Founder's Corner

This viral infection and our response seem to me to be full of irony.  So, here goes just some observations and questions.   

My wife is a non-practicing nurse, retired, and unable to work BUT if she was, I would truly be concerned for her heath.  I saw on the news that over 50 medical doctors in Italy have died due to the virus.  A friend wrote that when a potential patient arrived at a Kenya hospital thinking he had the virus, the staff retreated since they had neither the equipment nor protection. 

I stand in awe of those serving and am so thankful for them.  I am grateful for the actions of our government.  I am fearful that if the virus spreads into the countries of limited resources, we will see a catastrophe the likes of which we have never seen. 

I have always been impressed by hearing the prayers of my African friends and colleagues.  I asked about that one time and was told, “We have to pray.  We have nothing else.  The electric is unreliable, water only comes through the municipal pipes once or twice a week, the roads are bad, corruption is rampant, health care is largely sporadic and unavailable to many of us.”  I pray when I take my daily five mile hikes.

Questions: A few of many, that I would like to ask…

1.       Once infected, are you immune to further infections?  Do we know?  For how long?

2.       What about those taking care of those infected who are at home?  How do they protect themselves? 

3.       Government bailout:  Why should a corporation even receive a bailout?  Government deciding which corporations receive grants and loans sounds a lot like government control.

4.       Is Canada, Denmark, and the UK wealthier than the United States?   Canada is providing C$1,800 per family per month for at least 16 weeks.  Denmark and the UK are providing 75% of wage earners salaries.  I know $1,200 is a lot of money for some, but it really is not much. 

5.       When I visit Meijer it does not seem like much of a “lock down” to me?  When I visit Alger Hardware and Care Link I am met at the door with a questionnaire or refused entry?  Where is common sense?  We need thousands of examples of people practicing common sense solutions.

6.       This is a world crisis, but our news media seems to focus pretty exclusively on us.  What can we learn from South Korea and Singapore for example?  What is happening in other parts of the world?  What is the US doing to help other countries…if anything?

7.       What about our prison population?  High density military quarters? 

8.       I would love to hear more of our faith leaders speak out!  Where are they?

9. I can’t help wondering if Universal Health Care would not have done a better job dealing with this pandemic rather than our present ad hoc system? 

 I want to end this with a quote from Martin Luther, sent to me by a friend

A response from Martin Luther to a plague in the 1500s “I shall ask God to mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and people where my presence is not needed in order to not become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence”  sounds like good advice coming from the CDC nearly 500 years later.

Isaiah 26: 20 “Come my people, enter your chamber, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the wrath is past. 

I tried to attend our small group on Sunday.  We talked Coronavirus instead.  Then I went for a hike…thinking.  I talked with several people.  I watched the news and heard the governor speak.  I read emails from friends about how to be safe, what vitamins to take.  Jan and I spoke about our situation and if we should practice greater social separation.  We prayed as suggested by our president.  I saw a powerful posting on Facebook about the influenza panic of 1918.  Tonight, we listened to the Sixty Minutes presentation on the pandemic.  And the result?

First and foremost, I want to learn something from this experience.  I want to be intentional in so far as that is possible.  I want to be less critical realizing that most people are trying to do the right thing.  I want to practice common sense.  I want to be grateful for those health workers who put their lives on the line. I want to know if God has a message for me (or as a nation).   At the same time, I realize I have little patience for stupid, generally hate bureaucracy, and want to punch someone making political points out of this crisis.  I wonder about all the needs of our nation and suddenly, and with bi-partisan support, we can come up with eight billion dollars when a few people died, while on average there are 20 plus veterans that commit suicide daily.  We have an opioid crisis.  We have kids locked or separated from their parents on the Southern border.  Just saying…

I am not fearful nor am I worrying or losing sleep.  We have food in the house, gas in the vehicles, money in the bank.  Yesterday I sneezed several times in a row, common for me, and wondered if that was the start of the virus in my body.  This evening I was eating Doritos and started to cough.  Jan looked at me suspiciously.  Can I live normally at a time like this?  I am sure that is possible.  What is the learning?  What is the message?  Or is it just a matter of trust (Jeremiah 17:7)?

There are ten passages I found in scripture that talk about plague or pestilence.  It appears God uses this means as punishment.  In the Biblical stories, it does not just happen.  It also appears that God’s people are often the ones that rise up, pleading for the people, and God then, and only then, stops the plague. 

I just finished a book entitled Climate Church, Climate World (How People of Faith Must Work for Change by Jim Antal.  I find it fascinating that this is a global pandemic.  It is not limited to one nation.  I certainly am not making any claims about the purpose of this Corona virus nor what is the best way to stop it, nor that it is related to our stewardship of the Earth.  However, it might be wise for us, as people of faith, to at least ask the question IF there is a message therein, and what the message might be? 

Perhaps you have read a common Facebook posting by CS Lewis regarding the atomic bomb.  I paraphrase the posting and put in the words ‘Corona Virus.’

“How are we to live in a plague and virus infected age?  I am tempted to reply, ’Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed , as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of motor accidents.

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.  Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before Corona and quite a high percentage of us are going to die in unpleasant ways.  We have, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors…anesthetics.  This is just another option for death in a world which already bristles with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. 

Should the virus coming knocking on our door, let it find us doing sensible and human things; praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint, not huddled together like frightened sheep.”

Stay safe,  Best…Always,  Lou 

It was 20 years earlier that I read an article in the Lansing State Journal about someone walking the Appalachian Trail.  I could not shake the image of just walking day after day. 

