New School Year, More Rites of Passage

You know, Summer vacation for kids is really not that long. 1o weeks? In the whole scheme of things, not all that much time.

So how is it...why is it that it's not until school resumes that you realize how much your kids have changed? Another school year, rites of passage crossed - and I'm left realizing how much all our lives are changing.

Of course this Summer provided all of my family a dramatic change from what we've known. They've not intinerated as much as I have. They're adapting well, and for that I'm thankful.

Giving them the gift of being able to stay in school with the same classmates as long as possible, even up to gradutation, is a goal of mine for them. It is something I didn't have growing up, and I always long to know what longevity in formative relationships means over the course of time. I observe that in people I've known and find it appealing, bordering on something I grieve never knowing.

Both Andrew and Christopher have sets of buddies they've lived with through school over 8 years now, and they are tightly knit.

At this point in their journey, so much is changing so fast, and my head is spinning trying to cope with the reality that my boys have fully come into their own.

Andrew is a junior. This week alone we ordered his senior ring and letterman's jacket. Wow! He drives himself to school and travels up the road to Mason to visit his girlfriend. That's right, his girlfriend. So I'm dealing with the realization that he's growing up, AND that among the things I've purchased for him this week that some girl will be wearing them instead of him. When I was asked if a girl wore my stuff my answer was swift - "we're not talking about me!" Never much for team sports, he has devoted his physical pursuits to karate. He is one belt away from Black belt, and "he's on a quest to be his best...Asai."

He's my horn player. Literally...he's playing the trumpet I played from 8th grade into college. That life fits him well, and I know the excitment he feels when the band is on the march.

God bless the boy...he's endured the initial mistakes of first time parents and it seems he's come out fairly well adjusted. Whew!

Christopher is in the eighth grade and I have to remind myself that he is younger than his brother. He has grown so much in the past year it is stunning. He's always been our jock, and now he's maturing into that role. You look at him and believe he is the athlete he aspires to become. He's a statuesque and stunningly handsome boy. And he is going to make an impact in life...don't doubt that.

And then there's Jack. Our second grader. "Dad, you don't have to wake me up and help me get dressed for school, I can do that myself." Others observe how "bright" Jack is. And it's true.

"You should get him tested."

"Why?" I ask..."I'm the one being tested by him every day!"

They're all coming into their own, and I'm reminded of how blessed I am.

Andrew does this thing every night, even now and he's almost 17. He'll come to me, put his head against my chest and tell me good night. And then he'll say--

"I love you."

I'll say, "I love you, too, son."

and he'll say, "I love you more."

and I'll say, "nope, not possible."

Last night he asked me "you always say that, and I don't get it."

I said, "when you have your own, you will."

"You're probably right," he said, "but I'm not planning on knowing that for quite a long time."

"Good plan, son. Good plan."

Penicillin Anyone?

News of "vacating" our 38 win season does not come as a shock. It was predictable.

And if we Tigers are nothing else, we're predictable.

Predictably never reaching and sustaining greatness.

Predictably and irrretrivably stuck in a mediocre conference.

Predictibly mediocre. Yeah, that's it. And we like it that way. So we've got that going for us, which is nice.

No, not shocked. Not heartbroken. They did that to me long ago. Now it's just laughably sad.

When news of the investigation first broke, I commented on this blog that I was thankful we lost to KU lest we'd face the prospect of surrendering a national championship.

That's right, folks. We were one free throw away from having to open the trophy case and handing back the gold to whoever the heck you hand it back to.

And now the record books have been purged. And in a way, I feel that's appropriate. Maybe not purged, but sanitized. As it relates to Memphis, only one man is recognized again as taking us to the Finals - Clean Gene Bartow. Dana and John are examples of what will always be when you play it on the edge.

In an act that seems strangely just, John has to vacate 38 wins from his won/loss record, too--which means he is no longer the winningest coach at the U of M. Who is? #21. A guy whose love for his school, city and team could never be questioned - Larry Finch.

At the last, I have two things to say about this - one, if you bought a Final Four shirt from the Tiger Bookstore, thank you for the business and "they ain't no refunds!"

And two, for my friends who hail from the land of my birth, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, you'd do well to heed this warning:

"When you go to bed with the whore of Babylon, don't act surprised when you wake up the next morning with the Clap."

