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April 7, 2017August 28, 2017

Walking

“Jerry, meet Charles Duke. He’s been to the moon.”

Hardly an introduction one is offered every day.

So far – as of this blog writing – just a dozen sets of human footprints have ever marked the lunar surface. America had overtaken Russia in a great cosmic race.

The new acquaintance smiled my way. “Charlie,” he said. I took the extended hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir”.

Shaking the Colonel’s hand added one more link to my feeling connected – however remotely – to the wild, daring adventure NASA had embarked on in response to President Kennedy’s challenge.

How many Apollo blueprints, flush with intricate detail, did I sort and file up at the Tulsa plant anyway, I wondered. . . With their engineerish terms like Reaction Control Thruster Assembly and the like?

Charlie Duke was in Africa to deliver a Kenya flag that had traveled on an Apollo flight to the moon and back. It would be gifted to the National Museum. My wife and I had moved to Kenya a few years before. Today we were visiting friends in the Capital.

I joined a gathering that evening where the astronaut recounted his moon walk, along with a story of his personal faith.

Finding a seat I was soon taken by the former astronaut’s words. Near the end of his Apollo 16 narratives he shifted topics, sharing highlights of his journey with Christ.

Another witness. Another quite intelligent space-traveller – speaking of a reality he’d come to own, of a truth and a person upon whom he chose to anchor his life. The room was quiet – the only sounds the colonel’s measured tones, deep with feeling yet controlled. The impact of his next statement – like his enduring footprint on the moon’s surface – never left me.

“Travelling to outer space was a rare and wonderful experience. Yet. .”

The room grew quieter still.

“I’ve found that walking on the moon can’t begin to compare with walking on the earth with the Son.”

April 11, 2017August 28, 2017

Airport Angst

I was sorting British currency at one of earth’s busiest airports when my two-year-old girl vanished.

Amy had stood quietly at my side seconds ago as I made a kiosk purchase. In a quick, awkward 360 degree swirl I scanned what I could of this piece of Heathrow’s bustling throng. Amy! My little girl was no where in sight.

We had flown here from Nairobi, Kenya. Our family’s connecting flight to the U.S. would receive passengers in a couple hours. I sprinted the short distance to my wife, Ann, and the two older children. Because of a fractured toe from the day before, Ann could only stay seated, her leg out before her with the bandaged foot resting atop a lower piece of luggage.

“Julie! Scott!” They jumped to action when told their little sister had disappeared – striking off in directions indicated by my commando-like hand signals. I took in the many and varied images of travelers, their luggage pieces trailing behind like obedient pets. Nationalities and languages from all parts. My eyebrows furrowed. Some 75 million travelers pass through London’s Heathrow yearly. Lord. Where? Where can she be? Help us, Lord.

My movements were a vigorous, graceless waltz, craning this way and that, continuously turning, specially scoping for signs of ‘little people’.

Seconds felt like minutes, minutes like hours.

In something over five minutes the airport’s public address system gave a pop, then hummed to life. The voice was male.

It was even. Strong. Indisputably English. Voices have a way of projecting personality. The person back of this voice was clearly gentle and good-humored.

“Heathrow travelers, I would like your attention, please.” The din of luggage casters clacking and shoes clicking and people clamoring only barely faded as the announcer went on. “Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have a young lady, an Amy-BethLout (he blended the middle and last names to sound as one, sparing himself the awkwardness perhaps of associating the unflattering term ‘lout’ with any of his esteemed airport guests.) Regardless, the gentle, good-humored security fellow had got my attention. “Thank you, Lord”, I breathed.

It seems Amy had become sort of spellbound, taking in the grand throng of men and women and children. And their pigmentation. Since her East Africa birth only a tiny fraction of people she had seen had a skin color common to her own. Absentmindedly, after a mere few steps, she had drifted into the river of humanity.

Now I was holding her in a close hug.

”So Amy, tell us, how did you get to the nice man with the microphone?”

“Well,” she swayed back and forth slightly, “after awhile I looked around and I couldn’t see you anymore.” An old man with probably his wife was near to me. So I reached up and pulled down on his jacket. He looked at me and I said, “Do you know my daddy?” And so they got me back to you.

Her smile was unlabored, spontaneous, wonderfully naïve. “I’m glad we found each other daddy.”

I smiled back, only now aware my heart rate had begun normalizing again.

“I am too, Amy.” I hugged her again. “Really glad.”

