January’s poem

I used to post poetry during my first year or two of blogging. I’d like to try again. However, I don’t know very many poems; I might exhaust my supply after a few entries.

This month’s selection is by Matt Berry of Toast of London.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

All men somehow pay for love
While this world turns under stars above
It’s unfair how fingers point and blame
Now I hang my head in fear and shame

Who am I to cast a stone?
I’ve enough dark demons of my own
Just a pawn in a very complex game
Now I hang my head in fear and shame

How I hang my head in fear and shame
Yes, I hang my head in fear and shame

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I think it’s very moving.

Jasper and Ziva sing: “Now we hang our heads in fur and shame.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A philosophic bonus: “The Genesis of Shame.”

The funeral, etc.

On Friday, Karin & I rode to Kansas City in Martin’s & Mary’s car, arriving with them in time for the “viewing” ceremony. Grandpa looked very peaceful in his casket. He’d been laid out in one of his comfortable flannel shirts. I talked to many people, including a guy named Ryan with whom I’d gone to high school in Missouri in 1996. A member of the armed forces, he’d traveled virtually everywhere; he had much to tell me about Antarctica. Later, I introduced Karin to my grandma, but only briefly because everyone wanted to speak to her.

Afterward, I ate at a Waffle House, which I hadn’t been able to do since 2010. Then Karin & I spent the night in a well-wisher’s basement. M&M shared a hotel room with Ana & David and were attacked by bedbugs. Edoarda & Stephen, who’d used that room the previous night, also suffered bug bites.

The funeral itself was held the next day. Three hundred people attended (or so I estimate). I and the other grandsons bore the casket. I was reunited with Amber, a schoolmate from Ecuador who’s now a missionary to Papua New Guinea. Later, an old farmer from Duluth, Minnesota, questioned me about my dissertation. One woman learned that I’d studied philosophy and then asked if I believed in God.

On the whole, it was a grueling day.

The next morning, Karin & I got back into the car with M&M and rode back to South Bend, where we discovered that Jasper and Ziva had broken into their plastic container of treats and eaten the lot. The kitties were but little harmed: their treats aren’t very calorific. Jasper actually looks thinner now.

Today, some undetonated pipe bombs were found at a busy intersection near my favorite Vietnamese restaurant.

R.I.P. Grandpa

My grandpa – my mother’s father – died in his sleep yesterday, in Kansas City, Missouri. He was ninety-five. Many of his relations, who are scattered around the globe, will join my grandma at the funeral. Karin & I will travel to Kansas City on Friday.

My grandpa was known to U.S. evangelicals for discovering the bodies of the five slain “Operation Auca” missionaries. The “Operation Auca” story has been told by Elisabeth Elliot in Through Gates of Splendor and other books; in Steve Saint’s book End of the Spear, and in the movie of the same title; in the documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor, for which my grandpa was interviewed; and in my grandparents’ 2010 book, Unmarked Memories: Five Friends Buried in the Jungle of Ecuador. Many people also read my grandparents’ earlier book, Mission to the Headhunters: How God’s Forgiveness Transformed Tribal Enemies (1961; revised edition, 2002), which recounts their first years among the Shuar people.

My grandparents lived in Ecuador for thirty-seven years and then retired to the Missouri countryside. They helped out with various ministerial projects, traveling often. At home, my grandpa farmed pine and fir trees and beef cattle. I used to lend him a hand – bitterly, against my will. My grandpa didn’t understand why this teenaged grandson was so sullen. He enjoyed working with other people; he was naturally chatty and upbeat; as my other grandfather describes him, he was as confident as a person could be without turning downright cocky. Recreationally, he liked to fish … and to work (but I’ve already mentioned that) … and to be around other people who were fishing or working. He would attend a tractor auction for the fun of it.

He also could be very witty – even when he suffered from dementia (I describe this in a blog entry written during my last visit to him). A plain man, he enjoyed deftly pricking the balloons of pretense.

Here is a picture of him that I found on the Internet. With one hand, he holds his Bible, and with the other he greets a Christian of a warmer clime.

A local homicide; a visit to the Episcopalians

On Thursday night, a 17-year-old girl was shot to death about a block from our apartment, on a stretch of road along which I routinely walk to IUSB. Karin & I were outside the neighborhood when the homicide occurred. The victim was driving when she was shot, and she crashed into a house. (No one else was hurt.)

Here is a very sad news report about it.

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This morning, Karin & I visited the Episcopal church attended by one of Karin’s work colleagues.

I don’t think I’ll ever join a “high” church. For one thing – and this is something I’ve never enjoyed in any of the “high” congregations I’ve visited – it was exhausting and tedious to read, read, and read, vocally and in unison with others, from the church bulletin. For another, the communicants all drank out of the same chalice. Karin was amused and exasperated by how strongly that put me off.

I liked other things, though. The sermon, or homily, was about reorienting one’s life according to God’s will. I thought it very good, though its connection to the scripture – Jonah ch. 3, vv. 1–5 and 10 (the verses appointed for the third Sunday after Epiphany) – was rather tenuous. Also, I liked how the churchgoers greeted me with friendliness. “Peace be with you,” they would say. “Thanks,” I’d reply. “Peace be with you,” they’d say again. “Yes,” I’d reply again, “thank you very much.”

My son

I’ll tutor one more student tomorrow, and then the first week of tutoring will have been completed. So far, everything’s gone smoothly. I’m especially glad for new rules that simplify the emailing of tutees. (I used to waste hours every week trying to schedule meetings with a couple of deadbeats.)

This afternoon, one of my old tutees brought me a copy of the book that she and I had gone through together during the fall: Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. It was a lovely gesture.

She also told me that her husband had given her $50 to gamble in South Bend’s new casino, and that she’d won $300.

That’s great, I said.

Yes, she said, and I had the good sense to leave the casino while I still had $200.

Well, that’s still a nice haul. So your net gain was $150 once you returned the initial $50 to your husband?

It was $200, she said. I didn’t tell him I won anything.

I thought that was pretty good.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Yesterday was the anniversary of Jasper’s adoption. He’s lived with Karin for three years. In a sense, I, too, have been his parent for three years: I was with Karin in the pet shelter when she chose him.

To celebrate Jasper’s adoption, we’ll give some tuna to both of the kitties. However, since it’ll be a celebration of Jasper, we won’t interfere if he tries to steal tuna from little Ziva.

(Actually, we probably will interfere.)

Here is my son:

And here he is with his sister: