The power of words

Paula Deen was in the E!News studio recently, making media rounds to promote the launch of her new subscription based online channel, the Paula Deen Network. It’s been over a year since her multi-million dollar culinary empire came tumbling down after her admission that she used a racial slur 30 years ago.

"They (words) can be very powerful, and they can hurt, no matter how old they are," Deen told E!News.

When Today Show’s Matt Lauer asked her several weeks ago what she had learned from the experience, Deen immediately responded:   “Words are so powerful. They can hurt. They can make people happy. Well, my words hurt people.”

She is right, of course.

The trouble is remembering the lesson she learned.

When it comes to using the wrong words, I’m a repeat offender.

And I make my living from the use of words.

I don’t have room in this column to write about all the times I've said the wrong thing. Saying “I’m sorry, I didn't mean it,” can help but doesn't retrieve words misspoken. Once they’re out, the damage is done.

Someone once said, “Samson killed a thousand men with the jaw bone of an ass. That many sales are killed every day with the same weapon.”

It’s not just sales that are lost because of wrong words. Relationships and reputations can be destroyed by what we say.

We don’t think about what we’re saying until it’s too late. Therein lies the problem.

Cell phones and social media provide us all the more opportunities for miscues in language.

The other day I received a text message from a number I didn't recognize, informing me that one of my parishioners was in the hospital. I happened to be the city where the hospital was located, so I decided to drive downtown to pray for this person. When I arrived at the hospital, patient information did not have the person’s name. I needed the information quickly, so I called whoever it was that had texted me, hoping someone wasn't playing a mean prank on me.

But I accidentally called the wrong number.

A man answered, and I asked if he had sent me a text message.

“What?” he said with a hint of irritation in his voice.

Determined to find out who it was that texted me, I asked, “Has your wife or girlfriend been texting me?”

This was not a wise thing to ask the man.

He proceeded to inform me in no uncertain terms that his wife does not randomly text message men. He hung up before I could say, “I’m sorry, I just wasn't thinking.”

What we say and what people hear are not always the same, even though our intentions may be pure.

A lady once tried to compliment her minister, “Each sermon you preach is not quite as bad as the last one,” she innocently told him.

I saw a YouTube video of a blind person sitting on the sidewalk with a tin cup. Next to him was a sign that read, “I am blind, please help.”

A few people stopped to put some money in the cup.

Then a young lady passed him, read the sign, and like most of the others walked on. But then she came back, picked up his sign, turned it to the back side and wrote something. Suddenly, everyone who passed the blind man stopped and dropped coins in the cup.

What did she write that made such a difference?

“It is a beautiful day, and I can’t see it.”

Same message, just different words.

The more I realize the power in words, the more I think before speaking. And the more I think, the less I speak.

And the fewer times I have to say, “I’m sorry, I didn't mean it.”

Uniting to help the environment

What with all the bad news these days---from the Middle East (ISIS) to the NFL (domestic violence) ---it’s nice to hear some good news. This one comes from Mother Nature herself in cooperation with some people intent on helping her.

It seems the ozone layer is getting better.

A team of 300 scientists working for the United Nations has concluded that the ozone layer is showing the most significant recovery since 1989. The ozone layer has been thinning since the late 1970s. That’s because human-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in refrigerants and aerosol cans released chlorine and bromine into the atmosphere, destroying ozone molecules 30-50 miles high in the air. When scientists warned the public of the danger, countries around the world agreed in 1987 to phase out CFCs.  It took time but voila, it actually worked--- at least partially. The ozone layer isn't completely healed, by any means. Scientists calculate that it’s still 6% thinner that it was in 1980, and a yearly fall ozone hole appears above the extreme Southern Hemisphere.

But this is a sign of hope. It’s not just that we have a healthier ozone layer that can better shield us from skin cancer and crop damage. This news underscores the fact that people working together can halt an environmental crisis.

