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The call came on a Sunday after church just as we were sitting down to lunch. "Eric's vital signs are dropping. We think this may be it. You'd better come." It was the Palliative Care Nurse, one of the dozens of hospital and hospice staff people who supported Eric and his family over the five years he lived with bone cancer. She met me as I came in the door of the hospice where Eric had lived for five months -- a much longer stay than most of their patients who usually died within weeks. This 25-year-old young man who loved sports and every kind of video game was not going quietly into the dark night. The "Caucasian Sensation," as Eric called himself, had a voracious appetite for life.

The hospice cook, who loved Eric and was always coming to his room to give him hugs and make sure he was getting everything he wanted to eat, would tell later at his funeral how she would pile scoop after scoop on his butterscotch sundaes only to hear him say, "More, more." She finally gave up, she said, and gave him the pail and the scoop so he could take as much ice cream as he wanted. She was just one of the many friends Eric made along the way over those five years. Other cancer patients and their families, staff from the hospital where he was treated before coming to the hospice, along with friends from high school, college, and work, all paraded in and out of Eric's room. The hospice custodian and the chaplain stopped in regularly to chat and play video games. The nurses, aides, physicians, and social workers, many of who also came to his funeral, all took him into their hearts. None of them had ever seen so much activity in the room of someone who was supposed to be dying.

Eric was not ready to let go of this world. So, as I turned to walk down the familiar hallway toward his room that Sunday, I should not have been surprised to hear Laurie, the Palliative Care Nurse say, "Sorry, false alarm; Eric is better. And, he is not in his room. He is down here in the cafeteria." This had happened several times before, when Eric had come very close to death only to rally and call for more ice cream. On one of those occasions, he told me about two angels who came to him and told him that he could go with them if he wished. They also made it clear that it was up to him. He asked for and received more time.

I turned the other direction and walked with Laurie around the corner, and sure enough, there was Eric, propped up in a chair, eating ice cream, surrounded by his family.

As heartening as this sight was, the news was not all good. Eric was in great pain. Despite the efforts of a crack palliative team and the best pain management medicines available, his pain levels were extremely high. When they asked him to gauge his pain on a scale of one to ten, it was ten plus, unbearable. Eric said he was ready to enter a medically induced sleep. A decision was made to increase the dosage as much as possible.

I led them all in prayer, consulted with the chaplain, and then left to keep a family commitment. I came back at about 6:30, expecting Eric to be asleep. The room was buzzing with over a dozen people, not counting the two nurses, who were talking to Eric as they adjusted his intravenous lines. Though he had received enough painkillers to knock out a horse, Eric was wide-awake. He had the Tour de France on the television screen with the volume turned down low. I kept vigil with them for about four hours, taking it all in as people took turns talking to Eric, holding his hand, mopping his forehead, talking, laughing, moving in and out of the room to get snacks and soda, and watching the best cyclists in the world pedal steadily up the daunting slopes of the French Alps.

I would recall this scene in my sermon as I stood in front of Eric's casket in our church sanctuary, exactly four weeks later, on a warm Sunday afternoon in August, comparing our long vigil with Eric to the plight of the disciples that night they were in the boat "battered by the waves." It was chaotic and wonderful, a strange mix of death and life like I had never seen before, and Jesus was there with us, as he always is, walking toward us over the storm.1

A Ghostly Tale
Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time, the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."
-- Matthew 14:22-27

Matthew passed on a story about a perilous time to people who were living in perilous times. Jesus had just received word of the beheading of John the Baptist. If there had ever been any question about him being in danger of being killed by the religious or political authorities, there was none now. Jesus went up into the mountains to grieve and to prepare himself for what was certain to come. It must have been like this for Martin Luther King Jr., who lived every day of his ministry knowing he could be killed at any moment. Robert Kennedy surely knew risk like this when he decided to run for president just five years after his brother was assassinated in Dallas.

There was a night during my own ministry in Montello, Wisconsin, in the early 1980s, when the sheriff sat next to me at a school board meeting. I had taken a public stand against a paramilitary group called the Posse Commitatus who were calling for the banning of certain books from the school library and the firing of teachers they accused of advocating subversive ideas. The sheriff told me later that he thought I might be in danger because they had received a tip from an undercover agent to expect violence at the meeting. I wasn't frightened at the time, but later that night I went to bed shaking at the thought of what might have happened. The world would never look the same to me again. Danger brings everything into focus. It is easier to see what must be done, what cannot be postponed because there might not be another day.

