tree of memories

I know I need to take my Christmas tree down, but I hate to see it go. I love the fragrance of my stately Fraser fir (yes, I can still detect its scent after five weeks), the warm glow of the multi-colored lights, and - most of all - the memories associated with my vast collection of ornaments. One of things I enjoy most about the Christmas season is decorating the tree, since as I pull ornament after ornament out of our green and red plastic storage containers, I am reminded of story after story. 

My most cherished ornaments are the oldest ones in my collection - three glass ornaments with felt designs (1971), a pair of purple felt mittens (1970), and a felt Santa head festooned with sequins (1969) - all handmade my one of my parents' friends. As a teenager, I acquired a UT football player made of dough, so he makes an annual appearance among the branches. The gold glass heart and a purple ball nestled among the needles were acquired in December 1985, ordered from a catalog as Paul and I prepared to celebrate our first Christmas together as husband and wife. Of course, several ornaments were hand-crafted by Chaney  at various points in his childhood, including: a crumbling yellow bell and a green tree, both formed from dough and strung on lengths of green yarn; a gingerbread man made from sandpaper suspended by red yarn; a bell made of an inverted plastic cup with Chaney's picture taped inside; and two green construction paper wreaths featuring photos of Chaney in the center. A delicate glass sand spur hangs near the star - an ornament I procured on one of our spring break visits to Florida's Gulf Coast. The Mickey Mouse head covered in an array of small, colorful bells was a souvenir that I chose when we stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge on our visit to Disney World to celebrate Chaney's 16th birthday in 2006. The majority of the remainder of the ornaments were acquired on family vacations, such as: the moose in the canoe (Maine), the bear on a bicycle (Yellowstone), Santa hiding behind a starfish (Hilton Head), sled dogs in a sleigh (Alaska), Santa riding a whale (Hawaii), a UFO (Roswell, New Mexico), a glass chili pepper (Santa Fe), a tin guitar (Mexico), Santa clinging to the Eiffel Tower (Paris). 

I know the ornaments need to return to their red and green plastic off-season homes. But for at least one more night, I'll enjoy the show and treasure the memories.

silent night

Last week I developed a cough that progressively got worse, and by Saturday night my voice was almost gone. I stayed in bed most of the day Sunday so that I would be able to go to the Carol-Candlelight Service at church that night, even if I couldn't speak louder than a whisper. There is a longstanding tradition that the seniors who are in our Chapel Choir serve as candle-lighters at this service, so I did not want to miss seeing my son and the rest of the Class of 09 - some of whom I first began teaching when they were 4-year-olds - perform their candle-lighting duties. 

Near the end of the service the sanctuary was dark, except for the light of a single candle held by the pastor. The seniors approached the pastor one by one, and after he lit their candles, they fanned out across the sanctuary to their assigned sections. Row by row, the seniors moved through the congregation, lighting the candles of the worshippers who were seated along the aisles, who then passed the light down their pews until every face in the congregation was bathed in candlelight. 

Ironically for me, the song that the choir sang while the seniors lit the candles was "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence." At other points in the service when the congregation was invited to join the choir in singing, I was forced by my infirmity to remain silent, which was very frustrating but also enlightening. First of all, the experience allowed me to empathize with my mother, who lost her voice several months ago due to nerve damage from her chemotherapy. Not being able to sing must be especially frustrating for a woman who entered college on a voice scholarship. Second, the experience gave me the opportunity to focus more intently on the sounds around me - like the Robersons' strong voices coming from the pew behind me or the individual instruments in the Nashville String Machine playing on the platform in front of me. The forced silence was a blessing in disguise that allowed me to worship God in a completely different way. Silent night, holy night.

Christmas is coming!

This has been a crazy month. Wait - let me rephrase that statement. This has been a crazy year. I have spent the entire year thinking, "If I can just make it to [insert date here], then I will be able to take a deep breath and regroup." Yet time after time, these dates arrived and passed and there was still no time for deep breathing. The year has been a blur of activity.

I like to have my Christmas cards in the mailbox as close to December 1 as possible. Today is December 16, and my cards have not yet been mailed. Addressing the cards is one of the things on my "To Do List" today, so if I'm diligent they will be postmarked only 16 days later than I had hoped. Our Christmas tree was delivered on December 2. I hung the ornaments on the tree on December 13. I intend to keep my tree up until well into January to make up for that lost time. In past years, I prided myself on having all my Christmas shopping done prior to Thanksgiving. This year, I didn't buy a single gift until December, and I still have a couple left to procure.

When I was a child, it seemed liked Christmas would never come. The December days dragged by as my anticipation heightened. As an adult, it seems like Christmas comes too soon. December is a blur, and - if I'm not careful - before I know it Christmas Day will have come and gone.

I'm thinking about Mary this morning, and wondering how she perceived the passage of time during the final days of her pregnancy. Did the time fly by for her? Maybe not, since she and Joseph were forced to make a difficult journey to Bethlehem and she must have been extremely uncomfortable on that road trip. Perhaps it did, though, as the young woman hoped and prayed that they could register for the census and make it back home to Nazareth in time to bring her baby into the world in the presence of family and friends. I'll bet those last few hours were a blur - the onset of labor pains, the frantic search for lodging, the birth of a son, the unexpected visit from shepherds. A year earlier, Mary could not have imagined this astonishing series of events, yet she embraced her God-given role with grace. "Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished" (Luke 1:45).

self-denial

Two weeks ago, I started a Monday afternoon Bible study in my home for the seniors who I work with at church. We are focusing on spiritual disciplines for this study, which will continue through the spring semester, and I am using Soul Tending: Life-Forming Practices for Older Youth and Young Adults by Kendra Creasy Dean and Ron Foster as our guide. At our first gathering, I read through a list of 40+ spiritual disciplines from the book and asked the students to jot down which ones piqued their interest. Their lists surprised me.

This Monday we focused on self-denial. In addition to talking about the practice during our time together, the students were given homework assignments. Each one of us publicly shared something that we would deny ourselves in the coming week, and next Monday we will report on what we learned from the experience. When one senior was having trouble deciding how to practice self-denial, I threw out an idea. This Thursday is a significant day for her, since at 4:00 p.m. that day she will learn whether or not she has received early admission to the Ivy League school of her dreams. When I (half-jokingly) suggested that she could wait until 5:00 p.m. to check her status online, she immediately embraced the idea. She decided that she would instead spend an hour in prayer seeking God's will before she checked her admission status. I was impressed. That really is an act of self-denial for a senior. I can't wait to hear what she learns from this experience - and I also am anxious to know if she got admitted!

toy store

Last week four generations of the Brown family celebrated my grandmother's 90th birthday with great fanfare, but this certainly wasn't the only memorable party we've had in Mutt's honor. When she turned 75 - back in the day when Chaney was her only great-grandchild - we found a way to honor her and help others at the same time. 

Every December the Nashville Baptist Association operates a toy store at Shelby Avenue Baptist Church for needy families who live in the 37206 zip code, and Baptist churches across the city collect toys for several weeks in advance of this event to stock the shelves. In conjunction with this effort, we decided that instead of buying gifts for my grandmother that she didn't really need, we would instead purchase gifts for people who really were in need. Family members were instructed to purchase toys for Mutt that reminded them of her, and they had to be prepared to share an explanation for why they chose a particular toy at the party as Mutt unwrapped the gift. 

The party was a huge success, and Mutt thoroughly enjoyed unwrapping the toys and listening to our stories. A few days after the party, 3-year-old Chaney helped me haul all the toys into the church and place them in the collection box. This was a great life-lesson for Chaney and proved to be highly appropriate way for my family to honor a woman who is constantly on the lookout for opportunities to help those who are in need.

the mirth of Mutt

Last Saturday night, four generations of the Brown family gathered at the Pie in the Sky restaurant in Franklin, Tennessee, to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday. Actually, this was a triple birthday party, since both my Dad and my niece, Olivia, also had birthdays the week of Thanksgiving. We were all disappointed that my Mom couldn't be with us, since she was hospitalized for five nights during the Thanksgiving holidays, but we took lots of pictures for her.

In advance of Mutt's birthday - we call my grandmother Mutt because my Dad couldn't say Mother when he was a toddler, and that's what he called her - I had contacted dozens of family members and friends and asked them to send me humorous stories about Mutt. My grandmother is a consummate storyteller - a true raconteur - so it was only fitting that we honor this milestone birthday with stories. The resulting collection, which I titled "The Mirth of Mutt," reveals just how resourceful, generous, thoughtful, funny, and unflappable my grandmother is. Many of the stories reference incidents that occurred during the three decades that she ran the Hospital Flower Shop. 

