The Circus Comes To Town

We are two weeks away from our midterm elections, and here in Kansas for the first time in anyone's living memory a Democrat has a chance to win an election for Senate.  He's a popular megachurch pastor from the suburbs of Kansas City, a former Republican (aren't we all) who is charismatic and seems to be saying all the right things.  His opponent, a doctor who has made a name for extorting and suing (and jailing, it seems) his former patients because of unpaid medical bills, is riding the coattails of a deeply unpopular president.  

So we were all excited to hear last week that the president was coming to town for the first time in 10 years.  Yep, spending somewhere under six hours in an American state once every decade shows how much he cares about Kansas.  He came here to ostensibly campaign for the embattled Republican senator and the other GOP candidates who wish to cozy up to him; of course, flying all over the country these past few weeks he's gotten to hear cheers from the 32% that continue to support him.  Likely the affirmation and worship is what he really wants.  

It's interesting, though, that as he came to Sedgwick County he chose for the arena not Koch Arena on the campus of WSU (named after the Koch family, who is as conservative as they come), nor Intrust Bank arena in downtown Wichita, which is the standard all-purpose modern arena for big events in Kansas.  Instead, he decided to go to a small arena on the northern end of the county.  I've been there once or twice over the years...it's basically a barn with a bunch of seating around a bowl.  Maybe he couldn't get the first two due to other scheduling conflicts...but it strikes me as hilarious that here in Deep Red Kansas, a place where many people continue to revere him, they were worried enough about the crowd size that they chose a smaller venue for his standup act.  

I had no desire to go, either as somebody who would have to endure hours of warmup acts (included: washed up rocker Ted Nugent!) before he showed up an hour late for the lovefest, or as a protestor who would likely get beaten by his thuggish worshippers.  Instead I made a nice lasagna soup that my wife had been asking for, and enjoyed an evening home watching some TV and talking to my son on the phone.  I never did see Air Force One, though I drive my bus near the airbase in which he landed; I stayed out of the city and the traffic jam that his motorcade would have caused; I refused to watch any of the local coverage in the moment.  Not for me, thanks.  

The only surprising thing that might have happened (beyond the moron in the town one over from us who posted on multiple social media sites that he was gonna cap the president; yeah, he's going to jail) was that Trump announced $8 billion dollars for a 'Harvest Fuel Relief Program', something dreamed up in part by our desperate senator.  So let me get this straight...we engage in a pointless war of choice that has spiked fuel prices, we watch farmers (many supporters of the president) go belly up because they can't afford to run their equipment, and then we cheer on a plan that is essentially a bribe to keep the farmers on his side?  The same people who scream about how the left is racing into socialism races to bail out with massive spending the farmers who are suffering because of Trump's own policies?  Surely people are not so stupid as to fall for this again?   I mean, all those DOGE checks, tariff checks, 'vote Republican and get $5000' checks, and now farmaid checks?  None of these things actually exist, of course...but how many people teetering on the fence in the Senate election are going to now vote for our Florida-based incumbent who has enabled all these problems?  

Maybe it's a pipe dream to think that we can ever get rid of these morons.  But the fact that they are spending tens of millions on ads (many going straight from my mailbox to the recycling bin) here rather than elsewhere shows what kind of mess these people have created for themselves.  It should be an interesting next two weeks.

Thinning the Herd

My last Sunday to preach is December 27th.  Maybe not the LAST last, as I believe that I will always be called to serve God's people, and after at least a six months sabbatical ("no preaching, no teaching, no leadership, but yes I'll do a funeral") someday I'll get back up on that horse.  But my time as the preaching minister for our church is coming to an end, and the church is already making plans to move on without me.  

So I've started looking around my office to figure out what to take.  21 years of books, sermons, memories, plus whatever I brought here from the 10 years before that.  Since I'm not moving to another office somewhere, most anything I take will probably have to fit in the basement or maybe one of the kids' rooms.  Having had a few months to think about it, though, I think most of it's not going to the house.  I've already taken three boxes of books to our local library for their booksale (mostly books about sports, humor, and history); probably 90% of the rest of a lifetime's library will stay here.  I need to call some preacher friends to come and have a look through, because what preacher can keep from getting more books?  I know that for most of my career I couldn't.  Whatever doesn't get taken will stay on the shelves for whoever ends up replacing me.  

On this rainy morning I spent some time going through some boxes that have sat mostly untouched.  In them were my old class notes from two stints in grad school, plus some journals that were part of my postgraduate academic phase when I thought it necessary to try and keep reading what was new and trendy in ministry or Biblical studies.  The journals ended up being taken upstairs into our church library where they will likely sit for another 25 years, but I agonized a little bit more about my old classroom notes.  Surely I could use these again?  Or some wide-eyed student preacher might appreciate my insights and term papers from John Mark Hicks' class on hermeneutics?  In the end, I was ruthless, and took two big boxes out to the dumpster.  

I've still got a long ways to go.  Pictures of the wife and kids, a Ron Swanson bobblehead still in its packaging, a cricket ball from my trip to Sydney before I was married...those will all go home to the Me Museum.  But much of the rest of this?  Soon to be gone or abandoned.  

It's always easy at this point to hear again the words of our Lord from the Sermon on the Mount: 'Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal...'  Yet I wonder, if Jesus had come in our day and age, would he have had a library?  Pictures and cartoons on his wall?  A first draft of the SOTM laying on the corner of his desk?  And before he was crucified, would he have brought the Twelve into his office and start giving stuff away?  

Perhaps all this kind of stuff is what makes us so stagnant as we get older.  When we're young, we can toss everything into the back seat of a car and just go.  But decades later, we struggle to let go to anything. Maybe cutting ties with so much stuff will be a blessing for me, and get me back to remembering what's important again.  

In the meantime, anybody want some books???