My Dad is Batman

My dad is Batman and for that I am profoundly thankful. During my 8^th or 9^th grade years (’67 or ’68, can’t remember which it was) at Clark Junior High (yes kids, back then we had two 3-year junior highs in the Crescenta Valley) I went to a weekend winter camp with forty or fifty kids. Gary Baker was the LCPC Youth Pastor, my mom and dad were youth advisors, and Batman the TV series was in full swing staring Adam West as Batman, Burt Ward as Dick Grayson, Alan Napier as Alfred and dozens of comedic actors as villains and villainesses such as Catwoman (Julie Newmar & Eartha Kitt – wouldn’t that make it Catwomen?), The Penguin (Burgess Meredith), The Joker (Cesar Romero), and The Riddler (Frank Gorshin). The point here is that some good actors loved being bad guys in a cheesy TV show taken straight from the 40’s comic books. People love parody.

Saturday night at Camp Owongo we gathered for fellowship after dinner and a full day of snow activities - that’s right, back then we had snow in the local mountains during winter. Camp songs had been sung, a lesson given, and a table set up in front of the crowd when out from a side door came Pastor Gary Baker dressed in full-on chef’s regalia or chef’s whites, complete with white double-breasted jacket, white pants, and his head topped by a puffy toque (chef’s hat). He came out carrying a mixer, a bag of flower, and few other odd kitchen implements, set them up and introduced himself as ‘The Mad Baker’ and began telling us of his evil plot to enslave us and began mixing the potent compound he’d use to do it all the while flicking bits of flower at the front row. His performance was consummate and we were rolling in the aisles laughing. The humor was a bit tempered for me because as an advisor’s kid I knew who was a likely ‘volunteer’ for clean-up.

The Mad Baker quieted and, if possible, grew more sinister. He threw out malevolent looks to the crowd until we settled down, if only for a moment because that’s when Batman burst from the kitchen door, complete with a spandex costume straight from the TV screen - grey tights, black silky cape and head gear with matching silky shorts and gloves, and plastic boots and belt completed the scene. My dad’s voice bellowed from below the mask, and he could bellow with the best, “Not so fast Mad Baker!” The place fell apart and the fight scene ensued, worthy of the TV screen, flower puffed in every direction, POW! BAM! and WHAM! - until the foe was vanquished. Legend. For that three-year generation of Junior High kids, my dad was Batman and he was frequently greeted as such.

  

I didn’t mind the cleanup. After all, that was my dad who had saved us. It’s funny in so many ways but still, I find it emblematic of my dad’s heart. He is an Elder in the Presbyterian Church. He looks after the people, guides them, teaches and directs them. And he protects them. I tell you that my dad is a shepherd after God’s own heart.

From time to time I’m asked why I’m in youth ministry or why I’m still doing youth work. Most times I give inquisitor a simple math equation. Genetics plus God’s call. I’m happy with that. It is no wonder that I got involved with youth work early on, informally as a senior high student with junior high kids and then as a Sunday School teacher of third graders while a freshman at Glendale Community College. I hold my folks in high esteem and look up to them and how they conducted themselves as parents with faith. People who know us from those days and are peers of my parents don’t ask, they know why we serve as we do. Some folks shake their heads and wonder if I should be working with youth but until I’m led elsewhere, this is where I’ll be.

I'm not great with PhotoShop but
you get the idea

I don’t have a specific memory of this, but I have a photo of me standing up in the palm of my dad’s hand and looking around as if it were the most normal thing for me to be doing as a one-year old. The photo is emblematic of the way I’ve come to think of dad, holding me up, letting me look things over. ‘He’s got my back’ is the say it would be said these days. I frequently sign off on letters and such for Christian communications, ‘In His Grip’. It’s a phrase I picked up from my friend Darren Bottino shortly after my family first came back to LCPC and I got involved with the junior highs there again. That’s how I think of things, ‘In His Grip’ or in the palm of His hand. From time to time over the years I’ve imagined that photo with my dad in his Batman costume.

