Creator of VeggieTales talks about Race
Dear Friends:
For today’s Monday Musing, I commend a link rather than my own words. Phil Vischer is the creator of VeggieTales and the great-grandson of my childhood pastor. His video provides some straightforward history I believe important for us to understand. The video is about 18 minutes long, so wait to click on the link until you have some time to watch, listen and perhaps share.
Click here for the video from his series, Holy Post.
Thank you, Phil.
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor
Dear Organ Donors:
I’ve got an algorithm problem. That sounds like a condition that may require a cardiologist, and perhaps it should, because my algorithms are hurting my heart. After the Paul Johnson benefit concert at Emmanuel Episcopal Church yesterday, one of the attendees asked me about the pipe organ. The congregation of Emmanuel is rightfully proud of their 1970 Casavant Frères, Limitée, of Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada, Opus 3062, a 3-manual, 46-stop, 63-rank, electro-pneumatic action organ, with the 2024 addition of a full antiphon. (When someone else wants to geek out on pipe organs, I’m right there with them!)
The guest’s question was a harmless one; he asked if there were very many organists left who could play such an instrument. I concurred that it’s difficult
Dear Resurrection Researchers:
With another Resurrection Sunday behind us, while I’m nibbling on Robin’s Eggs (my favorite Easter confection gifted to me in tremendous quantity by a good friend), I thought I would muse today about what just happened. Through the centuries, theologians have come up with a variety of descriptions for the reasons and efficacy of Christ’s death and resurrection; some may be familiar, others esoteric. These descriptive schemas are known as doctrines of the atonement. The one thing they hold in common is the centrality of Good Friday and Easter Sunday as the defining moment of Christianity. I hope you don’t find
Dear Skeptical Scholars:
A few weeks ago, I wrote a musing which referenced the Omaha Gospel Tabernacle, the congregation of my childhood. Over the decades they have morphed from a series of evangelistic tent-revival meetings into a more respectable and permanently housed congregation rebranded as Christ Community Church. I was looking for reference to the first radio broadcast produced by founding pastor R.R. Brown, when radio was the hot new communication tool. I knew that in the 1970s they had received an award for being the longest consecutive radio broadcast from the same station (WOW). Armed with this information, I typed my query into AI-equipped Google. From my prompt I was informed that the Omaha Gospel Tabernacle was founded in Zion, Illinois,
Dear Listening Friends:
From the age of 13, my mother attended the same church until she was the longest continuous member, with nearly 85 years on the rolls. When she first attended, her aunt, my Great-Aunt Betty, was the church secretary to the founding pastor, the Reverend Dr. R.R. Brown. A fiery preacher in the style of Billy Sunday, Dr. Brown was an early radio preacher
Dear Answer Seekers:
As I write this morning, a streaming news program is blaring in the background with pundits bloviating their opinions regarding the United States and Israel’s decision to bomb Iran.
I remember during John McCain’s campaign against Barack Obama in 2008, he made a particularly controversial joke during a mic check at a rally; he was castigated as reckless for singing, “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran.” I also remember, in subsequent elections, so many candidates accusing their opponents of fostering
Dear Lenten Travelers:
Beginning this Wednesday and for the following four weeks, we will celebrate Communion in the Ashland Chapel at 6:30 p.m. and then retire to the Parlor for a study series on the politics of first century Palestine. I realize the topic may seem
Dear Fellow Failures:
We’re only a little more than a week from Ash Wednesday, which means Lent is just around the corner! I know that makes me sound a little too excited for observing a season when we are commended to reflect upon our mortality and sinfulness, but this Calvinist is always delighted to wallow in the total depravity of the human condition.
Total depravity is that doctrine of Calvinism that teaches about our permanent state of wretchedness—we are born into
Dear Fellow Gamers:
This past week I’ve been reading (listening to) a book commended at the conclusion of an Ezra Klein podcast, a space where he asks every guest to recommend three. This particular suggestion, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game by C. Thi Nguyen, is a playful mashup of cooking technique, game theory and organizational philosophy. Previously a food writer, Nguyen has brokered his personal obsessions with international cuisine, rock climbing and
Dear Winter Rushers:
The last few days of snow have reminded me of winter days over fifty years ago, racing on my Flexible Flyer from the top of the Field Club reservoir down into the gully below. In the summer it was the 10th tee of a private golf course; but in the winter, it was one of the best sledding hills in Omaha. Under the hill was a 25-million-gallon concrete container completed in 1954 by the Metropolitan Utilities District (MUD) to hold water from the Missouri and Platte Rivers. Founded in 1900 as the Omaha Cricket Association, the cricket club quickly transformed into a private golf course. By the early 1950s, memberships had declined, so the country club was all too willing to take $35,000
Dear Fellow Dreamers:
Yesterday I was honored to provide the keynote address for the La Grange Ministerium's annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Prayer Breakfast. My remarks were double the length of an average sermon, so I will not print them in their entirety. I offer this summary.
