Preachers and the Pulpit
Preachers and the Pulpit
For the majority of my early years, I grew up in the Broadway Nazarene Church in NE, Iowa. Broadway Church was part of my grandmother’s life and my parents before they married. If story is recalled correctly, my aunt Marlys introduced my parents at this church. The church was family, before I was brought into this world. The church was where my brother Lyle would charm the elderly and leave Sunday service with quarters in his pocket. Our minister’s family of eight children became our family and still is. With huge steep front steps, in later years, it is where my grandmother one evening would black out and roll to the bottom like a rag doll, spared from serious injury that night. Dedications, vacation bible school, and Sunday’s if I managed to “act” right a friend might be able to come to the house for the afternoon. A few steadfast rules of the house were – if you were too sick to be in church, your day was over, and three times a week until you were 14, then it was your choice of attendance. Church was the social forum of our family. Looking back, I can appreciate the efforts of my parents during those years, which gave me the chance to view religion and yet form my own decisions from the choices, which were made. I was the one who at 14, decided it was not my direction in life. My other four siblings, one became Baptist, one chose to follow the church of my parents, one converted to Catholic and one became a Mormon. All diverse choices made from early years of exposure in the church.
The church in my earliest years of memory, when still small enough to stand in the pew to view the pulpit – I remember how the sermons seem to revolve around the political issues of the 60’s and personal issues of the minister. Many times when I did not feel the same as what I was hearing – a quick comment of my own would be met with my mother instructing me to “sit down!” Sit down and listen – after all this was God’s messenger speaking, so regardless of personal views he might have, God must have led him to speak? Hmm… Still largely, disagree with that teaching. Many spiritual messengers of this time, still closely tie their political beliefs with being God given messages to be expressed. I am not saying I am without political opinion – I just believe even my own political opinions rise from judgment rather than from the spiritual side. The judgment relayed as the message of God in any name, I have yet to find born of compassion or unconditional love.
In our backyard when I was growing up, we had a slight slope across the yard, which made a ridge. Being young enough and not yet in school, I remember going outside and sitting on that ridge, looking at the sky with so many questions. I felt I did not have to “die” to be born, so why would I have to “die” to be a part of the sky again? I seen the clouds and sky as the heaven I was told about in church and God as everything I was looking at. If he could be so many places at once – then he must be all places in my mind. Being more of a great spirit, then just a figurative God as one person. Moreover, if God was all places, why could not all people just have one church? If he was everything, why would God care about only certain politics or churches more than others would? What I saw and what I was taught from a very early age, just did not find an alliance of meaning. Many Sundays became my day of not being able to do anything – when I would choose to call in sick for church.
My parents each lived their beliefs differently, which kept the perspective in thinking alive in the early years. My mother would be the one to carry the preaching through the week, where my father was one who would teach life lessons from his own beliefs. Very much living an external and internal faith in the way they represented themselves in life. My Dad taught accountability and responsibility per your actions, while Mom taught accountability and responsibility with more of a God will punish you approach. Both influenced by the pulpit and expressed differently. However, each Sunday as we drove my grandmother home from church, as soon as the car doors were closed and the car put in gear, an argument in relation to politics and the sermon would ensue between my father and grandmother. Which would end immediately, upon the ride ending with each saying pleasant goodbyes, almost like a Sunday ritual to vent their systems and go about the week?
Our town has a pulpit every square mile with very few being of the same belief. Take this same ratio worldwide and the pulpits of the world do create separation of God and people coming together. Pulpits in the form of mission work spread out across the world and cultures in the hopes of converting another people and culture to being right in the eyes of another. The wars of our world each have a culture pulpit fueling political beliefs, as the judgment of one over another finds and etching into the square miles of this planet, easing out a faith of peace into reform and conversion to the thoughts and judgments of another. Voices of silence and prayer in the fields of other countries and cultures, which have prevailed longer than history has recorded, becoming bloodied with the new word attempting to become the only word. With all resting below the beautiful skies, which people have lost focus on for the voice of righteous? Above as it is below? With only one Sun in the sky, which is visible, or one moon that shines across the world at night undivided due to culture or belief – that is the pulpit of the heavens. When clouds segregate from harmony, the sky changes… When beliefs separate from harmony – the world changes. We watch the clouds in creating a continual transformation of patterns and awe to be viewed, yet we are not able to create the same transformation as humans in awe of transformation. God has one energy – yet many names and transformations given as truth – you! Only we can change this world and release the judgments we have assigned on others, free will in the name from the pulpit – God’s/Your will. On this eve of 09.01.11, look for the peace you can bring to your world – do this in the name you assign to your creator. It is your choice and your pulpit of the energy you were given. You are the preacher and the pulpit, given birth in your name in full accountability and responsibility of your spiritual self. Life is a review – how are you doing?
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