There are several reasons people want to hike long distance trails and specifically the Appalachian Trail.  There are the casual hikers; those who love a short nature walk, a few minutes away from it all, to say they have been on the trail, or the section hikers who do modest stretches at a time.  These are the holiday hikers, the one day or overnight campers. 

It is the fanatics who endeavor to thru hike it regardless of experience, resources, or obstacles. There is the physical challenge.  The fact is that there is enough reason to make the attempt to climb the mountains, endure the pain, and walk over 2,000 miles.  It is the physical challenge and accomplishment. There is great satisfaction in knowing I was able to build up my strength, endurance, and had the mental discipline to achieve something most people will not even attempt.

The second category of people are those who simply need a time of reflection.  It is taking a break from life. There are numerous life events that trigger this need.  It can be divorce, death, illness, loss of job, mid-life search for a deeper purpose, spiritual searching, unemployment, and such. It surely is a time of asking deep questions.  It may not always bring answers but often brings a sense of peace and purpose.

My hiking had to have a higher purpose than the walk alone, as good and rewarding as that may be.  Before starting out, I wrote letters, articles for magazines, emails, and speeches, all with the purpose of seeking support for the hike.  Pledges were made, and money was raised… Over $115,000 went for business and community development programs in Africa.

Growing up on a small 60-acre dairy farm in South West Michigan gave me ample opportunity to hunt, fish, and explore all our neighboring farm fields and woods.  My high school friend, Armond, and I used to spend afternoons smoking his grandpa’s cigars in the woods. I had never done any long-distance hiking, nor even thought about it, but the hiking seed had been planted.

I was attracted to the loneliness of the adventure, the challenge, the opportunity to reflect, and even the little glory that one might receive having walked an unimaginable distance.  It was achievable. When the time came to think about raising money for Africa development programs and taking something so common as walking and making it mean something, I became committed.

I remember a person in Limpopo Province, South Africa, taking me to a sacred place where young boys were kept for two weeks for circumcision.  I was so impressed at being unimpressed. There was absolutely nothing special about the place, a place that was secret to the public. It was only sacred because a decision had been made to make it so. 

Nothing is more common in our lives than bread and in ancient times, wine.  Yet these common food items have become sacraments in the Christian faith. The common became sacred.

For me, the Appalachian Trail became the central point of reflection, a metaphor of life.  It was an opportunity to ditch the mundane and embrace the moment, but also intentionally impact the world.  The little dirt path in the woods became “holy” ground for me, much more than the regional values anchored in the communities along the way, good as they were.

I wanted to make a statement and do something worthwhile, significant.  One way to do that, I thought, was to do something that all poor people do.

In the poorer African communities, everyone walks. It is common for women and children to rise early in the morning and walk a mile or more to collect the water they will drink and wash with before the sun rises.  Nor is it uncommon to see children walk several miles to and from school every day. Farmers walk miles to and from their scattered farm fields and young boys and men walk dozens of miles shepherding their sheep, goats, and cattle.  How could we more closely identify with the poor than walking, raising money for development programs, and being engaged in worldwide partnerships?

What I soon discovered was that long distance hiking is also an inward journey.  Since you carry everything on your back, you soon discover what is important and shed the unnecessary, heavy, and luxury items.  There is also internal baggage we carry. Resentments, intolerance, pride, self-indulgence are slowly eliminated and hopefully dropped forever. 

It was only after I completed the trail that I realized something more intangible.  I wanted to discover the wisdom, sadness, beauty, happiness, and transcendence of life, all of which seemed to be lurking in the wilderness.  Perhaps, it was all within my soul. I just needed to remove the cobweb of distractions to discover more significant truths.

Africa

It hit me between the eyes and right in my heart when I read what a friend wrote in her South Africa reflection.

“This place, my work…this family has changed my life to the core.  They have taught me to open my eyes to the world — to fully see the beauty and sweetness of raw life, to embrace brokenness in order to become whole and alive.  Working with the poor is not glorious — in a sense of feeling warm fuzzies because I made someone smile today or tried to play the role of God or Santa Claus in their life — those things are fake.  Caring for the poor is easy, it’s knowing the poor that ties you in knots.

It forces me to wrestle with tough questions that I didn’t have to before because they were hidden by my privilege, by my whiteness, by my ignorance.  To be honest…it stings…this whole refining process…sometimes I wish I could just purge parts of my identity out of me.  Why is it that I have grown up to reduce Christianity to judgment, morality, tradition and even habit? Yes, it is about having an authentic relationship with Christ, but why did I slap my neighbor in the face by doing nothing?  When my poor brothers and sisters read the scriptures, they cling to Jesus’ words when he speaks about the poor — why am I finally waking up to them? Because I grew up in suburbia does that mean that these verses don’t apply to me?  That I can simply reduce them to charity if I have time?

God is teaching me that engaging with these complicated, integrated issues of poverty (oppression, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, illiteracy, exploitation, poor housing, crime, hunger, exclusion…) is not optional for someone who claims to follow Christ — it is a mark of a Christian.  In this life I have been born into a land of plenty and my privileged skin has given me a voice — how am I going to speak, and will it be worthwhile? Repenting of this ugliness inside me is only the first step — how am I going to live the rest of my life? Ali Jacobs October 22, 2007.

That was the central question I asked myself every day of the walk and continue to do so.

The question asked was, “What kind of legacy do you want to leave?” That is such an easy question to answer because without trying or thinking, we all leave a legacy whether we want to or not. The hard part is whether the legacy has any value, merit, or enduring value?

The question asked was, “What kind of legacy do you want to leave?” That is such an easy question to answer because without trying or thinking, we all leave a legacy whether we want to or not. The hard part is whether the legacy has any value, merit, or enduring value?