Worship Service – April 1 – Pastor Dave

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Field Trip: Madison

News018 Field Trip Madison

For December 1, 1989.

Pastor Dave wrote the following article December 1, 1989 for a newspaper column.  Pastor Dave had lived in Marinette for about two years, having moved there from Waukesha.  Not long ago he told the story of the “Leopard Lady” in Sunday’s adult education as an example of the vice of vain glory – where we attempt to find meaning simply by having people notice us.  He promised to look for it, and he found it.  Here it is:

Field Trip:  Madison

People should travel.  Better yet people should take field trips.  A field trip is an encounter with the “out there” not yet personally experienced.  Field trips tend to broaden horizons because they cast light in two directions: forward and back.  We get to charge forward touching, feeling and tasting the novel, but we also are allowed to see how the new experience reflects back on where we come from.  This happens when we discern the spiritual essence of a place.  It is much like panning for gold.  We wash lots of sand through our screens until we have a few nuggets from the new frontier that enrich our lives.

For instance, I had never experienced life on a large university campus until I took a field trip last week.  I was attending the University Extension Service at Madison for some continuing education.  This in itself would not have qualified for a field trip, but I did not confine myself to the classroom.  I hit the streets, looked into peoples’ faces, went where they lived, ate, studied and tried to intuit for myself what life at the University of Wisconsin Madison would be like.  Casting my flashlight forward into this new world, I dashed into an environment I had not previously experienced. Following are some of the nuggets I panned.

Madison is exhilarating.  There were people everywhere dressed in anything.  Imagine bulletin boards stretching a hundred feet filled with layer upon layer of past events.  Few remove out of date notices.  They simply staple over them.  What an archeology project!  This bulletin board would be enough to fuel a thousand page book for some future Michener.

Bulletin boards attract people, all kinds of people.  There was a street preacher at 7:30 in the morning dressed in a Bucky Badger sweater shouting out his message in the chilly air.  It didn’t matter that no one was listening, or even that I was the only person in the court yard.  He went smashing ahead, decrying organized religion, Richard Nixon and trying to equate the two.  His voice seemed to stay with me as I strode rapidly away.  I turned to glance over my shoulder only to see him cupping his hands to his mouth and yelling all the louder, aiming his words over my head so they could cascade down on me like spray from a garden hose.

One should never look over their shoulder in Madison.  I tripped over a bicycle anchored firmly to a parking meter right on the side walk.  Or at least that’s I think it was a bike.  Apparently bikes aren’t safe in Madison.  The handle bars had been removed by the owner, as had the pedals, brakes, both wheels and the seat.  It would have taken a paleontologist to reconstruct what this bike fossil might have looked like.  There were many bikes in the same condition.    People were walking by as if it were nothing to carry your bike seat, wheels, along with your books.  Ho hum.

Everywhere there was something new to observe.  There was a young artist clutching a canvas bag which harbored a painting.  I wondered what kind of art she painted, what style?  I tried to judge by her face.  Whatever it was she prized it as she carefully manipulated the bag to avoid the fossil bikes and people in her path.  Even a new born infant is handled with no more care.

And then there was the lady in the leopard suit.  You don’t see that north of Green Bay.  It was like someone had skinned a leopard and she stepped inside.  You might even mistake her for a zoo escapee if she would have penciled on some whiskers.  This definitely was a head turner.   The Madison natives, however, seemed unimpressed.  I was the only one whose head was on a swivel.  Perhaps they had seen Leopard Lady before.  After a time one takes radical novelty for granted.  Ho hum.

Leopard Lady was looking intently into the face of every person she saw, trying to gauge their reaction, trying to see in their face some response to her costume.  She reminded me of a butterfly in a meadow, flitting from flower to flower trying to find some nectar to draw into her being.  For whatever reason, she needed to find meaning in a stranger’s eyes.  She needed to have people think: “Yes this is most unusual,  this leopard lady, you must be a most eccentric person, perhaps very intelligent, but whatever you are, I notice you and I confirm the fact that you are alive, and I am quite taken with whatever you are.”  In my eyes the leopard lady found what she needed.  I never saw a leopard lady before.  She lingered a while before walking into the bank past an eight person line waiting to use the Tyme machine.  These people were not smitten by costumes.  Perhaps you have to be on a field trip to be smitten.

Well it was exhilarating, and I wondered if I would want to live there someday as I ate marvelous pizza in a very interesting setting.  I watched a veteran pastor and one newly ordained debate some issue over their sausage and cheese with extra sauce.  The steam rose between them as they leaned into each other, fog forming on their glasses.  There were discussions, works of art, interesting happenings everywhere.  Just don’t trip over dismembered bikes.

