A PINCH OF THIS, A PINCH OF THAT

"A pinch of this, a pinch of that, a Dewey button, and a French-fired bat." Those in the know recognize a witch's spell from one of the "Fractured Fairy Tales" on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. It is somewhat descriptive of the miscellany of this blog.

Lent, Holy Week, and Easter Day are at last past. I suppose I should be discussing the spiritual qualities of this time of year, but for this cleric, it's a time of absolute exhaustion. We clergy don't really appreciate the spiritual aspects of these days because we are so overwhelmed by the work necessary to produce these days. There are extra sermons to write, additional services to plan, and all the usual routine. One finishes the last Easter service and collapses. Most clergy take the Monday following Easter as a day off, but pay for it on Tuesday. Ah yes, the answering machine was blinking madly on Tuesday with an assortment of calls that required not only answering, but were the cause of additional work. And then there is email with more requests and, of course, the New Nited States Mail brought more things demanding attention.
Oh, yes, there were 144 people at worship Sunday, but this week will be half that number at best. Low Sunday, it's sometimes called.

Monday had to be a day off because I had been working for nine days without a break, sometimes putting in 12 hour days. The pressing problem becomes clean clothes. One has to do laundry sometime or other.

Ah, but Monday did allow some time for multiple cups of tea. I chose a very special tea, one of the very expensive French blends from Mariage Freres, 30 & 32 rue du Bourg-Tibourg, Paris. The French aren't known as tea drinkers, but the Mariage Freres make some very exotic blends of tea flavored and scented with flowers and fruits. For example, my choice for this Monday was Montagne d'Or, Mountain of Gold. The dealer describes it: "Marigold, safflower and rose blossoms are added with pieces of papaya and apple to create a symphony of flavors. For the afternoon. Because 21% of this tea is composed of flowers and fruits, this tea is low in caffeine."

A tea that elegant required a special pot and cup. Out came my Royal Albert china in the Old Country Rose pattern. It's not quite Hyacinth Bucket's (pronounce Boo-KAY) Royal Doulton china with the hand-painted periwinkles, but it is genuine. Of course I bought the tea pot as a second (the glaze isn't quite right in a few spots) and I think the cups came from T. J. Max, but it is my very own imported china. I sipped my tea in style while reading Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four. (No sticking out the pinky. It's quite vulgar to do that.)

The stress of the last few weeks has taken its toll on me. My back spasmed a couple of weeks ago and it was days before I could straighten out. Then there was the nightmare. It began at the local high school auditorium. I was ushered back stage to watch from a table behind the scenes. It developed into a talent show of sorts, only several of the performers who I knew were singers insisted on playing the harmonica. When it was over, it seems that I was supposed to be one of the judges of the talent show. I hadn't been paying that much attention. Fortunately the person next to me seemed to have a score sheet and I just agreed with the decisions. Actually, it was only to decide which performers would be back next week. I gather this is something done on American Idol, but I never watch that program and don't understand all the fuss. Somehow I ended up with the scoring sheet in a metal file folder and was concerned that it get back to the proper person. Only now I was walking on the campus of the university where I used to teach. There ahead of me was a brown and white gazelle-like animal. (I called it a deer in the dream even though in the dream I knew it wasn't a deer.) And then in the bushes close to me I spotted a snow leopard. (In the dream I called it a panther although I knew it wasn't a panther. The panther was the University's mascot.) Naturally, the leopard attacked the gazelle. I walked around the scene and warned people coming on campus that a panther was attacking an animal. Then I went back to worrying about the metal file folder. Fortunately that was the end. I have no idea what all that means.

Last thing. One day while doing the laundry (seems laundry occupies a large part of my life), a title for a story hit me: "Millard, the Vampire Frog of Pottsylvania." I had used the name Millard the Frog in signing an email once, so it was on my mind. My initial thought was that it would be fun to write a sort-of progressive story with different people writing successive parts, rather after the fashion of ghost stories at camp. I used to do a comic strip story with somebody like that when I was in seventh grade. But I don't know anyone who would want to do that any more, so I decided to write my own story. Usually a story involves a plot first, but I had a title. It's going to be a challenge to develop a story, but I've got the section us to where Millard is about to become a vampire frog. I'm stuck at getting a magic spell right. Of course the inspiration for the frog transformation comes from the Fractured Fairy Tale. I admit I don't know where to go next in the story, although I have a thought about scenes with a crocodile and maybe Dr. van Helsing from the Dracula story, but I don't know how to make something of the idea. Naturally there has to be a beautiful princess, but it needs a twist, and the princess cannot be turned into a vampire frog herself because that's too much like the fractured fairy tale. Oh well, I suppose this will go the way of many of my writings and never be finished, like my musical based on Noah's Flood, several blogs, an article based on my dissertation, and that map of the eastern hemisphere I was supposed to do in third grade. I'm afraid I lack persistence. Well, at least I finished THIS blog.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

HOLY WEEK & EASTER

Dear Friends,


This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. Because of the demands on my time, I won't have anything new for a couple of weeks. This week I re-issue a blog for Holy Weekfrom last year.

