Christmastide 2015 Reflections
We comfort ourselves
Any way we can
Take another bar
From the top of the stack
We hate to see it go
This long cold winter
Bring it back to the way we are
Bring it back we’ve come so far
But we won’t let it go
This long cold winter
From Ramon Speed, “Long Cold Winter”
Dear Family and Friends,
Another Advent heralds yet another Christmastide, and we send you our love and best wishes for the season and New Year.
One of the traditional carols proclaims “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight” and that simple belief still warms more hearts than has almost anything since, including a good deal of theologizing over how and why the simple faith might be true. We may have fewer seminaries, but, alas, that does not seem to diminish the amount of tortured theological thinking that yields a God that no one in her or his right mind and heart would ever embrace. A good deal of what passes for atheism today is simply healthy skepticism of the hogwash preachers often try to get us to swallow, preachers whose recourse to scripture has never passed through a sieve of intelligence.
“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.” As age comes on, I’ve found that both hopes and fears increase. The fears include the usual woes of aging—the stilts wobble more, the feet shuffle more, the sense of upright tilts a little more often—and so you walk instead of run and you drive a bit more cautiously. But hope abounds in a life lived long enough to know the current crop of alarms and doomsdays are as tired and old as human kind and, were there any truth to them at all, we’d have been goners long ago. Shame on the bigots and fear-mongers.
Still, there is a lot of real sorrow there “to be met in Thee” and aging brings it more frequently to our attention. Any who have based their lives on wish-fulfillment will find aging and dying a bummer, and that will include our awareness of the growing list of losses of friends and family. Our list this year is huge and is one indicator of the world’s assault on hope (and you will find it near the end of this letter).
We grieve, however, not as those without Hope. Advent, an especially favorite season among Episcopalians, abounds in stories of people asking Jesus how they can know when the end is near – and Jesus in effect replying, who knows and who cares? When, where, and how the end comes doesn’t in the least change what our new Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, calls God’s dream for us.
By the time you read this, Nancy and I will have enjoyed a lively parish conversation at our home parish, St. Luke’s, about how best to carry out the blessing of all couples in life-long unions of marriage; we will have enjoyed three Sundays of worship at Trinity Cathedral, Omaha, including Marty Burnett and the Cathedral choir’s Festival of Lessons and Carols and a lovely brunch with Theresa Houser, and we will have watched with eager anticipation the Paris Climate Summit and the UN resolve regarding Syria. Not all is right with our church, not all is right with the world, but my friends, if people trying to get it right and folks creating beauty don’t give you hope, then you probably won’t find it in this life.
Wittgenstein, though he did not embrace a faith, noted once that he couldn’t help but respect that unshakeable sense we have from time to time that, as Dame Julian put it, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Whatever you celebrate in this season, we wish you the peace that passes all understanding. And, of course, that includes surpassing the fear-mongering of politicians who capitalize on unchecked fears, perhaps a pertinent inclusion in the early rounds of what will seem at times an endless political campaign in which dollars may indeed count more than sense.
In Faith, Hope, and Love
Chuck and Nancy Peek
Family News
The highlights of our year: several visits in Cedar Bluffs with Noelle, Harlan, Rowan, and Brody; a January visit here from George, Laura Grace, Willie, Greta, and Huck, and our August with them in Milwaukee; and the gathering of all of us in Kansas City in late July for the celebration of our 50th Anniversary. It would be hard to imagine a more perfect few days together, topped off by Jim and Bev Carothers and Jon, Chris, and Ingrid Bruss driving in to join us all for our celebration dinner.
Aside from the visits, there have been lots of landmarks this year for which we are awfully thankful:
Our daughter-in-law Laura Grace took on a new job as compliance administrator with OnCourse Learning. By all reports, she is making a great difference for them, even while being back in school herself. She takes Huck with her to a nearby day care, which is learning how much better he likes it after he has had his morning snack! Our kind of boy! He’s the same Huck as forced them to dismantle the bunk beds when they found he could climb up to the top by himself at 1 and 1/2; they feared he wouldn’t be able to get back down, despite my assurances that one way or another, he would!
A shareholder in Crivello and Carlson, George is completing a busy year as president of the Mt. Olive School Board, all the while engaging in trials over welds, drive shafts, flat beds, ammonia explosions, and sundry other potential product liabilities. He takes Willie and Greta to and from school and continues to teach paralegals at Carthage College. Willie’s highlights might well have been playing for the Toledo Mudhens in a mechanical pitch little league (he got the game ball one game) and having his tonsils out. He beat Poppy by a year on that. The day George picked up Greta to go get him from the hospital, they stopped for a doughnut. Greta not only thought the doughnut was a good idea but was even better since “Willie wouldn’t get one!” That’s the voice of an aggressive soccer player!