I stayed with a good friend who loves Madison, but also loves Marinette.  They have a cottage here and every opportunity they return to it like a ball on an elastic tether.  You can’t get too far away without being snapped back.  He fishes Green Bay in his boat Grey Beard.  There is something here in the north that he needs.

It came time to return from the field trip with my gold memory nuggets.  Driving, I found that the north country was pulling me back where I belong.  Madison illumined Marinette in a new way for me.  Even though I enjoyed Madison, something about the experience had me longing for home.  I was trying to understand the feelings as I drove on in the night on County Y. The stars were shining over the Bay and its marshy edges.  Flying over head were the blazing northern lights, dancing spikes of green and white, a crown over the woods and streams proclaiming that: “This place is royalty.  We’re short on leopard suits, but for those on field trips there nuggets to be found in this land and on her waters.”  Madison was phenomenal but now I was glad when the long pine fingers reached out and welcomed me home.  A forest holding me in the palm of its hand.

David L. Echelbarger

Tree?

I was out for an early morning run, when off the path a tree caught my eye.  I stopped for a moment and looked at the mature oak.  It was surrounded by a skirt of buckthorns and I had to part the branches to get to it: like a jungle.  Only then did it come fully into view.  The trunk rose straight from the ground for about six feet before the first branch jutted out exactly perpendicular to the earth.  That is what drew me to the tree.

If I was young, I would return here again and again.  Surely, I would part the buckthorn and walk to this secreted tree. It could be my fort. It would become my friend.  The branch above my head presented any number of possibilities.  It could be a horse to ride, the back of an elephant or a base or a tree house.  If I was a child, I would devote myself to this tree.  I would return to it again and again: trying to figure out how to reach that branch, the next level.  Perhaps I’d toss a rope and pull myself up?  Construct a ladder?   I would reason it out.  I would get there and that tree, that tree, would be summer for me.  I have known many such trees.

 ***

The child sat in front of the flickering screen.  He had not been outside for days.  His fingers flew over the keys, his right hand shooting out to grab the mouse. His eyes were fixed on the game he was playing.  He would devote his entire summer trying to arrive at the next level.  The score climbed higher, as summer passed.  He had known many such games.

Authentic Yooper Certification Conveyed to Pastor Dave

In the June newsletter, Pastor Dave wrote about his grandson’s, John Grover Rector, birth.  In it he bemoaned the fact that he was never given an honorary Yooper certificate even though he lived in the U.P. for 16 years.  John Grover Rector, however, was born in the U.P. and then could be what his grandfather never could: an authentic Yooper.  You can read about it the June 2011 newsletter.

Pastor Dave sent a copy to the Scanlon’s, members of his former parish, in the U.P.  Here is their response:

Hi Dave,

We enjoyed your article.  Congrats on the birth of your grandson, an authentic Yooper, lucky guy!  We did a lot of thinking about why you were never awarded “Honorary Yooper” and wanted to share our reasons with you.  Be sure to read to the bottom (we know you will).

We were ready to give you Yooper status but:

When we took you to the Butler Theatre you complained about not finding 4 good seat cushions in a row.

Soon afterward:

We noticed you didn’t fully embrace the state of Michigan when we saw you flying the green and gold flag.

We thought you might earn it:

When you put a sauna in your basement only to find out that it was electric, not wood.

You were so close when:

You invited us all to your house for Oktoberfest.  The brats, beans and brownies were good but where was the pasty?

We were positive you were going to earn it:

When you moved out on 510.  But, then we heard you were sneaking into Marquette for some culture.

Oh, so close:

When you continued to drink our coffee. But, we caught on to how you were trying to expose us to the rest of the world with those coffee beans.

For sure it was yours:

When you were proud to drive around in Pastor Rudy’s truck but instead of adding more duct tape, you had to buy a newer one.

We gave you another chance:

And took you fishing on Rocking Chair Lake in June during a snowstorm.  Yet, you got stuck in waist deep mud and had to be helped out.

On your own merit we thought you had it:

But in checking out your CD collection we didn’t find “The Jack Pine Savage” by Da Yoopers.

Even the congregation wanted you to earn Yooper status:

So they did a critical review of your last 3 sermons.  The content was Biblically sound but not once did they hear the word, “eh”.

So Dave,

It took a small child, your grandchild, to earn you the status of “Honorary Yooper”.  You see, Dave. You couldn’t do it on your own.  It was the miracle of a child.  You now have “Yooper blood” in your family.

Therefore,

We bestow upon you the status of “Honorary Yooper”.

Watch for your certificate in the mail. It may take awhile as the mail truck only comes through once a week.

