Isaiah 58 the scope of repentance and redemption

Isaiah 58 -The Scope of Repentance and Redemption

 

            All Christians are called to repent. For those of us observing Lent, repenting along with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is an important theme. Isaiah 58 caught my attention as it was one of our Church’s readings for the first Sunday in Lent. Whether you practice Lent or not, it seems to me that Isaiah 58 has a lot to tell us regarding the way of repentance. I will be quoting verses in Isaiah 58 from the Jewish Publication Society’s version of the Tanakh published as a 1992 Book of the Month selection. I enjoy the crisp modern wording of the translation and hope you will also.

            [1]        Isaiah 58:1 shows God calling upon Isaiah to speak his message boldly – “Cry with full throat, without restraint; Raise your voice like a ram’s horn! Declare to My people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sin.”

            [2]        In Isaiah 58:2, we discover that God’s message through Isaiah especially targets the people who think they are faithful seekers of God. Isaiah 58:2 says, “To be sure, they seek Me daily, eager to learn My ways, like a nation that does what is right, that has not abandoned the laws of its God. They ask me for the right way, they are eager for the nearness of God.” (Isaiah 58:2) It is easy for us who believe we are earnestly seeking God to reach a point where we take our journeys of seeking righteousness for granted. We might remember a time when we sought God because we knew we needed His forgiveness, and His help to overcome our sinful ways and habits. Somewhere along the line we began taking our righteousness for granted. We began identifying as a righteous people, and gradually abandoned our search for righteousness, or we began to identify our search for righteousness within a mindset that thought of sin in certain ways which perceived sin differently than God does. We were still seeking God in our own way, but our own way was becoming dangerously close to being a way which in truth might well have come near to abandoning God’s ways.

            [3]        Isaiah’s message is fit for our season of Lent, when many of us practice some form of fasting, and trust that our fasting might help us draw nearer to God. The Bible teaches fasting as a way of seeking the Lord in some instances, but fasting can become for us an end in itself rather than a means to an end. God describes the sort of fasting he yearns to sees, saying “This is the fast I desire: to unlock the fetters of wickedness, and to untie the cords of the yoke - to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore you own kin.” (Isaiah 58:6-7)

            I suspect that part of where we can go so wrong in our practice of the faith is when we forget that God’s covenant is as much a covenant with a community in which we participate, as it is with us as individuals. If we imagine ourselves as in a mostly individual relationship with God, our understanding of pursuing righteousness will be in regard to things in our control. But if we understand that God has made a covenant with a nation and community of believers, we will begin to recognize that the pursuit of righteousness always has a communal context. If my thought is always my personal relationship I might be so obsessed with things about myself I can change, that I will hardly notice the persons in need within my community. Maybe I will resort to passing judgment as if the poor are always at fault for their poverty. Maybe I will not only neglect seeing the poor, but the troubled soul never quite able to get a healthy self-image or clarity of mind to pull themselves up out of what Bunyan called the “Slough of Despond.” An overly individualistic approach to the faith might cause us to sense no responsibility to our brothers and sisters in God’s community. We can imagine we are doing everything right, when in reality we have lost the center of faithfulness to God spelled out in “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

            [4]        In the final portions of Isaiah 58, Isaiah’s message addresses his audience in regard to how they were neglecting the Sabbath. I recognize that among Christians there are many who do not believe the Sabbath laws as such are binding on Christians. It seems to me that one does not have to hold that Sabbath laws are binding on the Christian, to realize that principles expressed in the Old Testament in the Sabbath Laws remain important as we journey through life, especially when the principles are set forth by the prophets as correctives upon incorrect uses of the Sabbath institutions.

