Blog Break

Thanks for taking the time to read the postings on this blog.

I am having a break from blogging over the northern hemisphere summer.

Geoff

Out of Pain Hope is Born

Joan Brown Campbell tells this story:

When my youngest son—a medical doctor named Jim—was an intern and doing his obstetrical training he was assigned to a wise old Roman Catholic doctor who had had many years of experience.

As my son, came to the day when he was to deliver his first baby, the mature physician was at his side. The mother, surrounded by her husband, her mother and random family members, began the journey toward birthing a child.

As the pain deepened, Jim was in and out of her room many times. Finally, the wise old doctor said, "Jim, you're making her very nervous. Just sit quietly and listen to her. She'll tell you when she is ready."

Minutes went by and suddenly she called out for her husband. Jim jumped up. The doctor sat him down saying, "She's far from ready." A bit later she called out in audible pain for her mother. Again, Jim got to his feet, but again the teacher said, "Not yet. She'll tell you when she's ready."

Sure enough, in a bit, amidst the groaning and pushing she cried out, "Jesus! Mother Mary!" and the wise man at Jim's side said, "Now, son. Now she's ready." He said, "When the pain becomes unbearable, they inevitably cry out for the Deity by whatever name."

And out of the groaning and the pain comes new life, new possibilities. Hope is born anew and in many a birthing room the unspoken prayer is, "Thank God."

Source: Joan Brown Campbell, ‘All Are the Children of God’ 30 Good Minutes, Program # 4302, 10 October, 1999

Internet Address:
http://www.30goodminutes.org/csec/sermon/campbell_4302.htm

Image: Birth

Oooh!

For many years an Arapahoe Indian woman wrote a weekly article for the local newspaper in America. Her English name was Molly Shepherd. Every week she wrote in broken English about her tribal customs, their songs, their funerals, the prizes for the one who came the farthest way to the funeral and the way they would give away everything that the deceased person owned. It was interesting. It was educational. Despite her broken English she had a gift for words.

One article, however, was very brief. It was the afternoon paper on the Friday following the death of President Kennedy. In that article, she said, “Molly has no words for you today. Molly has nothing to write today. Molly has no words today. Molly goes through the whole house saying, “Oooh….”

Did you hear that word? In that one word, ‘Oooh’, Molly has joined the travail of the whole world.

It means the same in most languages, ‘Oooh’.

It is onomatopoeic. ‘Oooh.’ By speaking that one word we are joining ourselves with people of every culture.

Geoff Pound

Image: Oooh

Positive Thinking!

A conference speaker decided he needed a memorable framework for his speech.

He'd been trained at Yale University and he decided to use the word YALE as the acronym for his address.

He started with the letter Y and spoke about Youth and their present day issues and he went on for at least 30 minutes.

Moving to A he spoke about adversity and that took at least 25 minutes.

When after 40 minutes exploring L and the need for Leadership most people were looking at their watches.

He finally got to E for effectiveness and after 30 minutes the people were wilting and their stomachs were rumbling. When the overcooked dinner was served two and a half hours later the people were most grumpy and expressing their complaints quite vociferously around the meal tables.

As the whingeing went on there was one bloke who had obviously done a Positive Thinking course because he said:

“I guess we can be very thankful that he wasn't trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology!”

Geoff Pound

Image: Yale University

Dig Yourselves Some ‘Memory Holes’

Nathaniel Philbrick’s new book, Mayflower, is a fresh retelling of the voyage of the Pilgrims from Plymouth to New England and their initial contacts with the original American inhabitants of the Wampanoag tribe.

One of the insights Philbrick unearths is that when the Pilgrims visited the indigenous communities they noticed circular pits alongside the trails, which the natives told them were for storytelling. Each of these ‘memory holes’ had been dug at a place where a remarkable act had occurred so that every time the Indians passed by these spots, they recounted the deeds from their distant past.

The new settlers quickly came to see the importance of remembering and telling their story, which has come down these hundreds of years to us.

When that little band of Puritans arrived on the Mayflower from England they experienced a harsh winter and only 50 of the original 102 survived. They discussed whether they should go back to their home country but they decided to stay on and plant corn and barley.

When the time of their first anniversary rolled around they wondered how this should be observed. Some proposed a day of mourning, when attention should be focussed on all those who lay in unmarked graves.

The others said: “No, a day of Thanksgiving would be more appropriate. After all, 50 of us have survived. We’re gathering in a good harvest. The Indians have been our friends.” In other words, let’s focus on what we have going for us, not on what we have going against us. And maybe that decision and that attitude of thanksgiving was the turning point in the founding of America. Had they chosen to mourn rather than give thanks, would they have found the courage to hold out as they did?

