Monday, April 17, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Duc in altum
Enable your servants to speak your word with all boldness, as you stretch forth your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
On Saturday night our friend Pam took her strong, sweet soprano voice from her home at Cave-in-Rock to Paducah, where she joined the choir to sing the fourth movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Joyful, joyful we adore thee, God of glory, Lord of love. Schiller wrote the words and Beethoven brought them to eternal life. Here’s just a small part of the wondrous whole:
Gladly, as His suns fly
through the heavens’ grand plan
Go on, brothers, your way,
Joyful, like a hero to victory.
Or, as Pam sang it:
Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen
Durch des Himmels prächt’gen Plan
Laufet, BrĂĽder, eure Bahn,
Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.
 Arriving home in Urbana yesterday I brought a few things in from the car and laid down on the couch for a late afternoon nap. I turned on the fireplace heater and said, “Alexa, play Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Alexa, turn up the volume.” Falling asleep has never been so sweet. I woke up just as the choir was pumping up the voices. All those German words fell on me, napping under a tree in the orchard, like sweet plums ripe and ready to eat.
I got back later than I planned. First of all I left two hours late. But that’s OK, I have plenty of time. In Tyler, Texas I visited with my good friend Casey for 90 or so rich, hungry minutes at a near-us-both Taco Bell, where our server Janelle did what she could to give us food for free.
As we talked he peeled off a black bracelet he was wearing and gave it to me. “DUC IN ALTUM,” the bracelet said, black on white.
We were sharing examples of the way faith develops in darkness and suffering. Casey’s mother and father are both presently in the hospital. A couple of years ago he and his wife Michelle moved back to Tyler, their hometown, from a parish in west Texas where Fr. Casey had been preaching, so they could be near and dear to their parents as they continued to age. Mostly with grace, but aging nonetheless.
Not German, but Latin on the bracelet. You know, like WWJD bracelets, but Latin. Pope John Paul II liked this phrase very much. It makes me think of the speech in Henry V, “Once more into the breech!” Jesus told Peter, twice, “Put out into the deep!” And there you will find more fish than you can imagine. In Latin, Jesus used the words: DUC IN ALTUM!
But perhaps I will see Jesus walking on the water, and want to join him as Peter did. And what will happen then? “COME! Put out into the DEEP!” It is very true that I might drown if I begin to walk that way. So will I walk that way? Into the deep? As our pastor Jeremiah said on Sunday, “Life is full of little deaths, out of which life always returns.” Still. Into the deep?
I left Casey unwillingly as the afternoon wore on. Through Texarkana into the middle of Arkansas, where tornadoes ripped through Little Rock just last week. Near Malvern, gateway to Hot Springs National Park, a long-time construction project has for three years required tunneling our cars and semi-trucks through a one-lane canyon for several miles. Saturday’s storm began just as I entered the single-lane nightmare.
As they prayed, the place where they were gathered shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
Not last week’s tornado, but pouring rain and heavy hail and driving winds. Interstate highways are safe … until they’re not. Beyond the tunnel, under every overpass cars and pickups huddled out of the storm. Even with our blinkers on, whatever was ahead looked vague and out of focus. The storm pushed me all the way through Little Rock. I stopped about 30 miles farther, in Brinkley where I’d made my reservation. Every room was full. The rain had let up a little. I carried my small bag up the stairs and fell down on the bed.
The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
So grateful to be here. I would look tomorrow to see what dents were on my car. I watched the end of “My Fair Lady” on TCM and just breathed. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Duc In Altum, thank you Lord.
(Acts 4, Psalm 2, Colossians 3, John 3)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
