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| Dad in Japan. |
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| Mom's senior photo. |
They
considered themselves fundamentalists, but this in the day when fundamentalism
did not have quite the edge it does today. They were kinder, gentler
fundamentalists, unafraid to laugh at themselves and to express doubt and
uncertainty, able to cope with a daughter’s divorce and my homosexuality and
even my progressive Christianity! My Mom openly questioned whether spirituality
could adequately be covered by the “Four Spiritual Laws” popular with
fundamentalist campus groups at the time.
Readers
will know I am not a fundamentalist Christian by any stretch of the
imagination, but my parents did provide me with the fundamentals of my
spirituality, some of which follow:
Read and study,
reflect and pray.
First and foremost, the scriptures. Mom taught first grade at a Christian
school and both Mom and Dad taught Sunday school at various times in our
Baptist church, and the Bible was their central source of inspiration, as it is
mine. Dad also read biblical commentaries and Mom also read mystics, as do I.
When I travelled Europe after college, Mom asked me to take with me her marked and
worn copy of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation
of Christ. They ended every day by
kneeling together for prayer beside their bed. And of course we never failed to
say grace before meals, even in restaurants (while my brother, out of embarrassment,
was under the table “looking for his napkin”).
Do good. One Saturday
morning, Mom invited a homeless man into our dining room and prepared him bacon,
eggs, toast and coffee much like her mother had fed the unemployed men
traveling the rails near their house during the Depression. Dad fetched an
intoxicated church member for coffee to sober up before taking him home to his
wife. They both invited a sad server at an Arizona café to join us at the table
and recount her troubles. Dad led a weekly jail ministry for many years, preaching
and toting a heavy portable organ to accompany the inmates’ hymn singing. These
are just examples of how kind they were.
Seek justice. Mom’s Christian
school (which I had attended) wanted to publish an article and photo about my
receiving an award, but rejected the picture because I had a beard. My mom, who
was never keen on the beard, informed them that I had won the award having that
beard, and if they didn’t want the photo she would not give them the article!
During the Vietnam War, Dad suggested we send Congress to fight it, and that
would be the end of it.
And,
before I came out to them as gay, Dad said to my mother of homosexuals, “If
they feel for each other what I feel for you, I can understand why they want
their relationships.” When my ministry within the LGBT community first appeared
in The Los Angeles Times in 1978, Mom
supported me and, though popular with students and their parents, was “let go”
after three decades of teaching first grade at sacrificial wages.
Attend church. We were in
church virtually all and certainly every Sunday: Sunday school and worship in
the morning, Baptist Youth Fellowship and worship in the evening. Wednesday
evening was Prayer Meeting and testimony time. Dad was a deacon and Mom was a deaconess,
and there were plenty of church meetings and work days.
Support the
church.
Years after Dad’s death, I volunteered to Mom that I would clean out their
garage. I discovered their old financial records and learned that Dad basically
gave the church his first week’s salary every month before taxes. Their income was minimal, though we had what we
needed, so this was sacrificial giving. After Dad died, Mom continued tithing
(10 %) of her small Social Security income. Additionally, they gave generously
to the church’s building fund (even though they did not like the design of the
new sanctuary!) and multiple charities, including the parochial school where
Mom taught.
Love well. My parents and
our family had our ups and downs, but when first married, they covenanted never
to go to bed angry, following the biblical admonition not to let the sun go
down on your anger. Mom and Dad were high school sweethearts and absolutely
loyal. Cleaning their garage I found well over 100 multipage letters exchanged
during three circumstantial periods of separation, including World War II, each
expressing their passionate love for one another.
Dad
worked hard, delivering bread to grocery stores and maintaining our yards and
house, and Mom, in addition to teaching, cleaned house and fixed all the meals—both
with some help from us kids. Thinking back on it now, I see that they were
practical ministers of both word (teaching and preaching) and sacrament
(delivering bread and meals). They offered loving hospitality to their children
and those important to us, as well as their grandchildren, great grandchildren,
other relatives, neighbors, friends, and strangers.
Follow Jesus. This was central
to all my parents did, in word and deed, in spirit and body, and I am still
trying to catch up!
A few of the posts that mention my parents:
Acts of God and Acts of War ( About Dad’s letters on board a troop ship docked at Nagasaki.)
Thanks be to God for the life, writings, and ministry
of the Rev. Richard McBrien (1936-2015)“who
unflinchingly challenged orthodoxy in the Roman Catholic Church for five
decades and popularized and perpetuated the reforms of the Second Vatican
Council.” He is quoted as saying, “The theologian’s job is one of critically
reflecting on [Christian] tradition or raising questions about it, even
challenging it, and that’s how doctrines evolve and move forward.”
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