June Norman Black

June Norman Black

Cousin Cathy called just the other day,

To tell me Aunt June had passed away.

I could have received her news in stride,

After all, she was ninety-five.

But no, I had a different reaction

Because June was quite an attraction

Not only to me

But a positive person for all to see.

In her youth she was physically beautiful,

With her family and work she so dutiful

In taking care of her own

With never a groan.

During my boyhood she changed my comfort zone

By placing me in a Sears fashion show.

Wearing white bucks and gray herringbone

She made me a male model. I know!

June, a local Norfolk television star,

Started lawn mowers by hand in commercial breaks.

In years later I challenged whether the mowers were

Warmed up for the ratings stakes.

“No,” June insisted,” the mowers were cold.”

So I am to believe that a 100-pound young lady,

When asked decades later to me so bold

Would not admit to something perhaps a little shady.

I remember June as our family so dear,

On Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving

In her home we gathered every year.

Those were good times for living.

June’s siblings were large in number,

Hazel, Bonnie, Pat, and Jean;

‘Doc’ [Worth], my dad, and Harry, and ‘Toots’ him I don’t remember,

Perhaps ‘Doc’ the family’s dean.

It is difficult to lose a person so dear,

Even when meeting eye-to-eye infrequent.

On hearing this news I shed more than one tear,

Through her life, I know what love meant.

June Norman Black obituary

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New Title Released - THE HERESY OF HAM print edition

Our Archdeacon Books imprint is proud to announce the print edition of "The Heresy of Ham: What Every Evangelical Needs to Know About the Creation-Evolution Controversy" by Dr. Joel Edmund Anderson.

The Heresy of Ham

Signs of the Total Secular State

Signs of the Total Secular State

Or

The Total Absence of God

I

Gradually the loss of human dignity

Is no belief in the sanctity of life.

Filled with ambiguity,

The new secular order rife

With its version of people value

Creates a culture for each individual,

A dignity seemingly better than biblical.

II

The politics of covenant is gone,

A collective responsibility forsaken

For the common good previously undertaken.

Deep roots has a relationship of covenant,

A willing sacrifice for the sake of others.

Secular citizens begin caring less

About any such political fundament

And more about their private living.

Society dissolves into a series of pressure groups, chilling.

No deep, stable structure

Lives in the secular ever-variable.

The steady religious tenet they puncture

With lies never tenable.

The secular floats on the surfaces,

On tides and waves uncertain,

No meaning and no purposes,

The real life behind their curtain.

III

Morality also a loss,

Though citizens not necessarily immoral.

Words losing force and original meanings now dross.

Duty, obligation, honor, integrity, loyalty and trust,

In secularism, all a loss.

IV

Relationships no longer consecrated,

Marriage becomes a mistress.

New forms of friendship reconfigure and break

Relationships with no emotional distress.

The idea of marriage as commitment,

A loyalty at the depths of our being,

Easy to discard and unsustainable,

Bring personal resentment.

Fewer people marry,

More divorces ensue,

Parents with no connection to their children,

Bonds across generations subdued.

V

The possibility of life meaningful,

Not a personal project

As offered by secular culture,

But from the outside bedecked

As a call, a mission, a vocation.

From the outside means a Transcendence,

Perhaps the final religious functioning in your presence

To teach, heal, and fight all forms of injustice.

The total secular order

Has no space for transcendence, vocation, or the life meaningful.

Conclusion

When life floats on the surfaces

It is a purposeless and self-centered fantasia.

Life becomes meaningless and disposable

In the form of abortion and euthanasia.

This is a versed adaptation/interpretation taken from the writings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’

The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning.

Schocken Books/Random House, New York, 2011, pp. 103-4.

Oh Really, O’Reilly?

Oh Really, O’Reilly?

There is this commentator O’Reilly

An expert on all things entirely.

If you don’t think it so

Just let him know

How his thoughts not always regarded highly.

It was just the other day

When Christian forgiveness came into play

Felt he necessary to correct a viewer

That repentence, required from a wrongdoer,

Releases forgiveness held at bay.

Reconciliation, though, can start with either side

But one may be obstinate with personal pride.

So the process begins

Regardless of who sins,

The high road therein attempted and tried.

God is in this high road action

Where repentance gains traction

With the two persons aggrieved.

Repentance and forgiveness now agreed,

Meet full reconciliation, not a fraction.

Rafael

Rafael

‘God has healed’ is Rafael,

But he seemed so far afield

When principles are held

As a protective shield.

Not meant here

To be a comparison,

But principle’s tier

Should learn from some.

The nine of Mother Emanuel

Lost life’s breath

Suddenly, not gradual

But instant death.

Then Mother Emanuel’s faithful

Shocked the nation;

A congregation not ungrateful

For the gift of reconciliation.