We all have choices to make in how we remember the people in our lives and the events that have shaped us. Choose the ones that give you peace and make you smile. Laugh a little, it’s okay.

Dad, thanks for having me in the palm of your hand and teaching me early on that putting on tights and a cape in front a bunch of junior high kids is natural.

In His Grip,

jerry white

Heavenly Transport

Naked Voices - Spring 2015

Voices raised in harmonies and tones, beats and reverberations, rang out through the hall. Naked Voices blended in ways that bespoke and confirmed my belief that God deposits a bit of His creativity in each of us. These young musicians, Brothas From Otha Mothas, Vocal Motion, and Intervals have touched upon the Mother Load and worked their craft to refine the ore and graced us in the purity of their performance. Thank you.

Sundaes on Sunday, how can I have said no to that? The after dessert fair the concert was kicked off by Brothas From Otha Mothas (BFOM, all male a cappella) with a rendition of Come Sail Away by STYX written by Dennis DeYoung. I saw waves breaking, heard gulls crying out, and was transported pleasantly away to carry on. Thank you BFOM.

Vocal Motion (VOMO – all female a cappella) followed up with a RAP/Hip Hop medley out of which I did not recognize any of the songs. You’ll just have to forgive me on this one because I just might have been the oldest person in the audience this past Sunday night, certainly in the top two percent – finally, I’m in the top of something. Nevertheless, while they sang never gonna get us I might have a gotten a little glimpse of them. The group was in constant motion and their sound was an eruption from the soul, I was delighted to see, hear, and feel their performance. Thank you VOMO.

I have a little observation tempered by my long career in the phone factory. Telephone men like their acronyms and I noticed that a cappella groups do as well. It must be a communications thing. What?

InterVals, the co-ed group of seven between the first two openers and the host group sent us a long with a rendition of _____. When I stalked their YouTube channel I noticed they sported several more voices on other occasions. I won’t hesitate to tell you that I closed my eyes and felt carried along like a raft on a stream, I love that easy-going way that rivers have while moving through the country. Thank you InterVals.

Naked Voices, sixteen co-ed voices deep, hosted Happy Sundae as the last concert of the year and honored their outgoing seniors, my nephew Trevor among them. With a full ten-song set plus an encore to pay tribute to, my post will run longer than my personal word limit but since it’s my blog and my limits I can stretch them when I want. The group is full-bodied, like a good Merlot.

You’re the One I Love, lead solo _____; you can’t close the door on this performance, it made me want to give a standing O. The energy bundled in the execution of the piece was barely contained, contagious, and was a fine kick off for the set.

Rather Be by Clean Bandit, solo ______; there was no place I’d rather have been, I loved the life NV gave this rendition. There was something satisfying listening to a love song while being with my core five, wife, three kids, and me. There will be times when we’ll be a thousand miles from comfort, make sure to have someone in your heart to love and you’ll be where you want to be.

Being a child of the sixties, The Beatles Medley hit me where I lived back then and evoked memories of crazy sing-alongs, then and now. Leading with Paperback Writer sucked me right in because it’s no secret now, I want to write something worthy of putting out in paperback. Hey Jude with my nephew Trevor on solo was awesome. We are thankful to Naked Voices and all that you’ve meant to him.

This Love by Maroon 5, solo performed by _____ was par excellence, sung with feeling and honesty. Loved it.

Fix You by Coldplay, senior solo sung by Trevor; one of the purest things that I’ve seen or heard Trevor do and he’s as honest a person as I know. I know he touched the audience as a whole but it felt like he was singing to each of us from the depths and so, from this song my hope for us all is to have someone sing to us “Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones and I will try to fix you.”

Treasure by Bruno Mars, solo performed by _____. Full of life, your energy was contagious. Contagious in a good way but brings me to another observation. A cappella crowds are a rowdy bunch and very demonstrative in their delivery of appreciation, love it over and over again.

