DREAM SONG 76: HENRY'S CONFESSION

--John Berryman (1814-1972)

Nothin’ very bad happen to me lately.
How you explain that? -I explain that, Mr. Bones,
terms o' your bafflin’ odd sobriety.
Sober as a man can get, no girls, no telephones,
what could happen bad to Mr. Bones?
-If life is a handkerchief sandwich,

in a modesty of death I join my father
who dared so long ago to leave me.
A bullet on a concrete stoop
close by a smothering southern sea
spread-eagled on an island, by my knee.
-You is from hunger, Mr. Bones,

I offers you this handkerchief, now set
your left foot by my right foot,
shoulder to shoulder, all that jazz,
arm in arm, by the beautiful sea,
hum a little, Mr Bones.
-I saw nobody coming, so I went instead.

"Mr. Bones" was a character in early 19th century minstrel shows that was a straight man for an "interlocutor," a performer that asked questions and engaged the other actors in conversation. The minstrel-show twist in this poem is that Henry, the interlocutor, Mr. Bones, the straight man, and John Berryman are one in the same.

Henry tells his story in the words of Mr. Bones (a.k.a John Berryman) whose father shot himself on the front porch of his home when John was twelve years old. The poet now longs for someone to "set your left foot by my right foot, shoulder to shoulder...arm in arm." Someone to offer him a handkerchief "sandwich"[1] to smother his sobs, someone to give him a reassuring hug.

But he sees no one coming, indeed expects no one to come. Hence the bitter "all that jazz." So Berryman comforts himself instead: "Hum a little, Mr. Bones."

This is the next-to-last of Berryman's 77 Dream Songs and perhaps the strangest and saddest of them all, reflecting more than any his tragic and lonely existence. In 1972, Berryman's life-long depression led him to follow the example of his father and to kill himself by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In a "modesty of death" he joined his father who "dared so long ago" to leave him.

I can't help but wonder: Would it have made a difference to Mr. Bones if someone had put a hand on his shoulder--someone whose heart was filled with God's love?

It would have been difficult to love Mr. Berryman: He was a unpleasant man, known for his angry tirades, his inclination to bully students, and humiliate his colleagues and would-be friends. Who would have believed that underneath his terrible spite lay bottomless loneliness and longing--that he was "from hunger"?

My teacher and friend Ray Stedman once mused in an off-hand way that, "threatened people are often threatening," thus uttering one of those profound simplicities that help to explain life's perplexities. Why are some folks determined to drive us away? Can it be that tragedy, sorrow and bitter disappointment lie at the root of their anger and aggression? Can we look away from the effect-the dry, hard rage they convey-and look to the cause? Can we bring the love of Christ to bear on our understanding of the sad process that turned them into hostile, unattractive people? Can we offer loving kindness in exchange for spitefulness and hate?

Several years ago I came across a Charles Addams cartoon in the New Yorker Magazine depicting a sour-faced curmudgeon, garbed in rumpled pajamas and robe, standing at his apartment door. He had just secured the door for the night with not one, but four locks. He had shut two deadbolts and had secured the chain latch. Only after the last lock was fastened did he notice a small white envelope stuck beneath the door. On the envelope was a large sticker in the shape of a heart. His security system had been breached. Someone finally got in--with a valentine!

Love always looks for a way!

DHR

[1] There's a note of irony here--as though a handkerchief sandwich could satisfy anyone.

There is no one political program, no one political
regime, even democracy, that necessarily follows from the
love of Christ. Each political system has pluses and minuses,
attractive and dangerous features. The key to a good society
is good people. Good people will make good systems. But
good systems will not make good people. Peter Maurin, the
thinker behind Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement,
defined the good society as simply “a society in which it is
easy to be good”.

To say the system is secondary sounds again like a cop-
out. But it is true, for bad people in a society with good
structures will make the structures bad or misuse the good
ones, while good people in a society with bad structures
will make the structures better. It is like putting good peo-
ple in decaying old buildings. They will improve them. But
put bad people in good new buildings and they will destroy
them. An ancient Chinese proverb says, “When the wrong
man uses the right means, the right means work in the
wrong way.”

If people were saints, our political problems would be
solved. They would not be solved magically, but they would
be solved as God would solve them because God would solve
them. For a saint is simply someone who lets God in. And
when God is in, He acts.

Of course, this sounds scandalously simplistic. But it is not
meant to substitute for the hard, specific questions, ques-
tions about institutions and laws and structures. These are
also important. But this is more important.

Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You, (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1990) pp. 216-217

WHO GOES THERE?

