Because I Care About Your Joy

I pray that you saw this little video. Enough to make the oldest heart young again.

Friday's ¶ Of The Day

Today's ¶ (paragraph) Of The Day comes from the inimitable and duly controversial Princeton philosopher Peter Singer in his New York Times OP-ED, "A Convenient Truth," wherein is discussed the medical prevention of a mentally-impaired child's normal physical development:

"Here’s where things get philosophically interesting. We are always ready to find dignity in human beings, including those whose mental age will never exceed that of an infant, but we don’t attribute dignity to dogs or cats, though they clearly operate at a more advanced mental level than human infants. Just making that comparison provokes outrage in some quarters. But why should dignity always go together with species membership, no matter what the characteristics of the individual may be?"

My only response is that Mr. Singer must not love cats or dogs.

I will stipulate that I am the only person on the planet who loves cats and dogs, fishers and fish, raccoons and rascally rabbits. I will freely confess that I have often stopped and removed roadkill from busy highways; I recently dragged a dead fisher (wrongly called a "fisher cat") out of the road. And I usually do so with some sort of prayer: I even used to perform a hasty ceremony, and, in a poem on the matter, I referred to myself as a "sort of priest for the tired."

What Mr. Singer fails to see is that I dignify life all around me every day: I manage and prune trees in my yard; I sow and manage flowers in my field (I am reintroducing wild lupine destroyed by a neighbor); I feed birds and squirrels. In short, I dignify those creatures that seem to care nothing at all about dignity. In fact, I grant a dying dog or bleeding bird more dignity than it gives itself, or it receives from its own pack or flock. The dead coyote I found frozen in last year's melting snow, its eyes plucked out by turkey vultures, received a blessing from me in silence deep in the uncomprehending forest. Its pack might have even returned and scavenged on its frozen limbs.

I also do something else: I assume that nature loves being so dignified.

But most importantly, what Mr. Singer fails to see is that the impulse for dignity comes from humans alone. Though a few species do seem to care about their dead (elephants come to mind), or their living (meerkats are crazily attentive to their young), or their dying (Emperor penquins seem to care), it is humans who ceremonialize birth, life, and death. We are a ceremonious, ritualistic bunch; we desire and even expect dignity all around us. From births and birthdays, from christenings to baptisms to bar mitzvahs, to wakes and funerals and anniverseries to holidays, we honor and celebrate milestones with alacrity, and like no other species. Thus, as a mere species in Mr. Singer's philosophical reflections, we humans merit dignity because we ask for it and we give it; and we do not give it to those species who do not seem to care for it all (like great white sharks and Komodo dragons). In short, NOT dignifying other species is in fact to dignify them, for we are giving them exactly what they give themselves.

I grant that I may be personally out of whack for softly praying over dead animals, but I believe in the Christian idea that my sins (though not mine alone) have caused widespread suffering throughout the biosphere: All of creation groans for the redemption of God's children.

This is why we deserve dignity, and this is why some of us, unlike Mr. Singer, attempt to dignify every living and dying thing around us: today, no doubt, I may even rescue a spider from the tub. The spider will not know I have been kind, nor do I know whether my kindness will result in my wife being bitten by that cool spider's mandibles later in the day. What I do know is that there is something different about me, and about every human on the planet, if I but take one minute to study any other creature walking the earth.

God bless the family in question whose daughter is so desperately sick. May mercy and gladness of heart fill their days, and may God's will be done.

Peace.

BG

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Preservation And Defense

Not long ago, two old farmers - a brother and sister - moved out of their family farmhouse: the last two surviving members of the Welch family had stayed at home as long as they could. They were each nearly a century old when they died a few miles down the road, beneath the flourescent light buzzing over a nursing home deathbed. But before they left this life, they bequeathed their farmhouse, and all of the surrounding land, to a conservation group: the old siblings did not want their legacy to fall into enemy hands.

Adjacent to the Welch's homestead, just east of the old rooming house, stood a clutch of barns. Inside one barn could be found the initials, carved into pine or painted in stove black, of every farmhand that passed through the farm dating back to 1865. It was clear that not a few workers took jobs at the farm several years in a row; others would be off to fight in some great war, never to return. There were chains and old scythes hanging in rusted silence; there were old tins on the wall; a set of old oars stood in a corner, crossed. It was a hall for the silent past, but a past that was not so silent if one but listened.

