Six-Word Essays on Time

By Allan Roy Andrews

               Now always dies

in clock time.

Streams of time

eventually dry up.

Life gives, but

Time takes away.

Clocks truly lack

faces and hands.

Has anyone seen

a clock smile?

Moment by moment

time abandons us.

The six-word essay is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, who took up the challenge of telling a story in just six words.

The form has been popularized in recent years, largely through the online publication of Smith Magazine http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/ and Narrative Magazine http://www.narrativemagazine.com/.

Whimsical Theology I: The humanity of Jesus

Incarnation at Ease:  Thoughts on bread, beer, and John Prine’s “Everybody”

By Allan Roy Andrews

          An anonymous 20^th-century devotional writer, reflecting on Jesus’ proclamation in the gospel of John that He is the “bread of life” (John 6:35), casually asserts that bread is “the most basic food there is.”

          Without challenging the historical and liturgical implications of Christianity’s prayer for our daily bread or the cultural significance of bread as a fundamental and necessary sustenance of life (as in prisoners, the hungry, and the fasting staying alive on bread and water alone), I wonder about putting bread in this exalted position.

          After all, aren’t the basic ingredients of bread the same as, or at least similar to, those that go into the making of beer?

          What would it do to our theology—especially our view of the Incarnation—if Jesus had proclaimed, “I am the beer of life!”?

          Many, from Martin Luther to Brennan Manning, would rejoice at such a seeming earthy assertion.  This notion implies we might meet the savior as easily in a local pub as in a church sanctuary:  What a drinking buddy we have in Jesus!

          Sure the notion is a bit whimsical, but not, I think, without merit.  Our attempts to understand how God could become a man (pitching his bodily tent among us) must allow that being fully human might mean drinking beer as well as eating bread with us (and would allow us to give thanks for our daily grains in all their forms).

          Such thoughts form what I like to think of as whimsical theology, and one of my favorite proponents of this thinking is the singer and songwriter John Prine.  Consider Prine’s encounter with Jesus in the lyrics of his song, “Everybody.”

         

While out sailing on the ocean;

While out sailing on the sea;

I bumped into the Savior,

And He said, "Pardon me."

I said, "Jesus, you look tired."

He said, "Jesus, so do you;

Oh, sit down son

'Cause I got some fat to chew."

Chorus:

Well, he spoke to me of morality,

Starvation, pain and sin.

Matter of fact, the whole dang time

I only got a few words in.

But I won`t squawk--

Let `im talk--Hell, it`s been a long, long time,

And any friend that`s been turned down

Is bound to be a friend of mine.

Chorus:

Now we sat there for an hour or two

Just eatin' that gospel pie,

When around the bend come a terrible wind,

And lightning lit the sky.

He said, "So long, Son, I gotta run;

I appreciate you listenin' to me."

And I believe I heard him sing these words

As he skipped out across the sea.

Chorus:

See, everybody needs somebody that they can talk to,

Someone to open up their ears

And let that trouble through.

Now you don`t have to sympathize

Or care what they may do,

But everybody needs somebody that they can talk to.

Everybody needs somebody that they can talk to.

Lyrics ©1972 John Prine

           I'll drink to that!  Just remember:  One cannot live by beer alone.     

'Crazy Heart': It's in the music--a divine call?

By Allan Roy Andrews

It’s not in the acting; although, Jeff Bridges does an outstanding job portraying a country singer waging a losing battle with fading fame and booze.

             

It’s not in the romance; although, Maggie Gyllenhaal is captivating as the younger lover of the troubled star.

It’s not in the script; although, the story moves intelligently from bowling alley to big stage with lots of foreshadowing in dialogue and drama.

             

It’s not in the booze; although, for a change there’s some deep reality to the hope provided through 12-step  programs, and in the end sobriety trumps a doomed sexual liaison.

             

It’s none of these that make “Crazy Heart” one of the outstanding movies of 2009; it’s in the music!

             

For one thing, Bridges is as admirable a singer as he is an actor, and his renditions of “A Hold on You,” “Fallin’ and Flyin,’” “Brand New Angel,” and snippets of the Academy Award winning song, “The Weary Kind,” mesmerize.

             

It helps to be a fan of country music to enjoy “Crazy Heart,” but the people who put this film together are connoisseurs of the genre.

             

Consider the songs that fill the background and carry Bridges’ staggering performance along its travels from drunkenness to degeneracy to dalliance to dangerous neglect to deliverance:  Buck Owens singing “Hello, Trouble”; the Louvin Brothers singing “My Baby’s Gone”; Kitty Wells singing “Searching”; Waylon Jennings singing “Are You Sure Hank Did It This Way”; Lucinda Williams singing “Joy”; George Jones singing “The Color of the Blues”; the Delmore Brothers singing “I Let a Freight Train Carry Me On”; and in a happy transition scene (a balloon ride symbolic of transcendence), Townes Van Zandt singing “If I Needed You.”  The music of “Crazy Heart” is more than window-dressing; it’s the dynamic driving the script.

