It’s strange how they originate and how they’re kept, often for a lifetime.  The nicknames we’re given in childhood and long afterward, whether they’re meant to hurt or honor us, have a long shelf life. I’ve been thinking of a few that have been with me for many years, for good or ill.

Apparently, I kicked a lot in the crib, making a lot of racket.  I’m not sure why I was eager to get my tiny legs moving so early, since I had no idea where to go.  But my noisy activity earned me the title of “Thumper,” drawn from Walt Disney’s “Bambi,” which came along about the same time I did.  Thumper was Bambi’s rabbit friend, so I later gained a few  related labels like “Rabbit” and “Ears.” Those were bequeathed to me by my childhood friends and my brothers, much to their delight.  They were harmless, since we all had names other than the ones on our birth certificates.

But other ways of addressing me, especially in high school, weren’t as innocent.  Because of my small stature, I was called “Shorty” by many classmates in those years we all have to endure as we search for our identity and self-worth. That stings to this day, although it motivated me to work on my physique.  I suppose my rationale was something like, “If I can’t be tall, at least I can be strong.”  So I built my muscles to the point where I could stand my ground and hold my own in any setting.

Other tags that I collected during those years were variations of my surname, “Clarky” and “Clarko.”  Another one that I couldn’t figure out then and still can’t was, “Fudgie.” I was told it was given to me because I was “so sweet,” but I’ve always suspected a far more sinister reason.

As life moved on, I picked up another moniker, “Russo,” from my father.  I don’t know why Dad decided that was “just right” for his eldest son, but I suspect it was suggested by other kinfolk who were tired of having to say, “Russ Junior,” since I inherited my father’s given name.  Of course, “Russie” was the way I was identified by Mom and my aunts and uncles on both sides.  I’ve always held my head high when I remember the term of endearment that my father chose.  Long after that, a couple of close friends began using “Russo” to identify me, and I was honored.  But it never matched the bond between generations that the name initially represented.

Then came the hard years of military service, and at Officer Candidate School I was called just about every name in the book.  We all were.  We dared not take offense; that was simply the Marines’ way of breaking us down and remolding us into their image.  And those crude epithets never penetrated the defensive perimeter we were building around our emotions.  Some of us still surround ourselves with those walls, fifty years later.

Later in the Marine Corps, I built my muscles and fortified my body in every way possible, so when I was released from active duty to enter theological school, I was in the best shape of my life.  My classmates thought I had something akin to a “barrel chest,” so they decided to call me “Puller,” after General Lewis (Chesty) Puller, one of the most decorated officers in the history of the Corps.  Photos of him bear witness to his thick pectoral area that earned him his nickname.

What a tribute and a gratifying stroke to my ego to be seen by my peers as a “reincarnation” of the General!  And even today, I’ll have old classmates e-mail me with the greeting, “Hi Puller!”  I consider it a mark of acclaim and admiration.  Always will.

I’ve traced this naming through several decades and have failed to mention the customary professional titles of  “Reverend,” “Pastor,” “Preacher,” “Brother Russell,” “Doctor,” and a few others, depending on the setting where I was serving at the time. I continue to feel a strange amalgam of pride and humility whenever I hear these words, almost always spoken with respect.  I was privileged to be a spiritual leader to hundreds and later thousands of some of the best people who ever walked this earth, and yet I often was overwhelmed by a sense of unworthiness when I realized that my parishioners truly regarded me as God’s representative.

But I’ve saved the best for last.  Among all the sobriquets I’ve heard to describe me, I value none higher than what I’ll hear at a reunion of my Marine unit later this year.  That’s the word, “Skipper.”  It was what rifle companies called their commander, and I had the high privilege of once serving in that capacity in Vietnam.  Of course, since the Marines are officially under the aegis of the Department of the Navy, we “soldiers of the sea” adopted much of the language of sailors.  The “skipper” was always the captain of the vessel, and we appropriated it to recognize a ground commander. When I said a final farewell to one of my officers several months ago, his last words to me were, “You’ll always be my Skipper.” Thank you for that gift, Jack.

And so it goes.  Any of us could compile a similar list and write a brief autobiography based on the words that have been used to describe us through the years and decades.  I invite you to do just that.

