Thoughts for the Turning of Time

2019 New Year’s Blog

Thoughts for the Turning of Time from Others*

When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set. Lin Yutang

Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back. Gore Vidal

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle. Mahatma Gandhi

I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves.  .  .  .  For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer. Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet.

When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. Robert M. Pirsig

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. 

I never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. Walt Whitman 

To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there’s more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged. Norman Mailer

Just as I am about to transcend history entirely, I remember Thoreau, who—no matter how hard he tried to find a place of natural peace and beauty, a place where he could escape history—kept bumping into former slaves and free black people living around Walden Pond. Robin Coste Lewis

You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. Anne Lamott

“Murderish words architectures of nothingness,” excerpt from “The future has an appointment with the dawn” Tanella Boni  (trans. By Todd Fredson), NAR (Winter 2018 p. 42)

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing, that is enough for one man’s life. T. S. Eliot (sorry, Tom, that should be “anyone’s life,” not one “man’s’!)

End of the Year Reflection

Emblematic of the range of our imaginations, New Years Day celebrates the birth of both E. M. Forester and J. D. Salinger, and in a way “imagination” is the theme of this New Year’s blog, perhaps better, the moral power of imagination that missed many critics but caught many viewers of Bohemian Rhapsody.

The film’s triumphal closing—the Live Aid concert performance of Freddie Mercury and Queen—may be even more instructive than favorable viewers have perceived. I believe it to be as good a modern rendition of the Gospel as I’ve seen in a long time, there are fine performances throughout, and Rami Malek’s performance as Freddie stuns!

The film draws together its three outstanding themes, themes we seldom see drawn together in the conversations of our times. The glorious performance leaves viewers excited and contemplative at the same time…a tour de force conclusion only reached by great cinematic art coupled with profound reflection on what we are all called to dream of and aspire to and seek—and some manage somehow to achieve.

Prior to its conclusion, the film has prepared us for all three themes and manages to draw them together in such a way that it doesn’t seem contrived, that you want to say, “Well, of course, I should have seen that myself.”

One theme involves how Farrohk Bulsara, pejoratively nicknamed “Paki’’ for his origins—receives sober injunctions from his father to think good thoughts and do good things for people. In such a day as ours, when we are uncertain about the relationship of good thoughts and good works, between creeds and deeds, the father’s advice must seem somewhat trite, hopelessly out of fashion. It certainly seems to register on ‘Paki’ that way—far better the excitement of even a mediocre rock concert in a tiny venue than to, well, think good thoughts and do good deeds. What is he, a boy scout?

Then there is the theme of being one’s best self, being what one is born to be.  Today we are not so sure there is a best and a worst self or that, if there is, that there is much difference between them.  But what the film indelibly registers on us is the pathos of the lost Freddie, the self-obsessed “star” with this retinue of hollow, shallow, sham followers. 

It is so palpable that at the theater where we saw Bohemian Rhapsody, people cheered when Freddie finally ousts the parasitic freeloader who has been subverting Freddie’s whole life. And that scene is paralleled by the touching scene at Tom Hutton’s door when Freddie says simply, “I could use a friend.”

But as we all begin to realize by at least the fourth or fifth grade, and as many best-seller commentators such as Robert Bellah have noted, we all long for two things: life with and among others—where we feel we belong, where we feel a “part of” some whole—and life as ourselves—where we are true to who we are, who we sense we should be.

Seldom can the two go together for anyone. Bohemian is one thing, rhapsody is another. The film hints early on at how difficult it might be for those two things to ever coincide for Freddie.  He gets a glimpse of it when he explains to an agent why Queen is different—I think it is because, he explains, we are just a bunch of misfits who don’t belong and the people in the back row of the audience don’t think they belong anywhere either and we belong to them.

At the same time, the new name Freddie takes is taken only by not belonging but insisting on being who he wants to be, regardless of the fall out. That the union of these two drives is possible—this is the third theme of the film.

