Linger

November 5, 2009 at 7:28 pm (Blogging)
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The earliest photo taken of the White House

The White House, photographed for the first time in 1846 by John Plumbe during the Polk administration.

It seems to me, that if any place in America would be haunted, it would most certainly be the White House, with all of the tension and stress and decisions made within those walls. 

There must be some sort of supernatural residue still lingering there.  A former resident certainly believes it to be so.

Fright House: Jenna Bush on the ghostly music playing in the presidential home already ‘haunted’ by Abraham Lincoln
by Sara Nelson
for the Daily Mail

The daughter of former President George W Bush has claimed she saw ghosts during her time in the White House.

Jenna Bush Hager told chat show host Jay Leno she had been terrified by spooky events near the fireplace in her bedroom.

The 27-year-old teacher, who now works as an education correspondent for the Today Show said: ‘I heard a ghost. I was asleep, there was a fireplace in my room and all of a sudden I heard 1920s music coming out. 

‘I could feel it, I freaked out and ran into my sister’s room. She was like “Please go back to sleep this is ridiculous”.

‘The next week we were both asleep in my room, the phone had rang and woke us up.

‘We were talking and going back to bed when all of a sudden we heard this opera, coming out of the fireplace.

‘We couldn’t believe it, we both jumped in bed and were asking the people that worked there the next morning “Are we crazy?”

‘We tried to rationalise it, but they said they heard it there all the time.’

Jenna and her family lived at the Washington DC presidential home from 2001 to 2009.

She told how her parents were settling in well back at home in Texas, and that the former president has even been offered a job at a hardware store – but turned it down, feeling he was overqualified.

The former first daughter confessed she had never seen Abraham Lincoln’s ghost – which is said to regularly haunt the White House – but wished she had.

Lincoln’s ghost is widely reported to walk up and down the second floor hallway, knock at doors and stand at certain windows with his hands clasped behind his back.

Indeed Winston Churchill refused to sleep in the former president’s bedroom after reportedly spotting his ghost lurking there.

The British Prime Minister had stepped into the room after a relaxing bath with a cigar and a glass of scotch.

Still naked, the premier is reported to have spied an apparition of Lincoln standing by the fireplace. The pair are said to have started at each other for some time before the ghost faded away.

Former first lady Hilary Clinton has also spoken about the spooky atmosphere in the White House.

The US Secretary of State said: ‘There is something about the house at night that you just feel like you are summoning up the spirits of all the people who have lived there and worked there and walked through the halls there.’

She told the Rosie O’Donnell Show: ‘It’s neat, it can be a little creepy.

‘You know, they think there’s a ghost there. It is a big old house and when the lights are out it is dark and quiet and any movement at all catches your attention.’

Indeed Harry Truman once wrote to his wife: ‘I sit here in this old house, all the while listening to the ghosts walk up and down the hallway.

‘At 4 o’clock I was awakened by three distinct knocks on my bedroom door. No one there.  [The] place is haunted, sure as shootin’!’

As well as human hauntings, the have been tales of a demon cat prowling the building’s basement.

According to legend, years go by without a sighting of the animal, but when it does appear, national disaster is said to be imminent.

Some witnesses claim the demon cat first appears as a helpless-looking kitten, which grows in size and menace the closer one gets to it.

A White House guard claimed to have seen it a week before the great stock market crash of the 1920s and it was also reportedly seen days before the assassination of JFK.

I’m not sure if Lincoln’s ghost is more frightening, though, than the thought of Churchill fresh from a bath.

Anyway, ghosts are most definitely real.  And while they may not be the unattached spirits or souls of the dead, they are real in the sense that after any great tragedy, or crisis, we allow some sort of residual effect to linger.

A fight.  A death.  Turmoil.  Job loss.  Rebellious kids.  Conversations with harsh words.  Wrecking decisions.   All of these give us remorse, guilt, and we are haunted with the sheer regret of the crisis.  And that residue, sometimes, just won’t leave.