Professor and chemist Mario Molina, who along with F. Sherwood Rowland won the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their study on the diminishing ozone crisis, said the news about the improvement in the ozone level is “a victory for diplomacy and for science and for the fact that we were able to work together.”

That should certainly invigorate those heading to the upcoming United Nations Climate Summit next week. Such a meeting is urgent: The U.N. reported recently that atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases surged to another record high in 2013, the increase from  2012 being the biggest one in 30 years.

The U.N. Climate Summit plans to bring in over 100 heads of state, along with CEOs and other leaders from around the world. The U.N. Secretary General is optimistic that the Summit will jump start U.N. climate treaty talks.

The Summit will be preceded on September 21 by what is being called the People’s Climate March. Thousands of demonstrators from more than a  1,000 organizations  representing millions of people will march in New York City, demanding that world leaders  take action to address human-driven climate change. They are hoping the march will do for the environmental movement what the 1963 March on Washington did for the Civil Rights Movement. The demonstrators won’t have a list of demands but simply want world leaders to realize the absolute necessity of taking action against global warming.

The People’s March is a result of grassroots activism. World leaders and big corporations still don’t seem to get that people really do care about the environment in general and global warming in particular. They are wearied with dilly dallying world leaders and governments.

Working together, people can make a difference.

Indeed, they already have.

A few months ago local communities in New York won their appeal over the billion dollar fracking industry. Fracking is a technique used to extract gas from deep within the earth. Some believe fracking has resulted in damage to the environment including poisoned drinking water, polluted air, mysterious animal deaths, and earthquakes.

Dryden, New York’s Town Supervisor Mary Ann Sumner said, “The oil and gas industry tried to bully us into backing down, but we took our fight all the way to New York’s highest court. And we…won.”  Sumner hopes the court’s action will inspire people in other states who are “trying to do what’s right for their own communities.”

Indeed, communities in Colorado, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and California are taking action to guard against the environmental and public health threats of a deregulated fracking industry.

And in my little part of the world, a group of Catholic nuns, the Sisters of Loretto in Marion County, Kentucky, led the charge several months ago, galvanizing opposition that defeated a proposed pipeline carrying potentially hazardous materials through Kentucky.

Neither the nations that banned CFCs, nor the communities in New York that opposed fracking, nor the Sisters of Loretto were certain their efforts would bear fruit.

But they did it anyway because they believed it was the right thing to do.

Let’s hope the actions of the people gathering for the People’s Climate March and those convening at the U.N. Climate Summit will bear fruit as well.

If nations lose this opportunity to unite against global warming, our earth may, in the not so distant future, have little fruit to bear.

Road rage, air rage: a common cause?

The driver cut in front of me, honking his horn while sticking his middle finger out his car window, pointing it in my direction. 

“What’s he so mad about?” I remember asking myself.

I had apparently failed to move fast enough when the light for the right-turn lane signaled green.

That wasn't the first time someone had so visibly disapproved of my driving.  I admit I’m not NASCAR driving material. I once had a friend tell me that driving with me was like being a passenger with Mr. Magoo at the wheel.

But I somehow felt that if the road rage guy could have met me, maybe let me buy him a cup of coffee, he wouldn't have been so enraged.

It’s easier to lash out at people when we depersonalize them. 

I’m not the best shopping cart driver either. I’m sure I've been guilty of blocking an aisle without realizing it, and several times I've almost collided into another shopper as I've turned a corner too quickly. But I've never had anyone in the grocery store gesture to me like the road rage guy did. In the supermarket, we work it out with a simple smile and an “Excuse me.”

I suspect the same is true for the recent incidents of air rage on commercial flights.

In one instance, a man was using the Knee Defender, a small plastic device that airplane passengers can use to keep the person seated in front of them from reclining their seat.  The flight attendant asked the man using the Knee Defender to remove it. When he refused (at 6 ft. 2 in. tall he said if the person in front of him reclined, he couldn't use his laptop), the passenger in front of him threw a glass of water on him. That flight from Newark to Denver was diverted to Chicago.

