At the Risk of Our Own Life

Today's gospel is a rather messy episode with all sorts of uncomfortable questions and answers. Why would someone be born blind? That was much more of a tragedy in Jesus' day than ours, with few employment options beyond begging. Surely there must be some way to explain the situation, prompting the disciples' question.

Jesus' answer at least refuses to assign blame, but it isn't entirely satisfactory either. He was born this way "so that God’s works might be revealed in him?" Really? This man suffered all his life just so he could be a prop for Jesus? Based on everything I know about Jesus, I'm going to say that Jesus didn't mean it that way. Here merely shifts the emphasis from one of blame to one of opportunity to minister and share God's love.

Yet when Jesus does just that, it stirs up more problems. Jesus had done "work" on the Sabbath when he made a little mud. Granted, this obsession with exacting requirements of Sabbath keeping is baffling to us, but if a homeless person shows up at our churches on Sunday morning, we generally tell him that we deal with such problems at other times. As I said, this is a messy gospel passage.

I wonder how many people in America today view the church in much the same way church congregations tend to view the Pharisees in today's gospel. Does the church look as baffling to outsiders as the Pharisees' behavior sometimes seems to look to us insiders?

Given that most of the opposition to Jesus seems to have come from religious circles, it would seem incumbent on church denominations and congregations to examine themselves carefully, to ascertain the ways in which we model Jesus' behaviors and the ways in which we model those of his religious, and no doubt well-intended, opponents. And surely we would want to guard against acting like Jesus' religious opponents, people of faith who seemed to think that their religious traditions and practices were so sacrosanct as to need defending and preserving at all costs.

One of the fundamental claims of the church is that we are called to be the body of Christ in the world. I won't for a moment minimize the difficulty of figuring out exactly what this call looks like, what particular ministries it calls us to undertake. However, it seems highly likely that any such calling will create tension and even conflict with our institutional, religious sensibilities.

The Presbyterian (USA) Book of Order, in its opening pages, says this about the church. "The Church is the body of Christ. Christ gives to the Church all the gifts necessary to be his body. The Church strives to demonstrate these gifts in its life as a community in the world: The Church is to be a community of faith, entrusting itself to God alone, even at the the risk of losing its life." (F-1.0301)

I wonder if the tension I am talking about doesn't reside within this line about faith and risking our own life. Jesus was willing to risk ridicule, suffering, and death for the sake of others, for the sake of the world. As Christ's body in the world, we are called to do the same. So what does that look like for the congregations where you and I are?

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

As we drawn closer to Holy Week and the cross, the gospel reading for today speaks directly of Jesus' being anointed for burial, albeit in advance. And it contains that troubling line where Jesus deflects Judas' supposed concern for the poor with, "You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

Much has been made of this one, stray line. At issue in the passage is a single act of extravagance, an outpouring of love by Mary. Jesus will not condemn her extravagant love. His comment presumes that caring for the poor will continue to be a priority for his followers. They, and we, will have ample opportunities to do so, but Mary will not have many more opportunities for such extravagance. As she likely senses, Jesus' time is growing short, and she expresses her love the best way she knows how.

It is difficult to make this story an allegory or analogue for our time, though that hasn't stopped us from trying. By Jesus' own words, Mary seizes a fleeting opportunity, one that is no longer available. Jesus does not go to the cross again. Jesus is not prepared for burial again.

Nonetheless, people will make a comparison between Mary's act and our worship, saying these are our extravagant acts of love directed toward Jesus, and surely Jesus would not pit these against helping the poor as Judas attempted with Mary.

Perhaps not, but Mary's one-time, extravagant act has become our primary focus. We in the typical church congregation pour the lion's share of our resources into worship, and we help the poor with whatever is left over at the end. Now certainly Jesus does not disdain our worship. He does call us to love God with all that we are and have. But he will not separate love of God from love of neighbor, and his words to Judas in today's gospel are not about a choice between worship and assisting the poor.

