Amid COVID fears and cashless consumers, how do Salvation Army bell ringers fare?

 My latest freelancing effort for The Salt Lake Tribune:

By Bob Mims | Special to The Tribune

Photo by Rick Egan, The Salt Lake Tribue

Every winter for almost a decade, Van Dodd has volunteered as a Salvation Army bell ringer, wishing a Merry Christmas to passersby — whether or not they pause to drop loose change or a dollar bill or two into his iconic red kettle.

Many pass on by, perhaps offering a furtive nod; others ignore his holiday cheer altogether.

Then, Dodd says, there are those brief, precious moments when he can engage a mother, a father and kids in an upbeat conversation. Parents drop money in the pot, leaving with a smile and their youngsters clutching candy canes.

“I’m a joyful kind of person. I kind of make people come off their shelf, try to brighten up their day,” Dodd says. “I’ve been ringing the [red kettle] bell for nine years now. When I relocated here from Indiana for my job in October last year [2020], I went right over to the Salvation Army office to volunteer again.”

Dodd, a 58-year-old father of three grown children, was assigned a spot in front of the Walmart at 2705 E. Parleys Way in Salt Lake City, the same bell-ringing station he returned to this December. He acknowledges with a sigh that in an increasingly cashless society, the clinking of coins and the rustle of greenbacks going into his kettle have been less frequent this year.

“The spirit of giving just isn’t the same,” he says. “People are in so much of a rush, so busy, with everything on their minds about COVID, whether [it is safe] to stop and give. ... Sometimes, if I just stand back from the kettle, then people might come and give something.”

Nationally, the Red Kettle campaign has seen its contributions first slip from a record $146.6 million in 2015 to $142.7 million in 2018 and then plunge to $126 million in 2019. It grew worse as the coronavirus took hold in 2020, with Red Kettle donations tumbling to $118.9 million.

Capt. Rob Lawler, officer in charge of Salt Lake City’s Salvation Army Corps, says Red Kettle donations here sank from $329,000 in 2018 to $211,000 in 2019 and barely $100,000 last year.

The pandemic also has made recruiting bell ringers — whether volunteer or paid as temporary seasonal workers — a painful task. From about 70 Red Kettle workers in 2018, Lawler could count on 20 or so on any given day this past week, the midpoint of the 2021 holiday campaign.

...  to read the story in its entirety and view some amazing photos, click here:  https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/12/18/amid-covid-fears-cashless/

At 150, Salt Lake City’s First Presbyterian Church strives to be the ‘hands of Jesus’

 

Salt Lake Tribune file photo

(Readers note: Here are the introductory paragraphs of my most recent freelance effort for The Salt Lake Tribune)

    Salt Lake City’s First Presbyterian Church takes pride in its 150 years downtown, where it grew from a dozen worshippers first meeting inside an 1871 livery stable to more than a thousand who marched to the first services at its English-Scottish Gothic Revival cathedral in 1905.

    Indeed, in that initial quarter century, despite doctrinal differences, First Presbyterian’s zeal for public education also earned the Protestant congregation a welcome from the state’s predominant faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Presbyterians founded what later would become Westminster College, along with 36 mission schools and four academies that taught an estimated 50,000 children — many of them from Latter-day Saint families.

    That’s a fine historical foundation, but interim Pastor Steve Aeschbacher says it is the future of First Presbyterian — striving to stay true to its devotion to biblical study as well as its ecumenical approach to shared gospel principles of serving the poor, hungry and homeless — that will define his church in the decades ahead.

    “One of the great things about ministry here is that spiritual things are ‘on the agenda’ for people in a way that they are not in other areas,” says Aeschbacher, who was chosen as interim pastor after the Rev. Michael J. Imperiale retired in June 2019 (a permanent replacement has yet to be named). “Our congregation has a long history of cooperation with other faiths [and] with many local groups to serve the needy, including St. Vincent DePaul, Crossroads Urban Center, the Utah Food Bank, and more.”

. . .  to read the rest of this article, and see some stunning photos that illustrate it, click on this link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/11/07/salt-lake-citys-first/

LDS Church-owned FamilySearch now lists same-sex couples in its geneaological records

Here is my latest freelancing effort, running today in The Salt Lake Tribune: 

----

   FamilySearch, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ genealogical website, says its nearly 2-year-old move to list same-sex parents and couples in its massive databank has proved to be a popular one.

   How popular? Well, FamilySearch, by policy, does not publicly release such specific statistics. Still, Chief Genealogical Officer David Rencher says those unpublished numbers do show that including “same-sex couples and same-sex parents has been well-received by the community of enthusiasts engaged in family history.”

   “Every person’s life is important to reflect in the fabric of the human family,” explains Rencher, who also serves as director of the church’s Family History Library in downtown Salt Lake City, “and adding these features to the [the site’s] family tree [feature] enables everyone to experience and see where they fit into the big picture.”

   The Dec. 10, 2019, official announcement, however, has not changed the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage nor its recognition of only traditional, male-female unions for solemnization and “sealing for eternity” within the faith’s temples.

   Thus, the FamilySearch initiative remains just another step for those hoping for wider same-sex acceptance by the church, says Nathan Kitchen, president of Affirmation, an advocacy and support group for LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and their families and friends.

   “When the announcement was first made,” Kitchen says, there was a “sense of relief within Affirmation and LGBTQ communities that the church would finally open its family records listings and pedigree format for all family configurations, not just opposite-sex monogamous and polygamous family configurations.”

   But it wasn’t necessarily seen as “an inclusive gesture,” he adds, “rather a necessary evolution for FamilySearch to survive and thrive in the family history marketplace.”

   Though a nonprofit operation, FamilySearch — linked to the church’s 5,400 family history centers worldwide and boasting nearly 1.4 billion individual names in its family tree archives — is a big player in a digital arena that includes for-profit companies like Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and FindMyPast.com.

   Kitchen notes the latter three genealogical sites were ‘listing and including same-sex couples and their children long before FamilySearch.org made its announcement and subsequent changes.”

   Of course, those family history services are not owned and operated by a religious institution committed to what it sees as divinely defined marriage on one hand and changing mores and cultural norms on the other.

   Rencher puts it this way: “Issues surrounding gender cross all segments of the population; so these new features accommodated [church members] whose families need to be reflected accurately in the FamilySearch family tree, as well as any of the other millions of [our] users throughout the world.”

   Kitchen says his own mother was among the many who welcomed FamilySearch’s same-sex pedigree expansion.

   “Yes, [she] was very excited to add me and my husband to the family tree in FamilySearch after my marriage,” he says. “[And] over the past couple years, I have heard of many parents who are happily adding their same-sex married children [and] grandchildren into their proud family heritage.”

   Even so, Kitchen asserts that “as fast as parents can add their same-sex married children to their family records in FamilySearch, the church removes them” from the faith by withdrawing their memberships.

   “It is a huge disconnect . . . to have the church remove them from their ‘forever family,’” he says. “For Latter-day Saint parents, this eternal family tree, not the FamilySearch family tree, is the only one that really matters in the end.”

   Kitchen and others in the LGBTQ community hold out hope the church’s proclaimed prophetic leadership will have a “revelation” that includes same-sex spouses and their families in the next world.

....

To read the entire story, with photos, click on this link:  LDS Church embraces inclusion of same-sex couples and parents in its FamilySearch genealogy database (sltrib.com)

Adidas-wearing pastor has a goal for Salt Lake City Unitarians: Get a kick out of life

  So, had a Tribune assignment to profile a new pastor at Salt Lake 1st Unitarian Church. 

  When he politely, and eloquently, declined to offer the usual background  -- age, marital status, family background -- I thought how will this possibly work? But it did, going to show even a 60+(+) semiretired journalist can learn a new trick now and then. 

