Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 4

 

“when you are on your beds, search your hearts. . .”

Although many have found their way to new life by way of faith, although a personal relationship with the Lord is the certifiable method by which thousands of suffering people have found their way out of dependency, I doubt the American Psychiatric Association would endorse the Word of God as a bona fide therapeutic blessing.

Especially this in verse 4 of Psalm 4. Here’s David’s therapy: “Bill (or Clarice or whoever), you need to think long and hard about these issues. When you hit the sack tonight, mull it over, consider the possibilities from every angle. Don’t go to sleep before you’ve covered every inch of ground.”

In our affluent culture, insomnia is a plague. And while, throughout his life, David had loads of reasons not to sleep well, it may well be that life in Israel—where people normally knew their place very well—was simpler. Insomnia may not have been the curse it is today.

Whatever the case, this verse opens the theme which has given Psalm 4 its handle as “the evening hymn.” Really, this odd little Psalm is a how-to on sleep. David doesn’t recommend a glass of red wine, at least not here. He had no access to Nite-all or any of a hundred other over-the-counter remedies.

In fact, he advises the opposite. When you go to bed, consider the state of your soul. Don’t shut those eyes until you judge your motives; assess your course in life, your purposes, the very state of your soul—advice that seems sure to keep anyone awake.

The entire Psalm is a call to holiness, not simply a bromide for insomnia. David’s intent (starting with verse 2) is to startle those “sons of men” who don’t really care about the God he’s come to love and worship. It’s a kind of twelve-step program aimed at dependency—on Jehovah God.

And what David is betting on is the still small voice of conscience. What he’s advising is a personal assessment that can be best accomplished in the silence and privacy of the bedroom, outside the glitter and the glare. In the silence before sleep, he says, think about the dead ends we too often pursue when in the spotlight.

I’ve got enough experience with depression to know that this piece of advice may not be the best therapy in all situations. The last thing I’d advise some of those I know and love is to spend more quality time mulling over their spiritual health. In some cases, that’s a recipe for suicide.

All of which doesn’t mean that David’s advice is bogus. Sometimes the therapy suggested here is exactly what our soul’s doctor would order up Himself, were he to fill out a prescription.

Orthodox Christianity has always argued for a death—the death of self—before the advent of the new life. That death doesn’t come without pain and hurt.

Honestly, I don’t think the Lord wants us all sleepless in Seattle or Sioux Center. But he wants us honest about ourselves and our motives.

Fannie Lou Hamer at the '64 Dem Convention

If you watched much of the Democratic National Convention for the last few nights, I'm guessing you heard the name of someone likely referred to as a hero--Fannie Lou Hamer. A year ago, I wouldn't have recognized the name or known anything about the story. That's a shame.  

I put together a piece on her life and her startling impact upon the culture in which we live when Fannie Lou told a story no one heard. You read that right. 

Here's the Fannie Lou Hamer story I wrote then--just six months ago.

*          *          *          *

Seems to me you have to cut LBJ some slack here. The man didn’t ask to be President. Didn’t run for it. Came into it when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November of 1963, and he, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who hailed from rural Texas, suddenly became President, leader of a grieving nation split like a muskmelon over civil rights.

You’ve got to cut him some slack because if he’s known for anything today it is signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as expanding the reach of the New Deal by declaring a “War on Poverty.” He was a progressive in every sense, despite the fact that he was raised in rural Texas, where holding such notions was something of a curse. 

While all of that is true, the yarn I’m about to spin makes him seem a skunk, worse, a racist skunk. But he wasn’t.

To say Fannie Lou Hamer came up through the ranks would be an overstatement. Born dirt poor in Mississippi, her daddy a sharecropper, she was picking cotton when she was six. The baby of a family of 20 kids, she quit school when she was 12. Had to, needed elsewhere.

She was 45 years old in 1962, when she attended a workshop in her own rural Mississippi by a group called the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee–or SNCC, whose purpose was to champion human rights for black folks like Fannie Lou Hamer. 

That meeting changed Fannie’s life, and that’s the kind of line people use all the time–“it changed her life.” This time, have no questions. SNCC did change her life. What Fannie Lou Hamer discovered was that people who couldn’t vote didn’t count—didn’t count and therefore weren’t human. 

During the 1964 Democratic Convention, Fannie and her SNCC friends determined to take a place at the convention with the Mississippi Democratic Committee. Let’s be honest. They weren’t at all subtle about it, just barged in and told the all-white delegation that, damnit, they were people too. When the Convention arranged for them to speak, on the docket was a firebrand preacher named Martin Luther King, and a sharecropper’s daughter named Fannie Lou Hamer. 

Now Lyndon Baines Johnson was scared his Southern constituents would bolt if America would hear Fannie’s speech. They weren’t proud of what she’d tell them because her personal story wasn’t at all pretty. One night not long before, Fannie and her friends were pulled from a bus, arrested, and jailed in a small town, then beat-up by the cops who’d arrested them. They’d been assaulted because they were Black–and they wanted to vote. “I’m sick and tired,” she used to say, “of being sick and tired.”

