Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-17-23

I never have taken the trouble, either when choosing classes in college, or casually consulting the Google gods, to know the actual definition of a weed.

Occasionally in my life I have owned properties large and inviting enough to grow gardens, and I have attempted their cultivation. That is, until realizing that… I have a “black thumb.” I have a friend, an ex-pat from England, who has the natural British ladies’ gift for planning, planting, growing enormous Technicolor and fragrant flower gardens with pathways, benches, little oases. Whidbey Island, now North Carolina: wherever she lives, gorgeous flowers grow and thrive.

It might not be only a British thing. Another friend is American-born, and lived some years in the Netherlands – oh yes: a nation synonymous with floral splendor – and returned to the US and to a second career as a floral and garden consultant. In any event, this gift is not a Marschall thing.

My disinclination, or deadly thrall, might have originated in fifth grade, when a teacher asked me to use “horticulture” in a sentence. A budding (ha) wise guy, I innocently declared, “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” Compounding my personal War Of the Roses, the afternoon I spent in the Principal’s Office was, ironically, next to a large vase of flowers.

Anyway, my working definition of a weed is, simply, an unattractive or inconvenient flower. That works for me. This theory does not prevent me from being fascinated rather than put off by the middle ground (literally) between beautiful flowers and pesky weeds: Wildflowers.

With all due respect to British garden-architects and those who make living rooms and lobbies resplendent with colorful and fragrant arrangements, “Mother Nature” (I choose to regard her as Mrs God) can outdo them all.

• When I lived near deserts in the American Southwest, I marveled at the times – maybe only one day every year or two – when the slightest rain-shower “made the desert come alive.” Then, those barren landscapes miraculously bloom with carpets of strange and brilliantly colored flowers.
• In the same mysterious ways, nature’s ambassadors – random breezes, hungry insects, and wandering birds – carry seeds and pollen far and wide. They cause pretty wildflowers to grow in unexpected places like highway medians and roofs of urban apartment buildings.
• One of the miracles of wildflowers is their resilience, matching their beauty. Seeds found on millennia-old ancient fabrics or in Egyptian tombs will still sprout and bloom when watered.
• Delicate wildflowers, counter-intuitively, are as hardy as they are beautiful. Seemingly fragile flowers, no matter how tiny, grow in inhospitable places – between barren rocks, in cracks of city sidewalks, sometimes sideways out of brick walls.

I believe that God has not only chosen to array His creation – that is, His gift to us, a beautiful world – in blankets of colorful, often surprising, beauty and fragrance, but He desires that we see lessons: a larger purpose.

Some people look at flowers that struggle, plants that die, wintertimes that leave trees and plants barren, as signs of a hostile universe; death is at every turn. But for every Winter there is a Spring. Every seed will sprout. Every desert will bloom. In a version of the “glass half-empty or half-full” paradigm – another proposition I never understood – we can know the answer to the question, “which prevails in the cycle: death or life?”

We know that Life prevails. Jesus – “the Rose of Sharon, the fairest of ten thousand flowers” – proved that.

This truth represents more than a nice metaphorical garden to walk through, or a bouquet we can put on our table. It is a promise. It confirms life and the renewal of life. It allows us to view life optimistically. What we may grieve over today; what we cannot see for a season; what we might cling to, despairing of any results or answers… are like seeds.

Seeds will sprout, in their own time and with patience and cultivation. And they will bloom. And bless. As flowers, they will produce more pollen and seeds. Life goes on… beautifully. And when it appears most fragile, we are reminded that life is real, life is earnest; life is determined, life is triumphant.

In my naïve folk-wisdom, I see those vagabond reminders of life triumphant, wildflowers, as floral counterparts to another of God’s colorful promises, the rainbow.

I listed some strange and hostile environments where wildflowers “take root.” But people are wildflowers too. Wild flowers. We know them; we should be them, in some form we can choose. At one time in history it was common that children left their homes in their early teens, sometimes losing all subsequent contact with their families. But they took root, blooming, blessing.

The histories of races and peoples can be traced today through the evidence of seeds and plants that were carried and cultivated in migrations of centuries past. The Virgin Mary, it is estimated, left her parents to be with Joseph when she was barely 14. My daughter moved to Northern Ireland almost 20 years ago, and is thriving faraway with her husband, children, and a wonderful career.

Be willing to be a wildflower seed. Eagerly await where God’s breezes and the flights of His birds and bees may carry you.