While Jesus was praying on the mountain the disciples were in a boat being tossed by waves. The wind was against them, Matthew writes. Later Jesus would send a Pentecost wind to blow in their favor, but in this moment an unfavorable wind threatened to destroy them. Matthew doesn't say, but they must have been frightened to death. I would have been if I had been in a boat battered by waves, and if my beloved rabbi was about to go up against powers that would surely kill him and everyone around him. I would have thought twice about sticking around, just as I have often thought twice about getting out of the church before it kills me, but that is another story. The dangers I have known in my life, including my little run-in with the Posse, pale beside those of the disciples, who had seen bodies hanging on crosses.

So there they were, clinging to the sides of a boat that might be washed under at any second, and they looked out and saw a figure coming toward them over the waves. The storytellers who told this story in the house churches of Matthew's day must have loved telling this part. I love to tell it to the children in my best horror-inspiring voice. Matthew wrote that they were terrified, thinking they were seeing a ghost. They were more afraid of what was coming at them over the waves than the possibility of drowning in the deep, dark waters. Choose your terror. Which one would you rather face? I would take the ghost over the sea, but then I wasn't there and I don't much like boats.

Some of these guys were seasoned fishermen. They had been through all kinds of storms and survived. But they didn't know what a ghost might do and they didn't have the luxury of being able to call "Ghost Busters." They were in "deep doo-doo" as we might say, and probably so scared that they forgot these familiar words of the psalmist, which surely were in Matthew's mind as he recorded this ghostly tale.

Some went down to the sea in ships doing business on the mighty waters; they saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their calamity; they reeled and staggered like drunkards, and were at their wits' end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. And they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.
-- Psalm 107:23-30

How often our courage melts away in calamity. How easy it is to forget that the one who raises the stormy wind and lifts up the waves can also make the storm be still and hush the waves.

As I was pondering what to write in this chapter this morning, I came across a real-life horror story in our daily newspaper. A man who owns a tree service was pulled into an industrial-size wood chipper in a community near where we used to live. He kicked at a small limb that was stuck and the machinery grabbed him and pulled him into the steel grinders. The homeowner who had hired the tree service called out in terror but could not make himself heard over the noise of the machine. The man's nephew and four other employees did hear his cry for help and pushed down on the safety bar that was supposed to stop the machine, but couldn't get it to engage. The young father of two daughters, and another on the way, was pulled all the way through the chipper. It was all over in twenty seconds. The witnesses wept when they recounted what happened as the cameras rolled for the evening news.2

If I ever tell this story in a sermon I will not describe it so graphically. One or two sentences will make the point. There is so much suffering in our world. I could go on about suicide bombers and our own smart bombs that are not so smart that they can avoid blowing up innocent babies and their families, but I don't need to. We have all been in boats so battered by waves that we forget who and whose we are.

"I'm just trying to keep my head above water." This is what people used to say when times were tough in the midwest farm country where I grew up in the 1950s and '60s, and times were always tough. Keeping your head above water was about the best you could do most years. This is what the disciples were doing in the boat that night as a fierce storm raged all around and the wind blew them further and further from shore.

M. Scott Peck begins his first best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled, with three little words: "Life is difficult." Peck quotes Buddha, who taught, "The first of the 'Four Noble Truths' is 'Life is suffering.' "3 We all know this but we go around hoping it might not be true for us, that we might somehow escape the pain we see and hear all around us. And often we can, for a while, especially those of us who live lives insulated by money and power in the Western world. Our supermarkets piled high with highly nutritious and fresh, heart-healthy foods; our gleaming hospitals and health clubs; and our investments, insurance policies, and generous pension plans give us "golden parachutes" unknown to the millions who are hungry, diseased, and living in squalor in countries whose natural resources we have exploited. Yet the poor often face tragedy and hardship with more faith and equanimity than those of us who can afford to drive to church on Sunday.

But sooner or later, cancer or heart disease, the untimely auto crash or the ghastly wood chipper gets all of us, rich and poor alike. There is a poignant death scene in the novel, Broken Trail, which was also made into a full-length movie with Robert Duvall in the lead role of Print Ritter. Print and his wranglers are moving a herd of 500 horses from Oregon to market several hundred miles east over rough trails. They come upon five young Chinese girls who have been sold into slavery. Print and his crew rescue them from their evil owners and take them along on the trail. They become very fond of the girls, and the beautiful young immigrants, in turn, come to love their rescuers. Sadly, one of the girls commits suicide by hurling herself from the wagon into the galloping herd after she is raped by cowboys in town. They bury her body along the trail and after the grave has been filled with the fresh dug earth, Print takes off his hat and says:

We're all travelers in this world: from the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth 'til death, we travel between the eternities.4

Life is hard. The psalmist got it right. We live many of our days with hearts "bowed down" and "no one to help." Our courage melts away in calamity and, like the disciples, we find ourselves calling out in fear (Psalm 107:12, 26b).

Jesus hears their cry, Matthew writes, and immediately identifies himself. "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." He identifies himself with "I Am." It is God walking above the storm, God in Jesus, or Jesus who is God, whichever it is. Fine theological points are of little concern when we are scared to death. Knowing God is with us is what matters, if only we can be sure. The knowing part is not so easy.

In her book, When In Doubt Sing: Prayer In Daily Life, Jane Redmont tells about a woman named Barbara who entered the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program and found she could not connect in any way with what the AA folks call their "higher power." Her sponsor told her she must pray: "You will pray in the morning and at night. Say anything you want, use prayers you know or your own words, I don't care. But you have to pray." Barbara complained that she didn't believe in God so it would be dishonest for her to pray. Her sponsor replied, "Who cares what you think? Just do it." Barbara agreed, saying, "... I'll just pray to my office wall." Each day she spoke her words to the wall, expecting nothing would come of her mandatory ritual. Then one day, the recovering woman discovered, as she prayed to her office wall, that she was not talking to herself.

I just knew somebody was there. And that it was the power who had been behind saving my life, that had motivated the work of those who saved me, and whose spirit I felt in the rooms of AA. I started crying. I was so grateful. I had no idea that I was worth saving.5

Barbara may not have known she was worth saving, but like the disciples she had cried out in fear, hoping someone might hear, and someone did. Jesus called out to the disciples in their battered boat, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid" (Matthew 14:27b).

No Ifs Ands Or Buts ...
Peter answered, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat the wind ceased. And those on the boat worshiped him, "Truly you are the Son of God."
-- Matthew 14:28-33

Peter's faith, like that of all of us would-be followers of Jesus, seems to be a little iffy at times. This incident in the battered boat foreshadows the denials that are to come on the night that he and Judas both betray Jesus (Matthew 26:69-70). Peter says, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come...." Peter, who represents all of the disciples, and all of us would-be disciples in the church, still has doubts about who Jesus is, especially in those times when he finds himself in rough seas. Who doesn't? Who of us can say our faith has never wavered. Matthew gives us a story in which we can see ourselves for who we are: flawed human beings who, in moments of weakness, are gripped by fear and doubtful about the identity of the voice that calls out to us over the storm. We are all in the same boat with Peter and the other disciples.

Peter expresses doubt, though he has just heard the familiar voice of his beloved rabbi calling out like God called out to Moses from the burning bush, "It is I," "I Am." Matthew is very clear whom Peter is being iffy about. Peter's response to Jesus is a direct quote of the words the devil spoke to Jesus when he is tempted in the wilderness: "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread" (Matthew 4:3b). This is the issue Matthew raises throughout his gospel. Those of us in the boat have a decision to make. Are we with God or with the evil one? This decision is all the more difficult when we are being tossed around by the storms of life.

Matthew is writing to a church that has been tossed about by a series of calamitous events. Many in the early church, in the last third of the first century, had seen and survived many killer storms: the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, the persecutions of zealous Pharisees who were trying to maintain the purity of Judaism, and the persecutions of Roman emperors when a political scapegoat was needed, as when Nero blamed Christians for the burning of Rome. Matthew is writing to strengthen the faith of believers in the church who are tempted to doubt during trying times, something the church has needed in every age.

Hundreds of Christians were attacked by local police and watched in horror as their half-finished church building was torn down and smashed one sunny afternoon in China in the summer of 2006. Simon Elegant tells what happened to this church of 5,000 parishioners in a suburb of Hangzhou, a lovely city by a lake a little over 100 miles southwest of Shanghai, in an article for Time magazine. Some church members were helping the construction crew and others were sitting on chairs on the perimeter of the construction site singing hymns.