Every year when Americans get together for Thanksgiving, with their turkeys, corn and other rituals, there is the retelling of the story and on such a day Philbrick says, a new ‘memory hole’ is dug.

Sources:
Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War, Viking, 2006.
Russell Shorto, ‘Pilgrims and Indians’, The New York Times, 4 June 2006.

Image: Mayflower in Plymouth Harbour.

Who's Winning?

A reporter in an English newspaper wrote of an episode he recalled. Back in the 1960s a handful of bowler-hatted Englishmen were strolling through London’s Hyde Park and they were stopped short by the sight of a Frisbee flying between an American father and his son. In the 1960s few Britons had seen this American toy.

After a few minutes, one of the men walked up to the father and said, “Sorry to bother you old chap, but we have been watching you for a quarter of an hour. Who’s winning?”

The reporter repeated with a laugh as he told this story several years later, “Who’s winning?” He said, “I wish I had asked him if he was married. If he’d have said 'yes', I would’ve asked 'Who’s winning?'”

Most of life (including marriage) isn’t meant to be a point scoring contest, a win or lose proposition or a competition.

Geoff Pound

Image: Frisbee flying.

Joyous Generosity

There is an old rabbinic parable about a farmer that had two sons. As soon as they were old enough to walk, he took them to the fields and he taught them everything that he knew about growing crops and raising animals. When he got too old to work, the two boys took over the chores of the farm and when the father died, they had found their working together so meaningful that they decided to keep their partnership. So each brother contributed what he could and during every harvest season, they would divide equally what they had corporately produced. Across the years the elder brother never married, stayed an old bachelor. The younger brother did marry and had eight wonderful children. Some years later when they were having a wonderful harvest, the old bachelor brother thought to himself one night, "My brother has ten mouths to feed. I only have one. He really needs more of his harvest than I do, but I know he is much too fair to renegotiate. I know what I'll do. In the dead of the night when he is already asleep, I'll take some of what I have put in my barn and I'll slip it over into his barn to help him feed his children.

At the very time he was thinking down that line, the younger brother was thinking to himself, "God has given me these wonderful children. My brother hasn't been so fortunate. He really needs more of this harvest for his old age than I do, but I know him. He's much too fair. He'll never renegotiate. I know what I'll do. In the dead of the night when he's asleep, I'll take some of what I've put in my barn and slip it over into his barn." And so one night when the moon was full, as you may have already anticipated, those two brothers came face to face, each on a mission of generosity. The old rabbi said that there wasn't a cloud in the sky, a gentle rain began to fall. You know what it was? God weeping for joy because two of his children had gotten the point. Two of his children had come to realize that generosity is the deepest characteristic of the holy and because we are made in God's image, our being generous is the secret to our joy as well. Life is not fair, thank God! It's not fair because it's rooted in grace.

Source: John Claypool, 'Life Isn’t Fair, Thank God’, 30 Good Minutes, Program #4317, 30 January, 2000
http://www.30goodminutes.org/csec/sermon/claypool_4317.htm

Image: Harvest time.

The Gift of Pain

Dr Paul Brand became known for his skill in reconstructive surgery as he spent a lifetime repairing the gnarled hands and thickened faces of people plagued with leprosy.

In an address he said that one of the main problems was that people with leprosy feel no pain. He spoke of a man who spilled scalding water on his leg and to his great surprise he felt nothing and instead of leaping for joy because there was no pain, he was sad. He realised he had leprosy and with this loss of pain would go the loss of pleasure.

Paul Brand said that pain is part of a brilliantly designed system and is one of God's most amazing gifts.

The condition we really ought to fear the most in life, is not the possibility of pain, but the total loss of feeling when we become numb and insensitive to the hurt of people around us.

If you're in pain for someone today, then be grateful for that gift. Be thankful that you're sensitive enough to feel these hurts.

Geoff Pound

Source: Address by Paul Brand in New Zealand, circa 1986.

Image: Paul Brand

Life is Colour

In the opening scene of the Iranian film, Gabbeh, viewers are confronted with a riot of colour‑colourful costumes, bright scenery and a dazzling gabbeh (hand made rug), woven by Iranian nomads. Some viewers have wondered whether this is a colour overkill but there is an interesting story behind this.

Film maker and director Mohsen Makhmalbaf found through the 1980s that he was becoming more and more out of step with the Iranian fundamentalist regime. Film makers had to get permission from the government to make films, and, as Makhmalbaf was increasingly becoming a vocal critic of the government, all his requests were turned down.

An organization that made Iranian handcrafts approached him with the request that he might make a documentary that might boost sales of the gabbeh. Makhmalbaf submitted the proposal and the government thought this subject was innocuous and would mean he would not be annoying them if he was making a movie about nomadic carpet makers in the back blocks of Iran.