Just prior to the final concert, in the scene where Freddie and Queen sit down with their good Jeff-Bush-imitation manager and put the band back together, the final argument for their reunion is not wanting to miss the chance to help do the good that Live Aid will do—shades of Hemingway’s moral guide: it’s what you wake up feeling good about.  But the final argument for being able to perform after their long hiatus is that, in reuniting, they are each finally becoming who each is meant to be. 

Tellingly, in that scene, as our daughter pointed out, the formerly fallen Freddie appears waiting for the verdict of the players standing against a wall where his head is haloed by his gold record.

In the end, then, what makes it possible for them to do good for others (the telephones ring off their hooks with donations during the Queen’s ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ performance) is the hard-won integrity of being who they are.  The enormous crowd is exhilarated and in that euphoric moment are bound together in the rituals of community.

I could not help comparing the scene with the usual Sunday morning service at churches like mine, churches that continue week in and week out to perform the ancient rituals of word, sacrament, and fellowship among congregations often not large and seldom euphoric.  I rejoice in those weekly moments and would not ever give them up for any mega-church faux performance in imitation of rock concerts in arenas; I’d frankly prefer the real thing.

But Bohemian Rhapsody’s closing concert reminds me that not everyone is called to be part of the Church, to be in the old phrase ‘churched.’ Much of what the Church does is also done outside the church and often to greater effect. One can think good thoughts, do good things for others, and nobly strive to be oneself without Church. One doesn’t often see that sort of life sustained for very long when not taught, encouraged, and supported by Community—but then one just doesn’t often see that sort of life sustained at all, even in the community of the Church.

The Church is called to pray for the world in words and actions and to help the world to discern and celebrate the presence and power of God in its midst. If you feel called to that, then you are called to be Churched.

At the heart of the Gospel is a story whose pattern is always: creation, fall, redemption. In Christ’s life that took the form of ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection. In Mercury’s life it took the form of performing, getting lost in the hopeless wants of ego, and re-emergence as a wounded healer in Queen. 

Church disciplines us to discern the pattern. We rehearse the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus until we have eyes to see creation, fall, and redemption in our own lives and the lives of those around us. It does not call us to insist that every story of creation, fall, and redemption be a religious story.

I find myself ever more grateful to feel called to being and living Church, but I also more and more believe not all, perhaps not even many, are so called.  Jesus blessed many people. Some joined the band of followers, but most didn’t. The Christian Church remained very small for the better part of a century following its founding. The word ‘ecclesia’ means those called out for a special purpose.

To small enclaves of committed followers God gives a particular mission about which I could write at much greater length, but to all humanity the call is much simpler and is fulfilled—or at least pursued—in a rich variety of ways.  Its fulfillment or pursuit may indeed look more like a social service or advocacy. It may look more like a one-on-one with a troubled friend. Or it may very well look, at least briefly, like a rock concert. Which is why the call is so beautifully enunciated in Bohemian Rhapsody!

If you are pursuing real life in the real world, then you can rejoice—either in sharing the call to pray for the world or knowing you are being held up in prayer by the Church.

You don’t, of course, go to Bohemian Rhapsody for history; you go for parable: Not everyone is on stage, and what is a stage if no one lights it, no one stands cheering in the wings, no one says “come and see”? Because, you know, despite its pedigree, not all the world is a stage, no matter how much we try to imagine it so.

• CODA

A review is at best a brief sketch. In this case, colors in the sketch also appear in Ramon Speed’s lyrics. If, however, you want a full theological treatment of the subject of Rock&Roll, take the journey our daughter took us on to Netflix and Springsteen on Broadway! Hugely thankful for how our kids—our own, our friend’s, and our students—have enlarged our horizons…but, then, we gave them the ’60’s! Next step here: reading Albion as a fine friend and creative spirit suggests to me.

Below: Oscar Wilde perched at the corner of St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin—out with the old, in with the new. Happy New Year to you all!

Christmastide 2018 Who Is This Stupendous Stranger?

Thoughts for the Season

“I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.” Booker T. Washington

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” J.M. Barrie

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”  George Bernard Shaw, quoted as the conclusion to the November 20 mediation in Courage to Change

Dearest Family and Friends,

One virtue of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is that, by the very nature of birth, the doctrine has to be of the stuff of legend, poetry, myth—it cannot be of the stuff of biology. The doctrine simply proclaims that there is something of an Eternal Mystery to Christ, a Mystery whose depths are best probed by the story as told by, for instance, Luke.

