books, coffee, and more . . .

(Four days ago, Don and I attended the 40th anniversary of the Open Door Libraries, a mission organization involved in establishing Christian libraries.  At the moment, it operates a library in Prague in the Czech Republic, Berlin in Germany, Budapest in Hungary and Amman, Jordan. In 2010, we had the privilege of serving as Interim Directors in Berlin.  The following article was written shortly after our return to the US.)


Missionary work in Europe? In a city dubbed as its “atheist capital?” Where the name of the country brings up that of Adolf Hitler? A country where the state church drives away believers rather than attract? 

In 2010 my husband and I did a six-month ministry in Berlin. Unlike our first missionary stint in the mid-seventies, we were not going to a third world country to do church planting nor to teach in an academic setting. We were to be responsible for the day-to-day operation of a Christian library, make gourmet coffee and connect with both Christians and non-Christians. Some of our friends raised eyebrows. “Why Berlin? Why Europe?” 

The Landmark Brandenburg Gate

Why Berlin?

A good answer is “Why not?” Berlin, a city of about 3.5 million people, has only 1% of its population
admitting to any kind of church affiliation. Though Berlin boasts of its educated populace, a better standard of living than most of the world, and a sophistication in arts and culture, there has been a turning away from Christianity in the last few decades. Berlin, much like the rest of Germany, has developed a cynical view of Christianity as reflected by the established church.  

Between 1980 and 1992, about 1.0 million Roman Catholics and 1.2 million Protestants gave up their church memberships. . . . In a society increasingly materialist and secular, the spiritual and moral positions of the churches became irrelevant to many. Among the younger generation seeking autonomy and self-fulfillment, allegiance was no longer simply surrendered without question to institutions of authority. Attendance at services dropped off significantly, and the institution of the church quietly disappeared from the lives of many Germans.[1]

The unification of Germany has significantly moved Germans farther away from the church. Under the communist regime in East Germany, extreme pressure was exerted on citizens to renounce their religion. East Germans who practiced their religion were denied educational and professional opportunities, for example. Consequently, at unification the majority of East Germans were either not baptized or had left their church.[2]

Another significant factor in Berlin’s paradigm shift is the influx of immigrants from the far reaches of the world. Berlin is home to 180 different nationalities. It has the largest Turkish population outside of Turkey. With each immigrant arrival come shifts in culture and thus, religion, either further eroding Berlin’s Christian foundation or in some instances helping revive it. The biggest church affiliations are the Protestant State church (The Evangelical Church of Berlin), the Roman Catholic Church followed with a strong third by the rapidly growing Muslim populace.

Germany gave birth to the Protestant Reformation when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses at the church door at Wittenberg. Her Christian heritage is still evident. Her calendar proudly displays the celebration of holidays such as the Ascension and Pentecost, in addition to Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter. The Blue Sunday law stands despite recent attempts to repeal it. The state churches are financially supported by taxes collected by the government from their memberships. The skyline of Berlin, displays majestic Gothic churches built to memorialize Germany’s faith in the One true and living God. Sadly, the buildings stayed through the centuries, but the faith faded. She displays a bravado that questions her Christian legacy, and yet, searches for “isms” that could help her get out from under her conflicted identity.  

Why a library?

The Old and the New

Berlin displays the polarization between the old and the new evident in architecture, culture and the church. The old wants to hang on to what it has lived with; the young rejects the old and wants to start anew. In this struggle, the contemporary church is attempting to find ways not just to stay alive, but to reach out and present herself relevant. The church has moved out of cathedrals and Gothic structures, changed from the music of Bach and Beethoven to contemporary music with drums and guitars, and has shed the preacher’s dark suits and ties for casual clothes. The Reset Berlin church meets in a café setting complete with little bistro tables to hold coffee cups, tea cups and Bibles during worship services. A band with drums, guitars and keyboard provides music. Project Berlin meets in a theater with a stage that looks more for a performance than a worship service. The preacher gets onstage much like Johnny Carson coming out from between the curtains. Even the names of the churches have changed from the traditional labels. The Jesus for All People Church reflects the ethnic and cultural diversity of the city in its name. 