Doubt has cast its weird, unwelcome shadows o'er me
Thoughts that life's best and choicest things are o'er.
What but His word can strengthen and restore me.
And this blest fact: that still He goes before.

-J. Danson Smith

Last fall Carolyn and I were driving up a winding mountain road into the Sawtooths when we came across a large band of sheep moving down the road toward us. A lone shepherd with his dogs was in the vanguard, leading his flock out of summer pasture into the lowlands and winter quarters.

We pulled to the side of the road and waited while the flock swirled around us, and watched them until they were out of sight.

I wondered: Sheep are the embodiment of all that is feeble and helpless. Do they fear change, movement, new places?"
Like most old folks, I like the "fold"-the old, familiar places. Like Bilbo, the aging hobbit, "I miss my meal at noon."

But all is shifting and changing these days; I'm being led out, away from familiar haunts and surroundings and into a vast unknown. I wonder: What new limits will overtake me this year, now that I'm older than old? What nameless fears will awaken? Jesus' words come to mind: "When I lead my sheep out, I go before them (John 10:4).

I may well be dismayed at what life holds in store for me this year and next, but my shepherd knows the way I'm taking. And he goes before. He will not lead me down paths too dangerous, too arduous for me; He knows my limits and will strike a leisurely pace. He knows the way to green pasture and good water; all I have to do is follow.

Thus I need not fear tomorrow, or take on its obligations, for tomorrow will take care of itself. God knows all the trouble that lies before me. It "must pass through Him before it gets to me."[1]

DHR


[1] F. B. Meyer

THE PROPER WAY TO PRAY
By Sam Walter Foss

"The proper way for a man to pray,"
Said Deacon Lemuel Keyes,
"And the only proper attitude,
Is down upon the knees."

"No, I should say the way to pray,"
Said Reverend Doctor Wise
"Is standing straight with outstretched arms
And rapt and upturned eyes."

"Oh, no, no, no," said Elder Slow,
"Such posture is too proud.
A man should pray with eyes fast closed
And head contritely bowed."

"It seems to me his hands should be
Austerely clasped in front,
With both thumbs pointing toward the ground,"
Said Reverend Doctor Blunt.

"Last year I fell in Hidgekin's well
Headfirst," said Cyrus Brown,
"With both heels a-stickin' up
And my head a-pointing down.

"And I prayed a prayer right then and there,
The best prayer I ever said.
The prayingest prayer I ever prayed,
A-standin' on my head."

I was raised in a tradition that prayed. We prayed before meals, before meetings, before bed-times, before football games, and before rodeos. We even had morning prayers at my public school, which gives you some idea of how far back I go.

I had no doubt then that prayer did something; I was never sure, however, what it did. And, I must confess, after all these years, I'm still a bit confused. Prayer "is a puzzlement for me," as Winnie the Pooh would say. I pray, but I’m not always sure how it works,

I do know this, however: theological explanations aside, when I'm in deep and desperate need, prayer springs naturally from my lips and from the deepest level of my heart, a solemn truth Foss' bit of whimsy enshrines.

There are no atheists in foxholes, or in any other holes we dig for ourselves. When we're frightened out of our wits, when we're pushed beyond our limits, when we're pulled out of our comfort zones, when our well-being is challenged and endangered, we reflexively and involuntarily resort to prayer. "God help me," is our first language, our natal cry.

"Brief, urgent, frightened words-a person in trouble, crying out to God for help. The language is personal, direct, desperate. This is the language of prayer: men and women calling out their trouble-pain, guilt, doubt, despair-to God. Their lives are threatened. If they don't get help they will be dead, or diminished to some critical degree. The language of prayer is forged in the crucible of trouble. When we can't help ourselves and call for help, when we don't like where we are and want out, when we don't like who we are and want a change, we use primal language, and this language becomes the root language of prayer."[1]

Prayer begins in trouble (and continues because we're always in trouble to some degree.) It requires no special preparation, no precise language, no appropriate posture. We just do it! It springs from us impulsively in the face of necessity. "The natural thing is straight to the Father's knee." [2]

Doublehaul Dave

---

[1] Eugene Petterson, Answering God: the Psalms as Tools for Prayer (New York, Harper Collins, 1989) p. 35
[2] George MacDonald

AN EXCERPT FROM THE PROLOGUE TO THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN

By Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)

And as for me, though that I know but lite,[1]
On bookes for to read I me delight,
And to them give I faith and good credence,
And in my heart have them in reverence,
So heartily, that there is game none[2]
That from my bookes maketh me to go'n,
But it be seldom on the holyday;
Save, certainly, when that the month of May
Is comen, and I hear the fowles sing,
And that the flowers ginnen for to spring,
Farewell my book and my devotion!


