Saturday, February 19, 2022 (today’s lectionary)
Wisconsin dreams. Flawless. Be here now.
“On the wind in February,
snowflakes float still. Half inclined to turn to rain,
nipping, dripping, chill.”
– Christina Georgina Rossetti,
English writer of romantic, devotional and children’s poems
(Reprinted from UIUC Japan House weekly update, 2/11/2022)
I am always partly in Wisconsin, often on Lulu Lake near East Troy where my friend Don spends most of the year. I’ve lived in Wisconsin for many wonderful days, weeks and years. Yesterday afternoon I spent a couple of hours in north central Wisconsin, first on the phone to Appleton for a conversation with my friendly helper, Jake at Thrivent Insurance, and then reading a note from old friend David, who lives with his family even further north, up where the air is clear and he listens to Mercy Me. The temperatures are frigid in the winter and mosquitoes race around during their short, miserable lives sucking blood in the summer, but the pine trees soar and the skies are blue, and somewhere deep in that mysterious Menominee woods, there be bears!
When I lived an hour north of Madison in the woods on the shore of Lake Wisconsin, we had a beautiful brown dog named Shawano. He loved to lead me down trails around our house, and then I led him home. Sometimes I thought how good it would be to take Shawano to the county he was named after, settle into a cabin, and live a right life, solitary and quiet, traveling to the city only now and then to buy food and blankets. Saying little.
Everyone speaks falsehood to his neighbor. With smooth lips they speak, and double heart. May the Lord destroy all smooth lips and every boastful tongue.
If I lived there now I’d be afraid of forest fires.
Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze … but now, the tongue is also a fire.
I would have a strong brown dog, perhaps, but not much else. And it’s only in my dreams that I walk the forest trails and look for firewood, while Shawano chases squirrels.
Every kind of beast and bird can be tamed by we humans, but no man can tame the tongue.
I could have taught freshman composition, maybe at Nicolet Bible Institute north of Shawano, read books in the evening by the woodstove, and (following up on my ballooning life on Lake Wisconsin) even learned to fly a missionary plane. I hope I would have been an obedient student and humble teacher, helping the college kids learn to love the questions, leading some or many of them into the joys of poetry and literature and educated imaginary adventures around the world, into centuries past and those to come, all while they wrote their daily Morning Pages.
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you realize you will be judged more strictly, for we all fall short in many respects.
As retirement approached I might stretch my budget and buy this house 40 miles south, get to know a young man with a snow plow, and pray outside every morning all year long. On Friday and Saturday nights I surely would spend evenings five minutes away (down Lulu Lake Drive) at the Cottonpatch Supper Club, reclaiming Wisconsin history, drinking Old Fashioneds and eating fresh lake perch or King Cut prime rib. Maybe a cold Leinenkugel now and then. And as at every supper club, the relish trays are to die for.
The heavens were opened and the voice of the Father thundered: This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.
In this green place on the planet less touched and tainted by the 21st century, I think I would enjoy sitting outside at midnight when I could, all the house lights out, getting lost in the Milky Way and listening for that Thunder that could only mean one thing. Maybe It will come tonight.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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