Noelle’s year included co-chairing the search committee that brought Ben Varnum to be the new priest at St. Augustine’s, Elkhorn. She also served as a Deputy from our Diocese to the General Convention that elected Michael Curry as Presiding Bishop, approved the new marriage canon for celebrating and blessing same-sex unions, and divested from fossil fuels, all completed in time for her to direct our new Camp Canterbury at Camp Calvin Crest. Harlan was written up in the Fremont paper, which lauded his accomplishments as Superintendent of Schools at Cedar Bluffs and called him a “visionary leader.” They are enjoying Rowan’s last year at home. A Senior at Cedar Bluffs, he graduates in the spring and is headed for North Platte and Mid-Plains Community College’s welding program. On the way there, he’s working at an internship doing welding for a fire engine manufacturer in Fremont. None of which quite surpasses the landmark of Brody leaving his childhood behind and becoming a teenager. We were able to enjoy his 13th birthday celebration with him, which included a surprisingly good movie, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, and Michael Jordan’s Creed. Brody leads us all as “Husker fan through thick and thin”!
Nancy had successful cataract surgery, separated by 3 months to allow a visit to the eye specialists at the University of Iowa to examine a spot on the left eye iris. Wonderful doctors and a green light to go ahead with the second surgery. She continues to enjoy involvement in Senior College, especially enjoying a course she took on the Vietnam War with Linda Van Ingen and the course we took together from Lance Hehner on Modern Agriculture. Besides being involved in one of Theresa Bushnell’s Yoga classes and taking part in the weekly Tuesday noon prayer group at St. Luke’s, she is joining the effort to follow up on the example of Kearney’s earlier resettlement of Laotian refugees by beginning the process of resettling Syrian refugees…a natural given Kearney’s early history of Syrian settlers. But her great accomplishment was the establishing of a Resler family archive at the UNL library, an archive that comprises both military and family history associated with her parents’ tour of duty in Japan when her father was Secretary to MacArthur’s general staff. She has labored for two years to gather all the pertinent materials and organize them and we are all so pleased that UNL Library decided they belonged in their archives. A wonderful visit from her brother, Barclay, allowed him to see the material when he came to speak to UNL students about his life-work lobbying government on behalf of Coca Cola for whom he served as a Vice President. He squeezed in that visit just in time to get back to Virginia so he and his wife Lorita could take off for Australia to help their daughter Pierce and her husband Bryce Coffee in the birth of Cullen Graham, Brook Coffee’s new brother, Tallon, Collins, and Emma Lenihan’s new cousin. We had hoped to see them this coming February when they return for a brief visit stateside, but plans for that didn’t work out, so we’ll hope to see the Coffee’s on their next trip home and possibly to see Barclay III, Sutton, and Keagan and Brian sometime next year.
Nancy and Chuck: this fall saw the successful conclusion of the fight we joined in 2012, along with thousands of other folks in Bold Nebraska and tens of thousands of others at the 2013 Climate March in Washington D.C., to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline from endangering the water and soil of the nation’s most productive but also most fragile ecosystem and greatest agricultural resource. We are not fooling ourselves that TransCanada has totally given up on it, but for now the NOKXL sign is in the garage. Hats off to Jane Kleeb and to the President.
As usual, Chuck teamed up with Terrell Tebbetts to offer a “Teaching Faulkner” session at the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at Ole Miss, and he preached at the Red Cloud portion of the International Cather Seminar and led a panel on Cather and Religion at the Lincoln portion. We hastened from Lincoln to McCook, where Chuck read poetry and emceed the performances of Mike and Ruthy and Bill Harley; following our time in Milwaukee, Chuck came home to appear as Willie in KCT’s production of Sunshine Boys. Stan Dart (playing Al Lewis) and Chuck had played these aging vaudevillians 15 years ago . . .it took less makeup this time around . . . and the help of veteran Phyllis Haverkamp and younger actors Melissa Conrad and Dustin Dye. (Jeff Knapp, who played the nephew a decade and a half ago, directed this production, with Bill Woods.) Despite the fact that publishing poetry requires a high tolerance for rejection slips, Chuck was very happy to see Finishing Line Press publish his Breezes on their Way to Being Winds and to hear that the Museum of Nebraska Art book group has chosen it for their April book study. (PS: McCook does such a great job of the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival—you should Google it and put it on your calendars!)