May we have better discernment about the words we say and the actions we choose, or, maybe more importantly, about the words we keep, and the actions we disregard.

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Remember

November 3, 2009 at 4:37 pm (Art)
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I often think about the Eucharist.  I am amazed at how little, in the New Testament, it is mentioned.  Most often, it is called, simply, “breaking bread,” and seems to imply that the Eucharist of the early church may have been a memorial meal, shared by all of the saints, which offered a chance of fellowship and memory, possibly not unlike our own Thanksgiving meals.

We have moved it to something very somber, though.  Most faiths tend to have it as a part of the design of worship, with specific prayers.  Some faiths, even, have the Eucharist offered by a leader in the church.  And, like most human things, it has its varying degrees of executions, but always with some sort of quiet meditation.

And that is not wrong, or offensive.  I shared a conversation with a member of my church, just last week, who said he has grown tired of an image of a crucifed Christ displayed during the communion moments.  Instead, he wanted a picture of an empty tomb, because, he said, “that’s what all of this is about, anyway.”

I believe our exercising of the Eucharist would be found insulting by those in the earliest models of the Christian church.  What seems to be a celebratory meal of fellowship has been turned into just another moment in the design of a worship event.  Long gone are the loaves of bread, broken together, with large pieces eaten and chased by overflowing cups of wine.   Instead, there are small wafers, and a slight sip, all with the idea to remember the remarkable moment in the Christian faith.

Maybe these ideas are foreign to you.  Perhaps you worship in a church where the Eucharist is only observed during special days, or occassions, or maybe you worship in a church where communion is shared every Sunday.  Either way, it deserves a second look.

Which brings me to the following story.  It is a slight story about the Berlin Wall, but I think it says volumes about the human desire to simply remember, both the awful, and the celebrations which follow.

Twenty Years After, Berlin Wall Gets a Facelift
by Kristen Grieshaber, for the Associated Press

Stroke by stroke, Gerhard Kriedner applied pink acrylic paint with a small brush on a 14-yard stretch of the Berlin Wall, recreating the mural he first painted months after the Berlin Wall came down on Nov. 9, 1989.

Kriedner and 90 artists from around the world have gathered again to repaint their original creations on the concrete slabs, bringing new life to images that have been eroded by the elements over the last two decades, on the longest remaining length of the wall that once split Germany’s capital.

“This is a very emotional thing for me,” Kriedner, 69, said, adding that he escaped from communist East Germany to the West himself as a young man. “The Berlin Wall stands for the total lack of freedom we had at the time.”

While Berliners were initially eager to tear down the city’s most detested symbol, in recent months there has been a major effort to restore the 3/4 mile-long (1.3-kilometer) dilapidated East Side Gallery — a major tourist attraction with 106 different paintings and graffiti.

“The wall was rotten through and through,” Kriedner said on a recent chilly, overcast autumn day as he put the finishing touches on his mural — a dark, barren landscape with bursting soap bubbles colored pink and light blue, his interpretation of the promise of Socialist dreams colliding with reality.

“In order to restore the wall, the entire artwork was scraped off, the concrete was chiseled down to the steel insides, and then everything had to be reapplied, but this time with waterproof acrylic paints,” the Bavarian artist said, adding that he’d been working off a photo of his original piece to ensure the new version mimicked the original.

Kani Alavi, the head of the East Side Gallery’s Artists’ Association, has been the driving force behind the restoration work that started in October 2008. Alavi lobbied for years to collect the euro2.5 million ($3.7 million) from the city, state and federal governments needed for the restoration process. That included room and board for the artists, who otherwise worked for free.

Of the initial group of artists, only five declined to participate in the renovation project. Six others died and their murals have been restored by other artists.

“We thought it was really important to recreate the paintings because, by now, there’s a whole new generation that no longer remembers the original Berlin Wall and the historic events that led to Germany’s reunification,” said Alavi, an Iranian-born artist who had already restored his own mural of East Germans crossing Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin on the night the border opened for the first time.