Here's one of the classic tales that was submitted by one of her friends: "Hattie Lou told me to go to Fred's Dollar Store and pick up a plastic pink princess telephone. I stood there with my mouth open and finally asked, 'Why? She replied that the family of lady who had died wanted a pale pink ribbon on a funeral spray that said, 'Jesus called and sister answered,' and she wanted a pink telephone to place in the center of the spray."

Outliers

After Chaney and I saw Steven Colbert's inteview with Malcolm Gladwell on November 17 and then we each heard Gladwell interviewed elsewhere in subsequent days, we decided we ought to read his new book - Outliers: The Story of Success. An "outlier" is something that lies outside of normal experience - something that falls outside of the statistical norms. In this fascinating book, Gladwell argues that extremely successful people owe their success to much more than personal intelligence and ambition. In fact, people who seem to have maximized their individual potential owe far more to their families, their birthplaces, and even their birthdates. 

Gladwell had me hooked with his introduction about the Roseto mystery. In the 1950s, a physician named Stewart Wolf launched an investigation into why the people of Roseto, Pennsylvania, had astonishingly low rates of heart disease compared to the general American population. As Wolf explored why these Italian immigrants were largely immune to a disease that was at epidemic proportions nationally, he discovered that the secret to their health wasn't diet, exercise, genes, or location. Instead, the key was the sense of community that the Rosetans had imported to America from their ancestral home in the Italian province of Foggia. In Pennsylvania, three generations of Rosetans lived under one roof and shared meals together. Neighbors lingered on porches to chat, and passersby greeted each other warmly on the streets of Roseta. Individual health reflected the overall health of the community.

As I read Gladwell's account of the Rosetans, I thought about the sense of community that existed in the days of the Early Church, when Christ-followers gathered regularly for meals, fellowship, worship, and prayer. I also thought about how the Apostle Paul's emphasized the importance of the interdependence of believers. Individual spiritual health is indeed directly related to corporate spiritual health. This would come as no surprise to the Rosetans. 

"Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it" (1 Corinthians 12:27).

giving thanks

Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever. 

Psalm 136:1-3

Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. 

Worship the LORD with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.

Know that the LORD is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; 

we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; 

give thanks to Him and praise His name.
For the LORD is good and His love endures forever; 

His faithfulness continues through all generations.
Psalm 100:1-6

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 

Philippians 1:3-6

cornbread dressing

Because my mom had to be hospitalized last night due to dehydration - a complication related to chemo side effects - we've had a change in our Thanksgiving plans. Instead of driving to South Carolina today to spend a few days with Paul's family, we have chosen to remain in the Nashville area for the holiday. This is a wise call for several reasons, including the fact that I am still suffering from a bit of post-surgery puniness. Flexibility is the name of the game. 

This will be the first time in over a decade that Paul, Chaney, and I have been at home for Thanksgiving. But every Thanksgiving Day - whether we've been at a beach house on the Gulf Coast, at a log cabin in the Smokies, or at my in-laws' home in Spartanburg - I have been responsible for making the cornbread dressing. Tomorrow will be no different.

As a child, I loved helping Granda and Daddy Bent make the dressing. Daddy Bent and I enjoyed repeatedly sampling the uncooked dressing, in an effort - or so we claimed - to make sure it was properly seasoned. I recall seeing Granda's handwritten recipe for this dish years ago:

Cornbread Dressing

biscuits

cornbread

chopped onions

chopped celery

2 cans cream of chicken soup

2 cans chicken broth

salt

pepper

sage

Crumble biscuits and cornbread together. Add onions and celery. Stir in soup and broth until moistened. Season with salt, pepper, and sage. Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Precise enough for you? I can't wait to taste it tomorrow - before and after it's cooked.

buttermilk chess pie

There is something indescribably wonderful about watching my 18-year-old son bake a buttermilk chess pie. As the smell of this delicacy wafts through my house, I recall all the times I stood in my maternal grandmother's kitchen and helped her prepare this sugary treat. It simply doesn't seem like Thanksgiving to me if I can't have a slice of Granda's chess pie and a double-helping of her cornbread dressing. Although Lucille Baker passed away when I was a teenager, her recipes are now being used by a fourth generation to carry on a tasty family tradition. This recipe even garnered me a blue ribbon when I entered it in the Tennessee State Fair in 2005. Enjoy!

Granda's Buttermilk Chess Pie

1 1/2 cups sugar

3/4 stick of margarine (softened)

1 Tablespoon cornmeal

1 Tablespoon flour

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 frozen pie crust

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cream sugar, margarine, cornmeal and flour. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add buttermilk and vanilla, mixing until well blended. Pour into pie crust and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

lunch with mom

Today I had lunch with my mom at Barbara's Home Cooking (or Barbara's Homecookin' as it says on Barbara's business card), a fabulous meat and three that is located in a small house in Franklin on Old Hillsboro Road. I highly recommend Barbara's fried chicken - I believe it's the best I've ever eaten.

As I was driving to pick my mom up to take her to Barbara's, I recalled the days when I was a student in the kindergarten program at West Jackson Baptist Church, where my mother was a teacher. I only have one distinct memory from my actual kindergarten class - the time when my teacher blindfolded random students and made them taste and identify various foods and I got stuck with a lemon - but I do remember the happy days when my mother would take me to Woolworth's in downtown Jackson after our half-day at school was over so we could share a meal together at the lunch counter. I always ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke, but it wasn't the meal I was excited about - it was my mother's undivided attention. As the oldest of four children - at that point my sister was 3 years old, one brother was 2, and the other brother was 1 - one-on-one time with either of my parents was obviously hard to come by, so I cherished our Woolworth lunches. 

Too bad there aren't any more Woolworth's in America. In 1997 F. W. Woolworth Company shuttered its classic five and dime stores and the company converted itself into a sporting goods retailer. Today the company is now known as Foot Locker, Inc. It's hard to imagine happy family memories being created in a shoe store.

Baptist Women in Ministry

This morning I had the opportunity to facilitate a panel discussion at Vanderbilt Divinity School about Baptist Women in Ministry. This event was sponsored by the Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship with the cooperation of Vanderbilt's Office of Women's Concerns. What a privilege it was for me to hear four of my Baptist sisters share about the joys and challenges associated with their ministries!

• Dr. Eileen Campbell-Reed holds degrees from Carson-Newman College, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Vanderbilt University. Campbell-Reed earned her Ph.D. in Religion, Psychology and Culture at Vanderbilt in August 2008, and her dissertation is a study of Baptist clergywomen and the Southern Baptist Convention. Campbell-Reed, who was ordained by her home church in Knoxville in 1996 and served for 5½ years as an associate pastor at a CBF-affiliated church in Georgia, plans to teach in a seminary or divinity school.
• Kim Crawford Sheehan earned her Master of Divinity degree at Vanderbilt in 2005. Sheehan is an ordained Baptist minister who currently serves as Associate Minister at Corinthian Baptist Church and as a full-time chaplain at Baptist Hospital. She is endorsed to chaplaincy through CBF.
• Amy Dodson-Watts earned her Master of Divinity degree from Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond and was ordained in 1999. Dodson-Watts has been in ministry for the last 11 years, having served as a short-term CBF missionary, Minister to Children and Families, Associate Pastor, and Co-Interim Pastor. She currently serves as the Director of Pastoral Care at Donelson Presbyterian Church.
• Rev. Judy Cummings was ordained by Temple Baptist Church and has been on staff at the historic Fifteenth Avenue Baptist Church for six years, where she now serves as Executive Minister. Cummings holds degrees from Tennessee State University School of Nursing, University of St. Francis, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She recently successfully defended her dissertation – “The Stained Glass Ceiling: The Continuing Paradox of Liberation” – to complete her Doctor of Ministry degree in Preaching and Church Leadership from Asbury Theological Seminary.

As I listened to their stories, I marveled at how God has uniquely gifted each one of us to serve Him. I was also reminded of the debt we owe to trailblazing Baptist women like Addie Davis, without whom it is unlikely that such a panel discussion would have even been possible. Two weeks before I was born, Davis became the first woman to be ordained to the pastoral ministry by a Southern Baptist congregation. 

"Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (1 Corinthians 12:4-7 NASB).

preaching practice

My grandmother, Mutt, was a florist in a small town in northwest Tennessee for nearly four decades. As a child, I loved to visit her at the Hospital Flower Shop for many reasons, not the least of which was that whenever I walked in the door - even if it was only 8:00 a.m. - she insisted that I help myself to a glass bottle of Coke from the antique machine in the front of the store. 

One of the many things that fascinated me in the Hospital Flower Shop was a pegboard on the wall near my grandmother's desk that featured a vast array of keys. These keys provided the shop's employees with access to most of the churches in the area, allowing them to make the weekly delivery of altar flowers at their convenience. My grandmother made many of these deliveries personally at the break of dawn each Sunday morning. I thought Mutt must be one of the most powerful people in town to have access to so many churches!

Early one Sunday morning as Mutt was making her rounds, she made a stop at a small church - the kind where you open the front door and find yourself standing in the sanctuary. After unlocking the front door and stepping inside, she heard a voice. Looking up, Mutt realized the pastor was standing in the pulpit practicing his sermon - while wearing his pajamas! Not wanting to interrupt his rehearsal but needing to complete her delivery, Mutt quickly and quietly walked down the aisle, placed the flowers on the altar, and made a hasty retreat to her car. 

Preachers, practice makes perfect, but it's probably wise to practice in something other than your PJs.

the amazing Mutt

My grandmother, Mutt, is simply amazing. Two weeks from today, she will celebrate her 90th birthday. What do you think she is doing to pass her golden days in Union City, Tennessee? I'll tell you what she's doing - she's coordinating the "Community Feeding of the 5,000," an interdenominational effort to provide a hot Thanksgiving dinner to those in need. (And, yes, they really do feed more than 5,000 people.) The food is donated by local businesses, churches, and individuals - 300 turkeys, 300 gallons of dressing, 100 gallons of giblet gravy, 200 gallons of green beans, 200 gallons of cooked apples, 50 gallons of cranberry sauce, thousands of rolls, and 625 pies - and is prepared by an army of volunteers. Those in need have three options: they can enjoy the fellowship as they dine with other guests at First Baptist Church Union City's Family Life Center on the Monday before Thanksgiving; they can drop by the church that day to pick up carry-out meals for their families; or volunteers can deliver meals to their homes.

Mutt has been coordinating this event since its inception several years ago, doing much of the administrative work via email. (Who says that senior citizens aren't adept at using technology?) She also spends countless hours in advance of the event working with a team of volunteers who cook as much of the food as possible in advance and freeze it, and she will undoubtedly be in the center of the activity at her church's Family Life Center on the day of the Thanksgiving meal. In addition to the meal, she also oversees the collection of canned goods and non-perishable items that local Scouts and other volunteers will sort and bag, allowing needy families to take a grocery sack home with them after they enjoy the Thanksgiving meal. Last year the students at the city's elementary, middle, and high schools collected over 10,000 cans, providing grocery sacks for 600 needy families.

It goes without saying that I feel like a sloth compared to my grandmother! I am just shy of being half her age, but I certainly have less than half her energy, enthusiasm, and ingenuity. When I grow up, I want to be just like Mutt.

college decision

Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking in Dr. Wilton Bunch's ethics class at Samford University. This is the fifth straight semester that he has extended an invitation to me to talk about restorative justice - specifically about the creation of The Next Door - but the first time that I have spoken to an undergraduate class. I told the students that it was ironic that I had ended up attending Beeson Divinity School at Samford in 2000, because eighteen years earlier as a high school senior, I faced a choice between attending Samford and the University of Tennessee.

During the fall of my senior year, I made a trip to Birmingham with two objectives: to attend a Barry Manilow concert (yes, I was and am a Manilow fan) and to visit Samford. I had arranged to spend the night on campus with my friend, Jan, who was a freshman. Jan and I had attended Franklin High School together, and we were both active members of our church's youth group - playing in the youth handbell choir, singing in the youth choir and girls' ensemble, and participating in a discipleship group. After the concert - which featured Samford's A Cappella Choir on Manilow's rendition of "One Voice" - as Jan and I drove back to campus, she suddenly panicked. "I don't have a pass!" she moaned.

Until that moment, I had not realized that Samford actually locked its students up on campus at night. If you intended to be out after the gates were locked, you had to have a pass signed in advance by your dorm parent to present to the guard at the gate in order to be allowed back on campus. Jan pulled over, rifled through her glove compartment, and discovered an old pass. After forging a new date, we proceeded down Lakeshore Drive to campus. We held our breath as the guard used a flashlight to inspect the pass, then grabbed a phone and made a quick call. After he opened the gate and waved us on, I asked Jan who he had been calling. She explained that not only were the students locked on campus at night, but the girls were also locked in their dorms. The guard had called Jan's dorm mother, alerting her to our arrival so she could unlock the door for us. 

"Wait!" I exclaimed. "Are you telling me that guys are allowed to roam free on campus at night while the girls are locked in their dorms?" Jan nodded. I was appalled. I believe it was at that moment that the balance tipped and I was destined to be a Tennessee Volunteer. This blatant gender inequality, paired with an already restrictive environment, was not what I was looking for in my undergraduate experience. 

I'm glad that God had a plan for me to eventually be both a Vol and a Bulldog, and perhaps one day I will add a third university to my education resume.

faith and politics

This morning I attended a lecture by Melissa Rogers on "The New President and the Politics of Faith" - one of a series of outstanding lectures Belmont University has offered in conjunction with Debate 08. Rogers, founder and director of Wake Forest University's Center for Religion and Public Affairs and former executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in Washington, D.C., reflected on the preliminary lessons we have learned during this election cycle about the intersection of faith and politics. Here's a summary of her observations from my notes:

1. Americans generally support some kind of separation of church and state, but we do not want to divorce personal faith from politics. (Rogers noted that Article VI of the U.S. Constitution mandates that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States," but this does not mean that citizens should not consider issues of faith when they enter the voting booth.)

2. The Republicans aren't the only ones who connect faith and politics.

3. Christians who are conservative in their politics and theology are not the dominant force in politics any more.

4. The challenge that John F. Kennedy faced related to his Catholicism in the 1960s has not gone away, and candidates who are the first in their faith tradition (Mitt Romney in this election cycle) continue to face added scrutiny.

5. The media are not going to ignore religious leaders who campaigns seek out for advice.

6. A candidate's house of worship can become a target for the media. (Rogers asserts that a candidate's house of worship should be a zone of non-interference - a place where the candidate can be challenged and refreshed spiritually without being held responsible for everything his/her pastor says.)

7. When it comes to religion, journalists often go for the sensational rather than substance. (Recalling the moment when debate moderator George Stephanopolus asked the Democratic candidates whether they thought prayer could have prevented the Minnesota bridge collapse, Roger observed that a more appropriate question would have been to ask the candidates what they would do to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure.)

In conclusion, Rogers reminded us of the words of the late Representative Barbara Jordan, who offered this sage advice to those who speak in the public square: “You would do well to pursue your causes with vigor, while remembering that you are a servant of God, not a spokesperson for God — a servant of God, not a spokesperson for God — and remembering that God might well choose to bless an opposing point of view for reasons that have not been revealed to you.”

election day

On this historic election day when voter turnout is widely predicted to be high across the country, I am recalling the student government elections that I took part in when I was a student at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. I became involved in UTK's student government early in my collegiate career and was elected at the end of my freshman year to serve as a representative from the College of Liberal Arts on the Academic Council. I was one of a slate of candidates who ran with the Insight Party, and I have to admit that I was not a very good campaigner. I think I was only elected because (a) my last name started with a "B" which meant my name appeared near the top of the ballot and ( b) my first name was unusual. I am an introvert - I know I hadn't made enough friends during my first year on campus to be elected based on personal charisma.

I remember being surprised at how seriously my fellow party members took the election. I remember one fascinating conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing party's campaign logo - what message were they trying to communicating with their choice of font and color combination? Actually, there were three parties involved in that election, but we discounted the third party - Big Al and his Apathy ticket - as being a farce. We figured that truly apathetic voters wouldn't show up at the polls on election day. Boy, were we wrong. Big Al lost the 1983 student body presidency by only 100 votes, and the following spring he won in a landslide. Big Al's campaign was colorful, to say the least, with his proposal of building a chairlift to the hill, his commemorative campaign posters (collect all 12!), and the staged assassination attempt during a campus presidential debate. Big Al's campaign energized the student body, and voter turnout in April 1984 was the highest in a decade, with around 6,000 students casting ballots.