... at about 2:30 p.m., thousands of uniformed police and plainclothes security officers ... bludgeoned people indiscriminately with nightsticks. "They were picking up women -- some of them old ladies -- by their hair and swinging them around like dolls, then letting them crash to the ground," says a man who watched the clash from across the street.

The government claimed later that the Christians had attacked the police officers, who were only doing their duty, lawfully tearing down an illegal church. But one member of the church showed the Time reporter receipts from the hospital where he was treated for broken ribs, along with many others from the church who suffered similar wounds. "They treated us like dead dogs," he said. "Some of them scoffed at us as we lay there, saying, 'Where is your God now? Why can't he help you? If you want to go to heaven, we'll help you get there right now.' "6

The author of the Time magazine article doesn't say how this frightening episode affected the faith of the church members who were assaulted, or that of others in the church. But who could blame them if they had called out like Peter, "If you are there, Lord, give us some sign of your presence."

My Wisconsin United Methodist colleague, Nancy Bauer-King, wrote an article for our local newspaper celebrating the fifty years that women have been allowed ordination in our United Methodist denomination, and in support of an area Roman Catholic woman who was recently ordained to the priesthood in an unsanctioned ceremony. Nancy recalled how, at age thirteen in 1953, she was told she could "... serve Jesus by being a missionary or a minister's wife but not a minister. Three years later," Nancy wrote, "the men in authority in my denomination granted full ordination to women...." Wisconsin had a woman bishop and Nancy knew several clergywomen by the time she got around to going to seminary 25 years later. But the church boat was still being rocked by waves of prejudice when she was appointed to her first charge in 1985.

I foolishly thought the battle -- at least in the United Methodist Church -- had been won. Ha! My first meeting with a pastor/parish relations committee included a verbal attack by a very angry woman citing scripture. People left the church. Two men from the small town stopped because they "wanted to see what a lady minister looked like." I quickly got used to the stares, questioning criticism, and warnings that I was going to hell (I was told the souls of the people I served were in peril, too). Why on earth would anyone -- male or female -- put themselves in the position of being subjected to such slings and arrows.7

It is not easy to keep faith when your every move is scrutinized and criticized, and your right to be who you are is attacked at every turn in a place where everyone is supposed to be safe. Nancy points out that what is now a little less true for clergywomen in most, if not all, United Methodist churches, is not yet true for gay and lesbian men and women who are denied ordination in the United Methodist church.

Any institution can continue to stick with its rules and deny access to holy things, but no institution or individual can eliminate the hunger folks have within for sacred presence. No doctrine can stifle questions of meaning. No institutional rule can erase one's imagination. No threat of excommunication can prevent all creative actions -- like Vandenberg (the woman who was illegally ordained) getting into a boat in an "unsanctioned" ceremony.8

I don't know if Nancy's faith ever wavered in all the years she has served our beloved United Methodist church. We are still a long way from the perfection John Wesley encouraged his followers to strive for. I know my faith has certainly been tried, as over and over again I have seen dear friends excluded from their rightful places in the church. It breaks my heart. In my beloved church, whose national advertising slogan is, "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors," a majority of hearts remain closed to the movement of the Spirit in the lives of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. There have been times that I have been tempted to call out with Peter, "If you are there, Lord, give us some sign of your presence."

After saving Peter, Jesus says to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" Does he say it sharply, with indignation, or tenderly, like a father comforting a frightened child? In chapter 9, Matthew had written about the way Jesus looked upon the masses of people who came to him seeking healing. "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). Is this the tone in which the gospel writer expects this question of Jesus to Peter to be read to the little huddles of first-century Christians, gathered in secret in homes and caves, fearful for their lives, lest anyone discover who it is they serve?

We don't know. Jesus speaks both sharply and tenderly to his followers in Matthew's gospel. Perhaps the author would leave the choice of inflection to the reader who knows the circumstances of his or her local church.

We do know that the disciples are beginning to understand who Jesus is. In an earlier, slightly different version of this story in chapter 8, Jesus is in the boat with the disciples when the storm comes up. He is asleep, undisturbed by the fierce winds that are about to swamp the boat. The disciples wake him, begging to be saved. Jesus asks them, "Why are you afraid, you of little faith?" Then he calms the storm and the disciples say in amazement, "What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?" (Matthew 8:23-27). The disciples are dazzled by his power, but they don't recognize the divine in him.