April 13, 2017August 28, 2017

The Leashed of These

“First thing we do, dear, we get that child into a harness!” The mandate erupted from my sister. Sis had just learned from my wife of our young daughter’s momentary disappearance in the heart of a bustling international airport. It was the 1980s, decade of Dipsticks (Dukes of Hazard) and of Yuppies. Of child harnesses.

In the moments following our frightful ordeal at London’s Heathrow International our young family labored to orient ourselves back to normalcy. Our departure gate was nearby and the call to board was still some way off.

“Ámy. Hey, come with daddy. Let’s find a donut.”

She sat opposite me at a simple booth, a warm glazed donut secure in her grasp. I took in her unassuming, cherub-like features.

Amy’s chin barely cleared the table top as she sank her teeth into the pastry – quickly modifying it to a new look. A flake of icing clung at the edge of her mouth, bobbing up and down as she chewed. The movement inspired the tip of my tongue to pursue an imaginary morsel from my own now-moistening lips.

“Angel girl”. Her attention left the donut for a second.

“Amy”, I went on, “daddy wants to talk to you a minute, OK?” I continued without pausing while she returned to her snack after studying it a moment.

“You know”. I was seeking language to connect a really young mind to the concept of vulnerability, of hidden hazards. But without instilling anxiety or fear into her wide-open emotions. How do I do this? The unspoken question was half-prayer, half-bewilderment. I had offered such cautionary messages before – in earlier times to each of our other two children. Had tried anyway. I proceeded.

A few minutes in I was winding down my second monologue to my two-year-old – a drill far too common among young parents anymore – i.e. be cautious when near strangers. . stick close to mommy and daddy, and so forth. Amy seemed to sense I was about to launch into round three. Her look into my eyes was direct. Not scowling, not smiling. I began my third introduction when a soft, polite voice inserted reprovingly. “Daddy, I already heard you the other times.”

My shoulders dropped to relax mode. I chuckled toward my precocious angel.

In America, Amy and her mother’s alliance with the security harness lasted all of three weeks. We are not sure what became of it. . . a canine’s residence, perhaps.
©2017 Jerry Lout

April 18, 2017August 28, 2017

Strong Language

“Hey Gary, got a minute to listen to my water pump? It’s got a clatter goin’ on.”

Minutes later, socket and ratchet in hand, the wiry young man wriggled beneath his fellow student’s old car. He felt as at home here as an armadillo in this South Texas heat. It was why Gary Pokorney’s conquest in Korea left me mildly puzzled.

Gary was no slouch. His dogged probing of a carburetor or gear box on any number of nearby vehicles attested to it. And there were plenty nearby. The Bible school parking lot gave a shade-tree mechanic projects abundant.

“Jerry, how would You and Ann like to join Beverly and me on a pizza date – celebrate our graduating departure from the Hill?” Hallelujah Hill at the Northwest edge of the city, barely inside 410 Loop, home to International Bible College.

The Italian eatery along Fresno Avenue offered up the best deep-pan pizza.
Raising my napkin to dab a speck of red sauce lingering from my last bite, I grinned, “Hey guys, let’s plan another one – a pizza date. Down the road next time, when you furlough home from Korea and we’re back from Africa?”

“That’s a date!,” the Porkorneys chimed.

Two years passed. Ann and I had settled into life in the great Continent of Africa. Turning my Nairobi post office key and swinging open the box one morning I drew out the latest copy of my alma mater’s paper. Travelling surface mail via land and ocean it was seven weeks arriving. Any mail from home brought instant smiles, especially of friends or family. A lead article in the Torchbearer caught my eye. “Gary Pokorney Honored in Oratory Feat”. I read on.

Astonishing phrases leapt from the newsprint, “. . . Pokorney wins first place. . . nationwide oratorical contest. . . Korea’s First Lady hosts reception. . .”

I devoured the piece – amazed and proud for my old school acquaintance. Over dinner, Ann and I recalled fond scenes. Of the Hill, of special friendships, memories. All refreshing.

“To think, babe,” I looked her way. “Just listen again. First Place. . . the wife of the nation’s president hosted a special tea in Gary’s honor. . . The Head of State himself remarked that if he weren’t looking at Gary firsthand he would swear the speaker was a Korean national.”

Later that evening my fingers pecked away at our small green Hermes typewriter. “Dear Gary,” I began. .