Here, if you are really looking for something to fill your hours, is a short list of what we’ve been doing since Easter of this year (in the order an aging mind remembers it!):
Went to George Ayoub’s retirement reception and to their reception for a visiting friend
Spoke twice at Tuesday Night Workshop in Grand Island (a program event), including dinner with friends Jim Schmitt, Tom and Audrey MacAloon, sometimes Bill and Gloria Schlachter, and the three muses: Jolene Stalker, Bonnie Sloan, Rita Stepp
Attended three artist receptions at MONA and Tru Cafe
Attended the Sandburg “winterim” class on Sandburg led by Kate Benzel and Mike Adams
Gave a Cather reading for an Omaha “friend-raiser”
Took part in a Cather Board meeting, helped host two information sessions on the National Willa Cather Center, and heard Richard Norton Smith give the keynote address for the center’s groundbreaking
Went to the KCT Gala
Helped Lynn Thomas celebrate his 90th
Supplied at St. Alban’s, McCook; St. Matthew’s, Alliance; Calvary, Hyannis; and Trinity Cathedral, Omaha
Lunched and suppered with GI friends Scott and Patty Taylor and Stephen and Caroline Price-Gibson and wished the Taylor’s Godspeed in their move to Oklahoma
Ate here and there with Grand Island friends (Taylors, Schlachters, Satterly’s, Ayoub’s)
Took part in two St. Luke’s foyer Sunday dinners
Took part in the clergy retreat at the Benedictine Center, Schuyler
Went to the Justice Program for Church of the Resurrection’s African American History celebration
Took classes on Modern Agriculture, WW II, and Vietnam from Senior College
Helped host a St. Patrick’s party at Ambry Club
Went to Lied with Andersons hearing the Chieftains and taking in The Things They Carried
Took part in the year’s meetings and events for Torch Club and volunteered to help with registration at Torch International Convention in Lincoln
Took in the last men’s basketball game of last season at UNL with Jack McSweeney and Janice Wiebusch
Heard Frank La Mere at World Theatre as he introduced a movie about the tragedy of Whiteclay
Performed again in the Sandburg “Prayers of the People” program at the World Theatre
Helped bury Brick Murray, Mike Cartwright, and Mike Adams, and attended my cousin Ted’s funeral in Sycamore, Illinois
Heard friend and State Poet Twyla Hansen read at Kearney Public Library and heard Mark Sanders, Matt Mason, and Britney Cordera Doane read in the Backwaters Press series at UNO’s Engagement Center
Gave a pre-Chautauqua talk in Alliance on Twain, Cather, and the “free land” frontier
Visited Merle Hayward at his ranch in Hyannis
Enjoyed a wonderful lunch hosted by Molly Fisher, along with Helen Stauffer, and took in some of the Chautauqua that brought Molly to Kearney
Took part in the adult Lenten class at St. Luke’s
Spent a nice weekend with Steve Shively
Stopped at Clark Swisher and Marty Townsends in Columbia, took in a play at their rep theatre where we bumped into Kyle Kuyper and Natalie Burling, and then enjoyed hosting Clark and Marty on their way to Thanksgiving in the Black Hills
Preached for the Eucharist that Bishop Barker celebrated at the Cather Spring Conference
Led the Cather and Religion panel discussion for the International Cather Seminar
Read poetry and emceed at the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival in McCook
Nancy underwent cataract surgery here and had a visit with eye specialist Dr. Wallace Alward at the University of Iowa Hospital
Nancy took part in weekly yoga classes and a prayer circle, and we did daily yoga by the lake in Milwaukee
Hosted family weekend in KC for our anniversary: Royals, LegoLand, Sea World, NFL history exhibit at Union Depot, Negro Leagues Museum, and dinner at Lidia’s
Presented another ‘Teaching Faulkner’ at the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference
Wished Jon and Marty Bruss and Ray and Jan Ptomey Happy 50ths
Chuck enjoyed a regular Friday lunch with Jerry Fox, Stan Dart, Dick Jussel, Gene Koepke, Steve Buttress, and Galen Hadley (when he isn’t out doing the work of the people!—Galen, not Chuck)
Prepared and gave two Torch Club talks on Nebraska writers, songwriters, and artists with Jerry Fox and Ron Crocker, and gave one of these programs for MONA Live
Chuck gave the annual George Norris talk at McCook’s Heritage Days
Attended Chuck’s 55th high school class reunion with Steve Schneider—the longest continuing fellowship of Chuck’s life
Visited with John and Katy Hall in Davenport, George and Clara Day in Cedar Falls, and Gerry, Cathy, and Anna Leigh Parsons in Albert Lea, Minnesota
Gave a talk and led a discussion on Cather’s My Antonia for the Red Cloud Roads Scholars class