But at the conclusion of this second account in chapter 14, Jesus comes walking to them on the water, and they get it. They finally have absolute clarity about who he is. As Jesus helps Peter into the boat "... the wind ceased," and "... those in the boat worshiped him saying, 'Truly you are the Son of God.' " This is how Matthew hoped and prayed everyone who heard his gospel would respond.


Get Out Of The Boat
Pamela J. Tinnin
When my father retired from the Navy, we moved to a small fishing and logging town on the southern Oregon coast. The coastline along that part of the state is as beautiful as any I've seen. It is also extremely dangerous -- the shore crops away sharply and the water is broken by rocky outcroppings, some clearly visible while others lie hidden beneath the waves.

Every few years a fishing boat was lost in the storms that swept in off the Pacific, until finally the US Coast Guard opened a station there. When I was a senior in high school, I saw one of their rescue efforts. I was standing on the shore, watching through binoculars while the wind whipped my hair and the rain came in dark sheets and the Coast Guard station alarm blared behind me. Within minutes after the siren had sounded, the dock was lined with townspeople, watching the scene with anxious eyes -- wives and parents and friends clasping hands, holding each other up, sending up prayers.

The rescuers didn't have a helicopter, just a small boat of their own. The little boat struggled to find its way through waves that topped out at thirty feet. Bandon was a small town, and I knew most of the fishermen. The boat in trouble was the Cindy Kay with five men aboard, one of them a neighbor of ours, Owen Russell, just five or six years older than I was. I'd had a crush on him since junior high, but his age, wild reputation, and my parents kept me from ever pursuing that interest.

The Cindy Kay was breaking up, her hull tearing into pieces as the wind tossed her against the rocks. As I watched, my hands clenching the binoculars, I saw a man swept overboard and disappear, almost as if he'd never been there. I could see another man standing at the rail, his yellow slicker bright against the dark sky. He was looking at the water, searching for the man who'd gone under. Then he tore off the slicker and jumped, all in one motion, and he, too, disappeared beneath the waves.

It wasn't until later I learned the man who jumped was Owen Russell, the boy who'd been nothing but trouble since I'd known him. But on that day, when Owen pulled Mickey Andrews up from the deep, he forever became a hero.

I was seventeen, standing there in the middle of that storm when the Coast Guard vessel brought in all five survivors. I remember Owen coming down the walkway, a gray blanket around his shoulders, his blond hair wet against his head. Word came that he had been the one to jump into the water, the one who saved Mickey. All of us waiting there on the dock cheered and cheered for him, and the reporter from Channel 12 stopped him and asked how it felt to be a hero. Owen just shook his head and blinked at the lights, then moved on. That was the last time I saw him until three years ago when I was back there for my high school reunion.

In the last few years, something strange has happened. People who've known me all my life, people who knew me as a clumsy kid, as a rebellious teenager, as a struggling young adult -- when they hear I'm a minister, they tell me things like a confession or something, like they've forgotten I'm the same old Pam I always was.

Owen was no exception. I ran into him at the grocery store. Even with gray hair and a bit of extra around the middle, he still has that wild look in his eye and that teasing smile. When I told him I was a minister, he laughed and said, "Now that's crazy." He told me he had his own fishing boat with his three boys. We talked a while about families and work and how time goes so fast.

I started to say good-bye, then I turned back and said, "Owen, I was there on the dock that day -- that was something. You were a hero."

"Nah," he said, "I'm no hero. I didn't want to get off that boat. It was breaking up fast, but we knew the Coast Guard was comin' and if we just hung on, we'd make it."

"So what made you do it?" I asked.

"I don't know exactly," he answered and shook his head. He didn't look at me while he talked, his eyes on the produce man stacking oranges in a big pyramid.

"I kept thinkin' about Mickey's wife and how they had a little kid and another on the way; how there wasn't nobody else to do it but me. Next thing I knew I was in the water, so cold and so dark I couldn't see a thing. I looked up at the boat once, then kicked hard and headed down into the darkness. I was choking for air and I almost gave up when I saw his face, all white and dead-looking. I grabbed for his hair and hung on. When I looked up there was nothin' but black water and I remember thinking, 'Jesus, help us.' Help us -- me, who'd never prayed in my life. Then a light come on up there by the boat, a big circle of light. I kept hold of him, and swam for that light. Funny thing," he said and laughed, "I didn't even like Mickey."