When Chaucer tired of his books and devotion he took to the fields and the "flowers in the mead." Me, I hie myself to a mountain stream.

Frivolous, you say, when there is so much work to be done. No, frivolity is a gift of God, a indispensable break from the necessities of life. But more than that: it is a foretaste of heaven's joy, a better metaphor for eternal pleasure than the "solemn" duties of this present world.

C. S. Lewis put it this way: "I do think that while we are in this 'valley of tears'--cursed with labour, hemmed round with necessities, tripped up with frustrations, doomed to perpetual plannings, puzzlings, and anxieties-certain qualities that must belong to the celestial condition have no chance to get through...except in activities which, for us here and now, are frivolous. For surely we must suppose the life of the blessed to be an end in itself, indeed The End: to be utterly spontaneous; to be the complete reconciliation of boundless freedom with order-with the most delicately adjusted, supple, intricate, and beautiful order?

"How can you find any image of this in the 'serious' activities either of our natural or of our (present) spiritual life? Either in our precarious and heart-broken affections or in the Way which is always, in some degree, a via crucis?

"No, Malcolm. It is only in our 'hours-off,' only in our moments of permitted festivity, that we find an analogy. Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for "down here!" is not their natural place. Here they are a moment's rest from the life we were placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven."[3]

Doublehaul Dave

[1] "lite": little
[2] "game none": no longer fun
[3] C.S. Lewis in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, p 92,93

HE PREACHED UPON BREADTH

by Emily Dickinson

He preached upon "Breadth" till it argued him narrow-
The Broad are too broad to define
And of "Truth" until it proclaimed him a Liar-
The Truth never flaunted[1] a Sign-

Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence
As Gold the Pyrites[2] would shun-
What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus
To meet so enabled a Man!

I think Miss Dickinson must have written this poem upon returning home from her Congregation Church in Amherst, and perhaps after listening to a visiting preacher. It's a reminder to all of us to keep things simple--not simpler than they are, but as simple as they can possibly be.

Her observation reminded me of a story I heard in my student days.

It seems that a young man arrived at the gate of heaven and was asked by Saint Peter who Jesus was. The man answered, "He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God." "Well said." Peter replied. "Enter into his rest."

Later, German theologian Paul Tillich arrived at the gate and was asked the same question. "Ah, who is Jesus," he reflected. "Theologically, he is the ground of all being; eschatologically, he is the ground of all hope; existentially, he is the ground of the divine-human encounter."

To which Peter replied, "Huh?"

Doublehaul Dave

[1] "flaunted": to display something ostentatiously
[2] "Pyrites": fools gold

SONNET 116

by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.[1] Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:[2]
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark[3]
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star[4] to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken[.5]
Love's not Time's fool,[6] though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:[7]
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.[8]
If this be error and upon me proved,[9]
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

This is, perhaps, the most loved of Shakespeare's sonnets with it's beautiful, oft-quoted summary: "Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds."

Love, it seems, is the art of persistence: it loves through every change of fortune, time and circumstance. It does not ask for fair exchange, a quid pro quo. It gives—profusely--expecting nothing in return.

Love does not change when a loved one changes. It does not withdraw when the other draws away. It endures love's tempests and torments willingly. It is not thrown off course, nor is it shaken by storms, but remains steady, resolute, and strong.

Love does not fade when outer beauty fades, but grows even stronger. It does not alter through time, but loves till death shall separate one from the other. It bears all things "to the edge of doom."

This cannot be error, for scripture strongly affirms it. To put it Paul's way, love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."[10]

Doublehaul Dave

[1] An allusion to the words of the marriage service in The Book of Common Prayer: "If either of you know cause or just impediment why you should not be joined together in holy matrimony… you do now confess it."
[2] “bends with the remover to remove”: to remove (draw away) from the remover (one who has withdrawn).
[3] The "ever-fixed mark": a lighthouse. The "sea-mark of my utmost sail" (Othello 5.2.305)
[4] "star": Polaris, the north star
[5] "whose worth's unknown": Again, the north star. The star's value can never be calculated, although its height can be measured from the horizon.
[6] "Love's not Time's fool": Love is not at the mercy of time.
[7] "his": time's scythe. Physical beauty bends and falls under his sweep ("compass").
[8] "edge of doom": death. "Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily" (Henry IV, 4.1.141).
[9] "upon me proved": If I am proved to be wrong.
[10] 1 Corinthians 13:8