  I thought it turned out rather well, and as always, Francisco Kjolseth found the less-traveled photos path to make the page pop. Kudos, again, to Editor Dave Noyce, another one-of-a-kind character blessing my universe, and a talented wordsmith to boot. 

________

     After 34 years with outspoken social and political activist Tom Goldsmith at its helm, Salt Lake City’s First Unitarian Church is turning to a contemplative Harvard Divinity School-educated minister and educator to help chart its future.

    But as interim pastor, the Rev. Ian White Maher will not be replacing the Rev. Goldsmith, who retired from the pulpit in May. Instead, the Portsmouth, N.H., native has a two-year contract to help the nearly century-old, 300-member church at 569 S. 1300 East contemplate both its congregational and civic missions before selecting a permanent senior pastor.

    “I’m not just here as some sort of consultant to make sure the church is healthy, though that is part of my job,” Maher explains. “But truly why I am here is to help people believe that they can fall in love with this life. . . to truly fall in love again despite all the grief and heartache we see.”

    Indeed, Maher — whose own activist credentials are hardly lacking, including advocacy for immigrant, LGBTQ and racial rights as well as what he characterizes as “multiple civil disobedience arrests” — sees the inward, contemplative journey as going hand in hand with First Unitarian’s long history of pushing for social justice, income equality and environmental protections.

    “There are so many people today who feel completely disconnected from their spiritual lives, and from organized religion,” Maher says, citing a 2014 Pew Research study showing 23% of Americans identify as “nones” when asked their religion — up from 16% in 2007. (During the same time period, self-identified Christians dipped to 71% from 78%).

    That’s [more than] a fifth of the American population. You have all these people that are ‘unchurched.’ And that doesn’t mean they are [all] atheists; it just means that what had been working is no longer working,” Maher contends. “I honestly, truly believe that the problems that we are facing — war, refugee problems, income inequality problems — are not actually our [real] problems. Our problems are greed, alienation and loneliness, and these are actually spiritual problems.”

. . . .

     To read the rest of this story, and view photos that illustrate it, click on this link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/09/22/new-adidas-wearing-pastor/

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur: Times for deep reflection, repentance and resolve

(Excerpts from my story in Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune on the beginning of Judaism's High Holy Days)

   Listen carefully during the daylight hours of Tuesday and Wednesday, and you may hear the blasts of the shofar rising from synagogues along the Wasatch Front.

  From a twisted ram’s horn come tones both alarming and plaintive, at the same time triumphant and hauntingly like the sobs of a lost child for its mother: This is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, which begins Monday evening — a two-day observance as rich in millennia-old traditions as it is in how 21st-century Jews in Utah and across the planet understand and experience the holiday.

  “Rosh Hashana has so many different meanings to it,” Rabbi Samuel Spector of Salt Lake City’s Congregation Kol Ami acknowledges. “In Judaism, we say that this was the day that God created humankind. There is a big focus during Rosh Hashana on togetherness, on seeing the holiness and humanity and one another, and in coming together as a community.

  “It’s a time for us to really reset. Ten days later is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,” Spector says. “We learn that, leading up to Yom Kippur, we are supposed to do an accounting of our souls and think about how we can be better, how we can both make our world better and be better ourselves, and make our world better in the new year.”

 To read the rest of my story, and see more photos, click on this link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/09/05/utah-jews-enter-high-holy/

St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral celebrating sesquicentennial in the heart of Salt Lake City

    Having an occasional freelance assignment now, in semi-retirement, from The Salt Lake Tribune has been a nice change. What is old is new again, kinda sorta. :)

This is my latest assignment for Religion Editor Dave Noyce (friend and former boss).

    "In the mid-19th-century Mormon theocracy ruled by pioneer-prophet Brigham Young, plans by smatterings of Episcopalians to carve out their own religious niche in the Utah Territory seemed audacious.