In the terms of today's passage, using the very same measure Jesus uses, we can easily invert what he says to Judas. The risen Christ is always with us. He is constantly available to us through the Holy Spirit, and our opportunities to worship him in ways plain and extravagant are without end. The same cannot be said for many of the poor. How many children in developing countries will die today for lack of clean drinking water, a relatively inexpensive problem to solve?

What would we do if we heard Jesus say to us, "You always have the chance to worship me, but such-and-such situation needs your attention now." Would we cancel our worship, and focus all our energies on doing what Jesus asked?

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Pain, Groaning, and Hope

I vaguely recall a quote without remembering who said it (an all too common occurrence for me). I think it was either Lyle Schaller or Tex Sample, and my paraphrased recollection goes thus. "Over a generation, the position of pastor went from a high-status, low-stress job to a low-status, high-stress job." Now if you think I'm going to whine about how hard it is to be a pastor, I'm not. Rather I see this as a reflection of how hard it is to be the church in our day and time.

Like pastors, churches have lost a great deal of status. Many people view churches with great suspicion. Even those who find spirituality and Christian faith somewhat attractive may want no association whatsoever with an actual church congregation.

Congregations respond in various ways to this situation, and these responses can create a good deal of stress. Some congregations "circle the wagons" and become righteous remnants, preserving old ways at all costs. But such attempts to guard the tradition can produce nasty battles over exactly what constitutes the tradition, especially around music and worship. Conversely, congregations that respond by trying to change the tradition and do new sorts of worship can find those changes producing stress and conflict over what changes to make and what is good worship and what is not.

Anxiety about where the church is headed magnifies every choice and decision. Wrong choices could have dire consequences. This is stressful, and when people are stressed out, they rarely exhibit their most endearing behavior. Fights over worship are common in both innovating and conserving congregations. Or it can lead to a kind of paralysis where people don't dare do anything.

In such an atmosphere, congregational leaders and pastors can feel overwhelmed and inadequate to the task at hand. The stakes seem so high, and every little problem, misstep, or upset can feel life-threatening.

In today's reading from Romans, Paul speaks of the difficulties that he and others face as they work to build up the church. He writes, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."

I am inclined to think of difficulties, of pain or groaning, as signs that something is terribly wrong. But Paul seems to view the very same things as signs of something new being born.

I like to talk a lot about call, about my own and about the church needing to hear a clear call from Jesus. But I have to acknowledge that difficulty and pain and groaning are more likely to stop me dead in my tracks than they are to seem like signs of something new being born.  I want a call that does not include any pain or groaning or difficulty or struggle.

Paul clearly understands Jesus much better than I do. He has totally bought into Jesus' language of taking up the cross, taking up suffering, and even death, as the path to true life.  How else could he say what he says to us today. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us."

We live in a time when it is hard to be the church, when church is not highly valued by the culture, when the way of Jesus is not a way many people, even many in the church, want to embrace. We also live in a time of great spiritual hunger, a time when people are longing for something they cannot find in the culture at large.

This is very different time from the time the church knew when I was born, but in many ways, it is a time not so different from the one Paul knew when he wrote his letter to the church at Rome. I wonder if I might be able, like Paul, to sense, in the difficulties and struggles and groaning that seem so much a part of being church in our time, the labor pains of something new that is being born.

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On "Being Fed"

After Jesus slips away from the crowds, they search for him and eventually find him. Unsure of how Jesus had given them the slip, they ask how he got there.  But Jesus doesn't really answer them. Instead he says, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves."

Not very nice of Jesus, complaining that those who seek him only want something, that they aren't following him because of who he is but because of what he can do for them.

Nothing much has changed, has it?

Twenty-first century Americans have taken this to new heights. We live in a consumer culture, after all, and so religion/spirituality becomes one more consumer item. We even use the same language of eating found in today's gospel. We are happy when religion "feeds us" and complain when it doesn't. We're less concerned with who Jesus is and more concerned with having our needs met.

Certainly God cares about our needs, but the whole Jesus business is about a lot more. It is about discovering the reality of God and ourselves that is otherwise out of reach. It is about discovering a whole new way of life that overturns consumerist notions of happiness and "being fed." If we can just quick focusing on or needs for a moment, and focus on Jesus.

