Walla Walla, WA November 5, 2010, Overcast fall day, 48 degrees.
My friend Jim's wife died yesterday. I spoke with him over the phone in the afternoon to schedule a home visitation so I could pray with them. She didn't survive the evening. I talked with him this morning and asked if he still wanted me to come over, he broke down as he affirmed that he did. Jim and his wife Gaye are people that I know and care deeply about. They have never attended a worship service in our church, but God has put me in their lives for times like this. For some reason, they know that I love, value and respect them as people and friends. I may only see them once a year, but there is a bond that gives them the freedom to call upon me in the face of the most difficult times of their lives. I take no special credit for that bond. It originates entirely from what the Apostle Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10: "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." I have felt like a clay vessel this week. The side effects of my last chemo took full effect on Tuesday and Wednesday. I was exhausted and couldn't keep food in my body for long. I am technically limited in what I am supposed to do, but I need and want to do more than just sit around and rest. It is a chess game of energy and common sense. I have no problem coming home and crashing when I hit the wall, but the emotional toll I pay when I hiberate too long is pretty high. By the grace of God, I started feeling better yesterday and today. I can only function a few hours at a time, but I pray that God will guide me to use that time to make a difference in the lives of others. I don't feel like it is an inability to relinquish or let go of things. I think alot about St. Paul's earlier words in 2 Corinthians, chapter 1 where he says that "God comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God." It is a privilege to allow God's abundant love and hope flow through us into the lives of others. I sat with Jim, family and friends this afternoon and talked about the services for Gaye next Tuesday. I remembered Jesus often being called to homes of people who had just lost a loved one. I have nothing to offer people in such a time except the love and comfort of Christ. We laughed, cried, and prayed together. Gaye is a woman of faith and hope in Christ. We will celebrate her life and give thanks for Christ's victory over death. I will continue to be a friend to Jim and so many like him that seek the power and promise of the resurrection. In spite of our personal limitations, God is only looking for willing hearts and hands to reveal the Lord's love and mercy. We have the privilege of sharing God's grace out of the abundance of divine comfort. Never disqualify yourself from serving others. It is not competence God seeks, but commitment. God provides the very words and love others need to hear. However, only we can choose to be a vessel in the Lord's hands. Rejoice in the face of your limitations, God only sees our potential in obedience to the Spirit's gentle touch.
On the medical front, we have gotten more information from Dr. Press in Seattle. So far, the only complete stem cell match is my sister Patsy. However, three other siblings are half-matched and they would do in a pinch. Brother Harvey is the only one of those three who has never had cancer, so he would be the likely candidate. Dr. Press wrote today that another sample arrived two days ago, so he would like to get those results before making a final donor selection. I think that is from brother Dan in Bismark, ND. He is even younger than Harvey and also has never had any form of cancer, that I know of. It is difficult to learn how to be patient. I would like to get things moving forward and have some idea of when and where, but it is not in my hands. That is a humbling reality. I am trying to learn what submission looks like in the real world. I am willing to let God guide the pieces of my life, I just wish it would happen quicker. I suspect that when I am in the midst of the stem cell transplant process, I might wish it wasn't happening so soon. During the summer of 1968, I found that events in our nation and my family were outside of my control, as well. It was a critical time of choosing which path I would follow in the yellow wood of life.
New Amsterdam, New York, Summer of 1968
For some reason, I found myself leaving Wapato, WA and flying to upper New York State to spend the summer with my eldest sister, Patsy, her husband Paul Pagiotas, and their three children. I think it had something to do with creating a bond with my older siblings and they lived on a 150 acre former dairy farm and needed a willing helping hand who had some farming knowledge. I remember it rained almost the entire first month I was there. Lake Effect moisture from the Great Lakes was the excuse, but it drove me crazy and I didn't know what to do with myself. I tolerated their children and tried to help out any way that I could. My sister is an amazing chef and I was introduced to Italien and Greek cuisine that I love to this day. When it stopped raining, I was able to begin the farm and household tasks that Paul expected. We had to mow all the meadows that had been put into the Federal CRP program. Paul had an old International Harvester hand crank starting tricycle tractor and an attached mower he expected me to use for that purpose. We went out to get it ready for mowing and there were some sycle blades that needed replacing. Paul was a brilliant Nuclear Engineer, but he had no farm sense or experience. He brought out his power drill and bits and started drilling out the rivets. I kept my mouth shut for the first couple of rivets, but finally I couldn't help myself. I suggested that there was a lot easier way to do that with a chisel, hammer and punch. His Bronx pride almost got the best of him, but he guardedly allowed me to demonstrate and we got the job done in a tenth of the time. If you didn't get the tractor started on the first crank, it could spin backwards and break your arm in two. I learned to dred starting the tractor in the mornings during mowing season, but we got the meadows mowed, in spite of all the young trees growing out from the fence rows. Second job was to repaint all the black window shutters on a two story house that had windows everywhere. It was a very historic home, listed on some historical register and Paul and my sister had done an amazing job restoring to its original glory. The only thing worse than priming and painting the shutters was to reinstall them on the house. However, the biggest job of all was to reinforce the rock piled foundation on part of the house and build an outside stair entrance to the basement, 8 feet wide and 8 feet deep and 8 feet long digging through solid New England granite. Paul helped me dig and chip on the weekends, but during the week, it was pretty much up to me. As we approached the divinely appointed depths, I would show him how much I had accomplished that day and confidently say that I was sure we were finished. Every day, he would measure and say: "A little deeper, a little wider." I grew to hate those words. I didn't know if we would ever get it right, but we did and then we got to start the task of building forms and pouring cement to reinforce walls before the stairs could be built. Paul told me to build a box one foot square so we could accurately measure sand, gravel and cement. I meticulously built that box and swore that it was perfectly one foot square. When it came time to mix the cement, amazingly we had some product left over from a three square foot sack. Paul suggested that we should contact the Federal Weights and Measures Commission and report that they had been using an erronious standard and that we were in possession of the authentic one square foot measure. It became a running joke and I think he kept that box around for years, just to get a chuckle once in a while.
The greatest challenge I had that summer, wasn't work or culture. It was the letters I was getting from my Mother back in WA state about my parents relationship. Since I started first grade, my parents had been separated many of those years for economic reasons. In 1966 my father had left Wapato to begin working for Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle and my mother had refused to relocate, so we were fatherless again.You would think that having 13 children would create an unbreakable bond, but they drifted apart and the marriage died. My mother was convinced Dad was having an affair and so she wrote heart wrenching letters to me describing what a "devil" he was and how horrible she felt. She was trying to force me to choose her side in any eventual dissolution and I didn't know how to deal with her feelings or the situation. It was a spiritual crisis. I didn't understand how God would allow my family to crumble and die. I alternated between anger at my father and pity for my mother. I remember going out to the meadows in the evenings and begging God to heal my parent's relationship and give me back a "normal" family. If you remember the summer of 1968, it seemed like our nation was falling apart, as well. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago exploded into anarchy. Vietnam, the literal war in the inner cities and generational disfunction and distrust made life seem out of control.
In the midst of all the chaos of my family and nation, God spoke to me a life changing challenge. I had been reading and meditating on the words of Jesus: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. What good is it, if one should gain the whole world and lose his soul?" Those words seemed to never leave my consciousness. I finally came to the conclusion that God was asking me to take those words seriously and act upon them in a significant way. I felt deeply that God was calling me to leave Wapato High School and go somewhere else my SR. Year of High School. I had no idea where that might be, but I knew deep within me that Jesus was asking me to deny myself all that I had accomplished in the past and be willing to follow him wherever He would guide me. It was a deeply difficult decision that would change the direction of my life forever. I made the choice to obey that call and returned to Wapato the end of August. My mother was the Librarian at Wapato High School and I dreaded telling her that I didn't feel God wanted me to go to school there that Fall. When I finally had that conversation with her, I foolishly suggested that maybe I should go to Seattle and live with my Father and go to school there. NOT! She predictably refused to even consider such an idea, but didn't flat out forbid me from leaving Wapato High School for another school system. I cried out to God to give me some direction, some sign to guide me in that decision. The first response I got was the Wapato High School tennis coach standing on my doorstep in tears, begging me to reconsider and assuring me that God would use me in Wapato. I wasn't deterred. My basketball coach had a much more mature spirituality and after the initial shock, told me to remember that if "I put my hand to the plow, never look back." I valued his words and support and continued to be a close friend. During basketball season that year, Coach Groenig had just assumed the Varsity Coaching Position. They lost the first ten games of the season and I would often stop by his home after games to give him support. He never got angry with me about abandonning the team and even got me connected with a basketball league in Yakima which I played in. God taught me a great deal about love and friendship from Jerry and Beth Groenig. He would eventually win enough games that year to get in a playoff to go to Districts, but they lost. He would become a WA State Hall of Fame High School Coach and I appreciate him to this day. God finally spoke to me through a Secretary at Dwight D. Eishenhower High School in Yakima, WA. I just drove around one day to visit High Schools in the area and walked into the office of IKE and asked how I could enroll as a student. She asked me where I lived and I told her in Wapato. She was surprised and wanted to know why I wanted or needed to drive 25 miles toYakima for School. My only answer was that I felt God was leading me to go somewhere else for my Sr. Year. She could sense my sincerity and said: "We need people like you in this school." She told me how and where to enroll and I felt God's affirmation to become a Cadet for the next nine months. My entire life would change forever because of that act of obedience.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
ROLLER COASTER LIVING!
Walla Walla, WA October 30,2010 Misty, cloudy morning 48 degrees.
Cancer is a roller coaster ride of highs and lows, sudden changes of direction and relief at the end of the ride. I'm far from the end of this ride, but we got some highlight news this week that is encouraging. The results of my PET scan of 10/21/2010 were very good. All previous tumor sites have been reduced to being described as clear. Lungs and major organs appear cancer free and the bottom line is my cancer is in a state of remission. That was and is the goal of the SCCA transplant team. They want me to return to Seattle without any active tumor sites so that all of my energy and their treatments can go towards a successful transplant procedure. Dr. Press from the SCCA (Seattle Cancer Care Allilance) spoke with me on Monday and after hearing the results of the PET scan agreed that I would do best with another round of R-CHOP Chemo.I received it this past Thursday October 28. I am recovering from that 7 hour process this weekend, but will go ahead and preach at all three worship services on Sunday. I also have a graveside service Monday afternoon and a Session meeting at the church Monday evening. My Prednazone pills will end on Monday, so I will start feeling the full effects of the Chemo after that. Dr. Press also informed us that we have found one match for my transplant from among the first five donors who submitted blood samples. It happens to be my sister Patsy Pagiotas who lives near Albany, New York. She is the matriarch of the family and would be willing to come out for the transplant if another younger and closer donor can't be found. This is a great act of love and sacrifice on her part and we appreciate it very much. We should have results from at least 2 other possible donors next week who are the next two older siblings after me. You wouldn't believe the number of people who have offered to be tested as possible stem cell donors. It is a testament to the value of friendship. It reminds me that my greatest net worth is not financial but relational. You cannot buy that level of devotion. It is the result of years of walking together through the best and the worst of times. We have been blessed to have been able to serve Christ at College Place Presbyterian for over 32 years. By the grace of God, we hope to be able to continue in that service for many years to come. The coming 14 months will demand great patience and perseverance on the part of all of our biological and church family. We hope to get all the pieces of this transplant puzzle in place so we can return to Seattle mid November and keep the process moving forward. There is a treatment option we can follow if the transplant isn't feasible given the age and health of the donors. We would prefer to go forward with the transplant, as that affords the greatest chance of long term complete recovery. However, it also introduces the bottom of the roller coaster ride of trading one potentially fatal disease for another. I might eliminate my cancer, only to have a Graft vs. Host complex that can be equally fatal if it gets out of control. That is why we will have to remain in Seattle up to 4-5 months following the transplant so they can monitor those potential risks. We would covet your prayers for all those decisions and outcomes. The best possible scenario would be to have a successful stem cell transplant that would cure my myleo-dysplastic syndrome, eliminate any residual cancer cells floating around, and replace my deficient immune system with a healthy and vigorous new one. That is why transplant patients often celebrate the date of their transplant as a new birthday. It has the potential to be a complete renaissance of physical life and is worth celebrating. The only thing that has greater power and eternal consequences is the day of conversion when God's Spirit makes us a new creation in Christ Jesus. The old is gone and all things become new. The righteousness of Christ is imputed/transplanted into our mortal bodies and we become the vessel of God's Spirit, grace and love to serve God and others. The correlations between my stem cell transplant and our spiritual rebirth will become more and more evident in the coming weeks and months. In my Junior Year of High School in Wapato, the fruit of the Spirit became more and more evident in every facet of my life.
Wapato Senior High School, FAll 1967
I returned from my second and final summer of work in Alberta via the Greyhound Bus Line. I knew what to expect the second time around and it wasn't nearly as stressful. I was looking forward to getting back to High School. God had blessed me with a good start my Sophomore year and I was more committed and devoted to serving Christ than ever before. In fact, I told my mother that I had decided to stop attending the Community Presbyterian Church where she was an elder and I was a member, and start attending the same holiness denomination that my brother and his wife attended in Medicine Hat. Occasionally my mother surprised me with deeper insights than I would have expected. I guess that after raising 10 other teenagers she had acquired some level of wisdom. She didn't have any significant problems with my decision. I think she knew that the pastor of the holiness church had a cute daughter my age and that this might be as much of a motivation as the theology or worship. She was probably right.
School started right away and I was busy and active from the get-go. I played Fall tennis and beat the number one singles player on our team in a challenge match. I was in training to make the Varsity Basketball team. I continued to be active playing the trombone in the band and Jazz ensemble. I was taking the most difficult academic courses available and I was active in many christian youth organizations in the church and community. I kept up my very disciplined study schedule and continued to get straight A's the entire year. That got me inducted into the National Honor Society and I was voted Vice President at the end of the year. I was also inducted into Modern Music Masters and was elected President for the following year. The topping on the cake, academically, was to be chosen Outstanding Junior Boy by the Masonic Lodge. It was a really big deal in schools of our size and I was probably considered a dark horse, unlikely to win considering the competition. However, the essay they had us write was about service and values of character and spirit. That was probably where I gained any advantage and everyone was pretty shocked when my name was announced as the winner. Ironically, my wife Kriss, who attended White Swan High School and was a year younger than I, won the same award her Junior Year. Our children had a lot to live up to and they far surpassed us in many many ways.
