OPPORTUNITIES IN DIFFICULTIES

Posted on July 3, 2012 by stanwiedeman

Aimee Copeland

Aimee Copeland filled the room with life wherever she went. The 24-year-old graduated from the University of Georgia with honors and entered the humanistic psychology program at the University of West Georgia. The program examines nature and its effect on the human soul. She hoped to use a therapy with trouble youths in which they spend time in nature in conjunction with therapy.

Aimee loves the outdoors. On May 1, she and a group of friends went kayaking and created a homemade zip line for additional fun on the river. The zip line broke while Aimee was flying down, carving a gash in her left calf. Her friends helped her to a hospital where the wound was stapled shut.

Three days later, after repeated trips to the hospital, a doctor diagnosed Aimee with necrotizing fasciitis, a very rare flesh-eating bacteria. She was airlifted to Augusta, Georgia where surgeons amputated her leg. As they removed her from the operating table, she went into cardiac arrest, but was resuscitated.

Placed on life support, Aimee’s organs began shutting down. Her father posted on a blog site one week after the accident, “Aimee’s probability of surviving the night is bleak. All we can do and all we have done is pray.” Doctors summarized her chances of survival as “slim to none.”

The bacteria continued to ravage her body. On May 17, surgeons had to amputate her right foot and most of both hands. In spite of her prognosis, Aimee’s condition began improving. By the 20th, she was breathing on her own.

Aimee left the hospital Monday (July 2), headed for a rehabilitation facility where she will have to learn independent living again. To give the sensitive skin time to heal, physicians plan to fit her for prosthetics six months after the amputations. Considering the doctors’ expectations, Aimee experienced a miraculous recovery.

Aimee with her father, Andy, and mother, Donna, on her first trip out of the hospital after 49 days.

Aimee’s father, Andy, has chronicled her journey on a blog and facebook page. One week ago, Aimee made her first wheelchair trip outside the hospital. Sitting under pine trees her father asked her how she felt about her life. Thoughtfully, she replied, “I don’t have any regrets about what has happened. I don’t focus on what I have lost. I would rather focus on what I’ve gained. I feel like I’ve been blessed.”

Andy interpreted her to mean that she was blessed to be alive, but Aimee corrected him.

“I mean that I am blessed to have the opportunity to experience something that not many other people have the chance to experience. I am blessed to have a challenge that not many others get to have. I am blessed to have the capacity to share my experience with others and have the chance to improve the quality of someone else’s life. I’m blessed to be different.”

Aimee’s answer reminded her father of a magnet that has hung on their refrigerator over a decade. The Copeland family has observed this magnet to the point of it becoming almost imperceptible. It reads,

“Help me O Lord to recognize your opportunities in my difficulties.”

The Copelands: Aimee, mother Donna, father Andy, sister Paige

Perhaps you are noticing a distinct tone of faith and hope in this family. Andy expressed the depth of this family’s faith in a reply to a friend’s question on facebook. “Many cannot understand why I am not angry and perplexed. I cannot wear two emotions. I am who I am. How can I be angry and happy? I can only trust in Him and allow Him to lead us.

Love will drive us forward, but anger will only destroy us. With Jesus there is hope, with anger comes depression and fear. We fear nothing and we are hopeful for everything. This is our faith and I am pleased to share it with you.

“I want to conclude by establishing a clear statement of exactly why I am sharing so much about our family values and about Aimee’s miraculous healing and her continued recovery. There needs to be no doubt that the blood of Jesus Christ is the foundation of our faith. It is through this faith that Aimee lives today.

“It also needs to be understood that the power of prayer is at work in our lives and that the prayers of millions have powered Aimee’s recovery.

“I believe that it is my duty as Aimee’s father to share our testimony of faith, love and hope and demonstrate through our testimony that God is alive. He provides miracles, but we have to ask for those miracles and have faith that he will intercede for those who appear hopeless.

“I pray that God’s name will be glorified and that His power will be magnified, through which ultimately our blessings will be multiplied.”

I leave you to ponder the testimony of this family.

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COURAGE

Posted on June 28, 2012 by stanwiedeman

Skeeter interviewing Aibileen and Minny for the book she is writing to expose the plight of the African American maid in Jackson, MS

My family watched The Help again last night. Set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, a zealous college graduate, Skeeter, returns home with a craving to write, but to write to make a difference. She persuades a household maid to tell her story. They convince a dozen other maids to cooperate as well.

Jackson perpetuated some of the worst forms of racism in the U.S. in the early sixties. Revealing that racism from the black woman’s perspective, Skeeter risked her reputation and status in that dense social community. The maids, on the other hand, risked their lives. This movie chronicles a story of great courage.

The cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz held the wrong notion, that fear negated courage. The wizard corrects him, “There is no living thing that does not fear when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing the danger when you are afraid.” Aristotle noted that the vice of a shortage of courage is cowardice, and the vice of an excess of courage is recklessness.

Appropriate fear orients a person to the reality of risk. Increased risk should amplify fear. Acting in the face of that fear constitutes courage.

Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, said it this way, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know your licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

Change frequently induces fear. Sometimes the risks associated with the change are evident, but often the fear results from the risk of the unknown. When I pledged my life to my bride, I could not begin to imagine how my life would change, but I knew that it would. (Ignorance insulated me from excessive fear.) I vowed to remain faithful to her regardless of the risks and any dangers we might encounter.

The middle class playground – the shopping mall

The affluence of middle class America dramatically reduces risks. We are accustomed to talking about risk management with the goal of risk displacement. Consequently, we have abridged the practice of courage. Life still throws enough bean balls at us that we cannot eradicate risk altogether, but we may practice the art of avoidance more than the virtue of courage.

Perhaps this explains our growing obsession with super hero stories. Movie studios discovered a gold mine when they began converting comic books into screenplays. We count the weeks until the release of the next blockbuster action movie, replete with displays of great courage. Even our super heroes have to face fear.

The Avengers super heroes

Watching The Help reminded me of the courage required to live the Christian life. I am not talking about practicing quiet times, memorizing verses, attending Bible studies or even witnessing (although that can be terrifying to some people). Jesus confronted the sinful beliefs and practices of his day, exposing hypocrisy and denouncing injustices. Eventually, the authorities could no longer tolerate him. His life posed a substantial threat to the status quo, especially to those who held power. His courage got him nailed to a cross.

At first, his disciples ran like scared rabbits. Fearing the same script for their lives, they deserted Jesus, denying any relationship with him, in spite of earlier boastful claims. Fear dictated their behavior. They congregated secretly. Hopelessness began to submerge their souls.

Jesus’ disciples at first ran with fear, but later proclaimed the kingdom with the same courage Jesus had.

Then the Holy Spirit came upon them, bringing with him courage. They picked up where Jesus left off, proclaiming the infusion of the kingdom of God into a godless world. They lived out that kingdom by faith with courage. They confronted their crooked generation with truth. Now, they abandoned their old lives as they knew them, and embarked on the adventure of an unknown future.

The men and women who followed Jesus faced criticism, rejection and persecution. The kingdom they introduced to their world clashed with the structures of power, as it always does. The stoning of Stephen precipitated a violent outburst against followers of the Way. To live for Jesus demanded courage, super-hero kind of courage.

The Help stirs something inside of me. I am deeply moved by the courage of Skeeter to give a voice to the voiceless, to expose the delusions of an unjust social order, to resist lies with the truth.

It’s not like my generation has adopted the values and habits of the kingdom of God. I witness the same hypocrisy and injustices that Jesus and his disciples courageously renounced. So what would it take for me to step out of my comfortable cocoon and bring the kingdom of light into the hallways of darkness like Skeeter did, like Jesus did, like the disciples did?

The same Spirit who filled the disciples fills me. Maybe I am not listening to him. Maybe I am too distracted by the worries of this world to notice the demands of the kingdom. Maybe I’m too afraid to listen or look. Who knows? But I do know that I don’t have to look far to find someone who needs a super hero – or just someone with a little courage.

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POSITIONING FOR THE HARVEST

Posted on June 21, 2012 by stanwiedeman

In the past month, I have had conversations with more than one person who have made the comment that Americans should expect a substantial shift in the status quo in the very near future. The global economy steadily tilts toward instability and collapse, according to many economists.

Many people dismiss these gloom-and-doom predictions as misguided scare tactics used by liberals to attack capitalism and institute a welfare state or socialist government. Who wants to hear more bad news? We are struggling to keep our tiny empires solvent as it is. We don’t want to believe that a massive storm is blowing in from the east, so we choose not to believe it.

Tom Sine’s life course was set in 1970, when he listened to an environmentalist elucidate the effects of human consumption on the ecosystem. That lecture inspired him to study trends in order to help the Church prepare for the future. He has consulted Christian and secular organizations in futures assessment and planning. His work spawned Mustard Seed Associates.

Sine’s recent book, The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time (2008), hopes to multiply the harvest of mustard seeds: the small, insignificant, ordinary people in whom God wants to unleash his Spirit for magnificent ministry for his kingdom. Writing about the challenges of missional church leadership, Alan Hirsch says, “It is getting much harder for their communities to negotiate the increasing complexities in which they find themselves. As a result, the church is on a massive, long-trended decline in the West.” (The Forgotten Ways, 2006) Sine examines some of these complexities, while reporting the innovative and redemptive ways that the new conspirators are addressing them.