Every day, the East Side Gallery in Berlin’s formerly eastern Friedrichshain neighborhood attracts thousands of tourists who pose for snapshots in front of the murals.

The western side of the wall was covered in graffiti during the decades after the barrier was erected on Aug. 13, 1961. The eastern side stood barren, desolate and guarded by stern border police for decades. Only after the wall’s collapse did a group of Berlin artists decide to decorate the stretch — the first joint art project of the formerly divided city.

They called on artists from around the world to join them in expressing their feelings in paint and color on the formerly untouchable east side of the wall.

“We had nothing, only cheap paint and brushes, but we were so euphoric about all the historic changes and we wanted to express them in our paintings,” Alavi said, adding that the murals show the joy and hopefulness of overcoming injustice that people believed was possible at the time.

Since then, pollution, weather and time turned famous images like the fraternal communist kiss between East German leader Erich Honecker and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, or the East German Trabant car that appears to be bursting through the wall, into a sad sight — with long cracks in the concrete and big chunks of paint flaking off.

Then there were the souvenir-seekers who chipped off pieces of rock or scrawled their names and messages atop the paintings.

The East Side Gallery received historic monument status in 1991. But despite new signs asking visitors not to tamper with the bright new paintings, it’s uncertain whether the new art will be free from graffiti, vandalism or souvenir hunters.

Some, however, didn’t seem to mind that prospect.

Julie Zinser, a tourist from Riverside, California who was strolling down along the wall said she loved the paintings, but the bright new colors made the it look less authentic.

“It seems like the gritty beauty of this city got a little lost,” Zinser said and then posed for a photo with her two daughters.

The Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall

What is a memory worth, anyway?  To these artists, it is a teaching moment, a moment when the world will once again understand the oppressive effects of a dividing wall broken against a surge of freedom.  Old artists now want to use it as a canvas, to teach this generation of such a powerful moment, for those in Germany, and even in the world.

We have a need to remember.  We glance through old photographs, share stories around weekend dinners, watch black and white films, all because we really do like to remember those moments.

The Eucharist is a common memory, then, a chance to again find great peace and celebration in an act of deliverance.  But what is this memory worth to you?

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Invisible

October 5, 2009 at 5:52 pm (Art)
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Behold the invisibility of artist Liu Bolin.

Liu Bolin, an artist in Beijing, captured the previous images, after an investment of ten hours per photograph.

His ability to successfully adapt to his environment has gained him international fame.  Concerning his work, he wrote the following statement, found here:

Now, in the real material world, the world views of different people’s are also different. Each person chooses his/her own way in the process of contacting outside world. I choose to merge myself into the environment. Saying that I am disappeared in the environment, it would be better to say that the environment has licked me up and I can not choose active and passive relationship.

In the environment of emphasizing cultural heritage, concealment is actually no place to hide.

It is hard to not be reminded of similar words, found in the New Testament:

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

A very powerful, visual reminder — concealment is nothing more than a blending with an oppressive environment. 

Transforming power can only be found in an escape.

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Stop

January 28, 2009 at 3:40 pm (Church, Prayer)
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As we experience a cold, cold winter, many of us are enduring the hardships of ice, while others are enjoying a day of rest a good day of snow can only provide.  Through these winter months, and especially on snowy days, I am reminded of the following verse from Job 37:

God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding.  He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’  So that all men he has made may know his work, he stops every man from his labor. 

God sends us snow so we may rest from our labor, from our work, from our week of filled schedules, so we can, if for a moment, behold God’s power.  We marvel at the inspiring beauty of snow and ice, even while we endure its inconveniences. 

Just remember, though, that it was always God’s intention to provide the snow of winter, and the storms of spring, so that even the visible weather would testify to the invisible God.

May you enjoy your rest today.

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Blessed

April 8, 2008 at 3:34 pm (Church, Persecution, Purpose, War)
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“Dear Parents:  I must, on this the 4th day of April, 1918, die.  Please pray for me, my dear parents.”