Sports, however, were still the biggest form of nortoriety in small towns then and now and I had some amazing experiences that Junior Year. I made the Varsity Basketball Team and though I didn't play a great deal, I was a significant part of the team and we were very successful. It is hard to imagine the level of athletic talent we would encounter during the course of that year. One of the A.C. Davis players in Yakima would end up running in the Olympic Games as a sprinter. Many of the players in the league would end up at Division I basketball programs. At the District Tournament the end of the season we played Pasco High School in the second round and faced off against a Sophmore phenom, named Ron Howard, who was a man among boys. We only lost to them by one point and the next night they beat Richland, the number 1 rated High School Team in the state by 20+ points. Pasco went on to finish second in the state tournament a couple of weeks later and the Sophmore Phenom would end up playing tight end for the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL. We were a Senior dominated team and I was slated to be one of the starting guards the coming year. Tennis was even more exciting for me personally and as a team. We had a truly talented team and I rose in the ratings to second singles. I had numerous unexpected highlights throughout the year and finished forth at the District Tournament. My friends were beginning to respect my spiritual life as well as my academic and athletic accomplishments. But Wapato was a fairly small pond and I was becoming a bigger and bigger fish. It was a recipe for pride and disaster. Little did I know that God had other plans for me my Senior Year in High School.This would all be revealed to me during my summer months, living with my oldest sister, Patsy Pagiotas and her husband Paul and their three children near Schenectady, New York. Just when you think you suspect you know what God is all about in your life, there comes a curve ball that puts you on the seat of your pants and you have to get up, dust yourself off and start over. In the coming months in New York, God would challenge me with the most difficult choice I could have ever imagined.
Cancer is a roller coaster ride of highs and lows, sudden changes of direction and relief at the end of the ride. I'm far from the end of this ride, but we got some highlight news this week that is encouraging. The results of my PET scan of 10/21/2010 were very good. All previous tumor sites have been reduced to being described as clear. Lungs and major organs appear cancer free and the bottom line is my cancer is in a state of remission. That was and is the goal of the SCCA transplant team. They want me to return to Seattle without any active tumor sites so that all of my energy and their treatments can go towards a successful transplant procedure. Dr. Press from the SCCA (Seattle Cancer Care Allilance) spoke with me on Monday and after hearing the results of the PET scan agreed that I would do best with another round of R-CHOP Chemo.I received it this past Thursday October 28. I am recovering from that 7 hour process this weekend, but will go ahead and preach at all three worship services on Sunday. I also have a graveside service Monday afternoon and a Session meeting at the church Monday evening. My Prednazone pills will end on Monday, so I will start feeling the full effects of the Chemo after that. Dr. Press also informed us that we have found one match for my transplant from among the first five donors who submitted blood samples. It happens to be my sister Patsy Pagiotas who lives near Albany, New York. She is the matriarch of the family and would be willing to come out for the transplant if another younger and closer donor can't be found. This is a great act of love and sacrifice on her part and we appreciate it very much. We should have results from at least 2 other possible donors next week who are the next two older siblings after me. You wouldn't believe the number of people who have offered to be tested as possible stem cell donors. It is a testament to the value of friendship. It reminds me that my greatest net worth is not financial but relational. You cannot buy that level of devotion. It is the result of years of walking together through the best and the worst of times. We have been blessed to have been able to serve Christ at College Place Presbyterian for over 32 years. By the grace of God, we hope to be able to continue in that service for many years to come. The coming 14 months will demand great patience and perseverance on the part of all of our biological and church family. We hope to get all the pieces of this transplant puzzle in place so we can return to Seattle mid November and keep the process moving forward. There is a treatment option we can follow if the transplant isn't feasible given the age and health of the donors. We would prefer to go forward with the transplant, as that affords the greatest chance of long term complete recovery. However, it also introduces the bottom of the roller coaster ride of trading one potentially fatal disease for another. I might eliminate my cancer, only to have a Graft vs. Host complex that can be equally fatal if it gets out of control. That is why we will have to remain in Seattle up to 4-5 months following the transplant so they can monitor those potential risks. We would covet your prayers for all those decisions and outcomes. The best possible scenario would be to have a successful stem cell transplant that would cure my myleo-dysplastic syndrome, eliminate any residual cancer cells floating around, and replace my deficient immune system with a healthy and vigorous new one. That is why transplant patients often celebrate the date of their transplant as a new birthday. It has the potential to be a complete renaissance of physical life and is worth celebrating. The only thing that has greater power and eternal consequences is the day of conversion when God's Spirit makes us a new creation in Christ Jesus. The old is gone and all things become new. The righteousness of Christ is imputed/transplanted into our mortal bodies and we become the vessel of God's Spirit, grace and love to serve God and others. The correlations between my stem cell transplant and our spiritual rebirth will become more and more evident in the coming weeks and months. In my Junior Year of High School in Wapato, the fruit of the Spirit became more and more evident in every facet of my life.
Wapato Senior High School, FAll 1967
I returned from my second and final summer of work in Alberta via the Greyhound Bus Line. I knew what to expect the second time around and it wasn't nearly as stressful. I was looking forward to getting back to High School. God had blessed me with a good start my Sophomore year and I was more committed and devoted to serving Christ than ever before. In fact, I told my mother that I had decided to stop attending the Community Presbyterian Church where she was an elder and I was a member, and start attending the same holiness denomination that my brother and his wife attended in Medicine Hat. Occasionally my mother surprised me with deeper insights than I would have expected. I guess that after raising 10 other teenagers she had acquired some level of wisdom. She didn't have any significant problems with my decision. I think she knew that the pastor of the holiness church had a cute daughter my age and that this might be as much of a motivation as the theology or worship. She was probably right.
School started right away and I was busy and active from the get-go. I played Fall tennis and beat the number one singles player on our team in a challenge match. I was in training to make the Varsity Basketball team. I continued to be active playing the trombone in the band and Jazz ensemble. I was taking the most difficult academic courses available and I was active in many christian youth organizations in the church and community. I kept up my very disciplined study schedule and continued to get straight A's the entire year. That got me inducted into the National Honor Society and I was voted Vice President at the end of the year. I was also inducted into Modern Music Masters and was elected President for the following year. The topping on the cake, academically, was to be chosen Outstanding Junior Boy by the Masonic Lodge. It was a really big deal in schools of our size and I was probably considered a dark horse, unlikely to win considering the competition. However, the essay they had us write was about service and values of character and spirit. That was probably where I gained any advantage and everyone was pretty shocked when my name was announced as the winner. Ironically, my wife Kriss, who attended White Swan High School and was a year younger than I, won the same award her Junior Year. Our children had a lot to live up to and they far surpassed us in many many ways.
Sports, however, were still the biggest form of nortoriety in small towns then and now and I had some amazing experiences that Junior Year. I made the Varsity Basketball Team and though I didn't play a great deal, I was a significant part of the team and we were very successful. It is hard to imagine the level of athletic talent we would encounter during the course of that year. One of the A.C. Davis players in Yakima would end up running in the Olympic Games as a sprinter. Many of the players in the league would end up at Division I basketball programs. At the District Tournament the end of the season we played Pasco High School in the second round and faced off against a Sophmore phenom, named Ron Howard, who was a man among boys. We only lost to them by one point and the next night they beat Richland, the number 1 rated High School Team in the state by 20+ points. Pasco went on to finish second in the state tournament a couple of weeks later and the Sophmore Phenom would end up playing tight end for the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL. We were a Senior dominated team and I was slated to be one of the starting guards the coming year. Tennis was even more exciting for me personally and as a team. We had a truly talented team and I rose in the ratings to second singles. I had numerous unexpected highlights throughout the year and finished forth at the District Tournament. My friends were beginning to respect my spiritual life as well as my academic and athletic accomplishments. But Wapato was a fairly small pond and I was becoming a bigger and bigger fish. It was a recipe for pride and disaster. Little did I know that God had other plans for me my Senior Year in High School.This would all be revealed to me during my summer months, living with my oldest sister, Patsy Pagiotas and her husband Paul and their three children near Schenectady, New York. Just when you think you suspect you know what God is all about in your life, there comes a curve ball that puts you on the seat of your pants and you have to get up, dust yourself off and start over. In the coming months in New York, God would challenge me with the most difficult choice I could have ever imagined.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Restoration
Walla Walla, WA October 23, 2010 Partly cloudy, 60 degrees.
We continue to wait for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance to inform us concerning a stem-cell donor. I called them this week and all of my nine siblings have submitted their blood samples. They should have the results from the first five that they have received the middle of this coming week. I will call back then. It takes 2-3 weeks for a complete evaluation of the samples, so they won't have a final recommendation for some time. I would guess that we will be heading back to Seattle around the 15th of November. By that time, we will have everything ready for winter here at the farm and at the church. We will be dedicating the Wasser House tomorrow afternoon during our Annual Harvest Party. It will all be at the church this year. There have been so many people help out to get the house ready. It is inspirational to see so much effort and sacrifice for people none of us even know. I am looking forward to seeing how God will use this ministry of hospitality to be a blessing and an encouragement to these families who will stay at the Wasser House in the coming months and years. We will keep a journal for families to share what is going on in their lives during their stay with us. I am confident that it will be a significant step in the journey of restoring their health and well being.
I have thought a lot about the idea of restoration this week. In the Old Testament lesson for this Sunday from Joel 2:25-26 it says: "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten--You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be ashamed." Cancer feels a lot like the devastating effects of locusts. Growing up in North Dakota, there were years when the grasshoppers would be so thick that when you walked out in the pasture or wheat fields every step would cause a cloud of locusts to swarm up before you. They would eat all the things we planted in our garden. They would damage the crops in the field so badly that it cost more to harvest a crop than you would receive from selling it. They would fly into your hair and clothes, clinging to your face and hands and leaving behind a dark brown liquid that looked a lot like my Grandfather's chewing tobacco. They made you feel increasingly discouraged, day after day, as you saw your hopes and dreams slowly eaten to nothing. Cancer treatment does something like that to you. You watch your hair fall out and your skin start to age as if time were accelerating out of control. In fact, it's that sense that you are going downhill in a car without brakes that keeps you awake at night. So many other people are making decisions concerning what you do and where you go that if you are not vigilant, you become apathetic about everything. It's a great temptation to give in and accept the label "cancer patient" and act out the role of a passive victim. There is a fine line between unhealthy denial and a positive expectation for the future. Like locusts, cancer eats away at your hopes and dreams not only for the present, but for a future that you may not have. Two things happened this week that I believe were the voice of God to give me hope and strength. All the passages in the Lectionary for this week's worship speak of God's restoring promise and power. I dream about what my life will be like when God restores the years the locusts have eaten with a time of health and strength. I long for a season without pain, procedures and PET scans. In fact, the very second I was entering into the tunnel for my scan on Thursday, this song began to play:
"I Will Be Here"
Tomorrow morning if you wake up and the sun does not appear
I will be here
If in the dark we lose sight of love
Hold my hand and have no fear
Cause I will be here.
I will be here
When you feel like being quiet
When the laughter turns to crying
Through the winning, losing and trying
We'll be together
Cause I will be here
Tomorrow morning if you wake up and the furture is unclear
I will be here
As sure as seasons are made for change
Our lifetimes are made for years
So I will be here
I will be here
And you can cry on my shoulder
When the mirror tells us we're older
I will hold you
And I will be here
To watch you grow in beauty
And tell you all the things you are to me
I will be here
I will be true to the promise I have made to you
And to the One who gave you to me
I will be here
And just as sure as seasons are made for change
Our lifetimes are made for years
So I will be here
We'll be together
I will be here
This song was written for a wedding ceremony, but to me it is what God says to us about the depth of the Lord's love and devotion. At just the perfect second in time, I heard God's voice remind me that we were together in the bowels of that machine. The biggest drawback of feeling the presence of God's Spirit, is that you often can't keep the tears from flowing. Being in the process of the scan, you can't move at all and so your ears fill up with tears and you just try to keep from doing anything that would mess up the results. A friend of mine who has a problem with divine visitations, always thinks these things are just co-incidence. It happens so often and brings exactly what I need at exactly when I need it, that I believe without a doubt that God is that faithful, if we are willing to listen and believe. Even just a mustard seed amount of faith could do mighty things Jesus was oft to say. I would imagine there are many of you who will read these words that can identify with the image of the locusts and the time you have lost in life. Being stuck in a PET scan machine forced me to be still and listen to God's gracious voice in the words of this song. I would encourage you to find a time and place where you can just be still and know that God is God. You might be amazed at what wonderful things God may speak to our hearts when the volume of our life is turned low.
Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada - Summer of 1967
I went back to Canada for a second summer of work for brother Noel. The bred heifer I had purchased the year before had a problem pregnancy and the calf didn't survive. It was a disappointment, but a valuable lesson in the reality of farming and ranching. I ended up selling her back to Noel the end of my second year. I knew a lot more what to expect my second time around. Like any sophomore, I knew just enough about farming and equipment to be dangerous. I drove Noel's prized pick-up truck into the corner of a building and dented the body just behind the driver's door. I baled straw, but didn't know enough to adjust the tension as it warmed up and he probably rued that omission every time he picked up a 30 lb. straw bale that winter. I spent more time with the neighbor boys and friends from the church. It seemed like something always happened when I was with them, like getting skinned up riding double on a motorbike. I was sore and bleeding for a couple of days, but the work had to be done and no mercy is given for stupidity. I learned to drive a swather, cutting wheat so it would dry and cure before winter set in. I only ran the swather into a rock pile once, and there was no damage. Putting up hay became a major work preoccupation. Noel had a German immigrant friend who was a competing weight lifter. He liked to come out and throw bales up on the trailer we used to haul them from the field to the stack near the barn. After you got higher than you could throw them by hand, you took a three pronged pitchfork, stuck it in the middle of the bale and lifted it up and over your head to the top of the stack. This guy could do it effortlessly. I secretly would go out after dinner in the evening and practise, hoping one day to take my turn putting bales up over my head with a pitchfork. It was a real challenge and I prayed for God's strength so I could prove myself to my brother and his buddy. The last week of hauling hay, I screwed up my courage and volunteered to take a turn with the pitchfork. They were both sceptical, yet curious. I took a deep breath, said a silent prayer and successfully lifted maybe 5-6 bales like a full fledged hay hauler. I had crossed the threshold from kid brother to hired man. I felt like the Biblical Samson who had been given supernatural powers to accomplish some great feat of strength. Now I was faced with a spiritual challenge equal to the physical one I had just passed.
