Montana G.I.: A Simple Act of Valor

My grandfather Jack O'Neill passed away this morning.  Please keep him and my Grandma Jeanne in your prayers. I remember  a conversation we had over a couple of beers on a spring night somewhere around 2005. We were talking about William Faulkner and that led to a broader conversation about race issues.

Grandpa Jack begin a story. "I remember when I went down to Texas after being drafted. It was a three-day trip by Army train. We got two meals a day; flapjacks for breakfast, a hotdog and a scoop of ice cream for dinner. The train was modern and went fast, but our car was old. It swayed back and forth the whole way, making everyone sick."

Welcome to the Army, I thought. I mentally tried to put myself in his Class B uniform. Riding away from Montana on a cramped train to Texas. Preparing to fight a war in the hot island jungles of the South Pacific.

He continued, "Our basic training was at Fort Wohlers, outside of Dallas. It was hot and I didn't like Texas. I remember one weekend they let us take a tour around Fort Worth. This was back before I drank, so it was more of a sight-seeing trip for me than anything. Most of the other guys went to the bars."

"At the end of the day, they picked us up in a bus, kind of a converted trailer. I went to get on and there was a sign right above the entrance, 'All negroes in the back.'" Grandpa pointed up from his recliner like the sign stood above the TV in front of us.

"It made me mad. I started to give the bus driver an earful. I guess he didn't know any better and was just doing his job; but I shook my head and him and went to the back of the bus to sit down. The black soldiers in the back thought I was crazy and was going to get myself killed. The white guys in the front were going  ballistic, saying that I was a 'know-nothing Northerner' and plenty of other things; but I stayed back there all the way back to camp."

I looked at Grandpa and saw him again as a young soldier with close cropped hair and press Class B's walking through the rows of hollering drunken men to sit in the back of the bus. A young soldier from Butte, Montana who didn't hesitate to do the right thing when confronted with racial bigotry even though the civil rights movement was barely in its infancy.

I can't describe how proud I am to share the same blood as that young soldier. Rest in peace Grandpa.


NOTE: Here is a picture of Grandpa meeting my son Bodie this Spring.

Running with the Current: Psalm 36's Description of Divine Providence

Another "Running with the Current" video.  I hope you enjoy it. I dedicate this one to my Grandfather Jack O'Neill who is really struggling right now. This video was taken at Kootenai Creek where it runs by their house in Stevensville, Montana.

Thank you,
matt



Text: Psalm 36: 6-11
Background: Kootenai Creek near Stevensville, MT
Read by Matt Kuntz

Hanging Clothes Between Storms: Accepting Adversity

June 2013

I pulled the shirt from the bundle of clothes in my left hand and placed it on the white line. I pulled the fabric apart and it expanded in the breeze.

Five minutes before, wind would've whipped the shirt to the ground. The rain hammered onto our roof well into the clothes' spin cycle. Thunder rumbled. It threatened to hail. Then the storm gave way to calm.

I looked up from the clothes line and watched the storm push over East Helena to the Spokane Hills. Rain drops poured down in sheets. Lightning rippled and danced between the ground and the clouds. A small rainbow struggled in the middle of the storm. Churning in the maelstrom. It could not build up any more colors beyond a red glow.

I placed another sheet on the line. Not sure whether it would have time to dry or share the same fate as the rain-soaked rainbow. The late spring storms came in legions over Montana's Rocky Mountains. Storm then calm, then storm, then calm.

Still the laundry had to be hung. Like the rainbow, we don't always get to decide between the storm and the calm. Both will come and there is limited purpose in questioning why.

Life is a constant learning process. While I'm at the midway point of life, I haven't proceeded anywhere near that far on the path of learning. I have gotten far enough to be able to identify some of my earlier beliefs that were completely wrong.

Those wrong ideas more than outnumber the spring storms. The most glaring example may be the belief that I held as a youth and as a young man that men and women could work hard for years and decades to reach a point where life wouldn't be a struggle.

Now I realize that life's struggles are guaranteed whether they be personal, physical, financial, spiritual, or a combination. Clearing one hurdle will lead to another. The struggle can be embraced, but it cannot be removed or overcome. For participating in struggle of is essential to our time on Earth, proving our faith and love for the Divine.

It's a lesson taught in the lives of Job and Abraham, but the clearest statement in the New Testament may be when the mother of James and John asked Jesus to have her sons sit beside Jesus in his kingdom. Jesus asked them point blank, "Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" Matthew 20:22.

This was not a question about experiencing peace, joy and happy times. Can you share in the struggle, suffering, and humiliation of the Cross?


It's the highest calling, but it can't be gained without the storm of adversity.


Note: Thanks to my sister-in-law Anastasia Gurinovich for taking this picture of the storm.

Cars Seat Spiritual Guides And Saint Paul: Conversing Between Beliefs and Faiths

Zen pilgrims traveled from monastery to monastery across ancient China to learn from spiritual masters who used puzzling, of paradoxical statements and stories, to prompt spiritual awakening. I undergo a similar process while driving my daughters around town.

The spiritual masters sit in their flower-print, front-facing cars eats and pepper me with theological questions, revelations, and absurdities.

