The Church Service

I went to church not long ago. I’m not a regular attendee, nor am I am member of the church that I attend when I go. My wife is a member, and she now sings in the choir and is chair of the church finance committee. My involvement is mostly musical. I perform when they put on a cantata at Easter and Christmas, my wife and I play in the hand bell choir, and I attend a service a few times a year. For the Mothers Day lunch, I made a sour cream apple pie to be served to the mothers. They had a contest for the best dish. I didn’t win. That’s the extent of my involvement with organized religion.

This particular Sunday was the last for the minister who had been there for a few years. He’s a nice guy with a good heart. He’s done well at this church, and even though I’m not a member of the church, I’ll miss him, and I think the community will be poorer for his having left. Sitting there in that church full of nice, caring people that morning brought to mind the utter disdain and contempt in which these good people are held by many on America’s political Left.

I am continually amazed at the high level of hate and vitriol contained in the criticism of “the church” and of Christians by secularists and such. To listen to and read the comments of these people you’d think that everyone who goes to church and/or believes in God is a Bible-thumping, proselytizing, hypocritical creep. But that is not my experience with churchgoers, and I say that as someone who does not regularly go to church.

The people that I know who go to church are almost to a person 180 degrees opposite from the picture painted of them by their critics. They are good people who have a genuine concern for others and do good works. Maybe they aren’t perfect. Maybe they slip once in a while. But who doesn’t?

The church itself is a small community. It has its own needs, its own problems, and its own government. It does good things, not only for its members and attendees, but also in the community.

I don’t think the most ardent anti-religion, anti-church critic—if they could be objective—could remain as coldly critical of churches and churchgoers if they ever got close enough to see what goes on in most of America’s churches. But you get the feeling that the critics think more of murderers, rapists and pedophiles than they do of religious folk, especially Christians. Perhaps it’s just an extension of the pitifully abysmal level of political debate today, where cogent arguments have been replaced with name calling and demonizing those on the other side.

But I think it is fear that drives these folks, and it’s not the fear that Christians will take over the country and impose their beliefs on an unwilling populace. It’s the fear that hides deep within the soul that tells them that a meaningful life is not attained by hedonism, pleasure seeking, self-indulgence and self-gratification. The inner conflict that exists—between what they want to do and what they know (deep inside) is the right thing to do—forces them to focus their frustration on people who, more or less, do what those secularist hedonists themselves don’t want to do.

Two Deaths This Week

Well, it’s happened again. I don't like being morbid, but two people I know, near my own age, have died within a few days of each other. It sure does make one think.

One of them, Con Ray Dotson, was just a year younger than I am. We were in the high school band together, he played trombone, I played trumpet. I haven’t had any contact with Con Ray for a long, long time. It may have been as long as since I graduated in 1963. So I haven’t been close to him. He had moved to a town an hour or so away from here. His obit was in the local paper. Fifty-nine years old: far too young.

The second was a guy who was 55. His name was Dickie Sowers. I didn’t go to school with Dickie, but I knew him. He ran a local business for several years. He was, like Con Ray, a good guy. Dickie’s sister, Susan, was a schoolmate and, more recently, lived across the street from me until we moved in 2001. Dickie had a stroke when he was 49. He never really recovered. He died of a heart attack four days shy of his 56th birthday.

My wife and I went to the visitation tonight. I met his wife and two teenage children for the first time. What a blow to them.

Personally, I’ve set 120 as my goal. I’ve got conflicting genetic information on that score. My dad and his older brother died at about the same age: 67. Their father died about that same age. However, my great grandfather lived to 92, and his other son, my great uncle, made it to 88. My great aunt was well into her 80s when she passed. My Dad’s younger brothers are now nearly 85 and (the twins) nearly 80, and doing fine.

My grandmother, however, is the champion. She lived to 106 years. Marcie claimed that she lived so long by staying away from doctors. She told the doctors that, too, when she absolutely had to see one. She had no health problems, aside from the occasional cold and five babies, until she was 86, when she had her gall bladder removed. After that, a fall resulted in surgery on her shoulder. That’s it. In 106 years she had two health problems (not counting her five sons) requiring serious attention.

So, who knows what will happen to me, and when? It really doesn’t make any sense to dwell on that. It does make sense to take care of yourself, if you can discern from the conflicting medical advice floating around these days exactly what really makes some difference in your health.

To all of you, I say: “Good health; much happiness; and to live as long as you want to.”

It was a birthday trip

My wife, Diane, and I were headed south to a concert in Charlotte, NC on last weekend, and we were going to stay at my cousin’s condo. We’ve stayed with her before, and we’ve stayed at her place when she was elsewhere, so we weren’t going to a strange place.

When we arrived at Karen’s place, we loaded ourselves down with the luggage so we wouldn’t have to make the three-flight trek more than once. When we got to the door, Diane, who had the lighter load and the free hand, unlocked the handle lock and then the deadbolt. As we struggled to get through the door with our loads, we heard a sound that immediately sent a chill down our spines: It was the sound of the alarm system telling us that we had less than 60 seconds to enter the code to turn it off before the thing screamed “break-in.”

Since we had stayed there before, we had been given that code. But that was months ago, and Karen didn’t remind me that this was something we needed to worry about. In fact, she had been there earlier in the day, and had left with a couple of her buddies for a weekend trip of her own only a couple of hours earlier, and wasn’t supposed to arm the alarm.

Well, you guessed it: not long after that initial recognition, the alarm began to sound. It was loud. It could be heard plainly for quite a distance. It was also alerting the security company that one of their customers’ homes was being broken into.

I tried every trick I could think of to turn the damned thing off. Nothing worked. The security company called and my wife answered the phone. I could hear Diane shouting over the alarm from the next room. They asked her name, which, of course, she gave them, and they asked if she had a password, which, of course, she didn’t.

A few minutes later the security company called again, and this time I answered, still having to shout to be heard. They asked my name. I gave them that. No, I didn’t have a password. At this point, the security officer asked some other questions: Am I the property owner? No. Where was the property owner? She’s visiting with friends in South Carolina. Have I tried to contact her? Yes, but I got her cell phone voice mail. We have even made some calls to find the phone number of the people she was visiting, and they didn’t answer, either.

At this point, I felt the security people understood the situation, but were bound by their duty to follow a procedure. I was told that the Davidson Police Department had been notified. Visions of handcuffs, mug shots and fingerprinting raced through my mind. What a birthday this was going to be!

Not long after the second call, a Davidson Police officer knocked on the door. She was very polite and efficient, and understood the situation. She, of course, asked for some identification, and an explanation, but she didn’t handcuff me, or take me to jail. She did say that the alarm on most security systems would stop after a while.

One more call from the security people: Name? Password? By this time, the alarm had stopped.

Diane and I were very (I thought) thoughtful about this situation. We made calls to find out how to reach the people hosting Karen. We asked some other friends who have a place nearby which boat company Karen’s son works for, and called him. He was able to give us the code to shut off the alarm system, when it started again, and he had a good guess at the password. When Diane left to go find some breakfast for the weekend, I closed the door to the deck, and the alarm went off again. This time, I had the code.

Finally, Karen, who had been enjoying a beautiful afternoon on the lake with her friends, got our SOS, and called. I thanked her for her hospitality.