Sunday evening worship service was always devoted to testimony and praise from the participants. Having had a clear and obvious direct answer to prayer by my successful hay hauling feats, I knew I was supposed to give a public testimony of God's faithfulness and goodness in my life. I dreaded the rest of the week. I bargained with God nightly about all the reasons I shouldn't have to stand up and testify in church the coming Sunday evening. I thought about faking illness, but I knew that was a coward's way out. I rationalized that God would certainly choose other more righteous and worthy people to speak His praises. I promised that I would tithe my income, read my Bible and pray every day, if God would just give me a free pass from ever standing up in front of a group of christians and saying anything publicly. Knowing what I know of my life today, I can only imagine God getting a good laugh out of what my life's vocation would entail. Vocation comes from the latin word vocare. It literally means the voice or call of God upon your life and destiny. My friend Frederick Buechner says that your vocation, or the place where God is calling you, is where the world's greatest needs and your greatest joy intersect. I went to church that night resigned to my divine appointment. About in the middle of the praise and testimony session, I felt like the Spirit of God yanked me out of the pew and there I was standing in the congregation with everyone curious as to what this rather strange young man from WA state would have to say. The only thing I could testify about was: "God gave me the strength to lift some hay bales over my head with a three pronged pitchfork this week." I sat down sweating profusely and was amazed that I hadn't keeled over, dead on the spot. I was certain that this was a once in a lifetime experience. I went home confident that I would probably never have to stand up in front of a church and speak, ever again in my lifetime. How little do we know or even imagine what craziness God is up to. It's probably better that we don't know where God's hand will guide us, we might just die from fright.
We continue to wait for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance to inform us concerning a stem-cell donor. I called them this week and all of my nine siblings have submitted their blood samples. They should have the results from the first five that they have received the middle of this coming week. I will call back then. It takes 2-3 weeks for a complete evaluation of the samples, so they won't have a final recommendation for some time. I would guess that we will be heading back to Seattle around the 15th of November. By that time, we will have everything ready for winter here at the farm and at the church. We will be dedicating the Wasser House tomorrow afternoon during our Annual Harvest Party. It will all be at the church this year. There have been so many people help out to get the house ready. It is inspirational to see so much effort and sacrifice for people none of us even know. I am looking forward to seeing how God will use this ministry of hospitality to be a blessing and an encouragement to these families who will stay at the Wasser House in the coming months and years. We will keep a journal for families to share what is going on in their lives during their stay with us. I am confident that it will be a significant step in the journey of restoring their health and well being.
I have thought a lot about the idea of restoration this week. In the Old Testament lesson for this Sunday from Joel 2:25-26 it says: "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten--You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be ashamed." Cancer feels a lot like the devastating effects of locusts. Growing up in North Dakota, there were years when the grasshoppers would be so thick that when you walked out in the pasture or wheat fields every step would cause a cloud of locusts to swarm up before you. They would eat all the things we planted in our garden. They would damage the crops in the field so badly that it cost more to harvest a crop than you would receive from selling it. They would fly into your hair and clothes, clinging to your face and hands and leaving behind a dark brown liquid that looked a lot like my Grandfather's chewing tobacco. They made you feel increasingly discouraged, day after day, as you saw your hopes and dreams slowly eaten to nothing. Cancer treatment does something like that to you. You watch your hair fall out and your skin start to age as if time were accelerating out of control. In fact, it's that sense that you are going downhill in a car without brakes that keeps you awake at night. So many other people are making decisions concerning what you do and where you go that if you are not vigilant, you become apathetic about everything. It's a great temptation to give in and accept the label "cancer patient" and act out the role of a passive victim. There is a fine line between unhealthy denial and a positive expectation for the future. Like locusts, cancer eats away at your hopes and dreams not only for the present, but for a future that you may not have. Two things happened this week that I believe were the voice of God to give me hope and strength. All the passages in the Lectionary for this week's worship speak of God's restoring promise and power. I dream about what my life will be like when God restores the years the locusts have eaten with a time of health and strength. I long for a season without pain, procedures and PET scans. In fact, the very second I was entering into the tunnel for my scan on Thursday, this song began to play:
"I Will Be Here"
Tomorrow morning if you wake up and the sun does not appear
I will be here
If in the dark we lose sight of love
Hold my hand and have no fear
Cause I will be here.
I will be here
When you feel like being quiet
When the laughter turns to crying
Through the winning, losing and trying
We'll be together
Cause I will be here
Tomorrow morning if you wake up and the furture is unclear
I will be here
As sure as seasons are made for change
Our lifetimes are made for years
So I will be here
I will be here
And you can cry on my shoulder
When the mirror tells us we're older
I will hold you
And I will be here
To watch you grow in beauty
And tell you all the things you are to me
I will be here
I will be true to the promise I have made to you
And to the One who gave you to me
I will be here
And just as sure as seasons are made for change
Our lifetimes are made for years
So I will be here
We'll be together
I will be here
This song was written for a wedding ceremony, but to me it is what God says to us about the depth of the Lord's love and devotion. At just the perfect second in time, I heard God's voice remind me that we were together in the bowels of that machine. The biggest drawback of feeling the presence of God's Spirit, is that you often can't keep the tears from flowing. Being in the process of the scan, you can't move at all and so your ears fill up with tears and you just try to keep from doing anything that would mess up the results. A friend of mine who has a problem with divine visitations, always thinks these things are just co-incidence. It happens so often and brings exactly what I need at exactly when I need it, that I believe without a doubt that God is that faithful, if we are willing to listen and believe. Even just a mustard seed amount of faith could do mighty things Jesus was oft to say. I would imagine there are many of you who will read these words that can identify with the image of the locusts and the time you have lost in life. Being stuck in a PET scan machine forced me to be still and listen to God's gracious voice in the words of this song. I would encourage you to find a time and place where you can just be still and know that God is God. You might be amazed at what wonderful things God may speak to our hearts when the volume of our life is turned low.
Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada - Summer of 1967
I went back to Canada for a second summer of work for brother Noel. The bred heifer I had purchased the year before had a problem pregnancy and the calf didn't survive. It was a disappointment, but a valuable lesson in the reality of farming and ranching. I ended up selling her back to Noel the end of my second year. I knew a lot more what to expect my second time around. Like any sophomore, I knew just enough about farming and equipment to be dangerous. I drove Noel's prized pick-up truck into the corner of a building and dented the body just behind the driver's door. I baled straw, but didn't know enough to adjust the tension as it warmed up and he probably rued that omission every time he picked up a 30 lb. straw bale that winter. I spent more time with the neighbor boys and friends from the church. It seemed like something always happened when I was with them, like getting skinned up riding double on a motorbike. I was sore and bleeding for a couple of days, but the work had to be done and no mercy is given for stupidity. I learned to drive a swather, cutting wheat so it would dry and cure before winter set in. I only ran the swather into a rock pile once, and there was no damage. Putting up hay became a major work preoccupation. Noel had a German immigrant friend who was a competing weight lifter. He liked to come out and throw bales up on the trailer we used to haul them from the field to the stack near the barn. After you got higher than you could throw them by hand, you took a three pronged pitchfork, stuck it in the middle of the bale and lifted it up and over your head to the top of the stack. This guy could do it effortlessly. I secretly would go out after dinner in the evening and practise, hoping one day to take my turn putting bales up over my head with a pitchfork. It was a real challenge and I prayed for God's strength so I could prove myself to my brother and his buddy. The last week of hauling hay, I screwed up my courage and volunteered to take a turn with the pitchfork. They were both sceptical, yet curious. I took a deep breath, said a silent prayer and successfully lifted maybe 5-6 bales like a full fledged hay hauler. I had crossed the threshold from kid brother to hired man. I felt like the Biblical Samson who had been given supernatural powers to accomplish some great feat of strength. Now I was faced with a spiritual challenge equal to the physical one I had just passed.
Sunday evening worship service was always devoted to testimony and praise from the participants. Having had a clear and obvious direct answer to prayer by my successful hay hauling feats, I knew I was supposed to give a public testimony of God's faithfulness and goodness in my life. I dreaded the rest of the week. I bargained with God nightly about all the reasons I shouldn't have to stand up and testify in church the coming Sunday evening. I thought about faking illness, but I knew that was a coward's way out. I rationalized that God would certainly choose other more righteous and worthy people to speak His praises. I promised that I would tithe my income, read my Bible and pray every day, if God would just give me a free pass from ever standing up in front of a group of christians and saying anything publicly. Knowing what I know of my life today, I can only imagine God getting a good laugh out of what my life's vocation would entail. Vocation comes from the latin word vocare. It literally means the voice or call of God upon your life and destiny. My friend Frederick Buechner says that your vocation, or the place where God is calling you, is where the world's greatest needs and your greatest joy intersect. I went to church that night resigned to my divine appointment. About in the middle of the praise and testimony session, I felt like the Spirit of God yanked me out of the pew and there I was standing in the congregation with everyone curious as to what this rather strange young man from WA state would have to say. The only thing I could testify about was: "God gave me the strength to lift some hay bales over my head with a three pronged pitchfork this week." I sat down sweating profusely and was amazed that I hadn't keeled over, dead on the spot. I was certain that this was a once in a lifetime experience. I went home confident that I would probably never have to stand up in front of a church and speak, ever again in my lifetime. How little do we know or even imagine what craziness God is up to. It's probably better that we don't know where God's hand will guide us, we might just die from fright.
Friday, October 15, 2010
NEW BEGINNINGS!
Friday, October 15, 2010, Walla Walla, WA 65 degrees perfect weather.
I am feeling more effects from the latest R-CHOP chemo that I had just over a week ago. It is sort of a delayed reaction. You feel fairly well when you are still taking 100 milligrams of Prednazone every day for 5 days. Then you come off of that cold turkey and the side effects of the chemo agents start to kick in and it's difficult to have much energy to do anything optional, like writing a blog. I also officiated at two Memorial Services last Saturday afternoon and preached three times on Sunday morning. We are in the process of finalizing the reconstruction of the Wasser House, located just next door to CPPC. It will be a home for people who are in Walla Walla to receive cancer treatment. There is already the Herring House for that service, but they only allow adults and have no capacity for children. We will be able to host one family at a time and focus on those with a child in treatment. The team getting the house in order has set a deadline of October 24 to get it ready and we will dedicate it during our Harvest Party that Sunday afternoon. There is already a waiting list of families who need this service, so we will have the privilege of showing God's love and grace to many over the years. People come to Walla Walla from all over NE Oregon and SW WA. to receive cancer treatment. With winter driving conditions approaching in the Blue Mountains, it becomes difficult, if not dangerous to drive over 1-2 mountain passes every day for radiation or other treatment. We know that this ministry of hospitality will not only meet physical and financial needs, but we pray that God's love will touch the hearts of all those who come to this house. It is a ministry of completely unconditional love. There are no strings attached to the use of the facility. We are creating a hospitality ministry team to welcome new guests, give them orientation about the house and the community and provide information about opportunities within our congregation and community that they can access. We already have a volunteer who happens to be a nurse, who will clean the facility after every usage. She wants to offer her nursing skills and awareness of sterile necessity to make sure people are safe and secure. Many others have given amazing amounts of time, skills and resources to transform this eyesore into a place of beauty and service. That is the goal of the cancer treatments and stem-cell transplant that we are experiencing.
I have heard from most of my siblings and they have submitted the blood samples to the SCCA for testing. We hope to hear from those tests in the next couple of weeks. I am scheduled for a PET scan on Thursday, October 21 and then will meet with my Oncologist the next week here in Walla Walla. The R-CHOP is obviously having a strong impact on my body. The tumor in my neck is essentially gone, along with my hair. Kriss and Cleo pulled out the bulk of it as I was shedding and then I went to the barber and had him even it all out with his closest cutting blade. I have an uncanny resemblence to DR. EVIL when I take my glasses off. I demonstrated that during the worship services last Sunday. It got a lot of laughs. One has to keep some form of self-deprecating humor in all of this or you can find yourself in a bad place. I try to keep in perspective all the amazing blessings that flood over my life on a daily basis. My friend Glenn, whose Memorial Service I led last week, was diagnosed with his cancer in late August of this year and died within six weeks. My first cancer surgery was 12 years ago and I have had four years since my initial diagnosis with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I try to live one day at a time and give thanks for the gift and miracle of each moment. I still waste a lot of time on probably non-essentials, like watching sports on TV, but some days it is therapeutic to just sit in my recliner and rest. We are just clay. Jeremiah 18 speaks of God as the Master Potter that keeps shaping and reshaping our lives into the form God desires, which is ultimately to be like Jesus. During my Sophmore year at Wapato High School I started a complete make-over in every area of my life.
Fall of 1966, Wapato, WA - Welcome to High School!