            Isaiah expresses important principles that were not being practiced due to misuses of the Sabbath. We read his words which say, “If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your affairs on My holy day; if you call the Sabbath “delight,” The Lord’s holy day “honored” and if you honor it and go not your ways, nor look to your affairs, nor strike bargains – then you can seek the favor of the Lord. I will set you astride the heights of the earth, and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob – for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 58:13-14)

            Once more a community approach to Sabbath keeping was essential if the Sabbath was to be honored. The command was spoken to a community. It was to be kept by males and females, sons and daughters, the wealthy, servants, slaves, the immigrants who are visiting or living in our lands, even the cattle which pull our plows. If we view the Sabbath only as being spoken to us as individuals we dramatically lessen its message. The servant and slave, or small child, or immigrant working with little option in a strange land had little opportunity to choose whether or not they would keep the Sabbath. Within the community, it was the man or woman with the privilege of being a master, or an employer, who often determined whether or not the poor laborer, the servant, the slave, or the immigrant was going to be granted the Sabbath rest which would allow marginalized families to have a day to enjoy rest, conversation, and joys of community. The Sabbath did provide for the individual but it was also provision for families whose individual choice was marginalized apart from the employer, master, and wealthy privileged citizen in society pausing and recognizing that God has spoken to give all our people, and all our neighbors that rest to enable restoration from the weariness of a week’s labor each seventh day of the week.

            The Sabbath was in reality an institution of various Sabbaths. There was the Sabbath to be enjoyed one day out of each week. A second form of a Sabbath cycle was the seventh year Sabbath when one year out of each seven Israel was to allow its land to rest. Debts were to be concluded so that in the Sabbath year, the lives of God’s people might be renewed by lifting away burdensome hindering debt burdens.

            Finally, Israel had following the seventh year of a seven year cycle, the fiftieth year when a declaration of the year of Jubilee was pronounced. At this time Israel’s land would be distributed in such a way as to protect the original intent of the division of the property of Israel’s families when Israel entered the holy land under Joshua. Slaves would be set free. A new day would begin, in which God’s people would be endowed with the gifts allowing them to make use of their own properties to feed themselves and bring blessing to their neighbors.

            In Christian thought, the promise of Jubilee has sometimes been seen as pointing towards Christ’s redemptive work. The language especially seems to be present near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He entered the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth. He was handed a scroll to read from the prophet Isaiah. He read, “The Spirit of the Lord I on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19; which was a quoting of Isaiah 61:1-2)

            When we see that the various Sabbaths provided rest from the work of our weekly routines, rest from debt and rest for creation one year of each seven years, and a Jubilee re-ordering all of life according to God’s kind purposes, as Christians we can see how the Sabbath institutions pointed towards the favorable day of the Lord when Messiah himself would bring rest, healing, and restoration to the people.

            This restoration would be more than individualistic saving of our souls. It would be a communal restoration wherein participants would see neighbors in need and begin to seek ways to encourage those needing encouragement, and the community would be marked by those of us with gifts ministering to those with needs, who also had gifts ministering to our needs.

            How is the Church to do this when each of us recognizes that we are not strong or wealthy, or wise; but rather we are weak, often poor, and drawn from the foolish of this world? Is not our strength that we have been given eyes to see, ears to hear, and a few small fishes to be blessed when the Lord takes our small gifts and multiplies them to give need to the poor, encouragement to the troubled in soul, and the restoration of hope to the discouraged? We must ask the Lord to open our eyes to see the needy and we must ask our meager gifts to be multiplied because we understand this is the favorable year of our Lord. Christ has brought us into the favorable year as long as this is today.

 

Can the Debate wait?

Can the Debate Wait?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Our government is in shut down mode. Some things run along as if nothing is wrong. But beneath the daily news shows that simply notice the debates there are the tens of thousands of government employees not being paid, and yet expected to continue working at their jobs. They live in no man’s land while the right and the left make their stands, sometimes because they simply must. The end isn’t as sure as we might suppose. Will one side blink? Will a grand compromise occur behind the scenes? Will a bit of face saving secrecy be followed while the appearance of defeat is suffered? Or will the unthinkable happen when the failure to reach compromise doesn’t take place and each side hardens until at last we discover that the breakdown of a civilized order we thought would not take place, has taken place?

            I have to admit that as I age, my tendency is to become less argumentative and more interested in finding a way to build general consensus. I am not sure this will happen in our present situation.