Rigid doctrinal literalism, such as we find in the fundamentalist approach, always tells us that Mystery, Truth, and Myth are not worth a fig because they aren’t ‘scientific’ fact. To the religious fundamentalist, the story must be biology or be done with, just as Genesis’s Seven Day creation must be good Geology. Strikingly, the secular fundamentalists, fashionably these days called atheists, labor in the opposite direction from the same point; for them, it can’t be biology so it must be done with.

Perhaps it is not so odd that these two fundamentalisms end up much closer to each other in their argument’s premises than either do with the original or developing understanding of the Mystery that sustains the life of spiritual-minded Christians.

As the poet/hymnist asked: who is this stupendous stranger? There is always in Jesus something elusive, other, dramatic. That elusiveness, otherness, and drama are better captured in the story of the Virgin Birth (especially as it is portrayed in art) and its sequel story of the Resurrection, with the foreshadowing in the story of the Transfiguration, the capstone of the Epiphany stories.

What should we think of this “man of God’s own choosing” as Luther called him, the depth of whose Mystery is captured by Booker T. Washington’s quote above? Here was a man who would not allow anyone’s behavior toward him make him hate them! Let’s stand for a while in that light and, as Barrie bids us, see how we compare!

Faith begins in the conviction of the difference we will perceive in that light.

Or is not the whole Gospel story one whose arc is Jesus becoming precisely what he was ordained to be and set out to be and died to be, just as Barrie notes. Of which of our lives can the same be said? Did I say let’s stand for a while in that light and see how we compare.

Did I note that faith begins in the conviction of the difference we will perceive in that light?

Yet, that light does not glare or scare. In art, it is cast in the gentle light of halos and beams. In the story it is cast by starlight and moonlight.  It is the gentle light of that Grace that knew how we’d show up in comparison — and created us anyway, called us anyway, loves us anyway. It is the light in which all is well, and all is well, and indeed all manner of things shall be well.

Look anywhere into the world to find encouragement of this light, and you will sooner or later be hopelessly disillusioned. That is not speculation; it is our experience of lives that have ended in despondency. Christians, of course, do not have sole possession of the light, but it is the only light that lightens the Christian story.

This is why the phrase Fundamentalist Christian must seem contradictory, as indeed linking the adjective Fundamentalist to any religion is contradictory.  The Fundamentalist is comforted by the experience of conviction; the spiritual person is comforted by the experience of the Mystery of God.

Now, having alluded to Dame Julian, she of the hazel nut parable, I need to add that not all human projects end up being entirely successful in this world, not even of course the project of “following Christ.”

Case in point, Andrew and Olya Pedersen set out to use part of the family farm near Boelus to raise hazelnuts.  If you have been to any coffee shop lately or bought any sweeteners, you must be aware that there is a pretty good market for hazelnuts.

Nancy and I became, at great expense (wait for it–), investors in this experiment in hazelnut agriculture. I lament to tell you that we have lost our entire investment. After much experimenting, about which Andrew’s annual reports and photos kept us duly apprised, Andrew has determined that the Nebraska climate is possibly not the most conducive to the growing of commercial hazelnuts.

We are out at least somewhere between $20 and $40!!!

But surely it was an adventure worth being part of even vicariously and at a distance, which is precisely how each of us get to “participate” in the great adventure of life, in the Mystery of Christ, with all its attendant wheat and tares, its storms and stones, its crosses and crowns.

Is it not every one’s adventure, everyone’s life if that life is lived as fully as life allows? Is not the Stupendous Stranger the portrait of what awaits each of us if we invite the Spirit of the Creator to lead us to what we are meant to be and cannot become of our own strength and will? I believe this is what Richard Rohr was after when he translated The Word (In the beginning was the word) as “the blueprint.”

Still the star shines, the light is shed, the clouds moving across the moon are choirs of angels singing, and the motivating conviction comes and “anoints” us, continuing in our night skies to lead upward and onward against all earthly pulls to slip slide away.