The film maker turns up the colour not for aesthetic reasons but to make a prophetic statement. The Iranian government had become prescriptive about the clothes Iranian women were to wear and required that they be clad in grey, brown or black. Makhmalbaf’s use of colourful costumes, and colourful rugs made from nature’s colourful dyes are his attempt to challenge the severity and oppression of the government.

The film maker is a prophet who will not be muzzled as he seeks a way to get his message across. Like tellers of parables Makhmalbaf presents a documentary about nomadic rug makers but within this story he weaves revolutionary threads to declare that life is colour. Regimes that are turning life into a narrow black and white existence are challenged to give people the freedom to weave the story of their lives out of the colourful threads of creation.

Geoff Pound

Sources: Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film, Gabbeh, 1996.
Godfrey Cheshire, Audio Commentary and article ‘A Carpet of light: Gabbeh’ (on the Special Features of the DVD)

Image: Picture from the film, Gabbeh.

Life Is Gift

When John Claypool died in September 2005 there were scores of tributes written and spoken about the impact he had had on countless numbers of people. One of the recurring memories of what John had said in his sermons and his books was that life is gift.

In his book, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, written after his daughter Laura Lou died of leukaemia, John Claypool, told this story that helped him to understand and work through his grief. At that difficult and dark time, this story was awakened from his childhood. He has told it many times and with different applications:

“We did not have a washing machine during WWII and gas was rationed. It was going to be a real challenge. At about that time one of my father’s younger business associates was suddenly drafted into the service. My father offered to let them store their furniture in our basement while he had to be away. Well it so happened that they had an old grey Bendix washing machine. And as they were moving in, my father suggested that maybe they would let us use their machine in lieu of our letting them use our storage space. So that was how it happened to get to our basement. The next question became, who is going to become the wash person in the family?

In that mysterious way that families assign roles, I became the wash person at the grand old age of eleven! For the next four years, I had a ritual every Tuesday and every Friday. I would come home from school, gather up the wash, take it down into the basement, fill the old Bendix with water, put in the clothes, put in the soap, and then watch as the plunger would make all kinds of configurations of suds. It had a hand roller that you could take the clothes once they were finished and you could wring them out. I can remember as a child trying to stick my finger and see how far I could go without it cutting off circulation. In other words, I became affectionately bonded to that old mechanism in those four years.

When the war was over my father’s friend came back. One day when I was at school, a truck came to our basement, took out all of their things, including the washing machine, and nobody had told me. It was a Tuesday. I came home and gathered up the clothes, went down in the basement, and to this day I can remember my sense of horror as I saw that empty space where the old Bendix had been. I put down the clothes and rushed back upstairs and announced loudly, "We have been robbed! Somebody had stolen our washing machine!"

My mother, who was not only a musician but also a wise human being, sat me down and said, "John, you’ve obviously forgotten how that machine got to be in our basement. It never did belong to us. That we ever got to use it was incredibly good fortune." And then she said, "If something is a possession and it’s taken away, you have a right to angry. But if something is a gift and it’s taken, you use that moment to give thanks that it was ever given at all."

That was the memory that resurfaced that night for me. I remember thinking that Laura Lou was in my life the way that old Bendix washing machine was in our basement and I heard the voice of my mother say, "If it is a gift and it’s taken, you use that occasion to give thanks that it was ever given at all." And that memory helped me to decide that night to take the road of gratitude out of the valley of sorrow. The Twenty-third Psalm speaks of walking through the valley of the shadow of grief. I would suggest to you that the road of gratitude is the best way I know not to get bogged down in our grief but to make our way through it.

Therefore, the part of the Bible, that became my Bible was that old story that taught me that life is gift, that birth is windfall, that all, all is grace. And I give you the gift that was given to me and I pray that somehow the sense of life as gift will enable you to make a brave and hopeful journey, not just into the valley of the shadow of bereavement, but through that valley to the light on the other side. May your journey be a brave one. Amen."

Source: J R Claypool, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler Morehouse Publishing, 1995.
Also John Claypool told this story in his address, ‘When the Bible Becomes Your Bible’, in 30 Good Minutes, Program # 4114, 11 January, 1998.
http://www.30goodminutes.org/csec/sermon/claypool_4114.htm

Image: Old washing machine [I don’t think it is a Bendix!]

All-Encompassing Gratitude

The author G K Chesterton broadened the notion and practice of saying grace when he said:

“You say grace before meals alright
But I say grace before the play and the opera
And grace before the concert and the pantomime.

And grace before I open a book
And grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing,
Walking, playing, dancing
And grace before I dip pen in the ink.”