And those were the last written words of Robert Paul Prager.

Prager, a German, lived in Collinsville, Illinois, and was an outspoken supporter of socialism, a very difficult subject to broach in 1918, during the time of what was then known as the Great War.  His views led him to be severely persecuted by a population already roused to defend America against any German influences.  Newspapers and pamphlets and demonstrations in various cities were warnings to those who were deemed to be disloyal to the American effort, or, more specifically, those of German descent. 

Prager was followed home after expressing his opinions in Maryville, Illinois, a small mining camp, and, in the city of Collinsville, Prager was stripped and then covered with an American flag, and made to march through the streets.

He was secured and rescued by a local policeman, who took him to shelter in the city jail, but Prager was later removed from the basement of the building by 300 of the men in town, who arrived at the building in anger. 

This is the description of his death, from a column written in The New York Times on June 2, 1918:

All reports indicate that at this time there was no intention to hang Prager.  It was planned to tar and feather him, but tar and feathers were not to be obtained, and a passing automobile in which was a rope suggested hanging.  The rope was knotted around the man’s neck and he was escorted a mile down the road.

The mob stopped at a large tree.  A small boy, boosted up the tree, adjusted the rope.  Prager was drawn into the air, but was lowered to bind his hands and feet.  He fell to his knees and for three minutes prayed in German.  He then wrote a short note to his aged parents, who live in Dreseden, Germany.  This done, the knot was tightened around his neck and dozens of hands grasped the rope that swung him ten feet into the air to his death.

Eleven men were put on trial for the lynching, and, against the urging of the judge, were tried on the basis of an assumed homefront warning that the war, now called World War 1, should have no bearing on the decision of the jurors.  He urged them to consider the basic fact of the trial, which was the murder of one man.  

The jury only took 45 minutes to reach a decision of not guilty, and when it was announced, the courtroom erupted in applause.  The eleven men who stood trial were congratulated amidst the singing of American patriotic songs.

Perhaps the most poignant part of this event, though, was the burial of Prager.  Buried in St. Louis by members of an organization in which he participated, they fulfilled the last request of the dying man, made on behalf of his burial — an American flag was draped over his coffin. 

Prager, a man in his twenties who sought to serve in the American Navy, a man whose views on government were controversial, was persecuted and killed because he was different.  And though a subplot in the American involvement of World War 1, it speaks to the nature of humanity to always intimidate and oppress those with unique differences, from the world stage to small rural communities. 
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Christianity is no stranger to persecution, positioning itself as counter to human nature, and even counter to any culture.  Early in its formation, Christianity bestowed blessings on those who endured persecution. 

But persecution for Christianity has not ended.  I want you to visit the website of the organization Voice of the Martyrs.  VOM is dedicated to assisting and encouraging persecuted Christians throughout the world.  On this site, you will read of Li Mei, arrested in China for singing Christian hymns to villagers, and praying for the healing of an elderly man.  Her sentence was up to 18 months of reeducation, and she spent a portion of her incarceration chained to her bed, and according to the site, was beaten so severely that she required surgery.  She is fulfilling the remainder of her sentence under house arrest.

Members of churches endlessly debate meanings of passages and visions of our churches.  And while we engage in such conversations, there are those of the Christian faith who are being beaten and chained and killed just because they believe.  We spend our spare time discussing and arguing, while underground Christians offer Jesus to those whose acceptance of Christ could condemn them to death.  Our time is spent with coffee and commentaries, while Christians in oppressive regions always bless the food of what may be their last meal.  We worry about styles and songs, while Li Mei is chained and beaten for a prayer of healing.

And those are the people called blessed. 

Please visit this site.  Your life, your faith, and your purpose, will change in a matter of moments.

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Litmus

April 4, 2008 at 4:59 pm (Church, Opinions, Purpose, Theology, Thinking)
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“… test the spirits … .”

The early Christian community, with a syncretism of a rich Jewish tradition and overwhelming secular influences, was familiar with spirits.  Several stories in early biblical writings attest to their persuasive power, and even cultural norms indicated the presence of supernatural influences.  

