Friday, July 12, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Sail Away
Oh Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim thy praise.
I could’ve done without the mess. But I do say to myself that we are the “trespassers” on this Urbana town lot, separated from at least five other lots by surveyor markings recorded in a dusty office somewhere. The water lines and sewer lines are underground and mapped by Julie and others, the electric lines swing quietly above our backyard into a pipe, into our house, into our outlets, into our lives.
We and those before us and around us make sure we know we’re on our property.
The groundhogs could not care less.
Behold I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves, so be as shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. But beware of men! When they persecute you in one town, flee to another. Whoever endures to the end will be saved.
Our backyard groundhogs are happy to dig holes in the unfortunately wooden floor of our beautiful long shed, built with the help of sons and sister-in-law about 1995. That’s awhile, I guess, but the roof made of plastic corrugated roof panels leaks in several places. I tried patching it with duct tape … you can imagine. And then the floor, which could have been concrete but was not, just some thick plywood on top of green 4 x 4’s … well, they chew through that.
We shall say no more, “Our God,” to the work of our hands.
So I have to do something because the groundhogs smelled the sunflower seeds I’d bought for cardinals, then they opened my supposedly unopenable metal box, then they ate and ate, leaving nothing but hulls. After that they knocked everything over while they were fighting for some more, and then they pooped and then they peed, and then they sang a song of possession, at least for one moment of their miserable lives. We are king and queen again. This is OUR home. Ha!
This didn’t happen while we were away in Austin for weeks or more at a time. This happened yesterday, during our big Beryl rainstorm. Or the day before.
I want to feed the birds. It’s a wide world, after all. It’s their backyard every moment of every day. But I don’t want to feed the groundhogs, although it’s their home too. They have dug large entrances in the ground, those groundhogs, on each end of the shed. Hmmm. Should I fill those holes? Should I set out live traps? Should I leave them alone and just clean up the remains? The spilled, eaten, sunflower seed?
Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence.
This is a chance to part with some stuff in that shed. Marc can use some of it. Some of it can be thrown away. Salt and Light is happy to take anything we take there. Lighten the load. Smooth the path. Make what I keep findable! Create in me a clean heart, O God.
In 1995 we wired the shed with electricity and cable TV. We set out a couple of chairs and a bench seat from a van we finally released to Mac’s Graveyard. Of course a TV stand had to have a TV, so we found one of those as well. This was our Teenage Boy-Man Cave. Marc and Chris can tell stories.
Since then, outside this redwood-stained shed we’ve created an outdoor “office” with concrete patio blocks, a couple pieces of garage sale art, two aluminum lawn chairs painted yellow, and a John Deere-colored metal table between them. This colorful installation sits between a gazebo we built at the same time as the shed (which we set on concrete piers, and it still stands straight!), and our Father’s Day picnic table with umbrella and chairs, resting quietly outside our back door under dark green trees and surrounded by light green bushes.
Three outdoor offices, but just two of us. Margaret mostly talks with folks inside, anyway. So really just one of us. One of me, and I’ve been spending time out there. The mosquitoes and flies retreated for a few weeks in June, although now they’re reclaiming their airspace.
Squirrels, birds, groundhogs, mosquitoes, and flies are living here with us, and I want to want to say, “Welcome!” In the movie about Charles Lindbergh, “Spirit of St. Louis,” Jimmy Stewart spent half his flight talking with a fly, debating with the fly whether she added weight if she were flying around the cockpit. Talking to the fly kept Jimmy awake, considering possibilities. When the fly finally flew out the window, he immediately began fighting sleep, fellasleep twice, awakening just in time to drag his plane up from the surface of the sea.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit.
The groundhogs’ food sources are tenuous. They can’t read, but if they could they would argue with Randy Newman and his “Sail Away” song.
In America you get food to eat, won’t have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet.
We humans in America don’t think enough about our wild brothers and sisters. When we (I, at least) do, we mostly just want to control them or kill them or keep them at bay. Today I’m cleaning up after them, and I guess it’s good for me. Randy Newman again, about life in America:
You just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day. It’s great to be an American, sail away!
Course the song is an engaging, challenging play on the songs Africans sang on their way to America’s slave coast. Randy has always known how to crack a whip against the back of our idealized US history. And his songs often make me cry.
Straight are the paths of the Lord. In them the just walk, but sinners stumble in them.
(Hosea 14, Psalm 51, John 16, Matthew 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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