After the old couple died, I would walk the forsaken farm, taking pictures here and there. The photo above was taken along the northern wall of the old house, just off the ell. I could not help but take the photograph -- with the old lamp and bulb, the paper-wasps' nest tucked beneath the shade, the flecked paint, a lonely window and the ghostly imprint of old shutters -- all calling me to remember. But what seems silent is not at all; and what seems old is still rather new: the tap of hands on a window flung open, the smell of fresh paint on a horsehair brush, the piquant air of harvest. I hear children nearby, the shouts of farmhands heading to town with a wagon-load of milk; or the muted thud of boots beneath a dim lamp during heavy snows.

The conservation group which inherited the land, in response to fears and anxieties and sundry other modern maladies, decided that the best thing for the preservation of the old regime was for the new to vanguish the past. So the fire department was called. The volunteer fire corps practiced in the light of burning barns. They rescued smoke and soot. They aimed their hoses only after all memories had disappeared in the heat of a spark fanned bright by legal arson. Later, a bulldozer would level the old farmhouse. Soil was pushed here and there beneath the row of singed catalpa trees; a little monument was erected to remind stray visitors of the monuments that were burned and buried.

Occasionally I return to the old Welch farm. Nothing much remains, of course, but a few flecks of paint, a shard of glass, an ember pressed into soot. And the wasps nearby.

Peace.

Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

In Whom Do We Trust?

Some of us are afraid to leave the barn. We fear we may be led astray, or that some fox will rend us to pieces. Beware, of course, of the wolf dressed in shepherd's clothing. Beware, of course, of the fox and coyote just outside the fence, sniffing for a way in. There is indeed a warm barn; but don't forget that you have a warm coat. And there is a fence, a sheepdog keeping watch, and a real shepherd but one prayer away.

You may be a sheep, but you are never a sheep alone.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Waking Up During The Fall

It was but a glimpse, and even then it was but a glimpse of a silhouette. It was a shimmer, a sylph; a vapor of joy and mirth in the night. It came and went like a scene between buildings spotted from the window of a speeding train. It was there, and then it wasn't. And yet it remains. Indelibly.

As I traveled into town the other night, a little after 8:00, I zipped down Concord Street with little in particular on my mind. It was a typical fall night, the edge of frost scraping at the windows, at the mums in planters, at the pumpkins on lighted front steps. Leaves piled in a light breeze along the curbs; woodsmoke curled around hedges and jumped over eaves.

Suddenly, as I approached the town funeral home, its lights on inside and out, a little girl, not more than 7 years old and wearing a little dress and overcoat, leapt off the funeral parlor's front steps and skipped toward a car at the curb, its rear passenger door swung wide open to receive her. There was glee, there was merriment; there was a pure and innocent joy in her step, the angle of her arms, the bounce of her hair. It was clear she felt free, happy, even relieved: nothing could encumber her.

But then I noticed, as I moved closer and past, that coming out of the funeral home, trailing behind the little girl, was a middle-aged woman carrying a huge funeral bouquet in a vase. She was saying goodbye to somebody, she was moving slowly; there seemed to be someone else in the foyer, another woman, more flowers, a man in a suit. There was no one else, no crowd, no line; no long queue of grief flowing down the street, like I had so often seen when some prominent person had died, or some shocking tragedy struck Peterborough. And as I readied to turn round the old library, I knew I had seen the closing moments of a wake, of calling hours: there would be a funeral or graveside service tomorrow, I knew; the flowers would be brought from one place to the next.

Who had died? Was it the little girl's grandmother, her great-grandmother? Was it her papa? Or was it someone she was supposed to know, someone in a long line of family that she knew by blood but not by face or name? Perhaps it was her little brother, or her little cousin, who had died at childbirth or because of a miscarriage. I could not know.

But it was the leap and the skip, the movement alone -- that sign of life -- that I know, and shall never forget. I do not know the little girl's name, nor do I have any idea what she looks like, blacked out as she was by the porch lights behind her and the lights shining on a funeral home's sign. There was light in that darkness, no doubt. But it did not come from any bulb or any flame. It came from a little girl, leaving death behind, leaping toward the unknown, free to be, to laugh. To swing her arms.