The rich-poor divide continues to expand in the unstable economy. The number of millionaires in the world grew from 4.5 million in 1996 to 8.7 million in 2005. That class controls $33.3 trillion of the world’s wealth, double what they wielded in 1996. Billionaires increased from 703 to 946 as did their wealth by 35 percent. In the meantime, income levels of the lower 55% of the world’s inhabitants declined or stagnated in that period.

Most readers do not inhabit in that lower 55%, but have felt the impact of the economic landslide. Elizabeth Warren contends that the working wife sustained middle class status for many families during the ‘70s, 80’s and ‘90s. Although the dual-income family earns much more today than they did in the previous generation, they have less discretionary income and smaller savings accounts. (The Two-Income Trap, 2003).

The Economist reports that savings shrunk from 7% to less than 1% in the 1990s. Many Americans now borrow more than they earn in order to consume what they want, inflating revolving credit card debt by 600% in the last two decades to $750 billion. From 1983 to 2003 bankruptcy filings skyrocketed by 500%. Warren predicted that this trend would result in 5 million families filing bankruptcy in 2010, up from one million in 2003.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) draws attention to the statistic that one in six children in the U.S. are born into poverty.

Warren attributes eight out of ten bankruptcies of families with children to medical expenses, job loss and family breakup. In twenty-five years, the number of uninsured Americans has risen to over 45 million. The household with a median income of $42,409 spends 21% on health-care insurance alone.

Insurance costs amplify about 10% every year, three times the rate of inflation. In 2005, health-care costs soared by 15% to $1.6 trillion. Corporations have stubbornly abandoned health insurance benefits for their employees, increasing their financial burden, while CEO bonuses swell. Legislators plead ignorance and refuse to intervene in the pillaging of American households.

In 1958, the cost of a private college education was $700 per year. Degrees cost more than $30,000 today. Most students walk across the stage to receive their diploma and out of the auditorium to receive a promissory note of $23,000 on average. Many of those graduates cannot find employment and pursue a graduate degree with additional debt. This dramatically affects the college entrance of African American and Hispanic students.

More people are slipping out of the middle class into the abyss of poverty. The feast at the banquet table continues to expand for the wealthy, while the middle class and poor fight over the leftovers and scraps. Printing more currency will not reverse this trend. Amassing more debt will not secure a rescue vehicle.

Sine believes this landscape offers God’s people opportunities to bring God’s kingdom into reality. New Life Covenant Church in Torrance, California launched in 2006 with a vision for reaching out to the needs of the community rather than the needs of the congregation. They gather only twice a week, on Sundays for worship and once in small groups. The small groups habitually identify and meet the needs of people outside the church. This church of several hundred has already spawned three other churches, is funding micro-enterprises in Africa and gives over 30% of their budget to local and global mission.

Stories of kingdom work and transformed lives abound. The mission of Jesus does not rely upon a healthy economy and stable savings accounts. In fact, his kingdom may expand at greater rates when people can no longer construct fairytale castles and mythological worlds for their consumer addictions.

The Church needs to position itself now for the growing harvest, which requires us to get out of the house and start getting dirty.

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THE ANTI-COMMENCEMENT SPEECH

Posted on June 12, 2012 by stanwiedeman

My son wrote on my facebook wall, “Is this a speech you would like to give ;)” “Totally,” I replied. My daughter commented, “Jeff thought you would really like this too dad. He almost sent it to you.” My children know me too well.

“…but here we are on a literal level playing field. That matters. That says something. And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all. Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same. And your diploma… but for your name, exactly the same.

All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special.

You’re not special. You are not exceptional.”

David McCullough, Jr. delivering his speech at the 2012 commencement of Wellesley High School

By this point in his commencement speech for Wellesley High School, David McCullough, Jr. had the audience grinning, giggling, chuckling and chortling. The beloved English teacher continued to make his point with the skill of a semi-truck driver docking his 18-wheeler.

“Contrary to what your U9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing 7th grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.”

McCullough rebutted the noxious self-esteem movement, which has done more to subvert self-esteem than the antics of the Three Stooges. In McCullough’s words, “You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.” Probably eighty percent of high school teachers rose up and called him blessed. The other twenty percent have not taught long enough.

Somewhere in our confused society, a generation of upstarts thought they could parent better than the previous generation. They succumbed to the propaganda of educational theorists who disdained any form of negative reinforcement, including rebuke and reproof (two biblical practices). Experts advocated the path to healthy and whole egos was lined with limitless praise and relentless applause.

