Secrets
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "Secrets"
Shining Moments: "A Doula's Prayer" by LaNette J. McQuitty
Good Stories: "Rudi the Restless Rooster" by John Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: "A Troubling Story" by Michael Johnson
What's Up This Week
I have wondered for years about "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame, often saying, "Before I die, I would like to know his identity." Now we know. It is as Jesus said: there is "nothing secret that will not be made known." The little joke in this week's Story to Live By might be a good jumping-off point for the Gospel text. If you are drawn to the tale of the abandonment of Hagar and Ishmael in the Hebrew Scripture, you may find Mike Johnson's Scrap Pile ruminations helpful. Mike writes: "This story bothers me about as much as any in the Bible.... How do we read this story in light of the Gospels? ...[T]he main thing that I find this passage calling me to do is to deal with the Ishmael in myself."
A Story to Live By
Secrets
"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known."
Matthew 10:26
A brilliant magician was performing on an ocean liner. But every time he did a trick, the captain's parrot would yell, "It's a trick. He's a phony. That's not magic." Then one evening during a storm, the ship sank while the magician was performing. The parrot and the magician ended up in the same lifeboat. For several days they just glared at each other, neither saying a word to the other. Finally the parrot said, "OK, I give up. What did you do with the ship?"
Shining Moments
A Doula's Prayer
by LaNette J. McQuitty
Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my cry of supplication. In the day of my trouble I call on you, for you will answer me.
Psalm 86:6-7
As a birth doula, I often find myself praying for my clients long before their labor begins. This particular time, for some reason, my prayers seemed to be much more intense. I prayed all week for a miracle birth, but you never know how God will interpret your prayers.
Labor for this mom, a first-timer who wanted to go "all natural," began on October 23, 1999, at 6:30 a.m. She said she had things to do and she would page me when the contractions picked up.
She went about her business, and paged me at 2:00 in the afternoon. I went to her house, and at about 4:30 we went to the hospital. When we arrived, she was dilated to only two centimeters and decided to go in the jacuzzi for and hour and a half. When she got out of the tub she was at four centimeters, and we celebrated. I said more prayers, thank God!
The contractions really picked up, and we spent the next two hours together on the floor on our hands and knees. Then the deep squats started, and I knew this was it. She was so beautiful, she just let her body lead the way. At 8:11 she said, "I can't do this anymore. I'm going to die."
I prayed and told death, "No! There is no way!" I had her checked, and she was completely dilated. The baby was born at 9:12 p.m., and the doctor did not arrive on time. She nursed the baby while I stayed with her and prayed and thanked God for this beautiful miracle. Little did I know!
I got home at 1:30 a.m., still on a "high" from the birthing experience. My sister, who was watching my children, was just hanging up the phone. She turned to me and said, "Michael [my 18-year-old son] was in a severe car accident, ejected from the vehicle, and his neck is broken in two places. Flight for Life is taking him to Froedert Hospital and we need to go."
My heart was broken. I prayed the Our Father the whole way to the hospital. It was an hour before the helicopter landed, and much longer before the neurosurgeon told me that my son's spinal cord was 90% compromised. The damage was so severe that we should expect him to be a quadriplegic with only eye movement. His injury was similar to Christopher Reeve's.
They called in the best surgeon in the country, and he arrived at 6:00 in the morning. He told me that Michael was lucky to have survived the accident at all. According to the reports, the first call for help came in at 8:11 p.m. (when the mother I was helping through labor said she was going to die), and four emergency departments from surrounding counties searched a cornfield for my son with no luck. At 9:02 they called for a Theda Star helicopter with an infrared heat-seeking device, and that helicopter located him at 9:12. He was "born again" at the same time as the delivery I was attending.
I continued to pray throughout Sunday while they gathered up eight neurosurgeons to operate on Monday. I stayed in the intensive care unit at Michael's bedside the whole time, and when they took him for surgery he looked at me and said, "Mom, when I flew from the car I was caught by an angel, and God was with me the whole time I laid there unable to move." He said, "Call my friends and tell them I'm going to be fine." After ten-and-a-half hours of surgery (and we thought labors were long!) and two hours of recovery, the intensive care nurses said we could see him. They could not explain it, but Michael was moving his hands and feet and responding to touch.
Three days later my son was transferred to the acute spinal cord injury center, where they had him take his first steps. They were a little slower than the first steps he took when he was ten months old, but they were no less important. The Flight for Life pilot came to his room and broke into tears. Michael was the only airlift that "made it" the whole week. They put him in a wheelchair, took him up to the roof, and took pictures of him by the "ship."
Michael is known as the "Miracle Kid." He is at home now, and doing most things for himself.
LaNette J. McQuitty is a birth doula in private practice. As a professional labor assistant and hypnobirthing practitioner, she has had the honor of attending at over 200 births. She believes that birth is a deeply spiritual and joyful experience that impacts a woman's entire life. As a doula, she provides a loving atmosphere that makes the journey to motherhood as empowering and fulfilling as God intended it to be. LaNette is the creator of the world's first patented board game about pregnancy (Who's Having This Baby Anyway?), and she also produced the birth video "The Power of Birth." LaNette is a member of the Association of Labor Assistants and Childbirth Educators (ALACE), Doulas of North America (DONA), and the Childbirth Assistance Resources and Education (C.A.R.E.) Network. For more information about her pregnancy board game and birth video, see LaNette's website at www.babygame.com.
Good Stories
Rudi the Restless Rooster
by John Sumwalt
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows."
Matthew 10:29-31
There was once a young, restless rooster named Rudi who could not sleep at night. Long after all the other chickens in the coop had climbed up onto the roost, said their goodnights, and nodded off to dreamland, Rudi would be awake, pacing up and down, too afraid to go to sleep. Rudi was afraid of the dark, and so he would stay up all night long, watching and listening lest something jump out of the dark and grab him. The least little noise would scare him out of his wits. Whenever he heard a twig fall to the ground or the wind blowing in the tree branches, Rudi would be certain that a fox or weasel was coming to get him. One night when an owl hooted outside the window, Rudi flew up to the top of the coop and refused to come down for three days.
The other chickens soon grew weary of Rudi's tiresome, restless behavior. Finally, one of the old roosters took Rudi aside one day for a rooster-to-rooster talk. He threw one of his great wings around Rudi and said, "Now look here, my boy, we can't have you waking up the hens at all hours of the night. They need their rest so they can lay plenty of eggs. You know if they don't lay enough eggs the farmer will chop off all of our heads. Now, what's the problem? Why can't you go to sleep at night like a good rooster should?"
"Don't you know," whined Rudi, "that there are weasels and foxes and bears out there when it's dark? I'm afraid they're going to get me."
"Have you ever seen one?" asked the old rooster.
"No," admitted Rudi, "I've never seen one, but I know that they're out there."
"Well, they've never bothered any of the rest of us," said the old rooster. "And besides," he added, "God takes care of us."
"How do I know that?" asked Rudi.
"It says so in the Bible," said the old rooster. "Look here." And he opened the Bible to the Gospel of Matthew and began to read:
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father. And even the [feathers] of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows."
"You see," said the old rooster, "God is watching over us. We don't have to be afraid."
Rudi thought and thought about what the old rooster had said. And that night, when all of the other chickens climbed up on the roost and said their goodnights before nodding off into chicken dreamland, Rudi was the first one to fall asleep. They never called him Rudi the Restless Rooster again.
Scrap Pile
A Troubling Story
by Michael Johnson
So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away.
Genesis 21:14a
This story bothers me about as much as any in the Bible. In this treatment of one who has served well and who at one time was highly valued because she held the key to the future but now is banished because she no longer serves the self-centered purpose of those in power, I see any number of wives jettisoned by husbands for newer models, and employees let go a year or two shy of being able to claim pensions. The story shows people being treated as commodities. And God is OK with it! From the first time I read this story decades ago, I have found myself on the side of Hagar and Ishmael -- and the Muslims who find themselves in this story.
How do we read this story in light of the Gospels? I don't feel that we have to draw a good moral from it -- any more than we have to draw a good moral from the Psalm that talks about dashing out the brains of the children of one's enemies against a rock. We can just say that this is one of those passages that the gospel negates. But I'm not content to let it go at that. I still wrestle with it and sometimes play with it, teasing it around, trying to see what more may be here.
I think of Paul wrestling with the notion of "election" in Romans 9-11, and finding an explanation that was satisfying aesthetically as well as theologically -- the rejection of Israel was a part of the Great Plan. In the short term, it was necessary for Israel to reject Jesus in order for the gospel to be taken to the gentiles. And long-term, as the gentiles depended on the Jews for their salvation, so in time the Jews would be saved by God through the gentiles. Then no one would have any reason to boast before God. (In that passage he also warns the gentiles not to boast that the natural branches were broken off so that they could be grafted on; that kind of faithless boasting would get them broken off themselves; rather they should stand in awe.)
It is similarly satisfying to dream of a day when Israel might be dependent not just on gentiles, but on Ishmael! But this explanatory template doesn't fully apply to the Ishmael story. Israel was rejected because of a lack of faith, while Hagar hadn't given any reason for being dismissed -- except to faithfully produce an heir on cue.
Maybe the story is more like that of Joseph, who didn't deserve to be sold into slavery. But that too was a part of the Great Plan so that when his family was threatened by famine, he would be in a position to help them. If his brothers had been nice to him, they might have all starved together when that famine came. (Or how about the story of Jesus of Nazareth? What if he had not been willing to be treated unfairly, confident that this was the only way that God could continue the plan and fulfill the Promise?)
Ishmael, of course, has in recent years been acting pretty much like I would under the circumstances. But... what if Ishmael responded as Joseph had, confident that God would bring a blessing out of this somehow? It is not for me to preach this to Ishmael -- certainly not if I am not moved at the same time to seek justice (e.g., for the Palestinians). Yet surely part of faith-life is not only accepting unfairness at a certain level, but even believing that God has a purpose in all this (and that if God didn't have one to begin with, God can come up with one). The Palestinians might make more progress by employing the non-violent means of protest that Martin Luther King Jr. understood so well. Cain is not a good brotherly model to follow, though it is understandable that Ishmael would feel much in common with him.
But the main thing that I find this passage calling me to do is to deal with the Ishmael in myself -- with all the unfair rejections I have experienced, with the bitter dreams of where I might be now if I had not been overlooked, with the acid that floods my soul when I think that God has allowed this, perhaps even approved it.
What does it take to be able to say, as Mary said, "Let it be unto me as you have said"?
Maybe what it takes is seeing beyond the unfairness of the moment to a greater fairness in the mind of God -- beyond the rejection of the moment to a greater embrace by God. I don't know. But this text will not let me alone.
Michael Johnson is a Disciples of Christ pastor in Arthur, Illinois, where he has served the Vine Street Christian Church for the past 26 years. Mike grew up in Wanatah, Indiana, near Valparaiso. He attended Lincoln (Illinois) Christian College and was ordained in 1966. Mike has served pastorates in Kentucky; Indiana; and New Orleans, Louisiana. He is married and has two children and three wondrous grandchildren. His interests include existential/process theology (real life, not merely academic), anything by Fred Craddock, family systems theory, and people who are both deep and plain-spoken.
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and e-mail the story to us.
**********************************************
StoryShare, June 19, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "Secrets"
Shining Moments: "A Doula's Prayer" by LaNette J. McQuitty
Good Stories: "Rudi the Restless Rooster" by John Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: "A Troubling Story" by Michael Johnson
What's Up This Week
I have wondered for years about "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame, often saying, "Before I die, I would like to know his identity." Now we know. It is as Jesus said: there is "nothing secret that will not be made known." The little joke in this week's Story to Live By might be a good jumping-off point for the Gospel text. If you are drawn to the tale of the abandonment of Hagar and Ishmael in the Hebrew Scripture, you may find Mike Johnson's Scrap Pile ruminations helpful. Mike writes: "This story bothers me about as much as any in the Bible.... How do we read this story in light of the Gospels? ...[T]he main thing that I find this passage calling me to do is to deal with the Ishmael in myself."
A Story to Live By
Secrets
"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known."
Matthew 10:26
A brilliant magician was performing on an ocean liner. But every time he did a trick, the captain's parrot would yell, "It's a trick. He's a phony. That's not magic." Then one evening during a storm, the ship sank while the magician was performing. The parrot and the magician ended up in the same lifeboat. For several days they just glared at each other, neither saying a word to the other. Finally the parrot said, "OK, I give up. What did you do with the ship?"
Shining Moments
A Doula's Prayer
by LaNette J. McQuitty
Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my cry of supplication. In the day of my trouble I call on you, for you will answer me.
Psalm 86:6-7
As a birth doula, I often find myself praying for my clients long before their labor begins. This particular time, for some reason, my prayers seemed to be much more intense. I prayed all week for a miracle birth, but you never know how God will interpret your prayers.
Labor for this mom, a first-timer who wanted to go "all natural," began on October 23, 1999, at 6:30 a.m. She said she had things to do and she would page me when the contractions picked up.
She went about her business, and paged me at 2:00 in the afternoon. I went to her house, and at about 4:30 we went to the hospital. When we arrived, she was dilated to only two centimeters and decided to go in the jacuzzi for and hour and a half. When she got out of the tub she was at four centimeters, and we celebrated. I said more prayers, thank God!
The contractions really picked up, and we spent the next two hours together on the floor on our hands and knees. Then the deep squats started, and I knew this was it. She was so beautiful, she just let her body lead the way. At 8:11 she said, "I can't do this anymore. I'm going to die."