Another flight from Miami to Paris was diverted to Boston when one man began screaming at the passenger in front of him because of the reclining seat.

A lady on a flight from New York to Palm Beach, Fla., decided to relax by doing a little knitting (How do you get knitting needles on a plane?) and reclined her seat.  But the lady in the seat behind her had rested her head on the tray table. She didn't appreciate being smacked on the head with the reclining seat. A shouting match ensued, and the plane was diverted to Jacksonville, Fla.

I’m not a frequent flyer, but I've flown enough to know traveling by air is no fun anymore. By the time passengers take their seats, they've waited through a security line, removed their shoes, had their belongings checked, submitted to a scan and in some cases been patted down, boarded a crowded plane and quickly squeezed into a seat with limited space. (Airlines are packing more seats on planes, shrinking the space for travelers.)

Air rage is just waiting to happen.

Both road rage and air rage have this much in common: They require a degree of depersonalization.

I've never read about an airline passenger screaming at the person seated next to them because someone invaded their elbow space. It’s easier to imagine evil motives in that person seated in front or behind you that you can’t see than it is in the person whose shoulder touches yours.

When someone cuts you off in traffic, passing by you in a blur or hidden behind tinted windows, they can easily become a jerk, plain and simple, rather than what they might really be were you to meet them in the grocery store: a frazzled single mom perhaps or maybe an exhausted construction worker too tired to pay attention.

The man who used the Knee Defender later admitted he had not handled his anger appropriately, told his sons he wanted to be a better father, and encouraged them to learn from his failure. And the lady whose head rested on the tray later said she was overly emotional because two of her dogs had just died.

If passengers could see their agitators as people---people with dogs and cats, and children, people who have failed and want to do better---perhaps they would be slower to get angry and quicker to be kind and gentle.

I hope people remember that when they see me getting in the driver’s seat of my car.

Will the real straw man please stand up?

Sometimes seemingly small matters turn out to have bigger implications than you originally thought.

Take for example the Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority’s preliminary approval for state tax incentives for the Noah’s theme park in Northern Kentucky.  It seems like a small matter, especially in light of the fact that the park will likely boost tourism in the area.  

Who could possibly object to that?

The Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Indeed the organization is making a big deal about it. As reported by Tom Loftus of the Courier-Journal, Americans United objected in a letter to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear that the theme park’s parent organization, Answers in Genesis, engages in religious discriminatory hiring practices since applicants must profess “…that homosexuality is a sin on par with bestiality and incest, that the earth is only 6,000 years old, and that the Bible is literally true in order to be considered for the job.”

But Ark Encounter (Noah’s Ark theme park) has not yet written their hiring policies.

Ken Hamm, President/CEO and founder of Answers in Genesis, noted that much in a recent blog, accusing Americans United of setting up a Straw Man. A Straw Man is what one side in a debate does when one party attacks a position not held by the other side, demolishes it, and then claims to have refuted the opposition.

Since Ark Encounter hasn't determined its hiring practices, Americans United, according to Hamm, has set up a Straw Man: “Because the Ark Encounter hasn't even set up its hiring policies yet and has not employed anyone, AU has written to the governor and other state officials to tell them we will be breaking laws (even though no laws have been broken), and, therefore, we should be denied the tax refund incentive,” says Hamm. 

However, Americans United noted that Answers in Genesis’ website has a job posting for a computer design technician specifically for Ark Encounter which stipulates that applicants need to supply a written statement of faith regarding their beliefs about creation and stating that they must agree with Answers in Genesis’ Statement of Faith.

If that policy is still in place, Americans United certainly has a right to be concerned, and Hamm is being disingenuous.

Hamm argues that that his organization should have hiring practices that include a statement of faith from applicants. Answers in Genesis, just like Americans United, have, according to Hamm, “the freedom because of the Statement of Faith of the organization to require employees to adhere to that statement.  I’m sure AU wouldn't want to employ a biblical creationist like me as its head, and AiG wouldn't employ an atheist!”

