Day #30--Naughty words

I have plenty of work to keep me busy. On whatever long list of suffering people may exist, I'd be way at the bottom if I showed up at all.

Yesterday I lost a speaking gig, my fourth since all of this started; but for me, sheltering in place has not been a horror. Our greatest suffering is perfectly awful weather that just about forbids exercise. I did my two miles yesterday in a snow squall, and it's mid-April, for crying out loud. See that picture? It's our backyard. I'm serious. Merry Christmas.

My only contribution to the war-against-pestilence effort--if it can be called a contribution--is reading The Boxcar Children to Ian, my grandson. I record it; he gets it on his iPod and listens to a chapter every night. I told him that when I was his age--he's in fourth grade--I just loved The Boxcar Children, and I wasn't a lover of books, at least not then. 

Initially, I told him I'd send him a chapter and see if he might like it. He said that'd be okay. Wasn't necessarily thrilled. You know.

Right now, we're about halfway through. If you know that old saga--it was first published in 1924--Henry, the oldest boy, who really didn't know he was a runner, just took home the prize for coming in first in the town's annual game-day footrace, a really big deal that earned him some bucks.

Before the race, some kid talks to him and describes what happened in last year's epic:

"That was a funny one," he said. "There was a college runner in it, and a couple of fat men, and some girls—lots of people. And the little colored boy over there won it. You just ought to have seen that boy run! He went so fast you couldn't see his legs. Beat the college runner, you know."

I'm guessing that paragraph didn't make later editions.

Now Ian is not my son, he's my grandson; and I'm not there when he listens. I'm not obliged to say anything, and, yes, I'm attempting to absolve myself from responsibility because when I read over the paragraph yesterday, I wondered if I should say something about contemporary usage. 

In her day, I'm sure Gertrude Chandler Warner was using perfectly acceptable language. Not so today.

But then how would I explain that saying "colored" is insensitive, but saying "people of color" is, these days, perfectly acceptable? For that matter, how would I explain the word insensitive?  And even if I'd bring up that usage, how on earth would I explain that the boy's description of last year's winner taking home the prize can most certainly be seen as racist, even if the winning sprinters on the platform during the next Olympics--whenever they're held--are likely to be all "people of color?"

I just kept reading. I could have left out the whole passage--it's not central to the plot. But I didn't. 

And then what about this? Mr. Cordyce, the boss at a steel mill, the man who funds the race, allows himself the joy of one annual holiday, the author says, the day of the race. Here's how she describes it:

Once a year J. H. Cordyce allowed himself a holiday. If he had a weakness, it was for healthy boys—boys running without their hats, boys jumping, boys throwing rings, boys swimming, boys vaulting with a long pole. 

Sheesh. Makes my skin crawl. 

I let it go. Ms. Warner meant nothing by saying things the way she did.

Ian is ten years old. I'm his grandpa, not his dad or mom. But I wouldn't be saying all of this if I didn't think it, would I?

Boxcar Children is an old classic I loved when I was his age. There'll be time for all of that propriety soon enough--that's what I'm thinking anyway, just like there was time for me. 

Still. . .

I got a day. I could put that voice track up on software and cut it right out. I could. . . 

What do you think?

Day #29--Sunday mystery

In my lifetime, much has changed in church and about church. My parents' view of what they called "close" communion, a supervised or guarded table, has disappeared by way of a far more democratic impulse. Not long ago, I saw a young father administer the sacrament to the little guy in his arms, whose understanding and perception of God is likely no more or less than any child's sensibility at two years old. 

Did that darling little boy know what he was doing, know what he was chewing on or drinking from that tiny cup? Probably not. But will his admission to the elements be enriching someday, when he comes to understand that he has been, all throughout his life, nurtured by that very body and the blood? Today's church banks on exactly that. What happens in communion today is a feast, not a test.

I'm not sure if today's practice is an astounding improvement. My parents' four-times-a-year practice, in their minds, made the body-and-blood special. How do I know that?--they told me as much during family devotions when I was just a boy. "There's communion this Sunday," my dad would say over the open Bible, "and it calls us to examine ourselves. . ."

That emphasis is ancient history. I didn't do it when my kids were little. Today, progressive churches, for very good reasons, practice communion every Sunday. 

So in our third gathering on-line, yesterday, in his congregational prayer, our pastor told the Lord how much we missed the fellowship of the sacrament by worshiping the way we are.

His telling the Lord that, got me to thinking. Why couldn't Barbara and I simply run upstairs, grab some bread and a glass of grape juice or wine, come back downstairs in front of the screen, and do the sacrament in the fellowship of each other and all the others gathered via Facebook? Wouldn't that count? Would the elements somehow less efficacy?

I don't think the pastor or any others in our church would go far as to say that only the bread and juice on the Covenant CRC's communion table could be classified as His body and blood. We're not Roman Catholic--we don't believe in transubstantiation, a word I learned to reject already as a boy in church catechism. Good, solid Reformed church practice always saw the bread and wine as symbols, not--for heaven's sake!--as somehow, via the great mystery, the actual, real thing.

So why, next week, couldn't the pastor send out, ahead of time, a note asking people to bring along the essential goods to the family room? Why couldn't he stand up front, as he does when we're not practicing "shelter in place," and walk us through the sacrament? 