In my remarks I mused on how, not long ago, we believed we were nearing a post-racial America. We had an African American president; women were finally busting through the glass ceiling, making almost as much as their male counterparts. We had gay friends who could finally legally marry, and we were ushering in a new world that welcomed gender fluidity. All we had to do was show up, deposit our tax dollars and campaign contributions
Dear Trusting Travelers:
As you know, I’ve done a little traveling over the past few months, and although I was supposed to be very afraid about flying during the government shutdown, I blocked from my mind everything I’ve learned about commercial pilots from Lance and settled into a series of relaxing, non-eventful flights. Of far greater terror have been the trips to and from the airport. First, a shout-out to Dan Rusk, who has most graciously dropped me off and picked me up from airports. These rides have been without incident, except for the one that involved his transporting garden compost in the back of his Tesla—the lingering earthy odor that permeated my suitcase is dissipating, and being profiled as a serial killer by TSA for the next few flights did break up the humdrum drudgery of air travel. I’ve also gotten way better at holding up my pants without a belt while walking through the metal
Dear Fellow News Junkies:
Some recent items in the media have revealed to me that I have a problem: politics has taken inappropriate residence in my head and heart.
A series of events taking place thousands of miles away from me, perpetrated by people I’ve never met, executing actions completely out of my control, have affected my demeanor, my energy, even my ability to concentrate on routine activities of daily life. This should not be acceptable. But like an addict believing the only resolution to feelings of withdrawal is another fix from the addictive substance, I am driven to doomscroll and double down on my helplessness. Of course, the purveyors of the addictive information are more than willing to leave little breadcrumbs of clickbait, driving me even deeper into a spiral of illusion. I jump back to my newsfeed to read one more update. If only I could discover the missing piece of data, an interview, a smoking gun, proof granting me that ‘gotcha’ moment of satisfaction, then I could regain control over my life
Dear Christmas Celebrators:
Closing out the Christmas season and its twelve days, I want to take one quick look as to how the church determined that December 25 was the magical day of Christ’s birth. Like so many who had taken high school Latin, I was taught that the Christian community was bummed out during winter solstice because the Romans celebrated the occasion with bacchanalian debauchery in a festival called Saturnalia. The party was named for and recognized Saturn, god of agriculture, wealth and the mythical "Golden Age" and called for gift giving, singing, drinking—pretty much everything we associate with a 1950s office party. Christians, it was
Dear Christmas Dreamers:
Christmas memories are as ethereal as frost etchings on a windowpane. We remember them as beautiful, and because of that unusual bonding angle of frozen water, we recall their six-pointed fractal symmetry; but the specifics of any particular pattern melts from our memory, and we are left with more of a feeling than a retraceable image. Such are my recollections of Nicholas Rudall, Classics professor at the University of Chicago, who in his spare time transformed the Court Theater from an outdoor summer drama club into one of the most influential artistic organizations in Chicago.
Rudall was a Welshman, and every December he would recite A Child’s Christmas in Wales in Ida Noyes Hall as a fundraiser for the Court. I heard his program many times while living in Hyde Park, and each performance felt as if Dylan Thomas
Greetings Light Bearers:
Hanukkah (or Chanukah) has begun, and Christmas isn’t very far away. Even Chicago’s weather has helped these past few days as we have experienced a very bleak midwinter, a carol that mentions snow no fewer than five times in the first verse. (For those who think modern praise music is too repetitious, consider that the word “Hallelujah” is sung 16 times in Handel’s Chorus, not counting contrapuntal hallelujahs throughout all four parts.)
The world has hushed this year with a terrorist attack against Australian Jews celebrating the first night of Hanukkah with a trip to the beach. The absurdity of violence has shaken the Australian public, as this is their first mass shooting since the Port Arthur violent attack in 1996. For us Americans it merely disappears into our barrage of rapid-fire
Dear Christian Soldiers:
When the current administration lost its stuff over the suggestion that American soldiers were not only free to disobey illegal orders but were required by military code to do so, their reaction became a crystallizing moment of clarity for me.
My own Christian journey was forged in the incubator of the religious right. Its expression in my youth was detached and distrusting of politics. The key to a radically successful life was obedience to what God intended for each of us, and I was taught that governmental authorities could never possess the tools of righteousness. In fact, we made fun of mainline denominations because of their acquiescence to civil religion with their scout troops in their church basements, candidate forums in their social halls and anti-war protests in the streets. We taught that Christians made better citizens precisely because our allegiance was to righteousness, not politics. We believed
Dear Energy Savers:
We’re at the precipice of the Advent Season, which most years begins on the Sunday following Thanksgiving. I say most years, because Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, which means anywhere between November 27 and December 3, whereas Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday, which means anytime from November 22 to November 28. In months with five Thursdays, Advent is the second Sunday after Thanksgiving. But the relationship between Thanksgiving and Advent is not where my mind is musing today.
My concern this Monday is emotional waste, which I think accounts for what is popularly called compassion fatigue. Now emotional things like compassion are not zero-sum commodities, but time and personal resources are, so while you can expand your capacity for compassion, you don’t suddenly have