I’ll break here for a couple of personal notes; most often the beat box guys/gals are standing alone and I just wanted to run on stage and hug them so they wouldn’t feel apart from the scene. And, we heard that otters hold hands while they sleep so they won’t drift apart. With all the love songs and songs about love and this being a senior night with summer staring us in the face allow me to say this about drifting; I have seen in print and am grateful to have it in my life – the best of friends though separated by time and distance never drift apart and when reunited take up where they left off. May it be so for all of us and our best of friends.

Woods by Bon Iver, solo by _____, amazing tones with harmonics especial. Time was slowed down and I was amazed at the end of the concert that time had barely passed.

_______ by _______, solo by Sheila, an organizational maven who sings like in instrument played by angels. Happy trails Sheila, you’re wonderful.

Love the Way You Lie (Part II) by Rihanna, solo by _____; a wonderful rendering of a disturbing song. Always be a hero but I suggest we do it without lying, my personal bias.

The Michael Jackson montage was electric with energy and the joy of performance, the perfect way to the end the official set. Great choreography, the wolves were especially captivating.

The encore wrapped things up nicely, “where there is love, I’ll be there.” Can’t go wrong with that. May there always be an encore.

While I try not to engage in wishful thinking too often, with the possible exception of the lottery, I do attempt to participate in hope and prayer and mine for you all is that nothing comes along to keep you from singing, that life gives you plenty to sing about, and that there is always someone in your life to cause you to raise your voice in song.

         

In His Grip,

jerry

Keep the iron side up.

Just Add Water

          “¹In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ²Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Genesis 1: 1&2 (NIV)

Just add water.

“¹On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, ²and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

⁴”Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.”

⁵His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

⁶Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

⁷Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

⁸Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

^9aThey did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the waster that had been turned into wine.” John 2: 1-9a (NIV)

Lord, there is a bushel full in those readings. My friends and pastors Andy and Lee could probably preach half a dozen sermons from them and not repeat each other. Early this morning the LCPC Men’s Ministry group read chapters 2 through 5 out of the Gospel of John and a couple of things struck me about Jesus’ first miracle. Hopefully, I won’t be steeling the pastors’ thunder.

Water plays a huge part in Biblical writings starting with the first couple of versus when God created the orb we live on and covered it with water. Water continues to play big through to the end of the New Testament with Jesus’ baptism, his first miracle, the man by the healing pool that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, the Samaritan woman at the well where Jesus started a revival in the town, just to name a few NT stories.

Jesus’ miracle was very simple, just add water and take it to the banquet master. This basic miracle would never have happened without Jesus’ mother taking the bold step of faith and first commanding the servants to obedience to Jesus. First the servants obeyed Mary, then they twice obeyed Jesus and the miracle became evident to kick Jesus’ ministry into high gear and giving us a story rich in allegory, abundant material for generations of sermons.

What step of faith do we need to take? What act of obedience to we need to make to precipitate a miracle in our lives and the lives of those we’ve been called to love?

         

In His Grip,

jerry

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

Mother’s Day Sunday brings out a host of sermons about what it is to be a mother and many point to Mary as a shining example. All the pastors really need to do is lean a photo of you on the easel up front and have them give me a call; I’ll tell them all about you and how you’ve become and been the model mom. There is plenty that I can tell them and whenever I can, I brag about you and tell people how fortunate that I am to have a mom like you.

People sometimes ask me, or sometimes they don’t and I tell them anyway, what inspires me to youth ministry. Before I tell them it’s in my heart and I feel called to it by our Lord, I tell them it’s genetic, both my mom and dad were youth advisors to me while I grew up and my mom in particular carried on over many years – ‘carried on’ being such a descriptive phrase for how we are when we are in youth ministry. We carry on is so many ways; goofy, pragmatic, doggedly, silly, tearfully… You have been a guiding light to me with the pathway having been lit to what looks to me in the rearview mirror to have been a lifetime of youth work in one form or another with the times that I’ve felt most alive and most in tune with the Holy Spirit having been while working with young people. Thank you.

You have been an example of selfless love that you show us by your actions, the way you set up your priorities, how you go about Christian service – your lifestyle. The Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, is your guidebook, your itinerary for living and it’s etched upon your heart.

