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Rhea Tails: improbable from the start

July 9, 2016 by David Baer

When I first met Rhea, I was lying on indoor-outdoor carpet under a table at the Lucky Dog Retreat, trying to coax the scared little girl and her puppy sister Asa to have something—anything!—to do with me.

Thing were not going well.

Robin, the proprietor of Lucky Dog Retreat, accompanies Indianapolis’ animal control officers into what are gingerly described as ‘bad situations’ in an effort to keep some of our city’s hapless animals from being destroyed. A dark look came across Robin’s face as I asked her about Rhea’s and Asa’s origins. ‘There were too many human beings and too many dogs in that apartment’, she responded, clearly not wanting to go any deeper into her description. Rhea and Asa, alone among a tribe of dogs, were to be saved. Their fear of this big stranger lying on the floor suddenly sounded entirely reasonable, at least as far as Puppy Logic goes.

Rhea was improbable from the start, one of just two survivors out of ‘too many dogs’.

Rhea’s tough beginnings—she was clearly not treated well in her first, chaotic home—haunt her still.

My fiancée was half a country away. I described Rhea on the phone, the scared little monster with wan hope of a future. It was impossible to make Rhea sound like the Ideal Dog. Nothing about this waif’s life has ever come close to ideal. Karen was not absolutely opposed to adding a dog with a past to our collection of two Rhodesian Ridgebacks in the new life we would soon share. If we went through with this, Rhea would join a sister who had been the runt of her own boiling, brown tribe back in Costa Rica and a blind and badly abused brother Ridgeback from northern Indiana. Yet Karen’s assent could not be described as enthusiastic.

I was to marry an adventurous bride amid a pack of rejected dogs.

After a few more visits to Lucky Dog, Rhea came home. Improbably. We would live to regret our decision. And then, eventually, to celebrate it. And her.

 

 

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knowing one’s place: Psalm 148

June 30, 2016 by David Baer

As the Psalter works its way down the home stretch toward its finale in the 150th psalm, the gloves come off. Doxology reaches to a stretch, digs down to bedrock, summons even the unseen powers and convenes heaven’s lights.

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts!

Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!

Let them praise the name of the Lord! For he commanded and they were created. And he established them forever and ever; he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away.

(Psalm 148:1–6 ESV)

In the ancient Israelite context, calling upon sun and moon to praise their Maker is brave: they were often worshiped as gods themselves. It is also polemical: they are put in their place.

They do not seem to mind, in the psalmist’s opinion, though worshippers of the heavenly bodies might beg to differ. The psalmist imagines heaven’s lights praising YHWH at full throat simply for the privilege of having been created at his command so that they can do so.

There is, we are asked to accept, no corner of heaven or earth where praise is rightly withheld. If there is war in heaven, celestial conspiracies afoot, they are forgotten as the psalmist reaches forward to how things should be. Will be.

The most awesome, the most mighty, the high and almost holy, even these burst into song when their time comes. They know their place, and are glad in it.

How much more we mortals, elevated as we are now to sing along without too much embarrassment about our little voices, trembling hands, sad yesterdays.

Perhaps He commanded us, too, into existence so that we could sing like this, eyes moist because we are not yet fully home.

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defining moments: 2 Kings 15

June 29, 2016 by David Baer

We feel as though our lives flow along in an indistinguishable stream of moments and events. In truth, our legacy is not formed this way. Life is both chunkier and clunkier than this.

Our defining moment—we never see it coming—falls upon us in a moment. Our legacy is too often defined by an awkward lurch as by a premeditated jog. Wisdom means that our unforeseen moment—the thing for which we will be remembered, the event that will hang like an adjective about our neck—will be of one piece with how we have lived up to that moment. People may be surprised by this, but they will say, ‘Yes, this is exactly like him’. And smile.

Sadly, the inverse is also true.

Then Menahem the son of Gadi came up from Tirzah and came to Samaria, and he struck down Shallum the son of Jabesh in Samaria and put him to death and reigned in his place. Now the rest of the deeds of Shallum, and the conspiracy that he made, behold, they are written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. (2 Kings 15:14–15 ESV)

The English translator, in order to collect his well deserved paycheck, is obliged to smooth out the unpolished redundancy of the Hebrew text. Woodenly, the summarizing statement about this forgettable, murdered king reads like this:

Now the deeds of Shallum, and (or ‘especially’) the conspiracy that he conspired, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel?