"God is the sky!"

I hear the statement, think about it and then respond. The masters question me until I give them an appropriately tangible and well-reasoned response. Or, until a yellow car drives by. If a yellow car drives by, the spiritual masters chant "Banana!"

During a recent trip, my oldest daughter Fiona said that her best friend "doesn't know God."

My wife and I paused for a second and then asked to elaborate. It became clear that the issue wasn't due to any lack of sermoning from Fiona.

Fiona wanted to know what to do.

In other words, how can she balance the love and respect she has for people with different beliefs than she has while still fulfilling her duty to share her own spiritual vision with the world?

The relevance of that question is only going to grow. Fiona's immediate family is full of Catholic, Russian Orthodox, evangelical Christian, and "spiritual but not religious" people that she loves and depends upon. Her extended family is even more diverse. We've got dear friends that follow Islam, Hindu and Native American traditions.

My wife and I did our best to answer Fiona. It was a hard response and hardly guided by a grown up world filled with warring factions fighting over faith. The following night, I found guidance from Saint Paul in his second letter to Timothy.

"[P]ursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord with purity of heart. Avoid foolish and ignorant debates, for you know that they breed quarrels. A slave of the Lord should not quarrel, but should be gentle with everyone, able to teach, tolerant, correcting opponents with kindness." 2 Timothy 2: 22-25.

It's a heavy challenge, but an essential one. To ensure that we honor the Lord not only in what we tell others about the Divine, but in how we tell them.


p.s. Let me know if you have a biblical quote or other spiritual guidance that you'd like included in the "Running with the Current" videos. Even better, post your own "Running with the Current" video on youtube and I'll add it to the playlist. Thanks again for reading.

Running with the Current: Psalm 103's Praise Of God's Love and Kindness

This is an amazing section on God's love and kindness from Psalm 103. I filmed the video on my way home to Helena from Billings. I hope you like it.

matt

Text: Psalm 103:11-17

Background: Yellowstone River near Reed Point, Montana.

Quantum Physics and Hootie: Navigating Concepts Beyond Understanding

My father-in-law is a quantum physicist from Russia. My mother is a mental health counselor from Butte, Montana. The conversations between those diverse backgrounds are always interesting, often deep and sometimes unintentionally hilarious.

This Sunday was my son's baptism. Each new memory brings back a dozen old ones and my mom asked my  inlaws about raising their children.  She asked my father-in-law whether it seemed like only a short time ago that he was a student at Moscow University with a young baby of his own.

My father-in-law looked at her a little quizzically and then stated, "I don't understand time."

From anyone else, this would have been a throwaway statement. If I'd said it, the most obvious response would be "Uhh, you messed up the words to that old Hootie and the Blowfish song - again."

[Gratuitous Hootie and the Blowfish Video]

However, it's a little different when a quantum physicist makes a statement about human beings' inability to understand the basic nature of time. Since Einstein, physicists have realized that time changes, speeding up or slowing down depending on how fast one thing is moving relative to something else. Scientists also know that time curves, the fabric of time-space to be more specific. But the most honest physicists, like my father-in-law, won't hesitate to state that human beings have only begun to understand the nature of time.Scratching the surface might even be overestimating how far we've come in unraveling those mysteries.

The Bible supports with the physicists' complex view of time. In Psalm 90, Moses wrote that "A thousand years... are merely a yesterday" in the eyes of the Lord. Saint Peter further described that "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day." 2 Peter 3:8

Yet, the complex changing nature of time is not a valid excuse for me to pick my kids up from daycare after 5:30 p.m. Closing time is closing time and each minute after that costs a dollar. The obscurity of time does not prevent millions of people around the globe from tuning in at exactly the right moment to watch the opening kick off on Super Bowl Sunday.

Human beings have figured out how to navigate through the unknowable characteristics of time enough to rely on it to guide the tasks that we need. My alarm clock may not be reliable within a certain range of a massively dense cosmic black hole, but it does just fine on my night stand.

We are faced with a similar challenge in facing the complex, obscurity of the Divine. It is impossible for human beings to fully understand spiritual mysteries. It is an intellectual realm beyond our grasp - by design. We can see the outlines of the deeper truths, but the mind of God eludes our comprehension.

In our faith life, we come across Bible passages that grind against each other. Religious leaders more human than divine. Dogma that offends reason and reason that disappears in the face of the largest questions like dew under a rising sun.

• How can we prevent the complexities, obscurities and contradictions of our faith from becoming a barrier to our spiritual development?
• How can we take the complexities, obscurities and contradictions of our faith and use them as the foundation for our spiritual life?

 There are no easy answers to these spiritual questions. The beauty of faith depends upon that obscurity; but humility, prayer and love are powerful sign posts and no one becomes lost while following them.

Running With the Current: Trials of Serving the Lord

Here is another installment of "Running the with Currrent." It's a powerful piece in Sirach on the trials of serving the Lord. I recorded the video on my way to Bozeman from Helena. I hope you like it.

matt


Text: Sirach 2:1-6

Background: Headwaters of the Missouri River near Three Forks, Montana.