Archive - Home RSS Feed

Sweet Tea

May 9, 2011 in Home with 0 Comments

Absolute Zero is a Russian mythical creature that, after breathing on any given substance, will cause all molecular activity to cease and – a millisecond later – disappear.

Russian Grandmothers in Syktyvkar

 Really!

OK, I may have some of the facts turned around but I remember Mr. Sawyer, my favorite high school teacher, instructing us future air conditioning mechanical geniuses on the theory of absolute zero, somewhere south of -459 F.

Which is like – really cold.

And when things are that cold, material starts to act differently, like a teenager learning to drive.

The cold stuff can be dangerous also. I saw it on a recent episode of NCIS where this guy dies after ingesting liquid nitrogen – or something like that.

For the record, liquid nitrogen boils at -320 degrees F, which is still a long was from the mythical absolute zero.

When I went to Russia on a mission trip a few years ago the “leaders” thought it was a good idea to venture north – close to the Arctic Circle. Apparently there were people who lived there despite the obvious warning God gave in the form of absolute zero weather to settle elsewhere – like Florida or Jamaica.

But no. They came – eastward across northern Europe – which I am sure wasn’t that much better. These folks settled in what is now called the Komi Republic. They speak Komi and Russian; the two languages having little in common with each other.

We settled into dormitory-like facilities in Syktyvkar, the capital of Komi and home to a university full of Russian and Komi girls studying foreign languages. There was one Princess in the whole lot. Could things be any better?

But that is another story.

Being from South Alabama, the snow was exotic.

For a little while.

What I wanted at that moment was iced tea – sweet tea.

I plundered through the communal kitchen and found a gallon sized glass jar. (Being in Russia I am sure they didn’t use ENglish measurements, but it was close enough to a gallon). I boiled water and drowned some Lipton tea bags that I had brought (for emergency purposes). I needed a cool place to complete the whole sweet tea cycle. The refrigerator in the kitchen was either too small or too crowded to house my newly created sweet tea machine. I topped off the jar with two cups of sugar and was ready for a delightful glass of Southern sweet tea in Northern Russia. Yes, that would make it feel like home.

There was one window in the room; a double window. You open one window and there’s another window to open, if you dare. the only slight problem was that your skin would freeze and fall off your face when you smacked it on the window framing on your quick retreat.

But don’t get ahead of me.

The concept of having two windows – that is – double windows that actually opened did not register in my warm-weathered brain. (I left Mobile, Alabama a few days earlier where the temperature was 65 degrees F). Not at any time did I stop and think, “Why Paul would the Russians have double windows near the north pole?”

Maybe it was to protect against charging polar bears? If one did wander by, at least he would have some sweet tea.

Right!

The jar of delicious sweet tea sat on the outer window ledge for less than an hour waiting for me to bring her in from the cold and enjoy sweetness.

Ignoring the absolute zero (I apparently love saying “absolute zero”) just inches from my double window turned out to be a tactical error. Obeying the laws of science (which happens in Russia too – who knew), the glass jar failed to adequately contain the quickly expanding tea, water, and sugar mixture. When I retrieved the jar, it – surprisingly – had a beautiful crinkly cellophane pattern that bore the likeness of a happy Vladimir Lenin.

With the leader of communist Russia smiling at me, I determined that then would be a good time to start learning to love hot tea.

 

Ramblings about bread and wine

April 26, 2011 in Home with 0 Comments

I am sitting on a church bench on a Sunday morning. Normally, I’d be speaking at a different little church, but a dying Dodge Caravan has interfered with my travel plans. Anyway, I am sitting on a bench waiting to “take” the Lord’s Supper.