“Heaven grant you many, many merry days!” (Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor)

Nancy and Chuck

PS. The RIPs once found in our Christmas blog come now at All Saints and Memorial Day instead.

Some pretty good reads this year:

I am enjoying so much Pulitzer Prize-winning Bright Swimmers by William W. Warner. The book was a gift to us from Stephen and Caroline Price-Gibson when they retired from their Presbyterian pastorates to return to their East Coast homelands. The subtitle is “Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay” and how anyone could have predicted I’d be enthralled with it I don’t know, but friendship often has a sixth sense!

I’ve been reading a book Jim Ganz Jr loaned me: Garrison Keillor’s O What A Luxury. It’s a delightful, funny romp aptly described by its subtitle: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic, & Profound.

You may recall that Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native is set in the midst of the Fall bonfires in his mythical Wessex. Fall bonfires continued in my time only in the kick-off rally of the coming McCook High Bison football season back in the late ‘50’s and just such a bonfire accompanies our friends Mike and Becky Evers’s annual (near) All Hallows Day Eve (Halloween) gathering of friends at their farm. I’m never there but I remember the opening of Hardy’s novel, and missing their gathering this year prompted me to resume my old custom of re-reading it in October, a custom I began when I wrote the unit on Hardy for accelerated high school English classes way back in the mid-‘60’s and continued for a good long time. (Without Wessex, there would have been no Yoknapatawpha for Faulkner, no Louisiana Parish for Ernest Gaines, and no Holt County for Kent Haruf!)

I continued reading More Words of Life: Selected Sermons given (both the book and the sermons!) by Don Hanway—a model (both the preacher and the preaching) of reasoned thinking about our faith, informing the practice of religion for all those who believe their lives are meant to be “one reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.”

I’m not finished reading Bill Northwall’s Return to Capitalism. I haven’t agreed with very much of it so far, but I am so grateful that Bill would want to send me a copy—that meant a great deal to me. And it never hurts to hone one’s opinions against the razor strop of arguments to the contrary, arguments Bill ably lays out.

Nancy and I are in our second year of rereading Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, one volume each fall—and still find it an extraordinary feat of fiction. (Recently, the PBS Durrells of Corfu series has been a great treat.)

My next two (again belated) reads: Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, loaned to us by Deacon Colleen Lewis (she who has survived five Rectors during her Diaconate) and a must read for a teacher who used to insist his students memorize the first 18 lines of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales! And the next in Sue Halgarth’s Willa Cather and Edith Lewis mysteries: Death Comes. Thankful to Sue and her partner for the gift.

Highlights of family news this Christmastide

From the Peeks in Milwaukee

• The September 12 birth of Louis Beecher Moss Peek, son of George and Laura Grace, brother to Willie, Greta, and Huck
• Lou’s subsequent ballooning growth! Me: What are you feeding that kid? Laura Grace: Bacon, is that wrong?
• Greta is back to art classes, even without a tooth or two
• Huck, the life of the party and the party of life is a superhero whose sign is the Green Spectacles
• George’s mother and father-in-law Jon and Martha, brother-in-law Jamie, Jon’s sister Polly (a wonderful artist in her own right), and cousin-in-law Claire took in the WWII sites in France
• Laura Grace, following maternity leave, is working part-time from home
• Will has been pitching baseball and singing in the Mt. Olive youth choir
• Great hopes for the Brewers to make the World Series, but they couldn’t Dodge the last pitch!
• The whole Milwaukee Peek clan joined Chuck and Nancy for a weekend in Iowa City—think 100-foot water slide, think Hamburg Inn burgers and shakes, think Pedestrian Walk
• George and Laura Grace refinished their basement after some water damage—now a wonderful space for kids fun, family gathering, and hospitality
• The firm where George is a partner just finished its fiscal year so—time to add up billable hours, see if they kept up with the growth of the family, and recover from stress

