Holy week surprise

Big Sioux River dawn

I wasn't purposely thinking about the Lord as I came to the intersection, and I can't begin to imagine what brought the whole story to mind, save that it's Easter Week or Holy Week or whatever, and it's in the air right now--the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I was right there at Mulder's used car lot when suddenly two things struck me almost simultaneously. First, how entirely broken--in every way--those disciples must have been to see Him suffer and die. Just a week before he'd come into town on a donkey and the whole world sang his praises. They'd seen boatloads of fish in their nets after he'd just suggested, as if it might be something to consider, that they toss those nets over the other side. They'd seen a sandwich or two turn into a cafeteria. They'd seen a whole herd of pigs commit mass suicide when a wild man walked away piping David's songs.

They'd seen it all, and who could fault them for falling asleep, doggone it. You ever stay up all night?--or try, especially when you were trying to follow him, old "miracle-a-minute." Pray with him, sure. If he was what he said he was, why didn't he simply put all their batteries on the same hot circuit?

They didn't see the inside stuff, whatever happened to him when those turkey buzzards and their pompous honcho boss interrogated him. But--damnit!--they saw the crown of thorns, watched as the beat-up Lord of Heaven and Earth tried to drag that cross down Main, for pity sake. That's when most of them left, went back to hide really, went back to hide their misguided complicity. Mostly, it was the women who stayed, and John, but the rest of them high-tailed it, not because they were afraid--okay, that might have been partly the motivation, but because they couldn't stand the watch the humiliation of their messiah, their King. It made them sick, really--it made them sick to their stomachs to think of where this whole exercise had been through--it made them heave. 

So I'm driving by the college now, waiting for kids to cross the street, and I'm sick myself to think of how beat-up that crew must have been by Friday late afternoon, how beat to shit they must have been, all those months on the Jesus trail, all those crowds, all that lame guys dancing--good night!  how about the dead raised to life? And it's over. It's over. It's over.

Because whatever they believed about him--how he might strangle those damned Romans and lead his people out of bondage once again, whatever it was they believed about him--all this King of the World stuff or not, by Friday night, the guy who made them give up their fishing nets to follow him, was one dead dude. 

Nails even. They didn't want to think about it.

There they were, cowering in a corner, their hearts--once so full of promise--broken, really broken. 

I don't know why, all of that just came to me. 

Honestly, if I were among 'em--those disciples--I'd have been just plain broken too. Just remember: none of them got it right. No, not one.

 Way up there at the top of the page, I said two things struck me at the highway corner--first, how absolutely broken the disciples must have been,  as if someone dropped a box of bottles. Broken glass, broken dreams. A number of them couldn't even look up on the hill where they put him on the cross. What they'd lived for was a bloody mess. Really, why didn't listen to those mockers? Why didn't he command a legion of angels to come down and slay 'em all?

It would have slayed me.

But I couldn't help thinking of yet another Easter scene.

There they are in a kind eternal self-pity for what they'd believed, for having lost something--somebody!--so rich, beyond their wildest dreams--"think of all those fish!"--only to end in this obscene, inglorious way.

It's quiet because there ain't a word left to say and everybody knows it. There they are huddled, bawling.

And then, turn the volume up, who should walk in the door but the Master, upper-case. The Master.

That's what I was thinking as I left town.

I'm not a particularly religious man, but the images were so sharp and so unprompted, so deep this Easter week.

My new All-Terrain

No,  it's not a Cadillac. It's more like a really expensive--almost top-of-the-line--Jeep, a Grand Cherokee with none of the extras. They call it, in fact, an all-terrain vehicle, honestly, because it's supposedly able to drive through gravel and grass, through all sorts of things where ordinary vehicles dare not enter.

I tried it once. I haven't been in the basement of our country place since the flood, after my son pointer-fingered-ly made it clear I wasn't to chance the stairs anymore. He'd seen enough of my indisposed carriage. I made it around back with my new buggy. Couldn't have done it with the old cheapy.

