Friday, September 25, 2020   (today’s lectionary)
A time to love
Lord, what is man that you notice him?
Man is like a breath and his days, like a passing shadow
Of course I’m late, but here’s a haiku for the firstday-lastday earlier in the week:
last kiss of summer (at 8:30 am)
crickets, calling “Be! Here! Now!”
yes! First kiss of fall (at 8:31)
Another of my heroes is choosing to turn his face away from the “news” for the next few weeks. In his Wednesday post Garrison Keillor, author of many books including his funny/serious memoir Homegrown Democrat, fondly remembers Marjorie, his girlfriend’s Republican mother:
I honest to God loved to be around her as she cooked dinner, her Rob Roy in hand, smoking a Winston, chatting about friends and family, prospective travel. Nothing about happy childhood memories, of which she seemed to have none. She had risen from hardscrabble origins to make a nice life, peaceful, no outbursts of shouting, no ugliness, wall-to-wall carpeting, art on the walls, no trashy behavior, good manners.
Keillor called himself an outlaw poet. But he grew up in a small town family and attended the Church of the Brethren. He learned the Bible and how to eat at potlucks. He learned the joys and labors of summer cooking, fall canning, and Minnesota winter feasts.
To everything there is a season
And a time for every purpose under heaven.
Garrison worried about being poor.
Maybe canning was a sign that we were. Our neighbors were not canners. The dread of the stigma of poverty stuck with me until I was 18 and went to college and actually was poor and took it as a point of pride. I was a poet specializing in unintelligible poetry, and poverty was a mark of authenticity. Geniuses were, of necessity, poor. My girlfriend, however, came from a suburban Republican family and over time, against my principles, I came to love them. Gradually they corrupted me and instilled strong bourgeois leanings that an outlaw poet should shun.
I love this guy because he writes about my life too. Now he’s old and so am I. Then he was an outlaw poet, or fancied himself so, and so did I. Time passes.
There is a time to kill and time to heal
A time to tear down and a time to build
A time to weep and a time to laugh
A time to mourn and a time to dance
A time to cast away stones, then gather them
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.
YouTube comments after the Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn” mirror both my joy and sorrow. Katherine Thompson (did I know her in high school?) reminded me of times long before our own:
This song is a consolation in these Coronavirus times. King Solomon wrote the lyrics 3,000 years ago, Pete Seeger set them to lyrics when I was just a baby, the Byrds popularized the song when I was a teenager. When the Byrds’ version came out, I was becoming aware for the first time that the world was a place full of pain and injustice, but also full of hope and a will to struggle to make it better. That has not changed. Now that I am old I see that both the pain and the hope will persist.
Time passes, and in the fall sometimes, especially if I need a nap or need to eat some vegetables, this fact feels dark and endless and sad.
A time to seek, and a time to lose
A time to tear and a time to sew it up again
A time of war, a time for peace
A time of love and a time for hate
… I swear it’s not too late
To everything (turn, turn) there is a season
And a time for every purpose under heaven.
In my endless striving for advantage, Solomon cries out for me to notice the unknowable, and thereby know more clearly the task God appoints for me.
He has made all things beautiful in its time
He puts eternity in our hearts.
Will man ever discover the work which God has done?
Show me, Lord. I want to see you.
Blessed be the Lord my rock,
My mercy, my fortress
Blessed be God my stronghold and deliverer,
You are my shield
And I trust you.
Garrison finished his Wednesday musings:
I was a busy man for about forty years, doing shows, writing books, being political. Now I am an old man. I turn on the ball game, I pour a ginger ale and pretend it’s Scotch, I smell the chicken cooking, and I remember that gentle Republican family at home on a Saturday afternoon. The more things change, the more they are the same. Like most people who value rationalism and low blood pressure, I ignore politics completely and wait for November 3rd and hope for clarity.
Back in my youth, I wanted to be an artist and imagined this required a reckless life, big mood swings, unfiltered smokes, straight gin, black clothing, and now I feel that inspiration can arise out of quiet and order and a peaceful disposition. I hope so. In my youth, I wrote a great deal about death and now, with death in the air, I write about gratitude for love and music and work and good-hearted Republicans. God grant us more of them.
Hmmm. Perhaps I have a haiku for today, just three days into fall. The sun shines, the sky is crystal blue, the temperature this afternoon is in the lower 70s. What is this malaise I keep shaking off? It comes back, and I shake it off again.
trip into the light
fantastic, rest a moment,
trip back out again
      (Ecclesiastes 3, Psalm 144, Mark 10, Luke 9)
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