Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 3 Comments

Whopper War

A seminary summer in Clinical Pastoral Education was at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta. In three months, I encountered more situations than in three years of ministry. My peers and I received supervised reflection on our pastoral care that helped us mature three years in three months.

One encounter was not with a patient but with another student chaplain from an evangelical college. Here’s the verbatim between me (M) and the other chaplain (OC).

M: I just had a Burger King Whopper for lunch and I’m a happy man.

OC: Wait until you have a Hardee’s burger; you’ll change your mind.

M: I’ve had a Hardee’s burger; I just prefer a whopper.

OC: Oh you couldn’t; Hardees makes the best burgers, period. Maybe they didn’t cook it right that day.

M: Actually I’ve had several Hardee’s burgers. It’s not that I don’t like their burgers; it’s that I like a whopper more.

OC: I don’t believe you. If you really had a Hardee’s burger, you’d know they’re the best. They’re the only way to go.

M: (Long pause) I’m confused.  Are you calling me a liar? Are you saying I don’t have your permission to have my own taste? Or are your refusing to acknowledge that it’s possible I could prefer something you don’t? “Have it your way.”

Actually I didn’t say “have it your way” then, but I couldn’t resist the irony now.

A few days later, that guy visited a bed-fast patient — talk about a captive audience. He tried every manipulation he had to get the man “saved” — with his limited definition of what “saved” meant to him. When he was questioned in “group” if that was ethical for a chaplain, he said: “If I don’t save them; they’ll go to hell.” That’s a lot of responsibility — to be in charge of who goes to hell and Hardee’s.

A week later he quit the student chaplain program and entered Pharmacy School. I hope and believe God has used his gift of exactly seeing things one way to save lives as a pharmacist. 

18 years later, Burger King began using the ad line “if you ask us, it just tastes better.” No royalties came my way.

Where do you see signs of only seeing things “my one way” in the media, politics or religion? How do you respond to the growth of white Christian nationalism in our midst? How do you receive different perspectives from other people?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Safe Space

During a decade directing church camps for youth in disequilibrium we sought to provide safe spaces. Jr & Sr High youth were going through seismic shifts emotionally, physically, relationally, and spiritually. At church camp, youth and adults could take a week to try on new ways of being in the world without the pre-conceived notions of who they were at home, school, or church; we became more than any of us had been before.

Three sacred spaces stick with me today. 

The challenge course game field was where we played. The “New Games” rules were: play hard, play fair, nobody hurt, everybody win. Amidst uncharted challenges, inclusive games, and lots of laughter, we built a community out of seventy strangers, rivals, and a few former outcasts.

The quiet tree was on the trail to our campfire where each cabin prepared nightly worship. The quiet tree was where you stopped talking as you became fully present to a grace filled presence. In that space, I’d finally decide how to interpret and share a meaning of an event of the day. The best teaching moments came directly from our experience.

The steps that led down to the cabins provided a third sacred space. Any camper could talk to me on the steps. We were safely in the open and everyone respected the privacy of a step conversation. Steps along the journey of family, friends, faith, sexuality, spirituality, and stances were explored.

Where are your safe spaces along your journey? 

How are you challenged to evolve? 

When do you play and laugh? 

When does silence reveal meaning to experience? 

Whom do you trust to fully listen to you?

Where do you find community for your disequilibrium?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Apart From into A Part Of

During my childhood Tuesdays “our” maid, Pauline, shined our home and brightened my life. Many weeks mom would trade days with Pauline’s Friday employer to prepare for crowded cocktail carousals. I remember Pauline’s laughter, her chess pie, her discipline, her love, and her riding the bus to the west end of Louisville. Like Psalm 103: “as far as the east is from the west.”

I remember Pauline crying only once. The second Tuesday of April I was home from fifth grade to watch a long funeral procession on our colored TV. I recalled being home from first grade on the fourth Monday of November to watch another funeral on our black and white. Pauline watched the funeral with us, soaking her white apron with her tears. I was baptized into her grief as she invited me in by hugging and holding me.