Source: G K Chesterton Quotes
Internet Address: <http://www.tc.umn.edu/~burc0050/quotes_chesterton.html>

Image: G K Chesteron

Things Caught Rather Than Taught

Preacher, Dr Jana Childers, in a sermon about ‘Saying Grace’, shares this experience about the way faith and other values are caught more than taught:

“A couple of years ago, at Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California, during a traditional African-American Good Friday service, I saw the grace of God extend.
In a lovely turnabout, the men of the congregation were providing the special music that day while the seven last words of Christ were being preached by seven women preachers. The men, some of them not technically old enough to qualify for the demographic category, were clearly getting a kick out of it.

I was, too, especially since my favorite baritone, Deacon Sellers, was scheduled to sing right after my sermon. I barely managed not to swoon each year when Deacon Sellers sang "The Holy City" and this year I was only glad I didn’t have to follow his song. Of course, there are not seven male soloists of the stature of Deacon Sellers who can get off from work on a Friday afternoon—even at a large, flourishing, wonderful church like Allen Temple—and so it was that some of the young baritones-in-training were given their first outing at this service.
I remember one young man who seemed to be eleven or twelve years old, who tremeloed his way through the first few bars of the assigned song, and who was a good two blocks out from the key the organist was in. The congregation was with him, though. "All right, now," I heard. "That’s right. Sing, child."

Gradually, I noticed a strengthening, and then a course correction. The young voice was encouraged by the congregation’s support, but there was more. The boy’s voice was being shadowed, it seemed to me, by a steady, stealthy voice. I looked around. In the choir loft a few yards behind the soloist, sat Deacon Sellers, his face and eyes averted. He just happened to be there, you know. Waiting his turn. I looked again. He was singing. Quietly, steadily, surreptitiously singing that green twelve-year old into key. Gradually, I realized that there were four or five men scattered through the large loft, also looking very casual, also singing.

There are some things about the Christian faith than can be taught. But the most important are caught, Paul reminds us. From moms and dads, from writers and speech teachers, and baritones....”

Source: Dr Jana Childers, ‘Saying Grace’, 30 Good Minutes, Program # 4421, 25 February 2000.
Internet Address:
http://www.30goodminutes.org/csec/sermon/childers_4421.htm

Image: Allen Temple congregation at worship.

Protesting Against Boredom

Several years ago an interesting story came out of America that concerned a New York bus driver. He was one of the many bus drivers whose job it was to negotiate the busy streets and crazy drivers in that pulsating city.

But one day, instead of doing his normal city round, he simply drove off in his empty bus and began driving down the east coast all the way to Florida. When he was finally located a bevy of journalists besieged him and asked, “Why did you do that?”

He said, “I have become tired of driving the same old route every day. I decided to go away on a trip.” His adventure produced a lot of publicity. By the time he got back to New York he had become a hero and huge crowds lined the streets to give him a ticker tape parade.

The incident had a satisfactory outcome with the bus company deciding not to penalize him but giving his job back so long as he promised not to take any more jaunts.

By this time the whole of the city was cheering because this man had protested against the boredom and the drudgery of life and he had become a symbol of the great longing among people to break out and get away from it all.

Source: I think this comes from one of Chuck Swindoll’s books.

Image: N Y Bus

Bradman-Like Integrity

A group that imitates the Beatles in their appearance travels around the world playing the Beatles music and hooking into the nostalgia that many still have towards this popular music group of the sixties and seventies. From the advertising clips they seem to have the perfect mannerisms and facial expressions.

There are bands of Abba look-alikes, Elvis look-alikes and in Hodgekinville, Kentucky (the birthplace of the beloved President) there is a man who has won the competition as the best impersonator of Abraham Lincoln. As a tour guide he gives the Lincoln speeches, including the famous Gettysburg address and he answers all manner of questions from tourists about what President Lincoln would do in this situation and that.

Skilful though it might be, it is sad to go through life copying another, not having the desire or the freedom to express ourselves. Yet often people play out a role or wear a mask in different areas of their life.

Kurt Vonnegut once said, "We become what we pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend!" We are either living our own life or we are living out somebody else's! We are developing our own life style or we are adopting a hand me down.

Asked what he wanted to be remembered for, cricket’s most famous player, Sir Donald Bradman, responded 'integrity'. Integrity is defined as being whole, honest and trustworthy. A 10 year study of 15,000 managers worldwide identified integrity as the most looked for attribute in a leader [Harvard Review Monthly 3/01]. Sir Donald was an embodiment of an authentic person.

The quality of integrity begins in the quiet recesses of the heart and is nurtured by reflection and formulating principles and values that guide our behaviour.

Geoff Pound

Additional source: Harvard Review Monthly, March, 2001.

Image: Donald Bradman

The Final Take Off

The author Frederick Buechner shared the following story to suggest what dying might be like.

