The Thanks You Get
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "The Thanks You Get"
Shining Moments: "God Spoke to Me" by Alice J. Giere, SSND
Good Stories: "No Thanks" / "Thanks Be to God" by Larry Gjenvick
Scrap Pile: "Let's Talk About the War" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl writes this about the worried mother of an American soldier in Iraq:
"Rita Piper loves our country, but she hates this war. Don't tell her that's un-American. Patriotism, she argues, embraces dissent. She supports our troops, but she strongly disagrees with the war they've been asked to fight and the president who got us into it. She loves her young son, and she struggles with the realization that he's in Iraq right now with a rifle in his hand and danger lurking everywhere in the heat and sand. 'My affectionate, sensitive son in a war zone -- it's just too much to bear,' Rita said..." (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, September 26, 2004. For the rest of Rita's story, click on http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/sep04/261771.asp)
For John's response to this provocative story (in a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), see "Let's Talk About the War" in this week's Scrap Pile. And read Rita Piper's letter to John telling about the responses she has received to the article. Rita writes: "Letters have been arriving, berating us for raising a sensitive girlie man, asking me if I clothed him in dresses. Pretty funny for the guy who won the 'Iron Man' award for physical stamina in his basic training group of 200 and who went to state in wrestling."
A Story to Live By
The Thanks You Get
Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?"
Luke 17:17
The famous Scottish surgeon Joseph Lister was once called upon to take care of a rich lord who had a fish bone stuck in his throat. The great doctor skillfully extracted the fish bone. In a rush of gratitude, the lord asked what he owed. Lister replied, "My lord, suppose we settle for half of what you were willing to give me while the bone was still stuck in your throat."
**************
When my three-year-old son opened the birthday gift from his grandmother, he discovered a water pistol. He squealed with delight and headed for the nearest sink. I was not so pleased. I turned to Mom and said, "I'm surprised at you! Don't you remember how we used to drive you crazy with water guns?" Mom smiled and then replied... "I remember!"
Shining Moments
God Spoke To Me
by Sister Alice J. Giere, SSND
My sister, Sister Joan Frances Giere, and I were on a vacation trip with our mother. We decided to take a route through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. As we entered the park the ranger told us that we couldn't have chosen a better day, that it was as clear as it ever gets. The beauty was breathtaking. At one of the vistas we parked and got out of the car just to drink in the beauty around us. I stood looking out over the vista, admiring the many shades of green nearby. As my eyes moved across the vista and the shades of green, with muted blues and purples far off, I noticed that even on that bright day there was a mist over the mountaintops that hid them from view. I stood for some time in silent wonder and awe for the magnificent Creator of such beauty.
It was the following day, when I returned in my imagination to that spot in prayer, that it seemed God spoke to me. It was as though God said: "When you stood at that vista you couldn't even appreciate the beauty right before your eyes, let alone the beauty far off. That's the way it is with me. You can hardly appreciate the little you know about me now, and there is so much more I want to teach you."
I have returned to that experience often since that time, and I trust that Jesus continues to teach me about His love and beauty.
Alice J. Giere felt her calling to become a teaching sister as a college junior. She worked one year after graduation, then entered religious life to become a School Sister of Notre Dame. After teaching junior high students and serving as a school administrator for 40 years, Alice worked as a secretary to the dean in a local Catholic university for nearly 10 years before becoming semi-retired. She now does volunteer teaching and massage therapy.
Good Stories
No Thanks
Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
Luke 17:15
Many years ago, an excursion boat capsized in a storm on Lake Michigan, just offshore from the Northwestern University campus at Evanston, Illinois. Several university students rushed to the lake to pull out survivors. One student by the name of Ed Spencer saved 17 persons himself.
Decades later Ed's story was being told to a large audience in Los Angeles, when a gentleman stood up to announce that Edward Spencer was present in the audience. The speaker invited Spencer forward and asked him what the most memorable part of the rescue was. The audience grew silent when Spencer said, "Of the 17 people I saved, not one ever thanked me."
Thanks Be to God
by Larry Gjenvick
Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip.