I hope that today Americans will turn out at the polls in droves. Let's set a new record for voter turnout. Now is no time for apathy. Even Big Al knows that.

The Godbearing Life

Although I haven't had much free time lately for leisure reading, I have been making slow but steady progress through an insightful book called The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry. In the chapter titled "Sharing the Mantle: A Community of Colaborers," the authors remind those of us who are student ministry leaders of the importance of partnering with our students. Consider this excerpt: "By and large, adolescence provides a gold mine of leaders waiting to be asked, waiting to be gathered for God and to share the load in God's plan of deliverance. Not only does their inclusion freshen our perspectives and inject vital energy in our undertakings, but it also creates an atmosphere of mutuality in ministry. Godbearing youth ministry does not abandon its responsibility 'to' youth and 'for' youth, but it is always conscious that ministry exists 'with' youth as well. We are Godbearers to youth so that they may become Godbearers in their own right."

Yesterday morning, the seniors and juniors in our youth group who are family group leaders - students who have accepted the mantle of leadership and facilitate student small groups each Wednesday night - taught all of our youth Sunday School classes. For the past four weeks, these dedicated students have stayed late after our Wednesday evening worship services to be trained to teach a lesson on 2 Timothy 3:14-17. The students were enthusiastic - and a little nervous - about their assignment, but they rose to the challenge, and the feedback I have received from students and adult leaders has been overwhelmingly positive. Undoubtedly some of these students will go on to become church leaders as adults - as clergy and layleaders - but in the meantime, they are already leading well in this congregation.

Thanks, family group leaders. You certainly made me proud. "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity" (1 Timothy 4:12).

trick or treat

My son has never enjoyed Halloween as much as I did when I was a child. First of all, he really didn't relish the idea of wearing a costume for any reason, and face painting was out of the question. He was a very reluctant Thomas the Tank Engine for a couple of years as a preschooler - but he looked so cute! The only costume I remember him being particularly excited about was the dinosaur one that I bought for him in the midst of his lenghty paleontological phase. (Check out the dinosaur documentary he did as a kindergartner - with my assistance - called "Zoorasic.") He actually wore his dinosaur costume around the house on many occasions, uttering appropriate dinosaur roars for the ultimate effect. But I was surprised today when I asked him which of his childhood costumes he liked the best and he recalled the year that he and his buddy, Andrew, dressed up like baseball players for the Atlanta Braves. "You can't go wrong as Greg Maddox," he observed. 

The most memorable costume from my childhood days had to be my store-bought "Lil Devil" apparel, which included the typical red, one-piece jumpsuit that tied in the back at the neck, a plastic mask of a smiling demon, and a pitchfork. What were my parents thinking? Fortunately, my impersonation of Satan did no long-term spiritual damage. My other favorite costume was one I made myself the last year I went trick-or-treating as a teenager - a basic ghost created  by cutting eye holes in a white sheet. My parents have a lovely photo of me wearing my ghost attire (I recall joking about being a holy ghost) while holding our black cat, Tar Baby. Again, what were my parents thinking? I found that my candy intake was heightened if I got on my knees on my neighbors' doorsteps, since then I looked like a cute little ghost (which I wasn't) rather than a greedy teenager (which I was). Of course, if I stood up too soon or the neighbor lingered at the door, the desired effect was lost.

The other reason that Chaney lacks my affection for Halloween is because he doesn't eat chocolate, so bringing home a bulging bag of candy wasn't particularly appealing to him, since he would only consume the Smarties, Blow Pops, Pay Days, and Starbursts. (My son does eat white chocolate, but that is not a staple of the Halloween candy industry.) I, on the other hand, would eat just about anything that was dropped in my bag, including the peanut butter taffy wrapped in orange or black waxed paper. All year long I looked forward to the happy half hour that my sister and two brothers and I would spend sitting crosslegged in the living room floor after making our trick-or-treating rounds trading candy. The first order of business for me was to try to get rid of any Mounds, 3 Musketeers, or Milky Ways in hopes of procuring Snicker's, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and little packets of candy corn. Anybody want to make a trade?

standing on the promises of God

When I graduated from Franklin High School in 1982, one of my friends gave me a little book titled "The Jesus Person Pocket Promise Book: 800 Promises from the Word of God." The book was divided into three sections - God's Promises for Your Spiritual Needs, God's Promises for Your Personal Needs, and God's Promises for Your Future Needs. In each section, verses of Scripture were grouped under various statements or questions. For instance, under the question, "Do you need wisdom?" twenty verses were listed, including this key verse: "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him" (James 1:5 NASB).

I referred to my Pocket Promise Book frequently during my college days and found it to be very helpful in pointing me to passages of Scripture that applied to whatever situtation I was dealing with at the moment. But today when I pulled the book off my shelf for the first time in years, I was a bit startled as I reread David Wilkerson's introduction, since he was undeniably promoting a "name it and claim it" theology. "Carry this book with you at all times," Wilkerson advised. "Think of it as a Bible promise dictionary and refer to it for answers to all your questions and needs."

I love God's Word, but as I study and meditate on the holy Scriptures, I still have questions. Lots of questions. But I have come to embrace the mystery of God, and I don't expect to figure out everything during my limited time here on earth. But I do look forward to the day when all things will be made clear. As the Apostle Paul observed, "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). So for now, I will continue to stand firmly on God's promises, grateful for the salvation He has offered me through Jesus Christ, and trusting that Jesus is interceding for me and my family at the right hand of God (Romans 8:34).

"We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19a).

close encounter

This morning I nearly collided with a white-tailed deer. What made this close encounter with a female Odocoileus virginianus unusual was the fact that this near miss occurred not in my vehicle but on foot. I was almost at the end of my two-mile, very brisk walk along Otter Creek Road at Radnor Lake when I was startled by a sudden movement just a few feet ahead of me. Nice job of camouflage, deer. The doe eyed me warily but - surprisingly - did not immediately dart away. After I apologized aloud for disturbing her while she was grazing for her breakfast, we amicably parted ways.

This near miss was clearly my fault - I was preoccupied as I prayerfully pondered how to proceed regarding a pressing problem. (Ahh, alliteration.) Ironically, I had been thinking about Proverbs 3:5-6 - "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths." Clearly, I could benefit from a little more (make that a lot more) directional help from above, lest I bowl over one of God's creatures in my haste to find my way along life's paths.

no favoritism

Last Friday morning I made a two-hour drive west on I-40 to Jackson to attend the funeral of Kathryn Stewart Highfill. Mrs. Highfill - or Mama High, as she was known by family members - died last Tuesday at the age of 92. I am not directly related to Mama High - she is the maternal grandmother of my first cousins - but I wanted to support my extended family and pay my respects to a remarkable woman.

Mrs. Highfill left her mark on this world primarily through her ministry as a pastor's wife. Her husband, Reverend Hayward Highfill, died in 1998, but during their fruitful fifty years of pastoral ministry, together they served five different congregations. Predictably, many of the stories that were shared at Mrs. Highfill's funeral recounted her experiences as a pastor's wife, and I found one of those stories to be particularly striking. 

Every Sunday, Mrs. Highfill chose to sit in a different place in the sanctuary. Her rationale? She didn't want to be accused of playing favorites, which is what she believed would happen if she sat with the same people every week. As I listened to that story, I thought about several passages of Scripture that address the issue of favoritism. In his letter to the church at Rome, Paul reminded the Roman Christians that "God does not show favoritism" (Romans 2:11). In his letter, James admonished his readers to follow God's example, warning that Christ followers who show favoritism are guilty of sin (James 2:1-9). Clearly, Mrs. Highfill took these words seriously. God doesn't play favorites; neither should we.

Happy Birthday, Son!

On a Wednesday evening 18 years ago today, Chaney Paul Swiney was born at 9:47 p.m. at West Side Hospital (now the Women's Hospital at Centennial) in Nashville. Born on his due date (which perhaps explains his predilection for punctuality), Chaney weighed 8 pounds and 10 ounces and was 20 3/4 inches long. We had checked into the hospital at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening, but after waiting nine months, what's another 25 hours? Relatives on my side of the family insisted he looked "just like a Brown" and relatives on Paul's side of the family observed "you can tell he's a Swiney." 