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Do the Math

Churches have to do a fair amount of math. Every year we set a budget based on our best guesses regarding expenses and congregational giving. Every year we make decisions about raises for employees and whether or not we can do that big repair we've been putting off. Every month we check on the actual giving and expenses to see if our best guesses are holding up.

We do lots of other kinds of math, too.  We count the number who attend worship on Sunday and the number of youth in the youth group. We keep track of our membership numbers, adding and subtracting as people come and go. Sometimes such numbers tell us things we very much need to know. But at times we can get controlled by numbers. Sometimes numbers keep us from doing what Jesus wants us to do.

In today's gospel Jesus gives a follower a math problem to solve. We're even told that it is a test. Jesus sees a huge crowd of 5000 people coming toward him and his little band of followers, and so he asks Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”

It's a pretty straight forward problem about math and logistics. 5000 people, how far to the nearest take-out joint, 5000 multiplied by the cheapest menu item, and how many needed to transport all those sandwiches? But Philip doesn't need to do all the math. 5000 multiplied by the price of a hamburger and he's done. “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”

Another disciple, Andrew, volunteers that a young boy has a lunch basket with some small bread loves and a couple of fish, but then he does a little math of his own and realizes how useless his suggestion is. "But what are they among so many people?” It's a math problem worked out over and over again in churches. "Yes we see the problem, but we don't have enough to do anything about it." Never mind those biblical stories of Jesus refusing to be constrained by the math.

Not that I occupy any faith high ground here. I regularly do the math and conclude it's hopeless, that there's nothing to be done. There's not enough time. There's not enough energy. I don't have enough or the right skills. There's no way I can pull this off.  I've done the math, and it's obvious. I don't have any miracles up my sleeve, and you just can't count on Jesus to come through with a miracle when you really need one.

Of course the miracles I'd like from Jesus sometimes have little to do with continuing his ministry to the world. I want Jesus to bless what I'm doing and make it successful, often without ever asking Jesus if this is what Jesus wants me to do.

I struggle with this faith thing as much as the next person, but it seems to me that the whole shebang is pointless if it doesn't work hard to figure out what Jesus wants of me, of us. This problem is perhaps a more serious one for church folks and especially pastors. It is easy to presume that our church activities are what Jesus wants. It is church, after all. But then I remember that it was the good church folk and their pastors who found Jesus so insufferable that they wanted to kill him.

What is it you want from me Jesus? What is that thing you would have me do, never mind what the math says?

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

Today the children of this congregation are doing a musical based on the book of Jonah, on the same day that the gospel reading is Luke's parable of the prodigal. But for this largely accidental pairing, I don't know that I would ever have contemplated the similarities between these two stories. Both the younger son of the parable and Jonah act contrary to what is expected of them. Jonah flees the call to be a prophet, and the younger son refuses to act the part of a good son. And both are eventually rerouted by events and circumstances.

If that were not enough, both the parable and the book of Jonah end with uncertainty. Will the older brother come into the party thrown for his younger brother? Will Jonah come around to God's willingness to save the people and animals of Nineveh? (Curiously, Jonah gets to play both the disobedient role and the older-sibling-like role of one offended by God's mercy and grace.)

Both these parables are fairly well known. The parable of the prodigal is much beloved, although there is a tendency to ignore the fact that most of us church folks are more older sibling sorts. We someone manage to hear the story from the younger brother's perspective, even while we run our congregations like elder siblings, insisting that church exists primarily for us elder types, not the wayward folks out there.

So too the story of Jonah, one of the Bible's more remarkable parables, is known in a stereotyped way. People know about Jonah being swallowed by the fish, but know little about the story's playful wrestling with running away from God's call and despising God's love given to those we hate.

As I approach my first anniversary as pastor of this congregation, I find that issues of call are taking center stage. This includes my own sense of call but also the call God places on this congregation. And it seems to me that this morning's two parables offer cautionary tales of sorts. They invite us to consider the ways in which we function like Jonah or like an older brother, unable to embrace the grace of God that is scandalous and offensive. And so they invite us to consider where we, who like to think of ourselves as God's people, are found to be opposing God's plans.

