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2018 Eastertide
by Charles Peek
Dear Family, friends, and followers of the blog,
Very best wishes from the heart of crane country in Nebraska…hoping you find joy and peace in whatever promise of new life grips your imagination!
Some thoughts that put my mind to work and may yours:
“Be joyful even though you have considered all the facts.” Wendell Berry
“My hosanna is born in a furnace of doubt.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I will try. Rainer Maria Rilke
“In the year 1653 when all things sacred were throughout this nation either demolished or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley Baronet founded this church. Whose singular praise it is to have done the best things in the worst times, and hoped them in the most calamitous.”
–Inscription over the west door of The Church of the Holy Trinity in Staunton Harold Chapel, Leicestershire, England
One might of course insist on grasping religious or biblical events only in their original setting and faith-community context. At the Great Vigil of Easter, we do just that. I’m quite comfortable with Paul’s assertion that ‘if Christ be not raised then is our faith in vain’! That alone is glorious.
I remain convinced, however, that the purpose in recording these events for us was only partly to rivet our attention on the original event, the original context. The even larger purpose was to rivet our attention on our own lives and times through the lens of the events and their celebration. That is, they are great for celebration but even greater as schools for training our perceptions of life.
What does the Resurrection say, then, about life? To me, it is captured to near perfection in the four quotes with which I began this little reflection.
They became more pertinent to me as Lent was drawing to its close and Easter anticipation was in the air in the death of Steven Hawkings and the rather pathetic take on his life and death among those of the fundamentalist persuasion. Franklin Graham, among others.
Surely Franklin must be an embarrassment to any serious Christian, probably even to Billy, at least as Billy can see now through the dark glass more clearly. There seems to be no issue he can’t distort in the name of his Jesus. His response to the death of Hawkings was typical.
He wanted to challenge Hawkings: “where do you think you got your brain?” And he was prompted to this by Hawkings’s apparent disbelief. I say apparent because most of his comments only show his disbelief in the fairy tale universe in which many of the pious seem to choose to live.
But let’s say that Graham is correct and Hawkings simply was not, in any sense, a believer. Still, I’d like to turn the challenge back on Graham—where does Graham think Hawkings got his brain? No doubt he would say, “from God.”
Then who is this God? What is this God like? Apparently, an ego-centered adolescent who is currently piqued by Hawkings’s lack of properly acknowledging his or her presence and importance. Really? This is the fundamentalist God?
I would rather conceive of God (the one who reportedly thought Job’s thought could not encompass God adequately) as having endowed Hawkings with an extraordinary gift which Hawkings used beyond any possible expectation and against all possible odds. What giver of any gift could be but pleased at how well his gift was used? Who could imagine its use not being celebrated by the one who made it possible?
I was once told of a Christmas where one of the children present grabbed a present he had just opened and ran off to play with it, parents calling behind him not to forget to say thank you. At the same time, another child dutifully said thank you and then the gift sat beneath the tree unused the whole day long. Which child was truly grateful? Didn’t Jesus say something about a son who tells his father ‘no’ but in fact does what his father asked, preferable as I recall Jesus’s story to one who told his father ‘yes’ but then never followed through.
Faith is, after all, a gift, and not one that Hawkings apparently received. Astro-physics is decidedly not my gift; faith, at least in some measure, is. I don’t particularly enjoy it when scientists belittle my gift and certainly don’t imagine them liking it if people of faith belittle their gifts.
The point, however, in this little reflection is that someone whose imagination is gripped by the Resurrection will not be belittling Hawkings but celebrating him and his courage, tenacity, and use of his gifts. After all, that is the truest thanksgiving for a gift—not just to acknowledge it but to use it!
Hawkings did “the best things in the worst times, and hoped them in the most calamitous.” Perhaps that could weigh more heavily on the light-weight purveyor of distorted religious judgment.
