IS IT GETTING BETTER?

I really should be grateful for all the improvements in life. Dishwashers and automatic washers and driers make life a lot easier. Air conditioning in cars (when it works) makes life bearable during Florida summers. Cell phones, computers, internet, jet plane travel. Great improvements.

Other things aren’t such great improvements–credit cards with revolving balances. These are an unmitigated disaster. Instead of saving for something, people go into debt. It’s not like a car loan or something where you make payments and eventually it’s paid for. No, these have been designed to go into greater and greater debt.

Fiberboard furniture and cabinets are another non-improvement. Sure it’s a lot cheaper and it does use up all the saw dust and wood chips and stuff but it come apart. And there isn’t much elegance about it. I had hopes that I would be able to install a wall of real wood cabinets in my dining room when I retired to hold the books that will have to be relocated from the office, but Home Depot no longer sells the nice seven-foot real wood bookcases they did 25 years ago.

Then there are the things that have disappeared altogether–dime stores, for instance. I suppose K-Mart is like a dime store, since it is the successor to S. S.Kresge, but it doesn’t feel the same. Everything is self service, no one know the merchandise, and nothing costs a dime. And they don’t have a lunch counter. Oh yes, I know you can get stuff to eat at K-Mart, but you cant sit at a counter where an older lady comes by with a pad of paper and asks, “What’ll you have, hun?”

At the other extreme I miss the uniqueness of a city’s own stores. Miami had Burdines and Chicago had Marshall Field’s. Now they are both homogenized as Macy’s. I like Marcy’s. I was glad when they opened a store in Miami, but it was different from Burdines and both were different from Marshal Field’s. Now it’s all the same.



Television was better in the good old days, too. Shows like “Our Miss Brooks” started off as radio programs that depended on dialogue to convey everything. That produced TV that was simpler, more like live theater than films. And there were local productions, also. In Chicago we had “Elmer the Elephant” and “Garfield Goose” as well as the big time shows of “Howdy Doody.” Maybe the most famous local production was “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie” which went on to the big times. Nothing but puppets and Fran Allison. No digitalized effects. And from what I understand most of the show was improvised.



And something about church was better. There was a rhythm to things you could count on–Sunday School, Vacation Church School, Church Picnic– all against a pattern of worship determined by the church year. And then it all started to fal apart. At least in part it was the inability to pass on the tradition from one generation to the next. Communities were far more mobile than in the past. But also there was a kind of shaking lose of the foundations that people had counted on. It’s hard to put my finger on it. It wasn’t just change; there has always been change in the church. It was a surrender of the essentials of the church. Often times the church came to be at odds with it’s own members rather than with the world it was meant to transform. People were bewildered by it all.

I am approaching my last years of active church leadership. Although I often frustrated by the silly spats that go on in the local congregation, I am even more wearied by the nonsense that comes from”The-Powers-That-Be.” Don’t those people belong to real congregations? Why do they so often ignore what people need? Why do they spend so much time and money doing things that just makes it harder for us on the front lines? Doesn’t the collapsing membership tell them anything?

Isn’t there a way to hold on to the good of the past and the good of the present? Of course! Why should Past and Present always be at war, why should they be polar opposites? No reason other than a lack of effort. We have to discern what is right, and that requires us to examine our values. For me as a Christian it means surrendering what I want for what God wants.

One verse of a hymn by a splendid modern writer firmly grounded in Christ, who brings the best of what is handed on from the past into the present. This is from her book; A Royal “Waste” of Time.”

Come, then children, with your burdens –
Life’s confusions, fears, and pain,
Leave them at the cross of Jesus;
take instead his kingdom’s reign.
Bring your thirsts, for he will quench them –
he alone will satisfy.
All our longings find attainment
when to self we gladly die.

May the Lord who blessed the Past, bless you on your Present journey and greet on your Future arrival.

Wayne





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