To make my heart skip a beat or two as I turned a corner, moving on.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.

Interceding On Our Behalf, With Groanings Too Deep To Be Uttered

There is a horse-and-buggy, and strange folks with black cloth and black hats, and some with beards, and a child running with flowers toward a deep blue dream. From some cold grey pasture (it was green this morning), with dirt on his boots and mud-caked cheeks, a man steps forward and, taking off his hat, bows before a weeping mother and father. He stands erect, though a little bent, and looks into their eyes, eyes filled with flowers and children and blue and dirt and the teary flash of a gun. He says, “We will forgive your son.”

A dog passes by, sniffing for a little girl whose last words of the schoolday were, “Please, shoot me first.” Mothers and fathers -- and several small girls -- collapse at such lessons.

But these strange images all look the same to us: black-and-white on a horse-and-buggy, a triangle flashing warnings. We barely slow down, unless we have friends visiting from faraway. That movie with Harrison Ford was as real as this: we are witnesses to the futility of innocence. And we drive home, thinking we got the picture.

The full moon falls from the sky with nary a word. But the internet and TV are all a-chatter. The world would do well to drape itself in black for a while, seeing in the dark fabric the brilliant tearing flash of forgiveness that cuts its way through an Amish field not far from Paradise. Forgiveness bearing glad tidings, once twitching with doubt on the tip of a trigger. The big, sad bang which started it all.

"Pray for me," he said†. We pray, irrespective of the time, or whether it's too late. And now Amish families gather coins and cans, raising funds, not for the victims, but for the murderer's own family, left shattered beyond imagination. The rest of us are just confounded by such grace.

Peace everywhere, if for just one minute.

[†"He asked the children to pray for him, and that's kind of interesting because he said he hated God," Rhoads said. "He must have recognized the faith in them, God in them." -- ABC News]

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

amish, murder, forgiveness, grace

The Emerging Informality: Christianity's Dire Need, Part III

[I am grateful for the comments that appear at the end of Part I of this series. Thank you for helping me understand things more clearly. I am also grateful for the comments posted over at Sunshine Church. My brothers and sisters in the Church of Christ have moved the discussion further in a very good way. Thank you all. And as a result of issues raised here, and due to some of the hard things I've already written, I feel I must continue the series on informed formalism and Christian worship. My apologies to my readers who prefer my more socio-political essays. But this topic is indeed socio-political, too, for the loss of formality portends problems for all cultures and institutions, I believe.]

I think most people would agree with the claim that American culture (particularly) is steeped in informalism. Clothing fashions indicate this, as does etiquette between the sexes: women casually ask men out on dates, and vice versa, with even sexual intercourse treated as a casual exchange. Children address police officers or church pastors by their first names; titles are dismissed in corporate life, even to the point where it is hard to know who is indeed in charge. Few people hold their hands over their hearts as the American flag is raised; few know the words to the nation's anthem. Even our president is casual, as are the media who report on him, revealing to us their mutual repartee, badinage or mockery. And perhaps no more casual place in America is the American church, with children free to move at any time during a service, or amplifiers cranked to drown out the din of so many people doing their own thing (the louder the amp, the louder the crowd). Pastors dress themselves "down," computers and projectors and paper communion cups have made their way into the sacrament of worship. Church is hardly a formal affair anymore, at least for many of us.

Malcolm Gladwell in his telling book, The Tipping Point, discusses that when a community pays attention to the little things, the details like broken glass on the sidewalks and in the storefronts; when a community fixes minor things, major things happen, like serious drops in the crime rate. Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani was in fact upbraided for his commitment to prosecuting the city's most petty crimes. The result? Crime rates in New York fell precipitiously. You see, it is a lie that the devil is in the details. God is in the details. In fact, He always has been. If the Gospel is about anything it is about the glorious news that God cares about the details, our details.