             

Bridges’ cry for help:  “I want to be sober,” and the portrayal of his session at a treatment facility should hearten the evangelists of 12-Step programs.

             

In that regard, I believe I detected a lyric change that might credit the emphasis 12-Step programs place on divine intervention.

             

Recovering from drunkenness, Bridges’ character, Bad (Otis) Blake, entertains in his friend’s bar with the song, “Brand New Angel.”

             

I’ve trooped through Web sites seeking the lyrics of this Greg Brown song.  The chorus of which goes:

“Open the gates, welcome him in;

“there’s a brand new angel, 
a brand new angel . . ."

The final line in the versions I searched is given as:

“With an old idea”; or

“With an old violin."

However, if you listen carefully to Jeff Bridges’ film rendition (not the soundtrack cut), the final line is:

             “Who doesn’t know me.”

Can this be God’s call to open the gates?   

Serendipitous laugher: Two experiences

By Allan Roy Andrews

             Experience No. 1:

Radio-television personality and humorist Art Linkletter died last week at 97.  Until about two years ago, when he suffered a mild stroke, Linkletter was still active on the philanthropic circuit.

             A few years before that, I heard Linkletter entertain at a small school fundraiser.  Linkletter, whose adoptive father was a Canadian preacher, told someone at that gathering that he “liked to help out small Christian schools.”

             In his comments that night, Linkletter told a joke that I have commandeered as a staple of fun found in growing older.  Here’s the joke:

“You know you’re getting old when you bend over to pick something off the floor and you say to yourself, ‘What else can I do while I’m down here?’”

I have learned experientially what Linkletter spoke of.  So I’ve used the joke a number of times, and it never fails to elicit hearty laughs.

Two of Linkletter’s books also keep me smiling:  Kids Say the Darndest Things, and Old Age is Not For Sissies.

Experience No. 2:

For the group’s edification, I recently read to my Bible discussion gathering a favorite poem by Billy Collins called “Flock.”

Here’s the brief poem:

It has been calculated that each copy of the
Gutenberg Bible . . .  required the skins of 300 sheep.
–from an article on printing.

I can see them squeezed into the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed,

all of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike

it would be nearly impossible
to count them,
and there is no telling

which one will carry the news
that the Lord is a shepherd,
one of the few things they already know.

--from The Trouble with Poetry, by Billy Collins.  (Random House, 2005.)

After a moment of silent reflection, one member of our group put me—and several others—in stitches when he said,  “I’m having a Gary Larson moment,” referring to the prize-winning cartoonist of The Other Side who was noted for his surprising and often warped sense of humor.

“I can see a room full of monks, having just sheared a flock of sheep, taking up their calligraphy pens and writing verses of sacred scripture on the flanks of the shorn animals,” my friend continued.  “They probably had a difficult time keeping the pages in order!”

It was a wonderful moment, and if Billy Collins ever reads about our experience, I have a feeling he’ll be smiling broadly too.  And if Larson ever reads this report of my friend’s experience, he’ll probably be saying, “I wish I’d thought of that!”

             

'Faith at Ease Lite': Reforming this blog

By Allan Roy Andrews

             I attended a writer’s conference several months ago at which the emphasis leaned decidedly toward writing for electronic media, and the predominant and repeated axiom asserted:  online essays should avoid the curse of excessive scrolling; that is, keep those blogs to a maximum of 400 words.

             Readers, especially young readers, increasingly read on a computer (or on a pad device).  Newspapers have taken this pronouncement to heart.  At least one well-known newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, during the past year abandoned print and offers its news online (there is a vestige of print in a weekly news summary).  Other major publications—newspapers and magazines--are leaning in the same direction.  Writers take note:  shorter is better.

             I once claimed I’d discovered the secret of writing a successful newspaper column.  Keep it under 600 words, I argued.  In the era of electronic blogging, 600 words means long-windedness.

             The standard is 400 words.  In taking stock of my archive of postings for this blog, I estimate my average entry is between 900 and 1100 words (and I claim to be an editor).  I’ve fallen prey to the notion that longer essays encourage deeper reflection.

             I repent.  I am taking a new tack and aiming for postings of 400 words or less; I call it “Faith at Ease Lite,” and in a way that title captures the conviction.  Eugene Peterson, using Job’s comforters as illustrations in his book, Subversive Spirituality (Eerdmans, 1997), reminds us that much of our talk about Christian spirituality is “chatter.”  I confess a proneness to such chatter, and my archives are convicting evidence.

             Of course, the other lesson urged upon bloggers at the same writer’s conference: Write consistently and often. 

             So I stop here, in the neighborhood of 300 words, and hope to be back more often.

             Be at ease.