            One of the most followed new elected persons in the House of Representatives is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, often simply described by her AOC initials. She is energetic, outspoken, a self-defined Socialist advocating a Scandinavian model of Socialism. She is also youngest woman ever elected to the House of Representatives. You might admire her or you might regard here as a threat to America. One new Republican Congressman, Dan Crenshaw, has expressed his desire to debate Ocasio-Cortez concerning her proposals. These two new representatives seem to represent the divisions of our fractured nation state. Crenshaw, the special forces soldier who has lost much of his eyesight due to his service in war, and Ocasio-Cortez looking for a way to move away from our continual wars. Crenshaw, a citizen connected to a region where the oil industry is part of the picture, and AOC, an advocate of green energy. It seems, in some ways, that these two newly elected representatives might do well to represent their positions in a debate. In some ways they would well represent the divided of ideas separating right and left.

            I feel like an American traditionalist torn apart in our present times. I am part rugged individualist progressive in the mode of Theodore Roosevelt, part pragmatic New Deal progressive in the likeness of Franklin Roosevelt, part Conservative get back to our roots Ronald Reagan; and part dare to hope progressivism of a Barack Obama. I would like to ask Ocasio-Cortez and Crenshaw to dare to do something original before they debate.

            I would propose the two first term representatives host each other in the districts they represent. I don’t expect it would change either Representative’s basic governmental philosophies. Still, I think the visiting of each other’s district might be in some ways productive.

            Ocasio-Cortez would take Congressman Crenshaw to some places in her district. She might take him to a diner or a restaurant where she thinks Congressman Crenshaw could get a feel for her district. She could take him to a place where she feels well represents some of the good her district offers to the rest of America. She could also take him to a place that needs a sense of hope to encourage people to discover a way to grow out of the economic or societal doldrums that have set in. Congressman Crenshaw could then return the favor by hosting AOC in his Houston area district. Perhaps each Congressional representative would better understand how their political perspectives relate to their personal political theories. Such an experiment might change nothing, or might change something. I think I would expect a minimally realistic hope that at least some empathy for the other person’s congressional district might occur. Perhaps there might be the sort of realization that former Speaker Tip O’Neill understood about life when he would say that all politics is local. Perhaps something about the Bronx would help Congressman Crenshaw understand Ortega-Cortez better, and something of seeing Crenshaw’s Houston district would help AOC better understand Dan Crenshaw’s politics. They would still have their own ideas and political commitments, but would it hurt or help each other if they took the time to spend some time with the other representative in each other’s district?

            I think this way, because I was once a kid growing up in a farm area. For most of my life, I thought of New York City as a place foreign to my way of life. Then one day, as I wanted to see something other than the way in which I lived, I decided it was time to visit New York City. My first visit was for three days. A brief conversation at a sports restaurant and bar with a cordial waitress helped insure me that New Yorkers could be kind and compassionate. I went to New York my first time expecting a wholly other worldly experience of that big eastern city. I returned realizing that New York City was a multitude of small communities connected by subways, street systems, and bus routes.

            I returned to this city that I discovered fascinated me the following summer. I decided to visit the city for three weeks. I decided I would see at least two things in each of New York City’s five boroughs. In the Bronx, I first visited the Bronx Zoo. I learned the zoo had helped pioneer some of the breeding programs for animals threatened with extinction. The zoo had a number of bison. There are some bison herds in my home state of Oklahoma. An information board described how a breeding program by the Bronx Zoo in the early twentieth century helped to restore the bison herds in Oklahoma that had been all but wiped out. It was an amazing thing for me, now a resident of Oklahoma, to realize that some or many of our bison in Oklahoma had a Bronx connection.

            Later in the day I went from the zoo in search of an Italian restaurant in an area of the Bronx’s version of a “Little Italy.” On the way to the restaurant I got my directions turned around and found myself blocks away from the Little Italy I was seeking. I was in an area where I seemed a conspicuously white looking person in an African-American area of the city. As a rural Midwesterner in my growing up times, it was a different world than I had known. I was out of my comfort zone, although nothing negative actually occurred. I wandered trying to get back to the area where I thought I would find a nice Italian restaurant in the Little Italy section of the Bronx. Instead I found an area, where people appeared to be speaking mostly Spanish. I began to realize that in a few blocks within the Bronx, a seemingly whole different world existed if your life had always been lived in rural or suburban white neighborhoods. I don’t think I was ready for the experience at the time, even though upon reflection it was encouraging that nothing really negative had occurred. I had simply found myself outside of my comfort zone, and the people I saw seemed to be enjoying being in the place of their comfort zones.