    But, in July 1867, two decades after Young had led Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley, newly consecrated Episcopal Bishop Daniel Tuttle — having first paid a courtesy call to the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — presided over his church’s first services in Salt Lake City’s Independence Hall.

    These pioneering Episcopalians went on to establish one of the earliest organized, permanent Protestant presences in Utah.

    “You could characterize it as both a gamble and a miracle, but it’s also what love does — it spreads out and drenches every nook and cranny [of a community],” says the Rev. Tyler Doherty, dean and rector of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah’s Cathedral of St. Mark, which is celebrating its sesquicentennial in September. . . . 

Read rest of my story, with photos by clicking this web link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/07/10/after-years-utahs-second/

A bright spring morning, an old dog, a wagon, and honoring the Walk of Life

 Part of my daily routine is a contemplative morning walk along riverside trails or in parks. I put on my earphones and log on to a podcast, or play portions of an audio prayer book, psalter, or if I'm in a more secular mood, an NPR, Axios or BBC newscast.

 Today, it was the prayer book on play as I did several circuits around a soccer fields complex above the Murray City Park. The air was invigorating, cool and crisp ahead of a warm spring day, a slight breeze in the trees where sunlight dappled a swaying canopy of leaves, while nesting birds chirped and fluttered through the branches.

 Then, as I got into stride and sipped my Starbucks French roast, I saw him -- an athletic man in his late 30s or early 40s towing his mixed-breed, gray-muzzled dog behind him. The canine lay nearly motionless on a small mattress and blanket aboard a wagon.

 Perhaps, in days and years passed, the man's four-legged friend had taken his human for long walks. Like so many other dog owners do with the wide open greenspace there, human and dog had played on the acres of green, tossing and chasing balls or frisbees. But now the years had taken their toll, replacing a puppy's boundless, energetic youth with the ragged, slow breaths and half-closed eyes of an ancient dog.

 Stamina had faded, aches in hips and shoulders grown, the runs becoming walks, the walks becoming shorter until this routine of quiet, simple companionship became what I saw today.

This day may have been the dog's last, or at least one of them. Yet, his human friend was honoring a life that had been -- and remained, even in its twilight -- precious and beloved.

 I remembered the many dogs I have had the privilege of knowing and sharing all-to-brief moments in time and unconditional love with over my life.

 I did not intrude on this moment of bonding and honor between the man and dog he dutifully towed behind him. Instead, I just stood still, quietly witnessed the pair as they went down a hill and disappeared.

 And, with a smile and wet eyes, I said a prayer for two souls on the Walk of Life.

 

"Practicing Prayer: A Daily Workbook" is a 28-day Orthodox Christian pilgrimmage of learning, revelation and devotional practice

 

At just 112 pages and a mere quarter-inch thick, "Practicing Prayer: A Daily Workbook," by Alexander Goussetis, might tempt you, at first blush, to underestimate its true spiritual weight.

Packed inside its pages, however, this is indeed a "workbook" for regular, daily prayer and devotion. Rev. Dr. Goussetis, a veteran parish priest and Ancient Faith Radio podcaster who currently serves as director of the Center for Family Care of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, guides the reader through a 28-day, step-by-step journey to a richer and deeper relationship with God.

From its first step of "Creating a Sacred Space," an area of the home featuring such spiritual aids as icons, candles, incense, a Bible and prayer books and a prayer rope, "Practicing Prayer" takes practitioners through an array of physical and spiritual lessons -- from making the sign of the cross, prayer postures, prostrations, and veneration of icons to the Orthodox Christian's treasured "Jesus Prayer."

The ancient prayer is both simple and short, but profound in its meaning, and beyond comprehension in its spiritual power. "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me," in partnership with a knotted prayer rope, is far more than a "Christian mantra," Goussetis writes, and it goes far beyond a "rhythmic incantation but implies a personal relationship . . . an expression of love between ourselves and God."

This book's value does not end with the 28th and final lesson. You will not master its lessons nor plumb the depths of its spiritual insights in a month, a year, or even a lifetime.

