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the meaning of chipmunks: the story of a rescued Rhodesian Ridgeback

May 12, 2009 by David Baer

Chipmunks are the garbage fish of suburban backyards. They are the bottom-feeding carp to, say, the smallmouth bass that is the inventive squirrel or the rainbow trout whose role is filled by the Northern Cardinal. A fallen Blue Jay may merit a sigh as we carry his defunct body tenderly to the garbage can. But nobody mourns a fallen chipmunk.

This common rodent expires unmourned while creating only slightly greater cosmic ripples than a squashed mosquito.

Until today. On this cool, blue-skied Spring afternoon in Indianapolis, crippled Sammy chased chipmunks as they darted among the logs of our wood-pile. Actually, he didn’t so much chase them in space and time as he intended to chase them with all his canine soul.

Rosie, his older Rhodesian Ridgeback sister, started the ball rolling, bending her muscular agility to the never-successful task of tracking the little rodents with her customary acrobatics. Sammy, barely up from the edges of the grave that threatened to devour him just days ago, lurched over on his three functioning legs to the scene of the unfolding drama.

Blindness and a 75%-rate of working limbs was not to deter this stalwart lad from making his futile stab at rodent mayhem. In some rough-and-ready choreography with Ridgeback sister Rosie, the Samsters stumbled this way and that, hinting at aggressive exertions in the direction of chipmunk prey even if his mind was much more the actor than his now-crippled body.

This boy has spirit. Custodians of the ground squirrel population of the American Midwest need not fret. Sammy will not soon be despoiling chipmunk families.

But, boy, would he like to! And that, for today, is enough.

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speaking life: Proverbs

May 12, 2009 by David Baer

In the light of the myriad ethical issues that preoccupy the biblical anthology, it is most remarkable that its powers of observation and instruction are so often drawn to that little organ we call the tongue. Biblical ethics in diverse garb agree that this little muscle possesses the powers of both life and death.

It is perhaps not surprising that the theme should be drawn into the orbit of another recurring image, that of the tree of life.

The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life,
but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.

The tree of life is patient of multiple understandings. One that ought not be lost in the shuffle corresponds to what grammarians call an objective genitive. That is, the subject (in this case, the tree) produces the item that clings to it in a grammatically genitive construction. Life, here, is the tree’s object. The tree produces the conditions which in turn create life in a recurring fashion.

One lives and lives well when such a tree graces the square of one’s community, for its leaves, its fruit, its sheer persistent productivity see to the nourishment of the people who live in its shade. Continue Reading »

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Sammy strikes back: the story of a rescued Rhodesian Ridgeback

May 11, 2009 by David Baer

Two experienced veterinarians in a room at our beloved Michigan Road Animal Hospital expressed astonishment at the dog Johnny and I brought in to see them this evening. Dr. Fletcher, looked twice toward the heavens, in gratitude. ‘Es casi milagrosa‘—’it’s almost miraculous’—she says to me. Language, loss, and renewed hope each bond people.

Dr K, who saw Sammy last Friday in his extremity, rises to the occasion. Sammy’s left front leg is useless but he has learned to lurch around without its help. Regaining his canine emotional balance, he even made some pathetic but joy-worthy attempts to snap at his sister Rosie as she ran laps around him this afternoon.

The boy is fighting back.

He’s going to make it.

Sammy is not out of the woods. Yet he is proving before our watching eyes what loving care and a dog’s refusal to give in can do against calamity’s claims.

Sammy wants to play. Good grief, he wants to play.

He cannot, of course. His legs will not carry him to it. Yet he wants to play. Something tells me he will have his way.

There is joy in Mudville this evening. The fat lady is swallowing hard, trembling with stage fright, suddenly, undeniably unsure of her task.

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Sammy goes down hard: the story of a rescued Rhodesian Ridgeback

May 11, 2009 by David Baer

I could tell by the trembly edge in my wife’s voice over the phone that the news was bad. Catching me early on the last day of a business trip, she reported that Sammy’s wanderlust had finally got him into deep trouble.

His nocturnal adventures in our back yard had morphed into a determined and ultimately successful effort to squeeze through the gap in our neighbor’s half-fallen fence and being the unchaperoned wanderings in the neighborhood that would prove his undoing. When Sammy didn’t appear for his breakfast at 6:30, Linda had awakened Lucas in a bid to outnumber the sickening possibilities a blind dog might encounter on his own in the night. Continue Reading »

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solitude’s utter depth: Proverbs

April 28, 2009 by David Baer

As a compendium, the Bible is born in a resolutely communal manger.

Solitary, introspective philosophies of the kind common to, say, Europe in the second half of the twentieth century, must scrounge energetically to find biblical precedents for the lonely path they travel. In biblical perspective, the first man and woman have barely begun to wake to each other’s charms before they are commanded to make a horde of other creatures just like them. Similarly, biblical trajectories of human history tend to reach their pinnacle in sanctified mob scenes.

In short, the Bible is rarely about me. It very often is about us.

Against such a default plurality, the proverb’s realism about life’s deepest experience stands in stark relief. Those fellow travelers of a redeemed and redeeming people will nod with understanding as it reminds us that deep singularity haunts the journey, even when the din of other voices rings loudly:

The heart knows its own bitterness,
and no stranger shares its joy.

Some things, we are allowed to consider, must be carried alone. Some tears tolerate no articulate explanation, some joys explode with solitary passion.

One walks, even in a very large company, alone.

There is no escaping solitude, only a wizened embrace of its inescapable, enduring presence. This is not all we possess. Yet it is, necessarily, a portion of our inheritance. And of mine.

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decorum’s obsolescence: Psalm 98

April 27, 2009 by David Baer

Something there is in YHWH’s justice that sets propriety to one side and makes grown men shout as though mad.

When a person or a community has ached for justice to be done, become familiar with the sour bile of longing, wondered times beyond counting whether it is vain to wait any longer when nobody seems to care, then correct decorum hardly matters. When YHWH (finally!) bares his arm to humiliate the arrogant and lift up the humble, the turning of tables is not met with quietly mumbled liturgies and neatly pressed shirts.

To the contrary, clothing becomes drenched with sweat as praise erupts from the lungs and legs of women and men who never thought they’d live to see the moment. Continue Reading »

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maiden voyage

April 17, 2009 by David Baer

Having grown up and passed parts of five decades riding utilitarian bikes with the purpose of getting from point A to point B, today’s maiden voyage of my slightly used Specialized Allez Elite road bike was a new experience. Indianapolis’ railroad-line-to-paradise Monon Trail was glorious in the sunlight of a 75-degree, blue-skied springtime afternoon.

The Trail was covered by walkers, runners, bikers, and skaters, yet managed to be delightfully welcoming and uncongested. I have wanted to ride for several years, ever since cartilage damage to my right knee made celebrating 50 by running my second marathon seem unlikely. A decade ago, while living in England, I joined 33,000 other runners to complete the London Marathon. It was a memorable day on which—the words of a news presenter brought me to tears as I sipped tea to heal my traumatized body late that night had it thus—’33,000 ordinary people did an extraordinary thing’.

I may never run a remarkable distance again. Friends of the two-wheeling persuasion reassure me that this is not to be lamented, that there is life after burning soles at mile markers, that cycling is the right way to hone the body, discover a sporting clan, and see much of this country (and others) at a decent speed. Continue Reading »

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coping with the insolent: Psalm 86 // Proverbs 13

April 17, 2009 by David Baer

The biblical proverbialist can get away with naming things. His task is deeply cognitive. As Solomon catalogued the Levant’s flora and fauna and so made a name for his encyclopedic soul, so does the wisdom tradition that he in some measure sponsored sort and label the eddies and flow of human conduct. Deep human pathos lies behind the proverbialist’s signature truths. Yet he does not appear to struggle in the pithy articulation of them. Not even when he speaks of that peculiar demon of the body politic that we call insolence:

By insolence the heedless make strife,
but wisdom is with those who take advice. (Proverbs 13:10 NRSV)

The proverb pivots on the matter of taking advice or refusing to do so. It is precisely the heedless—they do not ask, they do not seek—who initiate the ripples of dissension that flow disturbingly across the community. Wisdom does not do this. In their interrogative-rich probing, the wise consider and learn before delivering themselves of word or deed. The wise do not consider it their prerogative to speak or to do. They know they will impact lives as they do. They are careful in the best sense of the word.

Not so the insolent, who shoot from the hip. Theirs is no mere individual foible. They pick and tear at the community’s fabric. They are, in their plausibly deniable way, dangerous folk.

The psalmist knows this about them and says so, though without the proverbialist’s luxury of settled distance from the fray:

O God, the insolent rise up against me;
a band of ruffians seeks my life,
and they do not set you before them.
But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
Turn to me and be gracious to me;
give your strength to your servant;
save the child of your serving girl.
Show me a sign of your favor,
so that those who hate me may see it and be put to shame,
because you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me. (Psalm 86:14-17 NRSV)

This desperate, endangered pray-er is not about the concept of insolence. He is too busy to worry about such moral theorizing, though in a calmer moment he will know its treasure. His life is in danger’s way. Falling back upon YHWH’s self-disclosure, he quotes the divine self-definition back at God.

Where his heavenward shout brushes the proverbialist’s truth is in the heedlessness of those who seek his life. Just as they do not seek the counsel of people wiser than they, so do they refuse to set the Lord before them.

They are drunk with self-referential, asphyxiating certainty because they have never learned or have long since forgotten how to ask.

Faced down by such a mob—too often they are a well-spoken, nicely perfumed coterie of thugs who could not believe such a word should be used of them—the psalmist can find only those words that desperate people ought always to speak: Lord have mercy!

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how not to pray: Luke 18

April 16, 2009 by David Baer

I am not like other people.

Six words, these mere eight syllables, constitute the first mile-marker on the long road to hell. Neatly engraved on a gilded road-side sign, they appear to embody all the authority of law and decency. Yet they are the precise opposite of their claim.

Jesus abhorred the pious contempt with which people who mouth these words distance themselves from those who know their need. His uncanny appreciation of evil’s finest textures allowed him to diagnose both the negative and positive aspects of hellish self-differentiation.

First, the Pharisee in his famous parable of two men praying rests comfortably upon the platform of what he does not do. Not for him the bumptious filthiness of petty thieves, extra-marital coupling, and employment at the margins of decency. Then, the Pharisee takes those good disciplines of Israel’s shared life and makes them his moral bulwark: I fast twice a week … and I tithe!

The scene is made the more vivid for the parable’s brevity:

Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Who has not had such piety thrown in his face, his groaning prayers interrupted by the emotional violence of the self-righteous? Who has not poured out his heart in anguish to his Maker while heavenly ears bend to hear, only to be dismissed by the mocking religiosity of someone near at hand who tithes and with her glorious tenth presumably satisfies heaven’s need for justice?

Jesus will not allow that conversation between heaven and earth works this way. In his view, the tax collector’s plea for mercy throws celestial windows and doors wide open. The careful and self-possessed purveyors of mechanical obedience, on the other hand, hear only their own echoing voices in response.

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angels’ tears: Luke 15

April 13, 2009 by David Baer

Respectability is an expensive luxury that, in a moment, turns itself into a most damnable vice.

Jesus erstwhile adversaries—the mockable ‘Pharisees and scribes’—seemed incapable of recognizing that the perk of respectability ought to have been parked far down on the list of graded priorities. So deep was their confusion that they mistook the stream of sinners to Jesus’ side as an affront to propriety. They should have welcomed it as the best of news:

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable: ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

Angels, who bear their own glory lightly, see the movement of sinners into Jesus’ company more clearly. They weep and shout with joy over each one who repents. Here below, distracted and numb, we worry over the untied shoelace, the body odor, or the sexual history of such people. We require a respectability before, say, an audience with Jesus is to be granted.

Heaven knows no such quibbles. Angels do not fret at such a time. They dance.

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