“Be fruitful and multiply”? Also take root, bloom, and be a fragrant and beautiful flower – not one of life’s weeds – to be blessed, and to be a blessing, where you find yourself. Wild flowers don’t care where they grow.

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Click: Wildflowers

5-8-23

“Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent,” ran the opening line of a crime series in the early days of black-and-white TV. In the stories here, names are neither given nor relevant, but the situations are sadly too common in contemporary life.

They concern parents who are among my most precious friends; and precious children.

In the case of the first family, a family of strong Christian faith who show joy to the world about them and are upright in every way. One son had hidden demons, so to speak – episodes of emotional struggles and bouts of what the world calls mental health crises – and were that, indeed. Spiritual crises, too, but only episodes, because most of the time he was happy; a good friend and brother and son; strong in faith. But there were threats of suicide, and then prayer, therapy, meds, counseling. Then, evidently, victory. Then… suicide.

No more to be said, here anyway. Unimaginable grief, unending questions. Precious memories remain of the good times, of the good kid; for he was. Suicides are not new in humankind’s history… but why are they so common today? And among teens? And in a “comfortable” society, in happy homes?

In the other family, a son born with a proverbial silver spoon has periodically turned to drugs. The family is of conventional Christian background, and no social situation – other than the contemporary pattern of drug use so common – suggested that addiction was a prediction. Yet each episode was part of a vortex of more serious self-harm… then absences… and then bare escapes from disasters. Check-ins to programs and farms were accepted by the son every time… until he invariably checked out or went AWOL.

In this situation, currently, the parents are in a frenzy because the son has disappeared, evidently homeless and desperate, but by occasional accounts more addicted then ever.

In both of these cases, by some inner strength and faith, the moms neither gave up hope for their sons, nor faith in the One who can deliver… even amid the storms, even when the world screams, “Defeat!!!”

At this moment in history, in this rotting structure of a once-solid Christian society, I could be writing about other families, other children, other parents’ grief. Don’t we all know friends, relatives, neighbors with similar situations? Or… our own households?

The world grows crazier by the day.

And the world’s answer to the challenges of children who doubt is… to add more doubt.

The world’s answer to fear is… to provide more fear, to focus children’s attention on hopelessness and futility.

The world’s answer to craziness is to introduce more craziness: lies about gender, about patriotism, about tradition, about loyalty, about life, about faith.

Many of peoples’ problems in life are caused by their own sins. But many of today’s problems, I believe like those mentioned here, are the result of society’s evils visited upon vulnerable children – lies we are told; lies they believe; lies dressed up as truth.

Mental illness is real. Addiction is real. Does society – the “system” – provide help? Often, no. The culture, too often, is the enabler-in-chief. Music, entertainment, the media, Hollywood, education, even the church, too often provide excuses instead of solutions.

Are there solutions? If you believe the ills we face are bedrock spiritual crises… then, logically, the solutions are spiritual.

Shakespeare paraphrased Deuteronomy 32:2 when he wrote,

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It drops as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesses those who give and those who take…
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God Himself.

… and I suggest that, as the quality of mercy is not “strained,” neither are the qualities of love, and anguish, and grief, and a parent’s heartache. Neither a child’s needs, whether recognized, acknowledged, or silently screamed.

Only with God’s help can we end these cycles of horrible choices and frightening situations. They are cycles, for these situations described here are not random. This is contemporary America. This is our Post-Christian society. This is the world.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever (I John 2:15-17).

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This is a song written by the grandfather of my friend Daryl Coats about a “wayward” child and a parent’s love.

Click: The Greatest Gift

11-8-21

It seems like everywhere we turn these days we meet “virtual” things, “bots” (robots and robotic actions), and automated actions. When I was younger, the prospect of such things were called “labor-saving devices,” and promised a future of… saving labor.

Car washes led to driverless vehicles, in a way. Now we can read newspapers when going to work. Of course, when I lived in California, crazy drivers on the freeways read newspapers instead of paying attention to speeding cars in the dozen other lanes. Now, a few years later, there are no such things as newspapers any more. This is all called Progress.

On our computers, the program will finish our sentences. Algorithms predict, with high degrees of accuracy, what we want to buy and where we would like to travel. No matter, because commercials and subliminal messages mold our desires anyway.

So modern life is telling us what to do. Modern life increasingly also dissuades us from pushing back; prevents us from asserting ourselves.