What the President of United States knew is her telling that story in front of the nation would so infuriate his white Southern Democrats that he couldn’t let Fannie speak. He had to keep her still.

Here comes the part that’s forever worth telling. The only way the President of the United States could keep America from hearing Fannie Lou was to call a Presidential news conference. So, he told the networks he had something to say, and they obligingly cut away from Fannie’s appearance on the floor of the convention. LBJ had no news, so he told America on all the networks that it was his nine-month anniversary as President. That was it. That was all he had to say, the most useless Presidential speech in American history.

The result? Fannie Lou Hamer’s story had no nation-wide audience.

The administration of Lyndon B. Johnson passed landmark legislation for justice and equality, but he pushed along a war in Southeast Asia. For a number of reasons, he declined to run in 1968, when the country was even more fractured. It was—1968 I mean– not a particularly forgettable year.

And Fannie Lou? Once the networks discovered they got conned, Fannie Mae Hamer lit up the screen all week long. Throughout the following years, her hard work for voting rights gained her loving attention and an armful of honorary degrees. When she died, she was buried in her own little Ruleville, Mississippi. What’s written on her stone is priceless: “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

I was 16 during the summer of 1964, interested enough to watch the Republican Convention when my dad had it on. I never saw the Democrats. Dad couldn’t have imagined watching. MLK he’d heard of, and even SNCC, a bunch that sounded like problems. He was a fine man, a loving Christian, but he honestly thought that whole bunch to be social agitators, socialists even, maybe worse. What I do remember is Barry Goldwater’s speech, especially the line about “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Truth be told, I ran into Fannie Lou Hamer’s story just a couple of months ago. Took somewhere around sixty years.

Sixty years.

For Pastor Herm -- ii

(continued from yesterday)

It's not particularly easy for us to talk about the "office" of king because something in our histories can't help but paint "kingship" as something somehow evil. The last king to hold any sway over most of us was King George, against whom we fought a war, the War of Independence. I'm sure some bright theologian somewhere has mapped out an understanding of how a pastor fulfils the obligations of kingship, but in the life and ministry of Pastor Herm, I looked to his own words because I knew that Pastor Herm was more capable of drawing us into awe than most preachers, and awe is a prerequisite for beginning to talk about kingship. Awe is where faith begins.

This passage is from a sermon in a series of sermons with the title "Someone's Crying, Lord." This is Pastor Herm.

 I want to finish this morning with a picture from Psalm 56:5: "Oh, God, you keep count of my tossing [and turning], my anguish. You collect all my tears in your bottle--are they not your record?"

That's a picture for taking along this Lent. It's a picture that assumes that there will be tears until kingdom come, but God doesn't just let them evaporate, doesn't just brush them off.

He also doesn't avoid them. He doesn't say, "Don't cry!" as if crying were a sign of weakness. No! God collects tears, and not just to have a collection, but he wants us to know that he remembers every single one!

And do you know what? A good number of the tears in the bottle are his very own! Imagine the size of God's bottle!

  "O Lord God, dry my tears," we say, and He will, but not because it's time--which is to say, His time. Until then, there will be pain and tears, but the Lord will wipe away every tear from their eyes, will pour away His whole bottle and will lead all of his children to springs of living water!

In that short cutting abide lines that are suitably--perfectly--Herm's, and you know it when you feel his absolute thrill at uncovering some aspect of his God's rule in our lives--"imagine the size of God's bottle." 

And a number are his.

That's kingship. 

We will all miss him greatly.  

For Pastor Herm

Just last week, we took a run up to Willmar, Minnesota, for the funeral service of a very dear friend and former pastor, Pastor Herm Van Niejenhuis, who, with his spouse, Dee, retired from the church we attend. He did so almost exactly when we retired and departed for rural Alton. The Van Niejenhuises chose Willmar because Dee grew up there, a place she could, after many years in the ministry, be comfortably surrounded by family. 

Three years ago, after a routine physical, he was told, as was she, that he was carrying pancreatic cancer. It was not a pleasant surprise. Pancreatic cancer takes no prisoners. Suggested time?--a year or so, maybe more.

He fought valiantly and grabbed two whole years more than the doctors guessed. But pancreatic cancer is no joke, and, as promised, it finally took him a couple of weeks ago.

The family asked me to say a few words at the funeral. Herm was my friend.

I told the crowd in the downtown Lutheran church where he'd blessedly drifted off to in those late years, that once upon a time I was taught that the office of pastor carries with it a three-fold obligation: to be a prophet, a priest, and a king--all three offices." 

"Let me tell  you about Pastor Herm," I said, then told three stories. 

The first was from Pastor Herm's farewell party. For a power point presentation, I'd run around town getting a picture of each family waving goodbye to a pastor everyone loved, even though no one ever could have called him conventional. When I got to the Landman family, one of the kids didn't show up outside. "Hannah?" I asked.

"She's not coming," Hannah's mother told me. "She doesn't want Pastor Herm to leave." Back then, Hannah was ten years old.