But it is here that Hamm misses the point and in doing so sets up a Straw Man himself, for Americans United’s letter to the Governor was not to object to either Answers in Genesis’ or Ark Encounter’s statements of faith. It is the concern that a religious organization will receive tax incentives while maintaining religious discriminatory hiring policies. (Ark Encounter would be eligible for sales tax rebates of up to $18.25 million over 10 years.)

Let’s be clear here: This is not an “atheist vs. believer,” or a “secularist vs. religious” issue, though Hamm may want you to believe otherwise.

Americans United is not the only organization that objects to tax incentives for organizations that promote religion.

The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty advocates that “taxpayer funds should not be used in a way that advances or promotes religion…”

Baptists have historical roots as a persecuted sect in 17^th century England and Colonial America. They experienced firsthand the danger of a united church and state. Like the founding fathers, they understood that separation of church and state is the best way to protect liberty of conscience.

The larger issue, therefore, is whether a theme park promoting a particular religion and its views about the Bible should receive tax incentives at all, no matter what their hiring practices are.

Receiving tax dollars to promote religion is no a small matter.

That’s the real issue here. If Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists or any religious group wanted to establish theme parks celebrating stories in their sacred books and at the same time wanted to accept tax incentives, the objection from Americans United would, I hope, be the same.

It should be.

Plain and simple.

There’s no Straw Man in that.

The garden’s woes, the garden woos

“I’ve got a garden blanket to put over the frame for your lettuce bed, whenever you’re ready to plant a fall garden,” my friend mentioned to me on the way out of church.

I mentally surveyed the condition of my garden.

It’s that time of year when all the warm weather plants are birthing their ripened fruit. I feel like the lone obstetrician in a maternity ward where fifty pregnant women are in labor at the same time.

I’ve shared some of the bounty, but I have tomatoes ripening so fast that some are rotting before I can get to them. It’s the same with the okra. My wife cooks the world’s best fried okra, but it’s a chore and not something we eat more than once a week, so I’ve started canning them, and still some are maturing too quickly for me to keep them from becoming too large and tough. I’ve enjoyed grilled and smoked cabbage, and Lori has made delicious cabbage soup, but I lost another cabbage the other day. It had rotted before I could get to it.

It’s a gardener’s dream and a gardener’s nightmare all at once.

Of course, the vegetables are not the only plants that have been prolific. I’ve tried to stay as close to organic as possible, but on more than one occasion, I’ve been tempted to blast those weeds with a strong dose of pesticides, herbicides or any cide that will kill them.  Those pesky plants have dropped me to my knees, then well near broke my back as I’ve pulled, yanked, and chopped them. Still they are winning. Flinging them in the air as I throw them out of the garden, I yell, “Out of my garden.” My two Schnauzers’ heads move back and forth in unison as they follow the trajectory of the weeds exiting the garden. Curious eyed, the dogs stare at the whole episode, as if it is some strange human ritual.

All this flashed through my mind as my friend mentioned the fall garden.

Do I really want a fall garden? Am I up to it?

The nineteenth century English poet, Alfred Austin said, “Show me your garden, and I’ll show you what you are.”

“If he’s right, I could be in trouble, “I thought to myself as I continued visualizing the state of my garden.

“You’ve been much too busy this summer,” my wife tells me as I share with her.  “And by the way, those carrots you worked so hard to cultivate, well, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I’m not sure it was worth your time.”

She is right, I admit to myself. It’s not been a leisurely summer. And I wonder if gardening is worth the time.

Stopping by the grocery store is so much more convenient. Why bother with all that composting, and preparing the soil, and planting, and cultivating, and harvesting, and cleaning produce, and canning?

But then, as troublesome as gardening can be, there is a joy in it beyond the reward of fresh vegetables. There is a deep satisfaction knowing they were grown on the soil you worked, that little piece of earth you sweated over as you’ve made at least some contribution to The Giving Tree.