Appeared in KCT’s Sunshine Boys (Willie Clark) and enjoyed a wonderful weekend visit from Jim and Bev Carothers who drove up from Lawrence to see the show
Saw another volume of poetry published by Finishing Line Press (Breezes on their Way to Being Winds—available at FLP or Amazon or, for you nearby, MONA gift shop
Enjoyed another Annual Council of the Diocese of Nebraska, the Bishop’s regular post called Spread the Word, and Keith Winton’s Nebraska Episcopalian
With the Andersons, watched Nebraska upset Michigan State in football at UNL’s Memorial Stadium (where we also got to see Steve and Joyce Schneider, Steve’s brother Mike, and Mike’s son)
Read The Night Before Christmas and “King John’s Christmas” for the Crane River holiday special at the Merryman
Wrote a review for a good friend and colleague’s new book soon to be out at U. Press of Mississippi
Took in Christmas Carol at Kearney Community Theatre, with Dick Jussel as a marvelous Marley, David Rozema as a convincing Bob Cratchit, Rick Marlatt as a superlative Scrooge, and some wonderful kids in the cast
Enjoyed the Fox Christmas party and the Nachtigal’s, Thalken’s, and Greta Sandburg’s hospitality over these holidays
Found good food everywhere, especially the Bieroc in McCook, Mike Park’s Food Truck in Kearney, and Sullivan’s and La Bouillon in Omaha’s Old Market, including Advent/holiday celebrations at the Chancellor’s Holiday reception, a dinner with Jim Schmitt, brunch with Don Cunningham and Jeanetta Druecke, a visit with Arlene Stubblefield, Amahl and the Night Visitors with Fr. Jerry Ness, and an evening at Torch Club with Kate Benzel
A Preview of Coming Attractions:
Nancy plans to continue to work on plans for welcoming Syrian refugees, as well as to turn her attention to the memorabilia of other family members. Chuck will appear in CASA’s fund-raiser, “Men in Tights” (and those who want to can actually pledge to support that!). Parson’s Porch plans to publish a book of Chuck’s homilies given over two decades at Grace Church, Red Cloud, in connection with Willa Cather events there. Former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold is planning to write an introduction for the volume, which is to be titled “Speaking Aloud on Grace Church Street.” This January Chuck will teach a “winterim” class for Senior College called Archetypes of Innocence and in February will join Jerry Fox and Ron Crocker in presenting This is Nebraska: Out Loud and in Your Face. Chuck will also teach a class on The Bible as Literature: Genesis for the spring semester of Senior College, a class on short stories of Cather, Faulkner, and Hemingway for Lincoln’s OLLI, and lead a book group for MONA in April. Chuck and Nancy will kick off the year for the Tuesday Night Workshop with a joint talk on January 5 in Grand Island.
Rest In Peace: our list of lost friends and families and public figures who brought us joy:
My cousin, Ted Peek, died in August, and we lost close friend and fine musician, singer, and composer Mike Adams to sudden death in September. Also among those who died since last Easter: Helen Barger, widow of Fr. George Barger; William Joseph Barnds, former priest of this Diocese; one time student and parishioner with whom I “trudged the road,” Jane Bonner; Sally Brooks, former parishioner at Epiphany, Flagstaff; close friend Olive Bucklin, former NET producer and wife of long-time friend Don Cunningham; former parishioner and fellow trudger, Ed Burke; dear friend, former colleague, fellow Fulbright scholar, and extraordinary priest, Charles Richard “Carlos” Carlisle; dear and long-time friend, key figure in public humanities, Mike Cartwright; Edie Cunningham, old friend from graduate student days; former parishioner and KHS teacher, Betty Godfrey; faculty member at UNL, Nancy’s academic advisor, and supporter of St. Mark’s on the Campus while we were in school, Gene Hardy; another fellow trudger from GI, Ron Jones; Hazel Jordan, Methodist lay minister and old friend; dear friend from graduate school days who was starting her family when we were and was Nancy’s bridge partner, Ruth Lampe; nephew Brian Lenihan’s dad, Mick; MHS classmate, Lowell Logan; former McCook Mayor, St. Alban’s parishioner, and all around good gal, Flora Lundberg; friend Gary Luther’s dad, Roger; our plumber Norm’s daughter, Chrystal Majors; Helen, widow of former KHS counsellor Chet Marshall; beloved pet and life of many literary parties at the Fort house, Mojo; Kearney psychiatrist and friend of many years, Brick Murray; former priests of this Diocese, Edwards Newbury and Mary Lou Reynolds; the man the Kearney Hub dubbed the “oldest boy scout,” Ward Schrack; Charlie Stubblefield, creative writer and teacher, who shortly after learning he had suffered a heart attack and not long before he flat-lined said, “Well, I’ll be damned!” (I performed the wedding of Charlie and Arlene 15 years ago, most of which years she added to his life!); former parishioner Maxine Teel; the widow of Bishop Warner, Marci; fine poet and former parishioner, Nancy Westerfield; well-known former Kearney radio broadcast news reporter, Paul Wice; former parishioner and long-time Kearney business leader, Emma Jane Wilder. (Look for more on Mike Adams in future blogs, and see the Thanksgiving blog for more on Mike Cartwright)
