MY GRAND-FATHER'S CLOCK

          "Mamma, Grand-pa  spanked me !" , I lamented, expecting consolation.
       Instead :"He told you to stop messing with the clock."

      Lest this sound like an acknowledgement of long-ago child abuse, perhaps a bit of context is in order.  

     My grand-parents had the above clock on the mantel of their dining room.  When I was 4 or 5  years old, the clock and its pendulum fascinated my youthful curiosity.  So, on one of our visits, when I thought the adults were occupied in another room, I relocated a chair to the mantel, opened the clock door and began to accelerate the movement of the pendulum.  That was great fun until the clock's proprietor happened to walk through the room and observed my game.  I complied with his instruction to come down and desist.  When I thought he had returned to the living room, I resumed my fun.  Suddenly, there he was again, reminding me of his earlier admonition.  Then followed some kind of corporeal 'stimulation' to the posterior.  Retrospectively, I doubt that there were many licks with any force.  Likely, the hurt was to my feelings that I, the eldest grand-son, would be so disciplined.  Never again did I "mess with the clock", however.

Grover and Verdona Cooper
Clock owners
Late 1940's

Early in their marriage

    Then in 1951, just after my 13th birthday,  both grand-parents died within a month. The siblings made the sorrowful distribution of their parents' worldly possessions.  I lobbied the adults for the clock, using the rationale that I somehow 'deserved' it because of my earlier 'trauma' (though I did not know that word).  Instead it went to my Aunt Rachel, their youngest child,  ten years older than I.  Intermittently over the 65 years since then, I told Rachel that if she ever chose to dispose of the clock that I wanted to renew my bid.  Though I have frequently admired it, I knew that there were valid reasons it could not be mine.  Until this past Thursday night . . . 

Rachel, The Clock and Me,  April 7, 2016

       My two brothers and wives and I had visited her, gone to dinner and then back to her home for lots of warm conversation.  Rachel is 88 years old and a 'Karakter' and Family Treasure unto herself.  Still she posed a challenge to our decorum with her pre-meal grace: "Lord, Bless these Nephews and Neices and help them to behave."

    Back at her house, midway through the conversation, she suddenly said , "I have something I want to give Ron [me]" and disappeared into her kitchen. She returned with the clock and told us that her children had agreed that I could have it.  Seldom am I at a loss for words but in this moment, I could only manage , "Thank you !"  Gratefully, my sister-in-law, Shirley, had the presence of mind to record the moment.

      Then came an unknown piece of family lore.  She told us that her parents had received the clock from her paternal grand-parents.  She was uncertain as to whether it had been as a wedding gift (they were married in the early 1900's) or upon the occasion of her grand-parents' deaths.  At any rate, it is OLD.  And, it keeps perfect time, striking the half hour and hours.  (I attempted to insert a video of the striking.  Guess that's a tekky challenge for another time.  But then, the original owners didn't have computers and video. )

       I removed the current 'read' from the chest in order to take the above picture. Later, I thought it how appropriate to have left it there. The title: The Time of Our Lives.

    Satchel

NOT A JOKE . . .

             Initially, I thought it a bad April Fool's joke when I read about it yesterday.  Then I learned that it was for real.  There is apparently a Bill pending in the Tennessee State Legislature that would allow mental health counselors to refuse to treat persons with belief systems different from their own.

     One Tennessee legislator reportedly told a television station that "the bill is aiming to reinforce the First Amendment by protecting the religious rights of counselors, allowing them to refer a patient elsewhere."

     As a professional mental health counselor, I know that such a practice violates the American Counseling Association's Code of Ethics that stipulates that professional counselors may not refuse clients based on "age, culture, disability, ethnicity, race, religion/spirituality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital/partnership status, language preference, socioeconomic status, immigration status, or any basis proscribed by law."

    And, the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (of which I have been a Clinical Fellow) asserted that "we avoid imposing our beliefs on others, although we may express them when appropriate in the pastoral counseling process."

    I am in practice with an organization that offers 'faith-integrated' therapy. . . rather different  from 'faith-based'.  When meeting with a new client, I indicate that I consider myself a 'pastoral counselor' (as a retired United Methodist minister).  What that means for them is that if matters of belief and practice are topics that they want to include in our conversations, then I am 'at home' with the vocabulary and experience without our having to agree on matters of interpretation and that their positions are treated with respect.
However, if matters of faith, etc. are peripheral or irrelevant to them, then I am a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor and able to "walk in both worlds".  Currently, my clients span a broad religious ( and political) spectrum :  Pentecostal,  Black Muslim, Protestant ministers of several denominations and theological viewpoints, Roman Catholics, a former cloistered monk, as well as agnostics, 'nominals' and 'indifferents'.  Because our sessions are not for theological debate, I work with clients' own belief systems as a resource to help them gain clarity on their therapeutic 'issues'.  If pressed to define/describe my faith perspective, I doubt that many of my clients would be able to do so.

    'Evangelism' (some might say 'proselytizing') as a process to bring someone else to one's own faith perspectives and interpretations is a long practiced form of 'ministering'.  But not, I believe, in the counseling relationship.  Stated plainly, evangelism is not my ministry.  And, many of these  so-called' religious freedom' bills carry a huge agenda of discrimination and mean-spiritedness.

     I looked up the definition of 'minister' in an on-line dictionary. Among the meanings that I found, I particularly liked this one: "You don't have to be religious to minister.  When you minister to someone, you take care of them."

    Fred Craddock died recently. He was a Protestant teacher/preacher extraordinaire.  He told the story of when Rear Admiral Thornton Miller came to his college when he was a freshman.  Miller had been a military chaplain at D-Day in Normandy.  He told Craddock and some of his friends about how he had gone from soldier to soldier --- some screaming, crying, dying --- attempting to offer comfort and prayers.  As Craddock told the story: "Someone asked . . . 'Why did you do that?'
  His answer: 'I'm a minister.'
  And the person began again, 'But didn't you ask if they were Catholic or Protestant or Jew?  Did you just . . . I mean, if you're a minister . . .'
  Now get this. Rear Admiral Miller said, 'If you're a minister, the only question you ask is, 'Can I help you?' "  (Craddock Stories, p.137)

    Satchel