How to Help Defeat Cancer? Pedal. Pray. Repeat.

“[The bicycle] is no longer a beast of steel… no, it is a friend… It is a faithful and powerful ally against one’s worst enemies. It is stronger than anxiety, stronger than sadness. It has all the power of hope.”    --Maurice Leblanc, late French novelist

What’s with all the bikes on the road this summer?! Where’d they suddenly come from?

Those are questions on many minds and hearts in this part of God’s creation, at this time of year. One day the roads are clear and quiet and then one Saturday in the spring, bikes are everywhere, especially on the weekends. It can feel as if cyclists have returned to the streets and byways, like those swallows who return each year to Capistrano.  Bikers galore, flying around in their skin-tight lycra shorts and psychedelic bike shirts, riding in packs of two or four or more. Bikers whose numbers are peaking right now, in mid-July. Bikers like yours’ truly.

First, a confession and a plea.

Most bikers, like me, are trying our best to be the kind of biker that drivers like you, respect and even like. Bikers who wave and say “Thanks!” when you let us through an intersection or wait for us to pass by. Bikers who ride as far over to the right as we can, so we don’t hog up the road. Bikers who follow the rules of the road. Yes, these summer weekends you will experience a minority of bikers who are rude, careless, aggressive, and impolite. But hey—that’s not most of us who absolutely LOVE, to cycle. So: PLEASE watch out for us. We do not want to risk limb or life for this sport that brings us so much joy.

We cycle for lots of reasons.

To get in shape, to shed those winter pounds that can no longer hide beneath a big sweater! We cycle to relieve stress, hop on the bike at the end of a long workday and pedal away our cares. We cycle to see this amazing God made world at the smooth speed of 11 or 12 or 13 miles per hour. Fast enough to make forward progress. Slow enough to catch the beautiful show that is found in the warmer months in New England; hawks soaring in a bright blue sky and the yellow and white lily pads that cover a pond and a setting sun all orange and fiery.

But here’s also why there are so darn many of us cyclists in these parts right about now. Many of us are in training for a one-of-a-kind charity ride, the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC).  Come the first week in August the ride’s goal is to raise more than $66 million dollars, which will all go to support the incredibly important and lifesaving care and research that happens at Boston’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute. That sixty-six-million-dollar figure is not a typo. Every single penny raised by riders like me, every cent, 100 percent, goes to that world class place.

You know of the Dana Farber and have been touched by its work.

It’s the place where your neighbor or a kid on your daughter’s little league team or your loved one went to or go to, for hope and to seek treatment to get better from the scourge that is cancer. It’s the place where the absolute best doctors and nurses and scientists are focused like a laser beam on one dream and one goal: to find a cure for cancer and to live in a cancer free world.

We PMC’ers ride for the same reason, and ride for the special ones we love and loved, touched by cancer. I ride for Sue and Nora and Dottie and Scott and Mark and Lynne and T. Michael and Evelyn and Kathy. I ride for folks with cancer I do not know and yet want to help. That’s why me and 6,000 other people will set off on our bikes and ride a long, long way. Cyclists will be spinning their pedals all the way from the hills of Sturbridge in central Massachusetts, to the tip of the Cape, to P-town.

Begun in 1980, the PMC is the granddaddy of athletic fundraising events. In all those years and rides, the PMC has raised more than $830 million.  And all just one pedal, one ride, one mile, one road at a time. Here’s the ask.

We PMC cyclists need your help and prayers. Go to PMC.ORG. Make a general donation. Find someone you know who is riding. If you need someone to sponsor, my PMC page is right here: profile.pmc.org/JH0352.  

So, all those bikers all over the place right now? Please keep an eye out for us. Give if you can. Pray for a safe and fun PMC, for everyone who has cancer, or who has lost a loved one to cancer. We can beat cancer. All one pedal at a time.

See you on the road.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org) and in his 13^th year of doing the PMC. He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

Church is Church. State Is State. No Mixing Please.

“[The founding fathers] knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought.... They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship [and] that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed."

--Robert G. Ingersoll, 19^th century free thinker

Here's the deal, Uncle Sam.

I don’t need high school football coach Joe Kennedy to kneel down on the fifty-yard line after a game and pray, all in the sight of a crowd of players and kids and parents and the general public. I don’t need his help promoting Christianity or my sect of Christianity or him publicly witnessing about the power of his particular faith in his role as a guide for young people.  I don’t want him assuming that he somehow needs to do this very public act of evangelizing on behalf of Christians everywhere, in order to bring more people into the fold, win souls for God, or even help me in pastoring to my church.

Thanks, but no thanks, Joe.

To bring you up to speed, if you hadn’t heard…three weeks ago the Supreme Court voted 6-3 on behalf of Kennedy, who had sued the Bremerton, Washington school department for wrongful termination. Kennedy’s contract as assistant football coach was not renewed when he refused to stop his post-game praying ritual in 2015. He sued and the case went all the way to the highest court in the land and on June 27^th, the justices ruled that Kennedy’s public prayer was protected first amendment speech and therefore should have been allowed to continue.

And I have to say as a Christian and a pastor, as one who loves God and loves church and loves the people I serve, and who wants so much to see folks find meaning and purpose in religion…I am sad at this ruling. You see I do not want the government in any way shape or form to promote, or to be seen as promoting my faith, or other faiths or any religions. I’m a believer in what is called the establishment clause of the United States Constitution, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.”