And thanks to these now departed celebrities and world figures for the joy they brought and the contributions they made and the unique way each grew into an admired figure: Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra, baseball legend; Jerry Berrigan, ‘60’s activist priest; Georgia statesman, Julian Bond; great jazz sax player, Ornette Coleman; Darryl Dawkins, basketball player from an unspecified planet; E. L. Doctorow, major American literary voice; James Earl Jones, actor and “voice”; force for peace and justice, Samir Kafity, Presiding Bishop of Jerusalem and Middle East (Anglican); Blues Great, BB King; actors Christopher Lee, Patrick McNee, Roger Rees, and Omar Shariff; neuro-scientist and author, Oliver Sacks; Ken Stabler, Raider, and Reece “Goose” Tatum, Harlem Globe Trotter; leading writer for “emergent” Christianity, Phyllis Tickle.
Some good reads:
Ace Atkins’ White Shadow (we heard him talk about his writing at Off Square Books in Oxford this summer, on the same stage as featured our friend Greg Perkins reading from his own first novel), Roger Thurow’s Last Hunger Season, Barbara Miner’s Lessons from the Heartland, Peter Gough’s Sounds of the New Deal, Gibbs and Duffy’s The President’s Club, anything by Donna Leon, and The North American Review
Wisdom, quoted at random:
We must learn to honor excellence in every socially accepted human activity, however humble the activity, and to scorn shoddiness, however exalted the activity. An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. -John W. Gardner, author and leader (8 Oct, 1912-2002)
The sad and scary things themselves were, as it turned out, a fearsome blessing. (Frederick Buechner, “The Dwarves in the Stable”)
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. -John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (29 May 1917-1963)
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship’s captain has to avoid a shipwreck. -Guy de Maupassant, short story writer and novelist (5 Aug 1850-1893)
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. -Edith Sitwel
War is evil. Ask the infantry. Ask thdead. Ernest Hemingway
Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, “the greatest”, but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is. -Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (14 Sep 1917-1986)
Fewer than 5 percent of gun crimes are committed by people with mental illness; fewer than 5 percent of people with mental illnesses commit violent crimes. Tarring the autistic community in this manner — like presuming that most black people are thieves or that most Muslims are terrorists — is an insidious form of profiling. It exacerbates the tendency for people with autism to be excluded, teased and assaulted in childhood and adulthood. Andrew Solomon NYT.
A poem for your enjoyment:
[One of my father’s favorite hymns, found in the Christmas section of The Hymnal 1940, began “The snow lay on the ground, the stars shone bright” and ended with a Latin chorus: Venite Adoremus Dominum. (Pavarotti does a version of it.) Why those lines came to mind as I listened to Britny Cordera Doane read some of her new poems that use a medieval verse pattern, I have no idea; but, together, those form the background for this year’s poem, a new one for the season and a new venture in form for me.]
Signs and Echoes
this is blizzard country where being
caught in the wrong draw can kill
a stray or a herd the futures
traded on the livestock market
but today wafting flakes fall like
soft cotton, brushing skin dissolving
as it touches living, warm flesh
another grace, another manna from heaven
this will not displace the rigors
or disabuse us of the coming of winter
not the elements themselves but we
who are changed within transubstantiated Kearney, Nebraska December 1, 2015
The photo that (we hope) accompanies this is of our family gathered at Lidia’s in KC for our 50th Anniversary. Harlan and Noelle to the left, Laura Grace and George to the right, Rowan 18, Brody 13, Willie 7, Greta 4, and Huck 2 (current ages).
capeek 