Heaven's Band Has a New Lead Guitarist + Rest in Peace, Les Paul

This is my indulgence when I turned 40.

I didn't buy a sports car.

I didn't get a tatoo.

I didn't run off with a 25 year old.

I bought a guitar.

When I felt the urge to buy an electric guitar, there was only one choice for me.

You know the "Frampton Comes Alive" album cover?

There you go.

Together with my Marshall amp - I have far more quality tools than I have game to play.

But man, I'm glad I have 'em.

We can't ignore Les' talent par excellence, but consider too his longevity in which he matched that talent with ambition to make the most of the time he had.

A life lesson beyond the guitar, to be sure,and maybe the most enduring expression of an extraordinary legacy.

TigerBookStore's Newest Employee

Kid works for a Coke and Skittles.

Crazy cute.

Unalienable

Our country is in the midst of another conversation about a huge question - Health care.

Like too many questions before it, and like this one in particular, the partisan political rancor on polar sides will get too loud and be too over the top to deal with the question at hand effectively.

Efforts to compromise for the sake of bipartisanship will make a hot or cold question lukewarm - palatable to none and causing more problems than it solves. The Revelation to John indicates what happens to the Church that is lukewarm, neither hot nor cold - God wants to spit them out. What will happen to lukewarm policy? Hmm. I think we all know.

Of course, when you're dealing with a paradigm shift - which is ultimately what is being proposed about health care, you have those who are so for it that they can't see straight, and those who are so against shifting from what is that their favorite hymn must be "We Shall Not Be Moved."

But that's how it is. We can talk "reform" all day long. And there may be some things that can be done to reform elements of how health care is administered under the current system. We can deal with frivilous lawsuits and cap awards, and do all those things that help the industry do what it does for less. But the fundamental question is always going to be the same, and any "reforms" enacted will be variations on a theme with small changes spun as huge and accounted for within business models amounting, in the end, to no harm, no foul - at least to the business sector.

For the common family? Further erosion of the number of those who can afford coverage.

That this question has been in front of every administration going back to Truman validates the magnitude of the divide.

At the crossroads of this issue is this - as long as health care is understood as a commodity and not as a right of citizenship, an unalienable right, if you will, then the battle line will always be drawn and the chasm too deep and wide to bridge.

Health care as a right---is you is, or is you ain't?

Somewhere I read of the American people that there are self evident truths of equality and ..."that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Now whether or not health care should be a commodity is not the point, just yet.

At present, it is.

Which is to say that it is an industry that exists to make a profit. That profit serves to support shareholders and employees in companies that provide the means for health care to be purchased. The service they provide and sell offers good product to those who can purchase it. That is, if they are sick, they are covered - maybe, at least in part, rarely in whole, and never without a long, interminable dance that you wonder will ever come to an end.

Health care is available now...for a price. And for more and more families, too steep a price for them to afford. For those of us who have it, and complain about how much it costs and what is or isn't covered, at least we have the luxury of complaining.

This is not a diatribe against free markets. The free market is the defining characteristic of our economic system. And if health care is to be and remain a commodity, then there it is...the market will out, and consumers we shall ever be. As long as we have the capacity to buy in, we're golden. When the well runs dry? Then, to call upon my Western Kentucky roots to find the right "earthy" response to such a predicament, you're S.O.L.

If health care is understood as a right, then the fundamental question is whether or not the free market doctrines should apply. Even more, if it is understood as a right, how can they apply?

So we'll have speeches, for and against. Insurance companies will be demonized and supporters of universal health care will be called . . . wait for it---socialists.

Rhetoric will be heated, and for what? Unless and until there is a clear answer to the question of whether or not access to health care is answered, it will all be of little import.

There are questions such as these that we answer because we are citizens of country. But we are also, and I daresay, first, citizens of the Kingdom of God.

What, then does our citizenship in God's family do to our perspective on geopolitical concerns? Does it impact our perspective? Should it?

I would argue it does. And when the affairs of the world are in conflict with the tenets of faith I've espoused, I have to ask myself why that is, and if God's justice is to be found, what am I really to do to enact it.

Beyond what having health care does or doesn't do for you, what are the theological implications of such a question? What is the impact of such policy decisions on the least of these - which, by the way, is the Biblical benchmark for what God considers right and just. And if you doubt that, I know some prophets of the Hebrew Bible named Isaiah, Amos and Micah and a Nazarene Carpenter named Jesus with whom you may argue the point.