By this point in the Book of Kings, we are accustomed to this formula. As kings are honored or dismissed by the Israelite historian, we find that there is more to their lives than what he has been able to publish. But these deeds, should someone want to have a look, are available. You’ve just gotta’ look them up.

After all, are not the rest of (fill in the blank)’s deeds written in the Book of the Annals?

The unfortunate and lamentable Shallum is a little different. Shallum’s life distills down to ‘the conspiracy that he conspired‘. It is not a flattering abbreviation of a man’s life.

We don’t get to write our own epitaph. We are not consulted on the matter of how we will be remembered. We generate our legacy, but it is not ours to edit.

The wise and godly person understands this. Her life is of one piece, her ‘what you see’ is the same as her ‘what you get’. When her defining moment comes upon her, she gets no advance warning. Any surprise that is in it is an upside surprise, burnishing an already favorable reputation or—in the harshest cases—vindicating a righteous woman who had fallen under attack.

Biography is not a fair practice. It is raw and unforgiving, never entirely free of a judgmental edge. It selects its own data. It HIGHLIGHTS what it wants.

Almost nobody remembers Shallum. Those who do know only one awful thing about the conspiring lowlife. History’s verdict spits ‘Good riddance.’

So shall it ever be. Much hangs on that one thing, that one moment. Best to make sure it is a bead on a string of handsome little spheres that line up to become something worth wearing, worth guarding in a quiet drawer, to be treasured upon each recurring glimpse with a smile.

 

 

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not one step

June 29, 2016 by David Baer

Hold thou my hand; so weak I am, and helpless,
I dare not take one step without thy aid;
Hold though my hand; for then, O loving Savior,
No dread of ill shall make my soul afraid.

Hold thou my hand, and closer, draw me closer,
To thy dear self, my hope, my joy, my all
Hold thou my hand, lest haply I should wander,
And, missing thee, my trembling feet should fall.

Hold thou my hand; the way is dark before me,
Without the sunlight of thy face divine;
But when by faith, I catch its radiant glory,
What heights of joy, what rapturous sounds are mine!

Hold thou my hand, that when I reach the margin,
Of that lone river thou didst cross for me,
A heavenly light may flash along its waters,
And every wave like crystal bright shall be.

Hold thou my hand; so weak I am, and helpless,
I dare not take one step without thy aid;
I dare not take one step without they aid.

Fanny Crosby, 1897

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outnumbered: 1 Samuel 14

May 13, 2016 by David Baer

Faith and audacity sometimes come close enough to each other to be indistinguishable to the naked eye.

While normally YHWH shows himself in the ordinary and the mundane, the confidence in his reliability that we call ‘faith’ sometimes emerges in the extraordinary moment.

Saul, Israel’s first and unfortunate king, will come to no good end. Yet his son Jonathan is the type of young buck that anybody (including YHWH and the future king David, it emerges) would love.

As Israel’s line of battle faces off against the Philistines in one of those slow-motion encounters that could almost be seen as casual—until suddenly it is not and warriors are dying—Jonathan plans a reckless foray into the Philistine camp.

Jonathan said to the young man who carried his armor, ‘Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.’ (1 Samuel 14:6 ESV)

In the mix, the historian of Israel hears Jonathan speak out one of YHWH’s great truths: the strength of his human cohort is of no matter when YHWH’s purpose is to save.

Jonathan’s dictum, for so it stands in the narrative, is both perceptive and nuanced. This is not what one would expect from a two-dimensional comic-book war story, which the Book of Samuel most certainly is not.

It may be, Jonathan tells us across the centuries, that YHWH will work for us. There is no presumption here, just principled courage or recklessness. Time will tell.

But if he is in this, Jonathan coaches his young armor-bearer, whose life will be equally at stake, then YHWH can do what he wishes to do. His hand is unbound.

