Oh, My! It's Christmas Time Again

The annual overload of Christmas catalogs has begun again. Started a few weeks ago in fact --

but it's getting serious now. And it isn't even

Thanksgiving.

It used to be that Christmas promotions didn't start until the big Turkey Day Parades (Macy's,

Hudson's, and so on) but I think Christmas is kept in mind the year round now. (It is at the greatest Christmas store in the world -- Bronners in Frankenmuth, Michigan which DOES celebrate Christmas year round.) I even heard one of the local children suggesting that maybe we should move December 25th up to November 25th so that Christmas and Thanksgiving can be celebrated at the same time. And there are those who push the "Christmas in July" sales. Where's the real meaning of Christmas any more?

I'm thinking of how church services and the celebration of Christ's birthday have tended to become secondary. Routine. So many times the only time you see certain people in church are at Christmas and Easter and that there isn't any need for people to celebrate God any other times of the year. Does going to church twice a year make people any better? Does it give people a closer tie to God? A time to pay God's dues from time to time?

But there's something else missing nowadays. Family stuff. Like putting a ginger-bread house together. Or stringing popcorn and cranberries for the Christmas tree. Or making loops out of colored paper to be strung on the tree as well. Or making presents for others - our eldest daughter loves to do that. It's so much better when a gift is not store bought

I like to look at catalogs - but I can do that anytime. Always have. Always will. But I wish that they weren't so focused on Christmas.

Oh, about the picture - some traditions ARE still alive. People do still use advent calendars opening a little flap or door every day until Christmas. Or, as happened at our youngest daughter's house last Christmas - put together a ginger bread house a day or two before Christmas - even if the ginger bread house disappeared in to the mouth of a dog (or two) within minutes after it was built when no one was watching. So what if the dogs threw up - after all, it's a time of great joy - or so they say.

And you always thought it was the pumpkin

As this is written, it's Halloween - that very special time for ghosts and goblins. And costume-clad little kids carrying sacks to be loaded with candy and other treats. But it has never been limited to little kids like Margaret O'Brien in the movie "Meet Me In St. Louis."

Remember the scene? She was with a gang of kids - she was the smallest - and was pushed up to the door of the meanest man on the street so he could end up with a faceful of flour?

No, Halloween was for teenage boys as well - and I remember the occasion(s) well.

There was a time when a fender of a 1930's car was run up the flagpole in the center of our village. One year someone put a farm wagon on top of the Methodist church - another year a surrey was placed on top of the shed behind the church - in those days some churches had sheds where church folk could leave their horses and buggies during the church services.

It was a tradition at Halloween to soap up windows but the town leaders got a better idea - why not have a contest and let school children make a supervised project of fancy paintings on store windows using a base of Bon Ami to help with the cleaning when the season was past. I even did that with Christmas paintings on mirrors on our homes and once on a display window

in an Italian hotel in the mid-fifties. Lovers of art as they are, the folks in the town loved the American contribution to the Christmas season in their town.

We always had a Halloween parade in town and the high school band (all 8 or ten of them) was featured. Half the band was percussion as I recall but we made a joyful noise unto the community just the same.

One time I remember some of the boys loading up a big trash can with old, dried up highly flammable nitrate movie film, setting the barrel in front of the firehouse, and torching it off.

It provided the best explosion and fire in several years and and the firemen were not impressed.

Appreciative that they didn't have to take the truck out - but not happy just the same.

However, the real symbol of Halloween was not the pumpkin. While in grade school the thrill was making jack-o-lanterns. But when we became teenagers it became the season of the outhouse. The more outhouses that could be tipped the better - and if we could tip one with someone in it, all the better. Sadly, the outhouse is gone along with steam locomotives but memories still remain for some old guys who remember the day of the outhouse. There's a book that memorializes the "necessary house": Nature Calls by Dottie Booth and published by Ten Speed Press. It's a history book worth looking at.

But my father was smarter than many teenagers -- when we finally got running water in our house he invited our fire department to a beer bust in our back yard - and in the process told them they could have a training event by burning down the outhouse. A good time was had by all except the teenagers the following Halloween -- after all, outhouses were meant for teenagers at Halloween - not firemen at a beer bust. Happy Halloween!

Know where this is? And When?

Back in the last century - in my Air Force days (or years) (I spent a tour of duty at Lowry Air Force Base. I loved Colorado and it was nice to be back there this past summer.

However, since 1952 and 1953 a lot of things have changed in the Denver area.

There is no Lowry AFB anymore. It was closed down a number of years ago and most of the base facilities are gone.