I survived my return from the wilds of Alberta via the Greyhound Bus Lines. It was a long and tedious trip with a layover in Spokane in the middle of the night. There is no way you can sleep on those benches and you are constantly in fear that someone is going to just up and steal your luggage if you do happen to fall asleep. Bus Depots are not usually located in the best parts of town and so I got home very tired and cranky. High School orientation began immediately and we were the Class of '69, mighty fine. Having started a complete reset of my priorities and lifestyle in Canada, I wanted to make sure that I didn't fall back into old habits and patterns of behavior. Inspired by the example of people I had met in Alberta, I began to instill spiritual disciplines into my daily life. I prayed for every meal. I began to read not only the Bible daily, but other devotional materials. I discovered a "Christian Radio" station, KBBO in Yakima, WA that aired a program entitled "Unshackled" every weekday evening just when I was going to bed. It originated from some Rescue Mission in Chicago, IL and told a story each night of some desperate soul coming to the Mission for food and shelter and finding a new life in Jesus Christ. It was an ole-timey program with corny organ music in the background for emotional emphasis. Somehow the message was powerful enough to ignore the massage and I became a devoted listener. It reminded me daily of the power of prayer and the hope of a new life in Christ. Many of the converts had had a Godly mother or grandmother who had been praying for them for years, if not decades, and God answered those prayers. I began to pray for my family and friends with a hope and an expectation that God would one day fill their hearts with the Spirit of Life. As a result of these changes, I found myself in no man's land socially and culturally speaking. My friends had no idea how to relate to me any more. I didn't make it easy for them. I was a typical convert. Zealous to a fault, I must have come across as an amazingly arrogant and self-righteous fanatic. I had no qualms about telling them to stop listening to Rock and Roll Music and even suggested KBBO as an alternative. Having been deeply influenced by the Holiness Church in Medicine Hat, I made an appointment with the Principal of Wapato High School, Mr. Dorr, to see about abolishing School Dances. This was obiviously a place of sin and degradation and I thought it would be better for public schools to eliminate such temptations from their schedule. He was not in support of my vision and politely excused me from the office.
The transformation of my mind and spirit (cf, Romans 12:1-2) first showed up in my academic life. I now had time to study, since no one was calling to talk to me or invite me to go anywhere. I devised a very disciplined hourly pattern in which I would read or study intensively for 15 minutes. Then I would reward myself with a 5 minute break and then force myself to go back for 15 minutes on and 5 minutes off. I had read someplace that your efficiency of retention declines rapidly after 20 minutes of concentration, to the point that if you tried to read or study intensively for 60 minutes, the last 40 minutes would essentially be wasted. In my schedule, I could get 45 minutes of productive work out of 60 minutes and reward myself with three 5 minute breaks as well. It worked so well that I rapidly became a model student. I got everything done on time and came to class prepared to contribute to discussion and discovery. By the end of the first Quarter, I proudly carried my Quarterly Grade Report into the High School Library to show my mother how well I had done. It was the best Grade Report I had ever had and I knew she would be very proud and pleased. I received all A's and one B+. I handed her the Report Card without comment and awaited her response. She looked at it for a minute and without any facial expression or emotion stated: "You could have done better!" I was so angry and disappointed that I was speachless. I grabbed the paper and stalked out of the Library vowing under my breath that I would show her. I did. Over the course of the next 2 3/4 years in High School I would receive nothing less than an A, except for my final Trimester my Sr. year when I got another B+. I would not recommend this as a helpful parenting skill, but either my mother was extremely wise in how far and hard to push her expectations, or she was just having a bad day. Regardless, my academic transformation would continue and I would initial PTL on returned papers and tests, Praise The Lord. God was the only reason I could either desire or accomplish anything of value in my life.
The second area of obvious change in my life was my dedication and commitment to tennis and basketball. My mother had forbidden me from playing football. She had had enough sons seriously injured playing that sport and she argued that tennis, in particular, was a lifetime sport that you could play forever. I bought that reasoning and so I played tennis fall and spring, but basketball was king in Wapato and to be a member of the Wolfpack Basketball Team was the dream of most of the young boys in the community. Wapato was a school of about 600 students, but there were only a couple of classifications of different school sizes in those days and we competed against the largest High Schools in the state. Wapato was legendary as a small school who could compete with anyone. During my career, I had the privilege of playing for two WA State Hall of Fame Basketball coaches, Russ Insley and Jerry Groenig. They were Hall of Fame stature as people, as well as coaches. Early in the fall of my Sophmore year, I began training in earnest to make the Jr. Varsity Team. Those were the days of limited playing opportunity and there was only a Varsity and a Jr. Varsity Boys Basketball team. If you didn't make Jr. Varsity as a Sophmore, your basketball career was essentially over. By some divine intervention, I was selected as one of the chosen 12 out of dozens of candidates. We all got a buzz shave, just like I have today due to chemo, and we proudly wore the scarf and knit caps required by the coaching staff whenever we went outdoors. I was the shortest player on the team. By the end of the season, I would be one of the starting guards, along with my friend Glenn Hata. My favorite place to play was Ellensburg, WA. For some reason, I always did my best there and I was high point man when we played them in January, 1967. One memory stands out in particular from that season. We were playing a tight game in Grandview, WA and leading by just a few points, Coach Groenig told us to hold on to the ball and force them to foul us. I had been practising this special move inside the key that I had perfected to where I could score 9 out of 10 times. I found myself in the right place for that move and someone passed me the ball and I just reacted out of instinct and did the move and scored a basket. Coach Groenig immediately called time-out in order to ream me out for disobeying his explicit instructions about holding on to the ball. Arriving at the bench, he sternly asked me if I didn't recall him telling us to hold on to the ball. The only thing I thought to say was: "But Coach, I knew I could make it!" He had seen me practising this move over and over, even after practise was over, and I guess he believed me. I didn't take any more unauthorized shots the rest of the game, however, but I learned a lesson about dedication and courage in the face of adversity. My entire Sophmore Year would be a turning point in my life. The old adage was coming true, "God honors those who honor Him." I had committed to returning to Canada for a second year on brother Noel's cattle ranch. I wanted to show Noel and Betty that I was a new person in Christ. I went back with a completely different attitude and motivation.
I am feeling more effects from the latest R-CHOP chemo that I had just over a week ago. It is sort of a delayed reaction. You feel fairly well when you are still taking 100 milligrams of Prednazone every day for 5 days. Then you come off of that cold turkey and the side effects of the chemo agents start to kick in and it's difficult to have much energy to do anything optional, like writing a blog. I also officiated at two Memorial Services last Saturday afternoon and preached three times on Sunday morning. We are in the process of finalizing the reconstruction of the Wasser House, located just next door to CPPC. It will be a home for people who are in Walla Walla to receive cancer treatment. There is already the Herring House for that service, but they only allow adults and have no capacity for children. We will be able to host one family at a time and focus on those with a child in treatment. The team getting the house in order has set a deadline of October 24 to get it ready and we will dedicate it during our Harvest Party that Sunday afternoon. There is already a waiting list of families who need this service, so we will have the privilege of showing God's love and grace to many over the years. People come to Walla Walla from all over NE Oregon and SW WA. to receive cancer treatment. With winter driving conditions approaching in the Blue Mountains, it becomes difficult, if not dangerous to drive over 1-2 mountain passes every day for radiation or other treatment. We know that this ministry of hospitality will not only meet physical and financial needs, but we pray that God's love will touch the hearts of all those who come to this house. It is a ministry of completely unconditional love. There are no strings attached to the use of the facility. We are creating a hospitality ministry team to welcome new guests, give them orientation about the house and the community and provide information about opportunities within our congregation and community that they can access. We already have a volunteer who happens to be a nurse, who will clean the facility after every usage. She wants to offer her nursing skills and awareness of sterile necessity to make sure people are safe and secure. Many others have given amazing amounts of time, skills and resources to transform this eyesore into a place of beauty and service. That is the goal of the cancer treatments and stem-cell transplant that we are experiencing.
I have heard from most of my siblings and they have submitted the blood samples to the SCCA for testing. We hope to hear from those tests in the next couple of weeks. I am scheduled for a PET scan on Thursday, October 21 and then will meet with my Oncologist the next week here in Walla Walla. The R-CHOP is obviously having a strong impact on my body. The tumor in my neck is essentially gone, along with my hair. Kriss and Cleo pulled out the bulk of it as I was shedding and then I went to the barber and had him even it all out with his closest cutting blade. I have an uncanny resemblence to DR. EVIL when I take my glasses off. I demonstrated that during the worship services last Sunday. It got a lot of laughs. One has to keep some form of self-deprecating humor in all of this or you can find yourself in a bad place. I try to keep in perspective all the amazing blessings that flood over my life on a daily basis. My friend Glenn, whose Memorial Service I led last week, was diagnosed with his cancer in late August of this year and died within six weeks. My first cancer surgery was 12 years ago and I have had four years since my initial diagnosis with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I try to live one day at a time and give thanks for the gift and miracle of each moment. I still waste a lot of time on probably non-essentials, like watching sports on TV, but some days it is therapeutic to just sit in my recliner and rest. We are just clay. Jeremiah 18 speaks of God as the Master Potter that keeps shaping and reshaping our lives into the form God desires, which is ultimately to be like Jesus. During my Sophmore year at Wapato High School I started a complete make-over in every area of my life.
Fall of 1966, Wapato, WA - Welcome to High School!
I survived my return from the wilds of Alberta via the Greyhound Bus Lines. It was a long and tedious trip with a layover in Spokane in the middle of the night. There is no way you can sleep on those benches and you are constantly in fear that someone is going to just up and steal your luggage if you do happen to fall asleep. Bus Depots are not usually located in the best parts of town and so I got home very tired and cranky. High School orientation began immediately and we were the Class of '69, mighty fine. Having started a complete reset of my priorities and lifestyle in Canada, I wanted to make sure that I didn't fall back into old habits and patterns of behavior. Inspired by the example of people I had met in Alberta, I began to instill spiritual disciplines into my daily life. I prayed for every meal. I began to read not only the Bible daily, but other devotional materials. I discovered a "Christian Radio" station, KBBO in Yakima, WA that aired a program entitled "Unshackled" every weekday evening just when I was going to bed. It originated from some Rescue Mission in Chicago, IL and told a story each night of some desperate soul coming to the Mission for food and shelter and finding a new life in Jesus Christ. It was an ole-timey program with corny organ music in the background for emotional emphasis. Somehow the message was powerful enough to ignore the massage and I became a devoted listener. It reminded me daily of the power of prayer and the hope of a new life in Christ. Many of the converts had had a Godly mother or grandmother who had been praying for them for years, if not decades, and God answered those prayers. I began to pray for my family and friends with a hope and an expectation that God would one day fill their hearts with the Spirit of Life. As a result of these changes, I found myself in no man's land socially and culturally speaking. My friends had no idea how to relate to me any more. I didn't make it easy for them. I was a typical convert. Zealous to a fault, I must have come across as an amazingly arrogant and self-righteous fanatic. I had no qualms about telling them to stop listening to Rock and Roll Music and even suggested KBBO as an alternative. Having been deeply influenced by the Holiness Church in Medicine Hat, I made an appointment with the Principal of Wapato High School, Mr. Dorr, to see about abolishing School Dances. This was obiviously a place of sin and degradation and I thought it would be better for public schools to eliminate such temptations from their schedule. He was not in support of my vision and politely excused me from the office.
The transformation of my mind and spirit (cf, Romans 12:1-2) first showed up in my academic life. I now had time to study, since no one was calling to talk to me or invite me to go anywhere. I devised a very disciplined hourly pattern in which I would read or study intensively for 15 minutes. Then I would reward myself with a 5 minute break and then force myself to go back for 15 minutes on and 5 minutes off. I had read someplace that your efficiency of retention declines rapidly after 20 minutes of concentration, to the point that if you tried to read or study intensively for 60 minutes, the last 40 minutes would essentially be wasted. In my schedule, I could get 45 minutes of productive work out of 60 minutes and reward myself with three 5 minute breaks as well. It worked so well that I rapidly became a model student. I got everything done on time and came to class prepared to contribute to discussion and discovery. By the end of the first Quarter, I proudly carried my Quarterly Grade Report into the High School Library to show my mother how well I had done. It was the best Grade Report I had ever had and I knew she would be very proud and pleased. I received all A's and one B+. I handed her the Report Card without comment and awaited her response. She looked at it for a minute and without any facial expression or emotion stated: "You could have done better!" I was so angry and disappointed that I was speachless. I grabbed the paper and stalked out of the Library vowing under my breath that I would show her. I did. Over the course of the next 2 3/4 years in High School I would receive nothing less than an A, except for my final Trimester my Sr. year when I got another B+. I would not recommend this as a helpful parenting skill, but either my mother was extremely wise in how far and hard to push her expectations, or she was just having a bad day. Regardless, my academic transformation would continue and I would initial PTL on returned papers and tests, Praise The Lord. God was the only reason I could either desire or accomplish anything of value in my life.