"The airport is crowded noise, frenetic. There are yowling babies, people being paged, the usual ruckus. Outside, a mixture of snow and sleet is coming down. The runways show signs of icing. Flight delays and cancellations are called out over the PA system together with the repeated warning that in view of recent events any luggage left unattended will be immediately impounded. There are more people than usual smoking at the various gates. The air is blue with it.”

“Once aboard you peer through the windows for traces of ice on the wings and search the pancaked faces of the stewardesses for anything like the knot of anxiety you feel in your own stomach as they run through the customary emergency procedures. The great craft lumbers its way to the take-off position, the jets shrill. Picking up speed, you count the seconds till you feel lift-off. More than so many, you've heard, means trouble.”

“Once airborne, you can hardly see the wings at all through the grey turbulence scudding by. The steep climb is rough as a Ford pickup. Gradually it starts to even out. The clouds thin a little. Here and there you see tatters of clear air among them. The pilot levels off slightly. Nobody is talking. The calm and quiet of it are almost palpable. Suddenly, in a rush of light, you break out of the weather. Beneath you the clouds are a furrowed pasture. Above, no sky in creation was ever bluer.”

“Possibly the last take-off of all is something like that. When the time finally comes, you're scared stiff to be sure, but maybe by then you're just as glad to leave the whole show behind and get going. In a matter of moments, everything that seemed to matter stops mattering. The slow climb is all there is. The stillness. The clouds. Then the miracle of flight as from fathom upon fathom down you surface suddenly into open sky. The dazzling sun.”

Source: Frederick Buechner"Whistling in the Dark" 30 Good Minutes Program #3305 First broadcast October 29, 1989
http://www.30goodminutes.org/csec/sermon/buechner_3305.htm

Awesome!

Frederick Buechner, in a radio address shared this powerful experience:

“My wife and, in this case, all three of our children took a trip once to the west coast [USA]. One of the things that my wife especially wanted to see, because she is very much into that kind of natural beauty, was the giant Redwood Forest. As far as I was concerned, I was bored stiff with the idea. Who wants to go see another tree? But off we went, the four of us and some friends into the giant redwoods in Northern California. I want to read you this little entry [from his book Whistling in the Dark]. The entry on the word 'awe':

I remember seeing a forest of giant redwoods for the first time. There were some small children nearby, giggling and chattering and pushing each other around. Nobody had to tell them to quiet down as we entered. They quieted down all by themselves. Everybody did. You couldn't hear a sound of any kind. It was like coming into a vast, empty room.

Two or three hundred feet high the redwoods stood. You had to crane your neck back as far as it would go to see the leaves at the top. They made their own twilight out of the bright California day. There was a stillness and stateliness about them that seemed to become part of you as you stood there stunned by the sight of them. They had been growing in that place for going on two thousand years. With infinite care they were growing even now. You could feel them doing it. They made you realize that all your life you had been mistaken. Oaks and ashes, maples and chestnuts and elm you had seen for as long as you could remember, but never until this moment had you so much as dreamed what a tree really was.”

Buechner went on to say, "'Behold the man,' Pilate said when he led Jesus out where everybody could see Him. He can't have been much to look at after what they’d done to Him by them, but my guess is that, even so, there suddenly fell over that mob a silence as awed as ours in the forest when for the first time in their lives they found themselves looking at a Human Being."

“You have to be quiet to hear. Those great trees almost enforce you to be quiet. Anything you would say in their presence becomes the chatter of a cricket. How hard it is to be quiet, especially verbal people like me, to stop not only the outward talking but also the internal talking.”

Source: Frederick Buechner
"Whistling in the Dark" on 30 Good Minutes, Program #3305, First broadcast October 29, 1989
http://www.30goodminutes.org/csec/sermon/buechner_3305.htm

Image: Awesome Redwoods

Googledegook

The Google Search Engine now has technology that offers public speakers valuable help in connecting with their audience.

Google Trends provides a function whereby you can type in a topic and discover in what regions of the world this word has been searched the most and what topics hold greatest interest. The search can be narrowed to show in what cities and in what languages people have been Googling for stories and articles on this theme.

To illustrate, type into Google Trends the word ‘sex’ and you will find that Pakistanis head the list of searchers. Type in the word ‘sheep’ and before the results appear you would have already guessed the country where they’ve got the highest number of searchers of woolly stories.

In the search results you are provided with a ‘Trend History’ which is a graph illustrating the number of searches for that word from 2003 to the current time. If you type in ‘Danish Cartoons’ you will discover that this topic was little searched before February 2006 but then there is a spike fueled by the controversy. If you put in two topics and separate them with a comma (gloves,mittens; tea, coffee; God, Jesus) you will get a comparison.

