Stranger in a familiar land

By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Hebrews 11:9-10

I can imagine some of the conversations Abraham must have had with his family on the way to Canaan from their homeland. I'm sure they took some convincing--Who told you to pick up and move where? Leave our home, civilization itself, and strike out for the wilderness? They don't even have sundials in Canaan, for cryin out loud. I can imagine his reply--No, no, it's not like that. We're going to The Promised Land. And the eventual acquiescence--Whatever. You're the patriarch. How many times he must've told them, told himself, what it would be like in Canaan. And then sure enough, Canaan turned out to be, well, Canaan. Lots of goats. Plenty of hills. An abundance of hostile peoples. Not a lot different from back home, actually. Why are we here again? Still, he believed. Eventually his family did too (although Genesis hints at the sometimes difficulty of that process (Gen 28:20-21); it doesn't seem that the father's religion would necessarily become the son's).

To live in the land of promise as in a foreign country. I wonder if in some idle prophetic moment he ever paced out the foundations of the Holy City, if he ever looked to the horizons and imagined his descendents overflowing the land. I'm here, Lord--why not now?. David wondered a similar thing. After he'd finally taken control of all of Israel and movedto fulfill his one dream, to build a temple worthy of his God, that same God told him Wait. Not for you.

Our land of promise is the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom, the mustard seed which Jesus said grows up into a tree where the birds of the air come to nest. The Kingdom where in the wisdom of God's folly the lame walk, the poor rule as princes, and the seats at the banquet are given to the sick, the destitute, the outcasts and prostitutes. The Kingdom of God, ruled by the Son of God, the King who washes the feet of His subjects, who follow Him into humility and servitude, finding their glory nowhere else. This is the city set on a hill. This is the lamp that cannot be hidden under a basket.

And yet--here I am. But all I see are goats roaming the hills. And the world lurching through space at an angle to the sun.

To live in the land of promise as in a foreign country. I swear, some nights when I've lain long enough awake, thinking at the dark, I could get out of bed and pace every damn step of the contours of that holy city. You'd see me moving through the backyard after midnight with my eyes closed, walking better that way like those ancient oracles who could only truly see once they'd gone blind. Some nights I could tell you what's printed on the sewer lids of the New Jerusalem.

Let's be clear--I'm not talking about What Happens When Jeebus Comes Back, although I look forward (sans any real understanding, admittedly) to the eschaton. I'm talking about Kingdom Now, not Kingdom Come. But it isn't now. Or at least I don't see it. Not when I look around and not when I look inside. It makes me sick, sometimes, not sick with disgust but sick with longing. It takes me at the strangest times. Sometimes I almost have to pull my car to the side of the road and cry. Sometimes, walking on campus, I almost have to sit down on a bench and wait for the weakness, the physical trembling, to pass.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
the guitar strings not bend,
nor the voice of the drum number even the simplest of dances.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem, if that name should escape me,
that photograph disappear from my wallet,
let my voice not be raised, not to sing,
not even to order a sandwich.

Jerusalem, if I forget the words to the song
let every song remind me
of the one my blood used to chant,
the one I waved like a flag,
the one that made me think of birds.

O Jerusalem, if I fail to remember
let the locusts descend, let the dry bed drink the river.

Let the clowns swallow razors
if I fail to claim you, Jerusalem--
my coin, my credit.

# posted by Daniel at 8:34 PM.

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Poem

PHILOSOPHER FALLING ASLEEP

Sheep jump the mind's fence
in the descent to sleep, fleeing
the right side of the mind,
the logical cortex, the very half-brain
that would count them.
The left hemisphere tries
to keep up, to number them
as they appear one at a time
like an infinite progression
of the tiny white rain clouds
that meditate above the heads
of sad people in cartoons,
except that these above the fence
are sheep instead of clouds,
with black Labrador faces
and hard black feet that mark
the grass when they land.
The left brain would like to keep up
but has already lost count,
and the sheep keep coming,
regular as mortgage payments,
and it's nicer anyway to bury your head
in the fleece of a single sheep
and try to name the particular stink,
or dig for words as coarse,
as white and damp with sweat
as the sheep's unfleeced,
cotton-swab back. It's even nicer
to lie down beside the fence
and watch the sheep pass over
like clouds again, or to notice
how squinting through half-shut eyes
they look like other things
than clouds--like that one
could be a bird, or the next
which is the mailman who whistles
as he hops the fence, a stack of magazines
in hand, or this last one, coming now,
that starts out as a white ship
with sails distended but stretches
as it comes into an airplane
that doesn't land but keeps on sailing,
past the fence and recumbent,
nodding watcher into blue,
dwindling distance above the white field,
heavy with forgotten sheep.