The second area of obvious change in my life was my dedication and commitment to tennis and basketball. My mother had forbidden me from playing football. She had had enough sons seriously injured playing that sport and she argued that tennis, in particular, was a lifetime sport that you could play forever. I bought that reasoning and so I played tennis fall and spring, but basketball was king in Wapato and to be a member of the Wolfpack Basketball Team was the dream of most of the young boys in the community. Wapato was a school of about 600 students, but there were only a couple of classifications of different school sizes in those days and we competed against the largest High Schools in the state. Wapato was legendary as a small school who could compete with anyone. During my career, I had the privilege of playing for two WA State Hall of Fame Basketball coaches, Russ Insley and Jerry Groenig. They were Hall of Fame stature as people, as well as coaches. Early in the fall of my Sophmore year, I began training in earnest to make the Jr. Varsity Team. Those were the days of limited playing opportunity and there was only a Varsity and a Jr. Varsity Boys Basketball team. If you didn't make Jr. Varsity as a Sophmore, your basketball career was essentially over. By some divine intervention, I was selected as one of the chosen 12 out of dozens of candidates. We all got a buzz shave, just like I have today due to chemo, and we proudly wore the scarf and knit caps required by the coaching staff whenever we went outdoors. I was the shortest player on the team. By the end of the season, I would be one of the starting guards, along with my friend Glenn Hata. My favorite place to play was Ellensburg, WA. For some reason, I always did my best there and I was high point man when we played them in January, 1967. One memory stands out in particular from that season. We were playing a tight game in Grandview, WA and leading by just a few points, Coach Groenig told us to hold on to the ball and force them to foul us. I had been practising this special move inside the key that I had perfected to where I could score 9 out of 10 times. I found myself in the right place for that move and someone passed me the ball and I just reacted out of instinct and did the move and scored a basket. Coach Groenig immediately called time-out in order to ream me out for disobeying his explicit instructions about holding on to the ball. Arriving at the bench, he sternly asked me if I didn't recall him telling us to hold on to the ball. The only thing I thought to say was: "But Coach, I knew I could make it!" He had seen me practising this move over and over, even after practise was over, and I guess he believed me. I didn't take any more unauthorized shots the rest of the game, however, but I learned a lesson about dedication and courage in the face of adversity. My entire Sophmore Year would be a turning point in my life. The old adage was coming true, "God honors those who honor Him." I had committed to returning to Canada for a second year on brother Noel's cattle ranch. I wanted to show Noel and Betty that I was a new person in Christ. I went back with a completely different attitude and motivation.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
FROM A SOW'S EAR TO A SILK PURSE/SANCTIFICATION
Walla Walla, WA 70 degrees, beautiful weather,
I have my second R-CHOP tomorrow. It is a 6-7 hour process and I'm not looking forward to it. Hopefully my PICC line will work for the infusions and everything will go smoothly. I am starting to lose my hair. It comes out in clumps. I told our daughter Cleo that I am starting to look like a dog with mange. I may just shave it all off to get it over with. Cleo is saving some of it to make a bird's nest. I told her to make it big enough for a Robin's nest, she got a kick out of that. I am hearing from brothers and sisters that they have received their blood sample kits from the SCCA. They will get those sent back in and then we will find out who is a possible stem cell donor match. I will have a PET scan within 3 weeks to see how effective the R-CHOP has been. That's when I will have to go back to Seattle and make decisions about the timing for the Stem Cell Transplant. There are some big decisions surrounding all of those details, and we would appreciate your prayers for wisdom and discernment. We weaned the 2010 calf crop yesterday. The mother cows don't seem too stressed about it all. The calves are in the feedlot next to the barn and are already munching on hay through the feeder panels. They will need their second shot in two weeks for all their post weaning vaccinations. Bud Bier is putting up our final 16 acres of feeder hay this week. So far, the weather is co-operating and that will wrap up all our 2010 farm work. We sold some grass horse hay last week and got more hay stored in the barn for winter. Being home has given us a chance to get all the regular things done that need to be done before winter. The cows will be out on pasture for another 6-7 weeks before we will have to think about supplementing their feed rations. Cleo will have to round up some help to take care of that over the winter. Kriss is looking forward to leaving her crutches behind in less than two weeks. I would like to share with you the story of a special man who walked on crutches for 21 years, from 1641-1662.
Blaise Pascal was born June 19, 1623. His mother died when he was three years old. When he was eight, his father moved with his three children to Paris, France so that he could better care for them and provide the best opportuities for an education. He knew that Blaise was a gifted child. When the author Chateaubriand met him for the first time, he described Blaise as "un effrayant genie", a frightening genius. Desiring Blaise to have a more classical education, his father forbade him from studying mathematics. That minor impediment did not stop Pascal from learning on his own. By the time he was 11 years old, he surrepticiously had a paper published on the creation of sound and sound waves, based on his secret study of mathematical principles. His father relented and enrolled him with the greatest mathematicians of his day. By the age of 12, he had mastered the 33 original propositions of Euclide. His fame intensified with his publication, at 16 years of age, of an essay on cones and conical properties.
His father worked for the government calculating tax and interest fees. It was a job he could do at home so he could be with his children as much as possible. However, he often would work through the night doing all these minute calculations. Blaise created "la machine arithmetique", or a device that could make those calculations which would become the precusor to all modern calculators and computors. It made his father's work feasible, given the time he had available. By this time his family had moved to Rouen. Following an accident in which he broke his leg, Blaise's father needed in home medical care. It was provided by two caregivers who had recently been converted to the teachings of Jansenism, an offshoot of Catholicism that melded teachings of Augustine and Calvin. The entire family was converted and Blaise came to the conclusion that the ultimate goal in life was not the acquistion of truth, but the inculcation of holiness. Tragically, Blaise had fallen victim to early onset tuberculosis when he was 18 years old. He would have to use crutches for the next 21 years until his death in 1662. Rather than becoming embittered by his limitations, Pascal used his suffering as a launch pad in order to focus more fully on the sicknesses of his soul. He wrote an essay entitled: "Prayer to God - How to Best Learn From Affliction". From 18 on, he would never live a day without physical pain and misery. He is a living testimony to all of us about overcoming great obstacles.
Despite his physical limitations, it seemed to magnify his intellectual and spiritual gifts. Pascal had an unique view of science and religion. Theology was a "science, or source of knowledge based on the authority of revealed truth in Holy Scripture". Emperical Science was "based on human reason and scientific experimentation that led to 'connaissance' deep understanding". In his vast mind and view of the world, he was able to reconcile his religious convictions with his world changing scientific contributions. He rejected all authority, both ecclesiastical and intellectual that refused to embrace new understandings and progress. His secular resume is without equal. His studies on "le vide", or vacuum, led to the creation of the first barometer and such practical devices as the hypodermic syringe. Ultimately he would establish the foundational principles of hydraulics, infinitesimal calculus, theories of probability and vast theological insights. Equally, he would put into practice his biblical convictions in the creation of a form of public transportation for the poor by purchasing, from his own resources, wagons and teams to make circular routes to safely transport workers to and from places of employment. The streets of Paris were plagued by reckless aristocrats travelling in large carriages that maimed and killed untold numbers of pedestrians, usually the poor and halt. Blaise felt he was supernatually saved from one such incident while traversing a bridge in Paris and barely escaped death or further physical impariment.
As with all human beings, Pascal experienced his own wanderings in the wilderness. Following the death of his father in 1651, Blaise struggled with a crisis of faith and identity. His father had been the foundation stone that stabilized his entire life. How could he live without that stability and security? He went through a period of secularism and public acclaim. He was a favorite among the salon devotees and he embraced a new philosophy of life that sought to understand the world through instinct and calculated behavior. He provided for his new admirers ideas on beating the odds at gambling, which made him very welcome and popular, indeed. He eventually, however, would be drawn back into the fellowship of the faithful. Monday, November 23, 1654 between the hours of 10:30 pm and 12:30 am, Blaise would describe in minute detail an encounter with the living God. Words like certitude, joy, peace and total submission would highlight his response to this encounter. He summorizes this experience by stating: "Eternally in joy as a result of one day of spiritual awareness in this world. Non obliviscar sermones tuos "I will never forget your promises". Amen.
Rededicated to his love for God and his passion to serve others, Pascal would consecrate the rest of his life to writing Christian treatises, debating opponents of Jansenism, and hiding out after he and his teachings were banned by the Papal authorities. Nearing the end of his life, he continued to show mercy and love. He gave a mother with a sick child his home, so she could properly care for her family. He had his sister place him in the paupers home for the terminally ill so he could die amidst the poor. On his deathbed, his greatest regret was that he had not done enough to alleviate the sufferings of the poorest of the poor.
Looking at the short 39 year life of Blaise Pascal, one sees the process of christian sanctification. It did not originate with Blaise Pascal. He would be the first to declare that it was all by grace and the free gift of God. He would be very content today, knowing that almost all of Christendom knows little or nothing about him personally. but benefits daily from his great knowledge and contributions to the world. His was a heart dedicated to loving and serving both God and humanity. If you ever travel to Stockholm, Sweden, visit the Royal Museum and there you will find the perfected Calculating Machine Pascal made for Queen Christine of Sweden around 1652. He is a living testimony of the faithfulness of God and the fruitfulness of lives that seek to honor God using the talents and abilities God provides. My own journey towards sanctification is very modest and far from complete. Nevertheless, my first summer working in Alberta was a jump-start on that path of holiness and sanctificaiton.
MEDICINE HAT, ALBERTA, CANADA SUMMER OF 1966
One of the first reality checks I received after being on brother Noel's cattle ranch for only a couple of days, was my language. Noel took me aside shortly upon my arrival and asked firmly and bluntly, if I would clean up my language around his two young sons. Well, I had been making a sincere and conscious effort to not use any words that would be offensive, but it seems it wasn't good enough. "Gosh darn", "Shoot", "Son of a gun" and other seemingly innoculous phrases were just thinly disguised replacements for their sinful cousins. I would have to learn a whole new way of talking, and I did. The first Saturday I was there was shopping in town day. It was starting to warm up and I put on a pair of cut-off pants to go to town. Noel flatly said he wouldn't be caught dead being seen with someone wearing cut off pants to town, so I could choose to change clothes, or stay home alone. Reality check #2. Sunday, of course, was a day of worship and rest. I had no idea that it would be taken so literally or consistently. Going to church was a cultural, as well as a spiritual shock. Boy and girls were segregated in separate classrooms, even for high school students. What a bummer. Noel and Betty attended a Church with a "holiness" origin and it wasn't anything like the Presbyterian worship services I was accustomed to attending. It could last long past the normal hour of 12 noon and it got pretty emotional at times. Returning home, we had a great lunch that Betty had mostly prepared the day before and then I was informed that it was time to rest, meaning FOB, flat on bed. I wasn't used to doing nothing on Sunday and I tried to argue my way around this new reality, but to no avail. The clincher was after nap time, we had a very light snack and headed back into town for evening worship. What a shock to my system to find out that going to church in the morning was just the prelude to the real service that took place in the evening. This was a praise and testimony service where people were expected to get up and share what God was doing in their lives and world. It could go on forever. After less than a week, I would have probably headed back home, but I had no way of getting there.
The details of my employment were that I was to work 6 days a week for $5 a day, plus room and board. It was better money and food than I could have earned back in Wapato, and Noel wouldn't pay me until the end of the summer, so I wouldn't be tempted to foolishly spend any of it. Week two brought another crisis. I received a letter saturated with perfume and covered with lipstick imprints of lucious lips back in Wapato. Betty was sincerely shocked that any self-respecting girl would send such a letter. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I wasn't so sure she was that self-respecting, but she let me have the letter in spite of her doubts about my moral character. Within two weeks the letters stopped. I'll never know if Betty confiscated the letters, or I was just another victim of short term romance and long distance forgetfulness. I grieved about a day or two and decided I was probably better off unattached for the moment. Slowly, God began to change my attitude and behavior. I actually started to listen in church and I met some really sincere believers who loved God and weren't ashamed to admit it.
Work on the ranch turned into a routine of irrigating, harvesting hay, fixing fence, working cattle and feeding chickens. It was those 500 chickens that changed my life for good. Betty raised these meat chickens to sell to customers in town in order to buy things for the family that she needed and wanted. About the hottest time of the summer, she told me that it was time to process the chickens. Now, I had helped my family butcher chickens back in North Dakota, but this was a serious number of chickens to process and I dreaded the smell of wet chicken feathers and warm entrails for two weeks. Every day we had to reach our goal of 50 chickens in order to be finished in two working weeks. It started at the crack of dawn. Heating water for scaulding, catching 50 chickens, removing the heads and stacking them up for dipping in the scaulding water and then we got to pluck every stinking feather and then "clean" them, or remove all the entrails. Final work was to singe off any chicken hair, wash them and put them in bags for the freezer. It took all day. I dreamed about chickens every night. I saw chicken feathers even when there weren't any. I could tell you everything about chicken anatomy in minute detail. To relieve the boredom, I thought about inventing an automatic guillotine devise the chickens would mount following a corn trail which would make the de-heading a lot more interesting. It was vetoed without serious consideration.The redeeming thing about chicken processing was the untold number of hours I spent just sitting in the shade of a building talking to Betty about life and faith. She was and is one of the most Godly people I have ever met. She truly cared about me and my well being. I could ask her anything and she had a gift of wisdom and compassion. The things she taught me those days doing chickens were worth all the boredom of chicken plucking. By the end of the summer, I had made some significant progress spiritually and personally. I used some of my earnings to buy a bred Hereford heifer. I took home the rest of my loot on a Greyhound Bus that took almost two days to get to Wapato, after an overnight stopover in Spokane. I would be entering Wapato High School that Fall and I was committed to living a Godly life and doing all things to the glory of God.
I have my second R-CHOP tomorrow. It is a 6-7 hour process and I'm not looking forward to it. Hopefully my PICC line will work for the infusions and everything will go smoothly. I am starting to lose my hair. It comes out in clumps. I told our daughter Cleo that I am starting to look like a dog with mange. I may just shave it all off to get it over with. Cleo is saving some of it to make a bird's nest. I told her to make it big enough for a Robin's nest, she got a kick out of that. I am hearing from brothers and sisters that they have received their blood sample kits from the SCCA. They will get those sent back in and then we will find out who is a possible stem cell donor match. I will have a PET scan within 3 weeks to see how effective the R-CHOP has been. That's when I will have to go back to Seattle and make decisions about the timing for the Stem Cell Transplant. There are some big decisions surrounding all of those details, and we would appreciate your prayers for wisdom and discernment. We weaned the 2010 calf crop yesterday. The mother cows don't seem too stressed about it all. The calves are in the feedlot next to the barn and are already munching on hay through the feeder panels. They will need their second shot in two weeks for all their post weaning vaccinations. Bud Bier is putting up our final 16 acres of feeder hay this week. So far, the weather is co-operating and that will wrap up all our 2010 farm work. We sold some grass horse hay last week and got more hay stored in the barn for winter. Being home has given us a chance to get all the regular things done that need to be done before winter. The cows will be out on pasture for another 6-7 weeks before we will have to think about supplementing their feed rations. Cleo will have to round up some help to take care of that over the winter. Kriss is looking forward to leaving her crutches behind in less than two weeks. I would like to share with you the story of a special man who walked on crutches for 21 years, from 1641-1662.
Blaise Pascal was born June 19, 1623. His mother died when he was three years old. When he was eight, his father moved with his three children to Paris, France so that he could better care for them and provide the best opportuities for an education. He knew that Blaise was a gifted child. When the author Chateaubriand met him for the first time, he described Blaise as "un effrayant genie", a frightening genius. Desiring Blaise to have a more classical education, his father forbade him from studying mathematics. That minor impediment did not stop Pascal from learning on his own. By the time he was 11 years old, he surrepticiously had a paper published on the creation of sound and sound waves, based on his secret study of mathematical principles. His father relented and enrolled him with the greatest mathematicians of his day. By the age of 12, he had mastered the 33 original propositions of Euclide. His fame intensified with his publication, at 16 years of age, of an essay on cones and conical properties.