But most of all, these two stories remind us that God's grace will have its own way. Wayward siblings and Ninevites will be rescued, renewed, and restored. There will be rejoicing and celebration as grace has its way. And the only question, in these two parables at least, is whether we will join the celebration.

Redeeming Church

A Twitter comment about pastors caught my eye the other day. In part, it said this, "Great post. Church has dropped ball. I blame clergy. Timid, inward focus." It referred to a blog post on home foreclosures and the faith community's failure to see this as a justice issue that demands our attention. (You can read the blog post here.) But without regard to the blog piece itself, I was struck by the reading assigning the blame to clergy.

It has become a kind of conventional wisdom that the gridlock in Washington, DC is because everyone is beholding to some special interest in order to get reelected. Whether that interest is the NRA, a labor union, or some ideological position, the conventional wisdom goes, "They can't get reelected if they alienate their key supporters, corporate donors, well-funded lobby, etc. And so they can't do what they think is right or best for fear of losing the next election."

Presbyterian pastors don't exactly run for reelection, but congregations vote on our pay every year. And of course that salary comes from the voluntary contributions of members, so we have the same sort of political pressures on us as members of Congress. We can't simply do what we think right. Actually we can, but there may be consequences.

This system works pretty well when pastors, church leaders, and members are all in basic agreement about the mission and purpose of the congregation. Needless to say, this is not always the case. And if the Church fails to be Christ in and for the world as we are called to be, there is probably enough blame to go around for both pastors and congregations.

We pastors get comfortable with our churchy patterns: getting ready for weekly worship, managing the institutional apparatus of a congregation, attending meetings, visiting people, and for this getting a regular salary, health-care plan, and a pension. We Presbyterians actually have a stellar pension plan. Wouldn't want to jeopardize that.

Congregations have their own churchy patterns: "going to church" on Sundays, helping keep up the buildings, having fellowship and learning activities, and, if there is any money and energy left over, doing some "mission." A lot of folks find this a very comfortable set of patterns. And like pastors, they may be disinclined to rock the boat over any perceived deficiencies.

“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” So says Jesus in today's gospel. But truth is often much less comfortable than the routines we know and enjoy. In fact, churches and pastors are sometimes downright allergic to the truth.

In previous congregations I've served, I've had members praise "our great youth program" which had all but disbanded a couple years previous. Similarly I've been told about the 100s of children at our Vacation Bible School, only to discover that such numbers were last reached in 1967. Not that I'm immune to such wishful thinking or denial. I recall being stunned by the truth of attendance and giving trends on a graph charting both over an extended period of years. I had been there while it was going on, but somehow missed the truth right in front of me.

It is striking what settled things church congregations and pastors often are. Especially when you consider that our founder proclaims a kingdom, a new reign or realm of God where things will be new and different, where God's will done on earth, how can churches simply become a part of the cultural fabric? But we have, and we like it. We like the familiarity, the comfort, the pension.

“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” If you continue in my word... Nothing there about continuing what we are doing as though it were timeless. Rather it is about continuing in Jesus' word and finding there a truth that frees us. Frees us from old patterns that imprison us and make us timid perhaps?

I started off this post with a comment from Twitter, so it seems appropriate to circle back and say that I see a lot of Twitter comments about church. Many of the people I follow on Twitter are connected to church in some way, so that's not a big surprise. But a lot of those Tweets wonder if Jesus meant to start a church. They wonder if church as we know it is more hindrance to the ministry of Jesus than help. Troubling thoughts for someone with a church pension.

Is church as we know it and do it something Jesus wants? If the answer is "No," in full or in part, are there changes that can be made to pull us back to what Jesus does want? If the church is not what Jesus meant it to be, is it redeemable? Can it become what it should be?

Answering such questions surely requires us to continue in Jesus' word, to dwell with Jesus and his teachings and discover the truth. If, as I believe, the church is redeemable, surely it will take a deep engagement with Jesus' words so that our priorities begin to look a little more like his.