An old hymn praises “O Love how deep, how broad, how high, how passing thought and fantasy.” If the presence of miracles doesn’t broaden us, deepen us, stretch us, then the narrow frame for the miracle—say a biblical story—then the miracle itself has become a small treason against the larger life to which it was meant to open us.
If the Last Judgment looks at all at the tally of our use of our gifts and the good done to the world by their use, then I don’t think Hawkings’s life will be demeaned by the God of us all or all the mitred Bishops and Saints!
Happy Easter, and may this springtide/Eastertide enlarge you and your world!
Love, The Peeks
Our little list of those who ha departed since our Christmas/New Year’s blogs—RIP:
Friends and Family and locals
Larry Cole, Fraternity Brother; Jack Cudaback, curmudgeon who enjoyed learning and the arts, whose biggest surprise may have been dying on Easter Day; John Dale, former Methodist Superintendent of this district, a true gentleman, and father of Julia Tye; Kent Emal, colleague at UNK for many years; Jean McElroy, second wife of Jim McElroy, a man very fortunate in his marriages; Sue Morrisey, a blue rarity in a sea of red; she and John for years ran Kaufman-Wernert, the store where you went after you couldn’t find something anywhere else, bought out by a New Jersey firm who came to show us how to run a store—bankrupt within a few months; Orral Murphy, a Deacon of our Diocese serving at All Saints, Omaha; Pete Peterson, from 8 year-old cash register attendant at Central Café in Kearney to financier and entrepreneur respected world-wide; author of Running on Empty; lunch-mate of Bob Kerry, Ted Sorenson, and Dick Cavett; Kathy Robson, long-time organist at St. David’s, Lincoln, and wife of the late Deacon Jack Robson; Tony Shada, one of the nicest of many Shadas (one a former neighbor, another a former parishioner), whose extraordinary virtues, as Fr. Christopher said, in the funeral at the oldest Syrian Orthodox Church west of the Mississippi) were quite ordinary in the kingdom! Bob Templin, former parishioner who enjoyed Ravenna’s pizza and knew a thing or two about how to keep a floor clean and polished! Husband of Peg Templin; Mary Lou Toker, former parishioner, wife of John Toker; Shirley White, who held positions in both our Diocese and the national church; Marianna Wimberly, former parishioner, mother of some delightful children; Al Zikmund, former KSC football coach and brother and father of friends of ours.
Celebrities
Steven Bochco, from Hill Street Blues to NYPD Blue; Linda Brown, whose case before the Supreme Court change America and undid the death grip of segregation; Billy Graham, revered by many, among them friends who credit his preaching with their conversion; but despite some promising moments, still one who skewed the “evangelicals” toward the right and missed many chances to speak truth to power; his reps once told a parishioner of mine that her tithe would be better given to them than to her parish; David Humm, noted Cornhusker quarterback in the Devaney era, recruited over Sunday dinner with his folks in Las Vegas! Ursula Le Guin, fantasy on steroids; Ingvar Kamprad, the Swedish entrepreneur who founded Ikea and made it the world’s largest furniture retailer; John Mahoney a.k.a. Martin Crane; Winnie Mandela, whom Reuters called the Mother and Mugger of South Africa; Dolores O’Riordan, lead singer of the Cranberries, whose death, contrary to scripture, was ruled “not suspicious”; once a zombie, now undead; David Ogden Steirs, Frank’s successor in the surgical ward of MASH; John Sulston, British scientist who played a major role in decoding the human genome.
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Here’s a little Family News:
Cold, snowy, and windy winter here. Chuck got to teach a Winterim class on language with friends Dick Jussel, Jerry Fox, and Stan Dart; and to celebrate the Eucharist at the Cathedral for the commemoration of Samuel Shoemaker; and, the next day, to moderate an excellent panel on making connections across religious differences with Liz Easton, Julia Feder, Nuzhat Mahmood, and Rabbi Steven Abraham—the first event in the series celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of My Ántonia.
