The author and expert on the
history of guns in the U.S.
said that in the 18th Century
the gun was needed but not

loved and in the 19th Century
the gun was loved but not
needed and thus began the
mass sale of guns as totems

in order to keep the gun
manufacturers gainfully em-
ployed in modern manu-
facturing where little boys

sitting in the Saturday matinee
double feature would see how
wonderful it was to own a
Winchester rifle, and so the

modern-day myth of the gun
as savior was born in spite
of Jesus, nurtured, marketed
and progressed and prolifer-

ated in paperback novels and
Hollywood movies into the
mid-20th Century with the
explosion of lust for guns

so those little, mostly
white boys sitting at the
theater on Saturday after-
noon would know that they

eventually would be Lash
Laroo, Gene Autry, Roy
Rodgers, James Arness,
John Wayne, Hopalong

Cassidy, Clint Walker,
The Lone Ranger, Randolph
Scott, Paul Newman, Robert
Redford, Clint Eastwood

and a myriad of others to
save the nation for Ozzie
and Harriet and David and
in loving memory of Ricky.

Before reading her poetry, the
poet said something to the effect
that publishers want to sell books
(for obvious reasons thought the
capitalist) and that in order for
that to happen people need to buy
them and as that poet would like
to have the publishers keep publish-
ing her books she would encourage
those gathered for the poetry read-
ing to show their support for the
arts by buying the books (each one
signed by the poet) on the table
at the back of the room immediate-
ly following the reading, or per-
haps during the social hour after-
ward, maybe between glasses of
wine, but not so may glasses of
wine that they forget to purchase
the books. This, of course, was
followed by appropriately muted
laughter for an artistic occasion
just before the reading began
in earnest.

“Not everyone warms to the sight
of a priest at a party,” said Father

Brown, “but I never let it keep me
from a rum punch.” When he heard

the words, he understood them im-
mediately. Announcing oneself to

be a member of the clergy is invariab-
ly a conversation killer whether

answering the inevitable question of
one’s occupation while sitting in the

hot tub by the condo pool without
most of one’s clothes not to mention

one’s clerical collar or like Father
Brown in full clerical splendor stand-

ing among party goers where no quest-
ions are forthcoming concerning

vocations. Sometimes the silence
seems eternally deafening until the

good priest or pastor asks for a single
malt Highland Scotch neat and party

goers breathe a sigh of relief and
begin telling jokes of all sorts.

He jogged along the trail
scaring up a small snake.
He put his hiking stick in
the brush to catch a glimpse
and the little guy struck
at the stick and slithered
away. He acted bravely
because it was Michigan
and there are no poisonous
snakes where he lives and
there is no swamp for an
Eastern Massasauga swamp
rattler to swim, the area
having been cleared for
farming by the Dutch set-
tlers, but if this had been
the Phoenix Mountain Preserve
out his winter back door,
he would have just stood
perfectly still and watched
the snake slide by and he
wouldn’t even have dared
bow before the magnifi-
cent Tiger Rattler with
the very pretty rattle
and very large fangs
and a significant
supply of very potent
venom.

Young, handsome, athletic,
he cut quite the figure
in the pulpit,

a no-fool-around kind of
a guy (stern) who once
expelled me from

catechism class, but he
helped my father
make confession

of faith and if he was good
enough for my father,
he was good enough

for me, so I, too, made
confession of faith
and one time

preached on Youth
Sunday and he
told me I

had the gift for ministry.
A few years later,
after my father

had died tragically, the
pastor became a prof.
at the seminary

I attended as a student and
he barely acknowledged
my existence.

The only way I knew he knew
I was alive was when he
stopped me abruptly

in the hall to notify me
that I had misspelled
words in an essay

I wrote for the literary pub-
lication. I should have
been flattered that

he read it. Ah, pre-spellcheck.
It was as if we had no
history. My pastor,

one of the big reasons I went
into the ministry, my
childhood idol

had feet of clay. Looking back
in gratitude on forty-
five years of

ordained ministry, I see the
mysterious wonders that
God performs,

in spite of our feet of clay.

I know this is not a new subject, but it still fascinates me as I work
through my call to ministry all those years ago and those who played a providential/synchronistic role. The chaplain was one of them.

Bob

He broke every rule of public speaking —
alternately staring down at his manuscript,
then looking up into the thick, dark, high
rafters of the inverted ship, never looking
at those assembled in from of him in the
dark, flailing his arms questioningly,
tapping the side of his head like he was
trying to coax out just the right word.
You would think he had never spoken
in public before, but it was all well
rehearsed, dramatic, effective, mes-
merizing. He would have flunked speech 101,
but he held us captive in the chapel of the
small, Midwest, liberal arts college and
many were inspired to study for the
ministry because of him and his preach-
ing; many aficionados copied his style
and mannerisms never reaching the pinnacle
of that quirky style and some of us have
even figured out a way to forgive him for
inspiring us to that life of preaching.

She looked out at the strawberry moon
And all the surrounding stars,
And embraced the moonlight in her room,
The quiet reaching near and far.

She breathed deeply of the solitude
Safely hidden in stillness’s loving cup.
She heard the only sound to intrude.
It was the welcome breathing of her pup.

He had wandered streets alone and scared.
She found him three years ago.
He wasn’t abused; but apparently no one cared
And simply had let him go.

She sat in her own silent elation;
There was peace and no anxiety there;
The two breathed in syncopation.
He looked at her with a loving stare.

We saw the strawberry moon
at eleven-fifteen
on the summer solstice shining
brighter than any full-moon
we had ever seen.
The dog was not by our side;
he’d gone to bed an hour
too soon;
he was not real keen
on staying up and howling
at the brightest strawberry
moon ever seen.
We held hands as we looked up
and thought the sad moon
smiled on us and our chocolate pup
who snored through
that summer solstice’s
biggest, brightest
strawberry moon.

The buffalo calf couldn’t cross
the river and the mother tried

her best to get him across but
the current took him away. He

landed trapped on a rock island
and slept the cold night without

his mother — surviving the cold
only to be attacked by a young

wolf. Out of nowhere the call
came — mama was there, having

left the herd at great personal
risk. With mama in sight, the

calf bravely fought the young
wolf and then suckled like crazy.

Don’t ever doubt a mother’s love.

In a book of years, Rimbaud
wrote:
No one’s serious at seventeen
When lindens line the promenade.
The reader remembered being
seventeen the year his father died
by the father’s own hand and for
the first time in seventeen
years knew life to be
a very dangerous place.

In the same book of years,
Shakespeare’s Kent said, “I
have years on my back forty-
eight.” The reader was forty-
eight when his wife died in
a day and on that day aged
ten more years in life he
knew to be an ever so
dangerous place.

In that book of years, Philip
Roth wrote, “I was learning
at seventy-one what it is to
be deranged.”
The reader, seventy-one, sees
the world as a very lovely
place in the midst of all
the “very real and present
danger.”

Perhaps, he is a tad deranged,
but if so, he wouldn’t re-
arrange it as he hears his
wife ask him if he would
like to accompany her
to the store and later
they would look for
the strawberry moon
on this summer solstice
with the chocolate lab
by their side.