His father worked for the government calculating tax and interest fees. It was a job he could do at home so he could be with his children as much as possible. However, he often would work through the night doing all these minute calculations. Blaise created "la machine arithmetique", or a device that could make those calculations which would become the precusor to all modern calculators and computors. It made his father's work feasible, given the time he had available. By this time his family had moved to Rouen. Following an accident in which he broke his leg, Blaise's father needed in home medical care. It was provided by two caregivers who had recently been converted to the teachings of Jansenism, an offshoot of Catholicism that melded teachings of Augustine and Calvin. The entire family was converted and Blaise came to the conclusion that the ultimate goal in life was not the acquistion of truth, but the inculcation of holiness. Tragically, Blaise had fallen victim to early onset tuberculosis when he was 18 years old. He would have to use crutches for the next 21 years until his death in 1662. Rather than becoming embittered by his limitations, Pascal used his suffering as a launch pad in order to focus more fully on the sicknesses of his soul. He wrote an essay entitled: "Prayer to God - How to Best Learn From Affliction". From 18 on, he would never live a day without physical pain and misery. He is a living testimony to all of us about overcoming great obstacles.
Despite his physical limitations, it seemed to magnify his intellectual and spiritual gifts. Pascal had an unique view of science and religion. Theology was a "science, or source of knowledge based on the authority of revealed truth in Holy Scripture". Emperical Science was "based on human reason and scientific experimentation that led to 'connaissance' deep understanding". In his vast mind and view of the world, he was able to reconcile his religious convictions with his world changing scientific contributions. He rejected all authority, both ecclesiastical and intellectual that refused to embrace new understandings and progress. His secular resume is without equal. His studies on "le vide", or vacuum, led to the creation of the first barometer and such practical devices as the hypodermic syringe. Ultimately he would establish the foundational principles of hydraulics, infinitesimal calculus, theories of probability and vast theological insights. Equally, he would put into practice his biblical convictions in the creation of a form of public transportation for the poor by purchasing, from his own resources, wagons and teams to make circular routes to safely transport workers to and from places of employment. The streets of Paris were plagued by reckless aristocrats travelling in large carriages that maimed and killed untold numbers of pedestrians, usually the poor and halt. Blaise felt he was supernatually saved from one such incident while traversing a bridge in Paris and barely escaped death or further physical impariment.
As with all human beings, Pascal experienced his own wanderings in the wilderness. Following the death of his father in 1651, Blaise struggled with a crisis of faith and identity. His father had been the foundation stone that stabilized his entire life. How could he live without that stability and security? He went through a period of secularism and public acclaim. He was a favorite among the salon devotees and he embraced a new philosophy of life that sought to understand the world through instinct and calculated behavior. He provided for his new admirers ideas on beating the odds at gambling, which made him very welcome and popular, indeed. He eventually, however, would be drawn back into the fellowship of the faithful. Monday, November 23, 1654 between the hours of 10:30 pm and 12:30 am, Blaise would describe in minute detail an encounter with the living God. Words like certitude, joy, peace and total submission would highlight his response to this encounter. He summorizes this experience by stating: "Eternally in joy as a result of one day of spiritual awareness in this world. Non obliviscar sermones tuos "I will never forget your promises". Amen.
Rededicated to his love for God and his passion to serve others, Pascal would consecrate the rest of his life to writing Christian treatises, debating opponents of Jansenism, and hiding out after he and his teachings were banned by the Papal authorities. Nearing the end of his life, he continued to show mercy and love. He gave a mother with a sick child his home, so she could properly care for her family. He had his sister place him in the paupers home for the terminally ill so he could die amidst the poor. On his deathbed, his greatest regret was that he had not done enough to alleviate the sufferings of the poorest of the poor.
Looking at the short 39 year life of Blaise Pascal, one sees the process of christian sanctification. It did not originate with Blaise Pascal. He would be the first to declare that it was all by grace and the free gift of God. He would be very content today, knowing that almost all of Christendom knows little or nothing about him personally. but benefits daily from his great knowledge and contributions to the world. His was a heart dedicated to loving and serving both God and humanity. If you ever travel to Stockholm, Sweden, visit the Royal Museum and there you will find the perfected Calculating Machine Pascal made for Queen Christine of Sweden around 1652. He is a living testimony of the faithfulness of God and the fruitfulness of lives that seek to honor God using the talents and abilities God provides. My own journey towards sanctification is very modest and far from complete. Nevertheless, my first summer working in Alberta was a jump-start on that path of holiness and sanctificaiton.
MEDICINE HAT, ALBERTA, CANADA SUMMER OF 1966
One of the first reality checks I received after being on brother Noel's cattle ranch for only a couple of days, was my language. Noel took me aside shortly upon my arrival and asked firmly and bluntly, if I would clean up my language around his two young sons. Well, I had been making a sincere and conscious effort to not use any words that would be offensive, but it seems it wasn't good enough. "Gosh darn", "Shoot", "Son of a gun" and other seemingly innoculous phrases were just thinly disguised replacements for their sinful cousins. I would have to learn a whole new way of talking, and I did. The first Saturday I was there was shopping in town day. It was starting to warm up and I put on a pair of cut-off pants to go to town. Noel flatly said he wouldn't be caught dead being seen with someone wearing cut off pants to town, so I could choose to change clothes, or stay home alone. Reality check #2. Sunday, of course, was a day of worship and rest. I had no idea that it would be taken so literally or consistently. Going to church was a cultural, as well as a spiritual shock. Boy and girls were segregated in separate classrooms, even for high school students. What a bummer. Noel and Betty attended a Church with a "holiness" origin and it wasn't anything like the Presbyterian worship services I was accustomed to attending. It could last long past the normal hour of 12 noon and it got pretty emotional at times. Returning home, we had a great lunch that Betty had mostly prepared the day before and then I was informed that it was time to rest, meaning FOB, flat on bed. I wasn't used to doing nothing on Sunday and I tried to argue my way around this new reality, but to no avail. The clincher was after nap time, we had a very light snack and headed back into town for evening worship. What a shock to my system to find out that going to church in the morning was just the prelude to the real service that took place in the evening. This was a praise and testimony service where people were expected to get up and share what God was doing in their lives and world. It could go on forever. After less than a week, I would have probably headed back home, but I had no way of getting there.
The details of my employment were that I was to work 6 days a week for $5 a day, plus room and board. It was better money and food than I could have earned back in Wapato, and Noel wouldn't pay me until the end of the summer, so I wouldn't be tempted to foolishly spend any of it. Week two brought another crisis. I received a letter saturated with perfume and covered with lipstick imprints of lucious lips back in Wapato. Betty was sincerely shocked that any self-respecting girl would send such a letter. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I wasn't so sure she was that self-respecting, but she let me have the letter in spite of her doubts about my moral character. Within two weeks the letters stopped. I'll never know if Betty confiscated the letters, or I was just another victim of short term romance and long distance forgetfulness. I grieved about a day or two and decided I was probably better off unattached for the moment. Slowly, God began to change my attitude and behavior. I actually started to listen in church and I met some really sincere believers who loved God and weren't ashamed to admit it.
Work on the ranch turned into a routine of irrigating, harvesting hay, fixing fence, working cattle and feeding chickens. It was those 500 chickens that changed my life for good. Betty raised these meat chickens to sell to customers in town in order to buy things for the family that she needed and wanted. About the hottest time of the summer, she told me that it was time to process the chickens. Now, I had helped my family butcher chickens back in North Dakota, but this was a serious number of chickens to process and I dreaded the smell of wet chicken feathers and warm entrails for two weeks. Every day we had to reach our goal of 50 chickens in order to be finished in two working weeks. It started at the crack of dawn. Heating water for scaulding, catching 50 chickens, removing the heads and stacking them up for dipping in the scaulding water and then we got to pluck every stinking feather and then "clean" them, or remove all the entrails. Final work was to singe off any chicken hair, wash them and put them in bags for the freezer. It took all day. I dreamed about chickens every night. I saw chicken feathers even when there weren't any. I could tell you everything about chicken anatomy in minute detail. To relieve the boredom, I thought about inventing an automatic guillotine devise the chickens would mount following a corn trail which would make the de-heading a lot more interesting. It was vetoed without serious consideration.The redeeming thing about chicken processing was the untold number of hours I spent just sitting in the shade of a building talking to Betty about life and faith. She was and is one of the most Godly people I have ever met. She truly cared about me and my well being. I could ask her anything and she had a gift of wisdom and compassion. The things she taught me those days doing chickens were worth all the boredom of chicken plucking. By the end of the summer, I had made some significant progress spiritually and personally. I used some of my earnings to buy a bred Hereford heifer. I took home the rest of my loot on a Greyhound Bus that took almost two days to get to Wapato, after an overnight stopover in Spokane. I would be entering Wapato High School that Fall and I was committed to living a Godly life and doing all things to the glory of God.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
THE MIRACLE OF CONTENTMENT!
Walla Walla, WA September 30, 2010 Light mist on the river, sunny and beautiful. 80+ degrees
One almost never hears anything about contentment. Our consumer culture has a vested interest in keeping us discontented. If we could be content with what we already have, we would put at risk that 70% of our Gross Domestic Product that relies on consumer consumption. George W. Bush is infamous for that tried and yet untrue gimmick of sending almost every citizen a check for several hundred dollars and then announcing to the nation:"Go Shopping!". It seemed as if we could solve our economic malaise with just a dose of unnecessary and/or deficit creating spending. It may be the favorite bailout for government economists, but the American people didn't buy it. Most of them used the money to pay off some of the debt they already had and began to change their financial lives and priorities. The ordinary working people are always far ahead of those who govern. They have figured out that you can't just keeping going deeper and deeper into debt. You have to make significant sacrifices and life alterring changes to escape the tyranny of indebtedness. They used to have paupers prisons for people who couldn't pay their debts. It's scary to think about how many people would qualify for that situation, myself included, if we had paupers prisons today. We have been working diligently for several years to eliminate all indebtedness, including our house and farm mortgages. I can't wait for the day that we can call Dave Ramsey on his TV show and do the "WE'RE DEBT FREE!" scream. Dave's motto is: "Live like no one else, so you can live like no one else!" Contentment has a lot to do with Dave's philosophy. It would appear that millions of Americans are coming to the same conclusion and they are changing their financial lifestyles. One word of caution, however. Contentment and being debt free are not automatically linked to one another. There is a deeper spiritual need that trumps both of them. The French scientist, genius, mathematician, and christian wise man Blaise Pascal, described it as "le vide". An emptiness or vacuum in the soul of everyone that is "God shaped", meaning it can only be fully filled and brought into equilibrium, when God's Spirit enters into our lives. Pascal, like millions of believers before and after him, tried to fill that emptiness with fame, fortune, pleasure and stimulants. One night in the 1650s, Blaise Pascal described his encounter with the living God as if he were describing one of his scientific experiments. He kept track of the hour and minutes. He described his physical, emotional and ultimate spiritual sensations in minute detail. "Fire, consuming fire, the God of Isaac, Jacob and the prophets is present." It wasn't some religious ritual, it was the creation of a passionately personal relationship with God that changed his life and our world. That experience was so life-transforming for Pascal, that the paper he wrote it upon was found in the hem of his one and only outer cloak after his death. It remains in a museum to this day, a living testimony of the only source of true contentment. Like the 1960s Rolling Stones Classic declared: "I can't find, no satisfaction!" We try just about anything and everything to fill that vacuum, but it is instatiable without the presence of the eternal God who created us. The apostle Paul even used religion and self-righteousness to fill that emptiness, but in Romans 7 he despairs over his ongoing ennui: "So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!" On a journey to arrest and probably execute followers of Jesus in the city of Damascus, Saul of Tarsus was knocked on his keester, blinded by the light of the risen Christ, and overwhelmed by the grace and love of God. God said: "I want you to be my apostle to the Gentiles!". How could anyone refuse? He stumbled into the city, blind as a bat and waited for a believer named Ananias to come and give him the next clues to this life changing mystery. He would change his name to Paulus, or Paul, and in his epistle to the church at Phillipi he would write: "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength." Phil. 4:11-13. That was what I found in the A.C. Davis High School auditorium in May of 1966. A friend named Jesus who loved me enough to die for me. A friend who just also happens to be Kurios, Lord of heaven and earth. As a wonderful songs states: "to look into your judge's face and find your savior there." I felt and knew that the Spirit of the Living God was filling that "vide" in my soul and I felt "shalom", peace and wholeness for the first time in my life.
North to Alberta! Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada Summer of 1966!
No one bothered to forewarn me about the spiritual warfare I would encounter almost immediately upon accepting Christ as my Lord and Savior. Within days, I had a girlfriend. Now that's not to imply that women are temptress' or anything like that. However, it was much more than coincidence that a friend introduced me to this girl who just happened to live down the street from me and she wanted to get to know me as more than a neighbor. Why not? I was feeling pretty lonely at the time. Many of my friends were deeply suspect of my "conversion" experience. They didn't know how to relate to me any more and so they just avoided me. There were only a couple of weeks left before I was to go to work on my brother Noel's cattle ranch in Alberta for the summer. God, I believe, had all that in the works so I would be long gone by the time holding hands turned into Friday night movie kisses. I was falling head over heals into something like love, and the best place for me that summer was 700 miles away from that overwhelming perfume and those delicious lips. But I had to get to Alberta first and that was an adventure in itself.