Biblical realism takes many shapes. Similarly, its dimensions are sometimes writ large—across the span of nations—and at others sketched into the small space of a young warrior’s disgust with passive resignation in the face of enmity against YHWH and his people.

Either way, it challenges the reader to reckon with YHWH’s reality, not as a religious principle or a psyche-soothing construct but as a real and powerful presence. Just as real as this chair, this laptop, this floor under my feet.

Against mammoth odds—YHWH’s truth has now become Jonathan’s—the Lord can save if he wishes. We are not alone in this world so full of destroyers, without and within.

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the problem with kings: 1 Samuel 8

May 10, 2016 by David Baer

Centralization of power is easier to achieve than to undo.

The biblical narrative, child of an historical era in which kings were routinely elevated to the stature of demigods, displays countercultural and powerfully mixed feelings about the magnetic pull of power to the political center.

The prophet Samuel attempts in vain to persuade Israel’s tribal confederacy that the apparent gains of monarchy are not worth the cost.

So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, ‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’ (1 Samuel 8:10–18 ESV)

Alas, kingship had for these Israelites an obvious logic and an attraction too strong to resist. Besides, all the other nations have kings and it’s hard to be different.

Why swim against the tide?

Why, indeed, when we can be comfortably cared for, told what to think and when, provided for in our infirmity? Where’s the harm?

Then one day, we see our sons—their faces too young for such a hard, weary look—running and stumbling before his chariot. ‘Hail to your king!’, their lips move in unison.

Easy to do, impossible to undo.

 

 

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You will be resilient!: Convocation address, Clark Theological College, Nagaland, 17 April 2016

May 8, 2016 by David Baer

Convocation, Clark Theological College, Nagaland

17 April 2016

Honorable chairperson of the Board of Governors and members of this Board, Respected Principal Dr Takatemjen, incoming Principal Dr Mar Congener, faculty of Clark Theological College, distinguished guests, parents of the graduating students, graduating students, continuing students, staff, and the larger CTS family …

May I speak in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ?

  *   *   *

One of my favourite things is to look into the faces of graduands, like these 2016  graduands of Clark Theological College … and to imagine ….

Will you allow me to look without embarrassment into your faces?

I see feats that you hace already accomplished and sacrifices that you have already made …

Some of these achievements have been widely celebrated in your community as miracles of God and as heroic efforts by one or another of you.

Others have been quiet … even silent … invisible to all but one of you. These private acts of heroism may be known only to your closest family and friends. Or perhaps only to you. It’s no matter. God knows them.

  • Some have chosen a path of Christian ministry against other more lucrative careers that your family had in store for you.
  • Some have perhaps left a girlfriend or a boyfriend to pursue a calling that that person could not encourage or support.
  • You have worked late into the night to master Greek or theology or anthropology or the history of Jesus’ church.
  • You have encouraged each other.
  • Perhaps some have summoned up the strength against depression or sadness … the strength simply to get out of bed and to go to class. This, too, can be the deed of a hero.
  • You have discovered spiritual gifts that you didn’t know God had given you, and academic aptitudes that you didn’t know were yours to steward.
  • Your curiosity has been awakened and you have become alive to the joy that is learning to learn …
  • You have learned to stop talking in order to listen intently.
  • You have served your home churches or other ministries in which you have become experienced with new learning. You have learned to deploy that learning with humility and tact among sisters and brothers who have not had the opportunity of study.
  • You have discovered the heart of Jesus for the broken and the outcast.

 

The truth is, the churches and people of Nagaland and of India and beyond are fortunate to have you … blessed to know the kinds of servant leadership that you will provide over the next thirty years … or forty … or fifty … or sixty.

Rooted in scripture … eager to serve … with minds alert … and with hearts that sing … in more than one sense of the word, ready to go.

It would be awkward for an invited guest to speak anything but congratulations on an occasion such as this. It would be almost a social sin to speak of anything but commendation and well-deserved praise and encouragement to keep on into the future as you have walked in the past.

And I see the future, or at least I imagine that I do … and it inspires me … it makes it a wonderful thing to look into your faces this day and to think of things that will be.