“Connections” was conceived with all these in mind – a ministry to those who have known the Saviour and an outreach to those who haven’t, in a contemporary, relevant language and setting. Katie Thomas, former director, states that though the bulk of the ministry’s high-impact involvement has, to this point, been more with Christians . . .. they have, however, created an image specifically for non-Christians. Meaning, the interior design, the used book sales, the coffee...these things were a part of the identity from the foundational stages, so that it would be a place that was also approachable by non-Christians. . . .

Through the joint efforts of the Institute for Christian Resources (ICR now known as Open Door Libraries), a US-based missionary organization, and the Christian Resources Center (CRC), a Berlin-based mission board, “Connections” was established. When Eastern Europe opened as communism fell, ICR became aware of the need for encouraging, strengthening and discipling Christians in these countries. Recognizing the need to provide educational tools and resources to the Christian community, Willard Black, ICR founder, established the first of its libraries in Prague, Czech Republic, followed by one in Budapest and in Berlin. More recently, a library opened in Amman, Jordan.  Leadership in the ODL has transitioned to Phyllis Lanyon, Executive Director.

Dale and Barbara Mallory have been longtime tentmaker-missionaries to Germany. Several years ago the Mallory’s learned of the Prague library and felt that such an outreach would be effective in Berlin. With ICR’s partnership, “Connections,” a library with a coffee bar, was born five years ago. Katie Thomas was its first Director. In August, 2011 the Larry Lewis family left for Berlin to direct the ministry.

 “Connections” has over 4,000 books on the shelves ranging from children’s to theological books and a collection of videos, CD’s and DVD’s. It has an all-volunteer staff, coming from the United States and the local churches. The library also puts on special events such as art exhibits, children’s story hours, jazz concerts, seminars on contemporary issues to serious lectures designed to draw in non-Christians.

A People-Friendly Ambiance

“I certainly will come back. It is so peaceful here. It feels like a refuge from the noise and confusion

A refuge from the noise and confusion of the world

of the world,” said a Moslem visitor to Connections. The daughter found a book on the city of Damascus, which she excitedly brought to her mother, who was so thrilled to find a book on her birth city.

A retired seaman who lives alone in an apartment across the street from the library spends most of his days at “Connections.” He orders a milche kaffé and sips it as he does crossword puzzles. At midday he will order another and continue with his puzzles. Every now and then a volunteer staff would sit with him in the sitting area and discuss what he had been doing lately.

One late afternoon a regular patron of the library came in with a broken arm. Taking the empty chair next to a volunteer, she explained her broken arm. Then she continued - difficulties she’s had lately, unresolved issues she’s dealing with, pain that comes from a marriage to a non-Christian. Before she came she prayed for God to show her which books to borrow. He always showed her the right ones. Almost overwhelmed, the volunteer took her hand and asked if they could pray together. She said “yes.” After the prayer, she handed the volunteer an unopened pack of Pall Mall. “Burn it,“ she told her. She’d been trying to stop smoking and hadn’t had a cigarette for a few months, but today she picked up a pack on her way to the library. “I don’t need those anymore.” Then she headed to the stacks. Suddenly, she exclaimed loud enough for everyone to hear, “I can’t believe it. This is my mother’s book. You have one of my mother’s books! She wrote this,” holding it up for everyone to see. Her parents loved God, and have served as missionaries in various countries. With over 4,000 books on the shelves with many more unclassified/uncategorized books in the basement, what are the chances of her accidentally finding her mother’s little half-inch thick book on the bottom shelf of the biography section? Not much, unless God orchestrated it.

Why Europe?

The majestic Berlin Cathedral that has a history dating back to the 15th century, once a thriving church, has been reduced to a tourist attraction with token worship services to provide continuity to its role as a religious edifice. It reflects the state of European spiritual life. Philip Jenkins quotes George Weigel,

A Godless Europe, he argues, may for a few years appear pleasantly tolerant and nonjudgmental, but without commitment to faith and family, evaporating moral standards and plummeting birth rates creates a society that is literally unsustainable. A society that rejects the supernatural turns instead to short-term hedonism, with the only real criterion for actions being the pleasure and fulfillment of the individuals concerned.[3]

 Why Europe? Because Europe needs Jesus, too.