This year’s Lent has been a shake-down cruise for both of us. God does not seem done with us just yet! The week of this writing, we had the great pleasure to travel to Red Cloud for the gallery show and of Ken Anderson’s sketches, along with Bob Wiester, Carla Brooke, Jack McSweeney, Janice Wiebusch, and Linda Anderson and a slew of Andersons, Beebes, Fahrenbruchs, Schroeders (all family) and the Butlers. Wonderful Song Cycle followed drawn from My Ántonia, then stayed for the first time at the Second Cather Home!
Then a trip to GI to hear our friend Jim Schmitt talk about gratitude at the Tuesday Night Workshop, but not before we’d enjoyed a lunch with George and Jackie Ayoub and Barb Dunn, our annual tax visit with Bob Almquist (ouch), and dinner at Bonnie Sloan and Mike Oseka’s with Rita Stepp, Mike and LouAnn Nowak, Tom MacAloon, and Jim, one of the finest speakers, preachers, and friends I know.
Chuck is completing an application for Writer in Residence at Gladstone Library (Wales, United Kingdom) for 2019, and he preached at Kearney’s First Presbyterian Church on Palm Sunday (and will return there Easter III)…as well as stepping in for Fr. Jeffrey Nelson at Church of Our Savior, North Platte, for Pentecost, and in between we’ll both be celebrating in the Diocesan Sesquicentennial “Cranes and Common Prayer” at St. Luke’s, Kearney, featuring our inimitable organist Marilyn Musick and our “best in its class” praise band with Todd Thalken, Brett Ensz, Mike Loveless, John Ross, and Greg Tesdall and our new Rector, Stephanie Swinnea.
Following these, our plan to enjoy Easter dinner with the Ptomey’s at Chances “R” in York was snowed out by the Easter Day storm—had to settle for good curry buffet at Everest Fusion here in town and sure missed the family–but got to talk to them all, in Cedar and in Hartland.
We look forward to the completion of Chuck’s Senior College Class on Faulkner’s The Unvanquished and the class we are taking on the Rise of Nazism, as well as to celebrate with Art and Janie Hansen and Rick Marlatt their Hub Freedom Awards. We’ll close out April with Chuck’s talk for the Tuesday Night Workshop in Grand Island.
In early May, Fr. Robert Lewis and Chuck hope to celebrate the completion of their fund drive (mentioned at Christmas) for a car for the Sudanese ministry from St. Stephen’s, with publicity in the Grand Island Independent for Tom Dinsdale and his generous dealership. We hope it will be a blessing to Fr. Ibrahim Kuku and his fellow Sudanese!
Next, the Cather Spring Conference where friends Fr. Randy Goeke will preach, Dean Craig Loya will celebrate, poet Nancy Savery will pump the organ, and scholar Steve Shively will assist. Chuck will again be the poet and Master of Ceremonies for the Buffalo Commons Storytelling and Music Festival in McCook (thanks Cloyd Clark), then we’re off for the long anticipated trip to Ireland with the Ptomey’s, ending in a Cather Symposium at which Chuck will give a paper on Genesis in Cather; a short tour to see friends in the Northeast: helping Larry and Betty Becker Theye celebrate their 40th Anniversary in Maine, checking in with America’s finest story-teller and best blogger, Bill Harley and Deb Block, and Providence, hoping to see Jay Yost, Wade Leak, and Tom Gallagher along with the Forts (Charles, Claire, and Shelley) in New York before heading home for a few days.
Shortly after, we’ll be taking off for the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, a Teaching Faulkner session with Jim Carothers, Brian McDonald, Terrell Tebbetts, and Theresa Towner, and also a panel to which Chuck is contributing as well as moderating, with Peter Lurie, Theresa Towner, and Sarah Gleeson-White. We’ll be seeing friends Colby Kullman, Jack Barbera, Ann and Dale Abadie, Jennie Joiner, and Grayson Schick there and Clark Swisher and Martha Townsend on the way home—double treat: we plan to spend a weekend with them in Kansas City at the end of April, complete with WWI Museum, jazz, and BBQ.