My mother and I packed what things we thought I would need for working on a real Canadian cattle ranch and we drove to Seattle to say farewell to my father who was working for Boeing Aircraft Company. The next morning, Mom and I boarded the passenger train in Seattle northbound for Vancouver, B.C. It was a spectacular ride along the inland waterways and we got to Vancouver around 11 am. Unfortunately, the only return train left in 30 minutes, so all Mom had time to do was help me get my baggage into the terminal, give me a couple of dollars for food and wish me a good summer in Alberta. She caught the train back to Seattle and I was left alone, 15 years old, in the middle of a strange city in a foreign country. I cring today thinking about the risks that would be present if a parent did that today with their 15 year old. Well, I made the best of it. I went up to the counter and showed the attendant my ticket to Medicine Hat and they told me to take my baggage down to the appropriate place to get it checked in. That was a relief. I was now free from dragging all that stuff around the rest of the day. My train east didn't leave for several hours, so I decided to explore the great city of Vancouver B.C. School was still in session in Canada, so I got a lot of strange looks from people wondering why I wasn't in a classroom somewhere. On second thought, maybe it was the goofy cowboy hat I had dug out of the closet back in Wapato that I was wearing that got the strange looks. After a little while I realized I was hungry, so I went back to the terminal and sat down in the restaurant to eat. I had had one year of French language instruction in 9th grade so I could understand Soupe du Jour and some of the other things on the menu. Officially, everything in Canada was supposed to be printed in both English and French, so I knew that I would learn alot of new vocabulary that summer. As it turned out, that wasn't all I was about to be exposed to. After hanging around all afternoon in the terminal, we boarded the train in the evening and headed east. It took all night and then another whole day to get to Medicine Hat. Spiritual warfare #2 popped up on the train. I met an immigrant who was from some Slavic country. The only language we both could speak the other person understood was French. In my halting French, we got along and tried to visit with each other from time to time. The next afternoon, he invited me to sit next to him because he had something he wanted to show me. He pulled out these really disgusting porno magazines, assuming that any manly red-blooded American 15 year old cowboy would love to take a look. Spiritual temptations come in many forms and when you least expect them. As tired and sleep deprived as I was, I had the common sense to decline his offer and went back to my own seat. We were leaving Calgary at the time and we would get to "The Hat" in a few hours. Pulling into the terminal in Medicine Hat, I was relieved to see my brother Noel standing on the plarform to greet me. What a relief! Time to go to the Ranch and sleep in a real bed and not a train seat or the floor. A totally new culture and life awaited me on the Canadian Prairies.
One almost never hears anything about contentment. Our consumer culture has a vested interest in keeping us discontented. If we could be content with what we already have, we would put at risk that 70% of our Gross Domestic Product that relies on consumer consumption. George W. Bush is infamous for that tried and yet untrue gimmick of sending almost every citizen a check for several hundred dollars and then announcing to the nation:"Go Shopping!". It seemed as if we could solve our economic malaise with just a dose of unnecessary and/or deficit creating spending. It may be the favorite bailout for government economists, but the American people didn't buy it. Most of them used the money to pay off some of the debt they already had and began to change their financial lives and priorities. The ordinary working people are always far ahead of those who govern. They have figured out that you can't just keeping going deeper and deeper into debt. You have to make significant sacrifices and life alterring changes to escape the tyranny of indebtedness. They used to have paupers prisons for people who couldn't pay their debts. It's scary to think about how many people would qualify for that situation, myself included, if we had paupers prisons today. We have been working diligently for several years to eliminate all indebtedness, including our house and farm mortgages. I can't wait for the day that we can call Dave Ramsey on his TV show and do the "WE'RE DEBT FREE!" scream. Dave's motto is: "Live like no one else, so you can live like no one else!" Contentment has a lot to do with Dave's philosophy. It would appear that millions of Americans are coming to the same conclusion and they are changing their financial lifestyles. One word of caution, however. Contentment and being debt free are not automatically linked to one another. There is a deeper spiritual need that trumps both of them. The French scientist, genius, mathematician, and christian wise man Blaise Pascal, described it as "le vide". An emptiness or vacuum in the soul of everyone that is "God shaped", meaning it can only be fully filled and brought into equilibrium, when God's Spirit enters into our lives. Pascal, like millions of believers before and after him, tried to fill that emptiness with fame, fortune, pleasure and stimulants. One night in the 1650s, Blaise Pascal described his encounter with the living God as if he were describing one of his scientific experiments. He kept track of the hour and minutes. He described his physical, emotional and ultimate spiritual sensations in minute detail. "Fire, consuming fire, the God of Isaac, Jacob and the prophets is present." It wasn't some religious ritual, it was the creation of a passionately personal relationship with God that changed his life and our world. That experience was so life-transforming for Pascal, that the paper he wrote it upon was found in the hem of his one and only outer cloak after his death. It remains in a museum to this day, a living testimony of the only source of true contentment. Like the 1960s Rolling Stones Classic declared: "I can't find, no satisfaction!" We try just about anything and everything to fill that vacuum, but it is instatiable without the presence of the eternal God who created us. The apostle Paul even used religion and self-righteousness to fill that emptiness, but in Romans 7 he despairs over his ongoing ennui: "So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!" On a journey to arrest and probably execute followers of Jesus in the city of Damascus, Saul of Tarsus was knocked on his keester, blinded by the light of the risen Christ, and overwhelmed by the grace and love of God. God said: "I want you to be my apostle to the Gentiles!". How could anyone refuse? He stumbled into the city, blind as a bat and waited for a believer named Ananias to come and give him the next clues to this life changing mystery. He would change his name to Paulus, or Paul, and in his epistle to the church at Phillipi he would write: "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength." Phil. 4:11-13. That was what I found in the A.C. Davis High School auditorium in May of 1966. A friend named Jesus who loved me enough to die for me. A friend who just also happens to be Kurios, Lord of heaven and earth. As a wonderful songs states: "to look into your judge's face and find your savior there." I felt and knew that the Spirit of the Living God was filling that "vide" in my soul and I felt "shalom", peace and wholeness for the first time in my life.
North to Alberta! Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada Summer of 1966!
No one bothered to forewarn me about the spiritual warfare I would encounter almost immediately upon accepting Christ as my Lord and Savior. Within days, I had a girlfriend. Now that's not to imply that women are temptress' or anything like that. However, it was much more than coincidence that a friend introduced me to this girl who just happened to live down the street from me and she wanted to get to know me as more than a neighbor. Why not? I was feeling pretty lonely at the time. Many of my friends were deeply suspect of my "conversion" experience. They didn't know how to relate to me any more and so they just avoided me. There were only a couple of weeks left before I was to go to work on my brother Noel's cattle ranch in Alberta for the summer. God, I believe, had all that in the works so I would be long gone by the time holding hands turned into Friday night movie kisses. I was falling head over heals into something like love, and the best place for me that summer was 700 miles away from that overwhelming perfume and those delicious lips. But I had to get to Alberta first and that was an adventure in itself.
My mother and I packed what things we thought I would need for working on a real Canadian cattle ranch and we drove to Seattle to say farewell to my father who was working for Boeing Aircraft Company. The next morning, Mom and I boarded the passenger train in Seattle northbound for Vancouver, B.C. It was a spectacular ride along the inland waterways and we got to Vancouver around 11 am. Unfortunately, the only return train left in 30 minutes, so all Mom had time to do was help me get my baggage into the terminal, give me a couple of dollars for food and wish me a good summer in Alberta. She caught the train back to Seattle and I was left alone, 15 years old, in the middle of a strange city in a foreign country. I cring today thinking about the risks that would be present if a parent did that today with their 15 year old. Well, I made the best of it. I went up to the counter and showed the attendant my ticket to Medicine Hat and they told me to take my baggage down to the appropriate place to get it checked in. That was a relief. I was now free from dragging all that stuff around the rest of the day. My train east didn't leave for several hours, so I decided to explore the great city of Vancouver B.C. School was still in session in Canada, so I got a lot of strange looks from people wondering why I wasn't in a classroom somewhere. On second thought, maybe it was the goofy cowboy hat I had dug out of the closet back in Wapato that I was wearing that got the strange looks. After a little while I realized I was hungry, so I went back to the terminal and sat down in the restaurant to eat. I had had one year of French language instruction in 9th grade so I could understand Soupe du Jour and some of the other things on the menu. Officially, everything in Canada was supposed to be printed in both English and French, so I knew that I would learn alot of new vocabulary that summer. As it turned out, that wasn't all I was about to be exposed to. After hanging around all afternoon in the terminal, we boarded the train in the evening and headed east. It took all night and then another whole day to get to Medicine Hat. Spiritual warfare #2 popped up on the train. I met an immigrant who was from some Slavic country. The only language we both could speak the other person understood was French. In my halting French, we got along and tried to visit with each other from time to time. The next afternoon, he invited me to sit next to him because he had something he wanted to show me. He pulled out these really disgusting porno magazines, assuming that any manly red-blooded American 15 year old cowboy would love to take a look. Spiritual temptations come in many forms and when you least expect them. As tired and sleep deprived as I was, I had the common sense to decline his offer and went back to my own seat. We were leaving Calgary at the time and we would get to "The Hat" in a few hours. Pulling into the terminal in Medicine Hat, I was relieved to see my brother Noel standing on the plarform to greet me. What a relief! Time to go to the Ranch and sleep in a real bed and not a train seat or the floor. A totally new culture and life awaited me on the Canadian Prairies.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
"S'IL TE PLAIT....APPRIVOISE-MOI" - TAMING THE HEART!
September 28, 2010, Walla Walla, WA Indian Summer 80+ degrees, nothing but sunshine.
This is the best time of the year to live in the Walla Walla Valley. Beautiful sunny days, cool nights, the smell of ripening grapes and apples. The early fall rains have reduced the dust to almost nothing and late season fall grasses are jumping out of the ground. The Blue Mountains have had over 3 inches of rainfall. They look wonderful as they prepare for freezing temperatures and the changing colors of autumn. Snow will come and go at least three times before winter finally settles in for keeps in the high country. We are back into a routine once again on the farm and at the church. I had my PICC line changed at the Cancer Center on Monday. There is a little suspicious looking pimple - like bump that was under one of the connectors directly attached to my skin. We will have to watch it for infection. It is not close to where the line enters into my vein, so there isn't much of a chance of that getting infected. I went to church on Sunday and only did the Mystery Box and the Prayers of the People. Even that was tiring and I rested all afternoon. They have organized meals to be brought out to the house on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There is always more than enough left over to get us to the next drop off. It is typical of our congregation to anticipate our needs and more than adequately meet them. As soon as Kriss is off her crutches, we probably will be able to take care of our own needs. My renown as a chef must have gotten out. Our children used to always dread the day when Kriss was gone for some reason. They still talk about the exotic fruit salad I made. I will start preaching again this coming Sunday, October 3, and continue through October and hopefully the first Sunday in November. We plan on returning to Seattle at that time, unless they insist that we come back sooner. I will have another R-CHOP treatment October 7. It will take 2-3 weeks for it to do its job shrinking whatever cancer hot spots I have left and then we will have another PET scan. We will be able to compare this new scan with the latest one in Seattle and see how effective R-CHOP has been. That may have some weight in treatment decisions and timing. Meanwhile the search is underway to find a sibling stem cell donor. Your prayers for both the treatment and the donor search are greatly appreciated.
While I'm here, I need to attend to some things at the church, as well as the farm. God must have known that we needed this time back in Walla Walla to wean calves, process some steers and work with several of our colts. We have had other people start some of our colts, without complete satisfaction. I have been too busy this spring and summer to do the initial groundwork and getting them to the next level of training. Kriss paid the price for that neglect. Her horse, Scarlette, has been ridden by three different trainers and she was still a timebomb waiting to explode. While we were home over Labor Day Weekend, Kriss wanted to keep her rideable and did all the right things to warm her up and she appeared perfectly calm and safe. Unfortunately, we were all deceived by her external demeanor. Before Kriss could even get settled in the saddle and gather up the reins, Scarlette blew up, bucking seriously. Now in her younger days, Kriss could wrangle broncs with the best of them, but at 58 years of age, she ended up on the hard pan dirt with 4 fractures of her pelvis. She walked on it for a week before going to the Emergency Room in Seattle. She left there with crutches and the prospect of not putting weight on that leg for 6 weeks. She plea-bargained credit for the week she walked on it and got her sentence reduced to 5 weeks on crutches, contingent on good behavior. Seeing how Scarlette reacted after all her training, I decided I would go back to square one with her and start her from scratch. I had already begun to work with Seamus, Ella's 3 year old gelding, and so I added Scarlette to my horse whispering schedule. Everything I know about horse training I learned from Robert Phinney who is a disciple of Buck Branaman. I have books and DVD's by Buck that teach you to do something with a horse that changes both of you for the rest of your life. Your goal, before you would ever possibly get on a horse is to have the horse willingly hand over their will and well-being into your care and leadership. Horses are herd animals that need to find an authority figure that will protect and look out for their best interests. In exchange for that security, they will "turn loose", "hook on", or whatever other phrase you run across. There comes a point in the training process that the animal gives their heart, soul and future into your hands. As long as you never betray that trust, the horse will choose to be with you above all other horses or activities. They evolve to a place where their greatest joy is in pleasing you. It is a bond that people have treasured for thousands of years. In the training process there are certain skill sets and transitional stages that clearly communicate when the horse is "turning loose" and blending their will into yours. I decided to find out if Scarlette had ever learned those fundamental skills which would tell me if she was "hooked on" or not. She hadn't. As a result, she was a timebomb waiting to explode. Unfortunately, Kriss was the one on her back when it went off. So, we started working with her as if she didn't know anything. Tie her loosely to the snubbing post; brush and clean her all over; practice picking up all four feet using a soft rope to keep from getting hurt; small corral circle up and change directions; backing up and learning to do longitudinal flexion; changing eyes while driving with invisible reins; desensitizing to rope, blanket, saddle and touch; large round pen work at walk, trot and gallop; drawing off the far side of the fence; changing eyes in larger pen; loading and unloading in horse trailer; learning to stand near a wooden corral fence and get used to someone working above with ropes and start putting weight on back; cool down back at snubbing post, reward with some horse treats and turn loose with proper attitude. It was obvious from Day 1 of her new life, that Scarlette had never been given the basic fundamentals that would make her safe to ride. The goal of most trainers is to push a horse as fast as they can. That means spurs and whip. They get paid for how many "rides" they put on a horse and so there is a real temptation to intimidate a horse through sheer strength, pain and force. The horse seems great when you go to pick them up in a month. You can even ride them there and think this is the real deal. However, when the horse has time to process that experience, you still have a wild animal that is motivated out of fear and survival instincts. When it came to introducing Scarlette to the critical lessons of trust and confidence, she knew nothing. By the end of Day 1, she knew what she needed to learn. By the end of Day 2, she could do 85% of the fundamentals and passed all the basic skills tests. I had her saddled and standing by the fence allowing me to put weight on the saddle. One area that will take a lot of work is that somehow she had been struck or hit on the right side of her head. She is so sensitive to that area, that we will have to spend special effort to get that taken care of. Day 3-5 will be perfecting all the basic skills and slowly getting her used to having someone in the saddle in ever increasingly larger pens. Day 6 is the goal to ride her in the round pen at a walk, trot, and gallop without any problems or anxiety on her part when transitioning from one level to the next. I have been doing the same thing with Seamus. He has successfully completed Day 4 and I have asked my Photo Pro, John Anthony to come out and make a Video of Day 6 of Seamus's Great Adventure. We will try to get a link of that Video on this blog so you can see what a day in the life of a horse looks like who has "turned loose" and is "hooked on". The French phrase of A. de Saint-Exupery from the LITTLE PRINCE as the title of this blog, translates: "Please, tame me!" St.-Exupery's profound story of the taming of the Fox in his classic tale is the essence of christian conversion. That miracle took place in my life the spring of 1966 and life has never been the same since.
