Friday, October 9, 2020 (today’s lectionary)
Happy birthday, Margaret 🙂
During a car ride home from St. Louis, where we went from Waynesville to celebrate our church’s contribution to the book of Ruth in the Serendipity Bible, our pastor Gary Johnson introduced us to Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor’s radio variety show, capped off as always by a story from Lake Wobegon, where all the women and strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. That would have been in 1987, I think. Maybe on October 9?
Surely this was not on Margaret’s birthday, but perhaps, yes, probably, it was. It must have been. Celebrations have a way of finding us when we aren’t looking for them.
Those who have faith are blessed, whereas all who depend on works of the law are under a curse.
Another time we went to Italy for our twenty-fifth, to Tuscany, and on October 8 we happened upon a small restaurant on a small square in Siena. We had a wonderful meal with couples from England and Scotland, installed at the same table by the Italian proprietor and his wife, who spoke no English but possessed great emotional intelligence and played all three of our national anthems.
It came out that the next day was Margaret’s birthday, and our sweet new Italian friend insisted we return the next night. And we did. Again, the celebration, it came to us.
Let us receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
This year, cooped up in his New York apartment for months, Garrison came out of mothballs and wrote another book/memoir, which he called The Lake Wobegon Virus (in this case, the virus is caused by eating Norwegian/Portuguese/unpasteurized cheese, and it causes those who partake to be overly honest and under-edited in all they have to say, mostly about each other but also about themselves, and then to forget everything they just said.
I finished it yesterday. It’s been fun to read Garrison’s run-along sentences with little punctuation about events of his fictional friends that surely didn’t happen but just might have, and some of it certainly happens in their dreams. Keillor is 78, as he reminds his readers often in the book and on his blog. For him, as for me, there’s no longer any hurry. “I’m old,” he says, “The great democracy of death approaches and success means practically nothing.”
How refreshing. It’s about time Garrison and I and perhaps most of the rest of us stopped getting ahead of God. God speaks, and I listen.
There’s no hurry, David. Let me lead the way. I’ve been there, I know the trail.
At least I listen for a minute or two. But even after, when I get pumped up, my body doesn’t pump up with me, and in spite of myself I sit back down and listen a little longer. There really is no hurry, not now, not ever.
Great are your works, O Lord,
Exquisite in all their delights.
On this particular Fourth of July in Lake Wobegon, Garrison fell into step and like those around him, took his time about it. He joined his fictional friends, all the crew from all the years (47 years, in fact) to form a Living Flag on the high school football field. He got a white umbrella, others were red and blue.
We crowded in tight, umbrellas over our heads, forming a flag that we ourselves could not see, but we could feel our own solidarity. It was very moving. To me, it was, having set out at a young age to distinguish myself as a unique individual, and now here I was, anonymous, in service of an ideal.
Garrison Keillor will never be a conformist not preach any gospel of uniformity. And he’s glad at last to contribute himself to the diverse, red/white/blue flag of fellowship, and not try quite so hard to be the Special One.
Majesty and glory are the work, and your justice endures forever.
Gracious and merciful is the Lord.
In that path, I want to follow. Lead me, Lord, down the trail you’ve paved, the trail you know so well.
(Galatians 3, Psalm 111, John 12, Luke 11)
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