Interestingly enough Ireland is the country where more people are searching with the word ‘lonely’. Is this because Irish Internet users are the loneliest people in the world or because the Irish rock group, ‘Lonely Boys’ is so popular? (This is where the building of great theories on Google Trends has its weaknesses and in About Google Trends they spell out their shortcomings and suggest you don’t go writing your Ph.D dissertation on the basis of Google Trends results!) Type in the word ‘loneliness’ (as distinct from ‘lonely’) and another country leads the list. Type in the word ‘grace’ and before you go applauding the Americans in their search for God’s amazing grace remember that these results include all Google searches for ‘Will and Grace’, ‘Princess Grace’ and other celebrities going by this handle.

One great benefit of Google Trends is the way it lists the most commonly searched articles on a particular topic. Type in the word ‘loneliness’ and these are the top six story titles that have been searched on this topic in recent years:

1. Executives suffer from loneliness (it’s lonely at the top)
2. Russell Crowe and his ‘abject loneliness’ (ditto)
3. The loneliness of being German (is loneliness culturally specific?)
4. Gene links for loneliness (to what extent is loneliness hereditary?)
5. Loneliness is linked to blood pressure (loneliness and quality of life)
6. How dogs aid elderly with loneliness (links between friendship, emotional support, security and loneliness).
   
   Surely there is good illustrative potential here among the Googledegook.
   
   Geoff Pound
   
   Links:
   Google Trends<http://www.google.com/trends>
   About Google Trends < http://www.google.com/trends/about.html>
   
   Image: Graph provided in search results of the topic ‘loneliness’.

Culinary Cloud of Witnesses

The Palm Restaurant in West Hollywood has been an institution for the last thirty years. It is not an ordinary steak house because of the many film stars who are among its patrons.

However, the special feature of the restaurant is its ceiling and walls which are covered with pictures of those who have been regular diners for the last three decades.

As you enjoy your meal, caricatures of Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman smile down on you. John Travolta is there in his white Saturday Night Fever suit, Sonny and Cher are still together and Farrah Fawsett is in her prime.

When diners were recently informed that the Palm is moving to newer and larger premises their first concern was, “What about the pictures?” With almost every inch of the old restaurant covered in caricatures, each wall will be cut down in sections and re-hung in the new eating establishment.

The old and now the new restaurant will house the story of this dining community. The walls contain a museum of munching memories. Those no longer humanly present have a continuing significance. Ordinary diners adorn the walls, not just the rich and the famous. Three Wheaton terriers have their mug shots near the bar, providing visual evidence that you don’t have to be famous to be part of this restaurant community. Just hungry and loyal.

Source: Claire Hoffman, ‘Hallowed Walls of Hollywood’, L A Times, 13 April, 2006.

Web Address:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-fi-palm13apr13,0,1300560.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Image: Inside the Palm Restaurant

Lost in Translation

Listen to Eugene Petersen write of the time he and his wife attended a lecture by Paul Tournier and discovered an important new image for his life and work:

“Tournier was a Swiss physician who at midlife shifted his medical practice from examining rooms and surgeries to his living room. He left a medical practice that was focused entirely on the body and embraced a healing vocation that dealt with the whole person—body, mind and spirit. He wrote many books, and I have read them all. They were not great books—anecdotal in style, personal in story—but an appealing spirit of discerning grace permeated everything he wrote.”

“Driving the 20 miles home my wife and I were commenting appreciatively on the lecture, when she added, ‘Wasn't that translator great?’ I said, ‘What translator? There wasn't any translator.’ She said, ‘You're kidding me. He was lecturing in French, and you don't know 20 words of French. Of course there was a translator.’ And then I remembered her as she stood just behind Tournier's shoulder, unobtrusive, and translating his French into my English. She was so modest that I forgot she was there.”

“And there was something about Tournier himself. During the lecture I had a growing feeling that what he was saying and who he was were completely congruent: his long life in Switzerland and his lecture in Baltimore were the same. Just as the translator was ‘assimilated’ to the lecturer, her English words carrying the meaning and spirit of his French words, so his words were at one with his life—not just what he knew and what he had done, but who he was.”

“The transparency of the man was a memorable experience. There was no dissonance between word and spirit, no pretence. Later on I remembered what T. S. Eliot had said about Charles Williams. Some people are less than their works, some are more. Charles Williams cannot be placed in either class. To have known the man would have been enough, to know his books is enough. He was the same man in his life and in his writings. That's the sense I had that day with Tournier. He wrote what he lived. He lived what he wrote. He was the same man in his books as he was in person.”

Source: Eugene Peterson, Transparent Lives, Nov 29, 2003
We Address: http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=1195

Image: Paul Tournier

Hobson's Choice

One of the many alternatives on a menu is called ‘Hobson’s Choice’.