Your friends and Authentic Yoopers (this makes it valid),

Walter and Connie

2011 Easter Vigil Sermon – New Birth

Mary Magdalene, the scripture says, stood “near the cross.” And yet it must have felt as though she was a million miles away. She was there but could not reach him. She could do nothing.
It was in those moments that she hatched her plan. If she could not save him, she could at least bury him. And bury him well. At that moment she became a determined person with a single objective. That became her trajectory, her mission. We have our missions and our trajectories. We are all trying to accomplish something and we are determined. But life has a way of throwing us huge curves. Then what? What happens when our trajectory stops?
Mary’s was determined. I know something of determined women. Two of them are together right now. My wife staying with my daughter and her husband as Anna recovers from a C section that brought our grandson into the world. Christine is helping Anna get through finals week where she is a nursing student at Lake Superior State. I think Christine will come home someday – just last night she inquired if she had any flowers up and then she asked about the state of the house. I told her about the flowers.
My daughter is a determined woman as well. You have to be, to ride horses over big cross country jumps. Determination.
Mary Magadalene was a determined woman on a mission to appropriately bury Jesus. It was dark? No problem. The stone? We will deal with that when the time comes. Her determined trajectory carried her on.
My daughter was a downhill ski racer in high school. Anna is a small person, barely cresting 5 feet. One of her team mates once joked to her: “I can hear your voice, but I can’t see where it is coming from.” To which she replied: “The world could not handle a bigger me.” As her father, I tend to agree.
My daughter had a birth plan. No one wanted to deliver her baby naturally more than she. She studied, trained, and was prepared. She talked with us about it over and over, sent us books and videos. I learned a great deal – a lot more than I ever wanted to know. If ministry doesn’t work out, I can now deliver babies.
Anna told us: “I was sleeping soundly. And I heard someone call my name. “Anna,” the voice said. “It woke me up and I discovered the water had broken.” But there was no one to call her name because she was alone on the farm. Her husband was gone. He owns his own trucking business was delivering steel to Minneapolis. The day before they had been advised that the baby would not come for at least a week, so he left for a there and back trip.
Anna called her friend Tiffany who is a mid-wife and lives a couple of miles away. She would drive Anna to the hospital forty-five minutes away. Tiffany’s husband was gone too. Tiff’s car wouldn’t start. She jumped started it. Daniel, Anna’s husband, was racing home from Minneapolis. Christine was in the car heading up. I would follow in three hours after I settled some church things. We all were converging. She had no family with her. Her plans were falling apart. The trajectory she anticipated was stopped. What do we do then? Anna’s determined so she adjusted to a new trajectory.
The baby was breach, no chance of a normal delivery, but she put off the C section in hopes her husband could arrive. He would not. Yet another change. The baby was about to be born and so she went into surgery. She gave strict instructions not to reveal the sex of the baby to anyone including herself until Daniel arrived then they would look together.
Christine arrived just in time and heard the baby’s 1st cry and so did I since I was talking with Christine on the cell. Anna’s husband arrived an hour later and together they shared the moment of discovery! A boy. A day of changing plans, and trajectories for us all.
Mary Magadalene finds the stone rolled away. Two angels are inside. They don’t phase her. She’s a determined woman on a mission to bury Jesus. She demands to know where he is. Nowhere in the bible does anyone encounter angels with such nonchalance. There is no fear. No falling on the ground. She’s on a given trajectory. She runs into the gardener and she starts questioning him about a body. And then Jesus stops her in her path. Stops her predetermined trajectory and once she stops, he calls her name (Mary) and she sees Jesus is no longer a million miles away, but present. Her life is remade for ever. On that first Easter Day Jesus stops our well intended determined lives to give us what we cannot give ourselves, a new kind of life.
My daughter had been on a number of trajectories. What do we do when our trajectories are stopped? We look for the presence of Jesus.
I wondered how it would be for my daughter, now that all her expectations had stopped for her. I was with her throughout the day as she held her son and I watched revelation happen. “This is unbelieveable.” she said in sheer wonder: “I actually have a baby.” (no longer a million mile away but present). Then at the end of that tumultuous day she pulled herself up and announced: “You know, this has been a Great Day! It wasn’t what I planned, but it has been a Great Day!” The day began when she heard her named called in the morning. Truly she had never been alone. Now holding her baby, the encounter with her son helped re-make her experience. Our encounter with Jesus remakes everything.
We are on our predetermined paths. We adjust, we are determined. But there comes a moment when we can’t deliver for ourselves and our trajectories jerk to a stop. And there, stopped looking for direction, we encounter Jesus. He calls our name and our eyes open to the dawn of a Great Day. That is Resurrection! Amen.