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Loving Church Bullies

"But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." Regardless of how you understand the mechanics of the cross, this statement from today's epistle insists that Jesus is, in some way, God's intention to reconcile with us, no matter what it takes. Restored relationship with God isn't a reward for being good or for believing the right things. God has already done everything possible to reconcile with us, regardless of who we are. We simply need to realize how much God loves and desires us.

If Christians can claim to be anything special, it is to claim that we have experienced this reconciling love of God, an experience that  has tremendous implications for all our relationships. As the writer of 1 John says, "Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another."

I suspect that most of you have at least one person you can't stand, who drives you crazy, who you go to great lengths to avoid. I sometimes think such situations are even more common in church congregations. Churches have a remarkable knack for enabling and even encouraging anti-social, dysfunctional, and manipulative behaviors. Because most congregations have a cardinal rule of "Be nice," bullies, antagonists, and people with no power anywhere else discover that churches are loathe to call them out on their behaviors. Indeed such folks often occupy key leadership roles, and they can contribute to premature departures of pastors and other church staff.

Of course such folks sometimes go too far, creating a showdown of sorts. Tempers flare. Words are exchanged. But this upsets the culture of nice which must be restored, and peacemakers will work diligently to get one party (rarely the bully) to extend an olive branch. And "nice" rules once more.

Sometimes churches seem to have substituted "Be nice," for "Love one another." Perhaps such niceness is a sort of love, a bit like that of a doting grandparent who spoils a grandchild and is oblivious to any and all misbehavior. But such love is nothing like the costly love of God in Jesus. For that matter, it is nothing like the love of a good parent.

If you were a parent, and learned that your child was a terrible bully at school, tormenting and even physically injuring other children, what would you do? Perhaps there would be some temptation to excuse this behavior, but surely most people would want to correct it. True parental love demands such action.

So how are we to love church bullies and troublemakers? I think it starts with acknowledging that some of our "Be nice" behaviors are not about love at all. They are about avoiding the hard work of real love. It is easier and less painful for us to ignore them, avoid them, or let them have their way. Unless they get us so mad we explode, and of course very little that looks anything like love often comes from that.

How do people love one another in your faith community? More to the point, how do people love bullies, antagonists, and troublemakers? 

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Too Smart To See the Messiah

Nothing new in this observation: The folks who gave Jesus the most trouble were religious leaders. They were the learned folks, the people who had studied their Bibles and understood church doctrine. Anyone who knows Jesus' story knows this, but I'm not sure we always take it to heart. Do we who know our Bibles, who've learned doctrine, who are heavily invested in the church, every consider what it would be like if Jesus showed up now? Would we recognize him? Would we embrace him? Would we resist him?

There's an interesting bit in today's gospel where the Pharisees dismiss the crowds that are drawn to Jesus. "But this crowd, which does not know the law — they are accursed.” These devout, followers of the Bible can't figure out how to fit Jesus into their church doctrines, into their reading of Scripture, into their carefully crafted and sophisticated view of things. Perhaps those dumb, uninformed peasants who didn't understand the Bible could be fooled, but they are way too smart to be taken in by Jesus.

I am, too. Not that I'm going to reject Jesus outright, nor do I need to. With Jesus not being physically present to stir up trouble, I'm free to wear the messiah label, calling myself a Christian (Christ is simply the Greek form of messiah.) without actually doing what Jesus says or even thinking it's a good idea.

I'm too smart to think Jesus really meant it when he told me not to invite people to my dinner party who might invite me to theirs in return. "But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind." Maybe such lines worked 2000 years ago, but not in my world. And I can't really love my enemies or act like other people are as important as me. My daughters never would have attended a nice suburban school system so they could get ahead of folks who couldn't afford to live there if I had thought that way.  Maybe Jesus could resonate with simple peasants from the 1st Century, but I'm too smart and sophisticated for such things.

And so I'll keep thinking that Jesus was a good guy with some good ideas. I'll keep looking for some spiritual nuggets in the words of the Bible. But I'm way too smart actually to follow him.