            Finally I was standing near Fordham University, a place more obvious on my New York City map. From there I could begin to more easily figure out how to get to a Little Italy restaurant not far from Belmont Avenue, where once upon a time a group of guys from that are formed a band called Dion and the Belmonts. It was a rainy, Monday evening. The restaurant was not busy. The phone rang. The owner picked it up and began conversing in Italian. This was New York City. This was in the borough of the Bronx. Why would I think a political representative of this district would somehow be a carbon copy of a representative from the oil patch states, or from my original rural life in downstate Illinois? Wouldn’t it somehow be strangely appropriate if before two representatives debated one another on issues, they each hosted each other in their districts? They would still have different political solutions for national politics, but just perhaps they would be more interested than before in realizing that what one district needed might not be what another district needed.

 

First 2019 blog and transitions

2019 First Blog and Changes

By the Panhandling Philosopher, Dan McDonald

 

            In this first blog for the year 2019, I am announcing my plans to transition from the work place of much of my past thirty years, to a retired life where one of my focuses will be on writing. I am hopeful that this is just as it was perhaps meant to be. I don’t like to speak of being where we were supposed to be in a flippant matter. Life unfolds in mystery. One day you look over your life and think about what life has prepared you for, what you enjoy, what brings joy from your life to others, and you realize, “I think life has prepared me for this.”

            Few of us get the sort of direct input from the heavens that says you should do this or this other thing. A story is told of one farmer who was convinced he saw a clear sign from heaven. He was working one of his fields. He looked up into sky and as clear as day he saw a cloud with the letters P and C able to be clearly seen. He told the story to his minister and believed God was telling him he was meant to preach Christ. The minister wanted to test if this was God’s leading. He arranged for him to preach. It wasn’t terrific but at least it was earnest. He arranged a second time, and some felt it was boring. A third time and some members were threatening to leave if he ever preached again. Finally the minister tried to figure a way to urge the farmer to think of his vision in a different way. The minister tried diplomatically to break the news to the farmer. The farmer, while disappointed, had to admit he felt it wasn’t going well. The minister then suggested to him, “Maybe God wanted you to know He appreciated your work when you plant corn."

            I think we all sometimes deal with that desire to be more than we are, rather than what we already are. We know there is wisdom in learning to do well where we have been planted rather than to toss all that ways of life we have learned to live to become something we have never been. We live in a world where are taught to chase dreams, but sometimes we are not told that the dream becomes reality through self-preparation, discipline, and training. Following our dreams should imply to us that our dreams are connected to a path of diligence to bring those dreams into the reality in which we live. I am persuaded that the most direct path to a wasted life is following a dream without that dream being joined to a method of diligence and a way of discipline.

            In my life, I have always had a desire to write. I have also had a job that took a lot of my time, and left me tired. I am not sure whether that tiredness was rooted in me, or in the work itself. Personally I have loved to write. Practically my job paid the bills. A friend’s sister in college had embroidered on one of his shirts the words, “Variety may be the spice of life, but monotony brings home the bread.” However much that spoke to his life I am not sure, but it has spoken to mine.

            Looking back at my life from the mirror of my memories, I am  mostly grateful that most of my writing didn't discover a large audience. I have passed through a number of temporary stages in my life that I am glad don't necessarily represent where I am now. I have passed through the shifting winds of socio-economic-political firestorms. I was convinced right wing firebrand, blooming individualistic libertarian, moderate, inquirer of a more progressive commons based progressivism. The one thing I have learned to lean upon at this stage in my life is that Solzhenitsyn expressed a great truth when he described good and evil as forming the dividing line crossing every human heart. This is true whether you or I am Conservative or Liberal, progressive or moderate, individualistic capitalist or collective socialist. Each of us struggles with that dividing line between good and evil running across every human heart. It is why the manna for life had to be gathered fresh each and every day in the Wilderness. It is why we pray in the Lord's Prayer that each day we be given our daily bread. Each day we wake up to the reality that angels labor on our behalf and demons seek to incite us to their ways of chaos and destruction. I have had years with a very small audience, that gave me time to realize that for every nugget of value I have written there has been a lot of dirt and dross needing removed.