O darkest woe!
Ye tears forth flow!
Has earth so sad a wonder?
God the Father's only Son
Now lies buried yonder.

For years as an adolescent and young adult I attended the three hour Good Friday Service run by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod at the Palmer House hotel in downtown Chicago. It would be hard for me to underestimate the impact that ritual had in me. The texts were the seven last words of Christ from the Cross. I remember none of the sermons, but I do remember the hymns, the wonderfully moving passion hymns. Hymn after hymn was sung focusing our attention of the sacrifice of our Lord as words alone never could.

Who was the guilty?
Who brought this upon thee?
Alas my treason,
Jesus hath undone thee.
‘Twas I Lord Jesus,
I it was denied thee.
I crucified thee.

I suppose people would declare these are just too gloomy. At a time when even the church is filled with happy talk, there is an abhorrence on anything that pricks the conscience or dampens the spirit. But the crucifixion was terrible, bloody, and awful. All of Jesus' teachings are pointless if we don't see that he was headed to the cross. For my sake he died. For my sake.

In perfect love he dies;
For me he dies, for me!
O all-atoning Sacrifice,
I cling by faith to thee.

Attendance at Good Friday Services are always rather poor nowadays, a tiny fraction of those who will attend the Easter Services a few days later. But who can understand the glories of the resurrection who has not first understood the grief of the crucifixion. As Luther insisted, we must have a theology of the Cross and not a theology of glory.



What language shall I borrow
To thank thee, dearest friend,
For this thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever,
And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love to thee.

I heard the Baptist minister Tony Campolo talking about a sort of preaching contest he got into with an elderly African-American preacher. Campolo gave it his best, and the old preacher said, "Pretty good, young man, but I'm going to beat you with only seven words." And so the preacher did. The word's? "Today is Saturday, but tomorrow is Sunday."



Awake my heart, with gladness,
See what today is done;
Now after gloom and sadness,
Comes forth the glorious sun.
My Savior there was laid
Where our bed must be made
When, as on wings in flight,
We soar to realms of light.

Sunday will come. The terrors of Friday and the grief of Saturdayn gone, and we are lifted to new realms of joy.

Tis the spring of souls today:
Christ has burst his prison,
And from three days sleep in death
As a sun has risen.
All the winter of our sins.
Long and dark, is flying,
From the light to whom we give
Laud and praise undying.

It's not just all the people, it's not just the lilies, it's not even the hymns with all their joy. It is the truth that sets us free: Christ who was dead is alive. We who were dead are alive. All who fasted on the bitter tears of sin, have been welcomed to the great heavenly banquet.



At the lambs high feast we sing.
Praise to our victorious king.
Who has washed us in the tide
Flowing from his wounded side.
Praise we Christ whose love divine
Gives his sacred blood for wine;
Gives his body for the feast,
Christ the victim Christ the priest. Alleluia.

Christ has died!
Christ has risen!
Christ will come again!

Amen and amen.

May the Lord bless you on your way and greet you on your arival.

Wayne

An UN-bearable Story for Unpleasant Dreams

Last Christmas my sister gave a copy of Grimm's Grimsest,a collection of the most dismal stories from Grimm's Fairy Tales. I'm reproducing one of the worst ones here. I have found three different places claiming the copyright on exactly the same translation, so I'm going to assume it's in the public domain.

Once upon a time there was a child who was willful and did not do what his mother wanted. For this reason God was displeased with him and caused him to become ill, and no doctor could help him, and in a short time he lay on his deathbed. He was lowered into a grave and covered with earth, but his little arm suddenly came forth and reached up, and it didn't help when they put it back in and put fresh earth over it, for the little arm always came out again. So the mother herself had to go to the grave and beat the little arm with a switch, and as soon as she had done that, it withdrew, and the child finally came to rest beneath the earth.

Yuck! This sounds like a typical German story, all moral and no entertainment value other than terrifying the daylights out of little kids if they don't do what they're told. What a morbid tale. And the book burners want Harry Potter banished from the library! Are they nuts? Do they ever actually READ anything that's already in the Library? No, of course not. If they could read, they wouldn't be so anxious to ban books.

I am troubled by whatever it is in the northern European culture that produces folk tales like this one. Maybe it's just so cold and dark in the wintertime that people brood too much and think up dismal stories.

All I know is I'm going to read Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak's book Bears now to get this dreadful image out of my mind. (Another gift from my sister.) It's a great story. With only has 47 word, I should manage to finish it in less than half-an-hour if I don't move my lips.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne