Homestead mailing list

["Warren" <mogrits AT gmail.com>]

Here's one that has been in my inbox since 4/04, and it's staying there.
It's a response James made to Melody. I have no recall of the topic at hand.
I've expressed my appreciation of this post offlist to James but there's no
sense not reposting it for the newer members...

Melody writes:

> But no, it is not to save the poor little atheist that I would want prayer
> in school.  It is because that public schools are places that ban God,
> anybody's God with a capital G, from within its walls and it is wrong!!!

I had never broached the subject with Him, concerned that it might be a
source of embarrassment for Him; but finally it did come up one day.
Sometimes He comes to hang out on the farm during work time and usually
appears to be idling by while I do the work.  But this time was different;
no hocus-pocus miracles, no  expression on His face that means "Hey, I've
already done MY part."  This time He picked up handfuls of compost and
mulched around the plants in the garden and in the green house He repotted
some seedlings and was so quietly absorbed in it that I left Him alone.  But
the results of His work were stark.  Clean, neat transplants that all but
rang with green and growth.  Missed His calling, that one, I was thinking.
I absent mindedly mumbled "Hos thaumaston to onoma sou en pase te ge!"
He looked up with a cock of His eyebrow:
 "What's that you say?"
 "Oh, nothing."

By the time we were done, He was quite soiled and had dirt under His
fingernail and for once I had to admit that He had earned that beer.  As we
walked to the house I noticed He had a slight limp.

"Are You OK?"
"Yes, fine, why do you ask?"
"Your leg..."
"Oh, that.   Heh, heh, you didn't notice did you?"
"Notice what?"
"The snake."
"Snake?"
"Yeah, seems every time I do a little gardening, a snake shows up."
"The snake is in my garden?"
"Not any more, heh, heh."
"But what has that to do with Your limp ..."
He waved his hand as if I had spoiled the joke by having to have it
explained.
"... it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
He almost never quotes the Bible so I knew something was going on.
"I'm fond of that snake, You know."
"I know you are.  Don't worry, he'll be back."
"So that explains your limp."
"What did you think it was?"
By this time we were seated by the fire with my own recipe of the Holy
Brewski of Antioch.
"Well, I've read all those stories about You being thrown out of the schools
and I thought they might have injured You."
"Tell me what you've heard ..."  [Although He knows perfectly well what I've
heard, it's no use not playing along.]
"People who want prayer back in school tell how the school officials and
politicians and liberals have grabbed You by the scruff of the neck and
chucked you into the street. 'Banned' from school is the way they term it.
They tell how You got up like a banty rooster, picked up the badly dented
celestial crown, and shook Your fist at the locked gates and murmured 'Throw
Me out, will ya?'"
"And you were concerned that I might have been injured when they threw Me
out.."
"Yes, that, and ....."
"And what?  There's something else, isn't there?"
"Yes, there is.  Do you remember the Star Trek episode where they come
across the Olympian gods  but find that the gods are diminishing into
insignificance since no one worships them any more?" [OK, I already knew He
remembered that, He's a big Trekkie, maybe I shouldn't be so critical when
He's doing it.]
"Yes."
"And the Tom Robbins book where Pan is fading away since no one holds the
rites of Pan any more?"
"Yes."
"Well, the believers describe You just like that.  As if You only have power
and authority if people believe You do.  Once they stop, You become just a
weak old man they can throw into the dust and lock the doors against.  They
seem to view You as some incompetent Idiot."
He held up the brewski as if He were looking at the bottle, then He turned
His hand a bit and regarded His soil stained fingernails.
"Could you throw Me out of your garden?"
"What?  That's ridiculous!  As well to say I could throw the sun or the rain
out of the garden."
"Ah, yes ..... well, then, My work in your garden ... it doesn't really
depend on whether you believe or not, does it."
"Not in the slightest."
"Hmmmm ...'He maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and
sendeth the rain on the just and on the unjust.'"
[Two quotes in the same day ... bad sign!].
"So they can't really just throw You out of some place?"
"Well, let's put it this way: You couldn't throw God out of your garden even
if you tried, eh?"
"The very idea is absurd.
"So the God in your garden, is He real, or did you just make Him up."
"I'd have to go with real."
"And the God in the public schools, can you throw him out?"
"That's what they say."
"Then is He real, or did they just make Him up?"
"Ah ........... let's have another beer."
"Let's"

So I handed over another Holy Brewski of Antioch into the soil stained hand.

"Kyrie, ho kyrios hemon, hos thaumaston to onoma sou in pase te ge...",
indeed!
[O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the Earth.]

James