Billy woke up from a series of fantastically peculiar dreams. Half run by the industry and mystery of it all, he came to his wits and heeded Mamma McMichael's breakfast call. Sitting with his Mother and Father at the table, there was a calm so unique - kind of distracted from the morning stresses. Whatever the case may have been, they didn't wish to start eating until every McMichael was seated at the table. Cindy was not there. Rushed for time, Billy thought to save Cindy the drama of late-to-breakfast lectures by leaving the table and attending his morning duties, knowing he had only to clean himself up a bit to put himself together for the day. He didn't think it would take too much time and he found himself dressed for the day at the table with his mother and father still waiting on Cindy. Cindy seemed a bit sour at least from the sound of things. No one had seen her face, but the growing clamor in her room seemed to suggest as much.
If travel time stood at 45 minutes between home and the social house, they had 2 minutes to spare before they would be late. Suckered for time, Cindy came all disheveled and hurting. The McMichael's had a rushed and awkward breakfast feeling the tension that something had gone terribly wrong, without any sense for what it could have been. Before jumping in the mover, something in Cindy spiked and Mama McMichael threw her arms around her. Billy felt the rush of wanting to do the same. She unwelcomely accepted his embrace, but the sting of whatever crucible she had entered into kept pulling and pulling and pulling.
They all filed into the mover knowing they would be late and they would have to face the later-than-thou comedy at the social house. This however seemed insignificant compared to Cindy's growing pain. Mama seemed to think a no-touch policy was requisite, while Billy tried to offer compassion through the vehicle touch. The problem-tension encouraged a solution-tension that kindled a fire of passion. The great and wild climax spilled out and over when Cindy screamed, "Billy don't, Mom is trying to help!"
Billy was immediately torn because he was also trying to help. He meant well; yet, she perceived his attempts and efforts as unhelpful. To add sugar to stove-tops, Billy shelled off commenting about interpretation offering a defense for his actions. This was met by a parade of noisy, condemning jeers of Mom and Dad McMichael. Father let out, "Heaping coals, heaping coals, heaping coals, Billy!"
Billy immediately restrained himself and bit his tough hard. He instantly became conscientious. He was afraid to suggest any more concern or comment on anything else for fear of unbridled angst that would no-doubt boomerang. He sat and thought. He thought about the mornings progress only to find himself confused. The things he meant were not seen and the things he did not, were. On a more sophisticated level, I presume, he thought about the elements of transmission and communication. He thought to himself: "My intention was not appreciated and this seems to prove a lack on both ends, respectively. For if my intention was not appreciated, I obviously failed to make it clear. However Cindy's shortsightedness inhibited her from appreciating my concern." Funny how strange dreams meet strange things and how in the end there may be a lesson to learn. It seems that a gift must be understood relative to its giver and that the strings of communication have two ends.

Draw and its Death

It seems to me that relationships inspire people. I have seen it before. Boy meets girl: Girl meets boy: Woman, wooed: Man, pitied. Is this not the stereotypical fantasy awaken in funny bone-pains felt by the penetration of Cupid's arrows? Maybe it's the knight sat up in tin-can armor fallen upon that white horse bridled only by the force of passion or is it the frog tongue-tied and hopeful that there is one princess out there, just one, silly enough to kiss him? Cynical or not, these penetratingly deep affections -commonly referred to as love or passion- persuade men and women to engage in a language game for whatever reason or against it. My point is that “love” drives people to do all kinds of things it doesn't seem they would do on there own.
Honestly, there is a kind of disguised hubris in it all – love binds and blinds all for the sake of freedom and clarity; though, I have seen so many singles turn ga-gas fade into sordid relationships that seem to be anything but freeing and helpful. I have seen friends from all kinds of backgrounds, emotively enlivened, given the courage to “gird up their loins,” as it were, and effect a try-harder attitude because they think that it will make the relationship work. While I think its good that they finally give up their smokes and soaps, too often the exchange brings about nothing more than love stupors and drama.
However contrastingly, it seems that good relationships evoke good initiative and potential, happiness in general and good deeds. I suppose bad relationships could do the same though the effects would eventually die away. Of course, I am taking the liberties of big brushes and lots of paint, but I think this is a fair analysis of loves initial exuberance. This interested-ness of two people in each other drives a good thing forward, even as it acts like a “dam against fornication and lust.” I guess, even this is a bit idealistic given the Sex-god troubles placating the American milieu.
Whatever the case maybe, it seems that the substance of a relationship gives a unique kind of resolve to people involved; maybe its the pressure, maybe the sense of benevolence or concern. Whatever it is, something so terrible happens when and if that relationship falls apart. When a relationship dies it seems easy to embrace a kind of despair so fantastically real that it is as if demons are speaking. With the noise of fall-outs and fracture, divorce and break-offs comes the dissonance of that rhetorically savvy... persuading... feeling of apathy... I suppose other inexpressible emotions are evoked with a kind of damning rise that makes simple tasks more daunting than they have ever been before.
Questions remain: so many questions. I suppose your asking things like: why, what did I do wrong, what was I thinking? This is only natural though it seems to force the nail of failure even deeper. That constant impulse, that itching passion and that insidious draw recklessly leading you here has come full circle and left you in the place where you started.
I am under the conviction that hope has a peculiar and unique tie to God and the Gospel and its here that the pressure to turn of other gods is incredibly real. Affirming that loss has its own kind of good in the mystery of pain seems terribly unhelpful though it seems we have good reason to do just that.

Men without Chests

Relationships have a uniquely different kind of problem in the 21st century. Men are encouraged to sell there dignity for eyeliner and egoist sensationalism and women are duped into materialism dressed in raging manipulative cycles disguised by the memes of what is or isn't fabulous... Perhaps both flounder in similar ways wrestling with never being or feeling quiet like we should... What is so wrong with the biblical model? What is it precisely? Too conservative? Too libral? I suppose that conservatism has died a death no one is capable of redeeming if the archetypes for its prestige are the same egotistical men, too commonly lost in their own addictions and/ or self-righteousness... advocating, full-on- for a model that gives them a justification to treat their wives in intolerable ways... and liberals bury their best arguements for the necessity and beauty of equality, in mantras that bastardize monogomy and adulturate the santity of life. Who then is faultless and aren't these both acting in a way radically opposed to the Scriptures. May God help us as we try to get it right... in God's mercy.

Malcolm Muggeridge

We look back upon history, and what do we see? Empires rising and falling. Revolutions and Counterrevolutions. Wealth accumulated and wealth disbursed. Shakespeare has written of the rise and fall of great ones, that ebb and flow with the moon. I look back upon my own fellow countrymen, once upon a time dominating a quarter of the world, most of them convinced, in the words of what is still a popular song, that the God who made them mighty, shall make them mightier yet.

I've heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a Reich that would last a thousand years. I have seen an Italian clown say he was going to stop and restart the calendar with his own ascension to power. I've heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin, acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka.

I have seen America, wealthier and in terms of military weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people so desired, they could have outdone a Caesar, or an Alexander in the range and scale of their conquests.

All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind. England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running our of those precious fluids that keeps their motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate. All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

Behind the debris of these solemn supermen, and self-styled imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one, because of whom, by whom, in whom and through whom alone, mankind may still have peace: The person of Jesus Christ. I present him as the way, the truth, and the life.

Grandpa Hague

 My son Keith called, said he'd meet us in Richmond, and wished me a Happy Birthday. My fingers don't work like they used to. My bones feel heavy and weak. My legs and knees seem to work against me more often than not. The doctor came over and told me about my arthritis in my shoulder and its hard to feel like things will get better when I know good and well they probably won't.