“We just got news of your achievement. Wow, Congratulations, sir!” A post script wrapped up the note. . .

“I do want you to know this. When I read of your feat I retreated to my room. I seated myself in sackcloth and ashes, and wept over my Swahili-English dictionary.”
©2017 Jerry Lout

April 20, 2017August 28, 2017

Kentucky Surprise

“Fill ‘er up young man and check the oil, get the windows sparkling and, yes, run that vacuum of yours above and beneath the floor mats.”

It is common knowledge that many college kids scrape to get by. Such was our world in those days of self-service at the pump.

My young bride and I liked San Antonio with its Hispanic-flavored culture but could invest meager time sampling its delights. Time raced on in our happy but half broke world.

Fulltime work, fulltime schooling, volunteer pastoring duties, these pretty much consumed us. The adage two ships passing in the night depicted our days.

In time the San Antonio Express eyed my application and called me. I took up my post at the teletype machine. Life quieted. A little. Due to my skills the newspaper wage trumped my former gas-pumping earnings. Thank you Phillips 66 at the Caldera and Bandera crossing, and farewell.

Most days just after lunch I kicked the starter arm of my Vespa scooter and ventured to the city center. When my shift ended I mounted Old Blue again, making it to our eight-foot-wide house trailer on Hallelujah Hill before 1:00 a.m. Morning chapel kicked off at 8 o’clock. Vigorous praise music marginally rallied sleep-deprived students as we entered the old army barrack-turned-house-of-worship.

***

Mrs. Hottenstein.

“Brother Jerry, do you and Ann think you might swing by dear old Mrs. Hottenstein’s place Sunday mornings. . . bring her on to church, then drop her back home afterward?”

Pastor David went on, “She’s our retired school teacher from somewhere back in Kentucky’s hills and wants to come worship every week. She’s still pretty spry but is in her nineties and no longer drives. Anyway, maybe you all can talk it over, see what you think?”

A few weeks later following Sunday service we pulled from the church drive with our newer, older passenger. Responding to David’s invitation had been simple.

Nearing Mrs. H’s house this early afternoon I heard a clearing of the throat from our Pontiac’s back seat. Ann and I were fully unprepared for what followed.

April 25, 2017August 28, 2017

Time Share

“I want you to do something.” At nine decades and counting Mrs. Hottenstein’s spunk hadn’t waned.

Bypassing my questioning look, she peered at me through steel-trimmed lenses. Not unkindly. Still she certainly meant business. But about what?

“I need you and Ann to bring me details of your employment earnings, along with your overall monthly budget.” Again, no pause to indulge our reactions. Only one thing was clear to us. She clearly had our attention.

“I need to know your living expenses, tuition and other school-related fees, transportation and so forth – whatever counts as routine expenses.”

The long-retired school teacher wasn’t finished. Long stretches navigating Kentucky hill classrooms had clearly forged an aura of authority. She leveled her vision to mine.

“Jerry, the truth is that you are spending far too much time working a job to meet your college costs. You need to give more hours doing what you came to this city to do. To give yourself to the class time required, give your attention to study, to your assignments, exam preparations and the like.” The ninety-something-year-old voice shifted tone for the first time in her monologue – full-speed racing boat to trawling skiff.

“I want to help.”

“I will do the part I can to cut your hours at that downtown newspaper. You can arrange with them as a student to work a lighter schedule. I’m sure they’ll work with you.” She knew no such thing but that was beside the point.

“I will make up the difference once we settle on what is appropriate”.

Our car slowed. “Ah, here we are – already back to my place! Thank you once more for your kindness, giving me the ride.”

I walked her up three steps and onto her porch, my hand lightly at her elbow. She stepped inside and turned, facing me. From beyond the screen it was obvious her eyes had resurrected their piercing gaze.

“Remember now. Next week. Have it ready.” Crisp. Terse. Unsmiling.

Taking my cue, I responded in a tone that possibly matched some youngster’s voice of long ago. Near a one-room school house on a hill where bluegrass swayed.

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll do that. I promise.”
©2017 Jerry Lout

April 27, 2017August 28, 2017

Conditioning

I agonized the fresh image in my mind. More than haunting, the scene from this morning of the stricken child assaulted my senses. A torment ensued.

I stood behind the rough-hewn pulpit looking out at twenty worshippers. A shudder gathered in my middle back then up and across my shoulders. How could this have happened? How could I have driven away, on to my precious commitment?