However, the humongous hangar (or hangars) are still there and are the core of the Air Museum of the Rockies - well worth a visit. I've wondered if the old Base Headquarters building has been retained - it was a beautiful building with a Spanish

touch to its architecture. Looking at air photos of the area on

Google shows the huge "Brick Barracks" still there - not far from Hangar One. It held several squadrons including my 'open bay' instructor squadron, a small base exchange, and a dining hall. Even the facilities of the summer White House of Eisenhower's day, and remains of the earliest days of the Air Force Academy are no longer there. Most of the base has been done away with to allow building of new subdivisions. But memories of Lowry stay with me and good memories of Denver.

I remember a New Years eve when I went downtown to take pictures of all the Christmas lights on the Civic Center from the steps of the State Capitol. The next day we were driving around Denver in a Pontiac convertible with the top down. Weather in Denver was hard to predict. I roller skated at a rink in Englewood not far from the Gates Tire Company factory. I filled in occasionally as an announcer at KGNC - a country music station. I skied weekends on the base ski team and ended up on Sunday evenings in snake dances down the main drag of Idaho Springs or at a pub atop Lookout Mountain, looking down over Golden, Colorado. We had great times at Lakeside Park and Elitch's Garden where they had big bands of the time at their dance pavilions.

And we would take trips to other places in the area. Like the picture above where several of us spent part of a day at Royal Gorge. I couldn't easily handle crossing the Royal Gorge bridge today because of a problem with vertigo but in those days I had little fear (if any) of heights.

As I suggested earlier, a lot of what I remember is gone. Stapleton Airport has been replaced. Elitch's has moved closer to downtown. The electric buses no longer run the distance from downtown Denver to Aurora. Time changes a lot and Denver has become a big town and really sprawls. It has a problem with smog. It has problems with traffic. But in a lot of ways, Denver will never change. And some of us who lived there many years ago remember it as a special place with special memories. And that is good.

Somethings you simply accept in faith

It's been a year and a half since I retired from the pastoral ministry at Whittemore UMC.
It was a wonderful three years and I have missed it. In some ways. I miss the people and the personal aspects of being a pastor under appointment. The people of the church - each individually - became a part of my extended family and it was a deep personal loss when we
were not part of their family.

I was asked to go back there last Sunday to share a Communion service and it was really wonderful tom get back if even for one day. For a couple of weeks before I worked hard to
develop a message that would be meaningful. I finally came up with one that I titled "All In
the Family" but it was not oriented toward the Archie Bunker TV series. Instead, I borrowed from Bill Gaither music - a song called "The Family of God" It goes (in part) like this:

"You will notice we say 'brothers and sisters' round here
It's because we're a family and these are so near;
When one has a heartache, we all share the tears,
And rejoice in each victory, in this family so dear."

We walked into the church last Sunday morning a little early and it felt like 'Old Home' week. It didn't take long for the choir director to ask if I'd sing with them like in the old days. "Sure," I said and I wandered back to where they practiced - and what do you know -- they were singing................"The Family of God." "Oops," I said, "You guys just took care of my sermon for the morning!" They said, they could sing something else but I said, "No, I think this will fit in just great."

I think the amazing part was that both of us were thinking of the same thing at the same time. I'd like to think that God was in control that Sunday morning - that we all were focused on the same thing. That we're part of God's family - and it's wonderful.

"I'm so glad I'm a part of the Family of God
Washed in the fountain, cleansed by his blood,

Joint heirs with Jesus, as we travel this sod

for we're all part of the family - The Family of God"

But Dad, You Don't Understand........

That's what son Son Jeff said to me twenty or so years ago.

"But Dad, you don't understand. Things are different nowadays." And so they are.
I suspect one of his children (and maybe some other grandchildren) will say to others
of our children in the years or decades ahead. I have to agree that things are not today
what they were when I was growing up. And I worry about changes we've experienced and
I worry about what changes lie ahead for our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

I've just finished reading book titled "Marching Home" written by Kevin Coyne. It begins
toward the end of the Great Depression in the late 1930's and focuses on six young men growing up in Freehold, New Jersey. They become sailors, soldiers, and airmen in World War Two, survive, and come back home again after the war. Then the book offers a narrative of their lives after the war -- the changes that went on on in their town in post-war years - manufacturing plants closing - their rural atmosphere being converted to a bedroom community - and the changes in priorities that became part of society from the mid-sixties up to recent years.
And yes, things have changed but as some might say, "That's life".

My wife talks about her growing up years in Detroit. At one time her house was the only house on the street - by the time I met her it was wall-to-wall homes and today the crowded
housing spreads for miles and miles west and the environment of where she grew up has radically changed. I think of when a major retailer put up a store outside of a town where we
lived and the home-town stores in the town center fell by the wayside. Small mom-and-pop stores fell by the wayside and major chain management from out of state got rich at the cost of home town life. You've got to have lived in a time when Main Street was just what the name implies - the main center of town where families and friends gathered to shop and visit and live a life that was personal and neighborly. I have a hunch that some of our children don't know what I'm talking about because they, for the most part, have let modern lifestyle and values become a way of life. Yes, times are different and I probably don't understand why our values and priorities have gone the way they have because the priorities fifty years ago were pretty good.