From the Ptomey’s in Cedar Bluffs

• Rowan worked for some time at the Omaha Steel foundry in Wahoo and has now begun his final hours (Biology and Corrections) for his Associate degree from Metro Community College
• Brody, even as a sophomore, was Captain of his football team and on the honor roll at school
• Noelle returned from Ireland to head off to Austin, Texas, for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church—she and Woody Bradford and Betsy Blake Bennett’s return trip from Austin and ours from New York took us all to Chicago for a flight back to Omaha
• And then immediately thereafter Noelle directed an over-flowing Camp Canterbury just outside of Fremont
• The Ptomey’s and the Nebraska Peeks took in sights in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, including coffee with Martha Townsend who was mentoring a U. Missouri student group in Galway
• Harlan continued his vigilant look at political developments that affect his school and to fight for policies and programs that put kids first
• And he found a 2000 champagne Pontiac Bonneville with leather upholstery for Brody’s first car!
• They were able to join the Kearney Peeks for Thanksgiving (everyone had cooking duties for the big beast) and then host the Peeks in Cedar for Brody’s birthday celebration

From Us Folks

• Nancy continues with her weekly Yoga class with Theresa Bushnell and her Prayer Group at church, all the while sorting and sifting the world’s second largest archive, and resisting the new Fascists all around us
• Chuck gave talks on recovery at Grand Island’s Tuesday Night Workshop, trips that often entail either burgers and fries at Pam’s or Bonnie Sloan’s extraordinary fried chicken with Tom MacAloon, Jim Schmitt, Jolene Stalker, and Rita Tripp
• Once again Chuck was poet and emcee for the Buffalo Commons Storytelling and Music Festival in McCook, highlighted by all the Sehnerts, their wonderful bakery and Bieroc café, and the stellar talents of Bill Lepp, Zoe Lewis and her musicians, and the great McCook planners and hosts
• Chuck and Nancy took in the Cather Symposium in Limavady, Northern Ireland (where her family also brought Ardis Yost and both Tracy Tucker, Ashley Olson, their husbands, and Willa Murphy were our able and cordial leaders)
• After Ireland, the Peeks continued traveling to see Larry and Betty Becker Theye in Belfast, Maine (Belfast to Belfast!), Deb Block and Bill Harley in Seekonk, Massachusetts, and Jay Yost, Wade Leak, Tom Gallagher, and Claire and Shelley Fort in New York
• July saw us at the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference in Oxford, Mississippi—always a reunion with friends like Jim and Bev Carothers, Ann and Dale Abadie, Theresa Towner and Peter Lurie (both on my panel), Terrell Tebbetts who led the Teaching Faulkner this year, Grayson Schick, Jennie Joiner, and Seth Dawson—this year Karen Hixson and Roger and Cel Davis also went from Kearney and we had a great evening with them and Colby Kulman and Jack Barbera; Colby treated us again at the Ravine before we headed for home
• Chuck again taught History of the Episcopal Church at the Bishop Kemper School of Ministry in Topeka, Kansas, under the faithful leadership of Dean Don Compier, Mother Tracy Rohleder, and Deacon Robert Hurst
• Nancy and Chuck, with the advice of George, Laura, Noelle, and Harlan, are working on setting up the Peek Family Scholarship for UNK’s majors in language and literacy
• This will be Chuck’s last year of his serving as Secretary of the local Torch Club but he’ll keep on enjoying the monthly dinner and talk
• Also the last year of Chuck’s term on the Nebraska Library Commission where he’s enjoyed working with Director Rod Wagner and Chair Michael LaCroix
• We enjoyed wonderful occasions for feasting or lunch or coffee and rolls or breakfasts and conversation with local friends Jerry, Janet, and Gregory Fox (joined now by Javier and Sammy), Stan and Carol Dart, Steve Buttress and Jan Weber, Clint and Pat Jones, Galen and Marilyn Hadley, Dick and Marilyn Jussel, Gene Koepke, Kate Benzel, Greta Sandburg, Mike and Pilar Konz, Yao Zheng and Alex, Will Stoutamire, Brad Modlin, Mary Haeberle, and Bobby and Rachel Fox, as well as cider and pie with our neighbors Ryan, Megan, Penny, Theo, Leaf, and August Killion and lunch with Cloyd and Linda Clark and the BCSF gang in McCook
• Had fun taking in basketball and hockey games with Greg Fox, especially sharing the suite Kenny Anderson won for sinking a tournament putt, and watching televised Husker games with Ken, Linda, Rosemary Northwall, Carla Brooke, Jack McSweeney, and Janice Wiebusch
• Chuck did the voice-over for the Frank Museum’s new historical video, and he’s met with Jeff Welles to launch into the long-over-due work on his Strunk interviews and programs
• Chuck and Jerry Fox did a program for MONA this fall, we took in the holiday show at Kearney Community Theater with Stan and Carol Dart, and Nancy is a regular at Janet Fox’s Kearney Action Network—if you ask network of what, it’s “nasty women”
• Enjoyed welcoming UNK’s new Reynolds Chair of Poetry, Brad Modlin, to campus and St. Luke’s, including a trip with him to Dwight to visit Ted Kooser’s “Poetry Made and Repaired Shop,” and share a bit of lunch with him at the Dwight Café
• Were so pleased to be able to attend a grand Annual Council in Gering/Scottsbluff, ending our Diocesan Sesquicentennial Celebration (chaired by Noelle), visiting there with our two former Bishops, Jim Krotz and Joe Burnett, and then celebrating and preaching at St. Matthew’s, Alliance, enjoying the hospitality of Merle Hayward and Ron and Holly Westemeier and Willa, and seeing Marina Garner from Hyannis
• Took in exhibits at the Museum of Nebraska Art, plays at Crane River and Kearney Community Theater, poetry readings in the Front Porch Poetry series at the Frank Museum, concerts by the Platte River Singers, Marilyn Musick with John McKirahan, and the KHS Camarata
• Favorites of our infrequent leisure hours: Call the Midwife, The Crown, Miss Fisher and Dr. Blake Australian mysteries, the four-part Spy of Warsaw, and Madame Secretary
• Loved Marty Burnett’s choristers’ sung Compline at the Cathedral over the Thanksgiving holidays
• Enjoyed holiday calls with Steve Schneider (Chuck’s longest standing friendship, begun when they were in 9^th grade) and Dotty Leeds (Chuck’s cousin in Clear Lake, Minnesota), as well as weekly phone visits with son George and daughter Noelle