 ________________


[1] Religion in Germany, http://www.sacred-destinations.com/germany/index.htm accessed October 29,2011.


[2] Ibid.


[3] Philip Jenkins, God’s Continent (New York: Oxford Press, 2007), 9.

A Father’s Legacy

My cousins called him “Zeus” or “the Americano” every now and then. This was my father. He loved to preside over dinner-table conversations and would sometimes even instigate discussions of controversial nature to hear how and what we thought. Of course, he won every discussion, and characteristically would say “You Filipinos . . . in my country, God’s country. . . “ We all knew he was referring to the United States. That was his country, and he never tired of extolling her virtues.

Emiterio P. Reyes. That’s how he always signed his name.  He never left out the “P” which stood for “Panganiban,” his mother’s maiden name. If he were alive today, he would be 121 years old. The story is, at 13 years of age he joined the US Navy. He added 3 years to his age on his papers and off he went to see the world to escape his “fearsome” American Thomasite teacher. At that time the Philippines was an American territory. Somehow he was accepted in the US Navy. So began the adventure of this third grader that spoke very broken English. He traveled the world before there were the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain. He saw active duty in World Wars I and II. The family joke was he went to war not with a rifle, but with a coffee pot! He put in 33 years of service and was a Chief Petty Officer when he retired. He was very proud of how he had conducted his life with very scant formal education.

Growing up, I was unaware of how differently my father was raising his family. He was a product of two cultures and many a time I would hear him pontificating about how “You Filipinos just can’t be completely honest. Even if you mean ‘yes’, you say ‘no’. Why can’t you be frank?” This is a complaint about the Asian way of non-direct communication. When our neighbor gave him a bad time about wasting his money on having his girls (there were four of us) go to college, I heard him say, “Listen, their being girls is all the more reason to get them educated.”

Years ago, a friend asked me how it was that I was a Protestant though the Philippines was a Roman Catholic country. The answer goes back to the life-changing experience my father had as a young man. One night as he was walking on a city street in the United States, five guys mugged him. He was beaten up and left sprawled on the sidewalk. A kind man from a nearby rescue mission came to his aid. My father talked about getting even etc. etc. And the kind man admonished him that vengeance belonged to God. I believe this was the first time he heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. When he went back to the Philippines, he and my mother looked for a church that preached the same. He raised his family in this faith, teaching them from the Bible. The church became a very vital part of our lives.  

I have fond memory of little things he did that may have not have meant much to him, but did to me – how he would take me to the ferry landing at the American naval base at Sangley Point, so I could take the ferry boat to Manila during my college days. He would sometimes treat me to an American breakfast, just the two of us, at one of the base cafeterias. One summer I spent a month in a Christian camp in Southern Philippines. During one mail call I was sure I wouldn’t get any mail, so I announced to everyone that my parents were not into writing and it was fine if I didn’t get any mail. To my great surprise and everyone’s amusement, I got a very thick brown envelope from home. He had sent me a short note with the four-page comics portion of the Sunday paper! Then there was that time he took me to the Manila Airport for my trip back to my teaching post in Mindanao. He stood by the lamp post pretending to read a newspaper, but my quick glance at him revealed his tears at seeing his young daughter fly so far away from home.

When Don and I got engaged, Don asked my father for permission to take me to his home to meet his parents. He was adamantly against it. “I cannot allow my daughter to make this trip with you,” he told Don so strongly. (His parents were in Fresno, a good 3-hour drive from San Francisco where we lived.) “You tell your parents to come here and ask me for my daughter’s hand in marriage.” By American standards, he was being hard-headed and stubborn. Don had fears that his parents would not agree to driving the distance from Fresno. (His dad was just as bullheaded as my father was!) But they did come. Don’s Dad asked for my hand in marriage in traditional fashion, over a beautiful dinner hosted by my parents at the Empress of China restaurant in Chinatown. Days later he explained his action to me. Before he married my mother, he had an Irish girlfriend. When he proposed to her and talked to her parents about it, her father rejected him saying, “No Chinaman is going to marry my daughter!” My father wanted to make sure that my American future in-laws would treat me with respect. Many years later, Don’s sister told me her Dad’s account of that evening. She said they went home completely impressed by my parents. They were so proud that Don chose a girl with good values.

It is amazing that though he has been gone a long time, there’s hardly a day passes that I do not feel his imprint on my life. Sometimes I hear him in what I say. “It is important that you make your bed soon as you get up,” I would tell myself and everyone else in my family. This was a discipline my father learned while a young sailor. I open my linen closet, and I notice how I fold my linens, exactly the way he did. He had worked as a steward for an Admiral and knew how to run a household. “When you open a door, you close it behind you.” A habit I have easily acquired. When I oversleep, I tell myself, “Look to the ant you sluggard . . .” One of my father’s favorite Bible quotes. He impressed upon us the importance of being true to one’s word, citing Matthew 5:36-37, "Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes ' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil.” Years ago, I lost my whole Philippine stamp collection to a friend, and realized how deeply this admonition has been impressed in my heart and brain. My friend had just started a Philippines stamp collection and I promised to give her my duplicates. I made a mistake and inadvertently gave her my own collection. My friend realized my mistake and tried to give me back the stamps, but I couldn’t take it back because I had given her my word. I thought my father would have been proud of me, but I did feel sad at losing my collection.  

His legacy runs the gamut of varied lessons and values - how to make a perfect pie crust, how to make a bed, how one has to be reliable, to being honest in my dealings, to working hard and being diligent, to caring not just in words but in deeds, to being balanced in conducting my life (“Too much of even the good things is no good.”) This third grader ran away from his American school teacher in the Philippines and into a faith in an encounter in an American city street, a faith that permeated our whole lives. Today, that faith lives on in his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. A son, three grandsons, and a son-in-law have been pastors serving in New York, the Bay Area, in Arizona and in foreign missionfields. They have served in ministries in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, in campus ministries, youth work and in helping children traumatized by war in Bosnia, Israel, China, etc. Not a bad legacy for one who spoke broken English and had very scant formal education.

MY DISAPPEARING WORLD

If you’re a regular reader of my ramblings, you will have noticed how I ramble so much about changes I’ve seen in my lifetime. I reminisce a lot. I write about my complaints and near complaints about transitions. I beg your forgiveness. Naturally, it comes from where I am now with more years behind me than before. I fight a constant battle against the tendency to spend much time looking back and bemoaning how times have changed. Don and I have tried to keep engaged with life though retirement seemed to have pushed us a bit off the mainstream.

A couple of weeks ago I had a pesky molar extracted. I tried to suffer the pain for the longest time, but it could no longer be helped. As I sat on the dental chair, the oral surgeon and his assistant talked while working on my tooth. They talked about how the surgeon attended a conference and evaded paying the $650 attendance fee. He paid $20 for the name tag of a registered friend. Then the friend reported it as lost, so he could be issued a replacement tag. This upset me quite a bit. I wondered if I could trust this man. And they didn’t seem to be concerned that I could hear all this. It was as if there was nothing wrong with what he had done.

In the movie “The Sound of Music” there is a poignant scene where Capt. Von Trapp had just received a telegram from the new Austrian order. He gets lost in his thoughts and stares at a distance. The Baroness comes and asks, “You're far away. Where are you?” The Captain answers, “In a world that’s disappearing.”

My world, too, is disappearing. The core values that were taught me and passed on to me by my parents, grandparents, teachers and mentors are being slowly eroded by secularism, pragmatism, cynicism and various other “isms” that through the years have been introduced and taught by school systems, parenting authorities, political systems and the entertainment industry. For sure there are some good things that have come out of contemporary influences. There is a greater openness and tolerance for some ideas and ways which were so unwelcome years ago. The increase in the amount of information available to everyone has educated us more effectively and productively. The new technologies have made life a bit easier to manage to a certain degree. But I often question if the trade-offs we make for these new things and new values have made us better people. Our relationships with one another have become very superficial. Our new core values have sometimes made us very selfish and self-centered. I look at Facebook postings and see narcissism oozing out of its pages.

