What to Do with a Million Dollars?

November Journaling Challenge: Day 7
Prompt: Imagine that you received a million dollars on the condition that you give it all away and keep nothing for yourself. To whom would you give it?

$50,000 each to People for the American Way
                          American Civil Liberties Union
                          the most effective gun control advocacy group I can find

$50,000 to Candler School of Theology

$100,000 to the United Methodist Committee on Relief

$100,000 to Assumption Abbey, OCSO, Ava, Missouri

$100,000 to the Nature Conservancy

$100,00 to Lexington, TN, First United Methodist Church

$100,000 to Forest Heights United Methodist Church, Jackson, TN

$200,000 to Hendrix College, Conway, AR

$100,000 to our daughter, Sara Tomblin

Describe yourself with alphabetized adjectives

November Journaling Challenge: Day 6
Prompt: Describe yourself  using alphabetized adjectives, A to Z

accessible                                    

believable                                      

curious                                        

disciplined                                                                      

easily-discouraged                                                    

friendly                                                                              
                                                                                                                     
gentle                                            

humorous                                            

imaginative                              

judicious

kind

loving

modest

nurturing

open-minded

peaceful

questioning

respected

skeptical

thoughtful

understanding

valued

worshipful

x

yearning

zestful
(which can mean full of life or full of beans)              

What 5 Things Would You Take?

November Journaling Challenge: Day 4
Prompt: Imagine that you end up on a deserted island. All of the essentials of life are provided. What 5 items would you take to enhance your emotional well-being or bring you pleasure or offer you knowledge? 

1. A bag of books, including the Bible, Walden and Thoreau's collected essays, a volume of Mary Oliver's poetry, collections of art by Monet and van Gogh, a book of prayers, and Shakespeare's plays and poems

2. a laptop with wireless internet connection and collections of music and movies

3. a telescope with guide for stargazing

4. a set of colored pencils and a pad of art paper

5. a bicycle

What Are Your Favorites?

November Journaling Challenge: Day 3
Prompt: What are your favorites?

Favorite Book - Walden
Usually categorized as 'nature writing,' it contains seeds of wisdom on many topics -- a new economics which values simple living and warns of the human costs of industrialization, the benefits of reading, and the necessity, on occasion, of civil disobedience.

Favorite Music
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (Bach)

Favorite Movie
  action - Duel, an early Steven Spielberg work starring Dennis Weaver, with the supporting actor never appearing on screen
  character - The Color Purple
  overall - The Shawshank Redemption

Favorite Color - ultramarine
Now synthetically produced for artists, it was originally handmade from lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone valued for its intensity. Vermeer used ultramarine for the turban worn by the Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Favorite Summer
1970. I had light training by the Navy as a would-be JAG officer. Becky, Sara and I were able to use the weekends exploring New England. Highlights included the Boston Pops July 4th Concert, visiting Walden Pond, seeing a Red Sox game at Fenway, and walking Cape Cod.

What Do You Do to Enrich Your Mind?

November Journaling Challenge: Day 2
Prompt: What do you do on a regular basis to enrich your mind?

The most consistent practice I have for enriching my mind is reading. Reading is my passion, though some might call it an addiction.

Gretchen Rubin wrote in The Happiness Project, "What you enjoyed doing as a ten-year-old, or choose to do on a free Saturday afternoon, is a strong indication of your passion." Bingo!

My reading habit is rooted in the assignments I had in high school -- not only Great Expectations but also David Copperfield. Not only Huckleberry Finn, but also Les Miserables and Crime and Punishment . It's strange; I read so little fiction these days.

My usual pattern is to develop an interest in a topic and start collecting the best works I can find (and the most I can afford.)

When my interest was in haiku, for example, I amassed over 30 titles. Similar collections center on -
* poetry (Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall)

* art (van Gogh is my latest fascination)

* nature writing

*monastic spirituality (Thomas Merton and the Rule of St. Benedict

* World War I

I'm aware that none of this makes me smarter or even more knowledgeable than anyone else. I also know that reading is only one way of nurturing the mind. Someone has written that there are "eight intelligences." The life of the mind is only one.

I'm simply trying to be honest about my own life and to give you a brief glimpse into it.

What did I expect?

November Journaling Challenge: Day 1
Prompt: Today focus on using each of your senses. Describe in detail what they notice.

The rough bark of the oak tree reaches upward 90 feet. As I strain my neck to see the crown, I feel a twinge from an old surgery.

I hear no wind this morning, and few leaves cover the ground. I lean my back against the trunk, seating myself on a patch of moss, and settle into a nap.

A blast of cold air wakes me and shakes a thousand leaves from the tree. My outstretched legs are covered, and still leaves fall.