Without invitation, my mind already wants to add you to the famous list of the book of Hebrews, chapter 11:

By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. (Hebrews 11:4–8 ESV)

 

It would be an easy thing, during a ceremony such as this, to add your names to this list and to sum up the deeds you will accomplish, by faith.

*    *   *

But the truth is, I don’t know your future. I can only imagine. Perhaps I can only speculate.

However, two thing I do know:

You will face hardship. And you will be resilient.

 May I give to you as my gift on your graduation day a passage from the ancient book of Isaiah that has become so very important to me?:

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:27–31 ESV)

Now back to those two things about your future, of which I am certain.

 

You will face hardship.

In fact, you will experience exile.

Do you know what an exile is?

Exile is simply the loss of everything that seems important.

Old Testament Israel suffered what is for Jews and for Christians an iconic exile.

This people of God, this chosen race, lost everything.

  • Temple
  • Priests
  • Sacrifice
  • Land
  • Promise
  • Identity
  • Future

Israel lost everything. That’s what exile does. It strips you of everything you knew …. Everything you thought you were … everything that sustained you … everything you believed …

What does an exile sound like? Israel’s voice out of exile sounds like this:

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”   How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy! (Psalms 137:1–6 ESV)

It gets worse. Israel’s emotions in her exile become more savage and violent than I can bring myself to read out on a happy occasion such as this.

One thing was true of exiles in the time of Israel’s captivity in Babylon: nobody ever survived them. Exile was designed to liquidate peoples … to abolish all sense of separate identity … to destroy a people’s name and hope and future … to let captivity and assimilation accomplish their fatal work.

Exiles are final. They are terminal. They lead nowhere. Every exile claims to have the final word.

Yet the Lord turned Israel’s exile into one of his greatest miracles. He transformed an experience that could only possibly destroy his people into a rebirth that refined and resurrected them instead.

The Lord spoke  deeply into the lives of his captive people. He assured them that he was capable of being with them in this foreign place, as capable as he was of being present to them from the Holiest of Holies back in the promised land.

By YHWH’s grace, Israel experienced a national resurrection. Israel survived. Israel returned. Israel gave birth to Israel’s Messiah. You and I are here at Clark Theological College, brothers and sisters, together—sons and daughters of the Lord Most High—because of it.

*   *   *   *

I wish it were not true. It seems on such a happy occasion as this a shame to say it, especially as I exercise my privilege to look from this platform into your beautiful faces.

But you will experience your exiles.

For some, they will be momentary and fleeting. For others, the rest of your lives may prove to be an unremitting difficulty … for most of you, you will be somewhere in between.

Yet all of you—you, with your feats and victories and accomplishments, with your brilliant futures ahead of you, with your love and your families still awaiting you—all of you will know something of exile.

But here’s that second thing, that second prediction that I can make with confidence about your future.

You will be resilient!

 Resilient means that you will rise up from what should have crushed you. You will find your way past the moans of pain and into the songs of rejoicing.  You will discover strength when you thought you could only continue to collapse.

Out of your mourning, you will find that you have been given …

… a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that you are once again called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. (Isaiah 61:3 ESV)

And then, miracle of miracles, you will be even stronger and more beautiful than you are today.

It seems impossible, but this is what awaits you, dear graduands.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:27–31 ESV)

Thirty years ago, I was a young missionary in Latin America, learning to teach and to mentor young men and women with whom I had a powerful intuitive connection. Things were going well, and the Lord was causing a spiritual gift of teaching to flourish. I had been a very insecure person and found it difficult to imagine that all this good ministry was happening around me and even through me. I could not have been happier. I was 28 years old.

One day, after I’d finished teaching my heart out, an elder colleague whom I still refer to as the man who shaped me in ministry, approached me and said something I have never forgotten: ‘I want to hear you when you’re forty’.

Forty seemed a long way off then. Now it seems a very long way in my past. But that man knew that the best things come through exile and resilience … and that these take a long time to have their effect.

I want to hear you … I want to see you when you’re forty.

 35 years ago I read an essay on the back page of a famous magazine in my country called TIME. It told the story of two older gentlemen who loved classical music and frequented the performance hall of one of the world’s most prestigious symphonic ensembles, the New York Philharmonic.