Psalm 66:8-9
In the early 1930s, our family (which consisted of my father, mother, brother, sister, and myself) lived in a home with no central heating. My father and mother slept in the one bedroom on the first floor, and we three children slept in bedrooms on the second floor. In the winter, a kerosene heater was used upstairs to take the chill from the rooms.
One cold winter night when we were all asleep, my father relates that he had a dream, a vision, where a figure seemed to be standing at the top of some stairs saying, "Come up." He awoke, but thinking it was just a dream he went back to sleep. Once again he was awakened by the same kind of dream. When it happened a third time, and the figure told him that his children were in danger, he wakened and went upstairs, where he found the kerosene heater had malfunctioned and was spewing out deadly carbon monoxide fumes. He immediately extinguished the heater and opened the windows to let in fresh air.
There was no way he could have known or experienced the deadly carbon monoxide fumes on the first floor, and he was convinced that God had sent an angel to warn him and waken him so he could save his family from certain death.
At the beginning of my freshman year in college, I had an experience of my own. One evening after studying late, I left a brightly lit building to return to my dormitory. Cutting across the very dark campus, I felt a hand on my shoulder that immediately stopped me in my tracks. I looked back and around me, but there was no one there. Gingerly I felt in front of me with my foot, and there I found that one more step would have meant falling over an unprotected wall and dropping some 20-25 feet to a concrete slab below. I am convinced that, once again, God had intervened to save my life in a manner that could be explained in no other way. Thanks be to God!
Larry Gjenvick was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He now lives in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, and attends St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Wauwatosa. A graduate of St. Olaf College in Minnesota, Larry served in the Navy during World War II. Now retired, he is active in his church and numerous hobbies.
Scrap Pile
Let's Talk About The War
by John Sumwalt
For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid burdens on our backs; you let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.
Psalm 66:10-12
It seems all we talk about in church these days is sexuality and church politics. What we don't talk about is one of the most important issues of our day.
Richard Hays, professor of New Testament at Duke University, wrote an open letter to United Methodists (my people) in The Christian Century titled "A Season of Repentance." In it he offers a challenging proposal: "Let us stop fighting one another for a season, about issues of sexuality, so that we can focus on what God is saying to the church about our complicity in the violence that is the deepest moral crisis of our time. And let us call the church to fasting and prayer in repentance for the destruction our nation has inflicted upon the people of Iraq."
Hays asks if it is that "our denomination is asleep at the hour of crisis -- or are we just distracted by the battle over sexual issues?" He adds, "the religious rhetoric that we hear in the public sphere is almost always self-justifying, seldom calling us to prayerful examination of our actions and motives... A few of our bishops have spoken out against the war, but the church as a whole has not followed their lead." He tells about a speaking tour of South Africa and New Zealand recently where "the first question repeatedly asked me by people in churches, of all different theological stripes, was: 'How can the Christians in America fail to speak out against this war?' " (The Christian Century, August 24, 2004, pp. 6-8)
Tom Ehrich wrote about the need for reflection and discussion about the war in the September 15 edition of "On a Journey," his daily "Meditations on God and Life":
"Where I live, Christian churches are in constant uproar over right-opinion and ecclesiastical power. Meanwhile, our state is home to many thousands of military personnel and their families. We have a war to debate, we have troops to support, and we have worried families to care for... We need to examine our minds and consciences. We won't agree, but we must concern ourselves with things that matter." (For information about "On a Journey," click on http://www.onajourney.org/oaj/home/index.jsp)
There is enough in those two statements to keep an adult Sunday School class talking for weeks. The fact that this kind of dialogue has not happened much in most churches, including my own, can be attributed to our fear that the church cannot withstand the fallout that might result from the expression of differing opinions. We have strayed a long way from the Psalmist's declaration that we are a people who have passed through fire and water and yet have been brought by God out into a "spacious place" (Psalm 66:12).
Rita Piper's witness in the article mentioned in the introduction to this issue puts many of us in U.S. Christendom to shame. (Click on the article here if you have not yet read it: http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/sep04/261771.asp
Let's talk about the war in church. Let's talk about it before choir practice, over pot luck dinners, at the coffee hour, after meetings in the parking lot, in Sunday School classes, in our prayers of confession in worship, and in our sermons.
