Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 32

John Cheever (1912-1982)

 “Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to you. . .”

I read an interview some time ago with Susan Cheever, a novelist and non-fiction writer, who is—perhaps to her own dismay—likely better known as the daughter of the now deceased John Cheever, a highly celebrated short story writer.  For several reasons, that interview won’t leave me alone, and one of them is her claim that, to her as a child, her father’s short stories horrified her. 

 She remembers a time when her father used a ski trip she had taken as a base for a story about a little girl who dies on exactly that kind of outing. “In my family,” for her and her family, Susan Cheever says, “being fictionalized has been ten million times more painful” than finding themselves in portrayed in non-fiction, a memoir.

 That line in that interview nearly decked me because it had never dawned on me that my family might experience a similar horror, victims, in a way, of their father’s imaginative “use” of their lives. I’d never, ever considered the grotesque puzzle I might have left with any of them, finding semblances of themselves and each other twisted and turned into something at once bitterly unrecognizable and sweetly familiar.  I can’t speak for John Cheever, but I honestly never had a clue—I really didn’t.

Haunting questions arise unbidden.  Was my own playful creativity the occasion for their pain?  Was my joy their misery?  Should I have spent so much of my adult life trying to write stories?  Was the way I’ve lived my life dead wrong? 

And I ask myself this:  if I had read what Susan Cheever says when I was thirty, would I have dedicated so much of my time and enthusiasm to writing?

Perhaps it is a mark of the deep stain of sin itself, but now, looking back, I honestly can’t imagine myself not writing. For better or for worse, I guess, sitting here at this desk has become, for me, a “habit of being,” as Flannery O’Connor said. Sometimes, as the Bible says, our best deeds are as filthy rags.

 I feel myself in David’s own shoes here in verse six: “Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to you. . .”  His impulse to tell the story is, I believe, the impulse of most writers—and, for that matter, most humans. We want and need to tell the stories we find most meaningful, to share our joy or sadness. We want everyone to hear. Not all of us are evangelists, but we all have a gospel. We all want to testify. 

 Psalm 32 is a roadmap for those who need to find a path to forgiveness.  Psalm 32 shows us the way.  Psalm 32 leads us to divine and tranquil waters. But the story David tells has never saved a soul, and neither will a million sermons on this text, or, for that matter, this mediation.  Only God’s grace—through his son’s gigantic sacrifice—can do that.

I wonder if David knew that he was writing “the Bible.”  I wonder if he understood as he strung these words out in front of him that he was being directed by the Holy Spirit’s favor. I wonder if he ever considered his words were not his, but God’s.

Somehow, I doubt it.  And because I do, I find a refuge in his inability to keep silence.  He’s got to speak, to sing.  With the joy of forgiveness bubbling up inside, he can’t stanch the music from his soul.  He’s got to yap, to tell.

Even his joy, his testimony, his story requires forgiveness.  Everything he is—even his ecstasy—stands in need of grace. 

May God almighty forgive me, and Cheever, and all of us, as He promises, as He does, and as He will.

The colors

 

 

I wish I'd have just taken these, but they're just about twenty years old. It's me snapping away at fall in Minnesota, one of those wonderful little getaways it took us too many years to practice. 

Not much to say except I'm reminded of our Minnesota Indian summers, although the colors (not to be mistaken) are nothing like what shines from all that gorgeous hardwoods. Just a few more, to celebrate and remember.

Trust me, I could go on and on and on.

Among the Brew Crew

Truth be told, I could not have named a single member of the Brewers ball team last night before the game. I had decided to watch it--potentially, the last game of the 2026 World Series, because it was, potentially, the very last game of the 2026 and my wife was gone to Omaha for her seasonal dose of musical theater. So I did. I was born and reared in Wisconsin, after all.

But don't let me suggest that I was or am a Brewers fan. I happened to be in southeastern Wisconsin the night the Brewers knocked off LA to claim the Division crown and go on to the Series. Saw little more than the final out, but enough to know that all around me right then, there were mega-thousands of fans singing a dozen versions of Hallelujah! 

Just to let you know  how out of it I was right then, I asked our host whether or not County Stadium, where the Milwaukee Braves used to play, had a roof, thinking that it could be a cold Series. "'County Stadium' is no more," he told me, but I've forgot the name of the stadium the Brewers call home.

I had a radio just above my bed when I was a little feller growing up in Wisconsin. I used to fall asleep to the Braves games. Dad would reach for little knob beside the yellow-lit dial to turn it off for me when he and Mom went to bed. I knew every player, even the subs. In fact, I could probably go around the horn and name every one of the starters yet today. When I got my very first real Rawlings baseball mitt, it was signed by Eddie Matthews, who played third base and hit clean-up in the order. I wanted to be him. A trip to a ball game at County Stadium was doubtlessly a highlight of the year. I remember those trips in our '52 Mercury, a thrill beyond any other.

So when, late last night, the second baseman (I don't know his name) handily threw out the last of Ray hitters, when a few minutes later the field was full of Brewers teammates and their thousands of fans were screaming and waving their Brew Crew hankies, I was more than tickled--I was thrilled.

When the announcer turned the mike toward Jacob Misiorowski (what a perfect Milwaukee name!), the tall, young, and geeky flame-thrower who'd already won the Cy Young Award, and young Jacob was barely able to hold back tears amid the celebration, so was I. When Cooper Pratt, the kid (literally, a rookie shortstop, who set a Series record with six consecutive hits) just didn't know what to say or how to say it, I couldn't help thinking he sounded pretty much like the rookie he was. 

When I thought about friends and family who were overjoyed last night as they watched the celebration, when the agony of defeat is entirely drowned out by the thrill of victory, even this idiot witness to the game, way out here on the edge of the Plains, caught a bit of the fever amid the gaity and became at least something of a fan. 

I loved it, just loved it.  There's nothing like it, especially today in America's Dairyland. But tell me, and what's the name of the stadium where they play again?

Audio version now available

  

Sixteen stories in this collection, drawn from fifty years of writing. What the book does that's unique is offer the story of each story--what events or ideas pushed or prodded me to sit down and try to fashion something fictional. "Where did you get that idea?" some readers ask. Stories and their Stories answers that question sixteen times. 

For those of you who enjoy reading on Kindle, the Kindle version is available as of today at just $3.99, from these sources:

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Our Ruby-redness

It's almost futile to go to battle with the powers-that-be in this county because those powers are unmistakably conservative. When Gov. Kim Reynolds won the last gubernatorial race in 2018, she did so on the immense strength of what Iowa politicians call "the Ruby-red Fourth District," where Republicans outnumber Democrats the way hogs outnumber people in this corner of the state. Her margin of victory was just less than three percent; her margin of victory here in northwest Iowa was overwhelming, proving once again that if the region's mighty conservatives show up at the polls, the libs have to win big in other parts of the state to negate the tally here. 

Sioux County, Iowa, where I live is unhesitatingly the most most ruby-red of any of Iowa's 99, and therefore right there among the most politically conservative counties of the entire nation. Much has been made this time around of the two big races, both of which could go Democratic--Rob Sand for Gov, Josh Turek for the Senate, both good candidates. But if they lose, the loss will be attributable, in part, to a crimson voting block in Sioux County and the rest of Iowa's bright red northwestern corner.

My baptism into northwest Iowa politics began soon after I married into a northwest Iowa family, who reunion-ed at an Orange City park in 1972 just a few months after the wedding. Once the family divvied itself up by gender--the women around one picnic table, the men around another, the political talk started up. McGovern, of course, was from South Dakota--Mitchell, in fact, just down the road. 

But woe be unto those who would say he was "one of us." It didn't take long, as I remember, for the whole gang to get to slaying him right there in the park.

Let me just say that such talk no more unexpected than unfamiliar. My dad would have fit right in at the branding. The arguments were neither fresh nor silly. I was the family's newest member; we were still newlyweds. 

I spoke up--McGovern was anti-war, of course, and I got hammered, really hammered, despite the fact that I knew at least two of the gang shared my views of things--a medical doctor from Michigan and a high school guidance counselor from LA, both of whom wisely kept their mouths shut.

I was left bleeding profusely when the food was ready. I hoped I hadn't reflected poorly on my wife's marital choices and probably did. I asked the Michigan doctor why he hadn't come to my aid. 

The answer made all kinds of sense. "We knew better." The safe place in a political discussion is simply to keep your mouth shut. 

In early fall, I willfully attended the meeting of the Sioux County Republicans. Why? Because I assumed by DNA I was. 

I wasn't. I never went back.

That was more than a half-century ago, and it's been all uphill ever since.

I'm hoping the Dems will catch a break from the almost universal distaste for our famously bigoted President. I'm hoping the county's struggling minority will take a big bite out of the usual political tallies. I can't hope for a leftie win, but I can hope for a tally that doesn't offer the cushion we've given conservative candidates for as long as I've lived here. 

A decade ago, my wife joined the Dems and got an award--with her Sioux County Democrats--for going into battle with Goliath. They didn't win any races here, but they'd inflicted some blows on the ruby-red body politic. 

Won't be long and we'll know the score this time around.

Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 32

“For evil men will be cut off, 

but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.”

 

I don’t know that this line sounds right out here in farm country.

           

My father-in-law was what used to be called a “small farmer,” in the days when there was such a thing.  My wife grew up on a farm like Old McDonalds—little of this, little of that. 

 

Well, I got news.  Out here, those kinds of farms simply don’t exist.  Farming has become agri-business, and everything has changed. 

 

My father-in-law bought some land when he was farming, nowhere near enough for a young farmer today.  But he owns the land, enough of it that my wife’s inheritance is significant.  We could come heir to it, but then he might just give it away, to church or school. 

 

But let’s say his land comes to us.  Let’s say we keep it, and even though we don’t live on it, we might just drive by once in a while.  We’d likely rent it out to the cousin who now farms it.  Eventually however, we’d likely pass land ownership on to our children. 

 

Now there is a possibility that our children will live in the neighborhood someday, but that certainly isn’t a given.  So it’s possible that eventually the land her father bought as he slowly built his own farm will end up in the hands of absentee landlords. 

           

That phenomenon is happening all over the rural Midwest, prompting people to ask whether so much “absentee landlordism” is going to be good for the health of communities.  That question goes to the very heart of the quality of life out here on the far western edge of the cornbelt.  What exactly is our future if people in faraway cities own the land we live on?

 

To promise, as the NIV does, that those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land sounds, in this region, like a pipe dream—and it is.  Good people don’t inevitably win in the quest for land ownership.  The mid-80s’ “farm crisis” made that perfectly clear.  More often than not, good, hard-working people got flattened.  Sorry, David—maybe that was true in old Israel, but it’s not true—nor should anyone promise it—in the rural areas of the Upper Midwest.

           

The KJV says, more metaphorically perhaps, that the righteous will inherit the earth.  In our present context, I much prefer earth to land.  If I lived in Toronto or New York or Los Angeles, I wouldn’t much care which word is used; but here, where the future of rural life is dependent upon land ownership, I much prefer “the earth.”

 

Earth spiritualizes richly.  It suggests that those who hope in God inherit the concept of earth; they inherit the true (which is to say, spiritual) riches of this earth, not the ground itself, not the back forty, the neighbor’s thousand acres.  Cold hard cash is not at issue here and neither is good black dirt. 

 

Calvin says that what David means with this line is that those who hope in the Lord “shall live in such a manner as that the blessing of God shall follow them, even to the grave.”  That blessing may well include a thousand acres, but you can’t take that promise to the bank. 

 

It probably goes without saying that what David is promising is a far site better than the flattest, blackest land in all of Sioux County, Iowa. But out here, where land ownership is so important, it probably needs to be said.

 

Eventually, my wife will inherit the land. More importantly, and by grace alone, she—and her husband and our children and all of those we love--those who hope in the Lord--will inherit the earth.    

Renewal

 

For decades there stood in my library a copy of Sign of a Promise and Other Stories, my very first book, published in 1979 by something we called "Dordt College Press." Inside the cover, I scribbled "First Edition, First Copy" because that one was, in fact, the very first copy. It was very precious.

Was because it's gone. The library behind me still has three copies of that first book, but none of them bear that inscription because the one that did is long gone, drowned in our flood. Sad. If I had it, I'd show you right here, but it's history.

Yesterday I thought about missing that copy, but I did so without great pain because a new box showed up at our door (thank you, FedEx) filled with 30 copies of another book, my last (but maybe not my all-time last), Stories and their Stories, a book of my own short stories and comments about what set me on the path of each of their plotlines. 

So, pardon me for a moment while I put a copy of this brand new book into my library. I'm just as proud as I was 48 years ago.

Just older--lots older.