For more than a year, when I wasn't wheelchair-bound, I used a lightweight walker with little wheels out front and tiny water skis on back. Worked well for accessibility, but it lacked more than a little for convenience. This new vehicle has its own knapsack, including a pocket for my phone. It rides like its on a cloud, and has but one impediment for new drivers--like a bad dog, it'll take off on you if you're not careful. It's easy to take along, but it's not a compact car. It'll eat up a goodly chunk of what you have behind the front seat.

Seriously, whoever sells these things calls it an "All-Terrain" vehicle--look it up if you don't believe me. Why right now all our neighboring seniors are at coffee, telling each other that they saw that new guy from #37 cruising the neighborhood in an All-Terrain vehicle, and they'd be right in going upper case.

I like it. I don't love it because I'd love nothing better than to get rid of it and walk away on my own. But it's a cruiser and a long shot better than the old buzzard with miniature water skis on its back legs.

It's made in China, so I can't help wondering whether the people who put it together over there are getting a break on you-kn0w-who's brilliant tariffs. Apple does, I know, and my guess is if you take another look at the inauguration party in DC for the coronation in January, you'd find a few other billionaires whose roots are set with favored terrif status--for 90 days anyway.

But then, don't  hold your breath. Who knows where our fearless leader will go next?

I didn't see the list of supplicants he's blessed with grace. But I'm betting against the All-Terrain folks. Acts of mercy are not in our Pres's arsenal.

Get yours fast.

In Praise of where we used to live (10)

We're gone now, still moving in to a duplex, senior  housing, in Sioux Center. What's being reported on the western sky I'd have to drive a ways out into the country to see. We used to live where the skies spoke so often we couldn't even listen. But often what the sky said was silent and gorgeous.

 

To be truthful about it, this last one is a really early photograph, the one at the end, I took maybe 10-or 12 miles west of Sioux Center, on Easter morning, 2004, 21 years ago. It's not the hottest shot I ever took, but the sun's streaming that dawn was just about as gorgeous a thing as I'd ever seen then, or even today, almost 20 years later.

It's a perfect picture for Easter.

I've enjoyed putting these pictures up. Maybe I'll do it some more. . .

Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 42

“Why are you downcast, O my soul? 

Why so disturbed within me? 

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, 

my Savior and my God.”

 

One night late, years ago, a preacher friend of mine, over a few beers, began talking about what he went through when his wife left him, years before, an event that’s not supposed to happen, and certainly not supposed to happen to preachers. He didn’t blame her; he knew he’d had a hand in what happened himself, preacher or not.

 At that late hour, with a bit of lubrication, I stayed with him when it appeared he wanted to talk. I sound as if I was using him, and maybe I was in a way; but what interested me was his use of a phrase I’d heard before: “It took me a long time to process that,” he kept saying. “I didn’t have the tools at first to process what had happened.”

 I’ll admit I thought it was psychobabble, a cliché, an entirely strange word drawn from what we do to legislation or cheese or army recruits. But the emotion he carried as he told me the story made me wonder what that pat expression meant in the context of his adultery. I wanted process unpacked.

 By “process,” he said, he meant becoming able to look at the wound and not cry or rage. Process, he said, meant stepping back from the immediacy of the emotions, a step that wasn’t at all easy--and it took time, he said.  And it took work.  Like forgiveness.

 It seems to me that in verse five of Psalm 42, David (if he’s the writer) appears to have processed something. The unforgettable opening verses of the psalm emerge from the core of his grief; but verse five steps back from the sadness that threatens him and he begins talking to himself.  “For heaven’s sake,” he says, “what’s with me anyway? Why am I so incredibly depressed?”

 Then he pulls out an old bromide and tells himself what he’d obviously known for years and even sung in a whole psalter of his own ballads, something the curtains of his despair had seemingly covered: “Put your hope in God,” he tells himself, processing his sadness. 

 And then the resolution. Picture him, gritting his teeth, almost a snarl, pulling intent and dedication out of truth he knew, inside out:  “. . .for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

 I may be wrong. Maybe there’s a gap in this psalm. Maybe, like the preacher without a wife, it took him some time to process the emptiness in his life. 

 Wouldn’t it be wonderful to consult some standard King David biography and discover that this song was finished months after it was started, that he’s simply telling the story? 