Sometimes I wonder if there is still any virtue in being humble. We are told to do whatever we can to promote and market ourselves. "Selfies" have become a national preoccupation. Our politicians say character is no longer important as long as they serve their constituencies well and are productive. We have elected a president who outrightly lied to the Grand Jury and to the whole nation, but has become one of the most popular politicians of our time. To believe in God is to earn a label of being less than intelligent. And honesty? As long as you are not caught in your dishonesty, you are fine. The new morality keeps my head shaking. Promiscuity seems to be the order of the day. “What? You were a virgin when you got married? You must have been all messed up!” This was said to me by a friend who had had two divorces, an abortion and a couple of lived-in relationships. When I was planning my wedding, a concerned friend asked me if I was getting married because I was pregnant.

There are those of us who are caught in this transition and we don’t know how to cope with it. Recently someone called me to tell me how her act of thoughtfulness to someone in her time of grief was acknowledged with a little printed card that one buys at Hallmark. My friend belonged to my generation. Like me, she was taught that thank you’s are to be written by hand. I told her to be gracious and that not too many people go by that rule any longer. Personally, I have learned not to expect thank you’s any longer. Being thankful does not seem to be a practice among the 35 and younger. I don’t understand why people post Facebook pictures of their food at restaurants and at home. A young friend told me they do this to remember events. How meaningful is an event if it is only made memorable by the food served? Recently I saw a couple standing outside a grocery store. They were not talking to each other personally, but were texting each other on their phones. I’ve seen groups of high school students gathered at tables at Starbucks very quietly talking to each other through their smart phones – texting. I have been taught that looking a person in the eye when talking to him is the polite thing to do. Besides, the eyes reveal a lot about a person. Today I heard the former Senate Majority leader Harry Reid admit that he flat out lied when he accused Presidential candidate Romney on the Senate floor of not paying taxes. There was smugness in his confession and not a whit of guilt. And his fellow Democrats were defending this misbehavior with all their might.

Humility, integrity, honesty, Godliness, obedience to law, sanctity of life, respect for others, compassion – do these still matter?

Making Memories

From Downton Abbey
“Life is the business of making memories,” Charles Carson says to Mrs. Elsie Hughes in Downton Abbey.


Maybe it is the disease of the old that sets in during the retirement years – the constant excursions to things past. Two days ago, I took out an old Tupperware container that I hadn’t used for years. It was our old rice canister. It can hold 20 pounds of rice. It is over 40 years old. We bought it at a garage
sale in the home of missionary friends who were closing their years of missionary service in Indonesia as we were starting out on ours sometime in 1977. Tupperware containers were very valuable to missionaries who lived and served in tropical countries. They were so effective for keeping moisture and bugs out of flour, sugar, rice and even in protecting delicate underwear from silverfish and other little critters. If cared for well, they last and last and last.

Until just about five years ago, I had those avocado-colored canisters and orange containers in active service in my kitchen cupboards. They had traveled with us in our various sojourns that began with a one-bedroom apartment in Pacifica, California where we were young newlyweds. We got a few of them as wedding presents. Then they crossed the ocean to Indonesia to join us in the little town of Batu, Malang in East Java. About four years later they were brought back to California. They served us faithfully as we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where Don went to Seminary for a couple of years. There they were mostly filled with not just the staples, but with cookies and homemade fudge as our babies

grew into toddlers and to preschool kids. The Tupperware molds continually did service for making jello and such other things as were popular in the Midwest. Coming back to San Francisco, they were like old friends. They were faithful and true, and could be depended upon to do what they were made for. As the years went by, our lives changed. The children grew up and our needs altered. The items in my kitchen cupboards and drawers had to give way to other things. We needed room for the bread maker, the Crockpot and the new coffeemaker that ground the beans and brewed the coffee to completion as I programmed it. The newer kitchen canisters looked so much better than the avocado Tupperware. My old friends were relegated to the bottom cupboards where they were retired and recently, to a closet where we kept donations to Goodwill.


