=1C43D07C63B89316&id=1C43D07C63B89316%21328687&parId=1C43D07C63B89316%21327836&o=OneUp

Or this group picture

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ANndJ8%5FKlwcbvQc&cid=1C43D07C63B89316&id=1C43D07C63B89316%21328699&parId=1C43D07C63B89316%21327836&o=OneUp

If you'd like a specific picture of a volunteer from your area, please email me at norris@thechaplain.net and I will help identify a few

Most pictures taken during this project can be seen at https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ANndJ8%5FKlwcbvQc&id=1C43D07C63B89316%21327836&cid=1C43D07C63B89316

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Column for March 15-17


Column:

Editors

This is column pushes 750 words. Feel free to request photos and/or a shorter version.


A Long Walk of Faith on a Short Pier

After an exhausting week working with Chispa Project, Becky and I leave the Honduran mainland for a family getaway on the Honduran Isle of Utila.

We board a twin-engine turboprop that takes us over the three Honduran Bay Islands, Utila, Guanaja and Roatán. The waters are a world renown scuba-diving site off the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the second-largest in the world.

Our plane touches down on a landing strip that crosses the island. We load into a tuk tuk, a motorcycle-powered rickshaw, and drive through the tourist side of Utila where I'm quickly entranced by the stunningly blue shoreline. Ten minutes later, we unload into an air-conditioned condo.

On the second day, I meet our neighbor, Ken Nelson, a missionary with Legacy Mission International. Ken offers me a golf-cart tour into a barrio called Camponado.

In literal minutes, we move from stunning beauty to staggering poverty. I've not seen a landscape like this since my National Guard deployment into the muddy wards of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

That's a fitting comparison since the Honduran government relocated mainlanders into this barrio after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. The horrific flooding killed 11,000 people.

Being "relocated" out of Central America to an island might seem like paradise, but it's not a rescue. English-speaking islanders see the transplants as intruders and prejudice runs as deep as this barrio mud.

Ken and I dismount below sea level and walk a wooden pathway anchored into buried rock and wood debris. The deeper we go into the barrio, the more unstable the planks become.

"Watch your step," Ken said, "We don't want to have to pull you out of that mud." It feels like the trek could quickly become the proverbial long walk off a short pier.

At the end of the footpath, Ken introduces me to an 11-year-old girl named Jocelyn sitting on a wooden porch alongside her grandmother. Spina bifida has Jocelyn confined to a wheelchair that has kept her homebound for the past six years.

We join them on the porch where Ken speaks to them in Spanish, and I can only nod for the next fifteen minutes. Ken points to jewelry that Jocelyn makes, so before we say our goodbyes, I buy a plastic bead bracelet for a dollar.

As we return to our cart, Ken says he wants to hire locals to construct a pathway through the mud so Jocelyn can integrate into her community, but first he must raise $10,000.

"That's a lot of money to help one kid," I say. "Aren't there bigger community needs?"

"Good question, but I think she's worth it."

I offer a neutral nod.

"Keep in mind the greater good that will bring churches together. That will be a powerful message to this neglected community, one that I hope will spur churches to love on these people."

We return to our cart and Ken points to a group of men. "Many of the men live the leisurely island life, but they need to focus on pulling their community together. I think this project can help them catch a bigger vision."

As the Spock of Star Trek so famously posed, "Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Like Captain Kirk, I'm not sure that's always right.

The next day, I sit in a beachside café eating pork sliders and sipping a Coke. Becky tries to sleep in a hammock rocked by an offshore breeze, but the noisy grackles forbid it. I feel like we are cast in a Corona beer commercial.

It has me asking myself, "How did I get so lucky? How was I awarded working legs and medical care to keep them walking?"

There is no rhyme or reason for the privileges we are born into. So, while living on this side of heaven, the only thing we know for sure is that we have power to decide what we are going to do about poverty.

James, the brother of Jesus, asked his readers in James 2:14, "What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?"

Next week, I bring eight of my readers to Honduras where we will address "the needs of the many" by installing a library in an underfunded school with the Chispa Project.

Will such a project change things? Time will tell, but it will most assuredly change us.

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Web sites of interest

ChispaProject.org
10566 Combie Rd
Suite 6643 Auburn, CA 95602
Legacymissioninternational.org
54 Lake Shore Drive Daphne AL 36526


Contact Chaplain Norris at comment@thechaplain.net or
voicemail (843) 608-9715.

