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

UPHILL

by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Christina Rossetti was an Anglican Christian, who, after E. B. Browning's death, became England's most prominent poet, though today, in our modern/post-modern era she is largely overlooked. (Many modern anthologies of 19th century English poets do not contain or mention her works.)

Rossetti, like so many whose writings touch our souls deeply, suffered greatly, enduring long periods of melancholy, probably due to the fact that she was abused as a child, or so her biographers believe. Her road, in actual fact, wound uphill "the whole long day."

Yet her faith in God seldom wavered and in her final years Rossetti turned her pain into great good, writing and publishing her most compelling devotional and children's poetry and serving as a volunteer in a home in London for under-age prostitutes.

The structure of her poem, "Uphill," lends poignancy to its over-all appeal. Her questions lie buried deep in our own thoughts. Someone answers with authority and assurance.

UPHILL

Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you waiting at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

It's sometimes said, when old, that we're "over the hill," with the inference that everything now is downhill. I find aging to be just the opposite, however: the road winds uphill all the way and the steepest slopes may lay ahead. Old age does not necessarily bring respite and repose, but greater toil and effort "the whole long day"-'til night closes in.

But is there for the night a resting place?

There is a roof for when the slow, dark hours begin, for Jesus has promised, "I go to prepare a place for you." (If it were not so he would have told us.)

May not the darkness hide this place?

No, for Jesus has shown us the way to our Father's house. We cannot miss that inn.

Shall we meet other wayfarers at night?

Yes. Those who have gone before will be waiting for us there. The Lord has given and taken them away, but he will give them to us again, better, wiser, stronger, more beautiful than ever before.

Then must we knock or call when we're in sight?

No, Love, like the Prodigal's father, will rush to embrace us and bring us in from the night.

Shall we find comfort there, travel sore and weak?

Without a doubt, "the weary traveler will be welcomed home and will find rest there."[1]

Will there be beds for me, and all who seek?

Certainly, for our Lord has promised: "In My Father's house there are many places to dwell." All are welcome there where every comfort that Love can give awaits them.

"And you know the way..." Jesus said...[2]

Doublehaul Dave

[1]Samuel Rutherford
[2] Read John 14:1-6