Saturday, February 8, 2025
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Wumps
Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest awhile. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Miles and Jasper spent a few hours with us yesterday. We drove through the rumbling, sweeping, octopus-like car wash with the moonroof open, we ate hot dogs and put together a new Lego police car. Margaret and I finished a 60-piece jigsaw puzzle in record time. At their Austin Classical School playground Miles showed off his swinging prowess, hurling himself up and down through the air with the greatest of ease. Jasper stood up on a tire swing while I pushed him, something he said his teacher does not allow. Very proud of themselves, they were.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. You make me lie down in green pastures.
Most of all, we read The Wump World, a book Bill Peet wrote and illustrated in 1970. We read it for the second time. As I read it they left their Legos and curled up on the couch where Margaret and I were sitting. Bill’s book might have been written in 2025, as our new administration talks about getting a rocket to Mars in preparation for colonizing there, leaving the planet we have torn to pieces to start over somewhere else.
You know, like when the Europeans (that’s most of us) came to America and displaced those indigenous families living here to begin building the world we live in now. Like many of the native Americans, the Wumps did not fight back. Their life as grass-eating forest-dwellers moved underground, where they survived by eating moss and drinking water from underground springs, listening to the vast chaotic noisy world above them.
You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.
In Bill’s book the colonizers come from a planet called Pollutia. They are, tweaking a word coined by Jonathan Swift, called Pollutians. In their impatience, they ruin the environment of the Wump world, and soon must find another planet, where they can try again.
As they reboard their colonizing spaceships and take off for the next New World, their constant noise is replaced by sudden, profound silence. After a long time listening, they decide to climb up out of their cave.
Led by the biggest Wump, they crept up the tunnel to find the cave entrance covered by a crust of cement. With one powerful push of his snout, the biggest Wump bumped his way through.
Of course what they found on the surface of their planet was worse than they imagined. “The broad layers of hard, flat crust covering the earth felt strangely cold under their feet.” The buildings and highways filled all that had been meadows and streams.
So they began to walk.
You walk with me beside still waters. You restore my soul. Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
The lie of scarcity, which we have trouble not believing, never affected Jesus. I imagine Jesus walking, with his disciples, walking, walking till they are tired, then sleeping, sleeping, finding just enough food. Sometimes they took a boat across the Sea of Galilee, as Jesus began healing the sick. Gradually, and then in a rush, the people came.
When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
There is more than enough, he told them. When they were hungry, he told the disciples, “You give them something to eat.” And then when his disciples obeyed him, they found there was plenty for everyone.
The Wumps found plenty too.
In time the murky skies would clear up and the rains would wash the scum from the rivers and lakes. The tall buildings would come tumbling down and the freeways would crumble away. And in time the green growth would wind its way up through the rubble.
The Wump world did not, however, become the peaceable kingdom. Bill Peet did not include a savior in his parable. His story ends somberly, with more than a little grief.
But the Wump World would never be quite the same.
The bible’s Book of Hebrews, which we have been reading for several days now in the lectionary, ends with greater promise.
May the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep by the Blood of the eternal covenant, furnish you with all that is good, that you may do his will.
May he carry out in you what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
(Hebrews 13, Psalm 23, John 10, Mark 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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