Our contact information

Charles Peek

2010 Fifth Avenue

Kearney, NE 68845

308-293-2177

cpeek.cp@gmail.com

Nancy Jane Peek

2010 Fifth Avenue

Kearney, NE 68845

308-293-3386

nancyjpeek@gmail.com

Two poems for the season:

In Another Tongue, Advent Meant Waiting

For God knows how long,

Nana’s been out on her porch

waiting for our car to cross the miles

and pull up to their curb,

where the hugs and greetings and teary smiles

will be her release from the days and hours

she’s waited for our coming.

Long before the holidays, Papa dug up his gladiola bulbs

and took them to the cellar for the winter,

trimmed back the sprigs that disturbed the well-ordered bush,

drained and coiled up the hoses and hung them in the garage,

put away the poles and flies and creels,

all those ways he waited out the season now ending

in his stepping out on the porch to join Nana,

with whom he’d waited for one thing or another

for then over sixty years.

They watch my dad and I unload the packages and bags

as my mom led her mom back into the house,

helped her put the food on the table already set,

the two catching up as they took out each warmed dish.

Then at lunch, there’d be talk about what else we needed to do

while we waited for the rest of the family to arrive,

and for the guests who’d be stopping by,

when the greetings would all be repeated again.

All this, the way we entered on the annual remembrance

in candle light and song and silence on the holy night,

            long-expected every year, these liturgies of love

being the how we all waited and why we’d all come.

                                                                                                Kearney, Nebraska

                                                                                                October 18, 2018

Now Depart in Peace

Simeon, the first to see,

be blessed by epiphany,

and him blind;

but not in mind

or heart, the Word

his Soul, the light

that shined into his night,

first to sing

of what he’d for so long

longed, the Lord’s new song.

                                                                                    Kearney, Nebraska

                                                                                    November 20, 2018

Award presented to Chuck at the Cather Symposium in Ireland