These four words prove that all you need is an opening lick on a whetstone.
“Like people or dogs”
Four words, that’s it. That is all it takes to sharpen a razor’s edge and shave the ordinary. I will share the entirety of the poem that starts “Like people or dogs”, but to set that up, a brief rambling on how Jesus of Nazareth taught me the value of a poetic whetstone.
In the rabbinical tradition that Jesus participated in, a teacher would speak the opening lines of a Psalm and his students would recite the rest from memory. A teacher’s spoken cue to a lesson readied in the present moment, absorbed in a context, and remembered as a community. The labors of memorization, like eating celery, go unrewarded unless the labors are worth the effort, unlike eating celery. This practice requires the disciplines of remembrance.
Reciting a sacred text from memory can save your soul. Memorized and residing within, memorized wisdom can burrow into your bones and billow out in the right moment. Jesus does this when he recites the opening lines of Psalm 22 as he is being executed – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Imagine that. Now imagine that you were among Jesus’s friends following him on the torturous route to the crucifixion. A place designated for public execution, a gibbet to what happens when you cross the almighty state. Seeing Jesus hang on the cross you bear witness to his struggle for each breath. You can almost hear him say “I can’t breathe”. All but a few abandon him. The remnant watching hears Jesus recite the opening line of Psalm 22. A Psalm of anguish and rescue. Raw, bloodied, and gasping for air he is calling on his friends to join him in this sacred practice. A teacher even at the point of death. And imagine his disciples hearing Jesus cry out that opening lick of Psalm 22. He had done this many times before. They knew what was theirs to do as the memories flooded their brains. For it was only a few weeks ago that Jesus was grinning and beckoning them to wring out the scriptures over reality. On dusty backroad walks, river swims, and field edges they gleaned from this practice. They did not fully understand what they were practicing at the time. Jesus was teaching them to taste, see, and remember. He knew this practice could save them.
Praise the Lord, I am not the Lord. I am a contemplative shoveler clearing the sidewalk in a manner that can only be defined as lumbering. The blade is low, the work slow, and the laborer is smiling. I lifted this practice from Jesus and make my attempts at memorizing sacred texts, songs, and poetry. To nurture an incarnate life I gnaw on truth, beauty, and goodness.
I opened this musing with the first four words from the poem “Life of a Day” by Tom Hennen. It is a favorite poem of mine to chew on during the season of “ordinary time” in the Christian liturgical calendar. God, I love the liturgical humility of calling it “ordinary time”. It conjures up images of sipping a cup of ginger tea, walking the sun down to dusk, or sneaking a poem in before lights out. That is my romanticized version. It is also true that the season of ordinary time is when I am most susceptible to take the coolness of a blue morning for granted or blink away God’s expectant presence in my day. But in a moment of remembrance, I lean back into the unknown and recite four words.
“Like people or dogs”
So in this ordinary moment, on this ordinary day, in this ordinary liturgical season, sit with the words from the poem, “Life of a Day”. Who knows? You might even want to memorize them.
“Life of a Day” by Tom Hennen
(from Darkness Sticks to Everything)
Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has
its own personality quirks which can easily be seen
if you look closely. But there are so few days as
compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it
would be surprising if a day were not a hundred
times more interesting than most people. But
usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless
they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red
maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly
awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost
traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason
we like to see days pass, even though most of us
claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a
long time. We examine each day before us with
barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been
looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for
the next, when, we are convinced, our lives will
start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly
well-adjusted, as some days are, with the
right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light
breeze scented with a perfume made from the
mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak
leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.
Read the rest of the July NonRequired Reading here.