Feel free. Go ahead.

What of our denomination? Has The United Methodist Church offered a position on the health care question? The first social creed of the denomination came into being in 1908. It focused much on the conditions that gave rise to an underclass of laborers as a result of the industrial revolution. It is a really bold statement given its historic context. There are elements of it as relevant today as then:

The Methodist Episcopal Church stands:
For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life.
For the principles of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions.
For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, injuries and mortality.
For the abolition of child labor.
For such regulation of the conditions of labor for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community.
For the suppression of the "sweating system."
For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practical
point, with work for all; and for that degree of leisure for all which is the
condition of the highest human life.
For a release for [from] employment one day in seven.
For a living wage in every industry.
For the highest wage that each industry can afford, and for the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.
For the recognition of the Golden Rule and the mind of Christ as the supreme law of society and the sure remedy for all social ills.
To the toilers of America and to those who by organized effort are seeking to lift the crushing burdens of the poor, and to reduce the hardships and uphold the dignity of labor, this Council sends the greeting of human brotherhood and the pledge of sympathy and of help in a cause which belongs to all who follow Christ.

What of health care itself? The current position of the Church by virtue of the 2008 General Conference states the following:

Right to Health Care—Health is a condition of physical, mental, social, and
spiritual well-being. John 10:10b says, “I came that they may have life, and
have it abundantly.” Stewardship of health is the responsibility of each person
to whom health has been entrusted.
Creating the personal, environmental, and social conditions in which health can thrive is a joint responsibility—public and private. We encourage individuals to pursue a healthy lifestyle and affirm the importance of preventive health care, health education, environmental and occupational safety, good nutrition, and secure housing in achieving health. Health care is a basic human right.
Providing the care needed to maintain health, prevent disease, and restore health after injury or illness is a responsibility each person owes others and government owes to all, a responsibility government ignores at its peril. In Ezekiel 34:4a, God points out the failures of the leadership of Israel to care for the weak: “You have not
strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the
injured.” As a result all suffer.
Like police and fire protection, health care is best funded through the government’s ability to tax each person equitably and directly fund the provider entities. Countries facing a public health crisis such as HIV/AIDS must have access to generic medicines and to patented medicines.
We affirm the right of men and women to have access to comprehensive reproductive health/family planning information and services that will serve as a means to prevent unplanned pregnancies, reduce abortions, and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. The right to health care includes care for persons with brain diseases, neurological conditions, or physical disabilities, who must be afforded the same access to health care as all other persons in our communities. It is unjust to construct or perpetuate barriers to physical or mental wholeness or full participation in community.
We believe it is a governmental responsibility to provide all citizens with health
care. THE 2008 BOOK OF DISCIPLINE of The United Methodist Church

There it is. For a Church that fence straddles too many issues, this one does not seem lukewarm. And so, I invite you in the coming days of political grandstanding to listen less to radio blowhards and cable news pundits, and listen to the voice of the Spirit of the Living God. Where does that lead us?

Maybe at last to an answer.

Got the Feeling I've Been Here Before

Part of unpacking is coming upon those things that were already packed away anyway and not looked upon in a long time.

I came upon one of those pocket folders stuffed with pictures the other day. During my stroll down memory lane, I happened upon this one.

A somewhat younger version of me in the pretty brand new Covenant sanctuary, playing with Glad River on a Sunday night in the spring of 1997.

As memory serves, that was one of our best nights, top to bottom. Good crowd, lot's of support from the churches we were serving at the time - Colonial Park, St. Luke's and Asbury - and some of you Covenant folks were there, too. Wow, where does the time go?

And speaking of Glad River, coming soon, my definite post on the history of the band - (with pics) what we were, how we came to be, what we are, and my prayerful hope that there may yet be a trickle left in our incarnation of the River whose streams make Glad the city of God.

Didn't Beaver Cleaver Live in Mayfield?

I lived in Mayfield, Kentucky, from June of 1970 until the second day of January, 1976.

I turned 6 a month after moving there and moved away in the middle of my 6th grade year.

Mid-year appointments...ahhh, ain't they great? Especially on the psyche of children who change schools in midyear?

Did I say that out loud?