At a cathedral in Florence we found ourselves surrounded by grandiose reliquaries, like this one, a museum full.

Elaborate things like this were created as a treasured storage to keep some relic of the apostles, or else the elements of the mass in a liturgical processional. As much as anyone raised by believers proud of their Reformational history, right there I could feel the attraction of "the mother church." Whenever I'm in a cathedral, even out here on the Plains, I can't help but feel that somewhere in me there worships a Roman Catholic. 

But I honestly don't know the argument that would make the sacrament in front of a screen, our individual practice of holy communion, to be anything less than our practice thereof were we within the walls of the church.

I don't have a Luther-like "here I stand!" in this discussion, but I'd love to be around when it takes place because I'm not sure we know what it is we're doing when we take the elements ourselves, Wonder bread or not. I'm not sure I do.

What's more, more than likely, you, me, and the little guy in his father's arms, never will. That's part of what our Catholic friends would call "the mystery," a word I don't believe my parents ever used.

But I do. 

Day #28 -- Easter Sunday morning

Eighteen years ago, on Easter morning, this is how the dawn arose.

This Easter post is actually a replay from the wrong Christian holiday, Christmas, three years ago. At our house, Handel's Messiah, in its entirety, get aired two great days a year--Easter and Christmas. 

And, this morning, for my mother, who no longer sings with any earthly choir, I'll include the accompaniment for her old solo. I hear simply the opening lines, and she appears.

Like everyone else, we'll be alone this Easter morning. But then again, not so. :) No, never alone.


___________________ 

Visceral reactions aren't always pretty, not in an old men anyway. I get 'em and I'm not always proud of 'em; but not being proud of 'em doesn't mean they don't come anyway--they're visceral, after all. No one asks them to show up.

I'll give you one. We're obligated to attend Christmas concerts every December. I sound like Scrooge, and I'm not; but there is a you-better-show-up thing in full operational mode because every other grandpa and grandma in a three-state region'll be there, for pity sake. What?--you don't love your grandkids? 

'Course we do. Love 'em to death. And I wouldn't mind going to Christmas programs either if every other grandparent in the three-state regions wouldn't be there by the time we arrive. BUT THEY ARE. We've got to park a quarter-mile away. Listen, we're Dutch, which means cleanliness is next to Godliness, but so is being someplace ON TIME. 

So what? Just about everybody else is Dutch too, which means we show up 20 minutes early, park halfway to South Dakota, and then walk forever, up hill, to get to the auditorium.

When I'm huffing and puffing, I tell myself the adulation we lay on our kids is akin to idolatry. Four-year-olds play soccer and hundreds lug lawn chairs out to watch. An elementary school puts on a Christmas show, and it's SRO in a space the St. Paul Symphony Orchestra or the Boston Brass couldn't fill in a month of Sundays.

I can get owly. Viscerals'll do that.

Then I get inside. Place is packed. Here and there stripes of open benches beckon, but somebody's saving that space. Hundreds, no thousands of people. Seriously. If you want a good seat, you should have come yesterday.

So last night was another, a Christmas music program featuring a couple hundred kids--pre-kindergarten to fourth grade, all of them darling, I might add, all of them sweet Yuletide angels. Nothing spectacular, not some extravaganza, just plain music, Christmas music.

And then, halfway through, something I would not have thought possible--The Messiah. That's right Handel. Okay, it was a pee-wee version, but it was, without a doubt, the masterpiece. Don't know if Handel would have approved, but if he had a grandson or daughter in the bunch, he would have been all smiles.

I was. Our grandson is a kid one of his great uncles or aunts from the Netherlands once described as "a serious little boy," a kid who can lost in Legos, who could live for days-on-end surrounded by nothing more than Transformers. 

Second-grader. There he was amidst the throng, singing Handel. Second grade. Handel.

Imagine this, a couple hundred tiny kids in matching t-shirts walk on and proceed, many of them anyway, to wave to their grandparents a mile away in the auditorium. The director steps up, raises his hands. Silence. Then, just like that "And the glory of the Lord" fills an auditorium that's already overflowing by finding ample room in the wide open hearts of  a loving and totally beguiled crowd.

Did those little kids know what they were singing? Sure. Did they know that what they performed was perhaps the most celebrated piece of music in the world, an oratorio created in just a few weeks in 1741? Did they know how blessed they were? What they know is they sang parts of the masterpiece, even the "Hallelujah Chorus" to a standing room only crowd that got to its feet and stood.

He's just a little boy on a wide stage with a hundred other little boys and girls, second graders and third and fourth. Together, they sang The Messiah. I'm not making this up.

It's Christmas, and the world sometimes feels genuinely enchanted because, in so many ways, the story we celebrate is so much bigger than we are. Last night, when I left that auditorium, what was visceral in me made me wipe away a tear because I couldn't help think that it's so good for him to know--for all of us to know--that we are very much part of something so much bigger than we are. 

Listen to this. Last night, my eight-year-old grandson sang the "Hallelujah Chorus." 

From The Messiah. I'm not kidding. Handel. My grandson.

The walk back to the car didn't take long at all--all of it downhill. 

