Shadow’s not the only One who knows

By John Pierce

Our daughter saw her shadow yesterday. Not sure if that provides any revelation about the coming of spring.

She's not a groundhog and it wasn't Groundhog Day. And waking up to 63 degrees and hearing the forecast for an 80-degree high on a mid-February day is more revealing.

But not only did she see her shadow, she spoke to her and introduced her to her friends. She was nice and outgoing, Abigail reported to me about her shadow when I picked her up from school.

The call from the school’s admissions office came in the night before — asking if she would play host to a prospective student. Our ever-social teen accepted the request immediately.

“You should consider that an honor,” my wife told her, and then went on to explain that she was being asked to represent the school.

Then parental advice flowed like spring rain: Don’t lose your shadow. Explain to her what is going on. Make sure she is included in conversations. Be nice, because she’s watching everything you do.

Keep away from the boys. (No, that has nothing to do with being shadowed. Just something I try to bring up each day.)

Abigail reported a successful and enjoyable experience of being shadow. The only place the prospective student — a native of Puerto Rico — might have felt excluded (or just bored) was French class.

But one warning seemed to rise above all the others: Someone is going to be watching everything you do — all day.

Thinking back, I was never asked to be shadowed as a student — and I can think of some good reasons why. But warnings about being watched all the time were plentiful in my childhood (and usually delivered in the Authorized KJV that evoked more authority and fear than modern translations).

 “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” (Proverbs 15:3)

"For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.” (2 Chronicles 16:9)

Hmmm. Think I’d rather have a kid following me around.

All of our theologies are phony

By John Pierce

It is hard for me to determine which seems to last longer: the GOP primary or the NBA season. This time, the basketballers started later and the pols started earlier than usual.

Either way, both contests that now occupy the airwaves increase my eagerness to make it to The Promised Land of Opening Day. Not that the other two will go away then, but I’ll just pay even less attention.

Basketball fans and political junkies might consider my references to The Promised Land of Baseball to be, well, a phony theology.

In the dry land of the political landscape every word that flows from the overused mouths of travel-weary politicians gets over-scrutinized. How dare they say that?

Well, the answer is pretty simple: They want to be chosen over other candidates — and in some cases it helps if they can convince us that God prefers them as well.

The latest such overreaction (unless one occurred overnight and I was actually successful at ignoring it) was Rick Santorum’s claim that President Obama has a phony theology.

Now, that’s not a nice thing to say; but political scheming isn’t a very polite venture. And it’s certainly not the worst thing one candidate has said about another (even within his or her own party).

Candidate Santorum told an Ohio audience he was wooing recently that the President’s agenda is based on “some phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible.”

So what? Why is there outrage or even surprise? This is life on the political battlefield, not an ecumenical or interfaith effort to find common ground or better understanding.

The President’s theology probably is phony. So is mine. None of us has God figured out just right.

So is Mr. Santorum’s, I believe, if it leads him to the political positions he espouses — from pre-emptive war to contraception to issues of equality.

But that’s my opinion. And who said we had to agree with each other’s theologies in this country?

As someone who seeks to be sensitive to those from diverse religious traditions, I realize it’s usually not socially appropriate to say that someone has a phony theology (though I just did). But at least my own was included.

And, sure, there are better words than “phony” when expressing our disagreements with someone’s understanding of God. But it’s not reasonable to expect every word that flows from every politically-infused mouth to be carefully chosen. Most of us misspeak even though we don’t spend all day and night rushing from one rally to the next.

In political campaigns, however, few words get dismissed as grains of salt. Rather every line becomes political fodder for the opposition. It gets resurrected again and again regardless of one’s theology.

Hearing a politician say that another politician has a phony theology is just not that big of a deal. My greater concern is not whether a politician shares my own phony theology but whether he or she has a clear understanding of free speech that allows us to say even foolish things and of the religious liberty principles essential to the American experience.

We can handle various theologies from our national leaders. In fact, there’s a good bit of that now. It’s a theocracy we must avoid — for it is a phony way to be an American. 

Overturning tables — and misconceptions

By John Pierce

My parents, other relatives, neighbors, school teachers and church leaders taught me to value good manners. I still do (except when driving).

I try to speak kindly to others, to be gracious in social settings and to be mindful enough to hold the door for the next person. Manners just matter to me. And I don’t like being in social settings where ill-mannered people talk loudly on their cell phones or smoke in non-smoking areas or act like their convenience is more important than the rules everyone else follows.

So it’s not surprising that I grew up with an image of a well-mannered, polite Jesus. Our Jesus was sweet.

“Sweetest name I know.” “‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus.”

Jesus’ hard rhetoric toward the religiously pious didn’t get a lot of our attention. That would hit too close to home.

But the story of Jesus overturning the tables of the temple merchants was popular. It was interpreted as Jesus giving us permission for an occasional angry outburst if directed toward “sin.” It’s that moment in the Gospel story when Jesus shifts characters from Mr. Rogers to John Wayne — before returning to his sweater and sneakers.

Today, some church leaders play up the Cowboy Jesus image in an effort to get men roped into church. Such macho Christianity usually involves weight-lifting exhibitions, testimonies by athletes who credit Jesus with their on-field successes (in between “you-knows”), and wild game dinners.

On the other end, Jesus gets portrayed as meek, mild and accepting of all beliefs and behavior. He’s the quiet philosophical Jesus. But I realized a long time ago that a soft-spoken philosopher who wanders the countryside while telling warm-hearted stories doesn’t end up on cross.