Then he turned back to me and smiled. "You know, my life's not much to brag on. I'm no church man, never was. Never could stand to sit still that long. I still drink too much most Saturday nights. Been divorced twice. And I'm sure no hero. But at least I got that one thing, that one time when I did what was right, scared as I was. Maybe that counts for something, huh?"

His face was flushed and his eyes slid past mine. Perhaps he was seeking some kind of absolution, but I failed to offer him anything but the usual polite things you say when you meet someone from your past. "Well, good to see you ... Let's stay in touch ... Come on by and meet the family." Then we shook hands and walked away.

This past week, thinking about the story in Matthew, I've wished I could see Owen and tell him what I should have told him that night, that it's our whole life that counts for something, not just those big moments, those times when we have to risk everything. Certainly those times may come into our lives. But most of our days will be filled with those small moments, those small decisions, the ones that sometimes scare us worse than the big ones.9


La Ceiba
Stan Duncan
Last week a town that I used to call home -- and a great many of its people who I loved, who lived there -- all died.

Many years ago I lived in a sweet little seaport town called "La Ceiba," on the northern Caribbean coast of Honduras. It is named after a rare tropical tree called the Ceiba, which seems to grow forever, with huge intertwining branches that -- according to the legend -- hold down the earth and keep it secure in the universe. The roots of the tree seemed to reach to the center of the earth, where the center of God's spirit resided. We had one such tree in our town, and it was breathtaking. It was down by the beach in a park that I passed by whenever I would walk from my apartment to a friend's house who lived near the water. On the way to her house, I would often stop and admire the massive Ceiba tree, in all its glory, holding down the earth, and protecting it from being blown away. It was so large that it was hard to imagine anything that could dislodge its hold on the ground that it was there to secure. Its branches soared upward and outward into a magnificent canopy, broad and flat, and Harpies -- the largest of all eagles -- would perch from them and study our behaviors from above, searching for prey.

My job in those days was to do research on the work of development agencies in Honduras for a master's thesis I was writing in economics. But in the process, I met and loved -- and now miss -- an enormous number of people and places. I lived in a tiny upstairs apartment on Colon Avenue, in a gorgeous old Spanish villa with terraces and patios and hanging plants. My bedroom was on the second floor with a magnificent floor-to-ceiling, bricked-in arched window overlooking a busy Caribbean street scene below. I had a lush forest of nationalities and races that poured through the street below me all through the day and most of the night, buying and selling, begging and badgering one another until their faces and voices began to blend like a choir in some kind of modern abstract harmony. Often when I got in bed at night, I would turn off the light and open the curtains and lay in bed looking out at the lights and listening to the horns of the buses and the taxis singing to one another until I finally fell asleep.

My landlord was Maurico Benza, a dignified, aging, thin-lipped Spaniard, with a pencil-thin black mustache and an always-present bow tie. I loved the looks of him because he reminded me of all the Hollywood movie depictions of old world Spanish aristocracy. He had a slight smell about him of someone who wore just a touch too much cologne or hair cream. His hair had a metallic smoothness to it and I suspected that he used the better part of a bottle of Wildroot Cream Oil to get it to lie down like that.

Next door to the villa was my barber, Alfonso. I was warned before I ever went to see him that he was not fond of the influence that the American military was having on Honduras in those days, so I confess I lied to him and told him I was from Great Britain and we became fast friends. I loved Alfonso. He was an immigrant from Italy, and his Spanish was as bad as mine. We could talk well together because neither of us knew how to use big words and complicated sentences.

I remember, too, that his shop also had that same smell to it that Maurico my landlord had, and I often wondered if Alfonso was the supplier for Maurico's pungent hair products.

Down the street from Alfonso was the Parque Infantil, the "Children's Park." When I would get home early, I liked to go there and sit on a bench and watch the children play while I fed the pigeons. Across the street was a great place to eat called La Pizza Barrata, "The Cheap Pizza." The owners not only let you choose your own ingredients, but also had tables around the walls of the dining room where customers could roll out the dough and bake their pizzas themselves. It was a great hit with the children.