We are at a precipice in history. These things are not momentary fads, but Brave New modes of living. Candy, of sorts, that will cause cavities in our souls, I fear. The Romans lulled the population into subservience by giving them “bread and circuses.” We remember – we should remember – that Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

I have found myself lately wishing that modern life could provide us with virtual Volume Controls. Can’t we all just get along at a quieter level, a slower pace, normal surroundings?

I think it was Patsy Clairmont who said that in her life these days, “Normal” is nothing but a setting on the clothes dryer. In its own way she rivals Franklin’s profundity. There are many dangers in contemporary life, seriously parlous trends and signs. Some who are not alarmed are welcoming of the tremors and coming disruptions (at their peril, I think). And some people merely are distracted by the shiny toys and sweet candies, so to speak, and media propaganda and guilt trips and…

Combined with wars, inflation, crime, corruption and so much else, we might wish we could turn the clock back. Except for Daylight Standard Time, that is something we cannot do. We are being told that we can do almost anything we set our minds to… except to say “No thanks” to some of these rapidly changing elements of contemporary life.

My essays of late have careened from grim to glib and back again. So will this one, all by itself.

I am much worried about the state of affairs in America and the West, in popular culture, in government, and everything in between. I lament, and blame, the institutional churches in large part. And I try to rally Christians to assert their faith, their freedom, and their fates – that is, our civic duties and prerogatives – as our heritage is being erased and our liberties eroded.

But then I tell myself, and remind you of the fact, that we can peek ahead to the final chapters of the Book. There will be travail; trials; and literal tribulation. What we currently endure might only be a shadow of persecution to come. Yet we know that God reigns, Jesus has defeated the enemy, and the Holy Spirit has been given to strengthen and guide us. “Gospel” means “Good News.” There will be a happy ending to all of this.

I was sarcastic about the concept of “Progress” above. Yet I harken to the book I have read many times, The Pilgrim’s Progress, reportedly the second best-selling book in history after the Bible; and deservedly so. We are pilgrims and strangers in this world, but headed somewhere as we all must. But keep to the Road called Straight, enduring twists and turns, and climb upward to the Celestial City. You like “virtual” things? Bunyan’s book is a virtual picture of reality!

This week I have had moments of crying tears of grief, for friends. Both Christians. A friend whose dear husband died, I believe of Covid or symptoms brought on or exacerbated by the virus. Creative people, united in love of Christ and each other. And a friend whose son committed suicide – as is often the case, sudden, surprising, a mystery. My friend is new to me, a “Ted-Head,” devotee of Theodore Roosevelt; our friendship further informed by a common love of Jesus. The Lord gives my friend the strength to bear up and share a positive witness in these days following. I cannot pretend to think I could be able to do so, as he is doing.

So. What’s important in life?

Yes, these controversies threaten us, and when evils attack us, maybe we turn the other cheek. When they attack our families… or when they attack the Savior… Well, we remember to pray; we ask the Spirit’s wisdom. Sometimes we turn down the volume, if we can. Sometimes we may answer in kind. The Bible does lay out the “whole armor of God.”

But something else came to my mind this week, and it was not an accident to “find” it. It has centered me, and ministered to me. I pray it does for you too.

Another new friend, Daryl Coats, is the grandson of the composer of Gospel songs J B Coats. J B wrote some of the greatest songs of the past couple of generations. You might know “Where Could I Go But To the Lord” and “Winging My Way Back Home.” And many scores of others.

He also wrote one of the most beautiful, sentimental Gospel songs ever – “The Sweetest Gift, a Mother’s Smile.” Do you know it?

One day a mother went to a prison To see an erring but precious son;
She told the warden how much she loved him; It did not matter what he had done.

Her boy had drifted far from the fireside Though she had pleaded with him each night,
Yet not a word did she ever utter And though her heart ached, her smile was bright.

She left a smile, son, you can remember; She’s gone to heaven, from heartaches free.
Those walls around you, could never change her. You were her baby and e’er will be.

She did not bring to him parole or pardon, She brought no silver, no pomp or style;
It was a halo sent down from heaven, The sweetest gift, a mother’s smile.

Can we remind ourselves that amidst the fears and fights and threats and hate and dangers, that we have our heavenly faith, the love of Jesus, the promises of God… and each other?

Cherish your family members, and your dear friends in Christ. This simple song reminds us of, yes, a mother’s smile…  and God’s unconditional love.

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Click either (or both!) versions of this song. One by an elderly mother on a mountain cottage porch; one by the great Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt.

The Sweetest Gift – Jan Clark

A Mother’s Smile – Dolly, Emmylou, Linda