Paul and I had not known in advance whether we were having a boy or a girl, but it was a good thing we had a boy, since we had been unable to agree on a girl's name. "Chaney" is an adaptation of the name of American gymnast Chainey Umphrey, who received his father's nickname, which the elder Umphrey earned after he defended himself in a Philadelphia street fight with - you guessed it - a chain. This is not the kind of name that has a super-spiritual meaning that can be shared at a baby dedication, but we liked it anyway. Chaney shares his middle name with both his father and grandfather - Ronny Paul Swiney, Jr., and Ronny Paul Swiney, respectively. 

The past eighteen years have flown by, but every day it has been my unparalleled joy to watch my only child mature in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and people. A mother could not ask for a better son. 

Wii Fit

My parents knew I wanted Wii Fit for my birthday, but since their current life circumstances mean they don't have the time or energy to stake out the big box retailers waiting for a shipment of this difficult-to-find product, they simply gave me the money in a birthday card and wished me luck in my search. Since my schedule this fall has been incredibly busy, I haven't had time during the past two months to search locally for the game, even though I was eager to get my hands (or, more accurately, my feet) on it. In hopes of snagging one online, I subscribed to Wii Fit Tracker, but each time I received an email advising me that one was available, by the time I clicked the link, the inventory was gone. 

Yesterday morning after I completed my walk at Radnor Lake, I had a sudden hunch that I ought to go to the Wal-Mart Supercenter near my house. (Question: Would the Holy Spirit actually prompt someone to go to Wal-Mart?) I made a beeline for the electronics department, and guess what I found locked in a glass case? Not one, but two Wii Fits were available. I guess if I had been feeling greedy, I would have immediately purchased both units and then put the second one up for sale on eBay, but I decided to let someone else experience the wave of happiness that washes over you when you finally find something you've been seeking.

Chaney and I played Wii Fit for quite awhile yesterday afternoon, and last night we introduced Paul to the game. The first time you play, Wii Fit asks you for your height and age, weighs you, and assesses your balance. After a few moments, Wii Fit informs you what your Body Mass Index is - and whether or not that is a healthy number. Then - with great fanfare - Wii Fit announces your Wii Fit age. As you take advantage of Wii Fit's four training modes - yoga, balance games, strength training, and aerobics - you should be able to lower your Wii Fit age over time. Suffice it to say that Chaney's Wii Fit age matched his actual age, while Paul's and mine did not.

As I thought about the concept of a Wii Fit age, I wondered what it would be like if someone manufactured a device that could assess a person's spiritual age. Theoretically, your desire would be to attain a higher number of spiritual fitness in order to demonstrate that you are maturing in your faith in Christ (as opposed to Wii Fit, where a lower number indicates physical fitness). Perhaps such a device would prompt a Christ-follower to consider what steps he or she needed to take in order to become more spiritually fit. Instead of focusing on exercising and eating healthfully, in order to succeed in this endeavor, a person would have to pursue a rigorous regimen of spiritual disciplines. 

I certainly want to lower my Wii Fit age in the days to come, but I need to be even more focused on my spiritual health. "For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come" (1 Timothy 4:8).

Chaney's walk

My dear husband of 23 years will admit that he generally lacks creativity, but I must give him praise for the plan he developed to help our son mark his 18th birthday. Several weeks ago, Paul contacted several men who have played key roles in Chaney's life and asked them to take part in a special event in which they would have the opportunity to spend a few minutes sharing advice with Chaney.

Last Saturday afternoon, Paul took Chaney to Radnor Lake. They walked the short distance from the East Parking Lot to the Lake Trail, where they met up with my dad, much to Chaney's surprise. Paul then passed Chaney off to my father, and grandson and grandfather walked and talked along the Lake Trail for several minutes - the conversation included a reference to Napoleon - until they rendezvoused with my brother Todd at the point where Ganier Ridge branches off from the Lake Trail. Todd and Chaney then continued to walk along the Lake Trail until they reached the lake overlook, where my brother Trev awaited his turn on the journey. Trev escorted Chaney to the Visitor Center, where Scott was waiting. Scott is a Belmont student who has been serving as a Student Ministry intern at our church, and he has been a wonderful mentor for Chaney during the past few months. Scott and Chaney backtracked up the Lake Access Trail, then walked across the dam where they met Bob, who has worked with Chaney at church for the past four years and is one of his current Sunday School teachers. Bob and Chaney walked east on Otter Creek Road along the lake's shoreline until they met up with Randy, another adult whose life has intersected Chaney's through the Student Ministry at our church. Randy and Chaney then completed the final leg of this special journey and rejoined Paul and some of Chaney's previous walking  companions at the original drop-off point on the Lake Trail. The group talked for a few moments and then shared a prayer together before everyone dispersed.

Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." I am grateful for the countless ways in which God has used each one of these men to sharpen my son. I told Chaney that when he turns 21, he will be taking a walk with a bunch of women. :)

sauerkraut

This morning I heard part of Terry Gross's fascinating interview with Michael Pollan about his open letter to the President-Elect that was recently published in The New York Times Magazine under the title "Farmer in Chief." Among the suggestions that Pollan offered in this lengthy article is the creation of a School Lunch Corps program that will forgive federal student loans to culinary-school graduates in exchange for two years of service in the public-school lunch program. His discussion of school lunch menus immediately transported me back to my days at Alexander Elementary School in Jackson, Tennessee, where I attended 1st grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade. (We lived in three different school zones while I was in elementary school.)

My favorite thing about Alexander was the safety patrol room. Since my mom was a kindergarten teacher at Alexander, if I was sick (or was pretending to be sick), I was not sent home. Instead, I was escorted to the safety patrol room, where I could rest on a cot until the school day ended. Such happy memories!

My least favorite thing about Alexander (besides the scary 4th grade teacher who would chase children down the hall and corner them in the bathroom, where she would beat on the stall doors with a paddle in a vain effort to force them out of hiding) was the cafeteria food. In fact, when my parents informed me that we would be moving to the Nashville area at the conclusion of my 5th grade school year, I was relieved because it meant that I would no longer have to fear being assigned Mrs. Sneed's 6th grade class. Mrs. Sneed forced her students to eat at least one bite of everything that was slopped onto their lunch trays, and, consequently, there were always piles of uneaten food underneath her classroom's designated table in the lunchroom. Fridays were the worst days of all, since sauerkraut was always on the menu. I will always be grateful to God that he provided my father with a new job in Nashville in the summer of 1975, since it spared me from a school year plagued by sauerkraut. If a School Lunch Corps program is ever created, I trust they will institute a no sauerkraut rule. 

green light

This morning my pastor preached about being burned out. While undoubtedly there were many people in the pews who related to his message, I realized as I contemplated his words that I am anything but burned out. In fact, the image that came to my mind as I listened to the sermon was one of a driver who is sitting at a red light, impatiently revving her engine while waiting to see green so she can continue her journey as quickly as possible. As I pondered that image, a quotation popped into my head, one that I first read about a decade ago when my family visited Daytona International Speedway. The words are attributed to NASCAR founder Bill France, Sr., and were posted in large letters on a wall in an exhibit area: "On the plains of hesitation lie the bleached bones of millions who, when within the grasp of victory sat and waited, and waiting, died.” 

I am determined not to linger on the plains of hesitation. I know there are times when God wants us to wait, and there are great lessons to be learned in the waiting. But I'm watching for the green light (or green flag, if you prefer a NASCAR term), and I'll be ready to hit the gas when I see it.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" Hebrews 12:1-3.

Saturday mornings

As children, my sister and I always enjoyed the opportunity to spend the night with either set of our grandparents - especially since it allowed us to escape from our two pesky younger brothers for several blessed hours. I'm sure we had more of these Friday night sleepovers at Granda and Daddy Bent's house (since they lived just a couple of miles away from us), than we did with Mutt and Granddad (since they lived an hour away).

At Granda and Daddy Bent's house on Skyline Drive in our hometown of Jackson, Tifni and I would usually sleep in Uncle Ben's room. Ben was our mother's much-younger brother (age difference of ten years), and after he vacated his bedroom in order to attend Union University, it became the guest room. We usually woke up in his double bed a few minutes after 6:00 a.m., and as 6:30 a.m. approached we crept through the living room - past the crystal bowl full of lemon drops - to the den. After turning on the TV, we nestled ourselves into the twin recliners and restlessly watched The Farm Bureau Report, anxiously awaiting the magic hour of 7:00 a.m., when the Saturday morning cartoons would be aired. 