We will finish off the summer by taking in Nancy’s annual visit at the eye clinic at the University of Iowa Hospitals, where (Iowa City, not the hospitals) we’ll be joined for a day or two of fun by the Milwaukee Peeks and try to get in a visit with Mel Schlachter, John and Katy Hall, and George and Clara Day. We’ll be postponing our usual time in Milwaukee to coincide this year with an even better occasion—see below!
Chuck continues to enjoy his Torch Club, its members and speakers, and President Rod Uhlman, VP Jim Ganz, Jr., Treasurer Charlie Pickens, and Membership Chair Bill Wozniak, as well as his weekly lunches with friends Jerry Fox, Stan Dart, Steve Buttress, Dick Jussel, Gene Koepke, and Galen Hadley.
Nanny has, if anything, upped her political game, encouraging people to run for office, hearing candidates, and fighting against stupidity and prejudice while working to keep women’s health services and to halt the Keystone XL Pipeline. Chuck likes to think she is inspired to this by his blog! (Thanks Paul Olson, Jane Hood, Greta Sandburg, Geri Henderson, Jim Ransom, Karen Park, et al for your consistent encouragement and responses.) She also takes part in a weekly prayer group, a yoga class, and a recovery program. Chuck last heard her saying to someone at Health and Human Services, “I beg your pardon, you do not work for the Governor, you work for the people of Nebraska!”
The Peeks in Milwaukee have shared with us the news that Laura Grace is expecting their fourth child. It looks to be a boy and all the signs so far are good. This and the full remodeling of their basement (after a disastrous water leak) have kept them from the Ireland trip but will allow them a few days with us in Iowa City, where George has played not a few concerts over the years. Will, now 9, has just completed his basketball season and started baseball; Greta, 7, is gearing up to cope with three instead of two brothers; and Huck (4 ½) has allowed as how he might be “awfully wough on babies!” We are overjoyed by it all.
As for the Ptomey’s (also recovering from a basement water leak—go figure!), shortly after you read this Rowan will graduate from Mid-Plains Community College, the first of our grandchildren to strike out on his own. He and Harlan celebrate the same birthday, both this year significant—Harland 50 and Rowan 21, so the Ireland trip will give them both a chance to celebrate. Think Jameson, Guiness, etc. Having finished his Freshman year in high school and his football and basketball seasons, Brody will later this year get his driver’s license! Harlan continues to improve the Cedar Bluffs schools, despite the ill-conceived, politically driven attempts in our state to put such work in jeopardy. Noelle will come back from Ireland, go immediately to Austin, Texas, to be a Deputy to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, and then come home to put the finishing touches on Camp Canterbury.
We are all a busy lot, blessed by opportunities to share our gifts, enjoy our friends, fight what we hope is the good fight, and see some of the world.
Our contact information stays the same: Chuck 308-293-2177, cpeek.cp@gmail.com; Nancy 308-293-3386 nancyjpeek@gmail.com; 2010 Fifth Avenue, Kearney, NE 68845
A poem for the season:
Words from the Cross
For Michael Park
Seized one Good Friday by dread
On the heels of his father’s own death,
He found himself praying simply,
“If you are there, Lord, tell me,”
Thinking “Here O My Lord, I’d See Thee Face to Face”
Should be the watchword of the watching in this place,
Else what is there I’d find here that might abide
When (it floated in his mind) “fast falls” as now “the eventide”?
Yet, now, months later, he wonders out loud with us
What it was that restrained his loud “Amen”
When he first felt at Easter some joy homing in
On him, speaking freely here of not speaking so at Mass.
Let us not belittle such beginnings.
God, recall, began content with just a word
And joy is seldom contained in ritual recitations
Nor reverence constrained by the several stations
Of the cross when the wood utters to us a word.
Kearney, Nebraska
April 13, 2007
capeek 