The garden has always been there for me, waiting for me, and not just for me to tend to her, but for her to tend to me.

  “I’m going to the garden, “I often tell Lori after a difficult day. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “All my hurts my garden spade can heal.”

Walking down to the garden after my conversation with my friend, I take another look.  I have to admit: The garden is only doing what she’s supposed to do in response to the soil preparation, and the planting, and the cultivating.

I could feel Mother Nature smiling on my garden and me.

“Lori,” I shouted from the garden as I made my way back to the house, “I’ve just had a revelation.  I can‘t say ‘no’ to Mother Nature. She’s calling me back, back to the garden. I’ve got to start getting ready for a fall garden.”

Lori sighs and nods in tacit agreement.

“I’ll get the skillet ready,” she says. “Bring me a batch of okra.”

Where is the love?

Imagine that your 42 year old son has died after a four year battle with a rare disease that has destroyed his internal organs. You are grieving at his casket the night of the wake when an official of the church---the church which earlier in this horrid week approved the ceremony---calls you, informing you that they can no longer honor your request to have the funeral in the church as planned tomorrow.

“Why?” you ask.

“Because we found out your son was married…to a man.”

The conversation may not have been in those exact words, but that’s what happened to Julie Atwood a few weeks ago when the Reverend T. W. Jenkins, Pastor of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa, Florida, officially cancelled her son’s funeral the night before it was to take place the next day. Her son, Julion Evans, was married to Kendall Capers two years ago after 17 years together.

“It was devastating,” Ms. Atwood said of the experience. “I did feel like he (Julion) was being denied the dignity of death.” Church officials told Ms. Atwood it would be “blasphemous” to have the funeral in the church, the same church where she was baptized and where family members still attend.

Kendall Capers expressed to Tampa Bay NBC affiliate WFLA that he understood the Pastor’s position but added that the abrupt cancellation was “disrespectful” and “wrong.”

“Regardless of our background, our sexual orientation, how can you wait that long and put someone in a bind when they're going through a loss? asked Capers.

They did have the service at the funeral home where the wake had been held, but many mourners missed the service because they went to New Hope Church, unaware that the venue had been changed the night before.

What to make of this?

I can understand Pastor Jenkins dilemma.  For whatever reason, he apparently wasn’t aware that Mr. Evans and Mr. Capers were a gay couple. When several irate church members brought it to his attention, he made a decision not to violate his own principles:  "I try not to condemn anyone's lifestyle, but at the same time, I am a man of God and have to stand upon my principles.”

And ultimately, Reverend Jenkins and his church had every right to refuse the family’s request for the funeral in the church.

And yet, more than a principle is involved here. These are real people with real feelings: grieving people, hurting people, desperate people.

People needing a word of hope.

But hope is not what they received from a people whose church is named New Hope.

Pastor Jenkins said he tries not “to condemn anyone’s lifestyle.” Yet two person’s lifestyle is the very reason he refused to conduct the funeral.

As a pastor, I’m sure I've conducted funerals for people whose lifestyle I didn't approve: people addicted to alcohol and drugs, adulterers, gossips, hypocrites. But conducting a funeral is not necessarily an endorsement of the deceased’s lifestyle choices.

Pastor Jenkins and the church could have made that clear to the family and gone ahead with the funeral as planned.

But even then, is it always necessary for a church to point out to the grievers all the areas where the deceased’s lifestyle was at variance with the church’s standards? Does that help mourners work through their grief?

And what if not all the deceased’s family shares all the pastor’s principles? The couple in question certainly didn't view their sexual orientation as blasphemous, nor did they think it necessary to hide it: “It’s not like we woke up and said, ‘let’s be gay,’ someone we were born with and we've dealt with it for me, 40 years, him 42 years, and we make the best possible choices,” said  Capers to WFLA. Granted, their lifestyle was in violation of this particular church’s principles, but is refusing to minister to the grieving the best way to convince them to live by a church’s teaching?

Perhaps in their minds, the pastor and people were expressing love by their harsh actions. Maybe they thought such a demonstration of “tough love” would prompt sinners to repent. If so, New Hope would not be the first to justify their actions with that kind of reasoning. Indeed, such rationalization was institutionalized during a dismal era of the church, the Medieval Inquisition, when the church resorted to torture in order to ferret out heresy.

No, I don’t believe the family of Julion Evans is feeling the love, at least not from New Hope.

Love will have to come from another kind of Christianity, a Christianity intent on loving people unconditionally, even those people who do not abide by the church’s principles.

Stories from the baptistery

Connor rocked back and forth on his heels, biting his lip as his eyes darted back and forth, scanning my office.

It was his baptism day.

“It’s okay to be nervous,” I said, trying to put him at ease as he left my office with his parents on the way to the baptistery.

His father had warned me earlier that Connor was anxious about being baptized. “He’s worried that you’re going to ask him a lot of questions,” his dad had grinned.

I understood for I had been close to Connor’s age, eight, when I was baptized. Like Connor, I was an outgoing child, but the day I stood next to the pastor and made what we in my faith tradition call a “profession of faith” before being baptized, I was more than a bit fidgety: I felt like bolting and running. When the pastor introduced me in front of the congregation, I tried scooting behind him and hiding.

“Connor, I won’t ask you any questions other than the two we've already talked about, okay?”

He exhaled in relief.

But I could hear his voice quivering once we were standing outside the baptistery: “Is the water hot?”

I let him dip his hands in to test it.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” is the lead sentence in Joan Didion’s essay, The White Album. The sentence became the title for her collected works I suppose because it is so pregnant with meaning. In one simple sentence it addresses the complex nature of life and how we yearn to glean some order or purpose from the ambiguities that surround us daily. We do that by telling ourselves stories, “in order to live,” Didion wrote.

“And sometimes in order to relieve tension,” I thought as I watched Connor clasping and unclasping his hands.

I looked at the ladies who assisted with the baptism but stood close to Connor to make sure he heard my story.

“One time when I was in a different church, I was about to baptize a guy about Connor’s age,” I said as I placed my hand on his head.  “What I didn't know was that the custodian had gotten the water way too hot. When the boy stepped into the water he screamed like a cat that got its tail caught in the door, and everyone in the congregation looked toward the baptistery to see what was going on. “Yeeouh, I can’t do it,” he yelled after he jerked his foot out of the hot water.

“What did you do?” one of the ladies helping Connor asked.

“Well, his grandparents had driven several hours to see the baptism that morning. So, I told some of the men in the church to let the water cool while I preached, and then after my sermon we would have the baptism. I gave the men strict instructions to fill several buckets with ice. They were to wait until the music was playing and the people were singing during the invitational hymn and only then were they to throw the ice into the water.”

“What happened?” Connor asked.

“The men missed their cue. Just when I had everyone bow their heads and close their eyes for prayer, just at that tender and quiet moment in the worship service when I ask people to make decisions for Christ, lo and behold if the men didn't throw all that ice into the baptistery. The audience heard a big crash like a glacier had collapsed, leaving them looking at each other, wondering, ‘What in the world was that?’ But I did get the little guy baptized, and everything worked out.”

By now Connor was giggling.

“Watch your step,” I cautioned Connor as we entered the baptismal waters.

“Connor, did you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord?”

Without the slightest hesitation in his voice, Connor responded, “Yes, sir.”

“Do you choose to be his follower, his disciple?”

“Yes sir,” Connor declared.

When Connor looked up to me just before I lowered him into the water, he didn't need to say anything more because the peace in his eyes bespoke the presence  of the one in whose name he was about to be baptized.

“I’m proud for you, Connor,” I said as we exited the baptistery.

“Now you've got a story to tell about the day you were baptized. Remember to tell it, “I added.

And I believe he will.

For we indeed tell stories in order to live.

And sometimes to relax a bit and take in the story we are living in the moment.