While we watched cartoons, we always heard noises in the kitchen indicating that our breakfast of canned biscuits was being prepared. The best thing about the canned biscuit breakfasts was that there were always some left over, which we were allowed to toss out the backdoor to lure the squirrels. My grandparents' toy poodle, Thane, would then stand sentinel on his hind legs peering out the screen door, awaiting a squirrel's arrival. As soon as he spotted one, we would fling open the door and Thane would dart out the door, launch himself off the concrete slab of a back porch, and hightail it through the yard in a vain attempt to catch a biscuit-eating squirrel. He never caught a single one.

Our routine at Mutt and Granddad's house was very different and had its own charms. We had several options of where we could sleep at their house, but no matter where we slept we could hear the ticking of clocks. Restoring old clocks was one of Granddad's hobbies, so almost every room in the house featured a ticking, chiming timepiece. When we woke up on Saturday mornings in our paternal grandparents' white-columned house on Stonewall Drive in Union City, we knew we would not be reclining and watching cartoons. Instead, we had to get up early and go to work with my grandmother at her business, the Hospital Flower Shop. 

As we walked through the business's back door shortly before 7:00 a.m., Mutt would unfailingly ask, "Do you want a Coke? Go get yourself one - the key is in the machine." This was the moment I had been waiting for - a chance to drink an ice cold Coke out of a glass bottle for breakfast! (It was a bad habit I continued to indulge for roughly three decades.) Fully caffeinated, my sister and I would then get to work alongside the Hospital Flower Shop's employees creating our own arrangements, which Mutt graciously allowed us to price and place on the shelves in the showroom. Amazingly, every Saturday after we returned to the Shop from lunch, our floral creations had been sold!

Mulling over these Saturday morning childhood memories has made me hungry and thirsty. While I can't bring myself to pop open a can of biscuits, I think I'll bake my favorite Pillsbury frozen biscuits as a suitable substitute. And since I have glass bottles of Coke in my fridge, I know what I can use to wash them down.

poverty

Every morning when I check my email inbox, I see the “5 Minutes of Caring” message from CoolPeopleCare. These daily email messages from Sam Davidson are limited to 99 words that challenge individuals to consider how they can change their community and make a difference in the world.

This morning’s message emphasized “Blog Action Day” – a day when bloggers and media outlets are encouraged to highlight the issue of poverty. The timing is fitting, since right now the presidential candidates are debating at Hofstra University - Paul and I are recording the debate as we wait for Chaney to get home so we can all watch it together - but if the previous two debates are any indication, we will likely hear a lot about the needs of the American middle class, but very little about the plight of the poor who live in our country or elsewhere in the world. 

Did you know that 37.3 Americans were living in poverty in 2007? (U.S. Census Bureau)
Did you know that 2.1 billion people - almost half the world's population - live on less than $2 a day, and 800 million of these people survive on less than $1 a day? (World Development Report 2008)

For a little perspective about just how fortunate we are, check out the Global Rich List. By inputting your income, you'll find out how you rank in wealth compared to the rest of the world. For instance, if your salary is only $20,000 a year, you fall within the top 11.16% of the richest people in the world. If you make $40,000 a year, you're in the top 3.17%.

So take the challenge and investigate the Global Rich List. I'll bet you'll discover that you're wealthier than you think. Then consider what you can do to help those who are less fortunate than you are. "I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me" (Matthew 25:45).

S'mores galore

I think tent camping has a biblical basis. After all, didn't the Israelites spend forty years dwelling in tents in the wilderness? Unlike the Israelites, though, the 48 folks who camped together at Big South Fork last weekend didn't have a pillar of cloud by day or a pillar of fire by night to guide us, but we certainly had plenty of other reminders of God's presence in our midst. 

What a glorious weekend! The colors of the leaves were more vivid than I can ever recall on our previous annual camping trips to Big South Fork. The weather was much warmer than we had experienced in the past - I had never worn sandals and shorts while delivering my mini-sermon at the Saturday evening campfire before - but the evenings were comfortably cool and well-suited for a slumber in a sleeping bag. The daytime skies were a brilliant blue, and the evening skies were studded with more stars than we could ever count. The twelve families who gathered at the group campground at Bandy Creek - Stewarts, Atkinses, Fousts, Kennons, Walshes, Hartzells, Robersons, Cateses, Swineys, Gipsons, Pollards, and Robertsons - made a fresh batch of memories this past weekend, served up with a heaping helping of laughter. 

We took two group hikes during the weekend - a Saturday afternoon trek along the Big South Fork River to the O&W Railroad Bridge (4.6 miles round-trip) and a Sunday afternoon excursion along the Twin Arches Loop Trail (2.8 miles). During the rest of our time together, clusters of adults gathered around picnic tables and campfires, enjoying the kind of extended conversations that we rarely have time for during our busy days at home. Clumps of children shuffled through the woods on the lookout for the black bear that had been spotted in the campground earlier in the week. Some teenagers played football in the field, while others played cards in the pavilion. And we ate - a lot. Our community meal on Saturday evening - featuring four batches of chili and the Pollards' delicious cornbread, among many other dishes - was delicious as usual, but we were still able to consume large quantities of S'mores after the evening devotion around the campfire.

Camping at Big South Fork is like going back to a simpler time, a time when grownups passed the evening telling stories on the front porch while their children chased fireflies in the yard. Plenty of stories were shared this past weekend at Bandy Creek - stories that our children will undoubtedly recount to their own offspring in years to come. And while there were many outbursts of laughter among our children this past weekend, the adults laughed louder and longer. In fact, we often laughed until we cried. A cheerful heart really is good medicine (Proverbs 17:22).

happy camper

In October 1996, my family took our first camping trip to Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, which straddles the Tennessee-Kentucky border on the Cumberland Plateau. I had never camped in a tent before that weekend (sleeping in a car at a campground doesn't really count as camping, but those are stories for another day). I chose Big South Fork for our first camping experience because my friend Amy swore that the bathhouses were cleaner than her own bathrooms, so we acquired a tent and other basic equipment and made the three-hour drive to the Bandy Creek Campground. (FYI: The bathhouses really are incredibly clean.)

During that trip, we ran into Lauryn, a friend from church who I had first met on a mission trip to Scotland five years earlier. Lauryn told us that several families from our church were camping together at one of Bandy Creek's two group campgrounds, an experience that had become their annual tradition. Lauryn then invited us to join them for their community meal that evening, which we did. That night we asked them to add us to their camping roster, and we've been making the trip to Big South Fork every October since then. 

Chaney was a kindergartner the first time we camped; now he's a senior in high school. Camping at Big South Fork is one of our family's most cherished traditions. Tomorrow our family will set up at camp at Bandy Creek once again, along with eleven other families. In accordance with tradition, we will take a group hike on Saturday, which almost always features one or more boys getting their shoes wet in the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Saturday night we will share a community meal (a chili supper) at the pavilion before regrouping around the campfire circle, where I will share an evening devotion (I'm thinking about Elijah). Afterwards, the teenagers (and some adults) usually head up to the field where we take advantage of the lack of light pollution and stargaze to our hearts' content. I can't wait!

"The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies display the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech, night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard" (Psalm 19:1-3).

the art of communication

Recently I have been rereading a book that ought to be on every political junkie's bookshelf - All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President by Mary Matalin and James Carville. In the book, this political odd couple recounts their starkly divergent perspectives from their respective camps in the Bush and Clinton campaigns during the 1992 presidential election. I first read the book shortly after it was released in 1994 and decided that I needed to revisit it during this year's election cycle, especially since Matalin and Carville are familiar faces on the cable news circuit these days.

I have been interested in political campaigns ever since my father ran for Congress in 1974 (he lost to the incumbent), and I ended up majoring in Political Science at the University of Tennessee. The behind-the-scenes stories that these two political operatives share in All's Fair are fascinating, and there is a lot to be learned from observing their successes and failures as they sought to communicate their candidates' messages to the press and the voters. 

In one section of the book, Carville described the art of "wiring up the event" - anticipating who reporters will call to comment on an event, then preemptively contacting them to prepare them to respond in a way that reflects favorably on your candidate. Carville observed: "There are even times when you've got to wire up an event within your own organization. If you call and explain your plans and your reasoning, people will tend to be more supportive than if you just spring it on them. That goes for people inside the campaign, it goes for reporters, it goes for people in every day life. It's better to tell somebody ahead of time and get their support than to tell them afterward and try to change their mind."