That's a priestly story, Pastor Herm as warmly pastoral, even to the ten-year-olds, loved by all.

Then prophetic, Pastor Herm as prophet--not particularly difficult either.

At a classis meeting, when a new seminary grad was being quizzed by the old guys, someone determined to make him answer this question. The elderly pastor asked the kid something to the effect of this question: "Draw a line around what you believe to be 'the Christian life." 

Pastor Herm interrupted softly by raising his hand in the company of all those stalwarts. "You don't have to answer that," he told the candidate.

Theologically at least, prophetically, Herm's life had taught him that one cannot draw lines around the Creator of Heaven and Earth. Whatever circle one might create could not, would not define the Almighty. 

My guess is that the meeting had no more vivid theological lessons that what Pastor Herm offered in that single comment.

Tomorrow: the office of king.

And then there was Joe

Trump says it was a coup. Trump says enough high-flying vigilante Dems got together and pushed Biden out of office by telling him he was going to lose to Trump and take all manner of Dems along down-ballot. Trump says it was a nasty thing to do, which is interesting, coming from a schoolyard bully, someone who seems to reserve that word, nasty, for tough women.  

Well, I've got news--Trump is a gas bag. It's sweet of him for suddenly taking kindly to Joe Biden, a man he named almost daily as the worst president in American history--how did he put it?--"the Biden family syndicate" or something like that. That Trump should care for Joe Biden is a sweet gesture.

But then, Biden was beatable--Trump might have said. After all, when Biden was the old man, it was just plain fun to watch him get off a plane and hope he tripped. That debate was plain-and-simple disaster: President Biden looked so enfeebled that all Trump had to do is shrug his shoulders at the President's babbling. Trump enjoyed that game--Trump vs. Biden.

But then Nancy Pelosi and the other lefty communists in San Francisco and New York and elsewhere got together and told Biden to clear out the oval office. They threw a party and got rid of the old guy, which was a nasty thing to do.

Is that the way it went? Maybe so. Maybe enough loyal Dems quietly and secretly let the oldest candidate for President know that it was time for him to hang up his spurs and let the young guys run the cattle. Maybe there was a parade. Maybe Biden simply got sick of opening the door and seeing some other familiar face bearing that sickening gracious smile. Maybe he got sick of thinking it himself: it was time to go.

It's the kind of question that pundits will argue for decades: was President Joe Biden run out of town, or did he choose to go? Talk amongst yourselves.

I don't know that the question was answered last night either, whether anyone could finalize a report. All I know is that there were more tears shed at last night's celebration of the gifts of Joe Biden than could have been collected in a month of Republican conventions. His daughter introduces him, and when he walks out on the stage in Chicago, the guy bawls his eyes out because of. . .because of what? because it was his daughter greeting him? because he knew--as did everyone--that this was the last dance?

You know what? I'll tell you my answer. Up there on stage, before an entire nation, Joe Biden cried because he couldn't help but know that his daughter loved him. That's the big deal in his mind and consciousness, and that's the reason he'll go down in American history as one of the most productive Presidents ever. He honestly and truly cares about such things. It's why people adore him, why people believe in him, why he leaves office in an act of selfless political courage and strength almost totally unheard of.

Last night, a night full of tears, gave tribute to Joe Biden, who loved his country more--much more--than he loved himself. In what will without a doubt eventually be labeled "the Trump Era," putting America before self, as Biden did, is a treasure.

I loved the tears last night, all of them. Tim Walz bawled all night long, and then there was Joe. 

And then there was Joe.

 

Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 4

 

“Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself;

 the Lord will hear me when I call.”

 Not so long ago I said a few words after the wedding of a friend.  I thought I’d color the reception with some Midwestern silliness since our friend’s roots grow deeply into Iowa soil, and he was marrying—gasp!—a bona fide Southern Cal native, deserting the Plains for LA, a move which, if it didn’t happen so darn often, would be unthinkable.

 Like me, the groom’s ethno-religious pedigree is Dutch Calvinist, so I made mention of that fact and then lamented his leaving the holy land for the hellish hedonism of Southern California, the only corner of the country that gets its direction upper-cased.

 The woman who followed me among the speakers at the reception took off on the word “Calvinist” and delivered what some considered a tongue-lashing. The gist of her diatribe had to do with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, a belief that, in her estimation, turns all of us, ipso facto, into theological Nazis, I guess.

 I’d simply been trying to make people laugh, and I got a bona fide sermon based in doctrinal history, the old fracas between election and free will.  In that war, she kept no prisoners.  I got pole-axed for simply (and arrogantly) assuming I’d been "chosen."  She was—and she made no bones about it—against the arrogant assumptions assumed to be the character of those who honestly believed in such rot as predestination.

Honestly, the Bible doesn’t prove a whole lot conclusively.  It tells a great and true story, but it doesn’t offer plain and simple answers.  If you want that, see Oprah.

