A MERRY COWBOY CHRISTMAS

For the last few years -- off and on -- my friend Warren and I have collaborated in a Christmas carol project. I write the lyrics and he writes the music. We've produced six or eight of them, and it's a lot of fun. (You can order a CD of these and other original carols from Warren's web site, here.)

Here's one I started a few years ago, but I haven't submitted it to War because I don't think it's really a carol. (I'm not sure what it is.) For now, as here in the midwest we await a great blizzard, it's my blog Christmas card and a prayer that all travelers make it safely home:

It had been the wrong time to be heading for town,
with the wind coming up and the snow coming down;
but, then, it was Christmas, it’d been a lean year –

and he wouldn’t let weather or a few wind-whipped tears

keep him from playing the Santa Claus fool….

Now he’s tryin’ to beat winter back home.

The drift was too high for the old pick-up truck,

so he’d saddled up Star and whistled for luck,

whistled “God Rest Ye” right into the gale,

but the only sound heard on the wind’s lonesome wail

was one little bell he had tied to the mane

of the pony before leaving home.

That dress in the window – he’d been just in time.

The toy at the dime store – he’d waited in line.

Everything closing – the roads piling deep,

still twenty miles – he hopes they’re asleep.

(Though he wished he had told her he was out here alone –

that he’s trying to make it back home).

Gifts of the magi in two saddle bags –

but this wise man’s just lost his way.

The sound of a little bell over the wind.

Will this cowboy be home Christmas Day?

Now the pony’s ahead and he’s fallen behind;

he stumbles in snowdrifts and prays for the sign

of those first Christmas cowboys who, lost in the night,

followed a star to the birth of the light.

As he falls, there’s a bell, and the warmth of the breath

of a pony to lead him back home.

And all he remembers, on each Christmas Eve,

is the feel of his cold fingers making a weave

in the pony’s warm mane – he was too weak to ride

but hung on for dear life at that dear pony’s side –

Then: a light in the window, the cry of a child,

the arms of a woman, and home.

Gifts of the magi in two saddle bags.

A wise man who can’t find his way.

The sound of a little bell over the wind,

and daddy is home Christmas Day.

And a pony named Star led the way.

© 2009, Richard L. Jorgensen

CARGOES OF DIAMONDS, EMERALDS, AND... SNIPPING SNOPPERS?

In Thich Nhat Hanh's "The Miracle of Mindfulness," the author suggests a simple exercise: Each morning upon rising, sit comfortably at the edge of your bed, close your eyes, inhale deeply and exhale, and then slowly form a half-smile. (You can do this now, sitting on your chair.) It has been my experience that, not only is it nearly impossible to stop at a half-smile, during the process (as the smile triggers muscles in the whole face) the brain becomes infused with the feeling of well-being associated with a smile. The mind follows the physical leading of the body.

I experience a similar mind-body connection when I read John Masefield's "Cargoes." Usually when reading a poem out loud one tries to avoid the sing-song rhythm and artificial line endings in order to read it "for meaning." With this poem, however, the rhythm cries out for emphasis, and carries the reader along. It's as though a deeper meaning of this poem is in the rhythm itself. It's fun to read, and it has an effect something like that hard-to-control half-smile.

   Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

   Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

   With a cargo of ivory,

   And apes and peacocks,

   Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

   Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,

   Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,

   With a cargo of diamonds,

   Emeralds, amethysts,

   Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

   Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack,

   Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,

   With a cargo of Tyne coal,

   Road-rails, pig-lead,

   Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

The drum-beat of the poem builds from the mysteriously dignified and majestic "quinquereme" with its ivory and peacocks, slows slightly to examine a proud galleon full of diamonds and emeralds and accelerates near the end with a "dirty British coaster" that sounds like a cousin of Little Toot. By the time you get to the last line you're marching knees-up as though in a child's parade, and you want to clap those "cheap tin trays" together like cymbals!

There's a very interesting English-professor discussion of the meaning of this poem here, but, come on, meaning-schmeaning. This is word-play! I'd love to have a brightly illustrated version of this poem to read with my grandson. It would be as much fun as Dr. Seuss, who pulls not just a smile but a full laugh out of me every time I read

   ...snip with snippers! Nip with nippers!

   Clip and clop with clapping clippers.

   Nip and snip with clipping cloppers!

   Snip and snop with snipping snoppers!

Now, can I really go from Masefield to Seuss to Wordsworth? Yes, I can. One of the most beautiful stanzas in the language (it's in Wordsworth's ode to "Lucy") is moving not just because it's beautiful -- but because it, well, moves in us.

   The stars of midnight shall be dear

   To her; and she shall lean her ear

   In many a secret place

   Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

   And beauty born of murmuring sound

   Shall pass into her face.

The genius of Wordsworth's combination of rhyme, meter, alliteration, and spot-on word choice produces a sound just like water tumbling softly over rocks, and causes the rivulets that dance around Lucy's lovely face to dance in and among the cells of our bodies and the synapses of our minds. (In terms of brain development, this is almost literally true, and it is why reading poetry to children is so important.)

If poetry, as Donald Hall has written, is the highest use of our language, it is because it does something to us -- whether with the obvious rhythms and rhymes of "Cargoes" or Dr. Seuss, or, deeper, with the inexhaustible iambic pentameter of "Paradise Lost" or the silent undercurrents of free verse -- it does something. You're reading a dignified English poet and before you know it you're clapping tin trays together and shouting hooray!

_____________________________________________________________

"Cargoes" (1917), by John Masefield (1878-1967)

"Happy Birthday To You," (1959), by Dr. Seuss, (1904-1991)

"Three Years She Grew" (1800), by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Masefield

Wordsworth

Seuss

TO BIG JOHN, ON OUR BIRTHDAY

I'm pleased to share a one-day-apart birthday with my son-in-law (December 14/15). It reminds me that throughout my childhood I shared a birthday with my dad's best friend, John. Oh, I always got my own kid party, too, but I recall that, especially in some of those younger years, I really thought that it was fun, and very special, to sit at a table with Mom and Dad and John and Thordis and have birthday cake with my big friend, John.

As I grew, I not only got to know John as a sort of uncle, but, now that I look back on it, John and Dad modeled a lasting, solid friendship that I am now blessed to experience with my own friends.

In my pastoral meetings with parents to prepare for the baptism of a child, I like to tell the dads about my dad and John and the other men sitting around the church dining table, drinking coffee; and that those were the same men who were with their kids upstairs, in church, and they were the same guys that my dad and I went hunting with. This was not a culture of "going to church with mom and going hunting with dad."

So here's to John, In Memoriam. (The repeated phrase in the poem--a verbal "tic" of John's--is not an exaggeration.)

"I remember the time your dad and I over there..."

Over there across the room?

Over there east of the Missouri?

Over there on some remembered gravel backroad?

Over there.

Big John used the phrase as punctuation --

direction -- as the comma to his sentences,

his wonderful stories

of pheasant hunting and fishing over there...

"When you were just a kid and your dad and I

took you along to Lake Byron over there

and you got that fish on your line over there

and you looked at your dad over there

and didn't know what to do!"

The older he got, the deeper growled the voice,

the brightness of the eyes not diminished.

And, the less he was able to go anywhere,

the more "over there" became everywhere--

and anything;

the memories of all the times over there that

your dad and I over there....

Until at last, that day in the nursing home,

I sat across from him with the offered communion,

sharing with him the sacrament of the calling

I had entered as much because

he was at all those church basement suppers

drinking coffee with my dad --

as much because he and the other men were there

as because Dad was --

The eyes were duller now. He wasn't speaking;

he wouldn't know me, they said.

But after bread and wine

he provided the whispered post-communion blessing:

I miss your dad so much.

Over there.

WHAT TO SAY, WHAT TO SAY...

ON DITHERING: TWO REFLECTIONS

I. Umm, God, ummm, I umm, was, like, wondering...

If you move in certain circles, you've heard the "just" prayer: "Lord, we just want to thank you and we just praise your name and we just know that you are with us, and we just come to you praying for you to just be with us, and...."

This form of prayer is (almost literally) mindless: The "just" is simply a placeholder when someone doesn't know what to say.

My analysis of this form of utterance is not original with me, and it's not rocket science, but I think the origin of the "just" prayer has three strands: 1) Some proto-pray-er used the word as an expression of pious earnestness, meaning, "simply," or "all we ask is...." This was picked up by others in the prayer circle and 2) it eventually came to be identified in the prayer lexicon as expressive of truly heartfelt communication with God, but finally, 3) it has become a mere place holder. It is a spiritual form of "umm..., errr...." It is dithering prayer.

I believe the antidote to a plethora of justs is the same technique my high school speech teacher taught us as a way to overcome stammering in a public address: Instead of "umm," just pause. A micro-pause. It works. It's a form of silence, which the Apostle Paul advises as a very basic and extremely intimate approach to prayer:

...We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. ~ Romans 8:26

I'm not necessarily suggesting that when one is subjected to a "just" prayer that one should say, "Be quiet!" But that, too, is an invitation to prayer.

II. How About an "A" For Effort?

It was the end-of-term exam: an essay test in English Literature. My friend, Jim, as usual, had read none of the assignments. (He did read the Classics Comic Book version of "The Forsyte Saga.") He sat in the exam room for an impressively long time, writing page after page until the Blue Book was completely filled. A few days later we entered the classroom apprehensively -- the test results were to be returned. Jim opened his essay book to the front page. There, at the top, the professor had written, "Jim, you write very well. F."