Let Rita Piper's plea be read in every pulpit in the land. Let those who disagree with her be given equal time. And then after a long silent prayer, let all of us who call ourselves "the People of God" go to the Fellowship Hall and prayerfully, respectfully, and lovingly talk about the war over coffee and sweet rolls. Surely God will be with us and will bring us out to a "spacious place."
Here is my letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel responding to Jim Stingl's article about Rita Piper, followed by Rita's letter to me:
Dear Editor,
Jim Stingl's story about Rita Piper's son Brendan in Iraq was deeply moving. It left me weeping.
I know Brendan. Our son Orrin wrestled with him on the Tosa East/West wrestling team, and they were/are both students at UW-Stevens Point. We came to know Brendan's parents and cheered with them when he wrestled in the state tournament just four years ago.
I fear for Brendan's life, and I weep for all of the Brendans and Brendas representing our nation in Iraq. I am thankful for their willingness to serve and sacrifice. But I share Rita's fear about what becoming killers may do to them or how the possible trauma of all the bloodshed they will see may affect them. And like Rita, I believe that violence is never a good way to resolve conflict, even as a last resort. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. have shown us better ways to transform evil.
Certainly Saddam Hussein was a brutal ruler who murdered thousands of Iraqi citizens. I am glad he is in jail and I pray he remains there the rest of his life.
However, there are more Saddam Husseins in the world who are causing as much or more harm to their people as the butcher of Baghdad. The slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan is just one example. We have not raised a hand to stop the terror there or in a number of other places like Palestine and Israel. Indeed, we would not have enough resources to police every hot spot, nor should we try because we would probably do more harm than good, as it appears we are doing in Iraq.
How many thousands have died as a result of our invasion of Iraq? We have never had a full accounting of Iraqi deaths and injuries. How many billions of dollars worth of destruction have our bombs and shells wrought on the buildings and infrastructure of Iraqi cities? How many decades will it take to recover? Are the Iraqi people better off now than they were before our invasion? Are we safer from terrorism as a result of this investment of lives and billions of American dollars?
These remain open questions and deserve honest reflection and dialogue, something our leaders in both parties have been unwilling to do as they posture and call each other names in this election year.
Yes, I would like to see democracy in Iraq. And I believe it will come in God's time when the Iraqi people are ready. It has to come from within the hearts of a people. It cannot be imposed by the might of outsiders, no matter how good their intentions. This is a lesson we had an opportunity to learn in Vietnam.
It may be one of the lessons that Brendan and his band of brothers and sisters in Iraq will return to teach us again, those who live to come home.
Sincerely,
John Sumwalt
Pastor, Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
++++++++++
Rita Piper wrote to me this week, telling about some of the hurtful responses she has suffered since the article appeared in the paper:
"So many folks have been negative and threatening and mocking. Those who know Brendan understand that he has a sensitive heart, put together with a sometimes 'macho' style. Letters have been arriving, berating us for raising a sensitive girlie man, asking me if I clothed him in dresses. Pretty funny for the guy who won the 'Iron Man' award for physical stamina in his basic training group of 200 and who went to state in wrestling. I urge you to write letters to the Journal-Sentinel or News-Times denouncing this war and the person who led us to it. The warmongers make their voices heard, and those of us who don't support it are made to feel in the wrong.
"I just received an e-mail from Brendan -- the first since he arrived in Baghdad on September 24th. As always, he uses his humor get him through. Please keep him in your prayers. When we learned of the soldier's death in central Baghdad today, the first since Brendan arrived there, my heart just stopped. Thankfully, he sent the e-mail about two hours later, so I know that he is safe. Some say that I am misguided to speak out; as a mother, I believe with every inch of my being that I need to do this, that somehow, in some way, it will keep my son safe. I know that sounds crazy -- but it's all that I have. Remember how much I couldn't bear to watch his wrestling matches? I would watch and then go in the bathroom to get ill -- now to imagine him wielding an M-16..."
We would welcome letters from readers who have other views about the war, and will publish them in the Scrap Pile.
**********************************************
New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Jodie Felton, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. Click on the title above for information about how to order. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A, which begins in December.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
You can order any of our books on the CSS website; they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e-mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1-800-241-4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419-227-1818.)
**************
StoryShare, October 10, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 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: "The Thanks You Get"
Shining Moments: "God Spoke to Me" by Alice J. Giere, SSND
Good Stories: "No Thanks" / "Thanks Be to God" by Larry Gjenvick
Scrap Pile: "Let's Talk About the War" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl writes this about the worried mother of an American soldier in Iraq:
"Rita Piper loves our country, but she hates this war. Don't tell her that's un-American. Patriotism, she argues, embraces dissent. She supports our troops, but she strongly disagrees with the war they've been asked to fight and the president who got us into it. She loves her young son, and she struggles with the realization that he's in Iraq right now with a rifle in his hand and danger lurking everywhere in the heat and sand. 'My affectionate, sensitive son in a war zone -- it's just too much to bear,' Rita said..." (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, September 26, 2004. For the rest of Rita's story, click on http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/sep04/261771.asp)
For John's response to this provocative story (in a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), see "Let's Talk About the War" in this week's Scrap Pile. And read Rita Piper's letter to John telling about the responses she has received to the article. Rita writes: "Letters have been arriving, berating us for raising a sensitive girlie man, asking me if I clothed him in dresses. Pretty funny for the guy who won the 'Iron Man' award for physical stamina in his basic training group of 200 and who went to state in wrestling."
A Story to Live By
The Thanks You Get
Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?"
Luke 17:17
The famous Scottish surgeon Joseph Lister was once called upon to take care of a rich lord who had a fish bone stuck in his throat. The great doctor skillfully extracted the fish bone. In a rush of gratitude, the lord asked what he owed. Lister replied, "My lord, suppose we settle for half of what you were willing to give me while the bone was still stuck in your throat."
**************
When my three-year-old son opened the birthday gift from his grandmother, he discovered a water pistol. He squealed with delight and headed for the nearest sink. I was not so pleased. I turned to Mom and said, "I'm surprised at you! Don't you remember how we used to drive you crazy with water guns?" Mom smiled and then replied... "I remember!"
Shining Moments
God Spoke To Me
by Sister Alice J. Giere, SSND
My sister, Sister Joan Frances Giere, and I were on a vacation trip with our mother. We decided to take a route through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. As we entered the park the ranger told us that we couldn't have chosen a better day, that it was as clear as it ever gets. The beauty was breathtaking. At one of the vistas we parked and got out of the car just to drink in the beauty around us. I stood looking out over the vista, admiring the many shades of green nearby. As my eyes moved across the vista and the shades of green, with muted blues and purples far off, I noticed that even on that bright day there was a mist over the mountaintops that hid them from view. I stood for some time in silent wonder and awe for the magnificent Creator of such beauty.
It was the following day, when I returned in my imagination to that spot in prayer, that it seemed God spoke to me. It was as though God said: "When you stood at that vista you couldn't even appreciate the beauty right before your eyes, let alone the beauty far off. That's the way it is with me. You can hardly appreciate the little you know about me now, and there is so much more I want to teach you."
I have returned to that experience often since that time, and I trust that Jesus continues to teach me about His love and beauty.
Alice J. Giere felt her calling to become a teaching sister as a college junior. She worked one year after graduation, then entered religious life to become a School Sister of Notre Dame. After teaching junior high students and serving as a school administrator for 40 years, Alice worked as a secretary to the dean in a local Catholic university for nearly 10 years before becoming semi-retired. She now does volunteer teaching and massage therapy.
Good Stories
No Thanks
Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
Luke 17:15
Many years ago, an excursion boat capsized in a storm on Lake Michigan, just offshore from the Northwestern University campus at Evanston, Illinois. Several university students rushed to the lake to pull out survivors. One student by the name of Ed Spencer saved 17 persons himself.
Decades later Ed's story was being told to a large audience in Los Angeles, when a gentleman stood up to announce that Edward Spencer was present in the audience. The speaker invited Spencer forward and asked him what the most memorable part of the rescue was. The audience grew silent when Spencer said, "Of the 17 people I saved, not one ever thanked me."
Thanks Be to God
by Larry Gjenvick
Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip.