Plus, just ask any wife, or just ask your girlfriend (assuming, of course, that you are single) whether details matter. You'll learn pretty quickly that they matter immensely. Details matter in birthday gifts, details matter at anniversary dinners and first dates. Romance is vibrant with details, as is love. Nice homes, nice cars, nice clothes; when you purchase any thing, that purchase is often made all the more pleasurable and all the more fun because of the details. Bad romances and ailing marriages, bad purchases and lousy meals, are almost always due to some inattention to detail.

Yesterday it was reported that a 12-year-old boy, while on a field trip to a Detroit museum, intentionally stuck his chewed gum to a $1.5 million painting. It is tempting to think the youngster did this in artistic protest of hideous, over-priced art. But I suspect that it is more the destruction of formality, of formally valuing place and object, that assisted him in his crime. And his age group hardly gets the sort of direction from the adults that should guide them toward high standards: my wife, a middle-school librarian, weekly reports that the greatest offenders of propriety at school assemblies are the teachers. No one cares about the essential details of courtesy, or so it seems.

Let me point out two passages from Holy Scripture. The first is from Ecclesiastes, which was most likely penned by King Solomon, the son of King David, the chief psalmist:

"Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

Do not be quick with your mouth, 

do not be hasty in your heart 

to utter anything before God. 

God is in heaven 

and you are on earth, 

so let your words be few." (Eccl. 5:1-2)

These indeed are hard words. They are fraught with caution, suggestive of protocol and decorum. But do they remind you of anything? How about these words from St. Matthew's Gospel:

"But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." [emphasis added] (Matt. 6:6-7)

Those of us familiar with liturgy, or any formalized rituals, know that such formalities are designed in large part for economy, for efficiency. They are designed to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. One read through either Rite I or II in the Book of Common Prayer proves that the entire gospel message is proclaimed in a very short time, in elegant language and wonderful ceremony, with few words. Pastoral prayers from pulpit and lectern, from the crossing or altar, are done with the facility of language that gets to the point, removing the person praying from the center of attention.

But in many churches spontaneous and not pre-written worship and prayer is preferred, ostensibly proving authenticity and freshness. Of course, those of us who have endured listening to our pastors' or elders' long-winded "spontaneous" prayers have no doubt muttered in Christian charity, "Please, be done with it." And surely we've heard spontaneous prayers that are nothing more than re-arranged, automatic phrases. In fact, each of us can churn out such prayers at the drop of a hat, so familiar are we with these phrases. Written and spontaneous prayers can both become rote, reflexive and even dead.

Last December, in Touchstone: The Journal of Mere Christianity, I wrote about the all-too common practice of "asking" God in prayer without asking God anything at all. Surely we have all heard this: "Lord, we just ask that you be with Pastor Fred;" or, "Heavenly Father, we just ask that you guide us, fill us, heal us." My point in that essay was that such prayers are not questions, since there are no question marks in anyone's prayers. We say we ask but we don't actually ask! Our prayers are bereft of question marks, and we speak to God in ways we would not speak to our friends. Imagine speaking this way to your golf buddy: "Hey, I just ask you to hand me a five-iron."

You see, so many of us care so little about details that we forget the detail of prayer's punctuation. "Ask, and it shall be given you." And yet we don't ask at all, since we are so thoroughly informal we aren't even aware how vacuous our prayers have become.

These are realities. Nothing here is made up, mere fictions or straw men. Some would argue that the Gospel bids us to be free of these "worldly" formal constraints, insistent that Christ's news is that God is our "Daddy," our Father, our Abba (and that Christ is our brother). Of course, this is true, and yet rare is it that we hear that a father in Jesus' world was not informal, but the rabbi and priest of the house; involved in civic affairs at the city gate; a man gentle with children and yet worthy of their deepest respect. Toddlers of course could address their "Abba" in informal speech; but that is hardly the way fathers wanted their mature children to address them. Jesus tells us, in fact, to speak formally in prayer: "OUR (not just mine) Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." This is a formal address, taught us by our Savior. Moreover, we do not hear St. Paul declare to us that in the end of time "every knee shall bow, every tongue confess" that Jesus Christ is our brother, but our Lord, our King. We do not see a Father crowned; we do not see a brother lifted high, but the very King of the universe. This is the language and imagery we see in the Bible; Jesus is born of the Davidic line: He is royal, kingly, the very Prince of Peace.

