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| Memories are stored in this place: First Lutheran |
I have a long memory from when things were so much better. Maybe it was the continual decline that got to me. The drop-off became predictable.
Maybe memories are fading of when First Lutheran members made a decision every Sunday morning: go to the early service or the late service. Coffee and fellowship in between.
I have never been programmed to just accept a steady rate of deterioration in anything. I noticed significant problems in our Morris public school system in the 1980s. That situation became horribly uncomfortable before we finally had some people in power who slowly called for some adjustment. In the mid-1980s I was like the boy who said the emperor had no clothes.
People were not inclined to say I was wrong, just that I was being negative or "drastic" or some such thing. The forces on the other side of these matters gravitated to expedience or simple "quiet." Maybe it was the persistence of certain problems that got to me in the end. "Small town expedience" got to me perhaps.
Little by little my First Lutheran Church deteriorated. Do I have to remind you of the main catalyst? The whole gay rights thing that came down to us from the national level. But what consequences of all that!
We can say that First Lutheran was proud of its building once. It has slipped in that regard because of handicapped/elderly accessibility issues. The problem is accentuated by the seriously aging complexion of small town churchgoers. And these people do not want "gay rights" thrust in their faces. They are reasonable people primarily and they would want humane treatment for all. So OK, the church can remind everyone of that over-arching value and then move on. Move on, I tell you, and don't try to educate me about "LGBTQ" etc. Sexual preference is just one component of life.
So in the ashes of all this we now have First Lutheran Church of Morris. I remember its true heyday. No one would have accused it of being liberal. Our pastor was a Nixon Republican in the days when the political landscape of America was quite different. Republicans and Democrats could get along mostly, often just treating their differences with an air of levity. Nothing like today. Today it's "MAGA against the world" and Donald Trump actually lost in 2016, I mean he got three million fewer votes than the Democratic candidate. The electoral college is a holdover from Civil War reconstruction. Give the southern bigots some room to operate.
I'm sure MAGA was a factor in the tumble downward of my old First Lutheran Church. Can the people there even hold their heads high anymore? They will say they can. They are deluded.
Can I cut to the chase here? What kind of church does not even have an activity at their own building every Sunday? The congregation is paying to keep the building open. And it just sits there now on half of all Sundays, virtually unused? When I try to state the obvious like this, as with our public school system in the 1980s, people really sniff and get resentful. It's interesting how they stop making eye contact with me. The worst ones cease trying to use logic and just come at me with ad hominem personal criticism. I'm "negative." I'm a "quitter." I had an important local person accuse me of being negative to my face in the 1980s. As if the local public really truly wanted to plod along indefinitely with our public school as it was operating. As if the school was ashamed of making a genuine commitment to extracurricular. You should know what I'm talking about. Oh here I go again assuming that these people can actually peel through obfuscation and self-interest on the part of certain people and see the truth. People in their comfortable positions who fear any boat-rocking. Many of them simply fear change, especially people with government jobs. We still have a teachers union in Morris that can be very irritating, at least this was true up through a couple years ago. Oh, I do try to hold out hope. I'm not a quitter, I just think there is no hope for First Lutheran Church. Here's a heading on the Drudge Report this a.m.: "26 percent say Trump a positive role model." 26 percent? "Trump is a positive role model?" Why has our society gone to hell so horribly? The man was found responsible in a legitimate legal proceeding for sexual assault. Shall I go on? Maybe we should not not have any churches anymore. Our military destroys an Iranian girls school. Our Navy sinks an Iranian ship and doesn't bother to rescue survivors. I feel like the only sane person in an insane asylum. But go ahead and keep calling me names. Call me a "quitter."
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - musicstuff54@gmail.com