One day while I was sitting on my bench feeding some leftover pizza to pigeons, a man named Guillermo came up to me and begged for some money. I lied and told him I didn't have any. So he said, "Well, then, would you like to buy a map?" I thought about it and said that yes, I would like to buy a map, and I took some of the money I had just told him I didn't have, and I bought my first map of Honduras. And I still have it.

Over the next few weeks, Guillermo found me many times, and each time we repeated the same litany. I didn't always buy his products (I didn't always feel good about where he might have attained them), but often I did. He had postcards, seashells, movie tickets, and discount coupons at The Cheap Pizza. We shared the pizzas and had a great time. One day he announced that he had found a cat and wanted to keep it, so I gave him about $10 in Honduran limpira to buy cat food and milk. He told me it was a loan, but I didn't think anything more about it until months later when I had moved to Tegucigalpa, and I got a letter that my landlord, Mauricio, forwarded to me. In it, Guillermo thanked me for the loan, apologized for the delay, and said he was repaying the money. In the envelope was a bundle of The Cheap Pizza coupons in a rubber band, the value of which was about $10.

Outside of La Ceiba there were a number of clinics set up over many years by Dr. Joyce Baker, a United Church of Christ medical missionary in Honduras. Joyce could have made a fine living anywhere in the world, but for thirty years she lived, worked, and raised her family among the poorest of the poor in Honduras. In town, I knew a hardware store owner named Raul Madrigo, over on a street called the Avenida de La Republica, who grew up receiving free medical care from one of Joyce's clinics. He gives one day a week volunteering at another clinic in the poor Garifuna Indian community.

About a block down Colon Avenue on the corner of Thirteenth Street there was a real live Dunkin' Donuts, where I ate breakfast almost every morning. It was a little touch of North America in an otherwise very Caribbean-looking world. It looked and felt almost like any Dunkin' Donuts in the states, except that the coffee had a blackened, ruddy texture to it, and tasted something like a mixture of tar and charcoal. Honduran coffee is a serious drink for serious drinkers, and they are amazed at the weakened, pale fluid that passes for coffee in the States. It took me weeks before I could get my tolerance for caffeine up to Honduran levels, and I finally prided myself on my ability to get down two whole cups at one sitting, though I'm sure it did terrible damage to my blood pressure each time I did it.

I got into trouble at that Dunkin' Donuts one time, on my last day in La Ceiba. I had finished my work and was moving to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. I got to the bus station early, bought my ticket, put all of my luggage on the bus, and then went down the street to Dunkin' Donuts to have a muffin and cup of caffeinated tar. But when I got back, less than an hour later, the bus had already filled up and was taking off. I waved at the driver to stop, but he refused. He'd gotten his load and was leaving early, even if my things were on his bus! I couldn't send all of my worldly possessions off on a strange bus without me, so I jumped onto the ladder on the back of the bus, crawled along the top holding onto the luggage racks, and then slid down the side by the front door. I put one foot on the running board and one on the right fender, and held onto the rear view mirror, and rode that way, like Indiana Jones, for about two hours until we finally came to a another coastal town called Tela where the driver let some passengers off and nonchalantly let me on.

Inside, I collapsed in a rumpled, dirty, smelly, heap of exhaustion and dust across the aisle from a very proper-looking little girl in a prim pink dress who was reading a book. She looked up at me and over to her mother next to her, and then back to me. She said, "We're going to visit my grandmother in Tegucigalpa, and we're all dressed up. I guess you're not going to go visit anybody."

On Monday, October 26, 1998, Hurricane Mitch began to threaten the northern shores of Honduras. It was huge at first, but for a while it dissipated and people in La Ceiba and other coastal towns breathed more easily. Then, just as they were learning to relax, it made a dramatic turn downward right into the coast, and there it stalled for six days dropping as much as four inches of rain per hour. Fifty rivers overflowed their banks in the area. In La Ceiba, every house and building from the shore for twenty blocks up the hill through the Parque Infantil was covered by water in the first two days. My friend's simple home on the beach was gone. The villa I lived in was gone. The Dunkin' Donuts was gone. The barbershop, The Cheap Pizza, and movie house were all gone. The mighty Ceiba tree, holding onto the earth to keep it secure, was buried in water and sand. Many of the rural clinics, that Dr. Baker had labored to build for twenty years, were gone. Destroyed. Washed away. In the first four days, 70,000 people were evacuated from their homes. Ironically, when the storm built up, people bought out the stores of medical and food supplies, and then when their homes washed away, in many cases, there was no food in the store houses to help the people who were brought to the shelters.