But like breathing itself, so is daily prayer to the soul of the Christian. "Practicing Prayer" will be invaluable to filling your spiritual lungs now, and preparing you for that life of the world to come.

Lent: The things we 'give up' willingly, and those we don't (or, that car was stolen, and 'lent')

 Eastern Orthodox Christians take Lent seriously.

"Boy howdy," as a childhood friend from central Washington's wheat and ranching region would exclaim, do they take Lent seriously.

Six weeks of vegan diet is just the beginning of this time of repentance, reflection, and learning about -- albeit by faltering baby steps -- that (especially for us spoiled, fat Americans) undiscovered country of humility. 

Most outsiders to this most ancient, predenominational of Christian faiths (2,000 years and counting) focus on the food part of all this. But there's so much more to it.

Fasting from the distractions of the world is a commitment just as big, indeed probably more needful these days. Cut back on the TV, popular/secular music, social media, etc., if not try to just do without it period -- replace that with quiet moments, prayer, reading spiritual works, and uplifting, thoughtful literature in the broader sense.

Then there's the concept of almsgiving. That's not just giving a buck to a beggar, but being open to the plethora of ways we can purposely be charitable and loving to our fellow humans. What you save on skipping that steak dinner could be donated to a food bank or shelter, for example. Or, anonymously picking up the tab at a restaurant for an elderly couple or young family; pay for the Starbucks coffee ordered by the person in the drive up line behind you.

Offer a smile to a passer-by, a greeting. You know, random acts of kindness can have value beyond one's understanding, whether you are Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, or none of the above. To a believer, it can be liberating, a grasp at the essence of God's love.

Even if you do not believe that way, you probably do suspect there is a sort of Law of Reciprocity that reveals itself just as observably as those of long-undisputed laws of gravity, magnetic fields, physics, etc.

A the very least, and in ways ultimately still beyond our comprehension, such acts make others feel better. And they make you feel better, too.

But, after that metaphysical if not cosmic detour of thought, I'm taking this blog back to Lent, Orthodox Christian style.

Last weekend I prepared to enter this Lenten season (my fourth) ready to do better, at least incrementally. I was prepared, as I say: meat and dairy replaced by fruit, nuts, and veggies, and striving to acquire a taste for (or at least grudging tolerance for) black coffee. My reading materials were chosen (spiritual and secular alike), I had familiarized myself with the church service schedules, and brushed up on my Lenten prayer rule.

Then, someone stole my car Saturday night. Sunday, they found it trashed in a vacant industrial park in South Salt Lake. Police and insurance reports (the latter worthless, as the policy covered nothing but liability), trying to decide when/if to replace the car . . . and all while wondering why, with a row of new or late-model vehicles to choose from parked in front of our condo complex, a thief would pick my 23-year-old, 137,000-mile, reclaimed-at-auction beater to jack.

My parish priest, hearing my (I thought) rather good excuse for being absent, was suitably consoling. But what he said at the end of our conversation made me consider what had happened in a new, or at least more revealing (?) light.

"Yes, horrible. . . But what can you say? It must be Lent!"

No, God didn't send a probationary angel to shimmy open my locked Honda and rip the steering column apart to jam a screwdriver into the ignition. Life happens. But how we react to Life, well, that's kind of the point, right?

So, here's me with an unexpected opportunity to stretch, to focus on what really matters in life. And what really matters in life is Life. There's love, and hardship, unheralded victories of spirit and charity, and tasting the air we breathe, seeing beyond both time and space, hearing the conversation of the natural world around us, and seeing both the Eternal, and the universe within the eyes of a loved one.

And later today, I'll be looking at a 2012 Ford sub-compact. Manual transmission. A less-attractive model, I'm told, to thieves who have Hondas (however old) and Toyotas at the top of their "to-steal" lists.

Have your own, blessed Lent!

