July 5, 2006
Nitrogen
I don’t suppose I’ve ever been so pleased that God rains on the just as well as the unjust as I was this morning to find a thoroughly soaked and continuing-to-be-soaked yard and garden. I’ll not ask how I qualified. There’re some things that if one is all that sure about, needn’t be asked.
This past week, I’ve been “in charge” of CP’s otherwise carefully tended garden. And this same week in these parts, global warming has turned to global parching. All this, of course, quite in spite of those among our leaders who apparently never much watched Mr Wizard’s World.
As for the gardens, I’m certain they’re grateful to get what appears to be enough nitrogen to titrate all the chlorine pumped into them from city water all week. As for me, CP returns tomorrow to find me and my herbaceous charges finally having been rained on indiscriminately by God’s gracious inclusiveness. It’s a message perhaps even the church might heed.
July 4, 2006
Read
When Britain’s King George the Third was throwing his weight around these colonies a couple of centuries ago, he probably wasn’t wearing a dark suit, white shirt, red tie, and a flag pin in his lapel. He didn’t need to. He had a crown together with his divine rights and all. “Patriotism Schmatriotism!”
All those founding worthies who brought his brand of arrogance to an end didn’t have a Supreme Court to slap his wrists or a Constitution to design a balanced system to run a nation. They didn’t even have a nation. But they did come up with a Declaration of Independence and a revolution and did it all the hard way.
Arrogance is as thick and durable as Original Sin and not got rid of lightly. Just look the other way for a moment, believe a few promises about compassionate conservatism, and arrogance is right back in the saddle (well, metaphorically speaking), all pristine and unilateral, complete with swagger and smirk.
This time it’s without a crown, but its got preemption as a way of life and right here at home. It’s taken only six years to turn this country into as much turmoil as it ever had in 1776 — the separation of powers and of church and state, habeas corpus and cruel and unusual punishment, freedoms of speech and the press and the judiciary, the right of privacy, the insidious dangers of secrecy. Read the Declaration again today, and you’ll find another catalogue of wrongs not all that dissimilar.
Yes, read it again. Tough-love yourself and your family and friends enough to get it off the shelf or out of Google, dust it off, and take turns reading those glowing and powerful words. And when you finish, remember that quaint little piece of history recorded in King George’s journal, dated July 4, 1776: “Nothing much of importance happened today.”
July 3, 2006
Eccentricity
A seasonal OoN in tribute to the Great American Game… [Ed note: Rather Anglican, don’t you think?]
THE PITCHER
by Robert Francis
His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at.
His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.
The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.
Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.
Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.
July 1, 2006
Recall
The state trooper’s spinning blue lights reflecting in my rearview mirror were for me and for me alone.
I pulled over and stopped, accepted his invitation to sit in the cruiser’s front seat with him, and listened as he pointed out to me the exact nature of my errancy. We’d just passed a section of interstate where the 70 mph limit had been lowered to 55 mph. Neither my cruise control nor I had noticed.
He asked where I was going and why. I told him I was on my way to lead a day-long seminar at the university up the road. He smiled and returned my license, minus the customary citation. Then, he said, “Reverend, I hope the people in your seminar pay more attention to you than you do to the speed limit markers on this highway.”