Though not of the same magnitude

Rafael’s bride was wronged

And her spouse went on to brood

In front of a mighty throng.

This principled angel earlier attracted

Evangelical hearts, their admiration

He extracted

His principles, though, his fixation.

Why did he persist with vengeance?

Why not cross that political isthmus

With spiritual transcendence

To heal with God’s forgiveness?

Rafael, O Rafael

You should have lived up to your name.

Your principles so dearly held,

Withholding Godly healing became shame.

White Man, Black Man, and the Cross (in Dallas)

William Wilson, a bishop, and Stephen Manyama, a transitional deacon, both ministers in the Anglican Diocese of the South of the Anglican Church in  North America, traveled from Birmingham, Alabama to Dallas, Texas after the deadly shootings of police. I reproduce an article here from +William's The Spiritual Well communication newsletter.

+  +  +  +  + 

Dear Friends,

SENT TO DALLAS

          

            On Friday, July 8th about 9:00 AM, I was driving to our poor congregation in East Lake, Family Worship Center. My purpose was to work with Pastor Stephen, on some liturgical matters. Stephen is a Tanzanian by birth. He and I have become very close friends during the last decade.

            While driving, I was filled with a '9/11' kind of shock and pain over the massacre that had taken place hours before in Dallas. Suddenly, I had a conviction. It arose within me without mental or emotional process. It was simple, clear, and absolute:  "Go with Stephen to Dallas. Carry a cross together in solidarity with the afflicted praying for racial peace and healing of wounds in Dallas and in the nation."

            Upon greeting Stephen, I told this to him. He immediately responded: "We must go!" We dropped everything and prepared to leave.  We had no material means to accomplish this.  I made one phone call to a family I love. The couple told me they were in sorrow all morning over the Dallas tragedy. They said, "We want you to go. This is of the Lord. We will supply whatever you need."

            We got the first flight available and arrived in Dallas at 10:00 am on Saturday.  We needed a truck to transport the 12 ft cross we intended to construct. There was no adequate pickup available at any of the rental offices at the DFW airport.  While we were trying to figure out our next move my cell phone rang.  It was a friend of mine from the 1970ies, George Getschow.  He heard from a mutual friend that I was to be in Dallas.  Immediately he told us: I will bring my pickup truck for you can use, adding that he wanted us to stay at his home the two nights we were in Dallas.  It felt as though the sea was parting to make a way for us. 

            We drove to the nearest Home Depot, bought boards, 2" by 6" and set to work constructing our 12 ft by 6 ft cross. Remarkably, the staff let us use all the tools we needed to complete our task.

            We drove to Dealey Plaza, as George had suggested. Once we parked, I felt a chill in my blood as I recognized the grassy knoll and the book warehouse...we were at the very location where President John F Kennedy was assassinated by another terrorist in 1963. We began praying for peace and healing right there and proceeded to carry the cross to the place where the officers were the five officers were murdered. The crime scene was a large cordoned off area of some six square blocks. We decided to walk the entire perimeter. As we marched, we stopped to pray with police officers.  Many, very many, people came up to us, some to thank or take pictures or even to pray with us. Some begged us to let them help carry the cross.  There was much emotion in many prayers. One man came up to us with this comment: "You have no idea how moving it us for us to see you, a black man and a white man carrying the cross together."

            Toward evening, tired but very happy, we drove to George's home where we were received with extraordinary hospitality.  That very night the police, already feeling under siege, had to lock down the police station because of a bomb threat.  Learning this, we decided that on the next day, Sunday, we would carry the cross to that police station. 

            We began our trek by carrying the cross around the entire police installation.  We ended at the front entrance to the police station. Hundreds of people were there milling around the make-ship memorial while individuals paid respects to a large group of police officers gathered near the door.  As we approached, all eyes turned to the sight of the cross being carried by a black man and a white man.  The police asked our what is our intention. "We are here because we love you. We have come only to pray with you, to pray for you, to be in solidarity with you at this time of tragedy."

            Spontaneously, the officers took our hands and formed a circle of prayer.  I suddenly spoke this unprepared word, "The Lord Jesus Christ declares from heaven: 'My black children, love my white children. My white children, love my black children. I was crucified for all of you equally. You are all one just as I and my Father are One."

            Pastor Stephen began praying with inspired intensity and with the gift of tears. All in that circle wept as Stephen prayed for comfort and healing for the fallen, their loved ones, and for Dallas and the nation.

            We laid our cross there at the memorial, knowing that we had now completed the work for which we had been sent to Dallas.

George Getschow, our host in Dallas, is a noted author and professor of journalism. After we left, he composed a beautiful expression of what our mission to Dallas meant to him. To see his short piece, click here..

+William Wilson 

+ + + + ++

William Wilson's latest book is Pathways to Union with Jesus