Retired Husband Problems … Enjoy!

Subject: RETIRED HUSBAND

 

    

  RETIRED HUSBAND

 After I retired, my wife insisted that I accompany her on her trips to Target.
Unfortunately, like most men; I found shopping boring and preferred to get in and get out.

Equally unfortunate, my wife is like most women - she loves to browse. Yesterday my
dear wife received the following letter, from the local Target:

 

Dear Mrs. Harris, Over the past six months, your husband has caused quite a commotion, In our store.
We cannot tolerate this behavior and have been forced to, ban both of you from the store.
Our complaints against your husband, Mr. Harris, are listed below and are documented by

our video surveillance cameras:

 

1. June 15: He took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in other      
people's carts when they weren't looking.

 

2. July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.

 

3. July 7: He made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the women's restroom.

 

4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official voice,
'Code 3 in Housewares. Get on it right away'. This caused the employee to leave her assigned
station and receive a reprimand from her Supervisor that in turn resulted with a union grievance,
causing management to lose time and costing the company money. We don't have a Code 3.

 

5. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and tried to put a bag of M&Ms on layaway.

 

6. August 14: Moved a, 'CAUTION - WET FLOOR' sign to a carpeted area.

 

7. August 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told the children shoppers he'd invite
them in if they would bring pillows and blankets from the bedding department to which
twenty children obliged.

 

8. August 23: When a clerk asked if they could help him he began crying and screamed,
'Why can't you people just leave me alone?' EMTs were called.

 

9. September 4: Looked right into the security camera and used it,
as a mirror while he picked his nose.

 

10. September 10: While handling guns in the hunting department,
he asked the clerk where the antidepressants were.

 

11. October 3: Darted around the store suspiciously while,
loudly humming the, 'Mission Impossible' theme.

 

12. October 6: In the auto department, he practiced his, 'Madonna Look'
using different sizes of funnels.

 

13. October 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed through, yelled 'PICK ME! PICK ME!'

 

14. October 22: When an announcement came over the loud speaker,
he assumed a fetal position and screamed; 'OH NO! IT'S THOSE VOICES AGAIN!'

 

15. Took a box of condoms to the checkout clerk and asked where is the fitting room?

 

And last, but not least:

 

16. October 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited awhile;
then yelled very loudly, 'Hey! There's no toilet paper in here.'

One of the clerks passed out.

The Praise of God's Creation

Part of the daily lectionary (#PCUSA) quite often, Psalm 148 - here's a piece of it that caught my attention this morning:

7   Praise the Lord from the earth,
          you sea monsters and all deeps,
8   fire and hail, snow and frost,
          stormy wind fulfilling his command!

9   Mountains and all hills,
          fruit trees and all cedars!
10  Wild animals and all cattle,
          creeping things and flying birds!

11  Kings of the earth and all peoples,
          princes and all rulers of the earth!
12  Young men and women alike,
          old and young together!

For the Psalmist, EVERY voice is important - sea monsters, snow and frost, cedars, wild animals, creepy things, kings, peoples, princes, the young and the old, women and men … and everything else.

Herein I find reason to care for my environment, which is, finally, the entire global eco system …

When a species is lost to wanton human behavior, a voice of praise is forever silenced, and the choir of praise is diminished, and while we might be oblivious to the missing voice, God knows that a joyful sound is missing.

Mountains and hills, too, and I think of mountain-top removal coal mining in West Virginia and oil drilling in the Niger Delta - where the earth suffers cruelly, and though the people there lament loss of home and habitat, those making wanton decisions for profit silence the earth, condemning the earth to sorrow, and there is no praise from the ground and water, but only tears.

And to the kings and princes and rulers of the world, whatever pride of place may infect their thinking, their voices are simply part of the choir, right along with wild beasts and stormy wind. If there's ever a prescription for the sins of pride and power, this is it.

Let all the voices of God's choir have their place and their part … the vast choir of God's creation deserves to sing, and when God created humankind, it was only, God hoped, to create a creature that could provide life-sustaining care for the choir, so that all of creation might sing with joy.

Praise the LORD!

"Moonlight and Maggots" by Carl Sandburg

Moonlight and Maggots

    Carl Sandburg

The moonlight filters on the prairie.

The land takes back an old companion.

The young corn seems pleased with a visit.

In Illinois, in Iowa, this moontime is on.

A bongo looks out and talks about the look of the moon

As if always a bongo must talk somewhat so in moontime -

The moon is a milk-white love promise,

A present for the young corn to remember.

A caress for silk-brown tassels to come.

Spring moon to autumn moon measures one harvest.