I prayed and told death, "No! There is no way!" I had her checked, and she was completely dilated. The baby was born at 9:12 p.m., and the doctor did not arrive on time. She nursed the baby while I stayed with her and prayed and thanked God for this beautiful miracle. Little did I know!
I got home at 1:30 a.m., still on a "high" from the birthing experience. My sister, who was watching my children, was just hanging up the phone. She turned to me and said, "Michael [my 18-year-old son] was in a severe car accident, ejected from the vehicle, and his neck is broken in two places. Flight for Life is taking him to Froedert Hospital and we need to go."
My heart was broken. I prayed the Our Father the whole way to the hospital. It was an hour before the helicopter landed, and much longer before the neurosurgeon told me that my son's spinal cord was 90% compromised. The damage was so severe that we should expect him to be a quadriplegic with only eye movement. His injury was similar to Christopher Reeve's.
They called in the best surgeon in the country, and he arrived at 6:00 in the morning. He told me that Michael was lucky to have survived the accident at all. According to the reports, the first call for help came in at 8:11 p.m. (when the mother I was helping through labor said she was going to die), and four emergency departments from surrounding counties searched a cornfield for my son with no luck. At 9:02 they called for a Theda Star helicopter with an infrared heat-seeking device, and that helicopter located him at 9:12. He was "born again" at the same time as the delivery I was attending.
I continued to pray throughout Sunday while they gathered up eight neurosurgeons to operate on Monday. I stayed in the intensive care unit at Michael's bedside the whole time, and when they took him for surgery he looked at me and said, "Mom, when I flew from the car I was caught by an angel, and God was with me the whole time I laid there unable to move." He said, "Call my friends and tell them I'm going to be fine." After ten-and-a-half hours of surgery (and we thought labors were long!) and two hours of recovery, the intensive care nurses said we could see him. They could not explain it, but Michael was moving his hands and feet and responding to touch.
Three days later my son was transferred to the acute spinal cord injury center, where they had him take his first steps. They were a little slower than the first steps he took when he was ten months old, but they were no less important. The Flight for Life pilot came to his room and broke into tears. Michael was the only airlift that "made it" the whole week. They put him in a wheelchair, took him up to the roof, and took pictures of him by the "ship."
Michael is known as the "Miracle Kid." He is at home now, and doing most things for himself.
LaNette J. McQuitty is a birth doula in private practice. As a professional labor assistant and hypnobirthing practitioner, she has had the honor of attending at over 200 births. She believes that birth is a deeply spiritual and joyful experience that impacts a woman's entire life. As a doula, she provides a loving atmosphere that makes the journey to motherhood as empowering and fulfilling as God intended it to be. LaNette is the creator of the world's first patented board game about pregnancy (Who's Having This Baby Anyway?), and she also produced the birth video "The Power of Birth." LaNette is a member of the Association of Labor Assistants and Childbirth Educators (ALACE), Doulas of North America (DONA), and the Childbirth Assistance Resources and Education (C.A.R.E.) Network. For more information about her pregnancy board game and birth video, see LaNette's website at www.babygame.com.
Good Stories
Rudi the Restless Rooster
by John Sumwalt
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows."
Matthew 10:29-31
There was once a young, restless rooster named Rudi who could not sleep at night. Long after all the other chickens in the coop had climbed up onto the roost, said their goodnights, and nodded off to dreamland, Rudi would be awake, pacing up and down, too afraid to go to sleep. Rudi was afraid of the dark, and so he would stay up all night long, watching and listening lest something jump out of the dark and grab him. The least little noise would scare him out of his wits. Whenever he heard a twig fall to the ground or the wind blowing in the tree branches, Rudi would be certain that a fox or weasel was coming to get him. One night when an owl hooted outside the window, Rudi flew up to the top of the coop and refused to come down for three days.
The other chickens soon grew weary of Rudi's tiresome, restless behavior. Finally, one of the old roosters took Rudi aside one day for a rooster-to-rooster talk. He threw one of his great wings around Rudi and said, "Now look here, my boy, we can't have you waking up the hens at all hours of the night. They need their rest so they can lay plenty of eggs. You know if they don't lay enough eggs the farmer will chop off all of our heads. Now, what's the problem? Why can't you go to sleep at night like a good rooster should?"
"Don't you know," whined Rudi, "that there are weasels and foxes and bears out there when it's dark? I'm afraid they're going to get me."
"Have you ever seen one?" asked the old rooster.
"No," admitted Rudi, "I've never seen one, but I know that they're out there."