But we don’t know that, and no one ever will. All we’re left with the psalm. And in this verse—or so it seems to me—David seems to bottom out, to take hold of the promises of God he’s relied on throughout his life, at a myriad of other moments when he stood in dire need of being rescued. “Put your hope in God,” he says, in command form.

 In this verse, the story the poem tells is at its climax because the writer has stepped back to tell himself, to shout, in fact, the truth into his own ears, and now ours. “I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God” [emphasis mine, but I think his too].

 Sounds like a preacher friend of mine, talking to me over a beer years ago.

 Sounds like Job.  Sounds like a lot of us.   

In praise of the place we called home (9)

 and then there are the little things. . .

\

Hoot no more

Hear the news? Hooters went belly up. (Something about that lede seems way too physical. I didn't mean to be offensive.)

Apparently, the promise of women proud of their up-fronts wasn't enough to score customers who went down the street for their hot wings, where the scenery might not be as billowing, but the food was better.

I remember when Hooters first appeared. Made the Calvinists gasp, me included. (Read the next line with a husky anger!) "Shameless--absolutely shameless!" 

That was 41 years ago. News stories, like most things, get, well, droopy. Still, even though chicken strips couldn't compete, you might have thought, like I did, that their unique calling as an eatery would keep men especially hard and fast customers. Nope. Things tailed off.

So today, they're flat finished. Once upon a time, when I was a good deal more Puritanical, it was nigh unto impossible for me to imagine being in a place where some young thing asking me what I'd like to drink when all she's got over her hooters is a shirt proclaiming the, well, . .breasts. But they did,

Once long, long ago, my parents found themselves in some kind of place--maybe a Hooters. Maybe not. My mother's story featured a waitress with barely any shelter over her, . . well, hooters. It's hard to imagine what--good night!--they were doing there, but Mom swore (no, she never swore) she claimed it was the truth: the waitress had almost nothing on!!!

That wasn't the point. The point was to bathe her husband in derision by telling us that Dad, completely undaunted, acted as  if was nothing at all that that waitress leaned into him, the customer, and just about smooched his cheek with one of her ample blessings.

"And he just sat there and said 'Diet Coke,' or whatever," she told us. Poor Dad.  "You should have seen him look, as if all that bosom was no big deal."

Anyway, 41 years are gone, and I'm a little wistful, this Calvinist never having darkened a Hooters doorstep, never ogled one of those hooters. I'll never get a chance to order a Diet Coke. Is Pepsi okay?

Well, I can still dream. And if I get depressed, I can go to the fridge and fetch a couple of Ruthies. They're solid.

Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 42

  “These things I remember as I pour out my soul: 

how I used to go with the multitude, 

leading the procession to the house of God, 

with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.”

 

Those of us who haven't known David’s deep sadness in this verse are truly blessed, but I can’t believe there are many.

 

A decade ago or so I took a trip from Sioux City, Iowa, to Billings, Montana, up the Missouri River valley through the magnificent country explored 200 years ago by the Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery.  Much of that territory hasn’t changed dramatically; there are no cities to speak of, and most of the towns are dying and have been for a century or more.  Agriculture reigns throughout that region, even though making a living is just as tough as it ever was.  But the great joy of traveling the Lewis and Clark Trail a century after they did is that so much space, so much grandeur is still there waiting to awe.

           

I left the river and angled through “Indian country” on my way home, stopping at the 125^th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Little Big Horn, and then visiting a desolate place called “Wounded Knee.”  The whole trip was, for me, an epic journey, resulting in a novel—and more.  I fell in love with territory that keeps me dreaming of a life out there somewhere in the humbling reverie of so much open space and such a big, big sky.  These very words are part of that trip’s legacy.

           

One moment, however, was purely personal and unrelated to history or landscape, a moment in the Black Hills, where the Schaap family vacationed when our kids were kids.  Camping in the Hills was always a joy, the children so young they could spend all day on a beach no larger than a backyard and not complain a mite. 

 

I intended to drive through Center Lake campground, where we always set up our tent.  But when I passed the lodge and store at Sylvan Lake, I was time-capsuled back to a moment when I stood in that very store and watched my two tow-head kids trying to determine which of the little Black Hills curios they were going to lug along home. 