You are the mother to two of the greatest treasures I have, Stacey and Denise. Sisters, as annoying as siblings can be to each other, are priceless and you have done a wonderful job with them, not so much like a sculptor with mallet and chisel as like the river washing away the roughness, leaving behind smooth stones, graceful and elegant, water and rock, perfect compliments, one to the other. Thank you.

You are and have been a bonus mom to my friends, my wife, and anyone I’ve loved and brought to the house. It has been an open door for the three of us and your extended family has grown and I know, has blessed you in return many times over, that’s the way giving of yourself is. Thank you for being there for my friends and caring for them as you have. We have a few bonus kids of our own and understand the appeal and fun of it; thanks for that as well.

By the way, your mom job as translated into a very nice gig as Gramsey and now GeeGee, hasn’t it? Thank you for being such a wonderful example to my own family unit. I am so grateful that God brought me a woman who has also been a great mom and reflects many of the same qualities as you. I’m quite certain that she would agree that you have influenced her on this in a very complimentary fashion with her own mother.

Thanks mom, I love you.

jerry james

Dear Graycen

Dear Graycen,

Graycen and her mom Christen

Princess Graycen Rochelle Rogelstad has a very nice ring to it. Welcome to a wild and wonderful place – the McClelland/Rogelstad family. As the newest little princess in the household there are a few things that you should know.

Your appearance today, April 19, 2015, was a few days beyond the due date and in your own good time thus proving that medicine is as much practice as it is a hard science. Well done young lady. Your new family, extended family and friends, and their friends and family have been eagerly anticipating, hoping for, and praying for your arrival and now with it, you have brought us all much joy and the best sort of tears; tears of joy, gratitude, and heartbreaking thankfulness. It seems that a few of them have found their way onto my keyboard. Thank you.

It is an expressive group that you’ve joined as a family member; loud and raucous, joyful and loving, and they can be rather creative in their expressions of it. It will be fun to see how you can in one moment trigger a wild display and in the next inspire them to shush people to let you sleep while they want to dance and play at the same time.

By way of a quick introduction, I am one of your Grandpa Mac’s best of friends and I love your family to pieces. In case you haven’t grasp it yet like you’ve already grasped a dozen of their fingers, that includes you. Thanks for making us all so happy.

You’ll be bringing some changes beyond all the diapers. I will enjoy watching my friends as they morph into something even more complete as humans. Good hearted people always change when they hold a baby in their arms. Your parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and great aunts, uncles, and grandparents are all very lucky fortunate people to have you in their lives. Please find fun ways to remind them of that as you grow up.

You will be an inspiration. You will inspire prayers of thankfulness and intercession, pleading and hope. It seems to be the destiny of children born into families of lovers and believers to be such an inspiration. I’m sure that you have sensed that those prayers and hopes have been ongoing since before your first sonogram. It’s a big burden for such a little person so bear; just smile, nod, and move along; the chapters you write will be full of plot twists but the characters in your life will help you along very well.

And this is my prayer for you; that you live a long and glorious life of inspiration. May you find your own stroke and learn to plain it out in a yardage eating pace and that when you arrive at destinations you have just enough energy to appreciate getting to wherever it is that you’ve gone and have enough strength to do whatever it is that you need to do when you get there. May your egg-beater kick keep you comfortably above the chop and allow you to see over the action and control the zone. May you always have those around you that love you, allow you to try and fail and to try and succeed, and may you always have the ability appreciate what you’ve learned while doing them both. May you find an abundance of health, love, excitement, and peacefulness. Amen.

I am looking forward to meeting you and shaking your little hand.

In His Grip,

jerry

MAZ '15 Post 5: My Treasure Chest

From my notes of Tuesday, March 17, Day 4:

          The huntsman keeps me company through the night; Orion’s constellation is often the first thing that I see from my cot when I am awakened throughout the night here at the Gila River Indian Community. It always makes me smile as Orion is the first constellation that Cindy shared with me when we were dating.

