The 212th General Assembly affirmed the fragile unity of our denomination by rejecting one of the Beaver-Butler overtures and by delaying for one more year consideration of the overtures dealing with sexuality and ordination. One can infer from their decisions the belief that Presbyterians are neither ready to divide the denomination nor to continue debating the issues surrounding sexuality and ordination.
Long time pal Phil is retiring. I write, inviting him to join me in forming a senior step ball team. We were champs in seminary -- in the game where the batter throws a tennis ball against the Alexander Hall steps at Princeton and the fielders have to catch it before it bounces.
A professor friend at Union-PSCE some time ago sent me a tape recording of one of his classes. The visitor for the day was a Methodist bishop whose assignment was director of worldwide evangelism for the United Methodist Church. He described in detail his experience in his first parish in a small church in a poor neighborhood in Sydney, Australia:
There are some questions which need to be asked:
* Are denominations any longer viable? Or are they archaic? Or are they "The moral failure of Christianity?" (Richard Niebuhr)
Baseball is, of course, a biblical game because we are taught "the homer shall be the standard measure" (Ezekiel 45:11, RSV). Jesus was looking for the diamond when he asked, "Where are the nine?" (Luke 17:17) Baseball is congenial to Christians because it is played in green pastures and often beside still waters (in Pittsburgh, however, we can cross three rivers to get to the park).
Our son Gary was born in a hospital connected with the prison where his mother was serving time for grand theft. With a birth weight slightly more than three pounds, Gary could whimper softly but was too weak to cry for his first year on Earth. We were told Gary would never walk because to his mental retardation was added cerebral palsy affecting all four limbs.
Is the center -- the 75-80 percent of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) between the theological/ideological ends of the spectrum -- finally finding its voice? The actions of the 212th General Assembly which recently concluded in Long Beach, Calif., indicate a new self-consciousness on the part of the great majority of Presbyterians and new possibilities for moving forward in faithfulness to our calling.
When he was a teen-ager, my son, who was not wearing a shirt, approached his mother and said,
"Look, Mom."Â "I'm looking."Â "What do you see?"Â "I see your chest."Â "Yes, but what do you see on my chest?"Â "What am I supposed to see on your chest?"Â "You're supposed to see a chest hair named Fred."
I am often, and rightly, described as an athletic supporter. I love all sports but especially track and am proud to say that I am one of the few persons in the world to see Bobby Morrow (1956 Olympic gold medals at 100 and 200 meters and the 4-by-100 relay) run a full quarter mile.
Fundamentalist and Modernist; Liberal and Conservative. Sadly, these clumsy assignations are still made by Presbyterians. I regret to say that I am myself victimized by this distinction, and I regret even more that I perpetuate its use. The Apostle Paul discusses the broader problem of "we" and "they" (or to be more objective -- "us" and "them") in Philippians 1:15-18, coming to the remarkable conclusion that we should rejoice because Christ is being proclaimed, whether by "them" in pretense or by "us" in truth.
As a lifelong student of muliebrity, I have learned that Earth has few intellectual delights to compare with the satisfaction of embarrassing the woman you love. Although I. Kant say it out loud, an axiom of both pure and practical reason holds that a woman will never get angry at you if you are trying to express your devotion to her.
Most of us learn to preach by imitation and we imitate what we admire. When I was in seminary, the preacher I most admired wrote his sermons in a black, 6 b 9 notebook -- so I bought a 6 by 9 notebook.
Moreover, I noticed that when he was ready to turn a page, he made a dramatic gesture toward heaven and while everyone was looking up, he flipped the page. I practiced that maneuver too.
On August 11, 1991, after 37 years of devoutly offering burnt offerings to heaven, I smoked my pipe for the last time, quitting, as they say, cold duck. I had taken up pipe smoking because I thought it denoted a kindly, reflective, manly person such as I considered myself to be.
Last year a billboard emblazoned the conviction that the best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. Surely, by now, every father has figured that out although, given human weaknesses, it is not always possible. Certainly love is a big subject. For the rationalists, Dante, reflecting Aristotle, declares in the lst line of The Divine Comedy  that love makes the world go around. For the romantics, King Arthur by way of Camelot insists that the way to handle a woman is to love her, love her, love her.
Even though I am a world-class expert on women, I sometimes find them hard to understand. For example, I had been dating Margaret exclusively for about a year and a half, and I thought it was probably safe to put my arm around the back of her chair at a movie. I was what we called in those days "a fast worker."
To a flat-lander who has lived in the Mississippi Delta and on the Great Plains, Pittsburgh is a big challenge because of all the hills. This fact has led me to recognize that it is a serious mistake for a man to marry chiefly for beauty and brains. Brawn ought to be a major consideration. I now think the ideal woman is at least 6 feet tall, weighs about 290 and bench presses 400 pounds.
It is all very well for the Bible to command us in one place to be urgent (2 Timothy 4:2) and in another to do all things decently and in order (1 Corinthians 14:40). The problem is the Bible does not tell us which commandment applies to which situation. Thus, some Christians -- like the Methodists -- are regularly more urgent than decent and some -- like the Presbyterians -- are regularly more decent than urgent.
Declining membership is a major problem for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and doubtless will remain so until our leaders figure out why persons decline to be members. Quite naturally, various groups of Presbyterians blame these problems on those who do not share their primary interests: The church is too liberal or too conservative; there is too much or too little social action; too many or too few prayer meetings; too much or too little liturgy, and so on and on.
Two hundred years ago frontier religious revivals were made necessary by the scarcity of preachers and the great distances between people in America west of the Alleghenies.
First held in the open, these events were later held in large tents and then in roofed, but opensided, rough-hewn buildings called tabernacles. With three preaching services every day, the common feature of tents and tabernacles was a floor covered with sawdust.
Embarrassing my wife, Margaret, is not -- I swear -- the goal of my life, but if embarrassing her were my purpose I could happily retire, having succeeded beyond my wildest expectations many times over. For example, on our last wedding anniversary (romantic devil that I am) I thought I should take her out for an experience in elegant dining. Her choice -- Mexican food -- was a bit of a sacrifice because while Margaret likes spicy food, it doesn't agree with me.
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