 

The memory was crystal clear, almost a vision--their blonde heads, their innocent indecision, and myself, a young father who knew, honestly, little more than joy and pride and the wide horizon of expectation.  I too, it seemed to me, was an innocent back then.

 

I didn’t go in the store that day, just drove by; but when I came to the Center Lake turnoff a few minutes later, I didn’t go to the campground either but headed in the opposite direction. A visceral grief so profound I almost cried hit me like some unseen Black Hills bison.  

 

Ubi sunt, that grief is called in literature—a grief of soul at the transience of life, of my life and yours.  I know what what ubi sunt is. I taught literature for a lifetime; but that I knew it in a textbook didn’t heal the sad pain that came over me.

 

Today, remembering that moment, I can’t help but think about how much deeper Lakota grief must be for those Hills, the Paha Sapa, because Native memories are so much richer and so much more profound.  That’s another story for another day.

 

David’s lament in Psalm 42 has within it the same profound lament for how things were and how those things are no more.  His may well be the original ubi sunt.

 

Put yourself in a grand memory, a place and time now totally unreachable. Think of the Lakota at Pine Ridge, not that far away, remembering the joy of Paha Sapa.  Think of me turning away from Center Lake.  Think of David and that unforgettable mad dance of his before the ark.  That’s what’s haunting him, and that’s why he needs God. 

 

As I do.  As you do too.  As all of us do, I believe

In praise of a place we called home

Benny died of old age here and is buried out back. Hope he doesn't think we deserted him. 

Smokey came out here after Benny's death, a blue russian (lower case). Just exactly what he will think of his new digs we're yet to discover.

 

Round-tripper

The idea is to get to the other side of the garage. Since I sold my truck, the middle stall stays open. I'd parked the car, slid myself out, and used the car itself for ballast as I moved around it towards the ramp that runs up to the door. But there I stood, between me and the other side maybe ten feet or twelve. 

I had the option of going back into the back seat of the car to fetch my walker, but I'd just about had enough of that thing. People are surprised and happy about me and my walker, but I stagger around like a drunk with it, especially when I pull my bod around the car to get to wherever it is I want to go.

Sometimes I wonder--I swear it--whether some cop on a slow day might see me creeping around and just assume that I spent too long holding on to a bar stool somewhere, but it's standard procedure if I'm to get out of the house, which, believe me, is highly desirable for anyone who, like me, has spent a goodly chunk of the last six months without, well mostly without, four walls.

So, as I said, the idea is to get to the other side of the garage. That's it. 

From the right  front fender to the ramp is maybe six feet--I can almost reach it, so I take one tentative step with my right foot and lean until I'm there with right hand. 

Big deal. the idea is to get to the other side of the garage.

There's a bunch of stuff in a bundle and some lawn tools hanging from the wall along with--wait for it!--a baseball bat. That's right, a baseball bat. Calling that beast a baseball bat is like calling me Hemingway. It's skinny, short, and may well be the only wooden bat in Sioux County, Iowa.

But it'll work, so I inch my way across a couple of boxes, and grab it from its place  on the wall, a sandlot bat that survived hundreds of ball games kiddy-corner from the house I grew up on the blacktop at First Reformed.

It's my bat. It's got my name on it because when I was ten maybe, I branded it with a magic marker. No, I haven't packed it along with me for all these years. For a long time, it was the possession of one of the kids who played ball with us out there at First Reformed. Maybe thirty years ago, he gave it back when we stopped at his place in Hastings, Nebraska, and, yes, it was a great, surprise gift.

I can only imagine his joy when he thought about his old buddy dropping by blind to a gift he couldn't give to just any human being. I was the only guy. So sometime during that visit, he gave it up, smiling with his own generosity, and it's been mine--again!--for the last thirty years.

So the old bat wasn't a perfect cane, a little short for me and lots heavier than the aluminum one I sometimes use. But I thought it wonderful. The thing got me no farther than the other side of the garage, but that's all I needed.

Once more, these days the Schaaps are packing up, trying to throw things away. We got a helping hand from a big flood last spring that took out our first floor and lots of possessions. We haven't considered a total. It's too heartbreaking.

And I'm left with a ton of things that'll have to go now, as we move to a smaller place, an abode for the elderly. 