Commitment. The word rang hollow. I had left the child, his small body sprawled lifeless on the roadway. It didn’t matter that another vehicle hit him. I had driven on. I had left him there.

Although I had lived in Africa for more than seventeen years, the events of that morning were unique. I had witnessed more roadway carnage my first six months on the continent than in all previous years elsewhere. Still. I could not distance myself from this morning’s image. Even as I read Scripture to the gathered faithful, the scene looped repeatedly. Over and over.

At the accident spot the hit-and-run motorist had evidently slowed, then sped out of sight. Moments afterward I had approached. On seeing the lifeless child I slowed my truck and steered it partly off the pavement.

A frantic, hysterical young woman in her lovely Sunday dress faced the highway, only feet from the fallen boy. It was in that second, another kind of nightmare, one of a repulsive kind, took form in my religiously-conditioned mind. Indeed, the religious component itself made it all the more repulsive. I glanced to my watch and moved on.

Standing at the pulpit now, I seemed to age. Never mind that another vehicle stopped to lend aid – a fact I had witnessed through my rear-view mirror. And what does this speak, Jerry? I asked myself derisively – self-cynicism hatching inside a house of worship. Compassionate action through a rear-view mirror? Right.

The facts were obvious. Severely so. I had chosen reason over compassion, rationale above mercy.

Already another car had stopped, the gray Landrover, I had reasoned.

I, on the other hand – I, the missionary en route to a preaching appointment – had driven on. Me, with my Sunday church duty to perform. A muffled groan settled in my chest and elected to remain.

My sermon ended. Hours lumbered past and Sunday mercifully fell behind me. But on Monday and then into weeks ahead I questioned, Would my soul one day recover from the shame that’s settled over me, of religion-bred dereliction, the self-loathing of letting meetings trump mercy? Considering the scene for the hundredth time I doubted.

Guilt. Remorse. Blame. Judgment. Even the terms themselves seem to stagger under their own condemning weight. Especially so when a person owns them to himself.

The prophet assures of comfort, “His compassions fail not” – Lamentations 3:22

But is even God’s mercy itself equal to something like this?

May 2, 2017August 28, 2017

Solace For Mourning

My foolish act, passing an anguished mother along a roadside so I could make a preaching appointment, kept me stuck in long-term remorse.

For years I periodically revisited in my mind’s eye the awful scene. Each time, left sorrowing, self-detesting, grieved.

I had been given, at my own hand, a teaching moment of a severe kind. Any hearing the term good Samaritan thereafter drew a self-inflicted stab. If I had been a character in Jesus’s famous parable that Sunday morning, I was anything but the generous passerby readily lending aid. I was one of the other guys, the Levi, the Priest. Preoccupied. Dutifully religious. Hurrying to my assigned post.

Over time I gleaned insights – and healing – through my reflections as I learned to bring them, along with their pain, openly to God.

Interior questions got verbalized in one way or other. How could I have done it? What drove me to shirk responsibility? How can a string of roadway tragedies witnessed over time so desensitize a man to human suffering?

The hardest question to resolve went unspoken, even unformed. It lay churning within, begging a response. Do I find closure? Do I forgive myself?

In time the dark voice of self-loathing quieted enough that I caught a whispered message, a merciful intervention, surprisingly tender in tone. God’s voice.

I found that he had whispered it all along, but that had drowned the gentle voice by my own self-accusing chorus. His response to my inquiries came themselves as questions. Something after this fashion.

Was my mercy withheld from my servant-king who defiled a man’s wife then murdered him to cover his wrong?

Was not my friend who three times in succession disowned me not afterward commissioned as my trusted emissary?

Have not innumerable followers who have offended, failed and invited shame been welcomed, embraced and celebrated as was the prodigal of my long-ago parable?

He gently pressed on.

Were the negligent priest and Levite on Jericho’s roadway valued less by me than the assaulted man? And you, my son, does your worthiness trace to your own virtue, to your forever choosing rightly when testing comes? Does your goodness qualify your worth? Did my sacrifice at Golgatha prove adequate for the sins of all except for yours – are you the lone exception?

Through the questionings, and further whisperings, healing had entered.

The tragic roadway picture reemerges occasionally. But between me, that scene and a myriad others spotlighting my frailties, stands another image – of a cross-marked hilltop outside a middle eastern town.

I taste the nectar of deliverance and offer the one response I can, “Praise you, Praise you, Lord”.