Anyway, as I've alluded in other posts, those years were significant for me. Those were my Wonder Years.

Whatever Mayfield really was back then, it was the place I grew up. I knew it for what I could get from it.

Hill's BBQ ( I went to school with Molly and Mary)
K&N Rootbeer in Frosty Mugs brought to your car.
Summer days at the club swimming until water logged and learning to play golf (preacher's family had a membership).
Mayfield Cardinal Football games at War Memorial Stadium.

Friends and neighbors always near.
An easy walk to and from school.
A quick bike ride to almost anywhere that mattered.
And I was the preacher's kid at Mayfield First Church. Or, at least one of them. Dad was the Associate, and Mayfield was our home.

It’s what I knew.

I've rarely gone back over the years. I'm not sure why that's the case. Well, that's not entirely true. Initially it was the case because clergy don't go back to the places they've left---right?

It's just not done, and if you grew up with Jeffords as your last name, you're darned right it wasn't done.

And that was hard for me. I had a niche' of friends with whom I went to school and church and often those two groups were one, but not always. Whatever code of clergy ethics there was to abide by, I didn't know about it or care...I just missed my friends.

It's a pattern that has repeated itself more than once in my life, both as a PK and as a P in my own right.

It's a hard thing--probably necessary only because we clergy cannot be trusted to behave professionally toward one another--an indictment on all persons of the cloth and God knows there's far too many horror stories of preacher's past who can't and won't let go even though there is no longer any official authority to be pastoral in a former context – making it difficult for the new pastor and confusing for congregants.

The problem with that is PK's get caught in the vice between what was and what must now be.

A life lesson, me thinks, and one that's tough to take sometimes.

Well, over the years my contact with those who were my childhood friends has lessened and lessened to the point of being nearly nonexistent.

The people I knew and called friend are that only in my memory of what I knew them to be – almost 35 years ago.

I've always felt that Mayfield was an aborted chapter in my life. Maybe it would have been different for me to have left at a school year's end. It would have had some appropriate finality to it. And true enough, with each new appointment then and now has come the opportunity to be in relationship with wonderful people. And that has happened again as recently as my move this Summer.

Well, a couple of things have occurred that have reacquainted me with that place.

My sister has lived in Mayfield longer than anywhere else in her life, I guess. Beyond our time there are a family, she has lived just outside of town with her husband for the whole of her marriage. Earlier in life it was easier to get up there and visit. As my life has become more and more complex, the more difficult it has been to go.

Last week for the holiday break the family loaded up and went to Mayfield. It was the first time I have spent any meaningful time there, which is to say more than driving through on my way to Paducah, in about 5 years.

Jerriann and Colin moved into a new home last year, and she's been itching for us to come up.

It was a good visit and time I needed to spend with my sister. It's a hard thing, though. I know I'm not the brother to her that she had in Jimmy. I couldn't be that if I tried. So I haven't. But I've always known I could be better than I was.

We spent a couple of nights there. On July 4, she and I drove into town, needing to load up on cookout stuff, and I saw the town I once knew as home in the light of day.

My own sense of what I saw didn’t square with my memory. Maybe it’s that my memory, pre-life experience, is devoid of interpretation of what things mean in their realistic context.

What I saw was a small town that seemed smaller than I knew it. And it may, in fact, be smaller.

The General Tire plant is long since gone. The KT plant is gone. I don’t know what industry there is that generates the economic energy for the town to circulate around. I was left to wonder if Mayfield is hurting or if it has adapted to economic pressures and doing better than it seemed to me.

Well, since she and I drove into town to go to the store and because it takes only minutes to drive from one part of town to the other, we decided to go see the places I knew of as home in my childhood.

You know how time warps perspective? How is it possible that a place that seemed so expansive was the exact opposite?

Here's my first house. 1301 Longview. We lived there for the first couple of years. That spot in the front yard is a place a tree used to be- one I climbed and played in almost daily.

The curb in front is the one I hit my head on when I was 7 when I wrecked my bike after speeding down the hill coming from right to left in the picture. I think I see the indentation from here. A scary thing - concussion. What I remember about that is wanting to sleep, and my folks not letting me.

A couple of years later, we moved to 204 Heritage Drive.