An early indication of such testing seems to be a warning against prophets who convincingly claim divine truths, even offering proof, but do so in ways opposite of early Jewish law.  This passage, found in Deuteronomy, indicates that these prophets are being used by God to test his people — and it also indicates a very harsh punishment when their origins are found to be from unholy places.

This warning is reborn in a letter written by John, and the implications are clear.  There are those who offer proof of the divine, and claim to be from the divine, but are themselves misguided.  This phrase, written by an apostle, is a sure implication that there are various entities persuading for divine causes, but, of those entities, only some are authentic, while others have dubious motivations, and are even considered evil.  What is also troubling is that either these dubious entities have incredibly persuasive power, or those who follow are incredibly naive. 

Divine presence is a swift justification for those who search endlessly for purpose.  It becomes very difficult to argue with those who not only see God, but see godly action, in every personal conviction.  There is biblical evidence that this theology can be right and true.

But there is also biblical evidence that maybe every personal conviction is not born of God, and maybe God is even using those convictions as testing agents.  And that is such an overlooked aspect of faith – we struggle with an idea that God does test, and even tests with actions easily interpreted as holy.  Prayer, petition, and counsel are always given to support where we are led, but what if God is telling us something quite different?  How would we know?  I am, more often than not, unsure of a direction. 

But I am sure that proof may not always be enough.

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Give

March 21, 2008 at 8:31 pm (Giving)
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We watched an elderly gentleman clean the floor of a busy mall with his broom.

He had no expression on his face, he just completed his job, his task at hand.  Swarms of people passed him as though he was a ghost, and left their evidence behind on tables and around the legs of chairs.  He would fill the places they just emptied, and would remove their leftovers with indiscretion.  My wife and I watched him one afternoon, bored with mall walking. 

We had the crazy idea of doing something for this man.  And we did.  The look on his face was as indiscreet as his actions, for his eyes remained empty and void, programmed by his humble job to not accept any adulation.  

But I still walked away from feeling better, because I gave.

Giving is a very biblical concept, though now watered down with such an inept phrase as “random acts of kindness.”  The phrase, catchy as it sounds, just seems to promote kindness as a movement, the better side of a generally greedy and selfish culture.  But the very phrase itself reeks of greediness.  The movement belittles kindness to just one action at random intervals, generally promoted because the world has an enormous supply of people who can’t seem to find regular times to be kind.

I just happen to think that kindness is more than an act, closer to emotion than action, that seeps from your character in almost uncontrollable ways.  And I believe kindness is much more than a movement.  The world may lack kindness, but the last thing to encourage kindness would be some advertising and marketing ploy.  We have come to believe that twenty seconds of a selfless message, sandwiched between two advertising spots encouraging you to buy something for yourself, is enough to start some feel-good movement.  What these marketing ploys and slogans seem to be unable to grasp is the real, inherent goodness that genuine kindness makes you feel.

A survey from the University of British Columbia and the Harvard Business School proved such when they composed a study to find out if giving can actually make you happier.  They found that to be true.  Subjects were asked to spend money on someone else, even as little as $5, and the results were surprisingly surprising.  The test subjects felt happiness from true, purposeful kindness.  And this information is juxtaposed against rising salaries in recent years, which, according to other studies, has given people more wealth in their pockets, but left an emptiness in their souls.  Giving away your money — spending it on others — gives you the feeling that you can help others with what you have.  Which may even further indicate that we were born to serve, to help, to be kind, to give. 

The survey, though, does not appear to lend itself to random giving.  There is something more purposeful here.  True sacrificial giving requires much more thought than filling some kindness quota.  When you give through sacrifice, you give of something you otherwise would think you could never do without. 

The study isn’t meant to inspire a movement, or even embolden the current one.  But I think it validates principles found in Christianity, that giving, which is not a movement, and not a random act, is something that comes from deeper places.  And leads to much, much, deeper emotions.

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