History

I've spent a major portion of this afternoon going through a file collection which contains a lot of hitory. Contracts which deal with the purchase of the current house and its upkeep. There was a number of purchase invoices of cars which we have ownned in the past. One was a Volkwagon "bus" which most of the kids will remember. With a family of 9 it sure came in handy. I remember going with Betty to a Class Reunion, but threre was a newpaper article with her picture at her 30th class reunion. That was held in 1973 a few weeks after I had come home from by-pass surgery in Denver. A Christmas letter spoke of this as my being well enough to be left in the "care of the kids". As I recall they must have done a good job. There is a group of letters of my correspondence with various Seminaries - and this before I had even finished a year of College. There is also a copy of my discharge from the Army Air Corps in Nov. 1943 - after 7 1/2 months of military training. They finally admited that I could see only with one eye. There was a pciture of the family which appeared in the Jersey City newspaper. Paul had not yet been born, but was born later in Jersey City. Of Course Peter did not arrive until we had moved to Montana. Betty only got prettier as she aged. But there was always that welcome smile. Letters from Father and brothers, and some copies of my own. My, O my. What an afternoon.

Murder???

There is a group in Montana gathering signatures to get a Constitutional Amendment on the Fall ballot to state that life begins at conception therefor abortion is murder. I guess that I can't argue against the major principle, but I have been known to argue that life begins with the first breath. Well, a couple of things have been going through my mind lately. If this law passes what happens to the lady who has an early miscarriage. Looking through some old folders this week I was reminded again of the fact that Betty had a first term miscarriage when we were in Davenport. That would be the early 1950's. As I recall most of the tissue fell into the toilet and was flushed away. Was this LIFE? And did this tissue deserve a Christian burial? A few years later she suffered the early birth of twins at about 6 months. Were we somehow subject to criminal prosecution? The twins were given a Christian burial with the Pastor of the local Congregational Church in charge. I can't help but believe that if our constitution is changed we will all be in big trouble.

Betty's absence from me in death is often on my mind. Does she miss me as I miss her? And then I think of the nunc aeternam - the eternal "nowness" of God, and it occurs to me that as far as she is concerned we are all with her in God's present. So much for now.

Ecclesiastical Conflict

So? So Obama left his Church. So what? I found that I had to do that at one time myself. I left the Highlawn Baptist Church of Huntington, WV. A Church of which my parents were charter members and in which I was baptized and grew up in. A Dhurch which contained many friends and spiritual mentors. A Church in which I had learned my Baptist freedom roots well. Unfortunately after both mother and father had died; I had graduated from high school; ,served a brief tour with the Army Air Corps (that should tell you how long ago this history was); and was very active in State Baptist Youth Fellowship work the Church hired a young man as Pastor who had lost his sense of Baptist History. He was the son of a pastor with whom I had worked one summer in Logan County coal mine communities. This guy came into the Church out of a very conservative southern Baptist seminary in Texas. He immediately got the Board of Deacons to enact some of his conservative theology and required that anyone who was active in the Church to subscribe to a creed he had written based on his fundamentalist beliefs. In the first place I could not subscribe to many of the statements contained therein, and secondly I felt that having to accept a creedal statement was outside the scope of being a Baptist. I believed that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, . . ." and that was all the "creed" I needed. BUT, after all, this was my famly's Church. The "Mother Church" was one in which my Grandfather Taylor was a patriarch. Fortunatly at this time I was graduating with a Master's degree and going to Connecticut so I was able to transfer my membership to a Church in Hartford, and then back to a more Baptist congregation when I returned to Huntington to teach at Marshall College. It did not become a University until long after I had moved on.

There are many reasons for leaving one's Church, even after a long time membership. I, for one, think that Senator Obama has done both himself and the Trinity Church a good.