Jimmy and I shared a room and the last window on the left, which is barely visible in this (drive by with your iPhone in hand) photo, was ours. The window just to the right was Jerriann’s room, and the reason we know it’s her window is that she spent more than a little time climbing in and out of it at all hours of the night! But that’s another story.

It was a brand new house in a brand new subdivision. It was so new that not all the houses around us were finished yet, and there were no houses behind us, only woods. To play in those woods was to enter into a world of another kind. In the heart of the woods was a creek - and much time and mischief ensued there. My stories of that place were less than the Hundred Acre Wood and much less than the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but they were meaningful to me nonetheless.


I went to Longfellow Elementary School. We were the Tigers. Hmmm, seeds were sown early, I guess. I played football for the Tigers in grades 4, 5 and 6. I was starting center in 6th grade. In those days, we could chop block, and I was pretty good at it.

My mother still has the picture of me in Gold and Navy uniform. My footwear? Cleats? Nope…Red, high top Chuck Taylor’s. Nice.

Somewhere along the line, schools in Mayfield became something very different than what they are now. There were several other elementary schools back then – Washington and East College, I think. Now, there’s one brand new beautiful elementary school in town. Graves County schools didn't exist back then, at least not in the way they do now.

Longfellow is gone. The building is now being used as the Health Department on one side and an adult education facility in the back along the hallways where the upper grades once met. Other than my home and neighborhood, this was the building I spent more time in than anywhere else during those years.

If pushed, I think I could recall all my teachers from those years---I think.

This very bad picture is of the Church in which the soil of my spirit was tilled. First Church, Mayfield was a special place to me. I was confirmed there. It was from that pulpit that I was most powerfully aware of the art of preaching. It was there that I heard a voice from the pulpit other than my father’s.

I have vague recollection of Joe Leggett’s presence in the pulpit. What I recall more than his preaching was his crew cut, and during football season he’d ask Mayfield's golden boy, known to you as the Rev'd Dr. Gregory Waldrop, to stand up and announce how many touchdowns he had scored at the previous Friday night's football game, or how many points he had scored playing basketball. Greg and my Dad's relationship was powerful in those days. Dad was in Greg's life when Greg was sensing the call to ministry and he helped Greg to hone it as it was taking shape within him. There were many, many nights you'd find Greg at our home, late at night, popcorn popping and deep life conversations commencing. I remember Greg’s first sermon from Mayfield First's pulpit. It was titled “Go!”

But the voice from the pulpit that captured my attention in those years, other than my dad's, was Jerry Carr's. He was and is a master of the craft. His use of language and sense of presence in the pulpit had me riveted.

And there I'd sit. Very often I'd be on the second pew, pulpit right, sitting beside Chuck Stallins - who was the definition of a helluva guy.

I loved that Church. It was because of it that we lived in Mayfield. And when we left Mayfield, we left that Church.

Only in the recent past has some reconnection with Mayfield come about with folks other than family. One of my buddies in those days, Kenny, lives in Reidland and goes to church there with my friend and clergy brother, Sky, as his pastor. There was an email reconnect there, and that made me glad. Recently Kenny's dad died. A good man, as I recall, and I was thankful that Sky let me know that so I could convey my sympathies to Kenny. And I was thankful for a ministry peer I knew and trusted who could walk the difficult days of grief with them.

And then, dare I say it, there’s Facebook.

Liz was my closest buddy in those days. We went to school together, church, our families socialized. It was never boyfriend/girlfriend. Had we been in each others’ lives at another time, maybe? But we were buddies, and there’s always been a soft place in my heart for her.

Other than the rare news about each other communciated through our parents, we've not been in each other's company, or made direct contact, in a long, long time.

A few weeks ago I had a friend request from her, and I thought, “Ok, now I see the value of Facebook.” She still lives in Mayfield and has a great life. She’s helped fill in the blanks of folks I’ll never see again and always wondered what sort of life they ended up living.

My Mayfield trip was cathartic in ways I never expected nor thought I needed.

But I was wrong, I did.

It was good to be with my family. My boys loved being there with their Aunt Jerriann and Uncle Colin.

Don’t know when we’ll get back – although I doubt it’ll be 5 years from now.

We need those places, don't we? Wonder places for Wonder Years. Truth about them is never fully what we remember and was never really what was actually true. The value of the place and the meaning we attach to it is not dependant on that.

And that's a good thing.