Twenty Pounds of Brown Rice
Two days ago, I was at the Pacific Super, an Asian store where we regularly shop. I noticed that the 5-pound bag of brown rice for which we have been paying $3.99 has gone up by almost $2.00. Next to it was a 20-lb. bag of California-produced brown rice selling for $11.99. Even my mathematically challenged brain noticed how much better this deal was, so I heaved the 20-pound bag onto my shopping cart and brought it home.

I was proud of myself for making such an astute rice decision. The only problem was I didn’t have a container for 20 pounds of rice. Quick as a computer return arrow, I did an instant recall of the old Tupperware canister in the closet where I keep things to be donated to Goodwill. There it was – our faithful Tupperware canister that served us so well through the years – in the kitchen cupboard of a young bride, on the tile counter of our little home in Indonesia, on the shelf of an apartment in Cincinnati, Ohio and in a kitchen cabinet in Daly City and on and on the memories kept coming back. The sight and feel of this old friend opened the floodgates of memories. Once more, it will serve us well and make more memories with us.


The butler of Downton Abbey put it well. “Life is the business of making memories. “

"The Miller of the Dee"

Today a poem from long, long ago (and I mean l-o-n-g ago, like when I was in third grade), came to mind.  I don’t know what triggered this thought but I look back with fondness to this little poem.  At the time my teacher read it to us, it was a delight to my young girl’s heart.  But now, many years later it does more than that.  I thought I’d share it with you.

The Miller of The Dee 


There dwelt a miller, hale and bold,
Beside the river Dee ;
He worked and sang from morn till night-
No lark more blithe than he ;
And this the burden of his song
Forever used to be :
“I envy nobody no, not I -
And nobody envies me !”

“Thou’rt wrong, my friend,” said good King Hal,
“As wrong as wrong can be ,
For could my heart be light as thine,
I’d gladly change with thee.
And tell me now, what makes thee sing,
With voice so loud and free,
While 1 am sad, though 1 am king,
Beside the river Dee?” 

The miller smiled and doffed his cap,
“I earn my bread,” quoth he ;
“I love my wife, I love my friend,
I love my children three ;
1 owe no penny 1 cannot pay,
1 thank the river Dee,
That turns the mill that grinds the corn
That feeds my babes and me.”

“Good Friend,” said Hal, and sighed the while,
“Farewell, and happy be ;
But say no more, if thoud’st be true,
That no one envies thee ;
Thy mealy cap is worth my crown,
Thy mill my kingdom’s fee ;
Such men as thou are England's boast.
O Miller of the Dee.

UNKNOWN AUTHOR

THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS

This Thanksgiving morning I heard a rapper say over and over, “It’s Thanksgiving, give thanks.”  Also heard a lot of “We have so much to be thankful for” from the TV. Thankful to whom? 

Many years ago, I worked for a man who was one of the most abrasive people I’ve ever met.  He’s also made known to everyone that he did not believe in God.  He used to say that only people who needed a crutch to get through life believed in God.  God was man’s invention.  If you had enough intelligence, you can work things through yourself. 

One day he left for lunch and didn’t come back.  We learned later that he was on his way back to work when his car crashed into a pole. He was not killed, but was out for a while. His days and weeks were filled with hospital stays and visits, treatments, therapy and rehab, but he was alive.


He came back to work later that year.  The day before Thanksgiving, I remember him saying “goodnight”as he was about to leave the office, pausing at the door and turning back to the other secretary and me, he said, “Good night, ladies, and yes, I have so much to be thankful for.”


My thought was, who was he thankful to? 

 

THE TALE OF THE UGLY CHAIR

(Today I have a guest blogger.  My daughter writes.  She’s a much better writer than her mom.  She usually says more in less words.  I thought I’d share this with you.)

By Kristy Coughlin

 I'm giving this ugly chair a sweater and God's grace is pouring down like rain. All of these pieces are failed attempts at projects, and time "wasted." And yet there is beauty yet to be made. I'm weaving them together to create something brand new and my heart yells, "Even our wasted moments were together and that makes them precious, Lord."

I saved each of these failures, because I sort of knew they could be redeemed. I get that from Him. The redeemer's heart yells, "Hold on. These are not failures. They are pieces for another thing." Hold on, dear ones! Your pieces might not make sense today, but some day...