Bread and Wine
It is something I’ve done since I was 13. Before I was baptized, eating the cracker and drinking the grape juice was strictly forbidden. I don’t know why.
Well, actually I do know. I call it practical transubstantiation.
A little while after we married, my bride and I moved into a parsonage planted adjacent to the church building in a small town. After services one Sunday, we both watched as a lady smacked around her small son who had gotten into the leftovers of the Lord’s Supper. He cried pitifully, not understanding just why this was a bad thing.
The sad thing was that those stale crackers and miniscule amounts of grape juice were minutes away from being thrown away.
My extremely friendly Catholic friend at work considers the bread and wine (like all Catholics) to be the literal blood and body of Jesus. That’s Transubstantiation. I had not realized that some in my little protestant group practiced this view of the Lord’s Supper.
At least that’s the only rationale I can think of for beating your kid for eating left over crackers and Welches grape juice; if you really believed that was Jesus’ blood and flesh…
I am wondering how, after all these years, that little boy ever decided to love Jesus or to appreciate remembering him through eating a little bread and wine with other believers.
One of the things that strikes me today – as it has for many years – is why the insistence on the morbid funeral-like atmosphere surrounding the Lord’s Supper?
Are we remembering the dead or living?
My wife tells me that in Russia – her native land – that during Easter people will visit gravesites (very much like “Dedication Sunday” in the American South) and have meals and kids will run around – stuff like that.
And then a most unusual thing will happen: strangers will approach each other and say (in Russian of course) that Jesus is risen? The retort is always, “Indeed, He is Risen!”
Maybe that’s not so strange from Christians. But to receive that answer back from Atheists is a little strange – but I like it. Of course, it may have been out of respect for the “atheist” to answer that way; cultural norms are hard to break.
I believe that Jesus rose and is very much alive and I don’t like the way we treat the Lord’s supper.
Regardless, when I remember my dad’s life I don’t remember the funeral. When snippets of his life that intersected mine play through my mind like a YouTube video clip, I see him alive and interacting with me or someone else.
It was raining when we got back to the house after the funeral. And Mobile Gas had disconnected our service for non-payment while we were all at the gravesite (which was a nice touch with the rain and funeral and all). But I only remember these things that because of this article.
But here are a few things I do remember when I think about him:
He died a few days from my sister’s birthday in 1983.
I remember going with him to a used-car parts place in Plateau, Alabama – where you rummage through an ocean of automobile carcasses and find the one most like yours and see if the part you are looking for is still there, or has been harvested by someone – like that movie Coma. Only, these automobiles aren’t on life support – they are dead!
I watch him sweat and maneuver under the car carcass and find the part he needed. He then removed it from the donor car and walked to the guy up front to pay. I don’t know why, but I didn’t grasp the idea. I didn’t know why we had to pay when my dad had done all the work of finding and removing the part. He patiently tried to explain that the car belonged to the owner of the salvage place and why shouldn’t we pay? It belonged to the other guy and now it belonged to us – we paid for it. But all I could see was the energy exerted by my dad to get the thing.
Thankfully, I later understood, otherwise a career in burglary and petty theft might have awaited me. But I was never any good at political speeches.
I also remember lots of drinking and shouting and fighting. Once we were driving in Mobile and he half-heartedly was talking about his drinking days and said, “You probably don’t remember that part son.” Well, yes I did. How could I not? I got mad and slammed the car door when I got out to pump some gas. I was mad that he would even try to simply wish that I hadn’t remembered the years he wasted drinking and hurting himself and his family.
But I remembered and later learned to forgive.
That took way too much time.
I remember that he quit drinking, and that was good.
I remember that he grew a beard after surgery at the VA Hospital in Biloxi and we all came in to see him. He looked strange with a beard.
And I remember the day an ambulance pulled into our driveway and put him on a gurney and took him to Suburban Hospital in Satsuma. I thought that this would be like all the other times before; he would just go in and they’ll fix him up a bit and he’ll be back home.
But he didn’t come back home.
I remember the Christmas that he bought me a pretty good box of tools and sat on the sofa with my mom staring at me. He said that I was a “pretty good mechanic.”
I had never been so happy to be called “a pretty good mechanic” although some would later doubt that.
I was sad the day he died and sadder the day of the funeral.
But my memory of my dad is always reflective if his life, not of his death.
And he is not living.
But Jesus is. And that brings me back to my original complaint.
I don’t want to sit in introspective solitude and be as quiet as a church mouse as the clanking of metal plates with crackers and grape juice echo in the auditorium.
I want to remember that he lives and maybe talk about what he did when he was here and what he is doing now.
When I sit with my sisters and brother (which is rare) we sometimes might talk about some memory involving my dad. I don’t think about the funeral because it sad. And why sit around being sad when you can rejoice that you have a memory – a chapter of his and your own story.
I want to be full of joy at the memory of Jesus at communion.
A writer published a book a few years ago entitled, Come to the table. He addresses this concept that I’ve tried to in artfully describe here. He tries to get people to see that the Lord’s Supper as a quiet and individualistic taking of wine and bread is counter to the joy filled communal meal in early Christianity. He calls on a revision of the Lord Supper based on biblical values.
I agree.

My Old Auburn Home

April 5, 2011 in Home with 0 Comments

I made it home from Arkansas late last night following the interview at Harding. Nice folks there – all gracious and informative about the university. They really didn’t have to sell me about their cause – I am the product of two Christian universities – well, such as I am that is. Maybe I’m not the poster-person they seek, but I am hopeful.


160.5 Bragg Ave
My Auburn Home

I spent the entire time driving back listening to Donald Miller’s book, “Blue like Jazz” on my iphone It was a good ride – opened my ears to lots of stuff so far outside all of my experiences. He lives in Portland. I was there once, with the Army. I didn’t venture far from the hotel as it (surprisingly) rained most of the time. Looking forward to reading (or listening) to more stuff from Mr. Miller.
The photo above is of a little shack where I stayed while at Auburn University while stumbling through graduate school; and finally leaving to join the Air Force – a career move that lacked the whole “thinking-it-through-first” ingredient. It was 160 1/2 Bragg Street because the main house was 160 and the little shack only counted for one-half of an address. I rented it from a sweet woman named Mr. Guthrie. Good times.