Among the memorabilia, an ancient wooden bat, dressed up to make it look like a Louisville Slugger.

That's what I wrote on it when I was a little shaver with visions of baseball grandeur, dreaming of getting to be a high school star. I played third base in high school, catcher in college, and never used that old bat. Even if I had wanted to, my old friend packed it along with him for all those years. Besides, it was the kind of thing made for First Reformed parking lot.

I wanted to get to across the garage because ever since I became a cripple, I've spent too much time in the house. I just wanted to sit down for a while before I went in. 

So there I sat, me and this ancient sandlot baseball bat, inscribed by a kid reaching for dreams. I ended up playing ball until I was 55. Loved it.

But it'll go now. It's hung around with nothing to do for years. Still, for a while I sat there enchanted with the dreams drawn out with black magic marker. It's a beautiful, wonderful blessing to hold and swing and dream again of lacing a fastball straight out over the pitchers head into far left center. 

Today, that old bat delivered a round tripper that led only to the other side of the garage. The old guy got me where I wanted to go. 

It's going to be left behind, but somehow I feel better knowing that on the Saturday before we move, that scrubby Louisville Slugger, signed by Jim Schaap, got me where I wanted to go.

In praise of a place we called home (7)

 

Once upon a  time, i could walk to the Dunlop pond--it's in the neighborhood, and I'll miss it.

Sunday morning meds--from Psalm 42

“My tears have been my food day and night, 

while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

 

When my alma mater called to ask if I’d be interested in leaving Arizona and coming back to Iowa, I never really considered not going.  I loved high school teaching because I loved high school kids; but I understood that if I were ever going to write, I’d have to teach in college, where there simply is more time.

 

Greenway High School was brand new, on the edge of a northern suburb of Phoenix.  I’d been hired precisely because I was a Christian.  I was also male, experienced, and newly outfitted with a masters degree; those were also factors.  But, illegal or not, I got the job on the basis of my faith.  The district interviewer, a man named Bill Sterrett, was a Christian too.  That’s another story.

           

Only two years later, a college teaching offer in my hand, I decided to leave.  When I told Mr. Sterrett, I got scorched.  He looked up from behind his desk and shook his head.  “Why would you want to go there?” he said.  “Everybody there is just like you.”  He slapped that desk lightly with his hand.  “Here, you’re really different.”

           

Mr. Sterrett died several years ago, but that line still reverberates through the echo chamber that is my soul because he was right.  We’re not talking about the difference between Vanity Fair and the Celestial City—there’s far too much manure in the air to make any heavenly claims about up here in Siouxland.

 

But living out my allotted years in a burgeoning new suburb of a huge metropolitan area would have made me a different person than spending those years in an ethnic conclave huddled against the winds on the edge of the Great Plains.  I chose the monastic life, and, as Frost would say, that choice has made all the difference.

 

I say all of that because in my many years here I’ve never been anywhere near someone who might say to me, sardonically, in my distress, “So, Jim, where the heck is your God?”  Hasn’t happened—and won’t.  I am surrounded by a cloud of believing witnesses. 

 

Had I stayed in urban, public education and American suburbia, I’d know people who would ask me the very question David that burns in his soul.  Some of them are still friends.  Last summer I got an email from an old teaching buddy, a “jack” Mormon, who wouldn’t let the silliness of my faith rest, in fact, because he’s quite adamant about not having any himself.

 

But I’ve been cloistered for fifty years here, and those few voices who might mock my faith are accessible only on-line.That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t hear those burning questions. They rise, instead, from inside me somewhere; and what I’m wondering this morning is this: if I’d have stayed in a more diverse neighborhood, would the voices I would have heard supplant the ones I now do, the ones from inside?  What would be the pitch of my own personal faith?

           

Those questions are here, even in the cloister, and they are packaged in the same taunting voice David heard. That voice I swear I hear, that burning question, even in a cloud of witnesses.

 

But I’m thankful, very thankful, that God almighty has given me, as he did David, a faith that won’t let me take those voices to heart, even though I hear ‘em. Only by grace, do I come anywhere near to having a faith that is equal to that task.   

In praise of a place we called home (6)

 We will miss winter too.

A stranger in the bushes

They say it all happened in the spring of 1864, Adair County, Iowa, somewhere near the river, the Middle River. the eastern part mostly, where mulberry bushes and other such got to be profuse back then, thick as a bramble mask. One hundred and more of the county’s finest men were somewhere below the Mason-Dixon, fighting beneath a Union flag. Up north there was an Indian war. The time and place was primed for dark and abundant fear, the kind that send people home to hole up.

That kind of fear grew out of depredations reported by pioneer farmers or their wives, who wandered out back in the face of dawn to tend the animals only to discover the animals required tending no more—bloody and slain by a monster who’d obviously ran them down before pouncing and ripping them apart hideously.

Farmers in Jefferson and Harrison townships warned others about the fearful slaughter, but this monster did his dastardly work at night, thus avoiding the pioneer farmers.  

The beast itself was first seen along the Middle River in Harrison Township, a harrowing sighting, people reported, because none of the witnesses had any idea what the animal could be exactly—big as a donkey, people said, red kind of, and behind him in a bloody wake far too many slaughtered cows and pigs.

For reasons known only to the beast, he rather quickly picked up his things and moved, now to Jefferson Township, where the depredations included colts, calves, sheep, and more hogs. The people of Adair County were daily more distressed.

Then, the first dramatic sighting: Womenfolk were out gathering gooseberries when they quite silently came upon the beast, sunning himself on the dead branch of a tree maybe twenty feet off the ground. At that moment, he offered one of the women the first glimpse during his stay in Adair County. She and the others retreated quickly, but the woman who laid eyes on the beast said only that the river monster was bigger than any dog she had ever seen

The men organized a hunting party to flush him out of his lair in the bushes, and they did—but he avoided their attempt to end his depredations. Eventually, he simply disappeared once more, but only after helping himself to forty pigs, some of which were 100 pounds.

Now listen to the end of the story in the history of Adair County. It’s too good not to quote:

After this he was seen no more, nor, we believe, heard from,

but the fear that he might be still lurking in the timber was for a long time the cause of alarm and annoyance and deprived the good people of Middle River country of many-a gooseberry pie. The animal was probably what is known as the American panther.

 They were likely right, but this “American panther” goes by as many as eighty names, the most familiar of which is, likely, puma or pooma or pyuma—all of which are acceptable pronunciation. Apparently, the American panther is not proud about what he’s called because he goes by jaguar and mountain lion and, literally, at least eighty other names. That’s right—8-0.

 Just once in a while—maybe once every dozen years or so, a mountain lion, a puma, a jaguar, finds their way into our world, wandering far, far away from home to scare the pants off of you or me or cousin Al, if Cousin Al doesn’t shoot him first.

 For the record, as far as I know, not a one has shown up in Harrison Township, Adair County, Iowa, either—not a one. But, then it’s likely nobody bakes gooseberry pies any more either. It’s a shame really.

 But every once in a while they do show up, usually young males looking for love; so, the next time you’re enjoying walking along a thick hedge, vigilance is nothing to sneeze at. 

  

In praise of a place we called home (5)

 Some skies and a couple of birds as we leave.

When?

 

“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  

When can I go and meet with God?”

 

The Ghost Dance, one of the saddest religions of all time, was a frenetic hobgoblin of Christianity, mysticism, Native ritual, and sheer desperation that swept Native life throughout the American west in the final years of the 19^th century. 

 Wovoka, a Piute holy man, saw the original vision, then designed the ritual from his own revelation. Erect a sapling in an open area, a familiar symbol from rituals like the Sun Dance, which was, back then, outlawed by reservation agents.  Purge yourselves—enter sweat lodges, prostrate yourself before Wakan Tanka, the Great Mysterious, to witness to your humility. Often warriors would cut out pieces of their own flesh and lay them at the base of that sapling to bear witness to their selflessness. 

 Then dance—women and men together—dance around that sapling, dance and dance and dance and don’t stop until you fall from physical exhaustion and spiritual plenitude.  Dance until the mind numbs and the spirit emerges.  Dance into frenzy.  Dance into religious ecstasy.

 If they would dance, Wovoka claimed Christ would return because he’d heard their prayers and felt their suffering.  When he’d come, he’d bring the old ones with him, hence, “the Ghost Dance.”  The buffalo would return, and once again the people could take up their beloved way of life.  If they would dance, the dust from the new heaven and the new earth would swallow the wasicu, the white people.  If they would dance, their hunger would be satiated, their thirst assuaged, their sadness comforted. 

“The great underlying principle of the Ghost dance doctrine,” says James Mooney, “is that the whole Indian race, living and dead, will be reunited upon a regenerated earth, to live a life of aboriginal happiness, forever free from death, disease, and misery.”  

It was that simple and that compelling a vision. 

 As a white Christian, I am ashamed to admit that in the summer of 1890, the desperation of Native people, fueled by poverty, malnutrition, and the near death of a culture, created a religion that played a disturbing role in the massacre at Wounded Knee.

 It’s not hard to read the opening two verses of Psalm 42 if we’ve never felt the thirst David is talking about. But it’s helpful for me, a white Christian, to know the story of the Ghost Dance, to understand how thirstily Native people looked to a God who had seemingly left them behind. They were dying, spiritually and physically. 

That’s why the thirsty four-leggeds here would make sense to Native people—why, back then, they would have understood the opening bars of David’s song. 

 What’s at the bottom of this lament is nothing less than God’s apparent absence. 

Trev and Trump

So today is the opening of March Madness. May the best bunch of guys--and women--dangle the nets from around their necks come the glorious end. Lots of good tv a'comin'.

I'm reminded of a story from my coaching days, long, long ago. Once upon a time I was a freshman team coach at Greenway High School, Phoenix, Arizona, during a long winter season that coached me to see that my joy was in the classroom, not on a gym floor. 

Freshman basketball at Greenway meant two teams--A and B. It was never said publicly, but the truth is that the A team contained most of the kids the head coach thought had a future as a varsity Demon (nickname, of course), which left the B coach--me--with the others, which would have been unfair had not all the rest of the schools in the district done something similar. 

Thus, when we'd play Thunderbird High School, just down the road, we'd travel together, one team taking the court before the other. We lost--a lot too, but then the A team wasn't a whole lot better. 

Trev was Trumpian in arrogance, a real cookie who had to be ridden like a ill-tempered mule. He was talented on the floor, as long as he was out there, but often as not he was beside me on the bench because he had issues, as they say.

I once called his father to enlist him in the quest to temper the tantrums, but he backed off. "I haven't been able to handle Trev for the last several years," he said. "Good luck."

Something about the kid drove me nuts; something about him was charming--and a challenge. 

But here's the deal. We were playing away from home one afternoon, some other high school, when the squirrelly ref blew his whistle, stopped things on the floor and threw up his hand. "On 44," he said, or whatever and pushed his hands out as if it were pass interference. Trev blew up, claimed he'd never touched the guy, screamed bloody murder, which drew a technical.

I called the ref over. Now you've got to see us--it's a freshman team, late afternoon in the city. Maybe a half-dozen people in the stands. What I'm saying is there's no big crowd protest.

I call the ref over, tell him my Trev didn't push theirs.

"I don't care," the ref says. "I don't like his looks."

"You can't slap a foul on the kid because you don't like his looks," I said.

That went nowhere.  Trev had a foul and a tech, and I don't remember if  he stayed long in the game.

March madness wasn't what got me to thinking about Trev, Trump did. On the sly, his government thugs rounded up a ton of Venezuelans--does anyone know they are--wrestles them to the ground, shaves their heads, clothes them in t-shirts, and hustles them off to El Salvador, where Trump has assurances that the crook in charge of the government there says they'll be taken care of, then points at  some kind of hellish penetentiary. The government has nothing on these men. They just didn't like their looks.

These Venezuelan hombres may well have been gang members, may well have required deportation, but in this country, just like on  the basketball floor, there has to be cause.

As the judge told the administration, "Prove it."

That's the American way.   

In praise of a Place we called home (4)

 A neighbor had an extra lot. Neither Barbara or I were ever the kind of people who fashioned a dream home, but suddenly we building it, out in the country.

JOIN THE RESISTANCE!