Psalm 66:8-9
In the early 1930s, our family (which consisted of my father, mother, brother, sister, and myself) lived in a home with no central heating. My father and mother slept in the one bedroom on the first floor, and we three children slept in bedrooms on the second floor. In the winter, a kerosene heater was used upstairs to take the chill from the rooms.
One cold winter night when we were all asleep, my father relates that he had a dream, a vision, where a figure seemed to be standing at the top of some stairs saying, "Come up." He awoke, but thinking it was just a dream he went back to sleep. Once again he was awakened by the same kind of dream. When it happened a third time, and the figure told him that his children were in danger, he wakened and went upstairs, where he found the kerosene heater had malfunctioned and was spewing out deadly carbon monoxide fumes. He immediately extinguished the heater and opened the windows to let in fresh air.
There was no way he could have known or experienced the deadly carbon monoxide fumes on the first floor, and he was convinced that God had sent an angel to warn him and waken him so he could save his family from certain death.
At the beginning of my freshman year in college, I had an experience of my own. One evening after studying late, I left a brightly lit building to return to my dormitory. Cutting across the very dark campus, I felt a hand on my shoulder that immediately stopped me in my tracks. I looked back and around me, but there was no one there. Gingerly I felt in front of me with my foot, and there I found that one more step would have meant falling over an unprotected wall and dropping some 20-25 feet to a concrete slab below. I am convinced that, once again, God had intervened to save my life in a manner that could be explained in no other way. Thanks be to God!
Larry Gjenvick was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He now lives in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, and attends St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Wauwatosa. A graduate of St. Olaf College in Minnesota, Larry served in the Navy during World War II. Now retired, he is active in his church and numerous hobbies.
Scrap Pile
Let's Talk About The War
by John Sumwalt
For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid burdens on our backs; you let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.
Psalm 66:10-12
It seems all we talk about in church these days is sexuality and church politics. What we don't talk about is one of the most important issues of our day.
Richard Hays, professor of New Testament at Duke University, wrote an open letter to United Methodists (my people) in The Christian Century titled "A Season of Repentance." In it he offers a challenging proposal: "Let us stop fighting one another for a season, about issues of sexuality, so that we can focus on what God is saying to the church about our complicity in the violence that is the deepest moral crisis of our time. And let us call the church to fasting and prayer in repentance for the destruction our nation has inflicted upon the people of Iraq."
Hays asks if it is that "our denomination is asleep at the hour of crisis -- or are we just distracted by the battle over sexual issues?" He adds, "the religious rhetoric that we hear in the public sphere is almost always self-justifying, seldom calling us to prayerful examination of our actions and motives... A few of our bishops have spoken out against the war, but the church as a whole has not followed their lead." He tells about a speaking tour of South Africa and New Zealand recently where "the first question repeatedly asked me by people in churches, of all different theological stripes, was: 'How can the Christians in America fail to speak out against this war?' " (The Christian Century, August 24, 2004, pp. 6-8)
Tom Ehrich wrote about the need for reflection and discussion about the war in the September 15 edition of "On a Journey," his daily "Meditations on God and Life":
"Where I live, Christian churches are in constant uproar over right-opinion and ecclesiastical power. Meanwhile, our state is home to many thousands of military personnel and their families. We have a war to debate, we have troops to support, and we have worried families to care for... We need to examine our minds and consciences. We won't agree, but we must concern ourselves with things that matter." (For information about "On a Journey," click on http://www.onajourney.org/oaj/home/index.jsp)
There is enough in those two statements to keep an adult Sunday School class talking for weeks. The fact that this kind of dialogue has not happened much in most churches, including my own, can be attributed to our fear that the church cannot withstand the fallout that might result from the expression of differing opinions. We have strayed a long way from the Psalmist's declaration that we are a people who have passed through fire and water and yet have been brought by God out into a "spacious place" (Psalm 66:12).
Rita Piper's witness in the article mentioned in the introduction to this issue puts many of us in U.S. Christendom to shame. (Click on the article here if you have not yet read it: http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/sep04/261771.asp
Let's talk about the war in church. Let's talk about it before choir practice, over pot luck dinners, at the coffee hour, after meetings in the parking lot, in Sunday School classes, in our prayers of confession in worship, and in our sermons.
