Thursday, January 20, 2022                                      (today’s lectionary)
Songs, such as make wind worthwhile
Women came out from each of the cities of Israel to meet King Saul, singing and dancing, with joyful songs, with tambourines and lyres.
At our nearby Austin playground yesterday afternoon I told Andi the temperature was 79 degrees. She has lived here for twelve years; this was not a miracle to her. But in Springfield, Illinois the high yesterday was 27, and the low last night was 6. Plus wind. Dangerous to be outside, frostbite weather. Don’t breathe in the air without protection, you might freeze your lungs. And don’t, above all DO NOT, touch your tongue to a flagpole! Our grandkids Miles and Jasper were swinging and sliding and climbing all over the Austin playground, touching their tongues to whatever they wanted. Our grandkids Jack and Aly are shivering in their boots up in Springfield, keeping their wet tongues solidly inside their completely closed lips. DO NOT touch your tongues to a flagpole!
Last night the winds picked up in Texas, and the temperature dropped to 31. We curled up in our beds, covered our heads, and slept the sleep of the innocent. (This is not unlike hibernation, except we get up for breakfast.) I asked Alexa to play “crickets.” She was happy to oblige. The crickets chirped all night. But there are no crickets outside, certainly not in Illinois and I think not in Texas, either. They might have crawled underground, or not … I don’t know what crickets do in the cold. Maybe they die.
Like we might too, when we’re unable to find a warm place to sleep.
It’s likely to get colder tonight. Margaret brought our plants inside. We can clip bits of mint and parsley off and use them inches away in our kitchen. That sounds cozy, but just a few feet away the wind is blowing hard, and everything is freezing. I think of the caves and desert where Saul and David chased each other, hid from each other, did everything except kill one another. Quite often cold. Quite often very cold. Winter winds threatened them on the plains of Hebron, and they could not help each other.
My wanderings you have counted; my tears are stored in your flask; are they not recorded in your book? I am bound, O God, by vows to you.
I don’t know how Saul spent his days or nights. But David wrote songs, and then he sang them. Like this one, not written by David but echoing the physical and spiritual geography of those terrible, lonely months, turning into years.
As It Turns Out
Give me, I thought, a stand of tilted pines
guarding white water hurtling into mist.
Give me a steep-cut torrent over stones,
trout-bright, clear and fast.Â
Or better, I wished, give me the reckless reach
of a winter sea, heaved by moon and wind,
salt-sweet mayhem roaring across a beach’s
apron of frosted sand.
But that was long ago. Instead, these plains
remained my home, their waters slow and deep
and muddy, their gritty wind pockmarking plans,
fraying our early hopes.
None of that matters, for in you I have found,
across the decades, water deep and still
enough to fill me, and shelter from the wind
such as makes wind worthwhile.
—Jane Greer, in “First Things” magazine, February 2022
Jesus heard David’s songs. When the mountain goats cleared their throats and sang along, Jesus directed them in concert, reveling in the music of his creation and a boy who loved him. I imagine Saul heard those sweet songs too, from a ways off, sitting outside his tent when for the thousandth time he could not sleep.
Jesus had cured many and, as a result, those who had diseases were pressing upon him to touch him. And whenever unclean spirits saw Jesus they would fall down before him and shout, “You are the Son of God.” Then Jesus warned them sternly not to make him known.
Would Saul have turned to Jesus on the Sea of Galilee? Surely he would, there with the crowds pressing up along the shore. Wouldn’t he too have been healed, the evil spirit inside him broken and released? But, no.
Instead, unable, Saul wasted away, yearning to hear God’s voice again, and wept.
(1 Samuel 18-19, Psalm 56, 2 Timothy 1, Mark 3)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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