One of the things that frustrates me most when working within an organization - whether it is a secular or religious one - is when leaders fail to anticipate the questions that will likely arise regarding a proposed plan. I am more keenly aware than ever these days that many leaders lack what Lee Atwater called the ability to "see around corners," and far too often leaders set themselves (and their plans) up for failure when they don't think through the consequences of a proposal. Even worse, many leaders believe that by springing a potentially controversial plan on people without notice, they are actually increasing the likelihood of its adoption. The element of surprise is great at birthday parties, but not so good for consensus-building. 

the humility of untitled ministry

I am still processing my experiences from the CBF-sponsored Women's Spiritual Formation Retreat that I attended last week in Atlanta. The retreat provided me with a remarkable - not to mention rare - opportunity to spend time with over 40 Baptist clergywomen (both ordained and unordained) who are using their God-given gifts in a variety of ways in ministry. My favorite job title was "Minister to Young Adults and of Creative Discipleship," but there were also pastors, associate pastors, ministers of music, church administrators, ministers for every age group, and chaplains in attendance.

Dr. Molly Marshall, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City (the only female president of a Baptist seminary in this hemisphere), was one of the retreat speakers. Dr. Marshall is a hero to many Baptist women (and men) because of the way she gracefully persevered persecution within the Southern Baptist Convention. The first time I heard Dr. Marshall preach was at the Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in April 2006, and I was eager to hear her again. I was not disappointed. She is a brilliant theologian and a wonderful role model for women in ministry.

In a panel discussion during the final teaching session of the retreat, Dr. Marshall acknowledged the challenges that women in ministry face, and she encouraged us to persevere. "Begin with the humility of untitled ministry," she advised us. "It will open a pathway." Then she added, "God remembers He called you to ministry." I know I needed to hear those words. I'll bet I'm not alone.

two red things

I always have two red things in my car - a tassel and a bracelet. I hung the red tassel from my rearview mirror in May 2004, and I placed the red bracelet around my gear shift in the summer of 2006. 

The red tassel hung on the black cap that was perched precariously on my head during Samford University's Commencement on Saturday, May 22, 2004, at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex Arena. The presence of the tassel annoys my husband, who prefers to wrap it around the rearview mirror so it can't swing freely while he drives my car. But the tassel remains because it reminds me of God's call, His provision, and His protection. God called me to go to Beeson Divinity School to work on a Master of Divinity degree, He faithfully provided the resources for me to do so, and He protected me as I commuted twice a week between Nashville and Birmingham for four years (and 100,000 miles). The tassel reminds me that when I am willing to step out in faith and trust God to lead and empower me, He is able to do immeasurably more than I ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within me (Ephesians 3:20).

The red bracelet is made of plastic and emblazoned with the word "Courage." Debbie Harned's family and friends began wearing these bracelets when she began treatment for a rare form of cancer in January 2006. Since I do a lot of praying in my car, I eventually decided to place my bracelet in my car to prompt me to pray for Debbie and her family. Throughout her battle with the disease, Debbie continued to minister to others, even as they attempted to minister to her. Debbie was one of my mentors, and I deeply miss the lunches we shared in the physicians' cafeteria at Baptist Hospital where she served as a chaplain. Today when I look at that red bracelet on my gear shift, I remember Debbie's courage and take courage myself, recalling the words of one of Debbie's favorite verses of Scripture: "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19).

Two red things in a green car - powerful, portable, personal symbols of God's faithfulness.

on a hallowed hill in Tennessee

On a Hallowed hill in Tennessee,
Like Beacon shining bright,
The stately walls of old U.T.
Rise glorious to the sight.
So here's to you old Tennessee, 
Our Alma Mater true.
We pledge in love and harmony
Our loyalty to you.

If you have ever been to a football game at Neyland Stadium on the campus of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, you have heard these words sung during the Pride of the Southland Band's halftime show. I was a proud alumna yesterday when my family spent most of the day on campus for the UT Scholars Invitational. My son didn't need another campus visit to help him decide where to go to college (since he apparently made that decision about the time he started kindergarten), but we made the trip to learn more about the honors programs offered at UT. As a 1985 graduate of UT's College Scholars program, I was personally pleased to discover how the honors program has grown through the years, and I am confident that Chaney is going to receive an outstanding education at my alma mater.

During a browse session when we were encouraged to visit with representatives of various campus programs, we stopped at the booth hosted by the Office of Student Orientation and Leadership Development. The young woman who greeted us was extremely excited to discover that Paul and I were both former Student Orientation Assistants (SOAs). I served as an SOA during both my summers at UT, and Paul and I began dating when we served together as SOAs during the summer of 1984. We had actually interacted briefly during the previous summer when we both took a U.S. History course that required us to watch videos on small monitors in the library. We met when we both were waiting in the library to watch a documentary about Justice Hugo Black. During that first encounter, Paul was wondering why I was wearing purple overalls, and I was wondering where in the world Philadelphia, Tennessee, was. (For the record, Paul's hometown is located 40 miles southwest of Knoxville between Loudon and Sweetwater.)

I never dreamed as I roamed the campus of the University of Tennessee for three happy years that one day I would have a son who would follow in my footsteps. But by this time next fall, he will be the one roaming, and I couldn't be happier for him.

the sound of silence

Earlier this week, I participated in the Women's (Clergy) Spiritual Formation Retreat sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. The retreat was held at Ignatius House in Sandy Springs, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. Ignatius House is owned and operated by the Jesuit Fathers and Brothers of the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus and is named after Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order. 

The retreat began at noon on Monday and ended at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Of the 49 hours that we spent together, 25 were devoted to silence. Five times we observed hour-long periods of silence for reflection and sabbath. Each evening we observed the monastic tradition of the Great Silence, which began after our evening worship and was broken by the sound of a bell when we gathered for morning prayer.

In preparation for the retreat, we were encouraged to read Henri Nouwen's The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry. In this book, Nouwen focused on three of the spiritual disciplines practiced by the Desert Fathers and Mothers who lived in the Egyptian desert during the fourth and fifth centuries: solitude, silence, and prayer. Nouwen observed, "In our chatty world, in which the word has lost its power to communicate, silence helps us to keep our mind and heart anchored in the future world and allows us to speak from there a creative and recreative word to the present world. Thus silence can also give us concrete guidance in the practice of our ministry."

I had not realized how deeply I craved silence until I was afforded this opportunity to practice it for an extended period. As a writer and teacher, I was challenged by Nouwen's assertion that "silence gives strength and fruitfulness to the word." If I want my words to be fruitful - whether written or spoken - I must regularly retreat into God's silence.

Mr. Rogers Neighborhood

Last night when Scott Claybrook spoke to our youth group, he reminisced about his childhood fondness for watching "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" on PBS and his personal admiration for Fred Rogers. In particular, Scott referenced Mister Rogers' acceptance speech at the 1987 Daytime Emmy Awards. As he accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award, Fred Rogers implored the audience, "Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are - those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life?" What followed was ten seconds of silence, which Rogers monitored using his wristwatch. With an economy of words, Rogers moved the audience to tears.

I, too, was a childhood fan of Mister Rogers. Even when I was a teenager, sometimes when I arrived home from school I would still tune in to his show. There was something soothing about his voice, and the slow pace of the show helped me wind down. I particularly loved the segments about how things were made - the Picture Picture Factory Tours. In fact, several years ago when my family took a vacation to the Northeast and travelled through Pennsylvania, we visited the Crayola Crayon factory and the Martin Guitar factory just because I had seen them featured on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."

For years I have had a yellowed newspaper clipping about Fred Rogers taped to the computer desk in our home office. At this point I can't even remember when or where I found it, but it is as meaningful to me today as it was the first time I read it. "John Rogers said his father met Ralph Waldo Emerson's definition of success: 'To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children . . . to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.'"

That's exactly the kind of success I'm striving for.

the end of the golf season

Yesterday my son, Chaney, wrapped up his fourth and final season as a member of the Overton Golf Team. If you have a son or daughter, I highly recommend that your steer your child toward the golf team. Here's why:
- Members of the opposing team will not try to physically harm your child.
- Your child is unlikely to experience an injury while participating in a match (although mine did recently show up on the 9th green with a bleeding wound, the result of an accidental collision between his pitching wedge and his forehead).
- The coach will not yell at your child during the match (in fact, coaches and parents aren't allowed to offer advice to golfers during a match).
- Other parents will not yell at your child during the match.
- The season lasts less than two months.
- Your child will learn a sport that he/she will be able to play for a lifetime.

During the past four golf seasons, I have enjoyed watching my son mature - both as a golfer and as a young man. The first year he went to the district tournament as Overton's #5 golfer (teams can only take 5 golfers); this year he was Overton's #1 golfer at the end of the season. During his freshman season, he barely spoke to the other golfers in his foursome; by his senior year, he conversed freely. As a freshman, if he had a bad hole early in a round, he had trouble regrouping and struggled throughout the rest of the match; by the time he was a senior, he had learned not to allow one bad hole to spoil an outing. I loved hearing him encourage the new golfers on Overton's team this year, reminding them that he had struggled mightily during his first season but had slowly and steadily improved with practice.

While Chaney didn't qualify to move on to the regional tournament, he met his personal goal at the district tournament by shooting an 88 on 18 holes at McCabe Golf Course. Since studies have shown that 75-85% of all golfers fail to regularly break 100, an 88 sounds awfully impressive to his non-golfing mom.

the wounded healer

I recently reread Henri Nouwen's classic The Wounded Healer. In the third chapter of this book - "Ministry to a Hopeless Man" - Nouwen analyzed a brief conversation between a hospital patient and a theology student. The patient, Mr. Harrison, was a 48-year-old farm laborer who was facing major surgery on his legs. The student, John Allen, was taking a year of clinical pastoral training under the supervision of the hospital chaplain. During the conversation, Mr. Harrison expressed fear that he would not survive the operation, and compounding his negative frame of mind was the reality that he had nothing waiting for him at home except more hard labor - no family, no friends, no hope. The theology student failed to connect with the patient and walked away from the visit feeling frustrated. Not surprisingly, the hopeless Mr. Harrison died during surgery the following day.

Reflecting on this interaction, Nouwen asserted that Allen failed to exercise Christian leadership during the visit. Nouwen identified three basic principles of Christian leadership: personal concern, a deep-rooted faith in the value and meaning of life, and an outgoing hope which always looks for tomorrow. Nouwen observed: "A Christian leader is not a leader because he announces a new idea and tries to convince others of its worth; he is a leader because he faces the world with eyes full of expectation, with the expertise to take away the veil that covers its hidden potential. Christian leadership is called ministry precisely to express that in the service of others new life can be brought about. It is this service which gives eyes to see the flower breaking through the cracks in the street, ears to hear a word of forgiveness muted by hatred and hostility, and hands to feel new life under the cover of death and destruction."

"We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19a).

digging a trench

In October 1991, when I was a member of a mission team that ministered in Dundee, Scotland, I stayed in the home of a young woman named Aileen, and we formed a fast friendship. The following year, Aileen came to Nashville for a visit, and she brought me a book that became one of my all-time favorites - The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass (Age 37 3/4). I now have ten books written by this Scottish Christian humorist, and I have read many of them multiple times.

Last Tuesday morning I heard water running in the house, yet no faucets or toilets or spigots were turned on. A visit from a plumber that afternoon confirmed my suspicion that the pipe running from the house to the meter had sprung a leak. The following day, two guys came and dug a trench in our yard and replaced the pipe. Four days later, we still have an open trench in our yard, because the guys can't fill it in until a codes inspector comes to check out their work.

As we pulled in the driveway early this afternoon after returning home from church and I once again gazed upon the trench, I suddenly recalled one of my favorite passages from a Plass book. In The Growing Up Pains of Adrian Plass, he describes an extraordinarily difficult period in his life that was marked by "manic highs and miserable lows." One Sunday during this period, Plass was sitting in church when an image came to the forefront of his mind that proved to have great significance for his future.

"A picture started to form in my mind of a huge lake surrounded by plots of land, each one occupied by a single person. Behind the plots that gave access to the lake were more plots, again occupied by individual people. As I explored the picture mentally, I saw that the lakeside dwellers were made up of two kinds of people. The first kind rushed to and fro from the edge of the lake to the boundary between their own plot and the one behind, carrying cups of water to their landlocked neighbours. Most of the water got spilled in the process, but they worked on frantically, doing their best. The other kind were not working frantically at all. They were simply digging steadily on their plots of land, with no apparent interest in the fate of the waterless tenants whose land adjoined theirs. One of the cup-carriers stopped, red-faced and breathless, and spoke with some annoyance to one of the diggers. 'Why don't you do as we do? Why don't you get a cup and carry water to those who have none? It is selfish to work only on your own land as you do.' The digger leaned on his spade for a moment and smiled. 'You don't understand,' he said, 'I'm digging a trench.'"

Digging trenches is tough, time-consuming work, but the labor pays off in the long run. Time and energy must be expended in your if you want to be a conduit of the Living Water that comes only from Christ.

fuel shortage

Yesterday morning after I took my son to school, I began my search for gasoline. I already knew that the five stations within a mile of my house were out fuel, so I headed south a few miles. At station after station, I saw the same thing - gas pump nozzles covered with plastic bags or wrapped with yellow tape. At most of these stations, the numbers had been removed from the signs as yet another indicator that they were out of fuel. 

After a half an hour, I spotted a station in the distance that still had prices posted. People were utilizing every pump at this small station, so I wheeled into the parking lot and got in line. Unfortunately, it became quickly evident that customers were having trouble actually pumping the gas, and within a few minutes an employee came out and shooed us all away with a shout of "We're all out!" 

I hit the road again and eventually spotted a tanker truck at a Shell station. Cars were already lining up at the pumps, which were still shrouded in plastic. After waiting 15 minutes, an employee came out and unwrapped each of the "Regular Unleaded" nozzles, and grateful customers eagerly leapt from their cars. After passing 20 gas stations in 70 minutes, I was finally able to fill my tank.

According to today's local paper, at least 85% of the gas stations in the Nashville area were out of fuel on Friday morning. Things looked a little brighter by this afternoon, with "only" an estimated 50-60% of stations still lacking fuel. Our governor has warned us that the shortage will continue for several days, so Middle Tennesseans have been urged to conserve fuel (apparently West and East Tennessee are not experiencing the same shortages).

This experience prompted me to recall the words of Dr. Anna Carter Florence from her sermon “Filling Stations," which is based on Jesus' parable of the ten bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13). All ten of the bridesmaids grew weary and fell asleep waiting for the bridegroom’s arrival. All ten of the bridesmaids awoke to discover that their lamps were running low on fuel. However, the five wise bridesmaids had prepared in advance and carried enough oil with them to deal with the unforeseen circumstance, while the five foolish ones were unprepared and lacked the resources they needed to face the moment of crisis. The foolish bridesmaids then implored the wise ones to loan them some fuel, to no avail. By the time the foolish bridesmaids had gone out to purchase more fuel and returned to the house that was the site of the wedding feast, the door was shut and they were not allowed in. "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour," Jesus concluded.

Dr. Florence observed that the five wise bridesmaids weren’t really acting selfishly - their actions simply reflected the reality that we ultimately have to rely on our own spiritual resources. Other people cannot loan us their intimate relationship with God to use in a crisis situation. We can't borrow the peace that someone else experiences through Christ in a pinch. Simply put, there are things we need to do to maintain our own spiritual well-being, and nobody else can do them for us. Dr. Florence sagely observed, “You have to figure out what fills you up spiritually, and then make sure you have some to carry with you every single minute of the day, because that is how often you’ll need it.” 

an atheist's view of church services

Last week my father alerted me to an intriguing book co-written by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper called Jim & Casper Go To Church: Frank conversation about faith, churches, and well-meaning Christians. Jim Henderson (a Christian who has been involved in church planting, evangelism, and leadership development for more than a quarter of a century) recruited Matt Casper (a self-described atheist) to join him on a tour of twelve of churches across America, including: Saddleback (Rick Warren), Willow Creek (Bill Hybels), Lakewood (Joel Osteen), and The Potter's House (T. D. Jakes). 

In each church they visited, Jim and Casper would find seats, open their laptops, and begin recording their reflections about everything from the way they were greeted, the quality and style of the music, the method of collecting the offering, the sermon, and the general ambience in the worship space. Time and time again, Casper would ask Jim, "Is this what Jesus told you guys to do?"

Henderson believes that Christians need to shift from defending the faith to defending the space: "Too often, conversations we have about our beliefs are too much like debates, and we spend our time looking for chinks in the conversational armor, spaces where we can insert an argument or launch a rejoinder. The practice of defending the space means creating and obviously, defending such spaces. The practice of defending the space kicks in when we resist the urge to correct or attack and instead just listen (and maybe even take notes)."

Read this book!