All almanacs are merely so many moon numbers.

A house dizzy with decimal points and trick figures

And a belfry at the top of the world for sleep songs

And a home for lonesome goats to go to -

Iike now, like always, the bongo takes up a moon theme -

There is no end to the ancient kit-kats inhabiting the moon:

Jack and the beanstalk and Jacob’s ladder helped them up,

Cats and sheep, the albatross, the phoenix and the dodo-bird,

They are all living on the moon for the sake of the bongo -

Castles on the moon, mansions, shacks and shanties, ramshackle

Huts of tarpaper and tincans, grand real estate properties

Where magnificent rats eat tunnels in colossal cheeses,

Where the rainbow chasers take the seven prisms apart

And put them together again and are paid in moon money -

The flying dutchman, paul bunyan, saint paul, john bunyan,

The little jackass who coughs gold pieces when you say bricklebrit -

They are all there on the moon and the rent not paid

And the roof leaking and the taxes delinquent -

Like now, like always, the bongo jabbers of the moon,

Of cowsheds, railroad tracks, corn rows and cornfield corners

Finding the filter of the moon an old friend - 

Look at it - cries the bongo - have a look! have a look!

Well, what of it? comes the poohpooh -

Always the bongo isa little loony - comes the poohpooh,

The bongo is a poor fish and a long ways from home.

Be like me; be an egg, a hardboiled egg, a pachyderm

Practical as a buzzsaw and a hippopotamus put together.

Get the facts and no monkeybusiness what I mean.

The moon is a dead cinder, a ball of death, a globe of doom.

Long ago it died of lost motion, maggots masticated the surface of it

And the maggots languished, turned ice, froze on and took a free ride.

Now the sun shines on the maggots and the maggots make the moonlight.

The moon is a cadaver and a dusty mummy and a damned rotten investment.

The moon is a liability loaded up with frozen assets and worthless paper.

Only the lamb, the sucker, the come-on, the little lost boy, has time for the moon.

Well - says the bongo - you got a good argument.

I am a little lost boy and a long ways from home.

I am a sap, a pathetic fish, a nitwit and a lot more and worse you couldn’t think of.

Nevertheless and notwithstanding and letting all you say be granted and acknowledged

The moon is a silver silhouette and a singing stalactite.

The moon is a bringer of fool’s gold and fine phantoms.

On the heaving restless sea or the fixed and fastened land

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk with.

The moon is at once easy and costly, cheap and priceless.

The price of the moon runs beyond all adding machine numbers

Summer moonmusic drops down adagio sostenuto whathaveyou.

Winter moonmusic practices the mind of man for a long trip.

The price of the moon is an orange and a few kind words.

Nobody on the moon says, I been thrown out of better places than this.

No one on the moon has ever died of arithmetic and hard words.

No one on the moon would skin a louse to sell the hide.

The moon is a pocket luckpiece for circus riders, for acrobats on the flying rings, for wild animal tamers.

I can look up at the moon and take it or leave.

The moon coaxes me: Be at home wherever you are.

I can let the moon laugh me to sleep for nothing.

I can put a piece of the moon in my pocket for tomorrow.

I can holler my name at the moon and the moon hollers back my name.

When I get confidential with the moon and tell secrets

The moon is a sphinx and a repository under oath.

Yes Mister poohpooh

I am a poor nut, just another of God’s mistakes.

You are the tough bimbo, hard as nails, yeah.

You know enough to come in when it rains.

You know the way to the post office and I have to ask.

They fool you the first time but never the second.

Thrown into the river you always come up with a fish.

You are a diller a dollar, I am a ten o’clock scholar.

You know the portent of the axiom: Them as has gits.

You devised that abracadabra: Get all you can keep all you get.

     We shall always be interfering with each other, forever be arguing -

you for the maggots, me for the moon.

Over our bones, cleaned by the final maggots as we lie recumbent, perfectly forgetful, beautifully ignorant -

There will settle over our grave illustrious tombs

On nights when the air is clear as a bell

And the dust and fog are shovelled off on the wind -

There will sink over our empty epitaphs

a shiver of moonshafts

a line of moonslants.

For Thine is the Kingdom ...

What words may or may not mean makes all the difference.

But most words are defenseless against the imposition of meaning. They don't shout to us: "This is what I mean."

So we mostly do with them as we please … often by lifting them out of their context, and then telling them to behave, and like a dog, heel, or sit or roll over, at our pleasure.

Yet, some reflection and study can open the joy of a word beyond what we might think it means or even want for it.

So, I've been thinking about the liturgical end of the LORD's Prayer: "for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."