Day #26--Good Friday

Superlatives are risky, but I can't help thinking this piece of music is as beautiful as anything ever composed, Biebl's "Ave Maria." The pestilence all around is wearing on everyone, no matter what age or station, children to ancients. all of us in our own seclusion. Click on the arrow, and let Biebl's gorgeous eternal anthem bless the morning of Good Friday. 

 

  

Morning Thanks--Prof. Mike Vanden Bosch

Fifty years ago I wrote an essay for him, for the class he was teaching and I was taking--a class in how to teach English. He chewed me out for what I wrote, told me in no uncertain terms that he expected much more of me than I'd shown. In four years of college, I'd never been chewed out like that, for sheer laziness. I could have been, I'm sure, but I wasn't. Somewhere in my files that essay still exists. It was hot. Probably still is. He was angry.

Prof. Vanden Bosch was a great guy, a terrific teacher, a man who was, I knew, successful at his calling, not only because his strengths in the classroom were evident, but also because I knew he carried this nearly sublime reputation among friends who'd had him as a teacher and coach in high school, before he'd moved on to teach in college. They lived in awe of him.

Raising his ire the way I did with that essay was less distressing than perplexing, so I went to him. The whole thing was a misunderstanding. I had thought the essay was role-playing: "write an essay as if you're a high school kid." That's what I'd done. I was dead wrong. 

When I came up to his desk, he was gruff; but when I told him what had happened, he smiled, then laughed. Before the essay assignment, I'm sure I liked him. But the striking turn in his demeanor showed me an impressive strength of character I thought really wonderful.

Prof. Vanden Bosch was beloved. When some years later I returned to my alma mater to teach, we became friends, good friends. Broad-shouldered, muscular, powerful in a way that made most males cower, within him there lived a poet, a man who quoted poems he loved, reams of them, an artist who stopped seeing and writing only when he could no longer find the words.

Mike Vanden Bosch was a regionalist in the best sense of the word, a man of the dark Siouxland soil he loved, a native, who gifted us with histories of the town where he lived and the college where for years he held forth the resonant beauty of the written word. He had the shoulders of a mason. In his sixties, he was asked to coach women's softball. He did, and did well with the quiet strength that marked most everything he did.

He had to be close to retirement when he called me one June night and asked if I'd play first base for ad hoc softball game he'd lined up in McNally, Iowa, on an old sand lot under lights. He didn't need to say he'd be chucking--that came with the territory. Real northwest Iowans knew him better as a pitcher than a poet. On the mound, he was legendary.

Eleven years ago the two of us were asked to speak at the funeral of Harold Aardema, a country editor from Doon, Iowa, a mutual friend. I was proud to have been invited to say something. Mike was too, I'm sure. The funeral was out of town, so we drove together to an old church our mutual friend had begun attending when he and his ideas no longer found welcome in the one where he'd spent much of his life. 

That funeral was the first time I suspected his words weren't quite in a line. Something was unglued in what he said that morning, and that scared me--not what he said, but how. The ideas jarred, didn't run like they should have, almost left the tracks. The man I listened to in that little church that morning wasn't the Mike I knew. Something had gone slightly adrift.

We talked, up and back. I told him I wanted to see the farm place where he grew up, just one son of an over-sized Iowa farm family I knew from his myriad tales, a family mostly poor but proud and pious. We took gravel roads to find it, and I heard at least a dozen more earthy stories, some of which I remember--the time he and his buddies skipped church and went to a county fair where one of his friends put him up to take on some side-show wrestler who'd give any takers ten bucks if they'd best him. Mike was just a kid, but he walked out of the ring ten bucks richer. 

One of the stories had to do with his mother, whose senility, in her late years, was profound, he said, so profound she couldn't recognize her children. Nothing seemed to register, he said, but somewhere in that locked-up mind the old hymns still played. If they would sit in her room and start into "Beneath the Cross of Jesus," he said his mother's lips would move because the words were still there when nothing else was. He loved that.

Three years ago, on a Sunday, I sat in front of him at a comprehensive care facility in a worship service he slept through, crumpled up in a wheelchair. He had become his mother. After the service I tried to greet him. He didn't look up. I just hoped he'd heard the music.

The man we'd eulogized was a story-teller. One night the country editor got to talking about Mike Vanden Bosch and said he'd never forget the day Mike came back from college with a knock-out girl, a dish from back east, blonde and beautiful. "All of us were green jealous because," the old editor said, "there she sat, right beside him in that car, you know--before seat belts--right there next to him, that little pony tail tossing back and forth as they drove down the street."

That story I remember, too.

She was there too at the home too, sitting with him at the worship service. There's no pony tail, but she's still beautiful. I'm thankful for her--and a million other beloved caregivers who give their lives to men and women they won't and can't stop loving, even when so much of what those loved ones were has already departed.

In a way, Mike Vanden Bosch, poet and pitcher, teacher on court and classroom, husband and father, and grandpa had been gone already for a long time; but just this week he died. So, his life will be celebrated only by a grieving family, who are likely thankful for him that the end had finally come. For many, it seems, dying is hard, hard work.

The girl in the pony trail and her children and theirs will be alone in this pestilence all around. There will be no eulogies, no public visitation with family, no real funeral. 

