A nice letter from my mom, to her mom, as a Mother’s Day Gift, May, 1955. Found it while going through my granny’s Bible. Words to live by. 2 pdf files. Pages 1 & 2 of the letter in the first. Page 3 and a copy of the envelope in the second. You might enjoy this.
Category Archives: Central Community
Songs of Joy…
“They will come home and sing songs of joy…” Jeremiah 31:12
I believe it.
April 7, 2016 – Just week’s shy of his 100th birthday – our Uncle Mark Denton, the serious looking young man on the right – standing with his brothers – the quartet getting ready to sing…
slipped into eternity. 
He hadn’t been ill. Just the day before he was planning a trip with Barbara, his wife of over 31 years, but he fell… as 99 year old men are prone to doing… hit his head – was rushed to the hospital and was gone by 2am the following morning.
A life so very long. A man who loved and worked so completely. Gone. The last of 9 children to go Home. Finally Home. Can’t begin to imagine the celebration and stories on the other side with “that great cloud of witnesses.”
The Denton Brother’s Quartet is together again. More importantly, they have a “foursome,” ready for Heavenly links or whatever might happen in Heaven.
Uncle Mark’s hard head was almost mythical in nature and family lore. As a little boy, riding in from a day of hunting with his brothers, he didn’t get his head low enough as they came into the barn. Knocked off the horse. Knocked out cold. Vision nearly gone, the family gathered and prayed over him, kept poultices on his eyes, and waited weeks for healing. Once on the golf course with Dad, their brother Glen and Jim Minnis, he was caught by an errant golf ball while standing in a tee station. A sliced line drive, it ricocheted off his head with the sound of a foul ball off a broken bat and dropped him to his knees. After hovering over his unconscious body for just a bit – the others were able to get in their drives before nursing him through the final holes in and for medical treatment.
The final hit to the head took him or perhaps something was happening inside that caused him to fall but he was gone within 12 hours. The past year had taken it’s toll. Mark Jr, his oldest son, passed away last August. I imagine today’s a very lonely day for his remaining son, my cousin Doug, his wife Katie and their children as well as for his daughter-in-law Karen.
Uncle Mark’s first marriage lasted over 40 years. It’s final months were spent lovingly caring for Aunt Velda as she lost her battle with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). When he moved out to California after her death and then began courting our lifetime friend Barbara Holiday – many thought they were crazy. They’ve been crazy in love for over 30 years and discovered unexpected happiness with each other. God is too good.
Uncle Mark, (that’s Mark on the far left, Barbara just behind him, Jim, Joanne and the rest of us – at Mark Jr’s funeral, July, 2015) the last of our parent’s generation, is gone. He takes with him an interesting bit of trivia – he was among – if not the closest living relative of President Abraham Lincoln, our first cousin. The mantle has now been passed to our generation. More importantly, he takes with him the last voice of witness that lifted us up as children – of simple stock – to believe in no ordinary kingdom – but that we were called to follow Jesus and by His Grace live as citizens of The Kingdom of God. The passing of that eternal mantle also falls on us. So great a gift.
An older friend once told me “Your father and his brother’s… the Denton’s, they’re like the Kennedy’s of the church!” I thought to myself “yeah, without the money!” Looking back on our lives, impacted by the witness of such great men, our heritage is priceless. Much of that was carried with such dignity by Uncle Mark – a veteran, pastor, educator, husband, father, grandfather, uncle
and to all of us – all who knew them – a brother… the youngest brother…
The Quartet’s together again, impossibly, Joanne’s even at the piano and as my cousin Jeannene said this morning “They’re all finely in tune again!” So thankful for so great a heritage. So thankful for Uncle Mark.
So thankful for the life and example of Uncle Mark.
“They will come home and sing songs of joy…”
I’ll meet you in the morning.
The Life We Never Imagined
My life is different than I’d once imagined it would be, not certain if that’s a universal experience. Is your life what you started out to make it? Did you have an image of where you’d be, what you’d be doing at your current age?
I don’t think I did. Me, in my 60’s, still doesn’t feel like reality, and I’m living it.
Frontloading… doing all the fun stuff first… that’s rarely the way I attack a situation – not even a dinner plate – I’m the one who eats around what I enjoy most, saving the best for last. Examining my time off, travel, time surfing, it would be easy to imagine that I was frontloading and saving all the hard stuff for later on… when maybe I’d be ready for hard stuff.