One day a very young Korean girl—a prodigy really, for no one should be able to make music like the music she made at such a tender age—appeared on the program to play the famous Brahms Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic. It was the first piece on the program, to be followed by an intermission, and then by music of a different composer.

The performance was technically perfect. This little girl never missed a note. It was astounding. The audience was baffled by the ability of such a youth to play the music of a master as she had done.

There was only one problem: the performance had no soul to it … no pathos.

The one elderly music lover came upon his friend in the lobby of the concert hall during intermission. After exchanging pleasantries, he asked ‘So, what did you think?’

The other man looked thoughtfully down at his shoes for a while before answering. Then he looked his friend in the eyes and offered this comment: ‘She needs to suffer before she plays that piece again.’

*   *   *   *

You look this morning as though you are at the height of your powers. Vigorous … beautiful … strong … youthful.

But, in truth, you are not yet at the height of your powers. You are merely on your way.

The height of your powers will come to you when you have suffered your exiles and, in them, found resilience through the strength of the living God … The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob … the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … the Giver of his empowering Spirit.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28–31 ESV)

May it be so.

And congratulations for a most admirable beginning!

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not quite silent, not yet dark: 1 Samuel 3

May 8, 2016 by David Baer

When YHWH calls the boy-prophet Samuel in the late-evening twilight of Eli’s life, light and speech have grown scarce in Israel.

The story of this special child’s emergence as Israel’s prophet is replete with last vestiges.

‘ … the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.’ (1 Samuel 3:1 ESV)

The nation’s state is mirrored by its Old Man’s own lot,

‘… for at that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. (1 Samuel 3:2 ESV)

One might as well sketch this scene as faded daguerrotype, the figures recognizable enough, but too little vision, too little light, too little clarity. Too little of all that mattered, YHWH having absconded to the shadows.

Even the physical ‘lamp of the Lord’ in YHWH’s Eli-tended shrine nears day’s end and the hour of its snuffing out. Or are we too read promise into its vesper flicker?

The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. (1 Samuel 3:3 ESV)

Soon the divine calling of Eli’s apprentice will occur in a voice that is at first too quietly enigmatic to be discerned. Samuel believes it Eli who calls, not only because the Lord has not yet clear ‘stood calling’ Samuel as he will soon do (v. 10). Indistinguishable whispers carry through the night air, for the boy Samuel is as yet a bare promise, a mere hint at Israel’s rescuer, not yet versed in the naming of voices, for …

‘… Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.’ (1 Samuel 3:7 ESV)

When YHWH inhabits the shadows—we are gently instructed by a narrative whose purpose seems prima facie to be bolder than just this—a restless boy might well become a man of God, evening’s shadow might just give way to a bright morning, lost Israel might find YHWH and thus herself.

Evening shadows, for those who will watch and listen, bear sometimes the quiet rustling of redemption.

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the turning’s terrible brevity: Judges 2

April 24, 2016 by David Baer

The most important turnings are finished almost before we have had the presence of mind to notice.

And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. (Judges 2:10 ESV)

There is no correlation between the cost of a society’s abandonment of its accumulated legacy and the speed with which its people can mindlessly leave behind that treasure.

You might think a turning of such magnitude would require long generations of accumulated decisions. It does not. Nothing more than a single distracted generation is sufficient for the turning. Then all that has been discovered, constructed, sowed, cherished, watered, and repainted every second year against the blazing sun is gone. It is the grandchildren who will wonder what we were thinking, how we could have let this happen. Or perhaps as children of their age they will assume the herd truth that the abandoned way was retrograde, regrettable, embarrassing, oppressive.

If the book of Judges teaches anything, it is the speed with which self-absorbed vanity has its effect.

And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. (Judges 2:12 ESV)

Yet there is also this measure of grace in the book’s assessment the ancient Israelites’s plight:

 Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. (Judges 2:18 ESV)

Still, the picture is almost entirely an unredeemed one.

Forgetting, we are taught, twists minds. When a society loses its grip on YHWH’s mercies—the deep mercies embedded in its history—it soon degrades women, children, and the weak. It goes a little crazy. Then a little more. Then the blood of innocents stains its streets, while unanimously celebrated theories explain why this isn’t such a bad thing.

