I love libraries

I love libraries, those magical places where books of all shapes, colors, sizes, smells and topics march smartly along the shelves. Big libraries and little libraries, but my favorite is Fairfield's branch on Wortz Street. Plans are underway to move the Fairfield library to the new Carroll Valley building once it is built since the current location is small. I understand, but it makes me sad. I feel so pampered having our little library just a hop, skip, and a jump away.

The library was an immediate bright spot for me when we moved from our old stone house on Mt. Carmel Rd. Being able to walk to the library never ceases to bring me joy., especially since I don't drive much anymore. There's something magical about being able to slip up to the library any time I want just to browse the shelves, return a book, or say hello. I love having everything in one room, walking up to the desk and asking Sherry or Crystal (two of the best) to order a book knowing that within a few days it will be waiting for me. In the meantime, I go home with an armful of books. Once I asked for a book which wasn't available anywhere in Pennsylvania but Sherry looked until she found one in the Duke Library for me!

I love books. I have a Kindle which is much easier to use when I go to Wellspan to exercise, but that flat plastic thing isn't a real book. Plastic cannot replace the feel of paper, the rustle of turned pages, savoring full page illustrations, flipping pages back and forth to reread a passage, greedily reading knowing my book's battery will never run down.

Libraries are precious repositories of knowledge that connect us to our past and point us toward our future in far more personal ways than the reading something on a computer screen. Libraries bring people together. Libraries have chairs where one can sit and read or research. When I am in the library, I love scanning the cover's synopsis and reading several pages to decide if I like the author's style of writing or if it will challenge or inspire m. When greeting other library lovers who are reading magazines or working on the computers all seems right with the world.

Our kids grew up on books. A trip to the library or library story time was magical for them just as it is for me. Of course, books were such a sacred part of our bed time routine that our kids wanted to be read too even when they were in middle school. When the library had their annual book sale we'd buy our own copies of beloved books so we could reread them. Recently, our daughter walked in the door with a goofy grin on her face. “Look what I found.” she chortled as she dumped a collection of old much loved books on the sofa. “Read to me, Mom. “ So the two of us curled up on the loveseat, arms around each other like the old days, slowly turning pages , savoring the illustrations, we turned back the clock as we fell into the wishes and whimsy of Dr. Suess and other much loved favorites.

Joyce Shutt is pastor emeritus of the Fairfield Mennonite Church

The joys of advertising

Several years ago Toyota featured Daryl Waltrip driving a pick-up tearing up lawns, driving into people's houses, laughing and hooting as he went. No doubt designed to “humorously” demonstrate the power of the pick-up, these ads glamorized bullying. I was so appalled that I called various Toyota dealers until I got someone in higher echelons with whom I could share my utter disgust with their ad.

OK, Earl and I are just two old curmudgeons. While I much prefer public television, we also watch commercial TV. However, since attending a workshop years ago on becoming a discerning TV watcher I've become more aware of the hidden values programs and ads communicate. Advertisers know that we are all deeply influenced by what we read, see, and hear and their goal is to make consuming our essential purpose in life.

The basic message promoted of the money makers is that people are incidental to profits. Everything is about money. Greed is good. Fear and violence sell. Truth telling becomes incidental. Exaggeration is the name of the game. People are valuable only as unthinking consumers. And it's working. Ours is an instant gratification culture. Even in our politics the party line is more important than people needs. Just look at our social policies, infrastructure failures, racial and ethnic divides, health care for profit system, immigration policies.... 

Organizations like ALEC make sure that business interests comes first, taxes stay low, the wealthy get preferential treatment, public education is undermined in favor of for profit charter schools, prisons are privatized, labor unions dismantled, pensions privatized or even eliminated, gun sales pre-empt public safety, and lobbyists write legislation and buy elections. Our politics, films, TV programs, and advertisers glorify violence, market fear, promote selfishness and greed. Smart phones are promoted as preferable to face to face interactions. Technology is designed to marginalize people and maximize profits. Instant gratification and simplistic solutions have replaced long range goals and planning. Who cares what we eat if agribusiness and junk food manufactures turn a profit. Just take a pill instead of eating nourishing organic foods or exercising. Ever wonder why we have an addiction problem? And let's ban abortion and birth control while we sell sex as a commodity.