"Well, they've never bothered any of the rest of us," said the old rooster. "And besides," he added, "God takes care of us."
"How do I know that?" asked Rudi.
"It says so in the Bible," said the old rooster. "Look here." And he opened the Bible to the Gospel of Matthew and began to read:
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father. And even the [feathers] of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows."
"You see," said the old rooster, "God is watching over us. We don't have to be afraid."
Rudi thought and thought about what the old rooster had said. And that night, when all of the other chickens climbed up on the roost and said their goodnights before nodding off into chicken dreamland, Rudi was the first one to fall asleep. They never called him Rudi the Restless Rooster again.
Scrap Pile
A Troubling Story
by Michael Johnson
So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away.
Genesis 21:14a
This story bothers me about as much as any in the Bible. In this treatment of one who has served well and who at one time was highly valued because she held the key to the future but now is banished because she no longer serves the self-centered purpose of those in power, I see any number of wives jettisoned by husbands for newer models, and employees let go a year or two shy of being able to claim pensions. The story shows people being treated as commodities. And God is OK with it! From the first time I read this story decades ago, I have found myself on the side of Hagar and Ishmael -- and the Muslims who find themselves in this story.
How do we read this story in light of the Gospels? I don't feel that we have to draw a good moral from it -- any more than we have to draw a good moral from the Psalm that talks about dashing out the brains of the children of one's enemies against a rock. We can just say that this is one of those passages that the gospel negates. But I'm not content to let it go at that. I still wrestle with it and sometimes play with it, teasing it around, trying to see what more may be here.
I think of Paul wrestling with the notion of "election" in Romans 9-11, and finding an explanation that was satisfying aesthetically as well as theologically -- the rejection of Israel was a part of the Great Plan. In the short term, it was necessary for Israel to reject Jesus in order for the gospel to be taken to the gentiles. And long-term, as the gentiles depended on the Jews for their salvation, so in time the Jews would be saved by God through the gentiles. Then no one would have any reason to boast before God. (In that passage he also warns the gentiles not to boast that the natural branches were broken off so that they could be grafted on; that kind of faithless boasting would get them broken off themselves; rather they should stand in awe.)
It is similarly satisfying to dream of a day when Israel might be dependent not just on gentiles, but on Ishmael! But this explanatory template doesn't fully apply to the Ishmael story. Israel was rejected because of a lack of faith, while Hagar hadn't given any reason for being dismissed -- except to faithfully produce an heir on cue.
Maybe the story is more like that of Joseph, who didn't deserve to be sold into slavery. But that too was a part of the Great Plan so that when his family was threatened by famine, he would be in a position to help them. If his brothers had been nice to him, they might have all starved together when that famine came. (Or how about the story of Jesus of Nazareth? What if he had not been willing to be treated unfairly, confident that this was the only way that God could continue the plan and fulfill the Promise?)
Ishmael, of course, has in recent years been acting pretty much like I would under the circumstances. But... what if Ishmael responded as Joseph had, confident that God would bring a blessing out of this somehow? It is not for me to preach this to Ishmael -- certainly not if I am not moved at the same time to seek justice (e.g., for the Palestinians). Yet surely part of faith-life is not only accepting unfairness at a certain level, but even believing that God has a purpose in all this (and that if God didn't have one to begin with, God can come up with one). The Palestinians might make more progress by employing the non-violent means of protest that Martin Luther King Jr. understood so well. Cain is not a good brotherly model to follow, though it is understandable that Ishmael would feel much in common with him.
But the main thing that I find this passage calling me to do is to deal with the Ishmael in myself -- with all the unfair rejections I have experienced, with the bitter dreams of where I might be now if I had not been overlooked, with the acid that floods my soul when I think that God has allowed this, perhaps even approved it.
What does it take to be able to say, as Mary said, "Let it be unto me as you have said"?
Maybe what it takes is seeing beyond the unfairness of the moment to a greater fairness in the mind of God -- beyond the rejection of the moment to a greater embrace by God. I don't know. But this text will not let me alone.
Michael Johnson is a Disciples of Christ pastor in Arthur, Illinois, where he has served the Vine Street Christian Church for the past 26 years. Mike grew up in Wanatah, Indiana, near Valparaiso. He attended Lincoln (Illinois) Christian College and was ordained in 1966. Mike has served pastorates in Kentucky; Indiana; and New Orleans, Louisiana. He is married and has two children and three wondrous grandchildren. His interests include existential/process theology (real life, not merely academic), anything by Fred Craddock, family systems theory, and people who are both deep and plain-spoken.
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and e-mail the story to us.
**********************************************
StoryShare, June 19, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