Some afternoons I’m surrounded by people speaking Spanish that I can’t follow or respond to – we embrace – I put gas in my car, out of my paycheck, to spend several hours driving just for a couple of hours passing out paychecks, money for bills and food, sitting at a table with friends and eating, watching abandoned children play in the safety of the home we built them… it’s an amazing thing…
Some evenings, into the depths of the night, I stand with friends in the heart of urban poverty. Darkness so complete that it chases all but the craziest, the hungriest, the desperate… far from our circle… and we embrace… I shake hands and speak to dozens and dozens of people… I sing out loud – old songs – tell corny jokes – lift my arms and lead those lost in pain to The Lord in prayer. They accept me. We spend an hour or so together on the sidewalks of what was once skid row like the old friends some of us are – some of us have known each other in our weekly one hour gathering for decades – and good things happen where they shouldn’t really… it’s a miracle… so ephemeral that some nights it seems like it must be impossible.
I bury people. Stand at their gravesides and say the final words before a family gets into their cars and says the most difficult so long’s that are ever said – knowing the separation will be impossible to bear. Today it will be Betty. A wonderfully loving mother of friends I hold so dear to my heart. We’ll gather like family. Laugh. Cry. Say goodbye. This couldn’t be me…
Hope. Practical… in a way that applies to the most complex theological issues we face as the created. I strive to bring Hope that heals, holds, reconciles and reconnects. Friday – Good Friday – The Message of the cross. Sunday, Easter Sunday – celebrating the resurrection and our invitation to say “Yes!” to a life that’s bigger than anything we could ever imagine. Life Big enough to salve our heartbreak with Real and Healing Hope, today, forever… I’ll do it this weekend and Lord willing I’ll do it again next weekend. Weekends… It seems like we’d eventually begin to get it right. Not sure why God uses me… except that I said “Yes.” I’m pretty sure that’s what He wants from all of us. “Yes.”
Don’t even remember what the life I once imagined might have looked like… mainly because my blessings… countless blessings… have washed that old life away. I don’t miss it. Wouldn’t trade one afternoon with the people I love in Mexico, the friends I love in the heart of our city, the fellowship I share in our incredible church – a small part of God’s Great Big Kingdom – for even one of those imaginary moments… as fun as they may have once seemed.
My family – in more ways than I’ll ever begin to comprehend – has played such a vital role in making the miracle the life I’m experiencing possible. Each of them, at some point, embraced the incredible calling on our hearts as that of their own. They’ve traveled, served, loved, sacrificed and laughed… giving themselves wholeheartedly to our adventure together. Some moments it feels as if my life, my being, my becoming is a celebration of all their greatest hopes for me.
I stood in the road as our 2 year old grandson refused to – or struggled to call me “grandpa.” He called me “gramp.” Laughing, smiling, almost teasingly with eyes that sparkled he called me “gramp.”
And I felt like a million bucks.
Examine all that’s good in your life. Not the threatening stack of bills or the loss that refuses to let go of your heart… but all that’s good in your life and celebrate. Let God awaken the adventure that was dead within you and enter into this Easter weekend with new Hope. Hope built on the many blessings that you never imagined. They’re there if you’ll take a moment to look for them.
Wonder in this: God, The Uncreated One, loves us and wants to open that which is blind in us to new life. God, The Alpha and Omega, Beginning and the End, is inviting us to a bright morning with the adventure we were created to live out – the one we never imagined – it’s waiting still for the first page to be turned if we’ll only say “Yes.” God, The Great I Am, is inviting us to each other… to a new unity we’ve yet to discover… to love… pervasive and impossible in its power to open eyes, heal and restore that intangible something that we continue to miss in our lives so filled with the meaningless.
We belong together. It’s at the core of each of our earliest hopes, dreams and imaginings. We’re being invited to The Celebration of Creation. RSVP when you feel His Hand on your heart. Say “Yes” to the life that fulfills the dreams we’ve never dared to dream. It’s who you were created to become. It’s why we so desperately need a resurrection. Incredibly… You’re Invited!
Learning to Say “Yes!”
16 year old me – wandering Europe – on adventure!
My parents said “yes.” They gave me money. They drove me to airports, loaded me into vw buses and even dropped me on the side of high desert roads to take off into the wild unknown – often without a return date – no cell phone, internet, any guarantee of future contact. Mom would kiss me and ask “Do you have enough medication?” Dad would give me a hug and say something like: “Don’t forget to call your mom sometime.” Tell me he loved me – maybe slip me another $20- and I’d be off.
My buddy Brad (a frequent traveling companion in my youth) and I were talking the other day about our parents. All of them are gone, with the exception of Mrs. Delk, in her 90’s, in a rest home. In so many ways our folks were different as night and day: Brad’s dad was a lawyer who flew an airplane, mine? a preacher who drove a Rambler. Brad’s folks wandered off and tried things like EST. Mine wandered off until they knew the backstreets of almost every town in Europe (and the world for that matter) and always dreamed of standing one more time on the Ponte Vecchio… anywhere beautiful… away…
But our parents were alike in one way that forever changed us. When we wanted to go, they said “yes.” They encouraged it. They wept through it. They prayed over it. They said “Yes.”
As a society, we say “No” far too often as our children become young adults. We stifle their creativity, self worth, independence, personal determination and spirit of adventure.
We don’t own our children and as they age one of our primary tasks as parents is learning how to let them learn and become on their own – trying and hard as it is to watch, failing and trying again.
Life is a dangerous and risky adventure. Protecting our children from discovering that life that is their’s to live is even more dangerous and risky.
Before my teen years we heard the word “NO” plenty around our house. We also learned the value of doing “the right thing” and to “remember who you are.” On many adventures, in an age before GPS, in foreign lands and unknown places, I discovered that those two important lessons could be my “north star” that would always lead me home.
Palm Sunday, Easter, these days that were filled with so much in the home of my childhood, always make me remember the lessons I learned and make me wish I’d said “Yes!” to my children a little more often. They’re both so brilliant, wonderful and filled with life. I pray I didn’t stifle any of the adventure out of them.
And I remember all the times I headed out the front door – not knowing when I’d be coming back, sometimes not knowing where I was going – but leaving with the security of having parents who somehow, somewhere deep within, longed to nurture my sense of adventure, hugged me with worried, yet loving faces and said “Yes!”
I’m saying “Yes!” to the adventure out ahead of me in the days to come. Hope you will too. There’s so very much of life yet to live.
“Yes!”
when family speaks…
Our nephew Derek Hamer, now 18, he and his brother adopted out of poverty in Kenya by my sister Kathleen Hamer and her husband Dan, tell’s his story. Moving all in it’s own right.
If you’ve adopted children or if you’re adopted, or may be considering adoption, watch Derek’s story – like he says – it’s not finished yet – but will surely touch your heart.
So proud of you, as you share your story, and always.
Uncle Eric
the past… coming back to bless us
“Sometime’s we’re confused about what Angel’s are.”
Great opening line. If that doesn’t catch your attention at the beginning of a message I don’t know what will. Isn’t everyone a little confused about angels? My translator… boy did he move well with it.
Pastor Ken McDaniel recently came across some video of work from one of our trips to Kenya, a decade ago. It’s been fun to see the faces of old friends, remember moments we shared, to pray over folks that have meant so much to me and to wonder where they are today and how they’re doing.
Among the video is a message I preached in a little church in the city of Kitale. Telling the story of Gideon – when God called on him to be a “mighty warrior” I encourage the congregation to step out for God – bringing their challenges and fears – trusting God to deliver a great victory. It’s the heart of the story.
Watching myself – my ten year younger self – I was moved by the message and felt compelled to go to God again in my fear. It was as if God had hidden this message like an Easter egg – waiting to be found, opened… – and deliver a blessing, again.
Your past doesn’t always have to haunt you. Sometimes it comes back to bless us. It happened to me, today. It can happen to you as well. Watch, listen, surrender your fears and let God lift you up. The message and His victory is eternal. He’s Inviting us to step out on His terms and say “Yes.” Don’t miss your moment.
Simple Moments…
A couple of minutes with my dad and even an interruption from mom about phone calls from my brother Danny and one from me – Spring, 2001.
I don’t know what’s become of all the video tape that was made across the years – especially Christmas Eve with family – as mom and dad started to age. Hearing their voices again this morning; the stories dad told that we just took for granted, even mom saying that she’d just been on the phone with Danny, with me, makes me want to sit and watch every video ever taken. Not watching to garner wisdom or even to recapture the moment – much as both of those appeal to me. But just to sit in the wealth of their love again and remember.
Simple things; breakfast together, talking to mom on the phone, dad getting excited about going out to lunch… they all hold so much more value now that they’re gone. These voids are reminders to make the most of this moment. Even the seemingly simple moments. If looking back they’re gifts of wonder, how much more priceless they should become as we actually live them out. This introspection, that becomes action, is all too often a parting gift of aging and even then we miss the miracle of it all.