Forgetfulness begets murder and murderers, cultured and confused self-seekers with no conscience to restrain them, while grandpa’s righteous body rests barely cold in its grave.

However terrible, forgetfulness is not inevitable. Like all virtues and most vices, it is chosen in a moment, then repeated over time.

So run to your children. Gather up the grandkids. Tell them what YHWH has done. Find words for the fearsome story of the long trek north from Egypt’s slave-houses. Show them your rough-healed welts, your sleeve-hid scars. Tell them what it felt like the moment you realized that the boss-man’s whip would crack no more, tear no more, its silence become liberation’s quiet song. Teach them to remember.

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Do you think we could fit in this place, Allison?

March 26, 2016 by David Baer

Springtime in Indianapolis is like a resurrection.

Few cities I’ve known color their winters as gray as does our Indy. It’s one of the many things that make Indianapolis easy to underestimate.

Then comes the Spring.

The birds, on this resplendent Saturday between Good Friday and Easter, are busily nesting. Our feeders are busy, but so are the numerous bird houses scattered around our property. House finches are checking out the real estate, as are sparrows and chickadees. They move with the purpose of buyers in a sellers’ market. There are only so many bird houses to go around, you know. You snooze, you lose.

I admit, I’m a deeply sentimental man when it comes to places. An irrational nostalgia runs deep with regard to every place I’ve lived and a handful more where I’ve been.

Take Northern Wisconsin, for example.

My mother was born and raised there, my father pitched to Hank Aaron there, a whole youth worth of summer vacations made Lake Superior and the family who lived on its edges the destination of a long but never questioned drive from Pennsylvania.

When we Baers managed to gather there last Fall for the first time in many years, it was a coming home, a return to who we are, an understated migration to the stream of our origins.

I bought a bird house in Hayward. A knotty-pine Northwoods cabin of a bird house, a bit tacky if you’re from—let me pick a place—Virginia, but an icon of home if you have felt the Big Lakes’s breezes on your face.

May I detour for a moment in a technical direction?

The standard sources map out how important is the size of the hole in a bird house for the various species of backyard birds that lift our spirits and put our souls at ease in this Indianapolis space we call home. A chickadee family, you may be interested to learn, requires 1/8″ more of entrance clearance than does a wren.

My Northwoods knotty-pine bird house is made for wrens.

So it is that in these last few days a small drama has ensued just outside the windows which demarcate the human space from the delightfully kinetic animal space of our home.

A pair of chickadees has spied a log cabin that they would love to call home.

—Justin, it’s beautiful, honestly. But the doorway seems just a little small.

—Oh, Allison, I’m sure we can fit through. Look, just peer inside. OMG, it’s gorgeous in there. Can you imagine the kids?

—I know, Honey Man, I completely agree. I’m just not sure we can fit through that … um … that hole.

—Sure we can, Ally Baby, just watch. Ooh … Ouch … Oh my, this is a little tight. Here, let me peck at the edges of the hole for a while. I’m sure I can find us a sixteenth of an inch here. These things are not etched in stone, you know.

—Oh, Honey, you’re the sweetest. Knock yourself out. I’ll stand up here on the roof and watch.

—Ally, I think I can squeeze in. Ooh … ouch … HONEY, I’M IN … !!! Oh, Baby, it’s spacious in here. You wouldn’t believe it.

—But, Justin, when I’m with child? I mean, with eggs? Will I fit?

—Ally, Baby, we’ll get a gym membership. I’m sure it will work.

—OK, J-Dawgy, I really want to believe you. I’ll just sit out here on the wire for a while and peer longingly at our future home … I mean … what I hope will be our future home. You just keep pecking at that doorway. Do you think these feathers make me look fat?

This is as far as our drama has gone.

This afternoon has been a little quiet around the Old Log Cabin Bird House. Maybe a dream has died and our chickadee couple has found a little condo down the street. Or perhaps decisions have merely been postponed for another day.

Or maybe a pair of wrens is out looking …

You gotta’ move fast in a sellers’ market.

 

 

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