Author: itoccurstocp

Photo is of “my place.” Text from Raymond Carver’s At Least.

In Meditations of the Heart Howard Thurman takes on that conundrum in Matthew 6:25.  You know (in the King James): “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.”  Though in some versions the translation is not “do not worry” but “take no thought.”  Which is where we pick up Thurman:

“Take no thought.  This day I shall desert my anxieties.  I shall forsake them – cut the off from the food supply of my spirit.  Confident am I that if I do not feed them they cannot long survive….  Into God’s hand do I yield myself this day, with all that it involves for me, with he faith that I can take complete refuge in the knowledge and the love of God.  For me this will not be easy, nor do I lightly undertake it.”

Boy, he said a mouthful there!

My anxieties – “if I do not feed them they cannot long survive.”  Well, intellectually, I know that to be true, but damn, my Jabba the Hutt anxieties have been so well fed over the years that they can live a good while off their existing body fat.  So the “this will not be easy” is, well, classic understatement.

Granted, one seemingly needs to be of a certain age to remember and/or care, (and of a certain age where the remembering part becomes more and more of a challenge) but those of us who do know that the 3rd of June is a remarkable day in the history of music.  This is the day memorialized by Bobbie Gentry as “the day Billy Joe McCallister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”  This 1967 classic is certainly indelibly written into the American Songbook.  So on this day, give it a listen.  Two choices, feel free to sing along:

The iconic original by Bobby Gentry that drips of the late 60s.

If anyone comes close to the original, it is Patty Smyth on this version, great background music by Tom Scott & The L.A. Express

Here’s a bit of trivia.  Note that in this storytelling, and this is great storytelling, no one at the dinner table, the narrator’s whole family, has a name, just mamma, brother, papa…, yet every other person in the song does have a name.  

This song also presents a textbook example of a MacGuffin, an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself — that is, in this instance, the question: Just what did they throw off the Tallahatchie bridge? — that is a pure MacGuffin.

Photo taken on a beach walk a few months back. You never know what you’ll come across on the beach.

Photo of a flowering weed picked by the roadside on a recent walk. Text from John Berryman’s Address to the Lord.

From Howard Thurman:

“It has been aptly said that the time and place of a man’s life is the time and place of his body, but the meaning and significance of a man’s life is as creative, as vast, and as far-reaching as his gifts, his dreams, and his response to his times can make them.”

Which strikes me as a riff from the Jackie Robinson quote, one of my favorites: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”   Or maybe Robinson was riffing on Thurman.  In any case, let’s not lose the point (or at least one of the points) of each.  We each hold the ability to make a difference in some form or fashion.

Another accidental photo. Text derived in thinking about this by Howard Thurman:

“Often, the degree to which we oppose a thing marks the degree to which we do not understand it.  Sometimes we use our opposition to an idea to cover up our own ignorance.  We express our dislike for things, sometimes people, when we do not understand the things we pretend to dislike; when we do not know the people for who we have antagonism.”  Howard Thurman

Photo taken from the I35 walkway over Lady Bird Lake (formerly known as Town Lake).

Today I am struck by the seeming contradiction of wisdom.  Compare Darrell Royal’s “Dance with them who brung you” (that is, stick with what works) to Anthony DeMello’s “The donkey that brings you to the door is not the means by which you enter the house” (that is, what got you here won’t necessarily get you there).*  But there is always a way to reconcile if one looks hard enough.  Perhaps you dance at the door with the donkey who brung you, then leave it behind, walk in, and dance with whoever is inside.  There’s a life lesson buried in there somewhere, but it will be difficult to fit on a bumper sticker.

*To my knowledge, though contemporaries, DeMello and Royal never met

Photo accidentally taken. Text derived from a Howard Thurman quote: “Often, the degree to which we oppose a thing marks the degree to which we do not understand it. Sometimes we use our opposition to an idea to cover up our own ignorance. We express our dislike for things, sometimes for people, when we do not understand the things we pretend to dislike; when we do not know the people for whom we have the antagonism.”