Dispatch #22
Monday, September 23
Fremont, Nebraska

This is the first night I've slept all the way through without waking, without medications for pain.

The weather this morning is cool and blue, nice gusts of wind. We are parked by Sinai Lutheran Church at the immediate edge of Midland Lutheran College. In the student lot sits a car bearing this bumper sticker: REAL MEN LOVE JESUS. It's an unabashed sentiment, using (I suppose) the entire masculine chest/aggressive complex to drive the point forcefully home. And I don't for a moment doubt that the boldness represents a truth, that this car's owner loves Jesus.

But the car is parked on such an angle that it swallows two spaces for its own small self.

What does that say? About aggressive declarations of the love of Jesus? About the impressions such Christians must make upon the world?

Though I feel a companionship with folks who affix fishes to their cars to indicate their faith, I also hope they understand that the symbol is more than a single sign of Christianity: It invites, too, an assessment of Christians! Especially an assessment of the particular Christian driving the vehicle. For if the driver drives poorly, that reflects upon Christians in general. Upon me, notable for my faith. Upon my father and family.

The fish is not unlike the question printed on the backs of trucks: "How is my driving? Call 800 etc." Except that the fish offers no telephone number. All responses must be applied (albeit mentally) to Christianity: "Behold, a Christian! See how she behaves in public!"

The fish binds you! The fish requires a road protocol which must needs pay more attention to the rules and to other drivers than to your own impulses, desires, speeds, schedules.

And so, of course, does the cross you keep somewhere upon your person, visible to another's eye.

+ + +

Yesterday, in Yankton where I addressed a gathering of listeners (WNAX in Yankton was the first station to carry Lutheran Vespers and Rev. Gregerson's voice) a woman came and spoke privately with me. "You brought me back to church again," she said. She must be in her upper 60's, her hair swept back from her forehead to create, in my eye, a grand "empire" effect.

"My husband died right beside me. He simply fell to the ground and was dead. After his burial I did almost the same thing. I went to bed and could not get up.

"I could not start a thing for myself. Because you need hope to start. I didn't have hope, but only loneliness and death.

"But you come on the radio in the morning. Six-thirty on Sundays. When I wake up. I listened. I didn't get up to go somewhere else to listen or else to do. I stayed right where I was and listened.

"Over the weeks I began to look forward to the program. That was good. And then I began to miss my church. So one Sunday I got up and got dressed and went to church. And I am alive again."

+ + +

The sunset last night was a flaming quilt cast over the western heavens; and the moon stood on the edge of the eastern world, watching as a woman does with her hands in her apron pockets, leaning against the jamb of the door of her kitchen porch, both huge and content.

All is well.

Walt