 

Soul Searching: On Confusing the Duties of Faith with the Lure of Political Power

    Hopefully, this will truly be a time of soul searching for Evangelical Christians (as for us all) over confusing faith with political power, and thus a bitter harvest -- often borne of willful ignorance of moral compromise in leadership.

    And of course it is not just Evangelicals who detoured into this dead end path; still this uniquely American Protestant community seemed to fall hardest for a false secular gospel that clothed itself in fear -- and ultimately looked little different than the violence and hate that likewise betrayed and usurped other, initially peaceful protests over legitimate racial and justice concerns this past year.

   My friend, and a mentor in my Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, Fr. Steven Clark, put it this way in a comment:

"The evil one showed the world and said: 'This I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.'

And. . . well.. . . . you know."

Please read, and consider: 89.3 KPCC | 'How Did We Get Here?' A Call For An Evangelical Reckoning On Trump (scpr.org)

So, what is the opposite of the Midas Touch?

What would be the opposite of the "Midas Touch" of Greek mythology?

Given the devolution of modern public education, it is unlikely the current generation, and probably not the former generation either, knows about the story. So, a refresher courtesy Encyclopedia Britannia:

"Midas found the wandering Silenus, the satyr and companion of the god Dionysus. For his kind treatment of Silenus Midas was rewarded by Dionysus with a wish. The king wished that all he touched might turn to gold, but when his food became gold and he nearly starved to death as a result, he realized his error. Dionysus then granted him release by having him bathe in the Pactolus River (near Sardis in modern Turkey), an action to which the presence of alluvial gold in that stream is attributed."

Well, I've not met a satyr in my past journalistic wanderings, but I did know a decidedly randy alternative press editor in my early days . . . but that, and his reputation with the ladies, is another story -- and on consideration, not mine to share.

Hey, I am not a member of the White House staff, after all, all primed to spill secrets at the drop of a hat, or bribe, or political hubris. A confidence is a secret wrapped inside a . . . forget it, you'd never believe the story, anyway.

I digress. What I'm saying is if Midas' touch turned the mundane into gold, these past few days I seem to have to developed the ability to transform the ordinary items and tasks into something decidedly more brown in color, and disgustingly fetid.

Crap, in other words.

Go to New Year's Eve Vespers service, park the car right out front, and come out to be greeted by a $38 ticket for what amounted to an hour parked on an all-but-empty downtown Salt Lake City street. Thirty-eight bucks? Really?

Bake a loaf of bread, usually an easy task (I mean, we have a breadmaking machine, after all). Follow the instructions and ingredient measures to the letter, and when the nifty little automated oven gizmo beeps its "done" notes, I approach the smell of fresh, hot bread in anticipation . . . only to find a mound of steaming, mushy wheat flour with a bubble in its innards.

Oddly enough, that reminds me of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth."

In other words, there's a whole (hole) world under the surface of the crust. Well, not really. Just a yeasty cavity. Slicing this bread was educational, though . . . I suspect I know now how the "Egg in a hole" breakfast recipe may have been discovered.

But we were out of eggs, so just a sorry looking hunk of bread. Like I said, the opposite of the Midas Touch.

Ah, well. An apple, then. Is there such a thing as fruit lividity? You know, like on the TV crime scene people who point out the bruising on a corpse due to where the blood settled due to gravity? 

Whatever. The apple, a glowing red on the top, disintegrates as my fingers go knuckles deep into its unseen bottom half of grayish pulp.

Perhaps the Fecal Touch, then? Because that seems apropos to what comes next. 

Take a walk outdoors, I say to myself, cold crisp air, get the blood pumping, that's what I need. Shoes rustling through the wet leaves, freezing weather but still sunny, a raw sort of beauty to it all . . . then the right heel slips on a partially covered coil of what had to be Great Dane spore.

For Midas, the cure was to swim in a river. He lost his touch, and the river ended up chock full of gold.

But the only river nearby me is the Jordan River. And as we all know, it is already liberally laced with sewage from the overflow pipes of water treatment plants downstream.

Sigh.