So what's the difference? We (as a nation) has deteriorated. In business. In personal values. In moral values. In national pride. In politics. And it's not getting better. In some ways it is live for today - who cares about tomorrow -- tomorrow will take care of itself. But what will tomorrow bring?

Coyne's book says this: "The small town is no longer the typical American way of life. Today's society is increasingly mobile, urban, impersonal, anonymous; it is no longer capable of enforcing its moral and behavioral codes simply by force of community opinion.....today thousands of Americans live in fear -- crime is our nations number one internal problem."
To go a step further, we've lost our sense of values and have embraced a life of permissiveness.

When I was a teenager I don't think I worried about what the world might become in fifty years. I might have said to MY father, "Dad, You don't understand. Things are different from when you were growing up." The older I get, and the more years that pass, the more concern I have for what my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will experience forty or fifty years from now. And I wonder if they will feel the same way I do today.

By the way, the town Coyne talked about is Bruce Springsteen's home town. I wonder what he thinks of the world today.

I pray for our children and their children in the years ahead.

That's Life

It was bound to happen.

The first time I noticed it was out the AMTRAK train window week ago. I think it was at Dowagiac, Michigan. The leaves on a tree were turning.

Then, after we got home last Friday, I noticed that one of the trees outside the condo was turning (see picture at left) and realized that Summer is just about in the past tense. But that's life. Sooner or later we get to Fall and Winter.

Like I said, that's life.

I sat back and thought about the seasons of life. For instance, as a sixth grader I would swing in the swings out behind our two-room school and marvel at the lush new growth of green leaves as Spring emerged in upstate New York. Or the time my mother and I headed overnight by train from Buffalo to New York City in the nineteen thirties to go to a funeral. In Buffalo it was still cold and bleak with some snow still on the ground and the next morning New York City was flaunting flowers and new growth on the trees.

Then I thought about summer - of following a horse-drawn hay wagon to load new-mown hay,

and then transferring the hay to the loft in the barn. Or sitting under a porch at our house watching lightning playing across the sky during a wild thunder storm

Then I took a moment or two to recall what New York autumns were like. Like the leaves changing from a faded green to yellows, reds, oranges. Or the mists filling the valley and the chills of first-of-the-season frosts and apples ripening on the trees.

And there was New York winter - sometimes requiring snowshoes to get down the hill from our house. Zero - or below temperatures. A mile each way to walk to school. And stark tree limbs grasping for the sky and maybe in prayer for the new life that comes with Spring.

I tend to do a lot of reminiscing but it goes beyond memories alone. I tend to think that's part of life and it is challenging to be reminded that at my age I've gone through the birth and new life of Spring. That's childhood. There were the teenage and young adult years - the rich life comparable to summer time. Then came the retirement years -the years when everything began to slow down and one has a tendency to realize that even in human life there is a point when our "leaves start changing colors, and fade, and fall away." And all we have to look forward to is the winter of life when we wonder what tomorrow might have for us.

Perennial optimist that I am, I like to think life does not end with winter - we always have Spring to look forward to with the new potentials tomorrow holds. And if life doesn't make it through winter, reflect in one way or another on all the good things we have seen and done. And hopefully made the best of life and shared the best of our life in making the world a better place. And hopefully sharing something good and beautiful with others.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that for everyone and everything there is a season. never waste where you are - make the best of life - and be thankful for what God has given us. And hopefully we've given God the best we have had to offer.

Stilll in Chicago

You never know what can happen in Chicago. Especially when you are living 37 stories up and have vertigo. Or at least have mind or body reactions to height.

Anyway, I was glancing out the wall-to-wall window this morning and all of a sudden a helicopter flew by at our balcony level. Didn't have a camera in hand but it was awesome to see what I believe was a Coast Guard helicopter flying past our window as it flew up the Chicago River.

Last year we had a wonderful time watching the annual Air show - awesome as well with all kinds of airplanes flying low along Lake Michigan and close to the Hancock building. One day we watched the air show from the top of this building (60th floor) and then the next day we went to the Navy Pier at Lake Michigan and watched the whole show all over again from a different view. If one likes airplanes - as I do - it was a great show. So, I'm not going to say much more - I'm just going to show some photos from that weekend.

Oh, one other thing - State Street in Chicago must be a main connection for police cars, fire engines, and ambulances. Oh, my, there goes another one now! And within five minutes or so there'll be another. But you get used to it after a while. I suppose.

I sure enjoy Chicago. But maybe you've already gotten that idea.