            Gradually my writing has been refined having learned that my writing needed improvements, and my thinking needed to be guided by carefulness and moderation. I learned contentment with having a small audience. It is better to be mentored and corrected in our perspectives than being given a big audience for which we are ill suited.

            In the past year, my thinking has changed. A particular writing project has become part of my vision. It requires preparation, study, research, and time to develop its themes. I can see it passing those tests of questions like "Will this speak compassionately to others? Will this be interesting to readers? Will this encourage a fresh perspective that might move a reader from "Yeah this again" to "Ah ... this". I have hopefully moved forward from participation in the culture wars to bringing me along with others to approach that throne of grace where God asked us through the Prophet Isaiah to come. In the King James it is presented as a call to come and reason with God. In the more modern Catholic translation of the same verse the invitation comes to us, “Come now, let us set things right, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 1:19 New American Bible) My great desire is not to address the divisions of our culture wars, but to address the divisions of good and evil that do indeed run across every single human heart. That is the place where angels labor, and demons invade.

            I have long loved to write. But only in the last year has my vision for a writing project seemed to be something important enough that my writing move from pleasant hobby or happy privilege to being something I think worthwhile to make a priority. I am not expecting it to be a masterpiece, though I hope to give it my best labors. But I do hope that whatever I write be worthy of some pondering, and hopefully illuminating to some human aspect that is essential to our living our lives together whether in our churches, neighborhoods, or shared communities.

Advent and Advent People

Advent and Advent People

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            In the 2016 science fiction movie “Arrival” twelve alien space ships land on different places on the Earth. Doctor Louise Banks (A leading linguistic expert, whose character is presented by actress Amy Adams) is called upon to try to communicate with the visitors. One of the discoveries Doctor Banks learns is that while we move from our past to our future, the aliens move in the opposite direction from what is our future to what is our present. The visiting aliens have been visited by us in their past, during a crisis time; and now are reaching us in our present during a time that is a critical period in our human civilization. Doctor Banks understanding of time becomes less certain as she finds her life being informed by the impressions of her future presented to her in her contact with the visitors who can give her impressions of the future they know concerning her life.

            The Latin originated name “Advent” means to come. Our Christian season of Advent focuses on the twin focal points of Christ’s coming into our world. He has come in our past, to be born of Mary, to live, to suffer for our sins, and to be raised from the dead, conqueror of sin and death on our behalf. Advent, however, also focuses on a second coming of Christ when Christ, having interceded for us in heavenly places will return to complete the work of our redemption and salvation in that coming day. St. John gives us a wonderful sense of what shall take place, and also what it means for our lives in the present time between a past and a future coming of Christ. We are given the promise in I John 3:2-3 “Beloved we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him and shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hoped based on him, makes himself pure as he is pure.” (New American Bible)

            In the “Arrival” film, Doctor Banks sees glimpses of her future, conveyed to her through the aliens who are reaching into her world from their past which is part of Doctor Banks’ future. Doctor Banks sees beauty in the life being presented to her. She also sees trials and sufferings. The beauty she sees is so wonderful in its human beauty that she can accept the great sufferings she believes to be interwoven as a package with what will be her future life. I find in our participation in the season of Advent that what God has done for us in Christ in the past, and how he shall complete it all in the future is essential for our understanding how we are to embrace our place in the middle. We, who had fallen into sin with our lives lost to both God and ourselves, were granted to have Christ come on our behalf to enter our lives and redeem them though both his sufferings and his resurrection. The Serpent bit the son of the woman’s heel, while the long awaited Son crushed the serpent’s head. In the yet future great day of salvation our dear kind patient Savior shall arrive to bring to happy conclusion our triumph through him over sin and death forevermore. He shall wipe away our tears and the former things shall be no more.

