"God don't hear me otherwise"

So afterwards I out and asked him. "How come? How come you yelled?"

"God don't hear me otherwise," said Grandpa Kashpaw.

I sweat. I broke right into a little cold sweat at my hairline because I knew this was perfectly right and for years not one damn other person had noticed it. God's been going deaf. Since the Old Testament, God's been deafening up on us. I read, see. Besides the dictionary, which I'm constantly in use of, I had this Bible once. I read it. I found there was discrepancies between then and now. It struck me. Here God used to raineth bread from clouds, smite the Phillipines, sling fire down on red-light districts where people got stabbed. He even appeared in person every once in a while. God used to pay attention, is what I'm saying.

Now there's your God in the Old Testament and there is Chippewa Gods as well. Indian Gods, good and bad, like tricky Nanabozho or the water monster, Missepeshu, who lives over in Matchimanito. That water monster was the last God I ever heard to appear. It had a weakness for young girls and grabbed one of the Pillagers off her rowboat. She got to shore all right, but only after this monster had its way with her. She's an old lady now. Old Lady Pillager. She still doesn't like to see her family fish that lake.

Our Gods aren't perfect, is what I'm saying, but at least they come around. They'll do a favor if you ask them right. You don't have to yell. But you do have to know, like I said, how to ask in the right way. That makes problems, because to ask proper was an art that was lost to the Chippewas once the Catholics gained ground. Even now, I have to wonder if Higher Power turned it back, if we got to tell, or if we just don't speak its language.

I looked around me. How else could I explain what all I had seen in my short life--King smashing his fist in things, Gordie drinking himself down to the Bismarck hospitals, or Aunt June left by a white man to wander off in the snow. How else to explain the times my touch don't work, and farther back, to the old-time Indians who was swept away in the outright germ warfare and dirty-dog killing of the whites. In those times us Indians was so much kindlier than now.

We took them in.

Oh yes, I'm bitter as an old cutworm just thinking of how they done to us and doing still.

So Grandpa Kashpaw just opened my eyes a little there. Was there any sense relying on a God whose ears was stopped? Just like the government? I says then, right off, maybe we got nothing but ourselves.

(Louise Erdrich, from "Love Medicine")

---

But for you, O Lord, do I wait;

it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.

Look away from me, that I may smile again,

before I depart and am no more!

(David, from Psalms 38 and 39)

---

Today's first communion hymn

And now, O Father, mindful of the love

That bought us, once for all, on Calvary's tree

And having with us him that pleads above,

We here present, we here spread forth to thee

That only offer perfect in thine eyes,

That one true, pure, immortal sacrifice.

Look Father, look on his anointed face,

And only look on us as found in him;

Look not on our misusings of thy grace,

Our prayer so languid, our faith so dim;

For lo! between sins and their reward

We set the passion of thy Son our Lord.

-William Bright, 1874

"Take a Walk" by Passion Pit

I have been without Internet for the month of July--hence the dearth of activity here.

So here's a compelling music video that aptly complements Passion Pit's surprisingly ambitious dismantling of the American dream. It's worth your time and attention.

"Island Garden Song" by the Mountain Goats

So I just got The Coroner's Gambit. The nice thing about being addicted to the Mountain Goats is that with such an expansive discography alongside his still prolific album-almost-every-year production, I can pretty much count on listening to new stuff (and you can bank on having to hear it from me) for years to come.

Anyway. This song is marvelous and, despite sounding like so many other of his songs, it also sounds somehow completely different and unique. That's the beauty of the Mountain Goats. He only has about five or six different songs that he's written a hundred times each, yet every single one of them is unique. This, like so many others, is a treasure.

The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. . . . That is our life, to be trained by longing.

St. Augustine

We are essentially and ultimately desiring animals, which is simply to say that we are essentially and ultimately lovers. To be human is to love, and it is what we love that defines who we are. Our (ultimate) love is constitutive of our identity. . . . we are talking about ultimate loves--that to which we are fundamentally oriented, what ultimately governs our vision of the good life, what shapes and molds our being-in-the-world--in other words, what we desire above all else, the ultimate desire that shapes and positions and makes sense of all our penultimate desires and actions.

James K.A. Smith

Enter the deep places of our life and claim us for your purposes.

We would be more free than we are,

more bold than we dare,

more obedient than we choose

We wait for the gift of your large gift of life

that will wrench us away from death

to the miracle of Easter joy.

Walter Brueggemann

To you, O LORD, I call;

my rock, be not deaf to me,

lest, if you be silent to me,

I become like those who go down to the pit. 

David

A Summer Day Well Spent

I had breakfast at Bluegrass Grill and Bakery with my parents before I rode my bike into work. After clearing up a few final matters, I picked up some groceries at Whole Foods and headed back home.

There I spent a nice hour or so reading on the downstairs porch and drinking iced coffee while Alvin played in the yard. Then I met Sean and Ross at The Shebeen to watch one of the more exciting 49 minutes of soccer I've seen--the latter half of England v. Sweden in the Euro 2012.

Ralph arrived in from Quantico at the end of the match, and then we headed over for a delicious dinner at the McDermotts with Dawn and little Harold. We got to watch Phinehas take his first bike ride ever--the first of countless many, no doubt. For dessert we walked down to the Pop Shop in my neighborhood, which was closed, so instead Mom, Alvin, and I took a nice walk.

Ralph, Sean, and I closed the evening biking around Charlottesville--first to Zinc, which was closed for a private party, and then through the packed Downtown Mall, and finally to Backyard Cinema (or whatever it's called) to watch the first third or so of Alabama Moon--which turned out to be not so great.

So we snuck out early and biked back to the McDermott's. On the way we happened to run into the famed Robert Brandon Smith III, whom I had not met and who happens to be a fanatical reader of John Lukacs. We closed the night on the McDermott porch.

Great day--even with the little spill I took on my bike.

(click to enlarge)

I've really enjoyed knowing these little guys.

And my godchildren are pretty awesome too.

"And I thought, 'The world is our relentless adversary, rarely outwitted, never tiring.'"