A friend of mine, Dave Schelhaas, got pummeled by MAGA troops in the neighborhood--they're the majority, by far--when he published an essay that took on the king. The newspaper stepped in to edit out gross responses.

That's what many in the minority don't want to happen--they don't want to get incinerated by the royal right, the MAGA crowd, who will stop at almost nothing to protect their investment in a man who doesn't deserve their favor.

I put a note up on Facebook to JOIN THE RESISTANCE, urging readers to buy and wear Canada t-shirts. 

No single mess that the King of Messes has begun is more horrifying than his saber-rattling at our northern neighbors. Are there MAGA supporters who think, really, that what he's doing with regard to Canada is just or sane?

Here in the states and maybe especially here in  Siouxland, wearing Canada's maple leaf unequivocally identifies you with the loyal opposition, the American Resistance. 

In praise of a place we called home(3)

 

We were in the country all right, with a real live river for a neighbor, a famous one, named after the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die, the Floyd.

A river with its own  inhabitants.

Sunday Morning Meds--Psalm 42

“As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, O God.”

I’m not sure what I’m about to say is instructive or merely sensational, but one can die from thirst in four days, even if all you’re doing is praying.

At the end of my career, classrooms were strewn with water jugs in all shapes and sizes, some monstrous. Students toted them everywhere. Even in church, in the middle of a sermon, millennials of all ages take out bottle and grab a swig as if the numbers on their internal clocks tick dangerously close to 92 hours. I just don’t get it—but I’m not of their generation.

I’m guessing none of us—the heavy drinkers included—know the extremity of the opening line of Psalm 42, but then neither do I. I can’t remember a time in my life when. . .

Wait a minute. I used to bale hay. Just about every memory haying is in the barn, where, by noon, temperatures would soar in dusty, cob-webbed corners of ancient hay mows.

Today, close to sixty years later, I start buying lemonade come June. Often, I chug it, even though I haven’t bucked a bale in half a century. I remember baling hay whenever I drink lemonade. I remember slipping wet quart jars out of insulated paper bags, screeching off lids, and chugging cold lemonade right through a dozen ice cubes.

Still, only a few of us know the extremity of the simile here—of thirst that rages into outright panting. And I’m not among them. I’ll never forget pouring down ice cold lemonade in a hay mow, but I was nowhere near dying, even though at twelve I may have thought so and probably acted like it.

We don’t know that David wrote Psalm 42, but some believe he did; what’s more, some like to think he wrote it when his son, Absalom, was threatening his father’s life. Whether or not that’s true, the heft of the psalm’s opening simile has little to do with our not packing a thermos. Water jugs have nothing to do with Psalm 42.

What David is saying—if indeed he is the author—is that he passionately thirsts after God because God seems nowhere to be found. That’s the kind of thirst at issue.

On a particularly dark day for us not all that long ago, we took a walk around town. When we passed some houses of people we knew, I couldn’t help but recount the troubles each of those families were going through too. Maybe it was my problems that made me calculate tribulations—I don’t know. But I did, sadly. Racked up other people’s problems as if to take the edge off mine perhaps.

I’d just read a little from Calvin, specifically a line in Book I of the Institutes: “Without certainty of God’s providence life would be unbearable.”

Certainty is one fine blessing, but not everyone gets it. That night, I was a lot less confident than Calvin.

Psalm 42, long a favorite of many, is all about chugging certainty even in desperation, about knowing God is there, even when we’re sure as heck he’s not. That wonderful passage from Isaiah is a heavenly promise; the story from Acts does nothing but bring smiles. But Psalm 42 is the gut-wrenching plea of a man who finds himself without.

The thirst here is for nothing in a jug, for something a whole lot more than lemonade. The thirst here is for living water in the parched soul of someone who’s wandering in a desert where there’s nothing more than hot sand.

A lot of folks know that thirst, even David the King, David the poet, David the man closest to God’s own heart. Even he knew what it meant to pant.

It’s always nice to remember we aren’t alone, isn’t it? It seems to me that’s the blessing of Psalm 42.

In praise of a place we called home (2)

We'd come to reside in the country, where the bountiful skies spread themselves out for miles in all directions. 

Backyard dawns, 2012