            We are still in waiting for that final day. We do not wait passively. We wait both in suffering and great expectation. The Apostle Paul encourages us to recognize the suffering that is part of our redemption. He speaks to us as people in the middle, between the two comings, encouraging us to conduct ourselves in a matter worthy of the Gospel of Christ whatever is experienced in this life. (Philippians 1:27) He encourages us to remain steadfast in our Gospel centered lives telling us – “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.” (Philippians 1:29) There is great pain to be experienced in our future until he comes again. We should not expect to escape this experiencing of suffering. It is part of the redemption granted to us in Christ who both suffered and overcame both sin and death on our behalf. His life for us, becomes his life in us as we believe and follow him in the middle between his two comings. This is not us earning a works righteousness, but us being made alive to participate in the work of our own redemption.

            Despite the suffering we also find in our lives lived out in the middle, the growing confidence that he who began a good work in us will bring it to perfection. We shall see him and when we see him, we shall be like him. Knowing this is part of our future, we delight ourselves in seeking to be pure as Christ is pure. We embrace the painful sufferings of this middle season, encouraged by our knowing the beauty of that as we shall be purified we now seek to grow in grace in the beauty of the redemption Christ has granted us in our union with his life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.

            Advent helps us know that all time is in God’s hands. The future and the past have been transformed to speak to us who live in the middle and to encourage us in our sufferings and in our ambitions to grow in grace and to hunger and thirst for righteousness knowing that when we see him, it shall not have been a fruitless task of living in the middle, but we shall see him and shall be like him. So here in the middle we prepare ourselves for grief and pain and suffering. Here in the middle, we prepare ourselves for the great joy of seeing him and being brought to be like him.

            Here in the middle we see horrible wrongs that need confronted, confronted with the hope of the Gospel. We see children deprived of life as they grow in their mother’s womb. We see children with families fleeing thugs with power, only to be tear gassed as they approach what they hope will be their place of refuge. We see one nation bombing another nation and cutting a whole population off from food and resources so the entire nation is drawing near to a time of mass starvation. We see children plucked from their families to live in virtual slavery in fields where the laborers are seldom paid their due, while their labors bring great profits in providing us with the delicacies we desire. We see children taken from their families and turned into tools for the sexual exploitation of the privileged in an unjust world. This is life in our world. We see it in ourselves. We see our selfishness, our ruthlessness in yearning for our good while making another’s good of no importance. We find in ourselves our own tendencies to Cain’s false religion where he offers is personal sacrifices but refuses to believe he has anything to do with being his brother’s keeper. This is part of the world in which we live in the middle. But we are advent people. We know of his past and future coming. We are moved by his longsuffering on our behalf so we are overwhelmed by his granting us to participate in his suffering. The future speaks to us of the certainty of his future triumph over all the ills we face, and thus we begin to pluck the logs out of our eyes, and begin with humility the search to become pure even as he is pure, to become loving as he is loving, to be gracious to others as he is gracious. In Advent we learn how precious it is, for us to be Advent people, living in the middle with its sufferings and with great joy incomparable. It is a privilege to live as Advent people experiencing simultaneously living out the long loneliness and living in the company of the saints no man or woman could ever begin to count, surrounded as we are by such a cloud of witnesses. Living in the Middle is a painful, joyous paradox that we navigate knowing the ramifications of our Savior's past and future comings.

 

Giving Thanks I am a writer

Giving Thanks – I am a writer

By Dan McDonald

                This week on Twitter @authorTraci retweeted @byMorganWright’s asking readers about what the best writing advice was, that her readers were given. Such a question is probably answered differently by writers at different phases each an author experiences. As for me one piece of advice I received recently speaks perfectly to my present situation.

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            I have viewed myself as a wanna-be writer. A friend challenged me on that. He said that a writer is one who writes, and that as I have written quite a few blogs I am already a writer. Part of me felt like arguing with him. Instead I remained open to what he said, and soon the message began to make sense as I thought about the place my love for writing has had in my life.

            In my first year in my first four years of high school, I was a mediocre student, getting an occasional B, and the rest C’s and D’s. At the end of my freshman year I was in the bottom half of my class scholastically. That was also when an excellent English literature teacher assigned writing essays to our class. A significant number of students grumbled when essays were assigned. My reaction was the opposite. It was as if, school now had one thing for me to do that was enjoyable. I enjoyed thinking about how to write about something. My enjoyment of writing essays seemed to help me participate more willingly even in studies where we didn’t write essays. Well not in geometry, I fell behind there and things only got a whole lot worse as the year rolled on. By the time I graduated I had reached to the upper tier of the bottom half of the class to barely being within the upper one-fourth of the class. Writing essays proved to be my educational turning point. Even so, I never thought of myself as a possible writer.

            In my undergraduate years, I majored in history, minored in philosophy, and took a number of literature courses. These required writing papers. I was surprised when I received a number of remarks on papers saying “excellent writing.” I never thought of these remarks as suggesting I had decent writing talent.

            After graduated from college, and considering the possibility of going to seminary I felt like more academic studies wouldn’t be the best way for me to understand life. I went to work in a factory, then for a construction company, and later I worked as a warehouseman. During that time I often wrote papers that I gave to friends, sometimes they were inflictions upon friends. The one constant activity I enjoyed doing was writing, but I could never think of myself as a writer.

            I have one final story that as I reviewed my relationship to writing, suggests now to me that I should indeed think of myself as a writer. I was visiting New York City and was staying in a hotel where my view of the city was blocked by the Empire State Building in my window, definitely not complaining. I had been to the Bronx and caught a train near Fordham University to come back to Midtown Manhattan. It was late in the evening, with only a few passengers scattered throughout the train. Diagonally seated near me was this young woman, perhaps a college student. She had a writing journal and was writing almost frantically like someone afraid if they don’t get the thought on the paper it would be forever lost. Occasionally she paused between rapidly written sentences. She would look upwards as if asking her brain to come up with the perfect word or phrase. I imagined her in that zone where it is her and her writing and the rest of the world has retreated to a different universe.

            I decided I wanted to say something to her before one of us got off the train. I also wondered if I was just being crazy. Finally as we reached where I was getting off the subway I managed to say to her on the way out the door, “Whether you are writing for you or for another, best of luck on your writing.” She glanced up at me, and smiled slightly and said “Thank you.” I can look back at this now and I realize that at that moment I thought of myself as a writer, and thought of her a member of my tribe; a tribe of writers.

            Ned helped me understand I have been a writer for a long time. If you are a writer it matters if you think of yourself as a writer. As a want to be writer, every weakness in my writing led me to believe I was not yet a writer. As I have begun to think of myself as a writer, those same weaknesses are beginning to be treated as weaknesses to overcome, because I am a writer. I don’t imagine any writer wants to reach a point where they don’t want to pursue improvements in style, substance, clarity, precision, efficiency, and especially writing with beauty. As a want to be writer, each flaw suggested I would never be a writer. As one who has accepted “writer” as part of my description there is a world of flaws to which I am called to do battle, because I am a writer. I hope if you love to write and still can't quite view yourself as a writer, that you will realize you love to write, and whenever you write you will be a writer, and especially that you are a writer if you are willing to give yourself as you are to doing the finest writing you are capable of doing, and accept that if you are a writer, from here on you accept the call to continual improvement.

 

Streator at 100

Streator when it turned 100

Written by Dan McDonald

 

                   Fifty years ago this past summer, Streator, the place where I’ve always said I grew up, celebrated its one hundredth birthday.

                   Our address was route 1 Manville, but Manville had no stores after 1958, had no church after about 1973, and had only 13 houses built near a railroad that had been torn out sometime before I went to college. It was only people living near us to whom we said we were from Manville. To most people we said we were from Streator; about 100 miles southwest of Chicago, and 65 miles northeast of Peoria.

                   The city had started out as a village in the midst of farmers. After coal was discovered in the area, a Dr. Worthy Streator led a group of investors to bring a railroad to the town to help insure that the coal was mined and delivered to locales needing it. Miners from other parts of the United States, as well as immigrants from southern and Eastern European nations soon made their way to Streator to work the mines. The city, after 1868 was named for the investor who brought the first railway to our town.

