This Cranky Reverend asks “What Are We Becoming?”

Crankeverend (CR) reads alot and CR writes alot.  Sometimes CR reads something that just rips CR’s heart out (yes, this Cranky Reverend has a heart).  Today is one of those days.  CR wants you to read just a snippet of this article — and then let’s talk.

‘A premature and unnatural death’ in rural Oklahoma’

Eli Saslow, The Washington Post

TECUMSEH, Okla. — They had been expecting a full processional with a limousine and a police escort, but the limousine never came and the police officer was called away to a suspected drug overdose at the last minute. That left 40 friends and relatives of Anna Marrie Jones stranded outside the funeral home, waiting for instruction from the mortician about what to do next. An uncle of Anna’s went to his truck and changed from khakis into overalls. A niece ducked behind the hearse to light her cigarette in the stiff Oklahoma wind.  “Just one more thing for Mom that didn’t go as planned,” said Tiffany Edwards, the youngest surviving daughter. She climbed into her truck, put on the emergency flashers and motioned for everyone else to follow behind in their own cars. They formed a makeshift processional of dented pickups and diesel exhaust, driving out of town, onto dirt roads and up to a tiny cemetery bordered by cattle grazing fields. In the back there was a fresh plot marked by a plastic sign.

“Anna Marrie Jones: Born 1961 — Died 2016.”  Fifty-four years old. Raised on three rural acres. High school-educated. A mother of three. Loyal employee of Kmart, Walls Bargain Center and Dollar Store. These were the facts of her life as printed in the funeral program, and now they had also become clues in an American crisis with implications far beyond the burnt grass and red dirt of central Oklahoma.  White women between 25 and 55 have been dying at accelerating rates over the past decade, a spike in mortality not seen since the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. According to recent studies of death certificates, the trend is worse for women in the center of the United States, worse still in rural areas, and worst of all for those in the lower middle class. Drug and alcohol overdose rates for working-age white women have quadrupled. Suicides are up by as much as 50 percent.

What killed Jones was cirrhosis of the liver brought on by heavy drinking. The exact culprit was vodka, whatever brand was on sale, poured into a pint glass eight ounces at a time. But, as Anna’s family gathered at the gravesite for a final memorial, they wondered instead about the root causes, which were harder to diagnose and more difficult to solve.  “Life didn’t always break her way. She dealt with that sadness,” said Candy Payne, the funeral officiant. “She tried her best. She loved her family. But she dabbled in the drinking, and when things got tough the drinking made it harder.”  There were plots nearby marked for Jones’s friends and relatives who had died in the past decade at ages 46, 52 and 37. Jones had buried her fiance at 55. She had eulogized her best friend, dead at 50 from alcohol-induced cirrhosis.  Other parts of the adjacent land were intended for her children: Davey, 38, her oldest son and most loyal caretaker, who was making it through the day with some of his mother’s vodka; Maryann, 33, the middle daughter, who had hitched a ride to the service because she couldn’t afford a working car; and Tiffany, 31, who had two daughters of her own, a job at the discount grocery and enough accumulated stress to make her feel, “at least a decade or two older,” she said.

Here is a link to the entire article: The Washington Post

Now, CR wants you to put down your attitude and put down your political biases and most of all put down your judgmental tendencies and together let’s all say it: “What the HECK is going on in America today?”  My friends, CR would never claim to have any answers, except this: people are losing hope.  They are losing hope in their families, hope in their futures, hope in finding a job that they can live on, and the hope that other people might care that hope is on the decline, and premature and unnatural deaths are climbing at an alarming rate — and together we need to find some solutions.

This issue is right outside our doors, not just in rural America.  Just two months ago CR’s congregation buried a man in his mid-thirties who died of a herion overdose.  Just yesterday, doors down from CR’s church, four people were arrested for having drug and drug paraphernalia in their home — within the reach of their two-year old child. 

What makes this Cranky Reverend even more Cranky is the lack of care and compassion from the political elites and the non-political members of our society who want to give you a sound bite that en-capsulizes their “concern” for these problems, but lack either the political will or the political clout to make a difference.  The article from The Post listed some “sound bites”:  “What we’re seeing is the strain of inequality on the middle class,” President Obama said.  “Erosion of the safety net,” Hillary Clinton said. “Depression caused by the state of our country,” Donald Trump said. “Isolated rural communities,” Bernie Sanders said. “Addictive pain pills and narcotics,” Marco Rubio said.”
And the rest of us: Too many people adhere to this philosophy — “The government needs to do more to help people”.  CR thinks that is a bunch of “hooey”.  The government has been trying, albeit sometimes in pathetic ways, to make a difference in peoples lives, and the problems among the poor and middle class just get worse.  We cannot look to the government solely to make changes in peoples lives.  We need people to care enough about their neighbors, sometimes their neighbors several states away, that they will “DO” something to help, and “DO” something to show people we all have something within us to change our future — and that something is the love of Christ.  It is the love of Christ that compels us to do more than just pray for people.  The love of Christ compels us to do something — and we can see small examples of that in our communities and around the world — if we are willing enough to pay attention.  But too many in our churches think “…we should only help those within our churches”, and “…besides, we don’t have those problems in our churches”.  Again, CR says “that’s a bunch of Hooey”.  CR’s congregation discovered just two months ago how “local” and “real” these problems are for “our” congregation — and “our” community.

OHHHH, my “Crank-O-Meter” (TR) is really going off the charts.  CR asks you to read this article and then to pray for ways we can all do something, to work together as churches, and as people of Christ, to change the lives of people who have lost hope.

Crankeverend…..Out!