(9/15/04)

# posted by Daniel at 2:42 PM.

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Poop goes in the potty

Do yourself a favor and head over to Over the Rhine's website for the current MP3 Rarity of the Month. It's called "The Poopsmith Song" and was recorded for a children's album.

Classic, and a nice musical non-sequitur for those of us more used to the sweet sounds of the band's less, um, scatalogical stylings.


(Kelly, I fully expect to hear Emma singing this the next time I come by the house.)

# posted by Daniel at 12:01 PM.

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Packing a suitcase

Last weekend my sister and I drove up to Dallas to visit my grandmother. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a couple of weeks ago; this particular type of cancer, it seems, is extremely rare and basically untreatable. The doctor estimates she's got about a year left, although that estimate could be substantially off in either direction.

It's incredible to talk to her about it. Death, that is. She's very matter of fact about the whole thing--"I'm not worried about dying," she says, and is in fact believable when she says it. "I know I'm going to heaven and I'll see George" (her husband; he passed away fifteen years ago). I've always harbored this inner cynicism that everyone, regardless of what they might tell you, harbors a secret fear of death, but she's so...believable. Her voice only gets quavery, like she's going to cry, when she mentions Granddaddy.

For the record, I'm not sure what I think about the whole family-reunion-in-the-sky theology of death, but that's not what this is about. Her peace in the face of the greatest of human mysteries makes that quibble seem insignificant.

More to the point, I want to relate a couple of stories. On Saturday my mom and sister had to run some errands, so I got to spend the day alone with Grandmother. Most of the time I listened to her talk. I'd like to record some of those stories before I forget them, and thought I'd share them with those of you who follow this blog. This may be a pretty regular theme; we're going to try and make it up to Dallas as much as possible in the next year (sidenote: we've all been hugely blessed to have such a long time to prepare for her passing. Thank you, Father, for this grace, which we don't deserve or understand but receive with gratitude nonetheless).

Virginia (that's her name) met George while he was in the service, during World War II. She'd taken a job after school selling dresses in a department store in downtown Dallas. That was around the time that a lot of Jews came in and opened businesses in the downtown, one of which was the one she worked in (her way of putting it, not mine, although it didn't come across as racist as it reads in print--she belongs to that class of blue collar white southerners that looks at the world through racially-tinted glasses but who don't attach any necessary moral or value judgements to one's race--not an ideal perspective, at least as my generation typically sees it, but not exactly racist either, at least in the malignant way we usually mean when we talk about white southerners. To illustrate: she wouldn't be exactly thrilled if I joined the NAACP, but she'd be horrified if I got involved with the KKK).

At the time she was seeing a boy, but he was a drinker. She let him know that she wasn't going to go with anyone with drank beer, and he told her he'd quit, but she could still smell it on him from time to time. So she kicked him to the curb (my words, not hers). About that time Mary Jean, a girl she worked with at the store, got it into her head to introduce Virginia to her brother George, who was in the service, working stateside on reconnaissance aircraft radios. He'd had a steady girlfriend for whom he had even bought a ring, but come to find out she was dating around while he was away from home. So now he was available. He came by the store one day while he was home on leave, and he, Mary Jean, and Virginia went to lunch together. A couple of days later he took Virginia out. When she got to work the next day Mary Jean cornered her and started asking "What did you do to my brother last night?"

"What do you mean?" asked Virginia.

"Well, he came home and was just about dancing he was so happy."

And that's how my grandparents met. I think we're all pretty used to thinking about our parents, and imagining one hundred percent of our genetic makeup coming from them. But we're much less used to thinking of all four grandparents and realizing that the same is true of them--those four people hold within them every bit of the stuff that went into making us. I don't know why, but that's what kept going through my head while I was talking to her--lining up her and Granddaddy, and Grandma and Grandpa from my dad's side, and imagining myself sort of spread out among them.

It's getting on towards bedtime, so I'm going to wrap this up. Next time I'll tell you a story about my granddaddy while he was in the service. And about the word "honyock."

# posted by Daniel at 6:45 PM.

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