 

We went walking on the beach this evening.  Another gorgeous sunset on the Gulf.  So often I find that I lack the words to capture the colors and soft vapor shapes that dance across the Western sky.

But tonight my vision was shrouded by a crippling awareness of monstrous forces tearing us apart as a society and as a world. The lines of a poem came to mind, written by Irish bard W.B. Yeats, in the aftermath of World War I and at the time of the bloody Irish War of Independence.

His verse is entitled, “Second Coming.” The words that swept into my mind were:

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

This struck me as a dire depiction of what is happening around us these days.  We’ve lost the “center” that once held us together.  It is dismally obvious by a quick scan of the news. My United Methodist Church is splitting over the issue of homosexuality. Christians are sharply sundered over Donald Trump’s agenda.  Family and friends have stopped speaking to one another because of the tribalism that has rent our social fabric.

On a global scale, old alliances have been broken, the gap between the First World and the rest of humankind is widening.  The chasm between the wealthy and the indigent is ominously growing. And those we’ve trusted to lead us have lost their vision of unity, solidarity, reconciliation, and peace among the nations.  We can’t even find a way to work together to care for the environment while wildfires rage and oceans rise!

What will it take to find a center?  Religions aren’t helping; they often are the sources of  schism and the purveyors of violence. What about realizing we’re all in the human family together?  This Earth is our home, and we have to care for it.  And we are one race…called the “human race.”

O God of this great night and all the earth, we need you now.  Life on this planet is as disturbed as the surging sea outside my window.  Those who claim to follow you are too often the ones who sustain the tumult.  We confess that we constantly search for ways to exclude others, probably because we’re afraid of them, or we see our shadow selves in them.  Grant us courage to rebuild the bridges we’ve been eager to tear down.  Help us to see others as your children, whom you love and for whom, some of us believe, Your Son came to save. Amen.

I don’t know when it started. Probably in the mid-Twentieth Century.  It’s now sweeping across America like wildfire and has reached a level of hysteria reminiscent of the Nazi rallies of 80 years ago.

I believe it’s linked to idolatry, pure and simple.  Since the leader of a nation is more visible and present than the invisible God, it’s human nature for men and women to bow to an earthly hero who represents power and prestige.  Especially if that leader promises a return to a nation’s “glorious” past that, in fact, never existed.

That’s where we are currently.  Evangelical Christians have forgotten that their primary allegiance is to the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to proclaim.  This reign of the Almighty is both local and global, present and future.  It’s theme is captured in the words of the prayer we know best, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”  When we bow and speak those words, we are submitting ourselves to our true Sovereign, whose rule over our lives must mark us with love, compassion, and a thirst for justice.

For some reason, our nation once adopted a self-appraisal called “American exceptionalism.” It might have started in the 1800’s, when the call of “Manifest Destiny” led our leaders, including those who preached from our pulpits, to proclaim that God was “on our side” and had ordained that the United States was destined to stretch “from sea to shining sea.”  This meant, of course, that those who were already on the land would have to be relocated or exterminated.

Back to the present, this arrogance has found a home in the religion of many mostly Caucasian believers.  Just as Adolph Hitler rallied the church around his reverence for “The Fatherland,” so Donald Trump has deluded many otherwise sane people into believing that he is the “Chosen One” to save America and to restore Christianity to its rightful place of dominance in our culture. The outcome, according to those who interpret scriptural prophecy in a bizarre way, will be the establishment of a theocracy, where only followers of Christ will rule.  And where other religions and those of “liberal” political and social worldviews will  be exiled to the margins.

This is an outrageous misapplication of the faith of the prophets, patriarchs, apostles, and even our Lord Himself.  He never once marched on Rome, or Jerusalem for that matter.  He subjected Himself to Roman authority, as did the Apostle Paul as he traveled the Mediterranean world sharing the “Good News” of the arrival of the Kingdom in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The Christofascists (my word) are in their ascendance, and that is frightening to those of us who believe that faith should never partner with the power of the state.  Throughout history, whenever that has happened, the government ends up controlling the religion.  Christians in these days would do well to remember that the religion that Jesus gave us was never intended to be in the majority.  In fact, another glance through history reveals that the closer to power we come, the weaker becomes our influence to effect change.  Our purpose is not to side with the powerful, but with the weak.  That was the primary message of the prophets and of our Lord Himself.