Your life, my life, is a choice. God chose to gift it to us and I believe it’s our task to live it to the full. Choosing to put it all on the line – sharing the wonder of simple things.
It was a running joke in our family, whenever the clan would gather, that soon, Uncle John, Dad or one of the elders would say something along the lines of “This may be the last time we’re all together like this…” All the kids would groan – we’d heard it so many times. But our parents lost their folks so unexpectedly, so young, mostly while they were away. They knew what it was like to have a father, a brother, a mother, a sister, no longer at the table… one voice no longer lifted up in song… and they did their best to impart that gift of aging onto us, the young, and we merely groaned. We were eternal. This moment was just one more in a line of so very many. We were missing the miracle that was so quickly slipping through the fingers of our family.
This moment. It’s what I thought of when I heard mom and dad’s long departed voices that I’ll never hear again. I’d like to think that eternity somehow restores every wonderful family memory but I doubt it. My guess is that the joy of eternity is well beyond the grasp of my imagination. Until then we have the very precious now. I want to make the most of it.
Traveling across country in 1963, Aunt Helen paid Kathleen and I not to chew gum in the car. On our way to a youth convention in 1968, Dad, Tim and I camped out in our Dodge Monaco – I slept in the trunk. Spent the summer of 1970 traveling the country in a VW van with Jeff Truax and his mom. Jeff and I saw Linda Rondstadt and the Stone Ponies at Blossom Amphitheater outside of Akron on a beautiful evening in July… the stories just go on and on… decade after decade with an ever expanding circle of purpose and adventure… but it’s the simple moments in between that fill the big stories of our lives with wonder.
Choose wonderful adventures. Invite me to share them… or someone you love… and remember to make the most of the precious moments in between. It’s those in between moments that hold the rest of life together, like a catalyst, and give us strength to go forward into so uncertain a future. Begin by doing something special today. You and the people you share yourself with deserve to discover the wonder within you and without you.
many blessings and much love for the very best in this moment.
Eric
Listen in to the Valentine’s Day Message from Central Community
Central Perk
Last week #coffeecuphampstead liked one of my tweets. Piqued my curiosity. In London. Defining statement? “For over 50 years this iconic coffee house has treated the Hampstead population to great coffee , tea and raisin Toast.”
“Great coffee, tea and raisin Toast.” My kind of place. Next time we’re in London, raisin toast, marmalade and some funky herbal tea it is.
A couple of years ago we spent no small effort converting several rooms at church into a larger gathering place. Put in a bit of a kitchen. Great counter space. Bought some blenders and toaster ovens. Even put up a couple of televisions… all in the hope someone would see the import in the simple task of loving people… not just saying they loved people… but starting the day by loving people with coffee, tea, some cinnamon toast – simple, inexpensive acts that express warmth, love and acceptance in practical ways.
A couple of my friends even offered to pay for an employee for 6 months but I quickly discovered that it’s not as easy as you might think to find someone who see’s a comfortable place for strangers and friends alike to hang out as a suitable expression of God’s Love. I sure do. Way better than a few Sunday School classrooms that sat empty all week long.
It’s being used. Tuesday morning’s our women’s Bible Study gathers at one end of the room, Thursday evenings we have our first small service of the weekend there. It’s becoming a comfortable and loving room but still far from the robust and welcoming gathering place I had imagined.
2016 is a great time to begin building our little room into what we once hoped it would become.
February is a month of prayer at Central Community Christian Fellowship. Our doors open every morning at 5:30am for personal prayer and then at 6am we share in a devotion, communion and prayer together.
February’s the only month of the year I take communion every single day. This year’s a leap year – so 29 days of prayer.
Months before February 1 arrives I’m in personal preparation from deep within. I’ve been blessed to see the profound impact these days of prayer have had in the lives of so many. God alone knows how much healing, restoration, reconciliation, comfort, encouragement and inspiration have been the direct result of these times in prayer together. He knows it all. But anyone who’s shared even one month with us can tell you a cool story or two.
Last year I kept a 28 Days of Renewal Morning Miracle Log for people to list answers to prayer. 3 items listed were: Stan Brown released from hospital and able to share our circle of prayer, the dock workers lock out ended and finally it was bone dry in the sanctuary after a rain storm… Praise God for the new roof!
Each of these things may have occurred if we’d never prayed – God only knows – but we had the opportunity to pray for profound change, to silently, anonymously, enter in to the challenges of others, and to celebrate together when change came about.