 It’s almost impossible to find a verse that is as vivid an argument for election as Psalm 4:3.  After a series of rhetorical questions designed to upbraid the “sons of men” in verse two, David shifts his rhetorical focus and returns to the command form of verse one, this time, however, raising his finger toward the sons of men at whom he’d just been ranting. “You must know that the Lord selects his own,” he says, “and that he’ll listen to me,” implying, of course, that he (David) is among “his own.”

I’m sure I could find as strong a defense for the doctrine of election (or predestination) elsewhere in holy writ, but I’m also sure that I could also find as strong a defense for the doctrine of free will.  If the Bible were absolutely conclusive on that ancient theological battle, the battle wouldn’t be ancient.  God’s word has elbow room enough room for an awful lot of us.

But here’s the real kicker.  Just two verses before, David was demanding that God answer his prayers—in writer’s language, he was showing us that, in fact, God hadn’t really done that.  Now, with the force of those commands still roiling the air, he puffs his chest and tells (which is never as strong as shows) those who don’t believe, “Listen, chums, he’s chosen his own, I’m one of them, and he listens to my prayer.”

Say, what?  He’d just shown us exactly the opposite.

 I’m a Calvinist.  I confess—I believe in election.  But like David, I sometimes wonder if God is listening to my prayers.  I believe I’m his, but sometimes, like David, I confess that I wonder if he’s simply out of the office.

 As I’ve said, you’ve got to love the plain humanness of all of this.

 Praise his name.

Sunday Morning Meds -- Psalm 4

 

“How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?”

All prayer, our preacher said yesterday, is praise. A beautiful thought that, like the gospel itself, simply calls out to be given away. Even our anguish, our laments, our anger at God—it’s all praise because we wouldn’t be praying if we didn’t believe that God was God and therefore will, as they used to say, hasten to our aid. All prayer is praise—every phrase, every groan. We’re acknowledging Him, we’re asking him, we’re talking to him because we know we should.

And why should we? Because He is God. We wouldn’t pray if we didn’t believe. Really, that makes all prayer is praise. Isn’t that a wonderful thought?

And I think it helps me to understand verse two: “How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?”

I’ve got an assortment of old trophies sitting around my desk here—a couple of little gold basketball players, three golf trophies, and one gold hitter who’s been sitting here, bat cocked, waiting for a pitch that hasn’t come for a quarter century.

On the wall to my right is my diploma. The wall behind me holds several framed book covers—my books. It sounds awful to say, but I guess I must admit that I’ve decorated my study with my glory.

The egotist in me reads Psalm 4:2 all wrong, I think. When David bemoans the fact that those “sons of men” are turning his glory into shame, he’s not ticked off because someone’s given his poetry a bad review or editorialized against his Kingship. I don’t think he means something personal by “my glory.”

Elsewhere in the psalms, as many have argued, phrases like this point at the Lord. David’s “glory” is really in his salvation, in his being loved, in his knowing that the Lord listens to his prayers. His glory is not in his accomplishments; his glory, quite simply, is the Lord.

And I think that’s crucial because, for all its emotional meandering, Psalm 4 is about concern, about the sadness that arises in all of us when we know that people we really admire don’t serve our King. Psalm 4 is not about me but about love.

I am—I mean it—literally thrilled to know that an old novelist friend of mine prayed in the last few moments of his life. I loved the guy. He was a literary father to me, a great joy; but I honestly didn’t know about his faith. Today, however, I know this much from an unimpeachable source: on his deathbed, he and his nurse prayed together.

Honestly, Psalm 4 still seems an emotional roller-coaster. It moves all over the map. However, David’s song may well be not as bad as it seems if we understand that this initial accusation about unbelievers does not arise from David’s sense of being slighted, but instead from his deep regard for the rotten directions seemingly good people, people David admires, are taking.

In some ways, I think, the Psalm is about enlisting the help of the Lord in the heartfelt attempt to bring your friends home.

All prayer is praise. My glory, really, is his glory.

Makes sense, I think, and helps us see an even more human King David.

____________________ 

That sky-scape shot at the top of the page was taken off our back porch almost exactly one year ago today. This morning's sky doesn't hold the drama of that one, but it's just as beautiful, really, although I'm not awed. I'm distracted, sort of unable to register wonder, a painful condition for someone probably too easily thrilled. Today, one year later, my distracted is a tangled set of nerves in my lower back that leaves the torque (the therapist's word) at about half strength, which wouldn't be awful in a 76-year-old man if it didn't affect my coordination. I stumble around with a walker right now, and have for weeks.

Tuesday, August 13, I'm scheduled for back surgery to see what might be done to bring so normalcy back to my numbed leg. "I can't make you 18 again," the doc told me. I assured him I wasn't asking for that. I just want to be able to walk. 

Meanwhile, don't look for a ton of blogging here for a while. I'm going to need some time off.

You most certainly may say a prayer for me--and the surgeon.

Just remember, as I should, that all prayer is praise.  

"Who?"

Turns out, Sunday, I spent most of the day just a stones' throw away from West Point, Nebraska, having no clue whatsoever that by Tuesday morning the entire world would read "West Point" in boldface above the fold. Just now, I checked out the on-line edition of the West Point News, where the big story was a West Point couple off to Canada to shoot a bear (hasn't been updated). In case you're wondering, West Point is not all that far from Beemer or Scribner or Bancroft.

If that doesn't help, google it, like I did. 

What must be true down there in northeast Nebraska is that folks who watched TV yesterday have to be dang proud that West Point got more mentions than West Hollywood. Should the Dems win in November, one of their own, by birth anyway, will be right there in the center of world affairs, VP to candidate Kamala Harris, her absolutely stunning choice.

Who would have guessed a kid from Nebraska, a grad of Chadron State, way out west, could come as close as he has to being the most powerful pol in the world. Never went to Harvard. Never went to Yale. Just won over voters with the kind of winning personality Middle Border people like to believe comes factory equipped on all-American, small-town kids, a man who calls J D Vance and his orange running mate "weird" and who says that where he grew up if people didn't like what you were doing, you just told them to "Mind their own damned business."

VP Harris pulled up Tim Walz as her running mate yesterday, and most of America's first reaction was "Sure, who was that again"? Walz, as everyone knows a day later, is the Gov of Minnesota, the state he served for a dozen years in Washington. He spent 20+ years in high school classrooms and football fields, where he was much loved. He ran for office, he says, because his students urged him to.

His agenda is straight Democratic, edging leftward, but in demeanor and character the Orange Wierdo can hardly sell Tim Walz as a commie. My goodness, the guy hunts deer and loves the Vikings. He's got guns but rips the NRA. He's Lutheran. The Donald says a vote for him--and them--means the end of America. 

You've got to be sensory stricken to believe that horse s__t.

What's more, he's got a winning personality. Like VP Kamala, he smiles well, and it's not practiced. Comes naturally to both of them. From his inauguration way back  in 2016, Trump's forecast for America was doom and gloom--remember "American carnage stops right here"? It seems it didn't. Today, the line is as tired as an old hat.

Today the New York grifter and his unsteady-as-he-goes sidekick face off against a man from the middle of the country, by birth a Siouxlander in fact, a man so Minnesota-Nice that he's barely touchable by anything in Trump's abrasive tool kit.

I think Walz is a tremendous choice, but then I'm a believer in identity politics, and I love nothing better right now than having someone from the neighborhood up there churning for votes, lighting up the dais wherever he goes, and burning anything orange in his way.

Yes, yesterday was a great, great day.   

Suckow's "The Crick" reconsidered

Seemed a little overdone, the field artillery there in the park in the middle of a town overrun by the river it's lived with since the very earliest days of Sioux County colonization. All around, really, there was little more than destruction, houses marked with yellow ribbons and red notices on front doors. There was sufficient sadness all around; I didn't need to be reminded of war.

That howitzer is in a park in the middle of town, and although you can't quite make it out in the background of the picture, the lay of the land makes clear that once upon a time, many years ago, a creek ran merrily along to the Big Sioux, no more than a block away.

For years already, I have wanted to assume that that creek, now almost entirely filled in to ward off even more flooding, was the place where the girls--big ones and little ones--in Ruth Suckow's "The Crick," took such great delight. Suckow spent a goodly portion of her girlhood here, right here, somewhere very close, born into the manse of the church where her father held forth weekly.

It's hard not to imagine a creek inhabiting that wide space that runs through the park. I'm guessing that long ago the creek was disarmed, after yearly floods pushed the Big Sioux up and into its tributaries. Someone determined flood control could at least keep the heart of the village from drowning, so a huge berm was constructed a block west. The crick--as Suckow remembered it--was forever gone.

But before that, in a wilder time, the big girls waded in here, the little girls dreaming of someday being brave enough to do likewise; the crick offered an authentic Hawarden right-of-passage.

They longed for summer, for the hot dreamy hours when they explored beyond the bend where the weeds grew rank and high. Fearfully they would extend their orbit a little farther and farther, knowing they might be cut off from the safety of the house by Cricket Larson and those other girls from down the crick; but they had to experiment.

Down came the rains and up came a flood that threatened the entire village, both sides of the crick's inhabitants. The flood in Suckow's story must have been something akin to what happened here a month ago when it became clear to first responders that the river was up and rising. Delight is the girl at the heart of things, in all likelihood a member of Hawarden's sweetest children. Cricket Larson was on the other side, scrubby and poor and headed toward delinquency.

The story is very simple. A flood, right here at the place the crick once ran, pushed Cricket and Delight together, both homeless. They're pressed together in a safe house higher up the hill, forced by the mess outside to take mutual refuge. In the face of the storm, a friendship borne of mutual suffering grows.

Nice things happen in the writing of Ruth Suckow, but bad things happen too. Once the crick gets over its anger and pride and settles back into a playground, the score is clear: Delight's home--and her cat--made it through; Cricket's home was borne away by the Big Sioux. Delight, still a child, tries to measure out what happened in what she sees as God's way.

Delight's eyes were wide with awe. It was true, then. God, with a big curly beard and His arms spread out, sat on a cloud watching. He had kept the water from their house. She could not help feeling the fine importance of being specially looked out for by God. But it was mean of God to have let Cricket's house – and the chickens! – be carried away. She wanted God to have sent a little board down the crick for the chickens to float on.

When summer comes, things move back to normal. Cricket's mom does Delight's family laundry and shows up at the back door to pick up what needs to be washed. Cricket sometimes come with, but when Delight sees her, she picks up her cat, almost in defense, and tell Bluebell what's plain as anything in her mind:

Now when Cricket came to the back door of the parsonage, with the washing in a clothes basket covered with a blue apron on her little wagon, she stared at Delight with bright hostile eyes. Delight picked up Bluebell from his snug place on the chair and stood clutching him. When Cricket was gone, Delight whispered insolemn warning:

"No, Bluebell, I can't let you out. I can't let you go where that Cricket Larson might get you. Because she's mean. She throws rocks. She lives 'way down the crick, and she plays with those other girls."

I couldn't help wonder about this other flood, just a month ago, and the havoc it wreaked once more on the streets of Hawarden, a town now stacked up with trailers. I'd like to think it didn't have to be the way things went with Delight and Cricket. I'd like to think maybe Suckow was wrong.

That's what I couldn't help thinking when I stood there just out of range of that howitzer.  

A love story

His face is set, determined. Not a trace of a smile appears across set lips, as if whatever it is that stands in his way is formidable, even daunting, but not invincible. His determination is created by his confidence. He knows that what must be done, will be.

His hair is entirely his own. If your memory includes any image of John Neihardt, Nebraska's poet laureate-for-all-time (he still is, although he's been gone for 50 years), that image features his incredible mop of tangled hair that might well have been out of control but still did him proud, the mane of a hero drawn from poets of old.

It might surprise you--it did me--that this sculpted face right out of Ovid was created by his lover, his wife of fifty years, Mona Martinson, who was one of only three young sculptors ever to study with the artist considered today the master of contemporary sculpture, Rodin. Mona Martinson came from treasured stock. Her father was in the railroad business when that meant money. As a child of wealth and privilege, she lived a rare life in two locals--5th Avenue, New York, and Germany's Black Forest.

Mona sometimes fought her mother's plans for her life. When she was little more than a child, she told her mother that when she married, she wouldn't have an entire roomful of childcare like she had--she'd do her own mothering.

But it was her mother that brought a country writer named Neihardt into Mona's life. Her mother read and enjoyed some of Neihardt's early poems and short stories and recommended them to her daughter, who happened to be back again from Europe. 

And thus began one of the great love stories in American history--I'm fully aware of overstatement, but I'll stand by it.

In the library at the John Neihardt Center in Bancroft, Nebraska, you'll find that bust, one of only three sculptures Mona ever finished after marrying Neihardt, which she did less than a day after meeting him at Omaha's Union Station. They'd exchanged pictures, so he knew who was his sweetheart when the passengers stepped off number 112 on track 13. So convinced of their plotting was he that had their license to be married in his back pocket, dated the next day.

Seriously, even more impossible is that John Neihardt, an unmistakably promising voice in American literature and history, a day or two later took his bride out to Bancroft, Nebraska, to his mother's house, where the three of them would live. Mona Martinson Neihardt had studied with Rodin, for heaven's sake. Her upbringing likely included lawn tennis and croquet. She'd grown up on two continents, had to be multi-lingual (her father was German), was a product of the most prestigious educational possibilities, and there she was, married to a man considerably shorter than she was on the edge of the chilling loneliness of life on the Great Plains.

Disaster, waiting to happen? You'd think so, wouldn't you? Little rich girl surrounded muddy pioneer Americans, married a day after she first laid eyes on this little poet her mother thought interesting, a short guy with a huge mop of hair--it can't last. Conventional small-towners? Not really. Their neighbors didn't always understand them and didn't know what to think of their skinny-dipping, but their commitment to each other was indomitable. Amazing. Just amazing.

But the marriage did last, and that's why I'm telling you once again that this marriage of theirs--Mona and John--has to be one of the great American love stories.

Next time you visit Bancroft and the Neihardt Center, check out the sculpture, the bust that Mona did of her husband, one of only three sculptures she did after studying with Rodin, the master, go find the sculpture. You'll know there's more to its intrigue than simply a formidable sense of purpose and drive. 

She gave him his determination because, well, she loved him, as he loved her. 

Sunday morning meds--from Psalm 4

 

“How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?”

 Were I a writing teacher (which I was) and were I to be asked to grade Psalm 4—(which I’ve not been) I’d have to admit (maybe I shouldn’t) that in my estimation this song isn’t one of David’s greatest hits.

 I like the fact that it follows Psalm 3, a psalm traditionally called “a morning Psalm.” Psalm 4 has been just as traditionally called “an evening psalm,” as we shall see. Creates a nice pattern. It’s somehow fits where it is.

 But, just for a moment, let me make a case for what I see as its problems.  The song begins with a demand (“Answer me”) that softens rather quickly into the heartfelt request of every human being who knows he or she has sinned (“be merciful to me’).  Despite its in-your-face first line, it’s difficult to imagine that verse one could be written in any position other than on one’s knees. Read it again, if you think I’m wrong.

 Suddenly, and without notice, the supplicant of verse one turns his attention totally on those who have no faith in Almighty God, seems drawn to his knees out of concern for what the KJV used to call “sons of men,” a term of respect.

Verse three uses a whole different voice.  You should know, he says to those “sons of men,” that the Lord has chosen his own and, quite frankly, I’m one of them.  Furthermore, he says, chin jutting, he’ll answer my prayers.  Odd sentiment for a supplicant who wasn’t so sure about anything just a moment ago.

 In verse 4 and 5, those pointy-fingered accusations about his enemies’ sins have melted away into a priestly blessing.  Listen, he says, his tone lightening up, look into a mirror sometime.  Once you’ve seen what’s really there (verse 5), offer good sacrifices to the Lord.

 His enemies have disappeared altogether by verse 6, and verse 7 exudes joy at what seems to be the blessing he was demanding of the Lord at the outset.  Sweetly, the psalm ends with a pledge and a testimony.

Really, the emotional life—what writers call “tone”—of Psalm 4 is all over the map. In this poem, David seems almost manic-depressive, like his predecessor, Saul. There is little continuity here, almost no unity. The major players in the drama—David and his vain enemies—are multi-faceted, and even God shifts in focus.

Ask yourself this:  how many people do you know who list Psalm 4 as among their favorites?

So who reserved a place for it in the canon?  Why is it in the anthology?

I’ll hazard an answer. Because, in the words of a now-gone retail chain, “Psalm 4-are-us.”

Who hasn’t, in times of dire distress, panted prayers that were as disheveled as this, as madcap in structure and form?  Who hasn’t stuttered?  Whose most deeply felt prayers honestly achieve beauty and grace?

Psalm 4, like so many other songs in this book, testifies of God’s love. Its emotions are out of control, its rhetoric all over the map. It’s the testimony of a man at wit’s end, a man who’s spent far too many nights tossing and turning.  Psalm 4 is David’s way, really, of falling, graciously, to sleep.

Because it’s here, because it made the collection, because it does what we do, it’s very much ours. 

On the fabulously rich

Who could have guessed Donald Trump's choice for VP? Seriously, the man who'd written the first book dissecting Trump's phenomenal appeal to aggrieved white folks, the man who made a couple of million in book sales by ripping Donald Trump as someone as close to Hitler as we're every likely to see in America? He's the choice? Yet, Trump looked past such conservative luminaries as Mario Rubio and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, only to choose a guy who'd served in the United States Senate for less than two years and hadn't put up any significant numbers during that short service.

I honestly don't know if I can believe everything I heard is NPR's On Point on Wednesday, when the show traced the lineage of JD Vance, not his familial lineage, but, well, his financial family tree, for it seems--you may have read this elsewhere--that Vance has a sugar daddy by the name of Peter Thiel, a man who made his gadzillions from Pay-Pal. Thiel is, today, one of those fabulously rich media execs who hang out in Silicon Valley, a place, On Point would have you believe, is fast becoming as powerful as D.C. 

Doubt it? Consider Vance, who ran for the Senate with Donald Trump's endorsement (nothing to sneer at) and millions--literally, millions--of bucks from this guy Thiel. More than that and earlier, Peter Thiel made JD Vance successful as a venture capitalist by basically underwriting the guy's career. It's not difficult to say the man-who-could-be-king post-Trump, got there by clinging to the proffered shirttails a Silicon Valley oligarch.

Peter Thiel isn't the only one of the mega-billionaires operating within the system. There are others. And, what's more scary is that these Daddy Mega-Bucks are sometimes aligned politically and ideologically. That's scary. Consider the sheer power of, say, a dozen Elon Musks.  

Why do I shiver? Because they follow along with extremists who are anti-American. They're not communists or outright fascists, but they tend to believe that, anti-democratically, that not everyone is created equal, and their reasoning is easy enough to understand--they made millions, they cashed in on the internet, they did things no one else did, and they deserve others to bow at their beckoning. 

"Ah, Schaap," you're saying, "don't get all paranoid on me." 

I'm trying not to, but it's not difficult to wobble a little when you see the man who is a heart beat away from the presidency of the United States and emperor of the free world, and the guy has been something of the puppet of a single American oligarch whose billions have underwritten the VP's life with his own spare change.

It'll cost you an hour, but On Point opened up a whole new and powerful ideology on the rise  in these United States--something called these days, "the new right," or "alt-right." You can listen in or read the transcript here. 

Millions of Christians, like me, have been stupefied by evangelical Christians who follow the likes of the Donald. Let's be clear here. The "New Right" is something else altogether. They've just found it handy to throw their cash at Trump because he, like no one else, champions an ideology that may have sufficient strength to flip American democracy. According to On Point, these oligarchs don't necessarily like Trump, but they see him as their work horse. Think I'm alarmist?--go ahead and explain JD Vance's rise to power. 

Just try. 

A long story with a lot of faces

They were all nice--don't get me wrong. There wasn't a sourpuss in the bunch--men or women. They all handled the bald guy with the walker with respect and dignity. I don't doubt for a minute that they're all sweet people. Sweetness is all I saw from any or all of them.

They were all nice, but there were so danged many.

Before you get to the massive front desk, two sweet church-like greeters aim you politely where you're going. Let me just say, you need it--the cardiac center of Sanford Hospital, is Titanic in breadth and elegance. Some directions are in order.

The front desk has three receptionists. One of them (let's call her Employee 3)  turns her head over the shoulder, "S- C-H-A-A-P," she spells, "and whatcha' got for a birthday, sweetheart?"

I announce my birthdate, the first time in a unending ritual. 

"1948?" she says, stupefied, then turns around. "Honey, you are one good-looking ''48."

I'll write Sanford later to tell them to give that one a raise. I was there for a heart exam--something nuclear; she'd already turned it into a drum.

Anyway, employee 3, 4, and 5 make a paper copy of something regarding my visit; Emp 3 slips it in a folder, gives it to Emp 6, who has appeared out of nowhere to tell me I'm only slightly off course and usher me to the east section of Sanford universe. I'm not quick on my feet, so she holds the elevator door open, smiles professionally, and sinks us both down a floor, then holds the doors open again, takes me to Emp 7, who's behind yet another front desk, where she drops off my blue folder and ushers me to a waiting room chair.

I am clearly among the elderly, like everyone else, a half  hour early. 

Olympic gymnastics are on a tv across the room, so I get up slowly and steer myself into a position to watch. Not smart--it's the men's competition. Such incredible grace, and I've got to reach for the walker just to stand up. 

A half hour passes. At 11:46, Emp 8 emerges from a hallway door, picks up the blue folder and asks for James. I tell her my birthday. She's could be the granddaughter of the woman at the front desk. Says nothing. 

She brings me into a room with a hospital bed, tells me to take off my shirt and strings me up with an open-season hospital gown, puts me on the bed and opens the gown slightly, asks permission to shave the eight or ten hairs in the strategic positions the electrical nipples need to occupy, then tells me what they're going to be doing, and leaves. 

Emp 8 draws blood, checks my blood pressure, gets me ready for the juice I'll get eventually, hi-tech stuff the camera will observe as it snakes through my heart. Employee 8 has been with me for fifteen minutes, longer than anyone. 

Emp 9 is a stocky bald guy, the photographer. He pushes me into a room a bit farther down, where something sort of Rihanna-ish is on the boom box behind me. At least it's not Wagner. Emp 9 gets me comfy and shoots the film. 

Emp 10 comes by to get me up on my feet once the film is shot. It's a tussle--I'd been almost sleeping. She walks me back to the room where my phone is still lying on the table, and she tells me it's a good idea for me to drink some caffein, so would I like coffee or Diet Coke or something else maybe? That's Emp 11, who gets me a Diet Coke--and it's cold.

Emp 12 is the pro. He carries whatever "nuclear" is part of the test, tells me that it's got some kick, and I should tell him if the world floats away or something. But he says the effect won't be long. He's young for a shaved head, but he's the only one dressed like a doctor's--wishful thinking maybe, but that his job is top of the list is clear when the others--Emps 13, 14, and 15--all stay in the room for the treatment.

In just a few seconds I'm verklept. The juice mimics the effects of exercise I'd be going through if weren't for that walker. What goes in needs to be measured once it's flailing and sailing through my system. 

One of the gang--maybe 13 or 14--gets me up and helps me hobble to yet another nuclear room, where Emp 16 tells me we're almost done and "how was the muffin?" (Emp 15 got me a muffin, first calories I'd had in 12 hours). Emp 16, the second photographer, is kind enough to stick a pillow down under my knees and lets me know that it'll be just a few minutes (12 to be exact) before I'll be on my way to, "where do you live in northwest Iowa again"?

Emp 16 takes me out of the second nuclear room and walks me back to the waiting room. I head for the elevator, take it up one floor, and go back to the where, if I'm lucky, Emp Three will be free once more to relieve my heart of any lingering nuclear tensions--and she  is, thank goodness! She calls me "49," but who's going to kick about numbers?

So when Barbara pulls up I'm soon enough on my way home from Sanford Heart, scurrying down Minnesota Avenue on the old way home, when I try to make some sense of the scrapbook full of faces I'd met in two hours, sixteen (at least) different men and women who could call me their patient. 

I'm not someone who reduces life to a financial ledger. That Sanford needs 16 people to run an old guy through a nuclear stress test is their business, not mine. 

Medicine is a science, of course, ever-evolving through research and practice; but it's also very much an art, thoughtful people knowing how and when to help those who need it. But when finally we left the airport-like entrance--valet parking!!--I couldn't help being reminded that medicine also a business. My goodness, it's a business, a huge business.

I should mention that Emp 3 pushed me into the car and told "47" she'd put my walker into the back of the Subaru, then pointed to Barbara. "You be good to her," she said and shut the door.

Nice touch.