April 2024 – Southwest Conference Blog

Keeping the Faith for Passover

When I was five years of age my family moved to a different neighborhood. For a year we stayed in the house of my paternal grandfather, along with my Great Aunt Olive and Uncle Bruce, who lived in his basement.

For 25 years they had worked as missionaries in India, and with Mahatma Gandhi, to build a hospital and a school. In retirement they were living on a $22 a month pension.

My earliest memories include eating pieces of toast with applesauce for breakfast. A simple prayer accompanied the simplest of meals. My Uncle Bruce was a theologian and mathematician.

Listening to what he had to say, about matters of faith and belief, fed my interest in learning. I came to believe that Jesus is the son of man; because Jesus is the best the world has to offer in terms of love, forgiveness, and grace.

Jews were among the first to recognize Jesus as having messianic characteristics. In the teachings of Jesus, Nicodemus recognized Jesus as worthy of the titles: ‘Son of God,’ ‘King of Kings,’ and ‘Prince of Peace.’

When my father, mother, two younger sisters, and I moved to a house of our own, I discovered the Kampner family. We shared a common driveway. I soon realized I belonged in the Kampner household. On Sunday mornings, for over ten years, I waited for the phone to ring, knowing the call meant I would be going with Mr. Kampner to Irving’s Delicatessen in Pontiac, Michigan to buy New York onion rolls, lox, bagels, and cream cheese.

The phone always rang. The Kampner boys, Stan and Paul, were home from the University of Michigan on weekends. I managed to eat as much as they did.

On other occasions I read at Passover seders. The table was set with a place for Elijah. During my first seder, the doorbell rang, just as I asked: “How is this night different from all other nights?” Mr. Kampner told me to go let Elijah come in. It was the paperboy.

Mr. Kampner was president of his Rotary Club. He took me to their annual father and son banquet. He was president of his synagogue too.

On a Friday evening, I walked to services with Mr. Kampner. As I stood with nine Jewish men, Mr. Kampner turned to me and declared: “Jimmy, tonight you are a man, you make our minyan.”

For six decades the Kampner family was part of my life.

Before Mr. Kampner died, I traveled to see Moe and Rose Kampner in California. I sought out Stan, and reconnected with Paul shortly before he died in Chicago. Stan came to visit me.

For two millennia the messiah has come again, and again, season after season; because traditional services remind believers of the life of Jesus, his death, and resurrection. Such historic rites and rituals can lead to understanding, and community.

I last saw Mrs. Kampner in California on the occasion of her 100th birthday. Upon seeing me, she exclaimed: “Jimmy!” “Who’s Jesus?” I said: “Rose, Jesus was a Jew. Christians believe Christ will come again. Since Jews believe the messiah is yet to come, next time around everybody’s happy.”

When I prepared and served the sacrament of holy communion, I wore a Tallit. The prayer shawl of a rabbi invited me to think about the history and traditions that Jews and Christians have in common.

Sometimes I think about what I learned in religious studies, and what I have experienced in relationships with friends and colleagues of various faiths, traditions, and cultures.

When I do think about such things, I recall the kindness and acceptance I experienced in the home of the Kampner family.

Before I moved to Oro Valley, I officiated for the funeral of Ivan Bootzin, in Medford, Wisconsin. The secretary of a rabbi in Wausau helped to prepare me. I wore Ivan’s kippah.

It was the largest funeral in the history of the city. In addition to standing room only, inside the fourth-generation funeral home, dozens more stood outside, in the dead of winter, listening to the service on a loudspeaker.

Jews were pleased, relieved, and satisfied. Christians found the service to be familiar. I had selected prayers we have in common, from the Gates of Prayer for Shabbat and Weekdays.

So, who is Jesus? Jesus is the one who embodies the spirit of God in Christ. Jesus is the one who invites us to love one another in his name. When I am asked if I believe Jesus is the messiah, I say: “Who else you got?”

How We See Each Other

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

There is a German folktale that goes like this: There was once a man whose ax was missing, and he suspected that his neighbor’s son had stolen it. The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief. But one day the man found his ax while digging in his valley, and the next time he saw his neighbor’s son, the boy walked, looked and spoke like any other child. (Feldman, Christina and Jack Kornfield, eds. Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart, 1991).

Have you ever thought about how you look at someone else? Do you meet them and size them up as this thing or that thing? Do you hold the image of someone in your mind based upon their worst action or maybe just the worst action of someone they remind you of? Or are you able to look at others with grace?

And how about yourself? Is it possible to imagine how God must look at you and find yourself using that lovely pair of mercy glasses?

I confess I tend to make judgments on others based upon what I think I see, what I choose to remember, what I imagine to be true. Sometimes I forget that more than one thing can be true about others, about myself and that maybe I have chosen the wrong thing to hold in my heart while in conversation, while at work, while in a relationship.

I like this folktale because it reminds me that too many times I make a judgment about another person and I hold that judgement to be true. Maybe they did steal my ax or maybe I just think they did; regardless, I greet them, speak to them, think of them based upon the narrative I created or cling to.

Sometimes I have been surprised. Sometimes I am face to face with my prejudice, my too-quick sizing up of another, my misguided perception, when someone altogether different from my expectations shows up.

This week, I invite you to try and look at yourself and at others with a new pair of glasses. I invite you to see yourself, other people, other beings, as God must see us all, with love, acceptance, and delight.

You might just be surprised at how wrong you have been. And you might finally recover or find the very thing that has been missing.

Too Many Beets in the Bucket

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

“You got too many,” I tell him. “I know,” he replies, “that’s why I’m thinning them out.”

I watch my husband as he pulls out the tiny red threads from the bucket of soil. A few weeks ago, he threw a handful of beet seeds in a blue plastic bucket and now they’re all springing up. It’s kind of miraculous to bear witness to life bursting from seeds; but it’s also not very productive; it’s not good to plant that many seeds in such a tiny plot of earth.

Beets are one of several cultivated varieties of Beta vulgaris, plants grown for their edible taproots and leaves. We mostly just eat the roots; and if you want a good beet root, you got to give it space. In fact, you need as much, if not more space, to have the root grow into a delicious red ball as you need for the leaves to spread out on top of the ground. Thinning is required to grow this plant.

Author Wayne Muller writes about the need for thinning in his book, Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest. He writes about a friend sharing what she learned about thinning and pruning a garden in a letter she wrote him one spring.

In one of the Sabbath practices found at the end of every chapter, Muller tells the reader, “Frances writes to me: We have an abundance of growing vegetables…I couldn’t believe how you could plant seeds and then all this stuff would just come up with abandon. I knew I needed to thin those turnips and carrots – but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I thought maybe they’ll grow anyway. So I never did thin or prune… They also never did grow. Not one turnip did I get – although there were tons of greens.”

Muller goes on to say that “thinning is, as Francis says, making space for life. We plant so many seeds, and they seem so small, so benign, they take up hardly any space at all. But everything, as it grows, needs space.”

Spring is a great season for planting. It’s a wonderful time to throw out seeds and dream of a plot of land teeming with life. It’s the great season of growth.

But it’s also a great time to be intentional about what we’re hoping to accomplish, what we want growing in our gardens. It’s the season of plenty but it’s also the season of discernment.

As you enjoy the warming of the earth, the green bursting around you, the flowering trees, the blades and stems of bulbs breaking through ground, remember not to try and do too much, plant too many seeds, involve yourself in too many projects. Remember that thinning and pruning, discarding, letting go, is also a part of a healthy garden. Just remember and pay attention to everything you’re agreeing to do; and don’t plant too many beets in the bucket.