A few days ago Betty came to bed - the first time in a long time. She usually sleeps in the La-Z-Boy, though she rarely sleeps through the night. She was unsettled all night long, tossing and turning. She kept callin', “Junior, Junior, Junior.” I am not complaining; I just find myself confused and kind of desperate wanting to help and not knowing what it is she really needs. She was so blasted cold, though the new gauge on the stove read 81 degrees. I threw a blanket over her and lay back down. About the moment I got all situated back in bed, her begging voice began to resonate through the kitchen walls, soft and needy-like. To be honest, I thought the temperature was scorching, myself. Who knows? Could just be me? I told her what the thermometer read and she seemed to think the thing was broken; so I turned up the heat and wrapped her up again.

Today is one of those days that seemed longer than a usual day, more full maybe. For now my days are themselves full, though I don't feel like I accomplish much. I get up and get Momma her breakfast. Then I get mine and give her her pills. Lord knows, I think she is taking too many. I give her twenty pills in the morning alone. After I get my breakfast I get a load of laundry in the wash and by that time, its time for lunch. I can't move as fast as I used to. It's really kind of frustrating. Funny how so many things I thought I had good control over now have their own kind of control over me.

In any case, today I turned 88. Jean, Betty's sister, hosted things 'cause I can't get 'round to as much as I once did. I used to host my son and his whole family. All the boys and his little girl would stir things up in a magical kind of way. They were each so unique… and even amid the tension and chaos, I think, they got along all right. Now a few of the boys are married and they have children of their own. I sat next to my grandson’s newborn as he held her and started to think how we sat like book ends one next to the other. Beginning to end, as it were. Her fingers so limber and yet just as inaccessible as mine: hers because of ignorance; mine, age.

While birthdays tend to make you think more about your own life and death, how it's fitting and strange that I begin to think about the corn rows and army nonsense; the ladder, paint, and wasps; my two boys and my beautiful wife. Things like falling in love seemed so particularly fickle and weighted, important and unimportant, the same.

   My grandson began to ask a number of unrelated questions, or maybe I thought he was asking one question and I heard three different and unrelated things. It’s those damn pop cans that did a number on my hearing or maybe the end of Mrs. Migilicutty's stick… She did a number on me sinking that stick into my temple for wrong answers or sleeping in class.

   At first, I thought he asked about my army stripes. I told him three stripes means I was a Staff Sergeant at one point. Then, I thought he asked about the farm. I was born and raised there. Hell, raised my kids there. Finally, I think I understood him. He asked if I had any scars with a story behind it. I told him, “no”. I thought maybe that would shut him up, though it’s nice to get a bit of recognition here and there. Seems like everywhere I go, I feel beggarly or unnoticed. 

   He pressed me again, “Did you ever break something?” What kid doesn't break something? I thought. I said something about my collarbone and a football incident. The questions kept coming and I began rehearsing a story with all sorts of funny paradoxes and opening closets with different kinds of things than fantasy lands and witches but closets full of old Christmas cheeses and dinner rolls.

   I was born in the small decent village of Sydney, Ohio. I was the youngest of three boys, though the middle child of six girls. Margaret, Dorothy and Blanche; Chester and Eugene were all born before me. Betty, Ruth and Shirley were younger. Ruth died as a baby. Shirley came along not too many years later.

My parents’ ingenuity seemed to get us through, though Dad's severity distanced him from me. I had to walk to school even as a kid, four or five miles to the Orange Township schoolhouse. I know my grandkids have gotten sick of the woe-is-my-generation lectures, but I think they understand that things were just harder then. That said, getting by has its advantages. Seems like people are generally unhappier these days though they have more things.

   I started first grade when I was something round the age of 6. There isn't much to tell here though I found myself more excited about football and games than I did about school and the farm. At the age of twelve or 13, Mom suckered me into attending the local Baptist church and I found myself making a profession of faith. My inability to understand just how needy I was didn't seem to inhibit my neediness from growing with age. The older I get the more I realize that I have had needs my entire life and God met them, time and again. Because of this, I have been able to draw on the things I once confessed in these difficult times: my need for Christ and His saving grace.