Please realize that I am not here discussing personal, private relations with Christ. I am referring to the Bride of Christ, the corporate Church in corporate worship, that great gathering wherein self-centered worship ceases. I am talking about the gathering of the faithful, where the goal of worship is not about acquiring a blessing or feeling or some such edification. Corporate worship is where the self is to be subsumed by the centrality of God's place in the universe. It is not the obliteration of self, but its humility. Worship isn't some transaction wherein we indebt God to bless us; worship is a discipline of corporate life. Personal edification is available in all the other parts of church life: in cell groups, prayer meetings, home fellowships, Bible studies and everything else. The goal for us in corporate worship is unity, where the body corporate learns to act, speak, pray, kneel and sing as one.

I am ultimately talking about whether the current trend to become even MORE "informal" in order to be "relevant" is indeed a good thing. Moreover, I am talking about aesthetics, about beauty. If I am to serve a lovely meal, I do not serve filet mignon on a newspaper, nor do I set the table with plastic forks. Nor do I set my guests at lawn chairs in the midst of the dining room; I don't burn road flares for candles, or hang a flourescent shoplight from the dining room ceiling. And while my neighbor may daily wear overalls to work, I don't ask him to join me at the Ritz-Carlton for tea in those clothes because that is what he "understands." To do so is to insult his intelligence and his dignity.†

There is nothing harmful in aiming high in anything, particularly when that anything is the worship of God. But there seems to be this almost conceited idea that because Jesus called us brothers and sisters, we get to define what corporate worship means by comparisons we draw from our homes. If Jesus is indeed merely my brother, then He is like no brother I've ever known. And that, I can tell you, is a good thing.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

[Part IV begins here.]

†(For compelling books on Christian aesthetics, see Calvin Seerveld's Rainbows for a Fallen World, or D. Bruce Lockerbie's The Timeless Moment. The reviewer's comment at Amazon.com regarding Lockerbie's book is accurate, though far too brief.)

Jewels In The Night

Let this be a little diversion. Perhaps diversions from the serious task I've set before myself – addressing poverty – should not be permitted. But even the most serious enterprise requires a recess. I've often opined that the U.S. Congress should be forced to recess twice daily, with each representative and senator sent out to the playground for mandatory carousel time. Can you imagine how different things might be if we all had swing-sets in our yards, and at work? Oh, to have required teeter-totter time (that's see-saw time, for those of you unfamiliar with such colloquialisms)!

Two nights ago, I went outside into the moonless night (the waxing crescent had already fallen below the horizon), wearing my headlamp. As I gamboled about the meadow, I kept spotting little jewels in the grasses, little flecks of brilliant, clear vibrancy. I would spot these gems every dozen or so feet: There's one beneath the blueberry bush! There's another in the fallen maple leaves! Here's one aside the boulder! Some I'd see at a glance, disappearing if I'd move more than a tiny bit, only to reappear if I'd move just so.

At first I thought they were drops of dew, though I knew that such random droplets were unlikely considering the warmth of the night air. Besides, dew would be everywhere, consistent, and not hither and yon. Next I thought they were fireflies settled for the night, though these lights were brighter, clearer, sharper than the fuzzy phosphorescence of that common, mid-summer bug. With that, I turned off my headlamp and – bing! I had a clue.

With the lamp turned on again and after several minutes of half-minding these little beams, I finally decided to get a closer look. And what do you think I found?

I found that in every instance what I was seeing was utterly new to me. I was seeing spiders' eyes.

My head is still spinning.

Enjoy the day, the earth, the invisible power of breath.

Peace,

BG

[The photo was taken in 1985 with the camera of a childhood friend. It was taken during a lunch break when the two of us were painting a white picket fence in a tiny New Hampshire village. It is the first picture I ever took of flowers. Eventually, my dear friend, apparently recognizing that I had an "eye" for things photographic, bought me a camera of my own (a Canon AE-1P). Less than two years after this picture was taken, I was the staff photographer at a newspaper. Strange how things work. I do know this: the original image was made on Kodachrome 64. And there is one valuable lesson hidden behind the history of this picture: Whatever dollar amount you think is a fair price to charge for painting a picket fence, quadruple that figure.]