14 February 2009 – Valentine’s Day

Today is the wedding anniversary of my parents. With my father being deceased for 33 years, it’s tough to know that my mother has to be reminded of the date. Her memory continues to fluctuate between decades. I don’t see her quite as often as I did while on sabbatical. That now seems to have been treasured time to spend with her as she struggles to adjust to living in skilled nursing care. Her preference as she states it, “…is to be well enough to do for myself.” But the strength and the energy is no longer there. It’s a hard reality knowing that I am officially an elder in my family.

I hadn’t realized how getting back into the full schedule at the seminary would totally readjust the time expended on activities I’ve grown to like. Writing this blog is one of them. My newest time consumer has been ‘facebook’. As an introduction for some students in the Media and Technology intensive course in January, I’ve ‘acquired’ 109 ‘friends’ in the one month I have been in facebook, while I have not actively tried to acquire any.

In the past month I’ve celebrated the inauguration with friends who had all served in the US Virgin Islands. We noted that while we served there, in American territory, we were denied the opportunity to vote for any presidential candidate. We had good reason to celebrate this year. I’ve also received notes of joy from the LTI campus as those who studied there from a multitude of countries celebrate with the US, our new President Barack Obama.

I share with anyone who reads this an ongoing concern that continues. The students from Zimbabwe have dual concerns, one for the conditions in their homeland, and a second for their personal support of their educational endeavors. Even the South African students are expected to cover increasing amounts of the costs of their theological education. After 38 years the US Lutheran church has found that to be an increasingly difficult burden for those who wish to serve the Church and their Lord. As I have told the students, gifts that I can raise are being sent to my Bishop to be sent to be forwarded to the Bishops of the African churches for support of their students. Should you be able help, Thanks.

12/26/2008 – Christmas, Day 2

Mom came to my house for Dinner and she walked up the steps, slowly. Though still tied to her wheel chair, she had her second dinner at our house, since her move to Philadelphia. Dawn has come to the conclusion that the issue and concept of time travel started with someone living with dementia. We are never sure what decade is being reflected in her conversation, but eventually a name or and event will point to a date that is in the distant past.

My mother may be finding her own way of dealing with the fact that she is the elder in her family. She continually asks about the whereabouts of those who have left this life and in some ways have left her alone. She is the oldest of the two siblings who remain.

With the issue of travel a bit easier, Cousin Lisa continues to try to organize her father Melvin, in DC, to get up to Philadelphia to visit his sister.

12/22/2008 - Christmas Eve’s Eve’s Eve’s

I had difficulty finishing this entry in the blogosphere. On one side of my family I am officially an elder. A week ago Friday, we received notice from my cousin David that his mother Eleanor had passed away. The Stewart’s, this branch, is now down to the three male cousins. Though I’m the one in the middle age-wise, I am the only one with Children. How is it that I look in the mirror and I still see an older version of the newspaper boy, not an elder?

This is the fourth death in our family this year, though this may be the one that was expected. Eleanor had been in a nursing home for several years with Parkinson’s. When I visited her communication was difficult, but her eye spoke volumes. David, her younger son has also been diagnosed with the same ailment.

I did not expect my sabbatical to highlight my own growing older in such stark fashion.

12/16/2008 – Tuesday

CHOICES - Last Wednesday, I had unique choices, both related to South Africa. With season tickets to Temple Men’s Basketball, I also have the schedule for Temple Women’s Basketball. That evening the Women played the Women’s team from the University of Toledo. Now I’m not a hometown fan of the Rockets, but I met a former player Kristen Konkol, who is serving as an ELCA Mission Coordinator for the South African Young Adults in Global Mission Program, along with her husband Brian. She surprises many folks when she walks into a pickup game as the last picked.

I did though have another South African option. The Soweto Gospel Choir was in concert at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. It was my first trip to the new home of the Philadelphia Orchestra. [It was an obvious choice.] As Dawn and I waited for the concert to start, I noted how the choir was received at home after receiving their first Grammy, because earlier this week they had been nominated again. Dawn wondered out loud whether I could pronounce all the names of the Choir members. I started and stumbled on the ‘clicks’ in Xhosa, but I got through the list. The young man sitting next to me started chuckling. It seems he is Xhosa and a graduate of Penn and a former resident of Cape Town. He is ready to go home, but he has to convince his American ‘white’ wife that Cape Town is beautiful and cosmopolitan. We had an interesting conversation at the intermission.

The news today is about South African Choices. I may have typed about the schism that was beginning to appear in the African National Congress, but today it was reported that the Congress of the People, was organized today. The report here is that this new multi-ethnic party may have the political clout to be a major challenge to the ANC. I will view from afar.

12/2/2008 - Tuesday

Shedding and Shredding – Spending time at home has been a bit unusual for Bella Madonna. She’s the family member I have not mentioned yet in the blog. She is the quietest member of the family but she makes sure that she is noticed, most especially when either Dawn or I want to be busy at the keyboard. Her four paws seem never to work in harmony with one another. But for the one on sabbatical, I now command her attention. But shedding is not just about her fur, it is also the accumulated detritus that accumulates when one is working on a degree, a book, or is out of the country for six months.