                   The railroads serving our city began growing in number after 1868. The most important railway, serving our town, was the main line of the Atcheson, Topeka, and the Santa Fe. It became immortalized when the railway was celebrated in this song sung by Judy Garland. Streator was served by as many as six different railway lines.

                   Nearby abundant deposits of silica sand brought glass factories to Streator. By 1960 Streator was described as the glass container capital of the world. The coal mines were no longer being mined, but one glass factory employed three thousand people, and a second employed a thousand people. Other assorted industries included a brick factory, snow plow and lawn mower factories, and numerous shops which served the auto and agricultural implement manufacturing sectors. We weren’t a large city, but if you were willing to work hard, there were decent paying jobs in abundance. We thought that was the way things were and always would be, that 1968 summer we celebrated our city’s centennial.

                   Some of us learned things that year that we had never known. We discovered that for a time George "Honey Boy" Evans had a Streator connection. He wrote show tunes and one of his most famous had became the theme song for our centennial celebration “In the Good Old Summertime”.

                   A beard growing contest took place in the city's celebration of the centennial. Some grew the full sized beards that were grown in 1868, while others chose the 1890's style of handle bar mustaches. There weren't a lot of beards grown in the late 1960's by older people, but there were beards everywhere in Streator in 1968. We were celebrating our city, characterized by the hard work of miners and manufacturing workers. In Streator we believed, as much as anyone believed, that with hard work one could expect to build a good life in our home town.

                   My sister worked for an attorney in 1968. He carried heartbreak in his soul that summer while Streator celebrated. He had long been interested in politics, but a kind of nervous disorder led his physician to recommend that he avoid the stress of political life. The attorney, taking his physician's advice, primarily served his clients in matters of family, corporate, and tax law. He was of Irish descent and Catholic. He lived near both his church and business. He would stop at his church for morning mass every day of the week on his way to his law business. In 1968 he was elected to be a Robert F. Kennedy delegate at the Chicago Democratic National Convention. He was elated when Kennedy appeared to be headed towards victory at the Chicago convention, but then an assassin's bullet claimed the life of the Senator. Few people knew that my sister's employer had worked on a special surprise visit by Senator Kennedy to appear at Streator's centennial. It would have been one of the most exciting events in the attorney's life. While he managed to celebrate our city's first one hundred years, he carried with him in all its celebrations a heavy sorrowful heart feeling in every event what could have been, but wouldn't be.

                   In 1968, we who grew up in Streator might have had dreams of going to other places in the world, or dreams of living the rest of our lives in the place we described as home. It would be our choice. We imagined that Streator would always exist as a place where if you were willing to work hard, you would enjoy a decent life. We didn’t know how the next few decades were going to be different from the first one hundred years of life in our town. Farmers would face crisis years. Farm consolidation would replace the area's hundreds of farmers, with a few dozen. The coal mines were already gone. The railways would soon be delivering fewer passengers and less freight as Americans owned automobiles, flew by air; and the nation's freight was increasingly delivered by the trucks on interstates which bypassed Streator. The vast majority of our thousands of glass factory employees would see their jobs lost to the aluminum and plastic container industries. We would join the names of other cities experiencing the transition of the Great Lakes States transition from that of the nation's industrial center to the nation's decaying rust belt. The streets of downtown, where in high school I cruised when I wasn't at the pizza parlor, would become places where plywood covered windows of shops where people once went inside to buy fine clothing. It would become painful to see that Main Street that once was busy having become a desert of buildings with boarded up windows. In 1968, none of us would have seen those days headed our way. We imagined Streator would always be a place where hard work would allow one to live a decent life. In 1968 we would all have agreed that capitalism worked. In later years, we would wonder if there could be a system which did not come with so much boom when capital entered a town, and so much heartbreak when capital left a town in disarray. We came to understand capitalism not as a force ushering in a utopia, but more as something that just is, like life, joy, sickness, and death. Perhaps there is not really a better system, but seeing a city in ruins when capital has exited a town, those of us from Streator are prone to listen, on occasion for reforms and suggestions. We didn't know in 1968 that our centennial was more of a wake celebrating a past way of life than a wedding party celebrating our future.