Reality TV and many “news” channels glamorize bullying, rudeness, ideological sound bites, misdirection and half truths. I used to believe Americans were too smart to buy into the advertisers snake oil or what various media companies pass off as news and unbiased reporting, but I'm being proven wrong. After all, brainwashing works and when one is exposed to an idea or celebrity worship long enough one begins to doubt oneself.

Stores track my purchases and tailor coupons to my buying patterns. We are bombarded by telemarketers and scammers. I'm tired of being told what I should buy, want or believe. I'm appalled at the in-civility of our politicians, the petty partisan politics and self interest that pass for leadership.. Perhaps it's time we all rebel by turning off our TV's, curtail our use of smart phones to necessary calls and go visit our family and neighbors instead. In spite of what we are told, life and truth is not always easy, can't be reduced to an ideology, right/wrong dualism, or something we consume. Good decisions flow from studying facts, postponing gratification, practicing gratitude and concern for others.

Joyce Shutt is pastor emeritus of the Fairfield Mennonite Church.

Today's Grumble

As an avid reader I've recently immersed myself in historical fiction. What a reminder that the good old days weren't so good after all. Unfortunately, we haven't learned from history yet as we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. When you yearn for “the good old days” just remember that aging and/or being poor was much harder before Roosevelt and social policies such as Social Security. We rightly lament the horrible things ISSIS is doing while forgetting that Christians tortured each other in unimaginable ways during the Inquisition...pouring boiling water poured down people's throats, drawing and quartering, burning people at the stake...

I guess nothing every really changes because human nature hasn't changed. That's why the Bible is still relevant. Jesus famous quote “the poor you will have with you always” recognized that while human greed and selfishness will always be alive and well our selfishness can never be an excuse for not caring about the poor and marginalized. Nor can legislation solve the human nature problem though reasonable regulations can provide some safety checks and balances.

Walking past the waste water treatment plant here in Fairfield I am reminded daily that we are fortunate our federal government require even small municipalities like Fairfield to guarantee its citizens clean drinking water. The same with air pollution. Reading about the early industrial revolution illuminates just how much progress we've made but then John Grisham's GRAY MOUNTAIN is a disheartening reminder of just how much many modern industries such as the coal companies shamefully disregard regulations and pollute the land, water and air endangering everyone.

I am all for capitalism, but without reasonable regulations, greed and self interest will always win out. Which is tragic because in the end, we all sink or swim together. Today's profits can quickly turn into tomorrow's losses when we destroy our environment and impoverish the general public. After all, poor people are not in a position to buy all the unnecessary products mass produced today. And something is woefully wrong when a past president's response to 9'11 was “go shop.”

If I were running for political office I'd create a brand new party called “The Common Sense” party. My platform would be simple, though solutions never are. My platform would advocate setting aside hard line party ideologies in favor of working toward finding common sense solutions. Common sense regulations, common sense salary caps, common sense tax policies, common sense economic, a common sense legal system. While this would not eliminate self interest, it could provides a safe place for negotiation, cooperation, sharing power, benefits and responsibility.

When our kids were small they'd cry “that's not fair” when they couldn't get their way. Well, guess what; life isn't fair. Even so, we humans are capable of working together. It just takes effort and a willingness to actually listen to others as a way to find that much maligned middle ground. What possible good can come out of Pennsylvania's budget impass?  Shutting down the federal government? In the end such stubbornness makes our legislators look like school yard bullies.

 

Oh well.  Enough. 

 

Joyce Shutt is pastor emeritus of the Fairfield Mennonite Church.

The power of forgiveness

Aging is interesting. While my outside parts are showing signs of wear and tear, my insides feel much the same, with a few exceptions, the biggest being I am at peace with myself and the world, and hopefully a bit wiser. While it is true that much goes on in the world that disappoints, hurts, and frightens me, I realize that the only person I have any control over is myself and that whatever positive change starts I hope to effect always starts with me! When I change the way I function and react, others are forced to change as well.

The profound wisdom of the Serenity Prayer has been significant in y life. “God grant me the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time. Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace, Taking this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it...”

Aging has taught me the power of forgiveness, the futility of needing to punish the wrongdoer. Harboring negativity inevitably feels like pouring a cup of poison for my offender and then drinking it myself. Forgiveness frees me to look at what happened through transformed eyes, loosing the cords of mistakes binding me to the past by releasing the strands I hold of others guilt. In the end forgiveness makes my life safer and better by turning my enemies into friends, or at least, non enemies.

A true story illustrating this truth: In the early 60's a Korean family came to New York so their gifted son could study medicine, One evening he was murdered by 3 teen gang members. At their sentencing hearing the devastated parents spoke against the death penalty and lengthy incarceration. Since their son was no longer living, they expected these very boys to pick up the dream they'd destroyed by killing their son. They asked the court's to require the boys finish their high school and get college degrees while incarcerated, and they'd pay any costs incurred. God was asking them to adopt these boys and pour all of their love and resources into the very ones who had killed their son. Anything less than the complete transformation of these boys would make their son's death a tragic waste. When the boys came up for parole they asked to have them released into their care. This they said they needed for their own healing.

And so the miracle of forgiveness began... and continues its work through the years, for this quiet Korean couple visited those boys while incarcerated week after week, year after year. They arranged for their education, counseling and religious training with the courts help. Once the boys were released they took them into their home, claiming them as their sons. By refusing to define the boys according to their past, they helped everyone involved see these broken street thugs through a completely different lens. Today one boy is a doctor who runs a street clinic, another teaches in a ghetto school, and third is a missionary in Korea.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Loose the cords of mistakes and hate binding us as we release the strands of others mistakes. 

Joyce Shut is pastor emeritus of the Fairfield Mennonite Church.

Incarceration nation

I find it tragic that the US is known around the world as the incarceration nation. We incarcerate a larger percentage of our citizens than any other country largely because of our ineffective “war on drugs.” We're chosen to spend our limited resources criminalizing the mentally ill and addicted, even though science understands that addiction is an illness created by chemical changes in the brain. Punishment cannot change the body chemistry of a manic depressive, a psychotic, the clinically depressed or an addict. 

Our justice system is more insane than those we incarcerate, as insanity is repeating the same behaviors over and over while expecting different results. Why haven't we learned from Prohibition? Outlawing alcohol consumption didn't stop people from drinking then and it doesn't now. What it did was drive the production and sale of alcohol underground, creating the Al Capones, Mafia, and other violent criminal enterprises, just as our war on drugs has created drug cartels, street gangs, and addiction driven crimes.

It's a basic human tendency to self medicate when in pain, physical or emotional. When we abandoned prohibition we regulated and taxed the production and sale of alcohol, creating a source of public revenue. When we realized that tobacco caused cancer we regulated, taxed, and educated the public about the correlation between cancer and tobacco. Let's take the same approach to “street” drugs. Legalize their possession and use, but regulate their availability, tax their sale, educate the public about their effects, and use the funds generated to treat those suffering from life altering addictions. Several other countries are already doing this. Instead of outlawing drugs, they make them accessible through doctors and clinics who control the purity of the drug and the amount. By taking the power and profit away from criminal enterprises, drug related violence, street gangs, and violent crime in those countries has decreased by more than 70%! Most of their addicts are working and paying taxes!

Let's put our resources into treating addicts not building more prisons! Let's address the social ills that create so much of the poverty and pain that drives addictions. Let's stop making our police the enforcers of bad policy.

Addiction and mental illness is a natural human response to stress, poverty, meaninglessness, family dysfunction, and despair. Addicts are not lazy and morally weak. Addicts are sick. Instead of blaming them for having inherited a genetic propensity for addiction when confronted with stress or painful situations, let's treat them, slowly wean them off of their drugs and counsel them until they no s jailing blacks and Hispanics has not solved our race problem, criminalizing drug use has not stopped people from using. Instead it has increased crime! Let's learn from Prohibition. Let's decriminalize, regulate, and tax drugs. Then we will have the resources we need to establish more treatment facilities, mental health and drug courts as an alternative to expensive incarceration.

Joyce Shutt is the pastor emeritus of the Fairfield Mennonite Church.

learning from the past

Today's young women take their education, job opportunities, and career options forgranted. We oldsters remember when birth control was limited and abortions performed in back alleys and women died! When college's had curfews for women but not men, women wore hats and gloves and dresses to go shopping, only men's names were listed in the telephone book. and an unmarried woman was disparagingly called “an old maid.” I am appalled at the growing move to limit access to birth control and abortion, because the real issue is not protecting unborn babies but controlling women, their bodies, and their lives. If the concern was for the babies we'd have different social policies, child care and educational systems.

Remember the Clarence Thomas hearings when Anita Hill was pillared for daring to raise the issue of sexual harrassment? When many churches taught the “chain of command” wherein the man, as head of the household, had the right to dictate everything in the home, and it was legal for husbands to beat and rape their wives?

Fortunately, women turned the church and world upside down by challenging patriarchial language and practices. Back then our “brothers in Christ” insisted male references were inclusive, until they weren't. Men “preached” in church, but women could only “talk,” if that. I attended a workshop where the leader deliberately used only feminime pronouns when reading Scripture, referring to leadership in the church, and God. By the end of the first day, one male pastor acknowledged there was a language problem. After listening to only female references and pronouns he said he felt so excluded he wanted to leave.

And women pastors! God forbid! Women were considered too emotionally and spiritually unstable to think clearly or lead! Their monthly cycles and menopause, you kmow. So when Fairfield Mennonite called me to pastor the church in 1980 that was pretty radical stuff! Granted Mennonites are not the most progressive of demoninations,and after a lengthy application process we were told that while I had all of the attributes they (white ordained men) wanted for pastoral leadership, they (white ordained men) could not ordain me because I was a woman! Fortunately, Fairfield Mennonite did not accept “no” as an answer. I happily pastored Fairfield Mennonite for 20 years, building on my feminine perceptions and skills.. 

Much has changed in the past 50 years, but prejudice and discrimination persist. Women still get blamed for provoking rape and sexual harrassmen, implying that men aren't responsible for their sexual impulses. Really? The glass ceiling continues in business, athletics, the arts, politics. White supremacy is alive and well. Many of Obama's problems stem from his race, just as Nancy Pelosi is pillared because she is an asserrtive female. If she were male she'd be candiate material for the presidency!

While none of us can control the color of our skin or being born male or female, we can control our responses to the hand life deals us. Every painful experience carries with it the opportunity to grow and change, to better understand others' struggles, and to guarantee discrimination and bigotry stops with us.
We can learn from our past and make this a truly great country instead of defending the outdated prejudical ideas we grew up with.

Joyce Shutt is pastor emeritus of the Fairfield Mennonite Church.

In appreciation

Marriage is like two lines that rarely run parallel but squiggle this way and that, occasionally intersecting or running close together. Those times remind us of why we chose each other. People grow at different rates and in directions and if a marriage is to survive one learns to accept the serendipitous bursts of compatibility as sufficient reason to keep one going.

Most days I assume that things will go well. That the bills will be paid. That there's money in the bank. That the kids are making a go of their lives. That my basic needs will be met. And that happens. Too often I take my husband and our relationship for granted which is tragic as I have been much blessed. Gratitude is everything, especially in the face of life's challenges. Gratitude provides the hope, faith, and love needed to keep going.

In spite of illness, addictions, death, and other bumps in the road I wouldn't trade the life we've shared for that proverbial happily ever after. Each of us in our family has been enriched by the difficulties we've faced together, the hurdles we've cleared, and the very real decision we made over and over to stay together in spite of conflict, disappointment, illness, and pain. Not that it's been easy. It hasn't. But we are all so much better for the mountains we've climbed and the rivers we've forded.

My going to seminary and pastoring a church was a big adjustment for a man who grew up believing that women should stay quietly in the background. But in spite of his reservations, he was my protector and defender when attacked by church leaders who saw women as inferior beings. More than once his sense of humor saved the day as when he'd introduce himself as “the pastors wife.” He frequently stepped back so I could do my thing, In so doing he modeled for our kids that strength is not about being in charge but in providing the framework in which others might grow and thrive.

Ours is a culture where we are taught we need to be the biggest and the best, but when we become obsessed with self importance instead of greatness we leave behind ugly scars and deep wounds. Someone once said that we are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants, trying to mark everything as “mine.” My spouse is a truly great man. He walks lightly, demonstrating through his actions that since we inevitably hurt the ones we love and the universe we live in, the most important goal we can have is “to do no harm.”

The real heroes are not the rich and famous but those who notice and affirm others, who pay attention even at a cost to themselves. Relationships, especially the marriage relationship, teaches us that we don't get to choose if we get hurt in this world, but we can sometimes choose who hurts and heals us. We've had some really bad times over the years, but by and large I like the choice I made, and given he's stayed with me for 56 years, I trust he does too.

Joyce Shutt is the pastor emeritus of the Fairfield Mennonite Church.