So we resist those who are dancing with delight that they’ve found a champion in perhaps the most immoral man to ever occupy the White House. We cringe when we hear the “court evangelicals” who grasp at Trump’s coattails yammer for God to bless and bring success to a man who is chortling to himself at these sycophants who see him as their savior.

Those of us who follow the only true Savior will pray for our deceived brothers and sisters, while resisting an agenda that baptizes cruel, inhumane, and warlike behavior. We bow at the feet of the only One whose power is eternal.

 

 

 

 

 

I always seem to reminisce on the last days of the calendar year.  Not only about the previous twelve months, but back through the decades, across miles of memories and  moments of delight and despair. And all the times between those polar opposites.

I’m recalling my first place of ministry, where I began as a young preacher in training to become an ordained clergyman.  The location was a little town in southern Ohio named Rainsboro, after its founder, Aaron Rains. The little Methodist Church there had been served by student pastors for a century, and the congregation had learned patience and forgiveness as cleric after cleric would  blunder and fail. And then be lifted up by an understanding group of believers who saw as their mission the nurturing and mentoring of the novices who came to serve them.  I learned a lot about humility there in that welcoming and tolerant setting.

I got to know the young people of the village.  For some reason they were attracted to me, maybe because I was single and fresh out of the Marine Corps.  Or perhaps they were responding to my sincere desire to learn about their lives and to help them see that I was there to help and to represent a God who loved them. It took a while to gain their trust, but it happened sooner than I expected it.

Some of them lived in town; others lived out in the country.  A good number came from the area along Rocky Fork Creek, a few miles south of the only intersection in Rainsboro.  Along the creek, and lining the road from the water to the church, were steep embankments that the kids called “cliffs,” and as they made the journey, their imaginations conjured up frightful creatures they dubbed “cliff apes.”

The boys would describe in lurid detail what the monsters looked and acted like, and how these beasts would threaten any passers-by who dared to approach their hellish domain.  They would paint gruesome portraits of the ravages and carnage that these phantoms would inflict on local farmers and their families, and since the horrid scenes of Vietnam combat were fresh in my mind, I was easily swept into the harrowing narratives of violence. Of course it didn’t take me long to separate fantasy from reality, but the images haunted me and drove me to ask why there was so much angst in these adolescent minds.

One evening while I was meeting with the young men on the front porch of my parsonage, one of them asked  for a favor.  I normally tried to accommodate such pleas for help, but this one stunned me.  And I had to say “No.”  To have acquiesced would have put me at risk and jeopardized my standing in the community, perhaps bringing an end to my emergent pastorate.

The effects of this perceived rejection would linger for a while, and it took some time to mend the relationships.  But I don’t regret having to refuse that entreaty. That episode lingers in the shallows of memory’s ocean, but part of it embedded itself deep in my psyche, and it remains to this day. It was the immediate response to my “tough love” approach that night.  One of the leaders nicknamed “Ground Hog,” in a tone of voice  that was a dark amalgam of irony and cynicism, said, “Well, if a man of the cloth turns you down, there’s no place to go but the cliff apes.”

Strange how that has stayed with me.  And how often I’ve wondered what happened to those boys who, if they survived, are now in their sixties.  Did going back to the cliff apes mean a return to the fear and futility of their childhood?  It might have dispatched them back to a life of  helplessness that had ensnared  their bloodline for generations.  It might have led some on a path of self-destruction.  I’ll never know.

I often think of others who have been turned away by the church, when their demands and expectations were reasonable and when they were not.  Where do they go?  What’s the alternative to a life of faith and hope?  When they feel rejected by the Christian family or any other faith community, how many of them return to a life of primal fear that they try to  mask with alcohol or another addiction?

I pray for those youngsters, and I also lift to God my concern for the millions of others who live in terror over monsters both real and imagined.  The dark environment of our political and social world these days has driven many into valleys of dread, where the fiends and ghouls howl and the devils rule. Let us keep a light shining, so they find their way out of the shadows, past the cliff apes, and into the embrace of a Higher Power at whose voice even the demons of Hell once had to flee.