From my notes of Thursday, March 19, Day 6:

          I missed a couple of days of note taking, or was it just one? That’s what can happen out here, getting caught up in a hectic pace, moving the team from there to here and back again. Maybe though it was more of a focus on the lesson that I delivered Tuesday night along with the rain coming in as a beautiful distracter.

          I felt Kim’s urging for me to share my little testimony but really had no idea of how to relate it to The Treasure in the Field or The Pearl of Great Price. It wasn’t until I had started my talk and was partly through the scriptures that I was able to find the parallel. If it reached anyone, it was God’s grace and His Holy Spirit at work.

          We reviewed the scriptures of the two parables and the group shared their experiences of giving up some stuff in order to get the good stuff. Then I gave my literal interpretation of The Pearl from Matthew 13: 45 & 46.

          Read verse 45 and stop: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.”

         

          It says that the Kingdom is the merchant who is searching. 

         Then in verse 46 he sells everything he has and buys it. “When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”

          Jesus is the merchant and when he finds us, he gives his very life in order to have us in His Kingdom. Jesus’ treasure chest has been filled with his people at the cost of everything he had, his blood, his life…

          Then I related my story of finding my heart again and obeying God’s voice to come on my first MAZ thinking that I’d found a pretty cool rock, a little caked in mud and covered in dust but fun to have nonetheless. Later during our time in Arizona that year we were asked to share our testimony with the students and I shared the pain and bitterness that I had been carrying against God for years and how the bitterness had driven a wedge between me and God.

MAZ '15 Team @ Stotonic
in front of the new vatu
Photo courtesy of Paul Hofmann
a gem of a guy himself

          As I finished my story that evening on my first MAZ the group of twelve and thirteen year-olds along with the adult advisers gathered around me a prayed over me. I was healed of the bitterness and that was when I found that the rock was really a Jewel, my Pearl of Great Price. Those kids and those adults then, every team in between, and the kids and adults on this year’s team occupy my treasure chest. It doesn’t feel like sacrifice to have them in my life.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

         

In His Grip,

jerry

MAZ '15 Post 4: Wake Up Call

From my notes of Monday, March 16, Day 3:

          I woke up before my alarm this morning – actually it was hours before my iPhone would chirp me awake or any biological imperative would make itself known to me. Perhaps it was the cricket that tried a kamikaze-suicide by running full-tilt into my head that was just barely sticking out of the top of my sleeping bag or maybe it was the anticipation of waking up nearly thirty teammates for our first full day of work.

Vah Ki Before Sunrise

At any rate, I was fully out and patrolling our camp well over an hour before sunrise. I was followed closely by three of the girls asking if they could work out and then Jacob asking if he could run laps. Anna, Sinclair, and Emily worked out and Jacob ran while I quietly moved the dogs out in a widening perimeter; my path was basically designed to keep watch on the athletes. Jacob’s self-defined route took him in and out of the early-morning gloom. I was thankful that I was able to pick up his return earlier with each lap as the sun inched its way over distant mountains.

          I walked through the dorm that we established under the huge meeting arbor by pulling together benches and setting them face-to-face to make what could be cozy bunks. They keep us off the concrete floor and away from the creepy-crawlies. Early on in my MAZ carrier when my daughter Lauren would be sleeping next to me as a young elementary school child, we would simply spread out a tarp and lay our air mattress on it until one morning I was woken up by one of the reservation dogs licking my face. We joined the kids on the bench-bunks that night. Nowadays I use a cot as do several of the other adult advisors. Age and experience have helped define our comfort levels here in the Sonoran Desert.

          Walking from the pink section (girls) to the blue section (boys) and seeing them all wrapped up like cocoons I didn’t feel like waking them up, a rare occurrence for me. I felt more predisposed to let them sleep, even if only for fifteen minutes longer.

Wake up!

My humane wake-up calls were met with heavy resistance from a couple of bunks. I imagine that waking up with my face inches from theirs while asking if I was “getting through” to them paid dividends later in the week. It couldn’t have been pleasant waking from their dreams to see this face. Brad Pitt or Jennifer Lawrence? Sure. My face? Not so much.

In His Grip,

jerry