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Comfort for Hire

I did a graveside funeral service this morning for someone I did not know, someone who wasn't a member of this congregation. I had received a call from the funeral home. They wanted a Presbyterian pastor, and I fit the bill. The whole thing had a bit of a mercenary feel to is, and perhaps I was trying to assuage such feelings when I insisted the funeral home return the fee they had already charged the family for my honorarium. (I think I offended the funeral home employee when I said I would confirm with the family that this fee had been refunded.)

When I got to the funeral home prior to the service (they are located on the cemetery grounds), I found a room being prepared for a reception to follow the graveside service. After meeting the family I looked around to fill the time until we went to the graveside. And so I discovered that catered receptions were one of the services this funeral home offers to families. The "tastefully" displayed advertising for this service was hard to miss. And the layout of the facility was clearly designed to allow this on a large or small scale.

I had never seen this before, which may reveal nothing more than the lack of such practices in Raleigh, NC or Columbus, OH, the only places I served as a pastor before coming to the DC area. Regardless, I found myself wondering about a funeral home providing a "service" that in another time or place would have come from a faith community or from friends and neighbors.

Perhaps it is simply the very diverse and transient nature of this area, but my heart ached just a bit at the situation. Was there no community to provide comfort and care to this family? Could they only find such care for hire?

I don't know, and I wasn't about to ask the family. But it got me wondering about the level of community and care people experience in the typical church congregation. I've known many people who have felt very cared for at a time of loss, but often they have a long association with that church. What about folks who are new to a congregation? And I suspect this question may have different dynamics based on the size of the congregation.

There was a time when people were less transient, and it was more likely that multiple generations would live and die in the same congregation. In such circumstances, communities of caring could emerge in a fairly organic way. Over long years of association and friendships, a natural community emerged. Such communities can develop regardless of faith. It has happened in union halls and Elks Clubs right along with congregations. But surely church communities are supposed to be more than a natural development that grows from long association.

I wonder if this isn't a big issue for churches in an age when so many people are transient and have so little in the way of roots. If the church is to be the body of Christ, then it seems to me that people should encounter something of Christ's self-giving love the moment they arrive, and not after they are well enough known.

One of the things I love about baptism is the notion of it being an adoption ceremony. In baptism we are joined to Christ, and so we become his sisters and brothers, meaning, of course, that we become sisters and brothers to all those other siblings of Jesus in the church.

So if we are in some sense family, how are we to insure that people experience the sort of love and care one might expect from a reasonably functional family? And without having to pay for it.

Sermon video: If Only I Had a Cowboy Hat

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Sermon: If Only I Had a Cowboy Hat

Today's worship included the Lord's Supper and the ordination and installation of Elders and Deacons, making for this rather brief sermon.

Isaiah 55:1-9

If Only I Had a Cowboy Hat

James Sledge                                                                                       March 3, 2013

There’s been a lot in the news lately about changing the offensive name of the Washington  NFL team. I try not to say the nickname, but the discussion recalls my childhood, a different time when cowboys and Indians were movie and TV staples.

Cowboys were everywhere in the 1950s and 60s, and my brother and friends and I all had holsters and plastic six-shooters. I also had a pair of pointy-toed cowboy boots, and at some point decided I needed to complete the look with a cowboy hat. I had a toy cowboy hat, but I wanted the real thing, and they had them in the Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog.

For those too young to recall such things, the Sears catalog was the closest thing we had to internet shopping. It was a huge book. You could find almost anything in the Sears catalog, and they had genuine cowboy hats, right there in the section with saddles and bridles and barbed wire and other things that real cowboys might need.

My parents wouldn’t buy it for me though, and so I began saving my money. With a 25 cents a week allowance, it took a long time save the $8.00 or so, but I saved and saved, and finally had enough. My mother ordered it for me from the catalog, and then I waited. It seemed to take forever. I’m not sure I ever anticipated something so intently. O how different and grand my life was going to be when I got that real, genuine, cowboy hat.