The wind slaps a large one onto my face, covering nose and mouth. I can smell the decay of autumn. Sheepishly, I poke the leaf with my tongue, curious about its taste. What did I expect? Pumpkin pie, apple fritter, an oak leaf cobbler?

10 Biggest Turning Points in My Life

Prompt: List the 10 Biggest Turning Points  in Your Life, Ilene Segalove and Paul Bob Velick,
List Yourself

In chronological order:
1. Decision to attend Hendrix College

2. Marriage to Becky and birth of Sara

3. Decision to quit Law School after two years

4. Decision to be ordained in the United Methodist Church

5. Becky's health issues

6. Work on new mission and ministry plan at Lexington First UMC

7. Decision to retire at age 54

8. Opportunity to work with District Superintendents, Ben Boone and Joy Weathersbee

9. Marital difficulties and reconciliation with Becky in August, 2013

10. Decision to return to active status and serve Forest Heights UMC in 2009

11. Retirement in July, 2013

"I think you'd better give me that gun."

Prompt: Recall a situation when your courage was tested
from www.journalingprompts.com

I'm not sure whether this situation was an act of courage or merely a thoughtless reaction which placed me in danger but turned out well.

I was the Associate Pastor at Grace UM Church in Memphis. One afternoon the secretary and I were the only persons in the building. I was at my desk with my back to the door, and the secretary was sitting at a table, facing the back wall of the main office, unable to see the office door or the room.

For some long-forgotten reason, I left my desk and entered the main office. I saw a junior high-aged boy with a gun in his hand walking toward the secretary. Without thinking, I said, "I think you'd better give me that gun." He did. He gave me the gun! Of all the options he had, he walked over and gave the gun to me.

I said, "You wait here while we call the police." Realizing that he still had options, the boy ran out of the room, out of the building, never to be seen again. (I didn't have the gun pointed at him, trying to hold him in place. I suppose I thought that since he had been so cooperative once, he would cooperate again.)

We called the police, who arrived quickly. The first officer who entered the room said, "I think you'd better give me that gun," I did. It was loaded.

What I inherited from my mother

Prompt: Something you inherited from your mother
Judy Reeves, A Writer's Book of Days

Among the many treasures, material and immaterial, which I inherited from my mother, were two recipes. Most cooks have a favorite chili recipe, but very few people have even heard of tomato gravy.

The latter is a breakfast gravy, served over biscuits, not a dinner gravy for mashed potatoes. After I left for college, was married and started a family, my mother always prepared tomato gravy for me when we returned home. I say "for me," because my wife and daughter didn't particularly care for it. When Sara was a married adult, she gave it a try and loves it. We "shared a bowl" on my recent trip to Atlanta.

I must admit to ruining the dish for my wife. Shortly after we were married, she tried her hand at preparing tomato gravy. Too dumb for words, I said, "Is that all you're making?" and that was it for tomato gravy at our home.

Here is a good shortcut version of the tomato gravy recipe. The real thing must remain a family secret!

Not Quite Mom's Tomato Gravy

2 Tbs margarine

2 Tbs flour

1/2 cup milk

1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes

1 tsp sugar

1/4 to 1/2 tsp pepper

Melt margarine in saucepan over medium heat. Stir flour into milk until well mixed. Add mixture to margarine and cook 1 minute, constantly stirring. Add diced tomatoes, sugar, and pepper. Cook, stirring often, 3 to 5 minutes or until thickened. Serve over hot biscuits.

The secrets for the chili recipe are using olive oil and red beans (not red kidney beans.)

Mom's Chili

Saute one small onion and one pod garlic in olive oil. Brown 1 to 1.5 pounds hamburger meat in same skillet. Add 1 Tbs flour, 1 can diced tomatoes, 1 can tomato paste, 1 can tomato sauce, 1 can red beans, 1 tsp cumin, chili powder to taste, water to thin (if desired.) Simmer for one hour.

Enjoy! 

What situations make you most nervous? Most confident?

The title is the prompt. It comes from the Kaizen Journaling website.

The answer to both questions is the same -- speaking in public. Admittedly, it is a strange answer for a pastor. A pastor's ministry consists largely of speaking words appropriate to the occasion. Words are the raw material with which a pastor works every day. The occasions are numerous and various: visiting a new family in town, comforting a grieving spouse, answering a question at a committee meeting, praying at a civic gathering, preaching on Sunday morning. By and large, words are all we have with which to persuade, challenge, comfort, teach or inspire other people. Yet, as a  pastor, speaking in public is the occasion which makes me feel both most nervous and most confident.

Perhaps some examples would be helpful.

* In high school, before my pastoring days, my speech class traveled to Duke University for a competition. Without consultation, the teacher entered me in the Extemporaneous Speaking event. What a mistake! I was as nervous as a cat in a thunderstorm.

* In one of my early local church appointments I developed an anxiety about making the announcements on Sunday mornings. It was serious enough that I called the Lay Leader, who was also a good friend, for a cup of coffee. He offered to do the announcements, but I declined and eventually grew into the responsibility.

* Confidence in preaching was mostly a matter of experience. In the beginning I was nervous because I wasn't very good. Practice didn't make perfect, but it did make the preaching better and that increased my confidence. I also had a couple of insights. For one thing, as a preacher, I "grow on" people. One sermon might be disappointing, but, over a period of time, the sermons were effective and appreciated. That realization instilled confidence.

Secondly, an important awareness: If the congregation trusts you, knows that you care about them and will be there for them -- if you have integrity and compassion -- they are far more responsive to your preaching.

* Finally, I am an introvert in an environment which has extroverted expectations. As an introvert, anxiety in public speaking is a default response. In order to be effective as a pastor, however, I learned to function as an extrovert when necessary. By nature I am quiet in small group gatherings. Through experience, I learned to speak up and make my contribution. There were occasions, in fact, when I wish that I had shut up before I did. On balance, however, I accepted my introverted personality, but on occasion functioned in other ways, to the extent that I was able.

Strange, but true for most of my adult life: the situations which have made me most nervous and most confident have been occasions of public speaking.

When enough is enough

The prompt: When enough is enough
A Writer's Book of Days, Judy Reeves

When a casserole that "serves 8" is wiped out by 2, enough is enough.
When I  fall asleep at my laptop at 1:00 a.m., enough is enough.
When I have copied enough material from the internet to fill 150 file folders (conservatively),
enough is enough.
When my wife eats a bag of 3 Musketeers "one at a time" in a day, enough is enough.
When I have books stacked on books until the bookcase is bowing, when I have books stacked on the floor so that I can no longer walk through my office safely, when books fill the shelves in two bedroom closets, and then I check out 4 more from the library and order 3 from Amazon, enough is enough.
When I haven't showered or shaved in 3 days "because I am retired," enough is enough.
When I fall asleep driving, waking as I smash through a roadside mail box, then enough sleep was not enough.
When I start admitting these things publicly, enough is enough.

The thoughts that circle your bed at night

Prompt source: A Writer's Book of Days, Judy Reeves

Sometime during the past year, the predominant thought that began coming to me at night was about death. I am not morbidly preoccupied, and the subject doesn't visit me every night, but on occasion reality strikes home: I am going to die. It could be at any time, or on any given day I could receive news of imminent or approaching death.

The  thought creates anxiety. I am not ashamed to say that it scares me. Christian though I claim to  be, a believer in resurrection through Christ, the conqueror of death, yet in my gut the thought of "not being" as I am now is frightening. Yes, beyond death is a life more glorious, beautiful, and joyous than the one I cling to today. Yes, death is but for a moment while life is uninterrupted and unending. But the thought of leaving the familiar in its many beloved forms is most disturbing.

I admit that none of this became a nightly concern until I turned 65. I am now 66. It sounds old, though objectively it is certainly not aged. With my bad back, I consider myself an old 66. Does that sound less frantic? But I do not become frantic or truly panicked at night, just anxious, apprehensive. After some time - more than minutes , less than an hour - I fall asleep until the new day which God graciously gives me.

And you - what are the thoughts that circle your bed at night?

I had filed for divorce twice.

The prompt: Tell us  about a time when everything was going wrong - and then, suddenly, you knew it would be alright.
From: The Daily Post @ Wordpress.com

I had filed for divorce twice. The second time I moved into an apartment, signing a year's lease. For a year my attorney tried to get my wife's attorney to negotiate a settlement, with no success.  My wife often spoke of her desire to stay married and live apart. To me that arrangement seemed the worst of all possible worlds.

My wife's psychosis manifested itself in a variety of ways, creating immense stress. Some nights she would call two dozen times. She did not trust me to be honest and fair when dealing with our finances. The situation was spiraling out of control.

One day she proposed reconciliation -- I move back in and we resume our marriage after living apart for over a year. I knew that nothing fundamental had changed: she had not resumed taking her psych meds, which left a range of issues unresolved.

Our daughter challenged me: "Are you willing to move back, knowing that nothing has changed or is likely to change?"

I answered with a shaky 'yes.' Only today, almost two months after returning, did I gain the conviction that "it would be alright." Even when it is not alright, it will be alright.

Perhaps I was given that conviction because of a pleasant trip to Jackson together this morning. We actually enjoyed ourselves. I have no illusions about "nothing but blue skies," but I believe there is commitment and resilience on both sides to sustain us.