 

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New Column From Norris Burkes

Subject:
Column 829 words for 8-10 March


Column:

Editors,

This column is over 800 words, if you need a shorter version, I will be happy to edit on request. OR, you may edit according to your needs.


Roughing it with Rotarians

It's Monday and my wife, Becky, and I board a plane flying south to Honduras. From several thousand feet aloft, we cross a border that, according to The NY Times, "76,000 migrants crossed without authorization in February…approaching the largest numbers seen in any February in the last 12 years."

What makes those migrants seek a new country? One word: choices. Honduran immigrants seek choices and options that many would never have in their own country.

This is our fourth trip to work with the Chispa Project, a nonprofit founded by our daughter, Sara, for starting children's libraries in underfunded schools.

We bring three suitcases with 150 pounds of Spanish books to supplement the 16,000 books in the 50 libraries begun so far by Chispa. We hope we bring enough for a few Hondurans to make educationally supported choices about their lives.

On previous visits, we flew into downtown Tegucigalpa for the dicey and turbulent landing in the mountainous capitol of Honduras.

But this time, thanks to reader connections via Rotary Club International Clubs in Central Florida, we make a much smoother landing in the northern coastal city of San Pedro Sula.

An hour later, we sit comfortably in the Casa Blanca hotel, a 3-star accommodations venue reserved by the club.

"Wow, these Rotarians know how to 'rough it',"I tell Sara, whose former lodgings make this seem like the Ritz.

A few hours later, I see the need for comfort as the 8-person group, led by Rotarian Jim Weaver, return from a rocky ride into the mountains.

They walk into the lobby shaken and stirring with chatter about their three-day project assisting Compelled by Christ, (CBC) an organization that rescues young girls from abuse and prostitution. These girls, sold by their families for the price of a cow or less, have few choices in their lives.

"You're late!" says Jim. "We've finished our project with CBC. You really missed a blessing.

"CBC will rescue, literally, the most vulnerable in Honduran society. Most of the girls," Jim explains, "have little to no education, so apart from safety and affection, education gives these girls a chance in life."

Obviously, Becky, Sarah and I join a work already in progress, but Jim assures me that the Rotarians are not a "one-trick pony." He has much more up his sleeve that he hopes will empower Hondurans.

In the next few days, we walk with them into a trade school where they furnish six sewing machines that will be used for teaching children to sew. Throngs of kids peek in and out of the presentation and surround us with thankful hugs as we leave.

At the next stop, I watch Rotarians present a check to a grateful director at a home for orphaned boys. The money will fund replacement of the orphanage's broken brick oven. The idea is to allow the home to sell bread and become more self-sustaining.

This Rotarian group knows little rest as they manage four visits a day to schools and children's homes, community centers, clinics and special-needs daycare. They come to calculate how helping these places will bring the most good to Honduras.

The Rotarians focus on the physical needs that make Honduran life more self-sustaining. As physical needs are addressed, Chispa sees a path clearing toward education. And education, above all things, introduces life choices.

So, I have an ulterior motive in my rendezvous with this hard-working group.

We plan a detour to paint a library space in a local school. Before Chispa Project will place books on shelves, they decorate a space that relates to children and makes them proud of that space.

Imagine five grown men and two women in a humid 10-foot by 30-foot room rolling two coats of white paint on crumbling walls. The paint provides a bright pallet for colorful murals intended to inspire future readers.

Everyone takes turns sitting outside to escape the fumes, but the children surround us and chatter in a few English words. I return "poquito Español" and show them a few slight-of-hand tricks.

In adjoining classrooms, Becky coaches other volunteers and Honduran children in tracing a big balloon pattern projected onto a wall. The children fill in the outline with paint they dip from drinking cups.

We finish our painting and clean-up by mid-afternoon. The day is hot, and we pause for some ice cream cones sold by a street vendor at the school gate.

I look around and see that the Rotarians have slipped away.

"Where'd they go?" I ask Sara.

"Off to do another project assessment," she says, wiping her brow.

I chuckle. "It sounds like the Hondurans are getting more choices about their day than Jim is giving our Florida friends."


Web sites of interest
CompelledbyChrist.org
ChispaProject.org

Contact Chaplain Norris at comment@thechaplain.net or 10566 Combie Rd
Suite 6643 Auburn, CA 95602 or voicemail (843) 608-9715. Look for Norris' books at thechaplain.net or Amazon: "No Small Miracles," "Hero's Highway," and "Thriving Beyond Surviving."

 

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