UNITED or UNTIED

Well hello again, this is Dick Foth, out and about on a bright July morning, July 17th, Wednesday to be precise, and I'm just thinking about July as a month of commemorations, moments in time. I mean, it's only been two weeks since July the 4th and fireworks and music and hot dogs and watermelon and all of that, commemorating the independence of our United States of America. But a week later for me is a big date, July the 11th. If my mother were still living here on this planet, she would be 114 years old. She died four weeks after her 100th birthday in 2010. But when she was born, when Taft was president, there were 1,000 miles of paved roads in this country. And I think the annual average salary of a working person was around $900. In a couple of weeks from now, actually 10 days from now, we have a grandson, Jack, who's marrying Emma in Santa Cruz, California until I 27th, which is kind of cool because 61 years ago, Ruth and I got married in the Central Valley of California. I'll not forget that day. July 27th, 1963, and temperature about 105 degrees in the evening, sweat running down my back and down the back of my life. Yeah, it was a moment. After 61 years so far, so good. There are moments in time that define how we see the world. I mean, just a few days ago, we had one of those moments at a rally for the Republicans nominee now. For president in Butler, Pennsylvania, a young man, 20 years old, for no known motive at this moment, attempted to assassinate former president Donald Trump as he stepped to the podium. He was not successful. He was successful in killing a bystander. He was successful in critically wounding two others. But the folks at that rally, those 15,000 people, or however many it was, will never forget that moment. And those of us watching, whether live on TV or later, will also not forget some moments are tremendous and some moments are horrific. That was a horrific moment. There was another moment on the 17th of a month, not July, September 17th, 1787. The close of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia were representatives from 13 colonies were there to try to frame language that would wrap an idea in words. It's called the Constitution of the United States. I believe one of the colonies, it's 13 colonies. One of the colonies wrote Island did not have a representative there. So you had these 12 men, plus probably others, who were there hashing out over days, hashing out language to put words to an idea that would capture what makes freedom work, what makes liberty ring, if you will. And sometime at the end of that conference where they, you know, they talk, they hashed out, they worked on language, they made proposals. I think, if I'm not mistaken, they even had a time of prayer. Sometime when the convention was over, the record suggests that Ben Franklin was at the home of a friend, a socialite by the name of Elizabeth Willing Powell. She was wealthy, she was married to a man who had been mayor of Philadelphia or would be mayor of Philadelphia. Twice, she was a confidante of George Washington. She wrote articles about everything from politics to the role of women. And when she saw Ben Franklin, she said to him, well, well, doctor, what have you given us? A monarchy or a republic? And Franklin has said to have replied, we have given you a republic if you can keep it. How do you keep it? How do you keep a representative form of government where the voices of people through democratic process are heard by selecting and electing officials and people to offices, whether at the county or at the state level or at the national level or at the city level? How do you, how do you keep it? Well, you keep it, I think, by hard work. It's tremendously challenging to build something, whether it's a highway or a house or a dam or a city or a communities, it takes an enormous amount of work to build something. It takes hardly any time to tear something down. And when I think about the idea of together, I think about our interior lives being together. We talk about people holding it together or or having it together. We talk about people being really put together, but families don't work without it. Institutions don't work without it. States and countries don't work without it. My question is, when I think of if you can keep it, how do you keep the mission and the dream alive when tensions are great and positions are polarized, which is where we are as a nation. Not the first time will be the last. But I think my question is, how do you keep us together? How do we keep ourselves together in tumultuous times of a few more thoughts of that in a moment? So I'm back home now and the question I was asking was, how do we stay together in such tumultuous times or how do we get back together or create a new together? It cannot be easy, otherwise we would have done it, and it cannot be simple, otherwise we would have done it. What it takes is intentionality and work. In a time in our United States, it's interesting to say that isn't it, United States. Just a little thought here, this might sound a little cheesy, but the difference between United and untied is where I choose to put the I. Where do I put me in the middle of this? What can I do? That's the key question. Most of us feel powerless in some way, except by vote to affect elections, whether they be presidential or state or regional or county, whatever. But what has happened over the last few years for whatever reasons, and there are numbers that we can point to, is a devolution, not an evolution, but a devolution, a devolving into living in our own worlds, I believe. And when we do that, we put fences up, and then you have shout across the fence. You're not looking high to high. So in a culture that, especially in times like this, where we tend to shout at each other if we're not careful, how do we have a conversation? I love this thing that I read some years ago by Celeste Headley, a radio journalist from Georgia, she gave a TED Talk, titled 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation, and millions of people have viewed this TED Talk, and she began by asking the question, is there any 21st century skill more important than being able to sustain a coherent, confident conversation? And she's a professional interviewer, and these are the 10 things she suggests. One, don't multitask or be half-in, be present, if you're trying to engage somebody, be present. Two, assume you have something to learn. Don't pontificate. Three, use open-ended questions about who, what, when, where, why, and how, and let that person describe things. Four, go with the flow. Just let stories and ideas come and go. Five, if you don't know, say you don't know. Six, don't equate your experience with theirs. Yeah, not somebody says, I have this illness, and you say, you know, I had an uncle that died of that. Don't go there, okay? Seven, try not to repeat yourself. Eight, stay out of the weeds. Don't get down in little particulars about dates and all of that. Nine, and here's the big one. Listen. Listening is the number one most important skill we like to talk, and you're listening to somebody who's a talker. Okay, I like to talk, but our brains only allow us to talk at 225 words per minute. We can listen at 500 words per minute. Finally, be brief. When I listened to her thoughts, I was struck by the practicality of them, and I was also struck by this concurrent thought, how many times in the scriptures, the idea of another or one another is used. I'm not going to give you the scripture references, but let me just say the phrases, okay? Love one another, be devoted to one another in brother love, honor one another, above yourselves, live in harmony with one another. Stop passing judgment on one another, accept one another, just as Christ accepted you. Instruct one another. I mean, you know, we can teach each other. I can learn something from anybody, whether they're 102 or three years old, if I listen. Speak to one another with Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. When I say that, when I hear myself say that, somebody might be listening who says, that's just simplistic. It isn't simplistic. I don't think. I think it's essential. Whatever a nation is, whatever a state, whatever a family, it starts with one. I would submit. It starts with me and with you. If I intentionally ask myself the question, what can I do to have better conversations? What can I do to try to be together? I think that's a question I need to ask myself every day, and I would encourage you that way. Let me just read you very quickly, something that Ruth and I included years ago, a little book we wrote called Known Finding Deep Friendships in the Shadow World, and it talks about, and this is so present, if you will, we're about to start the Olympics. The Olympics will be in Paris beginning on July 26th, going through August 11th, and years ago, almost, I say almost a hundred years ago, there was an Olympics held in Germany in 1936, and some of you have seen the film called The Boys in the Boat, about a team of young men at the University of Washington who competed, and in his magnificent book, and I'm reading now from ours, The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown describes what the boys coach saw as they worked with and for each other. Here's eight guys in a boat, and you have one calling the beat, the rhythm, if you will. He heard them declare their dreams and confess their shortcomings. He learned to see hope where a boy thought there was no hope, and again, this is, this is in the heart of the Depression years, these very few of these head monies. He observed the fragility of confidence and the redemptive power of trust, and he goes on to detail in powerful language, the grueling training schedule early morning late nights, the lack of money, the desire to quit. He examines the lives and the challenges of each of the young athletes, and their years long striving for victory they had trained for years for this. Then he tells what the coach discovered as nine friends fought for their dream. He came to understand how those almost mystical bonds of trust and affection, if nurtured correctly, I come back to conversation, might lift a crew above the ordinary sphere, transport it to a place where nine boys somehow became one thing, a thing that could not be defined, a thing that was so in tune with the water and the earth and the sky above that as they rode effort was replaced by ecstasy. Wow, I dream for that for us as individuals and families and counties and congregations and nation. It was a rare thing, a sacred thing, he says, a thing devoutly to be hoped for. So in 1936 those nine young men took their rowing shell, the Husky Clipper, to Hitler's Germany, to take on the world in the Olympics, and they brought home the gold. That's it for today. I'm out. Think about it. What can I do? What can I do to help us be together in these days? God bless, catch you later.