February becomes a time of personal spiritual formation for me as I commit to take trans-formative action in my own life in order to find focus and direction as I seek God’s Will. Plainly speaking, I change it up a little. Take something out – put something in – that on a daily basis reminds me to turn to God. Two years ago February 1, it was $tarbucks and caffeine. They each played an important part in my everyday comings and goings. Barista’s from Los Angeles to San Diego knew my drink when I walked in the door. Made me feel like Norm on Cheers. “Norm!”
Two years later it seems so silly. Barely notice a $tarbucks any longer while driving. I use to search them out where ever I went. I’ve saved a ton of cash and interestingly enough a week after the headaches from lack of caffeine ended all of my headaches ended. I sound like my father here – but I haven’t had a headache in two years! (well maybe one or two… but I use to keep an ongoing prescription for mega-strength Motrin and it wasn’t exceptional for me to go through 30 to 40 of them a month. Hard to imagine now.
But I digress…
February 2016 may just be my perfect month to experience the joy of giving some time to being a barista in our “new” room. Pray, lead in communion, head over and serve coffee, cinnamon & raisin toast. Might even break out a little marmalade. I want to be of service and if I think it’s a good idea, why shouldn’t I get in there and open the doors to the community myself?
I believe in love. I believe that we really do all belong together. I believe that sometimes we just need a time and place to let what God’s up to simmer a bit until The Sweet Aroma fills the air. That’s my goal for February. Sound’s Positive and Amazing in it’s own simple way. In case I forget to tell you in the days ahead… You’re Invited!
Recognizing Our Moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO7Qrhss_j8
While in graduate school I was on staff at a thriving church in rural Indiana. The senior pastor, Vernon Maddox, would take me on occasional visits to struggling churches in neighboring communities where we would bring a needed gift and listen to the pastor’s needs and personal concerns over lunch together. I learned the depth of a servants heart in those afternoon’s away from the office.
A retired missionary attended our church briefly and then he and his wife went to Hartford City, Indiana, a community of 5 or 6 thousand people, just north of our little hamlet to plant a new church. They began by meeting in a church that opened their basement to the new little fellowship. Soon they had a gathering of 15 or 20 people, his wife playing piano and teaching Sunday School while he preached and carried the pastors work.
He was my favorite visit. Rides home, through fields of green or grey, I’d tell Pastor Vernon how sorry I felt for a man with so Godly a heart living out his calling in the basement of a church in a town God barely remembered. What could be worse?
Then he lost his Sunday School teacher and pianist – his loving wife, so dedicated a lifetime partner in ministry -to an unexpected death.
Now alone, far from the place of his birth, Vernon said we were going to take him for lunch. I dreaded the moment. Untimely death had yet to visit our family. I had one funeral under my belt and already felt so sorry for this man’s calling that I didn’t think I could face him with the additional sorrow piled on.
I’ll never forget walking into that little church basement to the awful sounds of someone straining at a guitar. The missionary made pastor laid down a cheap instrument, greeted us, apologized for his struggle at playing and said that now that his wife was gone he was teaching himself to play guitar so they could still have Sunday worship. He was going on.
Pastor Vernon hugged him. Tears were shed. We went and enjoyed a healing lunch and all I could think was what did this guy do that God would punish him with a life like this?
It was years before I realized that his faith and commitment to his calling in places known only to God was the kind of single minded devotion that had kept the church alive across the centuries in countless other little towns like Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi, Hartford City and the list goes on and on. “Great is Thy Faithfulness!”
I confess that as we approach a season when I’ll be begging for turkeys, backpacks and Christmas presents for Siempre’s kids I’m inspired and motivated by my encounter with this loving servant of God as well as the willingness of a senior pastor who knew I had some important lessons to learn.
I’ve also discovered that images of the church with hip purple lighting on stage or a cooler than corporate image no longer attract me – they did once – not any more. I’ve seen so much that’s shallow take front and center while that which carried real depth was shining brightly in Hartford City or some other place that to the world appears to be “God forsaken,” But to The Father is as Holy as a cross or a simple manger.
You may not be sure of your calling or why God has let your life fall into such heartbreaking circumstances, maybe it’s time to pick up an old guitar, or whatever else is needed, and give thanks that He has plans for you in whatever Hartford City you’ve been planted. This is a season of Thanksgiving. Like every year I’m nervous, excited and somehow certain that God will do great things. I don’t want you to miss one moment of the miracle (even when it looks like little more than Light slipping out the basement doors of a forgotten gathering in some Hartford City) This is our moment. So many are waiting. You’re Invited!