Let Rita Piper's plea be read in every pulpit in the land. Let those who disagree with her be given equal time. And then after a long silent prayer, let all of us who call ourselves "the People of God" go to the Fellowship Hall and prayerfully, respectfully, and lovingly talk about the war over coffee and sweet rolls. Surely God will be with us and will bring us out to a "spacious place."
Here is my letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel responding to Jim Stingl's article about Rita Piper, followed by Rita's letter to me:
Dear Editor,
Jim Stingl's story about Rita Piper's son Brendan in Iraq was deeply moving. It left me weeping.
I know Brendan. Our son Orrin wrestled with him on the Tosa East/West wrestling team, and they were/are both students at UW-Stevens Point. We came to know Brendan's parents and cheered with them when he wrestled in the state tournament just four years ago.
I fear for Brendan's life, and I weep for all of the Brendans and Brendas representing our nation in Iraq. I am thankful for their willingness to serve and sacrifice. But I share Rita's fear about what becoming killers may do to them or how the possible trauma of all the bloodshed they will see may affect them. And like Rita, I believe that violence is never a good way to resolve conflict, even as a last resort. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. have shown us better ways to transform evil.
Certainly Saddam Hussein was a brutal ruler who murdered thousands of Iraqi citizens. I am glad he is in jail and I pray he remains there the rest of his life.
However, there are more Saddam Husseins in the world who are causing as much or more harm to their people as the butcher of Baghdad. The slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan is just one example. We have not raised a hand to stop the terror there or in a number of other places like Palestine and Israel. Indeed, we would not have enough resources to police every hot spot, nor should we try because we would probably do more harm than good, as it appears we are doing in Iraq.
How many thousands have died as a result of our invasion of Iraq? We have never had a full accounting of Iraqi deaths and injuries. How many billions of dollars worth of destruction have our bombs and shells wrought on the buildings and infrastructure of Iraqi cities? How many decades will it take to recover? Are the Iraqi people better off now than they were before our invasion? Are we safer from terrorism as a result of this investment of lives and billions of American dollars?
These remain open questions and deserve honest reflection and dialogue, something our leaders in both parties have been unwilling to do as they posture and call each other names in this election year.
Yes, I would like to see democracy in Iraq. And I believe it will come in God's time when the Iraqi people are ready. It has to come from within the hearts of a people. It cannot be imposed by the might of outsiders, no matter how good their intentions. This is a lesson we had an opportunity to learn in Vietnam.
It may be one of the lessons that Brendan and his band of brothers and sisters in Iraq will return to teach us again, those who live to come home.
Sincerely,
John Sumwalt
Pastor, Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
++++++++++
Rita Piper wrote to me this week, telling about some of the hurtful responses she has suffered since the article appeared in the paper:
"So many folks have been negative and threatening and mocking. Those who know Brendan understand that he has a sensitive heart, put together with a sometimes 'macho' style. Letters have been arriving, berating us for raising a sensitive girlie man, asking me if I clothed him in dresses. Pretty funny for the guy who won the 'Iron Man' award for physical stamina in his basic training group of 200 and who went to state in wrestling. I urge you to write letters to the Journal-Sentinel or News-Times denouncing this war and the person who led us to it. The warmongers make their voices heard, and those of us who don't support it are made to feel in the wrong.
"I just received an e-mail from Brendan -- the first since he arrived in Baghdad on September 24th. As always, he uses his humor get him through. Please keep him in your prayers. When we learned of the soldier's death in central Baghdad today, the first since Brendan arrived there, my heart just stopped. Thankfully, he sent the e-mail about two hours later, so I know that he is safe. Some say that I am misguided to speak out; as a mother, I believe with every inch of my being that I need to do this, that somehow, in some way, it will keep my son safe. I know that sounds crazy -- but it's all that I have. Remember how much I couldn't bear to watch his wrestling matches? I would watch and then go in the bathroom to get ill -- now to imagine him wielding an M-16..."
We would welcome letters from readers who have other views about the war, and will publish them in the Scrap Pile.
**********************************************
New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Jodie Felton, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. Click on the title above for information about how to order. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A, which begins in December.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
You can order any of our books on the CSS website; they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e-mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1-800-241-4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419-227-1818.)
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StoryShare, October 10, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 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.