If you select ‘Hobson’s Choice’ it means that you choose to take pot luck and eat whatever is put before you.

The expression derives from Cambridge in England when in the 17th Century there was a man by the name of Hobson who kept a stable of horses that he hired out to people.

If you came to Thomas Hobson and asked him if you could hire a horse, it was his unbreakable rule that you took the one right next to the door. If you didn’t take that one, you got none at all. It was from this Tom Hobson and his insistence that without choice you took the horse next to the door that there comes the phrase ‘Hobson’s Choice’.

Very rarely do people get the chance to live their lives on the basis of their first choice, for life often confronts us with a choice which is really ‘Hobson’s Choice’. It may happen that through force of circumstance we are left with no alternative. Illness may leave us with no choice as to the kind of work we have to do. Misfortune may leave us with no choice as to what it is possible for us to have.

We can select ‘Hobson’s Choice’ in the restaurant but the real test of character is how we stomach ‘Hobson’s Choice’ when it is placed before us in life.

Geoff Pound

Image: A Hobson Horse?

Why Not The Best?

Before Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States he wrote a book in which he told about his graduation as a naval officer.

After finishing his training he applied for a job in the navy. He was interviewed by Admiral Rickover who was a man Carter greatly admired. The admiral was a demanding officer who said to him: “Where did you come in your class in the Naval Academy?” With a measure of pride Carter said: “Sir, I came 59th in a class of 840!”

Jimmy Carter said he expected to be showered with praise but instead he was confronted with the penetrating question: “Did you do your best?”

Carter was about to reply almost automatically with his, “Yes Sir” but he thought about it for a moment and said, “No, Sir, I didn’t always do my best.”

After a long awkward silence, the Admiral said: “Why not?!”

Jimmy Carter entitled his book, Why Not The best? and later it became the theme of his presidential campaign.

It is an important question that has relevance for us today.

Geoff Pound

Source: Jimmy Carter, Why Not The Best? 1976.

Image: Naval Officer Carter.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions!

Friend and former colleague, Jack McFadyen, once told of a time when he was serving as a chaplain at an Army Camp in New Zealand.

He visited a man in hospital who was in a terrible state. The man told Jack this story.

Some years earlier he was wandering along a river bank. Further up the river there was a family having a picnic and they hadn’t noticed that their little boy had fallen into the water.

The man said he also noticed that a young friend of his, a policeman, had spotted this child, thrown off his boots and had dived into the water after the boy. Then he said, when they came down opposite me, I could see that the policeman was himself in difficulty.

So I took off my coat and I swam out to them and when I got there I discovered that the water was moving so swiftly that I couldn’t possibly rescue both of them. So I had to decide which one that I would attempt to rescue. Would I rescue the man or the boy?

He said: “I made my decision and I rescued one of them and from that day until this day people have been telling me that I made the wrong decision. I should have rescued the other one.”

Which one do you think he should have rescued? Why? [Please don’t scroll down until you have come to your answer and reasons!!]











The man did not have the luxury of lots of time nor did he have the benefit of an action replay. He made his decision. He was told that he had made the wrong decision and now he was in hospital years later a broken man.

With a smile, Jack McFadyen said to his audience, “You’re going to wonder for the rest of your life which one he rescued!”

Jack said that the man rescued the adult because he knew him and he was aware that he had a family who depended on him. He made his decision but after that he wasn’t sure.

Life is full of decisions. Some of them are trivial. Some of them are terribly important. Many of them will need to be made with urgency while the opportunity is knocking. Sometimes the consequences of our decision making are devastating.

How we need great wisdom, especially in making that complex decisions that face us in life.

Geoff Pound

Source: Jack McFadyen, Palmerston North Central Baptist Church, circa 1986. Thanks Jack!

Image: Picture from a life saving class.

Leadership Jazz

In his book, Leadership Jazz, Max de Pree, says: “I enjoy jazz and one way to think about leadership is to consider a jazz band leader. Jazz-band leaders must choose the music, find the right musicians and perform – in public.

But the effect of the performance depends on so many things—the environment, the [people] playing in the band, the need for everybody to perform as individuals and as a group, the absolute dependence of the leader on the members of the band, the need of the leaders for the followers to play well. That’s not a bad summary of an organization!

Jazz band leadership is an expression of servant leadership. For the leader of a jazz band has the opportunity to draw the best out of the other musicians. And jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals.”

Writing [p102-103] about how we might draw out the creativity of our staff, Max de Pree picks up his favourite image again and says, “Creative work needs the ethos of jazz….. A [Jazz] Leader will pick the tune, set the tempo, start the music and define a ‘style’.