“In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another – which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality – we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement.”

“We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.”

Children cannot be blamed for the folly of their parents. Lacking discernment, they will inevitably learn to breathe the air of their environment, regardless of its toxicity. Even if they should do what most aspiring adolescent adults do, question and renounce parental enlightenment, they are still likely to overlook much of the imprudence of their progenitors – and repeat the same mistakes. This means they will still parent out of their “own fear of insignificance” and “dread of mortality,” while using a different poison on their children’s orientation to reality.

Hopefully, the David McCulloughs God dispatches as a prophetic voice to correct the conventional wisdom of the current culture will gain a hearing. Hopefully, something misfires in that adolescent network of synapses when truth challenges their assumptions. Hopefully, the eardrum of the soul resonates when wisdom shouts its protests.

McCullough exhorted, “…I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance. Don’t bother with work you don’t believe in any more than you would a spouse you’re not crazy about …. Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction. Be worthy of your advantages.”

And indeed, those advantages are as numerous as the permutations of their friends on facebook. But those advantages do not guarantee happiness or fulfillment or achievement. Only the generation-resistant, flesh-transcendent, enduring truth can accurately acclimate us to those desirable goals.

McCullough concluded with a morsel of that truth. “Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion – and those who will follow them.

And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special.

Because everyone is.”

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PERSPECTIVE

Posted on June 5, 2012 by stanwiedeman

I attended my last high school graduation when my seventh child graduated last week (although I was reminded that I would probably attend a few grandchildren’s graduations). Each of my children has completed their education through the twelfth grade, at least.

It seemed pretty anticlimactic to me. I mean, there was never any doubt that my children would graduate. The only real variables were their ACT scores and GPA’s. Their graduation was a given. None of them struggled to make it to the platform.

At my daughter’s ceremony, the superintendent instructed the audience to refrain from any audible celebrations for the students when they were called individually. Security personnel were stationed throughout the field house with walkie-talkies, looking for violators. I kept wondering if President Obama was going to show up.

Some people could not restrain themselves. One mother jumped from her seat when her son’s name was called (I am assuming here) and threw her hands in the air, while shouting in jubilation. A security guard in front of her leaned his head toward his radio, pointed at her, then pointed to the exit. She was stunned, but she left, protesting with dirty looks. Everyone around her knew that these people meant business.

Verbal outbursts continued and only a few actually had to leave. I just shook my head at these ill-mannered people. What kind of people cannot respect the decorum of the ceremony? Don’t they realize how unrefined and brutish they appear?

There was a check in my soul. “What kind of arrogance looks down on the behavior of others?”

I do not know the stories behind these diplomas. Maybe some of these students spent countless hours just trying to decipher a language that is not the one spoken in their home. Maybe some had to do homework late at night, after they got off work, trying to help support their single mom. Maybe some parents cajoled and argued with their son or daughter for four years, trying to convince them of the value of education.

The point is, I was interpreting their behavior from my narrow and uninformed perspective. I measured their responses from a fortunate and privileged point of view. This kind of bigotry acts like a security guard for my understanding, preventing any outbursts from tolerance or compassion. How would I have acted if I had walked in their shoes the past twelve years?

How much of life do we live this way? Our limited perspective rushes to judgment. Our dogmatism disguises itself as wisdom. Our egotism masquerades as enlightenment. At least, this is the way it seems to work in my life.

Perspective is everything (well, almost everything). We have to realize that each of us is situated in time and space. Our education overlaps on a venn diagram, but our assumptions and opinions are shaped by so much more than mere education – heritage, neighborhood, generation, ethnicity, parental training (with each parent also situated), siblings (also situated differently from you), peers, extended family, experiences, religion, and the list goes on.

This should caution us from speaking ex cathedra and from acting as judge and jury over anyone. We need to take a dose of humility every morning with our daily supplements. Holding our positions loosely, we should invite dialogue as a way of examining them. If they are true, they will withstand any test. If they are wrong, don’t you want to change them?

This does not mean our perspective can never have certainty or authority. When a position rests on a higher authority, the odds favor its truthfulness. (Even then, the authority is likely to be situated and must withstand the rigors of evaluation.) The more often a position withstands the challenges and tests, the more certainty it accumulates.

At times, I have purposely refused to read certain authors because I knew they would challenge my position. I avoided conversations with people about certain topics because their position differed from mine and I did not want to examine it. I am so adverse to being wrong, that I carefully circumvent controversy. This has left me with an anemic and feeble perspective at times.

I am learning – slowly. My daughter told me that I am not as judgmental as I once was. That was encouraging. I hope her perspective is accurate.

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