May 4, 2017August 28, 2017

Death Valley

There in the African Savannah where acacia trees with their flat-topped enchanting forms dot the landscape, an adolescent boy, a humble cattle-tender, was cornered by thieving attackers. He made a futile attempt to seek refuge among his father’s herd of semi-nourished cows – the bounty his attackers pursued. Horrifying moments raced like short distance sprinters toward the finish tape until the boy was seized and beaten to death by these neighboring tribal warriors.

Once I heard the news, words like heartless and senseless quickly sprang to my young missionary mind.

In the worldview of the tribesmen who had slain the boy for his father’s cows, there was nothing senseless about their deed. For generations nomadic lore had dictated that all cattle were created by God as a gift for their people. Any means to retrieve what was rightfully theirs was deemed acceptable. The “retrieving of cattle” was, to them in fact, a kind of calling.

Pastor Nashon had first been alerted of his young brother’s death by the high-pitched wailing of nearby village women. Afterwards, through grapevine media common to rural Africa, word of the tragedy reached our mission station several miles to the west.

Mounting my orange and aging Suzuki dirt-bike, I ran my helmet strap through the cinch ring, securing it snugly beneath my chin. Pastor Nashon needed a friend nearby – even a recent friend whose culture and land were radically different from his own. I hoped to somehow be such a friend.

Mindful of an involuntary tensing of my eyebrows I tried to push back my growing sense of inadequacy. Comforting loved ones who’ve experience the quiet and expected demise of, say, an aged and dear family member can be daunting enough. But this defied categories.

What shall I say an hour from now once my piki-piki is brought to a dusty halt and I enter the humble, thatch-roofed hut? How do I myself process such news, much less console the grieving young pastor whose brother’s life had so recently been brutally taken?

***

“Bwana asifiwe.” Nashon, only barely my junior gave a warm smile as he offered the Swahili greeting, “the Lord be praised”. Though a common greeting among believers, the words seemed specially poignant (maybe less than fitting? I thought).

I quietly entered the dirt-floor hut which was poised on a high ridge along the Great Rift Valley. I took the seat my young host offered. My senses caught the flavor of steaming, charcoal-heated chai, its vapors loitering above the fresh-washed mug now extended my way.

What followed altered my world forever.

May 9, 2017December 19, 2018

A Curious Mercy

I take in the surroundings of Nashon Gibuke’s home. He is a modest man entrusted with the care of an equally modest gathering of believers, young in the faith.

By the time of this visit he had served as pastor for barely thirty months. Had received the leanest of biblical training. What he might have lacked, however, in polished rhetoric or formalized doctrine, Nashon more than compensated through a faith rooted in personal knowledge of God.

We sipped the chai, exchanging customary amenities in a softer, more subdued manner than usual. Finally I rallied my best voice to offer condolences. This won’t come easily, I guessed.

I watched the pastor. He seemed keenly sympathetic toward me even as he struggled with his own crushing sorrow. He brought a compassionate gaze my way as he leaned forward in his simple, primitive-like chair. “Brother Jerry”, he began “I want to say something”.

It was my turn to lean attentively in his direction. Still, his opening took me back.

“I forgive these men who have done this thing. I forgave them when once I learned of their sad deed”.

Was I hearing correctly? No hint of insincerity belied his low, steady voice. My puzzled expression invited him onward.

“I know that these people do not understand the badness of what they have done. They do not know. They do not understand. They need God and I have begun praying for them that they should know him and gain his peace.”
I sat quiet for a time. I felt an atmosphere change. And was suddenly aware.

Aware of God, his presence here beneath the long grass weavings – the primitive roofing matter of this Kuria hut. I felt transported to a far-away place, a sacred setting. The holy land. I was seated in Solomon’s grand and newly-dedicated temple of the Living God. I stood alongside Isaiah, trembling at booming angel voices crying Holy, Holy in the hallowed sanctuary. And considered the earthen floor here under my feet. It might easily have dictated with hushed voice that I remove my shoes.

I knew a reversal of roles had taken place here in Kuria country. I, the missionary-teacher had come to extend comfort, but rather sat quietly, while a young, sparsely-educated, under-compensated pastor stepped, so to speak, to his lectern. His non-sermon to me – his audience of one – conveyed with astonishing eloquence the message of an ancient grace. Of mercy, traceable only to one place. Heaven.

Bwana Asifiwe – the Lord be praised. Indeed.