The deadly combination of my completing a degree and then six months later heading to South Africa has given my home office the look of a stuffed storage closet. Since returning, I’ve been filling a recycling bin with old magazines and mailings and a waste basket of shredded paper each week. Most of my friends know that I’m a collector, that is, I am not a pack rat, I’m just an untrained archivist. So going through old papers and is like pushing the delete key on personal data on a computer. It is done reluctantly.

In going through the material I found mail from an old friend, “the original poor humble parish priest”, Rev. Dr. James Gunther. Dr. Gunther has a PhD from Harvard in Sociology, and his most recent mailings also note that he is a futurist.

What he does for me is send a package at unscheduled intervals with tidbits of his lived history as an African American Lutheran clergyman. Sometimes the materials are repetitive, but there is usually one nugget that opens up a line of history about which I may have heard, but did not live. Near the end of my sabbatical proposal, I said that I would work on my research in the history of African American Lutherans.

Along with two large packets of materials sent while on sabbatical there was one lone envelope. In it was a tribute to one of his colleagues, one of my colleagues, one of my elders. Just a month ago, some one asked me about Vernon Carter. I had not heard about Vernon for at least four years, but I assumed that he was still living. I was wrong, he had died in 2007. Rev. Vernon Carter was the long time pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church in Boston, MA. He was a pivotal figure in addressing racial inequality in the Boston Schools in the 60’s. [http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2007/08/25/rev_vernon_carter_at_88_held_vigil_to_fight_racial_inequality_in_schools/?page=1]

Vernon at five foot was a giant in persuasion. He could easily make this seminarian feel insignificant by his grasp of the way that social ministry was to be done in a society that did not readily embrace change. He was giant enough to make the Boston Globes annual review of notables who had passed away in the previous year. Granted it was on the seventh page, but he was recognized and remembered. [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2008/01/01/with_grit_or_grace_they_left_their_mark/]

Like his idol, Martin Luther King, Jr. he practiced non violence, but no matter where found inequality needed to be addressed. His advocacy in later years included assisting Ethiopian refugees and those, who like him shared black and Native American ancestry.

It’s not just shedding and shredding, but the rereading that moves one into sharing and much to my wife’s dismay, saving.

11/18/2008 – Tuesday

It’s been two weeks since we’ve elected a new president. The forty-fourth President is working hard on a transition of power and busy selecting staff to support his work in governing the country. Early on there were a significant number of instances of words of encouragement and “bi-partisanship” from those who supported John McCain. In the past few days, McCain and Obama have met for conversation. On the surface there is an aura of the highlights of the American political process. We peacefully move from one administration to another. The 2000 election was not a speedy transition, but it was peaceful.

One of my colleagues in South Africa Brian Konkol has written about his experience in South Africa and the comments and questions he has received post election. [SEE Konkol’s in Blogs I view] There is much to affirm about what Brian is experiencing, but I have two different views of the world. The first is the most current. I see that there is an unsatisfied populace who sense that the election was not only the loss of political control, but they have a sense of personal and social control that is also lost. Why is it that the sale of guns has sky rocketed in the US? The verbal comments have focused on a belief that Obama will take away the right to bear arms. If the news reports are correct, the number of assault rifles that have been purchased “for hunting” puts every deer in North America in deep jeopardy.

The rush to blame Obama for our current economic recession and economic crisis is headlined by Rush Limbaugh, who didn’t wait 24 hours to continue the critique of the president-elect [see: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-onthemedia9-2008nov09,0,4216330.story] Even a Director of a nonpolitical, nonpartisan foundation found that even the casual mention of a “sense of new beginnings” regardless of one’s personal politics received negative responses from many of his donors. [see: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15509.html] In addition there have been reports that there are more specifically documented threats to the president-elect than have ever been reported by those agencies charged with his security. One wonders why the perceived loss of political power brings out some of the worse in humanity.

If you read Brian’s last posting, it notes that there seems to be an openness toward political discussion in his experience in South Africa. My second comment is a cumulative reflection of my six trips to Southern Africa. I must admit that my five months early in 2008 was much different than any previous visit to South Africa. I distinctly remember being told in 1992 not to wear any ANC paraphernalia when we traveled from Johannesburg to Durban. We had physically relocated from African National Congress [ANC] territory to Inkatha Freedom Party [IFP]. In 1996, while on the Umphumulu Seminary Campus, which was located in Natal Province, the political discussions for guarded since the majority population in the area was related to IFP. This year the open discussions of politics was unexpected by welcome. In fourteen years South Africa seems to have captured some essence of freedom of discussion that we have yet to capture here in the US.

Progress is interesting, but so is fear. Some fear the loss of power; I fear for the safety of our president-elect. Perhaps we can all learn from this challenging time.

11/4/2008 – Tuesday – ELECTION DAY

Almost every day I was in South Africa, someone asked me about the Presidential politics of the US. Tonight there is a party in Grant Park in Chicago. Two days ago I watched the park personnel put up the tent and fences for a celebration. Tonight in Philadelphia, I watch the citizens of the United States elect a 44^th President of African Descent. My sons, my wife, my mother have voted and witnessed an election that we did not think would happen in our lifetime.

As we watch Senator John McCain concede, we reflect on the fact that 40 years ago Grant Park was the scene of another youth movement in the political process that did not end in celebration. How times have changed. Tonight we not only dream of hope, but we see the foundation laid in HOPE. Upon this foundation, we will build change for country that is truly in need of change. Yes we can. YES, WE CAN.