A.C. Davis High School Auditorium, Yakima,WA May 1966
The Junior High School Youth Group from the Wapato Community Presbyterian Church planned an outing to see the Billy Graham movie THE RESTLESS ONES on a Sunday afternoon in May of 1966. I was a reluctant though regular attendee at Youth Group due to my mother's absolute insistence. Word had it that after the movie we would get to stop for something to eat on our way home and that sealed the deal, as far as I was concerned. I was familiar with Billy Graham Evangelistic movies. We had seen them before and my mother made me watch Billy Graham Crusades on TV from time to time. I knew the formula and the script. The movie we were going to Yakima to watch would be a story of rebellious, lost teenagers who would find themselves in increasingly difficult, if not dangerous situations. Some pastor or youth worker would befriend them in an attempt to change the direction of their lives. Somewhere nearby, a Billy Graham Crusade would be taking place and some of these youth would agree to attend. At the end of the service, Billy Graham would issue an "alter call", reminding everyone that all those that Jesus called to be his disciples had been called publically as a demonstration of their commitment and courage to follow Him. Sure enough, the script went exactly as I knew it would. A pastor stepped up on the stage and made the "alter call" personal for all of us in that auditorium inviting anyone who wanted to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior right now, today, could come up on the stage and a counselor would be there to pray with them and give them some free literature to take home. The counselors went forward right away to kind of prime the pump for others to follow. I was getting a little uncomfortable knowing that this was going to take some time and other groups would get to the food joints ahead of us and we'd have longer to wait to eat. As the number of seekers began to thin out, the pastor also invited anyone who would like to redidicate their life to Christ to come forward for prayer. Something, probably the Spirit of God, literally lifted me out of that theatre seat and I headed for the aisle. When I got there, I had to make the most significant decision I would ever make in my life. I knew I was the least likely kid in that Youth Group who would go forward publically to make a decision to follow Christ. I looked to the right at the EXIT sign and turned left. I walked up the steps onto the stage thinking to myself: "What are you doing up here?" Having a fairly quick and calculating mind, I figured out pretty quickly that my best chance of getting in and out of the hands of the counselor would be to state that I came forward to "redidcate my life to Christ". That would eliminate at least 25 minutes of hearing the entire plan of salvation and I was fairly certain that at some point in my childhood, I had accepted Jesus as my savior in Sunday School, Vacation Bible School or Good News Club. So, it wasn't a complete whopper of a lie, and knowing God's great sense of humor, I figured God knew my true motives which were to become a follower of Christ and seek to serve Him as his disciple. They assured us that the people who had brought us that afternoon, wouldn't leave without us, but I couldn't wait to get back to the car and go eat. I was the only one from our Youth Group who had gone forward. After all, we were Presbyterians and we weren't used to doing things like "alter calls". Decently and in Order was our modus operandi and all the rest of the group looked at me like I had done something indecent and disorderly. I had. However feeble my level of understanding and commitment that afternoon, God's Spirit came into my heart and I knew that I was one of Jesus' disciples. I may have been more interested in a Miner's hamburger and fries a few hours before, but now there was something amazingly new and wonderful in my soul and I would never be the same. Jesus "tamed" my heart and soul and I "turned loose" the control of my life to Him and "hooked on" for the ride of my life.
This is the best time of the year to live in the Walla Walla Valley. Beautiful sunny days, cool nights, the smell of ripening grapes and apples. The early fall rains have reduced the dust to almost nothing and late season fall grasses are jumping out of the ground. The Blue Mountains have had over 3 inches of rainfall. They look wonderful as they prepare for freezing temperatures and the changing colors of autumn. Snow will come and go at least three times before winter finally settles in for keeps in the high country. We are back into a routine once again on the farm and at the church. I had my PICC line changed at the Cancer Center on Monday. There is a little suspicious looking pimple - like bump that was under one of the connectors directly attached to my skin. We will have to watch it for infection. It is not close to where the line enters into my vein, so there isn't much of a chance of that getting infected. I went to church on Sunday and only did the Mystery Box and the Prayers of the People. Even that was tiring and I rested all afternoon. They have organized meals to be brought out to the house on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There is always more than enough left over to get us to the next drop off. It is typical of our congregation to anticipate our needs and more than adequately meet them. As soon as Kriss is off her crutches, we probably will be able to take care of our own needs. My renown as a chef must have gotten out. Our children used to always dread the day when Kriss was gone for some reason. They still talk about the exotic fruit salad I made. I will start preaching again this coming Sunday, October 3, and continue through October and hopefully the first Sunday in November. We plan on returning to Seattle at that time, unless they insist that we come back sooner. I will have another R-CHOP treatment October 7. It will take 2-3 weeks for it to do its job shrinking whatever cancer hot spots I have left and then we will have another PET scan. We will be able to compare this new scan with the latest one in Seattle and see how effective R-CHOP has been. That may have some weight in treatment decisions and timing. Meanwhile the search is underway to find a sibling stem cell donor. Your prayers for both the treatment and the donor search are greatly appreciated.
While I'm here, I need to attend to some things at the church, as well as the farm. God must have known that we needed this time back in Walla Walla to wean calves, process some steers and work with several of our colts. We have had other people start some of our colts, without complete satisfaction. I have been too busy this spring and summer to do the initial groundwork and getting them to the next level of training. Kriss paid the price for that neglect. Her horse, Scarlette, has been ridden by three different trainers and she was still a timebomb waiting to explode. While we were home over Labor Day Weekend, Kriss wanted to keep her rideable and did all the right things to warm her up and she appeared perfectly calm and safe. Unfortunately, we were all deceived by her external demeanor. Before Kriss could even get settled in the saddle and gather up the reins, Scarlette blew up, bucking seriously. Now in her younger days, Kriss could wrangle broncs with the best of them, but at 58 years of age, she ended up on the hard pan dirt with 4 fractures of her pelvis. She walked on it for a week before going to the Emergency Room in Seattle. She left there with crutches and the prospect of not putting weight on that leg for 6 weeks. She plea-bargained credit for the week she walked on it and got her sentence reduced to 5 weeks on crutches, contingent on good behavior. Seeing how Scarlette reacted after all her training, I decided I would go back to square one with her and start her from scratch. I had already begun to work with Seamus, Ella's 3 year old gelding, and so I added Scarlette to my horse whispering schedule. Everything I know about horse training I learned from Robert Phinney who is a disciple of Buck Branaman. I have books and DVD's by Buck that teach you to do something with a horse that changes both of you for the rest of your life. Your goal, before you would ever possibly get on a horse is to have the horse willingly hand over their will and well-being into your care and leadership. Horses are herd animals that need to find an authority figure that will protect and look out for their best interests. In exchange for that security, they will "turn loose", "hook on", or whatever other phrase you run across. There comes a point in the training process that the animal gives their heart, soul and future into your hands. As long as you never betray that trust, the horse will choose to be with you above all other horses or activities. They evolve to a place where their greatest joy is in pleasing you. It is a bond that people have treasured for thousands of years. In the training process there are certain skill sets and transitional stages that clearly communicate when the horse is "turning loose" and blending their will into yours. I decided to find out if Scarlette had ever learned those fundamental skills which would tell me if she was "hooked on" or not. She hadn't. As a result, she was a timebomb waiting to explode. Unfortunately, Kriss was the one on her back when it went off. So, we started working with her as if she didn't know anything. Tie her loosely to the snubbing post; brush and clean her all over; practice picking up all four feet using a soft rope to keep from getting hurt; small corral circle up and change directions; backing up and learning to do longitudinal flexion; changing eyes while driving with invisible reins; desensitizing to rope, blanket, saddle and touch; large round pen work at walk, trot and gallop; drawing off the far side of the fence; changing eyes in larger pen; loading and unloading in horse trailer; learning to stand near a wooden corral fence and get used to someone working above with ropes and start putting weight on back; cool down back at snubbing post, reward with some horse treats and turn loose with proper attitude. It was obvious from Day 1 of her new life, that Scarlette had never been given the basic fundamentals that would make her safe to ride. The goal of most trainers is to push a horse as fast as they can. That means spurs and whip. They get paid for how many "rides" they put on a horse and so there is a real temptation to intimidate a horse through sheer strength, pain and force. The horse seems great when you go to pick them up in a month. You can even ride them there and think this is the real deal. However, when the horse has time to process that experience, you still have a wild animal that is motivated out of fear and survival instincts. When it came to introducing Scarlette to the critical lessons of trust and confidence, she knew nothing. By the end of Day 1, she knew what she needed to learn. By the end of Day 2, she could do 85% of the fundamentals and passed all the basic skills tests. I had her saddled and standing by the fence allowing me to put weight on the saddle. One area that will take a lot of work is that somehow she had been struck or hit on the right side of her head. She is so sensitive to that area, that we will have to spend special effort to get that taken care of. Day 3-5 will be perfecting all the basic skills and slowly getting her used to having someone in the saddle in ever increasingly larger pens. Day 6 is the goal to ride her in the round pen at a walk, trot, and gallop without any problems or anxiety on her part when transitioning from one level to the next. I have been doing the same thing with Seamus. He has successfully completed Day 4 and I have asked my Photo Pro, John Anthony to come out and make a Video of Day 6 of Seamus's Great Adventure. We will try to get a link of that Video on this blog so you can see what a day in the life of a horse looks like who has "turned loose" and is "hooked on". The French phrase of A. de Saint-Exupery from the LITTLE PRINCE as the title of this blog, translates: "Please, tame me!" St.-Exupery's profound story of the taming of the Fox in his classic tale is the essence of christian conversion. That miracle took place in my life the spring of 1966 and life has never been the same since.
A.C. Davis High School Auditorium, Yakima,WA May 1966
The Junior High School Youth Group from the Wapato Community Presbyterian Church planned an outing to see the Billy Graham movie THE RESTLESS ONES on a Sunday afternoon in May of 1966. I was a reluctant though regular attendee at Youth Group due to my mother's absolute insistence. Word had it that after the movie we would get to stop for something to eat on our way home and that sealed the deal, as far as I was concerned. I was familiar with Billy Graham Evangelistic movies. We had seen them before and my mother made me watch Billy Graham Crusades on TV from time to time. I knew the formula and the script. The movie we were going to Yakima to watch would be a story of rebellious, lost teenagers who would find themselves in increasingly difficult, if not dangerous situations. Some pastor or youth worker would befriend them in an attempt to change the direction of their lives. Somewhere nearby, a Billy Graham Crusade would be taking place and some of these youth would agree to attend. At the end of the service, Billy Graham would issue an "alter call", reminding everyone that all those that Jesus called to be his disciples had been called publically as a demonstration of their commitment and courage to follow Him. Sure enough, the script went exactly as I knew it would. A pastor stepped up on the stage and made the "alter call" personal for all of us in that auditorium inviting anyone who wanted to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior right now, today, could come up on the stage and a counselor would be there to pray with them and give them some free literature to take home. The counselors went forward right away to kind of prime the pump for others to follow. I was getting a little uncomfortable knowing that this was going to take some time and other groups would get to the food joints ahead of us and we'd have longer to wait to eat. As the number of seekers began to thin out, the pastor also invited anyone who would like to redidicate their life to Christ to come forward for prayer. Something, probably the Spirit of God, literally lifted me out of that theatre seat and I headed for the aisle. When I got there, I had to make the most significant decision I would ever make in my life. I knew I was the least likely kid in that Youth Group who would go forward publically to make a decision to follow Christ. I looked to the right at the EXIT sign and turned left. I walked up the steps onto the stage thinking to myself: "What are you doing up here?" Having a fairly quick and calculating mind, I figured out pretty quickly that my best chance of getting in and out of the hands of the counselor would be to state that I came forward to "redidcate my life to Christ". That would eliminate at least 25 minutes of hearing the entire plan of salvation and I was fairly certain that at some point in my childhood, I had accepted Jesus as my savior in Sunday School, Vacation Bible School or Good News Club. So, it wasn't a complete whopper of a lie, and knowing God's great sense of humor, I figured God knew my true motives which were to become a follower of Christ and seek to serve Him as his disciple. They assured us that the people who had brought us that afternoon, wouldn't leave without us, but I couldn't wait to get back to the car and go eat. I was the only one from our Youth Group who had gone forward. After all, we were Presbyterians and we weren't used to doing things like "alter calls". Decently and in Order was our modus operandi and all the rest of the group looked at me like I had done something indecent and disorderly. I had. However feeble my level of understanding and commitment that afternoon, God's Spirit came into my heart and I knew that I was one of Jesus' disciples. I may have been more interested in a Miner's hamburger and fries a few hours before, but now there was something amazingly new and wonderful in my soul and I would never be the same. Jesus "tamed" my heart and soul and I "turned loose" the control of my life to Him and "hooked on" for the ride of my life.
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