After that it’s up to the band to be disciplined and free, wild and restrained, leaders and followers, focused and wide-ranging, playing the music for the audience and accountable to the requirements of the band.

Jazz-band leaders know how to integrate the voices in the band without diminishing their uniqueness. The individuals in the band are expected to play solo and together. What a wonderful way to think about leadership and working with others to create a vital community or productive organization!”

I wonder what image we might select that would typify the unique style to which we might aspire? Or what image might select us that will fire up our imagination and stimulate a fresh sense of urgency about our work with others?

Source: Max De Pree, Leadership Jazz (New York: Dell Publishing, 1992), 8-9, 102-3.

Image: Jazz Band

One Experience of Church

The song writer and singer Larry Norman often used to share at his concerts this poem, written after his first time (and last time?) in church:

The first time that I went to church was on a Sunday morning
And from what I had heard I figured I would spend my whole time yawning.
At 18 years of age or so I thought I knew it all.
My hair was long, my jeans were tight,
I loved a knife or buckle fight,
Providing mates stood left and right,
And those we fought were small.

But my mates and me we’d never been so off to church we filed
We marched inside about three abreast, straight down the middle aisle.
Some of us were smoking cigs,
Ron was sucking candies,
We sat in what they called a pew,
Then looked around to see just who would come inside.
Let me tell you, everyone dressed like dandies.

And the row behind us was full of dames, you should have seen their looks
And one old dear she gave me a smile and offered me some books
Ta, we opened them, passed them round
You should have seen the words
All set out like poetry is and the words put us in a tizz
And Fred said, through his lemon fizz,
“These books is for the birds.”

“Ssshhhh, tut, tut, tut”, one old lady says, and the whole place buzzed.
And someone says, “Oh do hush up, you make more noise than us.”
So we looked around the building then,
It really was revealing.
Sam says, “Hey mate, get the score,
There ain’t no carpet on the floor.
See the rafters, they are so poor,
They can’t afford a ceiling.

Can’t afford electric either,
Using candles everywhere.
Hey, there’s coloured windows like my Grannies
At the bottom of the stairs.
“Shut your face,” I said to Sammy,
“I’m a listening, so is Ron.”
And from the left, without a noise,
Came a line of little boys,
And Sam says, in a puzzled voice,
“Cor! They’ve all got nighties on!”

Then came men in robes and banners.
“Look at that one, must be queer,
Do they dare condemn us
For the way we choose our gear?”
And then there is the minister,
Whose job it is to preach.
The minister, what’s his name,
Those real long prayers and what he preaches
Sounds just about the same.

I came to church to listen close,
I can’t dig the chap,
It’s like Fur-rr-ooh, furr-oo-oa
Shifting, sinking sands
And words like judgment or reprimand.
Well, me and my mates don’t quite understand
A language like that.

I am used to talking with my mates in words that have a meaning.
But that there church was just about the weirdest place I have been in.
If people like that kind of stuff
Well, let them, that’s okay
But let me tell you what I feel.
I feel we need someone who will deal
In words and thoughts and things that’s real.
I would listen to what he’d say.

My Mum once said, “Son, Jesus came to save young men like you.”
“But Jesus came so long ago, Mum, I don’t think it’s true.
But is there someone here who can explain to me, right now,
Is Christ a myth, a madman’s whim?
Well some say that Christ can cure our sin.
Is there a way to contact him or will I die not knowing how?

Listen, I only came to church to see if they could offer hope
But everything that happened there was way outside my scope
You know like afterwards, outside was a beggar on the grass.
He held his hand out to the people, they’d smile, then they’d pass.
I’m sure he reached for something real, something more than cash.
He begged them for a little cheer and they all pretended not to hear.
I get the message loud and clear.
Church is middle class.

Image: Inside one church building.

Starting Over

Not long ago one of the world’s great violinists, Isaac Stern, was playing a Mozart violin concerto with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Midway through the first movement Isaac Stern had a lapse of memory. He forgot the music.

Immediately he stopped playing, he went over to the conductor and he asked if he and the orchestra could prepare to begin the concerto again, and then turning to the audience this remarkable musician apologized for his mistake then started the music all over again.

A critic reviewing the incident said, “The performance began again from the beginning thus allowing the audience to hear Mozart un-maimed.” He said, “Although Isaac Stern could have vamped for a while until his memory got back on track, his was surely a more honest and more musically satisfying solution. A man of his ability could have fooled his audience and covered up his mistakes and yet his faithfulness to Mozart and to his music demanded of him a clear accounting of his error and a desire to start all over again.”

Theologians might call what Isaac Stern did ‘repentance’.

The violinist didn’t cover up. He acknowledged his mistake to those watching and listening. He started over again, played it the right way and gave to his audience the gift of his music.

Geoff Pound

Image: Isaac Stern