He deserves much more, as does his wife. His loving family deserves every square inch of blessed grace the Lord can bestow upon them as they remember a man they loved and still do. 

May the words of those old hymns his mother could still sing move their lips too. 

This morning I'm thankful for him, his life, and so much good he's left behind.

Day #26

It was impossible not to giggle yesterday when Wisconsin's Speaker of the House went on camera in a plastic suit and face mask to play cheerleader for an election that seemingly shouldn't have taken place. The welcomes he uttered were entirely undercut by his COVID-19 armor. To the rest of America--with the exception of Trumpites--what went on in my home state looked plain nuts.

Yesterday, I picked up a manuscript from the door of a friend who'd proofed it. It was in a plastic bag, and even though she was out on the street when I arrived, she let me pick it up from the back door.  We chatted awhile, she even mentioned that I could let the manuscript sit for three days so the virus would go inert. She's kept the six-foot restraining order distance.

I wore a mask to the hardware store on Saturday. Felt weird, but I did. Went to church twice on Sunday and never left the basement. The two of us went together to the grocery store on Saturday, but I'm told that today all such public coupling will not be permitted. I got milk yesterday by myself.

The country--or so it seems--is following the President's guidelines, even here where there's been only a few cases of the virus. I'm sorry, Wisconsin, but the Speaker of the House, outfitted in all the heavy-duty gear while telling people to come on down and vote looked as dangerous as he did hilarious.

So last night we listened to a podcast to try to understand what's going on in my home state. Here's my take. For a time, across-the-aisle support for this election was clear. Then came COVID-19. What happened around the state yesterday wasn't just a primary, it was also an election, specifically an election for a Supreme Court judge. In other words, what would be tallied finally wasn't just a preference poll: someone would win a significant seat on the Supreme Court.

Seems things in the last week got nasty, which isn't rare in the Badger State. When the Democratic governor called the election off, the Republican legislature demurred, fought it in the state Supreme Court (where they won), then fought it in the supreme Supreme Court (and won again).

Why did those angry pols dig in their heels? Because the election had real-time consequences: the state Supreme Court needed a judge; the election would determine who that judge would be.

Then poll workers began backing out of running the show. Milwaukee, opened only five polling sites; normally there are 180. Green Bay had only two out of the usual 31.

Did all of this--Coronavirus and long lines to vote--affect the number of people who voted? It's hard to believe it didn't. Look at the picture. And yes, masked voters kept their distance from each other.

Last-ditch efforts to vote by mail failed because, as the President himself said yesterday at his daily news conference, Repubs say there's so much room for fraud that way, despite the fact that the Pres and Melania did it themselves. The difference is, they're upstanding citizens. (For the record, he still claims that thousands of illegals from Conneticut came over the state line to help Hillary to her 2016--stolen--victory.)

So it went on, painfully, it seems, while most of the world was sheltering in place, and while the President hired on a new press secretary, who just a few weeks ago is on record telling the nation that all this talk about a Chinese virus is just the Dems trying to bring down the President AGAIN.

So Day #25 was a weird one.

For the record, here in Siouxland it was perfectly gorgeous. My creaking frame is telling me this morning that when we weren't fielding a much beloved torrent of pictures of a little princess in a Tulsa hospital, we spent some hard-working hours in the sun, out back.

When the all-clear goes up someday, I want to head east, back to the town where I grew up.

Not right now. 

Day #25

This is all I need to say. We're greatly thankful. All's well.

Day #24

U. S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, talking about the coronavirus pandemic yesterday on Fox News made a claim that's beyond imagination. He told Chris Wallace that it was somehow fitting for him to speak on Palm Sunday, the beginning of holy week, because, he said, "This is going to be the hardest and saddest week of most Americans' lives."  

I am an American.

He called this week "our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment. Only it's not going to be localized--it's going to be happening all over the country." He said he wanted America to understand that.

If he's right, and I'm not questioning him, then it's already begun in hospitals and nursing homes across the land.

If he's right, then, as we speak, nurses are pulling up sheets over the faces of deceased. If he's right, then I'm scared because right now we have children in a hospital, a mom and dad who want like nothing else to welcome their own little girl into the world. That birth is happening. That child is being born during what the Surgeon General called "the hardest and saddest week of most Americans' lives." 

Thousands of difficult stories are happening all over this country and this world as these letters appear across the bright screen in front of me.  But one looms larger than any other for us right now: in Tulsa, Oklahoma, right now, a father is holding his wife's hand as her heart and body and soul begins the miraculous process of bringing that little girl into a world besieged by a virus few could have believed so devastating.

This morning my rich thanks are for hospitals and doctors and nurses so profligate with their concern that they risk their own lives to treat far too many patients.

But this morning please grant us a blessing, Lord, keep them--mom, dad, baby, and little sister--keep them safe and well. Let that child's first breath be sweet and pure air. Deliver us--all of us--from the fear we can't help but feel all around. 

Amid all the suffering, make it a beautiful day for our little girl to come into the world.

Reading Mother Teresa--Bringing Him and Meeting Him

Rev. Casey Kuipers and family

Whatever you did 

for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, 

you did for me.’” Matthew 25:40 

In Chant of the Night, Cornelius Kuipers’ 1930s novel about mission work in the Zuni pueblo of New Mexico, a young Zuni named Ametolan agrees to take three Anglo missionaries for a day-long hike up Zuni Mountain, a deeply sacred place to his people. As they climb, they learn some things about the Zunis’ history of great suffering, first at the hands of the Spanish, then at the hands of missionaries from the south, from Mexico, stories amply illustrated by hand and footholds carved into the sheer sides of the mountain so the people could escape death.

The white folks love the stories, but they joke around; they don’t revere the place, as does Ametolan. When one of the Anglos says she’d like to meet the god of the Zuni mountain because “he must be some guy,” “the party laughed,” says Kuipers, “but not Ametolan.”

Kuipers was himself an Anglo missionary who spent decades in the Zuni pueblo. That he would criticize his colleagues and fellow Christians’ nonchalance is noteworthy and, in its own way, lovely. He breaks the stereotype of Christian missionaries who were often what Native people determined them to be – piously disguised scouts for a cultural cavalry, men who sought, as did the U.S. Army, the demise of all indigenous people.

I don’t claim to know anything about missiology. I’ve never been a missionary, and I don’t know how missionaries are trained. But I do know something about how Christian mission has often blundered with Native people, killing them and their spirit with their own Godly intentions. Almost a century ago, a missionary named Cornelius Kuipers seemed to understand that too – and he used his novels to try to explain what he’d discovered on the mission field, tried to explain, not to the Zunis, who needed no explanation, but to his own people, Anglo Christians.

How did he come to understand that banter like the hikers in Chant of the Night was crass and unfeeling, especially when it was done in holy places, even pagan holy places. How did he learn that, on the mission field, mockery is always off-key? The title of his only nonfiction book is Zuni Also Prays, which is to say, "Don’t demean people." Pride is the first of seven deadlies, spiritual pride the most hideous. Just remember, he likely wanted to tell his own people, Zuni also prays.

This morning Mother Teresa taught me something Cornelius Kuipers would have liked. Mother Teresa took to heart that absolutely central passage of the gospel recorded in Matthew 25: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” While she dedicated her entire life to bringing Christ to the poor on the streets of Calcutta, she was equally sure, strange as this may sound, that when she met the poor, she met Jesus. She not only brought Christ, she met him in wasted streets. She looked into the faces of the poor and, quite literally, saw her Lord.

When I read the novels of Cornelius Kuipers, novels meant for his people, I can’t help thinking that he too saw Jesus there in the Zuni, a vision he knew very well might be difficult to relate to people back home.

Really, all of this isn’t just about missiology; it’s about more than that. It's about the very character of the Christian life, don’t you think?

Day #22

He IS a marvel. Of that, there's no doubt. Love him or hate him--there's no one else quite like him. If Republicans believe Brother Pence will pick up the reigns once the Prince of Orange leaves the stage, they're sadly mistaken. No one can, so no one will. We will not again find a man whose claim that he never had to be forgiven for anything is not just a part of his show, it's part of his character. And it's a marvel. He's a marvel.

He addicted to accolades, needs adoration the way the rest of us need oxygen. His patented two-hour rallies get shut down by a killer virus, and he simply takes over afternoon television, two hours, sometimes more, as if he can't get enough of him. 

He requires enemies, rabid opposition. If he doesn't have them, he creates them. He nurtures enemies. Never has there been a President who, from Day 1, worked so hard at widening the chasm between liberal and conservative ("American Carnage"). These days he seems to choose which hospitals to help, which states to bless. 

He's a wonder, a marvel. Networks scramble to know how to deal with his presence. A national--no, an international--catastrophe is all around. He is the President. America is sore afraid. So am I. We're human. We look for leaders in a crisis unlike any in anyone's lifetime, and the POTUS turns daily news conferences into a variety show because above all else, glory and honor and power belong to him. 

He has a captive audience, but that's not enough. Just to be sure, he lets the nation know that Mark Zuckerburg told him he--the POTUS--"was number one on Facebook" too. 

He's our President, although he's made it clear that the buck never stops at his desk, always someone else's--the hospital hoarders, nurses who don't share face masks, ungrateful governors, and, of course, fake news, the enemy of the people. If someone repeats what he said just three weeks ago--that this China virus thing will magically disappear, that soon enough it will all just go away--he just denies saying any such thing. 

"I could shoot somebody dead on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters," he told his gang at a gig just down the road. As far as they know, he hasn't. Not yet. But I don't think they'd care.

And that's not fake news.

He IS a marvel.

Day #21

You'll note right here that the 11th Hour says this Dr. Robert Gallo is "INVOLVED IN RESEARCH PROVING HIV CAUSES AIDS." That's only partially right: he and a colleague discovered the makeup of the HIV virus. He's no slouch. 

I saw this Dr. Gallo for the first time last night, and he sounded masterful, not simply because he "discovered" the HIV virus, nor because he's head of something called The Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, but because he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about and actually--get this!--apologized to Brian Williams for talking too much. 

Williams fended off that apology quickly because he too knew that the guy sounded not only knowledgeable but convincing. Williams probably looked at his notes just then and realized that he was running long; so he started a wrap, but Gallo wouldn't let him. He raised a finger. (You can find the whole 11th Hour here, but the raised finger segment is at 25:12) He asked permission to say one more thing, then emphasized that he what he wanted to say "is going to be important." I was all ears. "I think, within the global network right now--and we'll be coming out with this very soon--. . .we think and I believe there is something that could really help, right now, with a vaccine, which is a not-for-this-specific vaccine, for this virus that is available now that could very well--and I believe will have--a major effect for the world."

My inner skeptic knows all of that may go nowhere, but, for better or for worse, Gallo's last-minute revelation felt like ice-cold lemonade amid a midday scorcher. His phone is likely ringing off the hook, even though it likely has no hook.

I spent most of a beautiful day on my knees cutting back last summer's growth on bushes and grasses on the east side of the house. I'm healthy, maybe a few sneezes early morning (allergies), but no symptoms of anything evil. Still, last night, it was difficult to tell my 72-year-old body that I wasn't suffering, the aches and pains all in the logical places--knees and back and shoulders. I creaked--first long day working out in the yard.

But those few words from this fellow got my attention. He may be ghost dancing, but in a flash of a moment I couldn't help but see the light. Becoming a believer is not all that difficult when the need is so profound.

It's 6:17, and pitch dark outside my window, pitch dark. But I'm guessing that somewhere on the eastern horizon there's a glance of light because some feathered guest, a contralto I judge, is just outside, starting her aria.

Miss Emily is right--"hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul." This morning's thanks is for good news.

Day #20

Got a gift yesterday, a good one, from a friend who wanted to see what it would take for her to make a mask. She turned out a few, handsomely. I'm not sure why, but when it's strapped on it makes me feel more professional than criminal, which is a good thing. Some news show guest expert recommended them yesterday, said he couldn't help but believe we'd all be better off if we wore them while out on the street. So today I'm prepared, even if, right now, going masked to Fareway seems a little soap opera-ish.

I picked up a book from the college library Tuesday, not by going in--no one is--but by arranging a clandestine hand-off just outside the door, where the librarian passed me the book, latex gloves on her hands. Weird.

I'm still adjusting to the toll the experts say we just might be able to reach if we all social distance--it's officially okay to use that phrase as a verb, btw. I'm trying to avoid being serious because those preposterous numbers just don't calculate in my imagination. Something in me won't let them.

Which is not to say I'm not trying. As we all are, I'm a Fauci Fan--as most of us are. I believe him and his elegant sidekick with the x--Dr. Birx. Their best-case-scenario numbers are buzz bombs: we'll be doing well, they say, if we lose less than 200,000, a commendable target. 

I paid $1.74 for a gallon of gas yesterday. Last month I would have sung "Happy Days" all the way home. Yesterday, eh. 

What I can't get out of my mind is that tiny granddaughter who should be appearing right in the middle of the pestilence. The POTUS claims things will peak just about the time she'll determine to pin down a birthday. 

We know she's a she, and we know her name--little Charlotte. Her bedroom in Perkins is up to snuff; a couple nights ago we were given a Google Duo tour. Looks great. She'll love it. And she has a charming big sister.

We'll love her. We know that. Soon enough she'll show up in our kitchen on the little Google tele that plays pics of her sister 24/7. We'll love her too because we already do. 

Dear God, keep her safe. And her mom. And her dad. Hold us all in your hand.

Dear God.

Day #19

Here's what's going for us in the back yard right now--spring. Only once a year are we blessed with the gift of emerging life. These little guys will flower soon and then be gone, but for a week or so in late March they're numero uno, a religious spectacle, a processional of bright green thanksgiving.

Lord knows we need 'em. Last weekend, Dr. Fauci dropped a number into the virus dialogue that may take a week or more to register--200,000 deaths, at a minimum, if we're blessed. Just for record, a reader tells me that total annual deaths from influenza average between 20 and 60 thousand.

COVID-19 is a wholly different breed of cat, and 200,000 is a trial simply to imagine. 

Impossible for us, a retired couple but not institution-ed. Like everyone else these days, we video-called (FaceTime) our kids just a dozen miles away. "Can we come over?" our granddaughter asked.  She's in college, except she isn't right now. A soft answer turneth away wrath, I guess, but how do you say, "No, you can't" sweetly? Her brother, a high school kid, told his mother he was jumping from the roof tomorrow. Stay tuned. 

For some, like us, life goes on. 

We went a dozen miles south for a river walk (wonderful, but nothing like San Antonio). We'll do that again because the path was, for us at least, new and as beautiful as the sunny morning. I grew up with hardwoods on the lakeshore, but out here at the edge of the plains, I've been really taken by cottonwoods, not because they're gorgeous but because--forgive me!--they're not. Look at this car wreck.

He's a monster. But then, who knows how many floods he's seen? How much wind? How many twisters? He's as formidable as he is mangled. Maybe it's a her. Wood so soft that most farmers out here on the ocean of grass called 'em weeds. Still, in no time at all this beast will draw a quilt of emerald over most of its nakedness. 

Call 'em what you want, I call 'em survivors--huge survivors whose towering ugliness is somehow astonishing.

Beating COVID-19 is going to require a level of American exceptionalism we haven't needed for many years. . .long riverwalks of patience and compassion and sorrow. 

In just a couple of weeks, if that, this old cronie will blossom, God willing. Come July heat, it's old, broken arms will spread soft shade over the river walk. 

That's something to look forward to too.

Day #18

I'm calling it Day #18, because the day I couldn't help thinking all of the virus-hex was deadly serious was the day the NCAA tournament was shut down, redefining "March Madness." 

If it's Day #18, then it seems fair to say that the last 14, have been, here at least, awful weather-wise. Not wicked, just awful--wind and clouds and gloom. But yesterday we caught a break: it was a very real Sun-day. The wind abated, and the Puddle Jumper Trail was full of people (keeping their distance). When I got out there, it seemed far warmer than I thought it would be. I couldn't help thinking that what we'd missed in that cloudy cold was the actual death of a season. There's actually green stubble out back, gorgeous stubby stands of emerald. I can't remember ever being surprised by new growth before. Amid the dark cold, what was lost to winter grabbed a wholesome jump start. It's still kind of dark out. Later, I'll grab a picture of that green goodness.

Yesterday, Fauci the flu guru bare-knuckled a somber prophecy: we could lose one hundred to two hundred thousand before this vampire virus gets laid to rest. Astounding. I want badly not to believe him. That was a conservative estimate too, assuming we all keep our distance.

Honestly, no one's got it as good as we do, a couple of retired folks out here alone in the country, rour schedule less than bare-minimum-ed. We worry about our kids, especially the little Oklahoma cowgirl about to be born. 

Want to know how many options a person had to attend worship yesterday?--just as many as one has any ordinary Sabbath. Everybody's worshiping on line. Yesterday, we had church in the basement again, week #2; but someone had taken note of the bare naked look behind the preacher last Sunday and thusly put up some props that definitely improved what we might call "the set." 

I'm guessing that setting change illustrates community-wide adoption of the demands experts and the Pres claim must be followed. We're learning to adjust to the isolation, sheltered in place. It's not fun.

In a half-hour or so, I'll be on the radio, talking about the Spanish Flu a century ago. I don't want to listen. 

Time to quit. Out east, the morning sky is a bit carmelized beneath an azure bowl that promises good things. It's beautifully calm and clear. Look for yourself. 

That'll do. This morning, I'm thankful for another dawn. 

Reading Mother Teresa--"I thirst"

“I am thirsty.” John 19:28 

Sometimes people here in the upper Midwest claim we’re blessed with only two seasons: winter and Fourth of July. The line works, I think, for two reasons: one, winters can be brutal; and two, so can Fourth of July.

When we moved to Iowa from Arizona, we didn’t expect to be clobbered by heat, but we were. The house we rented was not air-conditioned, and, that first July, we nearly died – that’s overstatement. What we’d left was higher temps, but what we’d discovered was thick, dank humidity.

Right about now, mid-summer, nothing dispatches thirst like lemonade. Pink, white, raspberry – no matter. It’s a reminder of a boyhood bucking bales when icy canning jars full of the stuff were the only antidote to heat stroke. That’s overstatement too. You just get thirsty, really thirsty, in July haymows.

We just finished a sojourn in New Mexico, where we hiked over murky lava flows and through elegant sandstone at elevations that sucked your body dry. Always pack water. Drink it--parks and trails at 7000 feet don’t pussyfoot; their signs use the command form. Water is life. I drank buckets.

I’ve spent most of my adult life believing that if we underplay anything at all about Jesus Christ it’s his human side. The great mystery of his existence is that he was, at once, both God and man. Impossible, yet there he is, both. Where we underestimate him, I’ve often thought, is in his humanity. We like him as Lord and Savior, but he could be almost unfeeling at times – witness his seeming disregard for his own mother when he started out on his own in the temple. If you want to follow me, he told his disciples, forget Mom and Dad – actions he modeled himself.

He was human. Jesus Christ was human, too, not just Lord and Maker and King and Redeemer. He pulled human flesh as if it were spandex, for Pete’s sake – and mine.

Therefore, “I am thirsty” is an utterance I’ve often considered to be a clear indication of his humanity. The physical agony of the cross, far beyond my imagination, prompted very human needs – he got thirsty, horrifically so. He was human. Be careful, I might have said – and still would – about over-spiritualizing him.

Then there’s Mother Teresa, whose very ministry was created – by her own account – by her immense interpretive vision of that very Good Friday utterance – “I thirst” (41).

Why does Jesus say “I thirst”? What does it mean? Something so hard to explain in words – . . . “I thirst” is something much deeper than just Jesus saying “I love you.” Until you know, deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you – you can’t begin to know who He wants to be for you. Or who He wants you to be for Him. (42)

That’s what MT believed.

Jesus Christ was Mother Teresa’s sole motivational speaker, and his words, especially those uttered in his agony, were her rallying cry. She transformed his thirst into a metaphor and spent her life working to quench the emptiness he felt at Calvary, an emptiness satisfied only by the poor – their love and their souls. His thirst for them became her soul’s motivation.

She saw Jesus dehydrated, wearied, nearly dead; and she sought to bring him relief on the streets of Calcutta by satisfying his thirst for those poor he loved so greatly.

It may well be I’ve been wrong for all these years. Perhaps in stressing his humanity, I’ve neglected his divinity. Perhaps in taking him literally, I’ve not seen him spiritually, up there on the cross at Golgotha, body and soul dehydrated, his heart overworking to pump his dehydrated blood because he wants, more than anything, not just water but, as MT might say it, those he loves, his people, splashing over him, gushing with love.

That’s the way she read it, and that’s the way she lived in Calcutta.

Something to consider, even in our muggiest July.

It's precious

My memory has him at second base. I don't know if that's right or not, and if my memory fails me, I'd not be surprised. I just remember him showing up out of nowhere with the whole gang of public school kids, coming up the hill to the east diamond on the playground cross from our school, the Christian school.

There were no adults. Just kids. Sixth graders, I think. And he and the public school kids came over in a wave, kids we knew but mostly hated because they were the enemy, not Satan's minions, but ball players with some ringers who made them tough to beat. The whole bunch of us--Christians and publics--were on our own. Not a teacher to be seen, not a parent either--just kids playing ball.

I haven't a clue who won, but it seems to me that's the moment I remember seeing this tall kid with skinny legs, the kid my friends said was the new Reformed church preacher's son. Somehow it seemed unfair. First Reformed calls a new guy and some great ball player, his kid, comes along like a free-bee.

Seems to me it had to be spring. If it was fall, we wouldn't have faced off on a diamond. If I'm right, then it didn't take long at all for that kid to become a friend because the town where we grew up, Oostburg, Wisconsin, had baseball teams I'd already been a part of for at least a year. Once our two schools shut their doors for summer, enemies became teammates, buddies. 

And the two of us stayed friends for the next half-dozen years, very good buddies all through high school--football (he was the quarterback, I was a grunt), basketball (him underneath, me outside), track (he was a runner, those long legs started somewhere right beneath his ribs--I was a "weight man" in every sense), and, yes, baseball (first base, third base) because when the Christian school kids got together with the public school boys, we were good. We were very good. We won championships.

In high school, we both went over to the real enemy--Cedar Grove, another Dutch town--for girlfriends. But at OHS we took the same classes, lived in the same gym. We were good kids, the kind parents dream of. I don't remember fighting with my parents; I'm sure the preacher's kid got along with his just as well. High school halls are full of horror for millions; back then, we'd have called it a blast.

One of the most perplexing mysteries of my life with my friend Bob was why we both decided to go to college in Iowa, to Christian colleges 500 miles west but only a dozen miles apart. The only possible reason is tribalism, not Christian vs. public, but Christian vs. Christian. So deep was our devotion to our respective Dutch Reformed denominations that neither set of our God-fearing families even considered sending us--good, good friends, best friends--to the other's college, couldn't even think of it.

So off we went, and so ended, in a way, our friendship. For two years we met when the two colleges played basketball and baseball, but neither of us lasted long on the hardwood when the handwriting on the wall spelled out the end. I remember smiling, shaking hands, and then moving on.

In my life, Vietnam finally dominated. I didn't go (a weird heart, 4-F), and neither did he (287 in the draft lottery). I marched into a late Sixties rebel thing--long hair, bell bottoms, and anti-war activism--just about the time I quit basketball, discovered literature, and began dreaming about being right here with my fingers on the keys. 

Bob stayed in the gym, coached at a couple of area high schools, then returned to the college where he'd graduated as a head bb coach when he was barely any older than the kids. And he was good. He was terrific. He was a great coach, which meant he went up in the coaching ranks until, a few years later, he walked away, not because he didn't like coaching but because he recognized in himself that his whole-hearted commitment made coaching hazardous to body, mind, and soul. He found his way into sports administration and loved it.

Now, in his retirement, he joined an adult writing class, where he followed the coach's game plan and created--and it wasn't always easy--his own story, so that, he told me, his great-grandkids would know who he was and, most specifically, what it was like for him to grow up. Hence, the title Things Were Different Then.

You can buy it on Amazon, but that's not what he's after. He just wanted to put it all down, his life--or as much of it as he remembers and wants to share--for his kids and theirs. 

Strangely enough, real friendships seem not to require a lot of work. They can often go for years without having to be watered or weeded. Male friendships, some say, are especially hearty. They'll make it though anything. I think that's true of the two of us. 

But then we do have our moments, like a couple of magical mystery tours back to Oostburg for high school reunions, a nine-hour drive that, the first time, became so rich with reminiscence that it locked us in the past, so much so that we went to Cedar Grove to drive past our old girlfriends' places even before we made it to Oostburg. 

And then there was this. When my dad died, we had the visitation just before the funeral, all of it on a Saturday. And there he was, my friend Bob, on his way to Green Bay he said because one of his sons was playing for the Packers. All I knew--all I had to know--was that there he was in line to give me his sympathies, a hug. 

I'm sure I was a little weepy when my dad died, but fifteen years later I don't remember crying at any particular time during that long weekend, but that one, when my old friend Bob walked up, tall and thin, in the reception line. That did me in.

It's precious--his book, I mean. To me, it's precious.