Days later when helicopters finally began arriving to take in some of the survivors, they saw rooftops with people lying dead on top of them. They found babies whose mothers had tried to save them by tying them to the tops of trees to protect them, but they were dead. They had survived the storm but then died of hunger.

One man survived by breaking open a hot water tank and drinking from it. A four-year-old neighbor girl washed in and lodged into the window of his house. He could wrap her up, but he couldn't get her out. So he saved her life by getting drinks of fresh water from the tank in his mouth and squirting it from his mouth into hers. Another man was caught in a mud slide next to his house. He heard the roar of the rain and the mud coming down onto him, so he lashed himself to a tree to protect himself, but the tree and all of his house were carried away with the water. He flowed for over ten miles tied to the tree before he was lodged into a mud bank and the rope broke free. His feet were buried deep into the mud, but it broke both his legs, and he laid there for two days more waiting for someone to come and dig him out.

The death toll across Honduras rose into the thousands. It is estimated that one out of every three buildings in the entire country no longer exists! Every major road was destroyed, every airport. Every major power line. Seventy percent of the economic production of the nation was ruined. At least 12,000 people, real people, died, 13,000 were unaccounted for. Over one million people were put into temporary shelters. At least a million and a half more were made homeless.

When people die far away it's terrible, but we don't feel for them because we don't know them. I didn't know anybody in Rwanda, or Bosnia, or Palestine, or Afghanistan, and it is hard to know the true impact of suffering and dying until you know somebody there. I want you to know that these people are not statistics but real people, good people, kind people, and they all died. And I miss them.

I worried and cried for my friends. I tried to contact them and was unable to reach most of them. I also prayed to God for them, not with anger but that they could reach out to God's Spirit and experience strength and courage in it, whether in this world or the next.

Perhaps in one sense God is like the mighty Ceiba tree. News reports say that when the waters receded, they finally found it -- beaten and damaged -- but still standing. They say that throughout the storm and its horrendous destruction, the tree gave strength to the community and all of the people who lived around it, in part because it too had suffered, right in the midst of their suffering, right along side their pain, and in the end, battered and bruised, it never released its hold on the earth.10

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1. Eric Monteith was a regular in our worship services at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church. He attended the 8 a.m. chapel service with his mom, Phyllis, his stepfather, Richard Matel, and his brothers, Brent and Joel, even after he was admitted to the hospice. In the last few weeks of his life he explained to me over and over again that he would come to church but he couldn't make it up the steps anymore. Eric was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin (where his father, Harry, still lives), June 3, 1981. He was a graduate of Hamilton High School in Milwaukee and a student at The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater when he was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2001. Eric loved people, sports, and video games. Eric loved life! His very presence was life-giving and life-enriching for his many family members and friends.

2. Erin Richards, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 17, 2006.

3. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 15.

4. Alan Geoffrion, Broken Trail (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 2006), p. 199.

5. Jane Redmont, When In Doubt Sing: Prayer In Daily Life (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1999), pp. 94-95.

6. Simon Elegant, "The War for China's Soul," Time magazine, August 28, 2006, pp. 40-43.

7. Nancy Bauer-King, "Female Clergy Answer the Call," The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 18, 2006.

8. Ibid.

9. Pamela J. Tinnin is pastor of Guerneville Community Church (United Church of Christ) in Guerneville, California. She is co-author of Bit Players in the Big Play (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 2004).

10. From a sermon preached by Stan Granot Blythe Duncan on December 12, 1998, at the United Church of Christ in Abington, Massachusetts, following the destruction of Hurricane Mitch. Stan Duncan is a UCC/Disciples of Christ pastor, originally from Oklahoma, now residing in Abington, Massachusetts. He has served as a pastor, campus minister, and economist, DJ, and pianist. He lived for two years in Central America researching and writing about economic development projects. Stan is the author of Companions of Jesus about the killing of the six priests, their cook, and his daughter in El Salvador in 1988, which he co-authored with Jon Sobrino. He has also published a number of articles on economic development and human rights, and writes a religion column in the Patriot Ledger. Now and then, Stan does commentaries on NPR, most recently he did one on Market Place about immigration.