Twenty years later, the thickest book on my shelf was “A Testament of Hope – The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.” Unlike so many books around it, I actually read this one — moved by his poetic, prophetic preaching. That year, during our annual meeting, the fourth week of April 1988, I was given the Mexico, Missouri “NAACP Drum Major for Justice Award”. 

I was astounded. I had attempted to answer Dr. King’s call, but I hadn’t accomplished much. And why an award from the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP? I asked the leader, “Why me? I’m not a C in the NAACP!” She said, “Honey, we’re ALL colored by God — there’s just a variety in the pigmentation.” I realized this award was not one more benefit of my privileged life. I was not apart from others; I was a part of a community sharing a vision of skin tone bringing no power, stigma, fear, or hierarchy. I accepted the appreciation for being part of a kin-dom where everyone equally strives side by side for the betterment of all.

Eleven years ago tonight I was invited to speak when our town’s community gathered at 2nd Baptist Church to remember, celebrate, and be inspired by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I invite you to discern if those words have something to say today.

What is your experience of moving apart from into being a part of whatever “the other” is in your life?

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Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 5 Comments

William Sloane Coffin

During my final year of seminary, as 1983 began, I heard a taped sermon that transformed my life—an all-too-rare occurrence.

The sermon by William Sloane Coffin at the Riverside Church in NYC begins with words I would never forget: “As almost all of you know, a week ago last Monday night, driving in a terrible storm, my son Alexander – who to his friends was a real day-brightener, and to his family ‘fair as a star when only one is shining in the sky’ – my twenty-four-year-old Alexander, who enjoyed beating his old man at every game and in every race, beat his father to the grave.”

10 days after his son died in a wreck, the father preached this sermon to his church January 23, 1983. You can search the sermon online; you can download the audio through his archives site.

As a pastor and hospice chaplain for 35 years, Coffin’s words still ring true: “When a person dies, there are many things that can be said, and there is at least one thing that should never be said. The night after Alex died I was sitting in the living room of my sister’s house outside of Boston, when the front door opened and in came a nice-looking, middle-aged woman, carrying about eighteen quiches. When she saw me, she shook her head, then headed for the kitchen, saying sadly over her shoulder, ‘I just don’t understand the will of God.’ Instantly I was up and in hot pursuit, swarming all over her. ‘I’ll say you don’t, lady!’ I said.”

“For some reason, nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with his fingers on triggers, his fists around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is dead set against all unnatural deaths……. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”

Since 1983, I have imagined being in hot pursuit, swarming all over many funeral consolers. With all the best intentions to protect God or insulate pain, I have overheard each of my top twenty list of deadly things to say to a grieving person. 

When you put your personal grief into words, what do you think, write, or say? Which cultural comments have not been helpful to your grief work and journey? What expressions and actions have brought you transformative comfort? 

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 3 Comments

Skyhook

Friday’s story was about our three-year-son driving our minivan with minimal damage to objects or persons. How fleeting life can be. The way I saw things at the time, I wondered if God had helped to guide his little hand to shift past catastrophic reverse and into a safe drive of a few inches forward. I don’t see it that way today.

I see God as present in and loving his/her/their entire creation—including me. I don’t see our creator as operating some skyhook that rescues some people from the actions of themselves or others, while leaving others behind. From my tradition, I agree with Jesus: children, your Father in heaven “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)

Skyhook rescue theology raises concerns for me. I can never answer the “why” question. Why would I be rescued while another suffers who is not rescued?—or the reverse of course! It’s the temptation to act like I am so special, God will rescue me from hitting the ground if I jump off a building (Matthew 4:5-7 and the other accounts of Jesus’ temptations).

Seeing a skyhook is dangerous. The “rapture” conspiracy theory (that is neither Biblical nor faithful as I see it) says God will skyhook people like my tribe before destroying the world. If God doesn’t care about this world and people who are “other” than me, then why should I? Why would I care about others, the environment, or climate change if God is going to throw it all away like garbage?

A divine skyhook takes away our human responsibility to seek answers to rampant violence, including the threat of nuclear destruction. Because God does not and will not rescue us from the consequences of our actions, we might want to reconsider our behavior.

How has skyhook rescue theology been a part of your journey of faith? When have you been reassured by seeing that way? What stumbling blocks came in your path from that perspective?