No wonder Jesus was compelled to ask even those closest to him: “But who do you say that I am?” Apparently, the confusion has been going on for a long time.

The Lenten season is designed for introspection. One good place to reflect is on the broader presentation of Jesus given by those who recorded his life and teachings.

With careful attention to not imposing our predetermined concepts of Jesus on our reading, we might discover something new and fresh about the most remarkable person to walk the face of the Earth.

We just might find: an often kind but sometimes less-than-polite Jesus; a revolutionary whose love and mercy threatens those of us who claim to be loving and merciful; and a savior who not only rescues sinners by our definition but reminds those of us who think we are safely on the right shore that we could use a little more rescuing too.

But, then, it’s never a bad time to get better acquainted with Jesus — the sweetest name I know.

Melissa was right all along

By John Pierce

The political mess created by the White House over how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law would have been handled much better if officials had listened to Melissa Rogers, former chair of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

She is a good Baptist who directs the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and is former general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Writing in a Washington Post forum back in October, she pointed to a law in the president’s home state of Hawaii (warning: all stupid birther comments will be deleted) under which “religious employers that decline to cover contraceptives must provide written notification to enrollees disclosing that fact and describing alternate ways for enrollees to access coverage for contraceptive services.”

A somewhat different approach that addresses the same concerns is what the White House took yesterday — but too long after stirring up a hornets’ nest.

As Rogers told ABP following the president’s announcement, the better-late-than-never revision that exempts religious groups from the contraception rule “resolves the religious liberty concerns and respects the interests of Americans who would like to have these important health benefits.”

Details of the plan can be argued — and should be. Some of the debate will be civil and constructive to the effort to find the right balance here. Much will not be.

But these larger observations seem true to me:

1.     Defense of religious liberty will bring together a lot of Americans who otherwise disagree. That is a good sign that we may be remembering our roots better than some of us feared. The test, however, is whether we stand up for the rights of those with whom we disagree. There was some evidence of such in this controversy.

2.     The gap between Roman Catholic Church teaching on contraception and the practice of individual Catholics (and some Catholic institutions) is overwhelming wide. But that does not negate the legitimate concern over the Church’s religious freedom.

3.     Political compromises are not valued in a highly divisive environment like we live in right now. And it’s not going to slow down until at least the end of the year.

4.     Religious and political fundamentalists — including some Southern Baptist leaders — still have their boxers in a tight wad despite this latest exemption that seeks to balance both religious liberty and health care concerns. Therefore, it must be a pretty good plan that avoids extremes.

Shelves full of memories

By John Pierce

Word out of Catoosa County, Ga., is that Carlock’s Food King is closing. If you've never lived around there that news is irrelevant.

But those of us who consider the Boynton Community to be home are feeling a sense of loss.

The Boynton of my childhood didn’t have much to lose (by traditional measurements): the school where we attended the first eight grades, the Methodist and Baptist churches, a rickety old gym, a baseball field — and just over the creek: a church camp, Boy Scout hut and Carlock Brothers Grocery (as it was known then).

Over the years the gym was replaced by a new community building, more ball fields were added, the blue-ribbon school started sending students off after the fifth grade, and a volunteer fire hall replaced the scout hut where my friends and I had spent many all-nighters playing ping-pong and listening to Red Foxx and George Carlin albums that we could not have played at home.

Losing Carlock’s store comes as no big surprise really. There’s a gigantic Walmart on nearby Battlefield Parkway along with Bi-Lo and other food providers. Shopping on the four-lane that connects Fort Oglethorpe and Ringgold is more convenient than the curvy two-lane Boynton Drive that lost its designation as a state highway many years ago.

But it is a loss indeed — for those of us who consider the small grocery store (especially the previous building) to be a station along the way to adulthood.

Carlock’s is where my friends and I turned in Coke (that’s any soft drink for you Yankees) bottles for two cents each. Five empties, no matter how dirty, provided a free snack.

Free was good. An “allowance” for me was having permission to go to Carlock’s, not money doled out each week.

For families like mine, the Carlocks provided needed credit before credit cards were in vogue.

“Put $10 on my bill,” my dad would say to Mrs. Evelyn Carlock as he handed over some hard-earned cash.

She’d pull the pad with “Pierce” written atop it from the alphabetized collection of familiar names under the old cash register that required math. Then they’d talk about church, the LIONS Club horse show or the last time Peavine Creek got out of its banks.

Other memories of Carlock’s come rushing back:

Mr. Delmont Carlock, who owned and ran the store for decades with his brother Joe, once paid for me to attend nearby Camp Scott Patterson when my parents didn't have the money to send me. I was always grateful for his kindness and investment in me.

One hot summer day, when I was very young, my parents were shopping at Carlock’s. After paying the bill (or probably putting it on the credit pad) they noticed I was missing. But I was soon found — asleep on the cold tile floor beside the dairy cooler. I could only dream back then of such summertime comfort at home.

Carlock’s is where I bought some of the baseball cards and marbles still in my possession — if I found enough Coke bottles or had a few coins in my pocket from odd jobs.

Usually, Carlock’s stuck to the basic, small grocery fare. Except when our little part of world got broader attention with the release of Billy Walker and Brenda Kaye Perry’s song, “Who do you know in Ringgold Georgia?” The 45-rpm records could be picked up at Carlock’s along with pork chops and potatoes.

Time moved on. So did I.

But memories sure do last — even of a grocery store where the chapters of life were marked by good people with whom simple experiences were shared. Ones that seemed so insignificant at the time, but now mean a lot.