   I ended up breaking my collarbone and dropping out of school somewhere round this time, maybe a bit earlier. I quit school in 8th grade and joined Dad on the farm. I dropped out because I failed twice and got sick of the beatings. I felt like I knew things well enough anyways so why put up with that shit. I had a number of chores and responsibilities that Dad assigned to me. At different points in time, I had to feed the cows, chickens, and hogs; milk and clean, as well as other things. During the winter months I found good work at the elevator tossing grain into bins.

   When I turned something like 16 or 17, Dad started to pay me and I found myself earning a little extra by taking on other chores at the neighbors’. I worked for fifty cents a day for farmers nearby. Our employer owned three farms in my area so it made work kind of easy to find.

   I don't know how it all works but the Lord wasn't the only one that noticed me at church. Miss Betty Zirkle started to pay close attention to me. We were set up on our first date: we were sent to the skating rink and we ended up holding hands by the force of silliness. While we had struck up a friendship, the world had gone off to war. In these difficult times, all my buddies were joining the fight. I felt like I needed to join them. After having deferred my draft twice for farming sake, I didn't want people to think I was coward or somethin’.

   I joined the army and set off for Alabama for training there. During the break, I found myself a ring and took Betty by the hand. I can't remember where we were in my parents’ house, but I know my knee shook more, then, than it does now. That whole break seemed to come and go, far too quickly. Through the tears, I waved goodbye and I joined my company in Kansas where we waited for our assignments. I don't know what we were thinking, Betty and I. I don't know if we believed we would for certain see each other again. I don't know? Nothing seemed certain then; save Christ and Him crucified.

   They held us in Kansas no more than a couple days and they transferred us to a neighboring state - Lord knows which one. Not too much later, they shipped us to Washington State to await the ship to Saipan. Infantry has its machismo draw, but I don't think I was looking to die. In Saipan, the news of Jap cease-fire reverberated through the base. Two bombs and the war seemed like it was over. It didn’t seem real. How could two bombs end a war of this magnitude? Big bombs, I guess.

   I don't think I ever grew tired of receiving Betty's letters. It made such an impression on the guys that they held me down and tattooed my forearm BMZ, her initials. It was times like this I was really grateful for a friend like her. Funny how lonely it can get surrounded by so many people. The things you miss... the people...

We were transferred again to Guam, where we relieved a company that had served through the war. The administration took volunteers and so I found myself volunteering for mess-hall responsibilities and they made me a cook. I didn't know much about politics but I knew well enough to make sure the Captain was fed well. “Don't bite the hand that feeds you.” Sure. But if you feed the one feeding you well enough, it seems to pay off. Captain sent me off to cooking school in Hawaii. After training, I returned by boat to Guam. The twenty-one-day journey set us on base in the evening right after supper had been served. The boys told me the Cap. was waiting for me. I will never forget the way he looked at me and pointed saying, “You are the Mess-hall Staff Sergeant and you start tomorrow morning.” Either the shit they were feeding the boys was just that bad or I had made an impression upon him before leaving. I guess in this case both may have been true.

   The war had been over a good while now and it was just a matter of time before they sent us home. Eventually that call came and we set sail for San Fran. some time that summer. The boat cook needed an extra hand; so, I pitched in during our trip home. I went from the boat and took orders for the train, being set in charge of the cooking there.

   Just for the record, I had my secrets. I knew how to make the boys happy. When we ran out of meat, I found the boys some meat for their eatin'. They didn't need to know I dressed the kitchen rats. I did what I could with what I had and that seemed to make the boys happy enough. This made my job worthwhile. My train north connected with a train east and I was headed home.

   Home. The word had a particular ring to it that seemed so sweet. I mean, landing state-side felt pretty good but getting home was unmatched. The way my baby embraced me. The smell of the October sky, all lit up with flickering stars undimmed by the noise of city lights. This was home.

I got home and Dad was picking corn. I thought to help out a bit or maybe it was just that he suckered me into doing it for him. In any case, I ran the picker a couple different times that fall. I got to know the Zirkles a bit better. They were a unique bunch in much the same way as Keith's kids. Lord knows they cared for each other, though wives and husbands brought more chaos and tension that any of them new how to manage. We could only pray that things didn't get worse… They did, though. Truth is, I don't think I prayed near as much as I should have. It’s easy to grow bitter. Too easy.

   Sometime after getting back I started work at the Sechour's Bakery. Three months after I got back, Betty and I got married. Funny thing is, Momma Zirkle had to sign Betty off to me cause she was a day shy of 18. We got married January 18, 1947. Keith was born 10 months later.

   I made porterhouse rolls and wedding cakes until sometime that spring. Offenbacker, our mailman, gave me a job as a farm-hand. That season I planted for him though I didn't get to harvest the crop. I took on a new position under Hershel Covault. Keith was born that November. Dick's birth marked about the ninth year we were there.  I stayed at Covault’s for about thirteen years.

   There was a time that it became clear we needed to leave so I left the farm… and for good. We moved to the Bradegon's, taking up a factory position in Sidney. I stayed at Bradegon's for 'bout 2 years, 'til I moved to Fletcher. Right around the early 60's, we bought and moved into the house on 2 East Main right next to the Fire Depot. At Stolle’s Sidney factory, I work along a line of boys pressing parts and then moved to another section of the plant where we set up zip-top stamping machines for bottling companies. After a lay-off I re-applied and was given a different position under Stolle. I was assigned to metal sidings.

   Stolle owned half of Sidney, at least it seemed like it. I got to meet the man once. Though I didn't treat him the same way I treated Cap in the army. Things were different. I had a job to do. Stolle stood right in front of the aluminum roll when I had to stitch a new roll. I pushed him out of the way and did my job. Though I don't really think I made too much of an impression, I was given the foreman position soon after I started.

   Eventually, it became clear I needed to move on, so I found good work with Ferguson, a construction company. I painted on the side to make ends meet only to take it up more once I left Ferguson's. Things kind of blossomed and withered from there, a little of both as is only natural. Keith went off to college got married had kids… Dick, well, poor kid… He…

   Just then Dick came and told me that Mom wanted to go. I pushed myself away from the table and one of Keith’s boys brought me the walker. I said my goodbyes and they were said to me as I made my way to the car little by little. I found myself seated in the back seat on my way back to Fletcher. Sitting back, it’s funny what people remember. Joe remembered the candy treats. Seth, my false teeth tricks. Sam remembered my smoking and how I wished they would never start; Ray, my silly goodbyes. Maxine, said something sweet about how I try to take care of my Girl, and Jean, my Girl's mom. Whatever was said, I am sure thankful it’s these things they remember. I am thankful that I got to play a bit of euchre on my birthday and I am glad I won.

Just some thoughts...

The legacy of the evangelium hammers right at the substance of my own heart. The burden of my regrets, frequent failures, despair and idiosyncratic secret sins lobbies hurling insults that seem to penetrate ever deeper the longer I spend in this “dark world and wide”(Milton). The substance of that etching silence reminds me that partnership is just as endearing and enviable as canker soars on Sunday. The bother of loneliness is just as cold and recalcitrant that contentment seems just as impossible. The loss and the gain have a paradoxical movement spiraling away with out the impetus of my own planning or progress without imposition, though there are days I feel like I have the reigns. These contrasting bipolar tendencies exist in every Christian and the Gospel is both the culprit and the medicine. Christ's wounds have made us priest to God. His work provides means and reason for the kind of lifestyles we care to lead counter to the “call of the wild.” The Gospel preached to Adam that makes us Abraham's and therefore Christ's, is the same Gospel lived out by God in Christ “to wit the filth” (Bunyun). My propensities toward despair and egotism, self-centered-ness and loneliness have their own death in the death of the death of Christ.

Brief lecture given at Vespers

I thought that it would be helpful as a kind of interlude into our own acapella time to entertain an integral distinction. Essentially, it is one of nature and the spirit, the natural and the spiritual. Sure, the interconnectivity and relatedness of the two makes the tension of distinction a rather difficult thing. You might think what does this have to do with singing and worship. Its my argument that without a sense of the distinction unconsciously or consciously, we risk worshiping the True God, wrongly.
Theologically, we have the terms General graces and Special Graces. General graces are those graces given to all mankind “The rain falls of the head of the unjust and just alike.” Creation articulates something about God as it is His Art giving a standard for beauty in general even as it serves as a type and shadow of the “spiritual.”
So we appreciate the noise of someone singing on the toilet in a different way than we do Bach... we appreciate the smell of the same toilet signer in a way different than a rose... We have a framework from which we can describe and define good from not so good...
That said, this is something distinguished though not unrelated to those Graces specially given by God to His people. Remember the Church is given the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God does not abide with all men. You are privileged and this should induce humility and earnestness, not egotism and pride. Without time to tease out all the implications of the distinction, it fits our purposes in this respect.
The distinction has everything to do with the components of that in which we hope to participate, because if all we are concerned with doing is singing we will miss the special reasons why we gather. This may very well be a principal reason we are so disenchanted with church gatherings. If all we see in church gatherings is singing, a lecture, and a social hour, we miss the larger reason why we have gathered. We have gathered because we believe certain things are true. We have affirmed things with our minds and hearts about reality. We have gathered because we believe in Christ's work in Living a life of obedience to all the positive and negative proscriptions of the law in our place, his death for our sins, his resurrection to conquer the last enemy, even death and his ascension... This is not all we believe but we have our grounds and these grounds for gathering are bound up in a perception of God informed by His Word that by the Hearing of the Word the Spirit given by the Father and the Son may act out a sanctifying grace among us and in us to the praise of God alone.
Ultimately, we gather as an act of obedience to God and for God. And He promises to participate with us and bless us in grace as we bless him in praise. With not even a hint of tit for tat, we gather interested in making a joyful noise unto the Lord obeying his command to sign songs of hymns and spiritual songs. Of Consequence, the benefit is two fold: the general thrill and beauty of song singing and the special wonder of participating in an act of worship with God and for God. We are interested in general beauty because it is bound up in an extension of God's own being. And we are interested in the spiritual because of the relationship we have to God in Christ.
This ought to liberate us out of the idiocies of indifference and preference that so often accompany “worship.” Whatever tool that we use in the practice of the presence of God in song, it appropriately is an instrument. An instrument for a practice chiefly interested in affirming things with our minds so that our affections might be rightly informed. Without affirming true things, we invite illusion and the appearance of blessings.
This doesn't mean, “Oh my gosh, I really cannot sing so I cannot participate.” Do we say this about babies who cannot yet walk? Do we say this about our child who does not yet know how to ride a bike? Granted, it may be that a child may never learn to walk or ride a bike but this is in a way unnatural.
Honestly, do we say this kind of thing in any other domain? In our classes, what is our standard? Obviously, the teacher or his expectations provides a standard for the student because the one who knows the most has the best grasp on how little it is he really knows. The best signer too has the best grasp on how much it is he has yet to appreciate about voice in general.
A general concession may then help us, we are all learning and with learning comes the wear and tear of misunderstanding, and mistakes and tension. This is normal and natural. The music elite like to refer to it as dissonance. That said, part of signing involves listening, intentional listening. The kind you exert when you thrust your feet into movement attending to the instructions given by the one who knows how to ride a bike.
Note, that as we sign together corporately there is a real sense of community. It may very well be that through an exercise like this where a sure goal is in mind that we profit one by affirming things together with our minds, and two by participating in the awkwardness and thrill of melody, harmony, and dissonance in song to the Glory of God alone.