More than likely crafted as a liturgical response early on, it's been incorporated into the prayer, and now for most Christians, it's simply how the prayer ends.

And for me, it ends well.

Yet careful thought, I believe, needs to be given to what these words mean.

So let me have a go at it.

"Kingdom" is a good word when read within the context of God's Kingdom so ably expressed by Isaiah's "Peaceable Kingdom" imagery in Isaiah 11. Within the stories of Israel, kingdom often meant what it might well mean for us, and how it's often been used throughout Christian History - kingdom by the sword, with mighty kings going out to battle with storming chariots and charging horses.

But not so for Isaiah, neither for Jesus nor Paul.

The Kingdom of God is one of justice and peace, wherein all have a chance at life, and no one is hungry or afraid. That's the kingdom for which we pray - thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Power demands some thought, as well. Again, not the power of the sword that brings death, but the power of God's creative energies that create life, sustaining and enlarging it … the creativity of creation, the bringing forth of light and life for the sake of a world wherein all creatures have their place, and the human creature, endowed with great capacity, is called to care for the vulnerable creatures and their habitat - for it's a matter of vulnerability. The human being, created in God's image, has the capacity to raise up or to bring down life and death. When it comes to the vulnerable, to do as God does - and that's to raise up, to protect and to save.

The last word, glory - a big word that encompasses fulfillment of purpose … a human being, fulfilling God's intended purpose in compassion and wisdom, brings glory to God, and like a glorious sunset, or a glorious piece of pumpkin pie, when something is just right, good and harmonious, it's glory.

The last word I consider is Thine - these words belong to God; they are not ours to define as we please. Rather, these words belong to God. Even the word God can mean just about anything we want it to mean; history makes that ever so clear. Yet within all of the stories and all of the history, there's been a consistent image of peace, and a constant call to live these words, not with the power of kings and armies, but in the power of faith, hope and love - that which neither takes nor demands, but gives and restores.

Measured by Jesus, who crafts the Prayer when the disciples ask how they should pray, the church rightly crafted the response to his words - a fitting end to the LORD's Prayer:

For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen!

"The Barricade" by Karen Gritter

By a good friend and theologian/poet … Karen Gritter

The Barricade

 "I stand at the door and knock"

The door is shut

The bar in place       

Rusted the lock

Lost the key

Black the blood

Upon  the ground

And on the door

Where your slave was bound  

And tortured long

Until she died

Her spirit fled

And does not haunt

The place beyond

Where hope awaits

But in the dark

A lonesome lark

With broken wing

Who cannot sing

A casualty of hate

Which did never abate

They speak of love

But it seems too late

This Day, 1963.

I was studying in the library (Calvin College, Grand Rapids), when a student came to the table and said, "The President has been shot!" I replied, "Okay, what's the punch line?" thinking it was some kind of macabre  joke. He made it clear - no joke. I quickly left the library for the Commons and a TV. A friend recalls me stepping into a classroom and saying, "The President's been shot!" (I don't recall that moment), but I remember lots of tears that day in the Commons. And then at home in the following days - no one doing anything. As if the nation was paralyzed. My parents were Republicans; I don't recall their reaction, if any, but we had TV on the entire time. Nor do I recall any specific emotion on my part, but I recall being distressed. Did I weep? I don't know. But I weep today. His death, a serious loss to our political health and vision.

I've Never Been Self-Sufficient

I've never been self-sufficient.

When I was in my mothers womb, I wasn't.

When I was born, fed and nurtured, I wasn't.

As I grew and grew up and went to school, I wasn't.

Good teachers helped me along the way, recognized my potential,
and did kindly things, challenging things, to shape my character.

In grade school, high school, college and seminary.

Great women and men, who, for whatever reason, came to my
side to help me along the way.

In all of this, I've never been self-sufficient.

The love of my life, my wife, has stood by me.
Cried and laughed with me.
Walked with me, run with me.

I've never been self-sufficient.

In ministry, every paycheck came with the hope, faith and love
of so many Presbyterians who shared a vision of Christ and
gave enough to support me and my family, as well as the church
and its mission.

Now in retirement, I enjoy Social Security and my pension: both
of which are mutual along with many others who've made the
journey of life and reached these years.

Have I ever been self-sufficient? Never.
And never will be either.

In the end, it's likely that some kindly nurses and doctors
will see to my needs.

Family and friends will tell me of their love.
And help me along the way to the end.

And when I die, others will handle my body
and dispose of my material remains.

I will live on for awhile in memories.

My breath will return to the sky.
My body to the earth.

And the earth and sky will hold it all.
All that I've been.
And will hold it with love.

I've never been self-sufficient.