It’s important to remember that the founding fathers, including James Madison who authored the clause, had fled England, in part, because in that country there was no separation of church and state. None. There was one official religion, the Church of England and its clergy were essentially government employees, and the King (or Queen) was the head of that church. The folks who came to this country in 1620, the founders of the religious sect I belong to, fled in part to escape the oppression of such state sponsored religion. As Madison wrote of this necessary wall dividing church and state: “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries”

I hear the argument when it comes to support for Kennedy and his visible prayer.  He’s just praying, right? He has that right to practice his faith. He’s just doing what a person of faith does: talking to his God. What’s the matter with that?

Well, for one he’s a public employee and a teacher of young people by word and by example. It’s not the business of any public employees to either promote or demote any religion. When you are praying so publicly as he was, you are essentially teaching a lesson.

So too, his players look up to him and maybe want to emulate him and may feel like they must pray too, in order to curry favor with this coach. Make sure you get to start the game, right? And what of the Jewish or Muslim or Atheist players: will they pay the price if they choose not to pray a Christian prayer and take a knee with coach? And if this were only about his personal prayer, and nothing else, why couldn’t Kennedy just go into his office, close the door, sit at his desk, bow his head, and then talk to God?

Or was an audience somehow needed?

I like that government is not supposed to be in the religion business. I do not need or want their help, or any of their employees’ help, when it comes to spreading the faith. I like that the government cannot tell me just what I am supposed to pray about or tell the members I serve about how they are supposed to practice their religion. I like that there is no “Church of America” and that the President is not its head. I like the fact that the United States has the second oldest “freedom of religion” constitutional clause, second only in age to the one found in Rhode Island’s state constitution. Freedom to practice religion as one sees fit. And yes, to pray, absolutely, but also freedom of religion from government interest, promotion, or regulation.

Yes, even in a prayer by a well-meaning and faith-filled football coach.

Got me to thinking about the years I spent in middle and high school on the football field. None of my coaches ever prayed, at least not in public, or in their capacities as leaders of young men.  I don’t remember ever praying either.  And I don’t think that absence of religion took away from my experience. I loved playing football. I also loved going to church youth group on Sunday nights. I never imagined combining my two loves or getting them mixed up. Faith was faith. Football was football.

Freedom of religion. Freedom from government promoted religion. Both are precious freedoms.  I just wish the Supreme Court hadn’t so clearly fumbled the ball on this play.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

 

 

     

   

When One Freedom Is at Risk, All Freedoms Are At Risk

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”     --President Ronald Reagan

Here’s the struggle I am having in the shadow of July 4^th, the day in our nation more than any other all year, when we as Americans are supposed to celebrate our freedoms. Our personal freedoms. Our legally protected freedoms. Freedom, as in freedom to…freedom to worship and freedom to speak out and freedom to peaceably assemble for protest and freedom to marry and freedom of the press.

That is a short list of the very long list of freedoms we enjoy as citizens of this land.

But with the overturning of Roe v. Wade a week ago last Friday by the Supreme Court and the negation of 50 years of settled law; now we are talking about taking a freedom away. Where once a “freedom to” existed now it is a non-freedom if you will, an anti-freedom, freedom cancelled. Before this decision, this particular freedom to choose was not wholly unregulated or one-hundred percent free, unfettered.

No freedoms are.

Most speech is “free” but, as one court ruling declared, that does not give you the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded movie house. You can protest but not to the point of violence. And until the Supreme Court’s ruling, reproductive rights were not absolute either. States could regulate abortion. That restraint of freedom reflects public opinion on this complicated moral issue. Most Americans want to keep this right while also regulating it in ways that are reasonable.

But now that freedom is no more.  Forget reason. Forget compromise. Forget any middle ground.

That freedom, the law of the land since 1973, for almost two full generations: it is gone, sent back to the states for them to re-debate, thus guaranteeing a patchwork of laws, often confusing and complicated. Step over a state line and everything changes.  You can take a pill in one state but not another. You can send away for pills…. wait, maybe you can’t. What’s your address again? You want to help a woman struggling with this choice? You better lawyer up. You might end being fined thousands of dollars or even put in jail, along with doctors and maybe pharmacists and women too.

You see that’s what happens when you go backwards, as opposed to forwards, when we regress as opposed to progress, on freedom. One step forward but then two steps back.  I’ve always believed in the theory that socially, mores and values change, and often for the greater good and the common good. There once was a time not long ago when women could not vote. When suspects were not entitled to legal counsel. There was a time when it was settled law that schools could be legally segregated by race and a couple in love could be arrested for being married because their skin color did not match.

Thank God those days are over! They are over, right? Who is to say? Can you imagine the chaos if (or maybe even when) other freedoms are also taken back or cancelled in the same way by the courts?   

I’m old fashioned and even corny when it comes to freedom and the American story. In a way being free is our shared American aspiration. I’ve always believed that freedom—the ability of a human being to make choices for one’s self, the ability of you or I to be free to do something or to not; the ability to have the privacy to make a very hard decision, with only God as the witness and counsel: for me, all of those ideas stand for true freedom. Stand for the best kind of freedom, freedom that is finally given to every single human being by God.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….” 

But, on this July 4^th, 2022, I’m sad to report that our country is less free than on July 4^th, 2021.  Millions of our sisters and moms and neighbors and friends and spouses are much less free now. 

And that is not a good thing. Not at all.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.