Take up and Read

By Bobby Neal Winters

The words of the Bible--the biblical idiom--are the glue that holds good literature together. This is true even in popular music.

This article started taking shape when my youngest daughter got a dog and named him “Cowboy.”  It planted an earworm in my brain that has been coming and going ever since.  There is a song by the Oak Ridge boys that begins:

She played tambourine with a silver jingle /

And she must have known the words to at least a million tunes /

But the one most requested by the man she knew as Cowboy /

Was the late night benediction at the Y'all Come Back Saloon

It has been my frequent companion for months.  As earworms go, I could have done worse, but I don’t want to speculate about that too long for obvious reasons.

When a song like this goes through my mind like this unbidden for such a long time, I start thinking about how it’s put together. What toolbox of words is the writer pulling from?

One thing I noticed right there in the beginning is that the author of this song assumes a certain familiarity with church services.  You need to know that a benediction consists of words of comfort said at the close of a service that is meant to send the congregants into the world with hope.

The songwriter is telling us that the Y’all Come Back Saloon is a church for the people who go there.  This theme is returned to later in the song when 

“...all the fallen angels and pinball playing rounders /

Stopped the games that they'd been playing for the losers’ evening prayer”

It is not uncommon for writers to pull from a religious or biblical idiom to construct their texts.  And it is not always used to propound an overtly pious theme.

Leonard Cohen did this all the time:  “I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord”; 

“And everybody knows that you're in trouble /

Everybody knows what you've been through /

From the bloody cross on top of Calvary /

To the beach of Malibu /

Everybody knows it's coming apart /

Take one last look at this Sacred Heart /

Before it blows /

And everybody knows”

He was absolutely brilliant at it.

Once you start listening for it, you hear it in surprising places. In Bob Seger’s night moves, for instance:

We weren't in love, oh no far from it /

We weren't searchin’ for some pie in the sky summit/

We were just young and restless and bored/

Living by the sword.

One artist who has gone beyond drawing from biblical idiom into writing new books of the Bible is Bob Dylan. In his time, he has been a prophet. To me, “The Times they are a-changin’” reads like a chapter of Jeremiah;“Masters of War” is an imprecatory psalm; “Like a Rolling Stone” reads as if written to a latter-day Jezebel.

He could write like that because at some point he’d absorbed the Bible. He went from using it as a flavor to something much more powerful than that.  In his best work, even when the language isn’t explicitly there, the Bible still is.

The Beatles used explicitly religious in “Let it Be”:

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me /

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be /

And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me /

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

And let’s not forget the Rolling Stones:

Please allow me to introduce myself/

I'm a man of wealth and taste/

I've been around for a long, long year/

Stole many a man's soul and faith/

I was 'round when Jesus Christ/

Had his moment of doubt and pain/

Made damn sure that Pilate/

Washed his hands and sealed his fate

The language of religion and the Bible provide a common pool that can be drawn from.  As a writer you can use it to speak to a broad audience. It talks about important things in powerful ways.  

But as we grow ever more atomized as a people we are losing that common core, that common language.  People are not going to church; they are not going to Sunday school; we are having a second Tower of Babel, and we will get to a time when they will not understand what I just said there.

I do have hope. If nothing else, maybe our grandchildren will discover our music, and in order to understand it, will pick up a Bible.  They might hear the little voice tell them, “Take and read.”

Sorry about all the earworms.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

 Electricity, Insulation, and Psalm 91

By Bobby Neal Winters

Our biggest barriers are in our own minds.

Fear is our most powerful enemy.

Fear of failure is the tallest wall we have to climb.

My attention was directed to Psalm 91 when I was poking through social media last night.  I looked it up, and the following portion spoke to me:

You will not fear the terror of night, /

    nor the arrow that flies by day, /

nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,/

    nor the plague that destroys at midday. /

A thousand may fall at your side, /

    ten thousand at your right hand,/

    but it will not come near you.

At the time, I felt the need to “do something with this.”  This is the result.

I am insulating my garage.  I am turning it into a workshop.  This was Jean’s idea.  She looked upon me with pity as I worked until my hands were red and numb last winter in my former workshop while her car was safe and dry in the garage, so she yielded the garage to my use.

This meant the garage had to be heated or I would be back to where I was before.

When I was director of the general studies program on campus, giving advice to the students who entered that program, I would tell them to look at where they wanted to go and to set up a plan that would get them to that end.

I took my own advice.  I wanted a warm workshop, so I looked at some YouTube videos: How do you heat a workshop? There were a lot of options, but I settled on electrical heat. 

My endpoint was a garage heated with electrical heat, but if I didn’t insulate it first it would (1) cost a fortune and (2) still be cold.  It was also clear that the electrical heater I needed would have to run off of 240 volts. (I grew up calling this “220” but it’s actually 240.) 

The electrical had to be done before the drywall and the insulation was put up. It’s just easier that way.

But here’s the thing: I am terrified of “220.” I have a cemetery in my mind of people--good, kind, smart people--who have been killed by 220.  Most of them are imaginary people, true, but that mental cemetery is there.  It is not irrational to be afraid of electricity.

Fear is a manifestation of something that God has given us to protect us.  It comes from a good place.  But like a fierce, wild mustang, it must be captured, understood, and domesticated before it can be a useful racehorse for us.

We should capture our Fear and domesticate it to Respect.

Electricity has the power to kill me, but if I respect it, it will be my ally. 

So I watched a bunch of YouTube videos on how to install a 240 volt outlet.  All of them showed how to do it, and then said it was for entertainment purposes and said to hire an electrician.  Darned good advice.  If you can get one to come out, please let me know how you did it.

After preparing myself, turning off the power main to the whole house and checking at the breaker box that the electricity was indeed off, I installed the “220” breaker and hooked it to the outlet.  It took 20 minutes wall-to-wall if you don’t count the hours of YouTube videos I watched.

Since having done that, I’ve been putting up roll after roll of fiberglass insulation and screwing panels of osb to my garage walls.  I’ve got about an hour’s worth of work to finish the walls, and I will do that after I finish this column. (The ceiling still needs to be done and if any of you have a drywall jack they can loan me, let me know.)

I was as afraid of doing the insulation as I was doing the 220.  This wasn’t because I was afraid of being killed.  It was simply because I had never done it.  It was filed away in my brain as something only experts could do. I had erected barriers in my own brain.

The barriers were taken down in the same way as before: I watched a lot of YouTube videos on insulation. (Watching YouTube videos is dangerous too; their algorithm will start bringing you a lot of ads for Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Menards.)

Just as God has given us the gift of Fear which we need to tame into Respect, He wants us to use the Respect to gain the knowledge we need in order to overcome the barriers we meet.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

 Of Weathermen and Queen Elizabeth II

By Bobby Neal Winters

I liked going to Safeway when I was a little boy because they had automatic doors. They were like magic. They open even though you don’t touch them.  I still think they were pretty cool.

Once I had just stepped through those magical doors and looked up to see the weatherman from KTEN-TV (channel 10 in Ada, Oklahoma) right there in front of me.  Had it been Jesus Christ himself, the shock could not have been greater.

Looking back, I consider myself lucky that I didn’t wet my pants.  As it was, I just ran off crying at the top of my lungs. There wasn’t a puddle for anyone to mop up, but just a story my big brother could hold over my head for YEARS.

Now things are different. Until he moved, I walked past the house of the KOAM morning weather guy every day. When he was out in his front yard we would pass and repass. If he was on his phone, he’d nod his head and wave. Occasionally, I would thank him for the good weather we’d been having. 

So I now, as a grownup man, know that these folks we see on TV every day are just people, just human beings, like us.  No, not like us, they are us.

But there is something there, some special quality that the folks that “everyone knows” have. This is a place where I am running out of words. I am pretty sure someone knows them and that I will be told them--perhaps even nicely.  I want to say they have a power, but that’s not precise enough.  Would one use either the word charisma or charism here?

I’ve run out of words, so as I am a teacher, let’s do some examples.

As I write this, Queen Elizabeth II has just passed away at the age of 96.  She arose to her position not out of merit, but out of birth because that’s the way such things are done. That position gave her this quality I am talking about. Just because she was who she was being in her presence would have a certain effect on you depending who you are.

I wouldn’t run crying from her presence now like I did for the KTEN weatherman. I would stand there like a grown up and wet my pants.  Of this, I have no doubt.  There would be a custodian there with a mop as the EMTs rolled my unconscious body off to the ER.

Others would be affected differently I’m sure.

While I said that Queen Elizabeth didn’t rise to her position because of merit, she did fill that position as well as any could in this modern day.  Others will speak of different things, but I most respected her quiet, but unapologetic, Christian faith. She expressed this faith not as a theologian nor a preacher, but as a simple professing member of the faith.  This is something of a trick when you are the titular head of the Church of England.

Pastors have this quality to a lesser degree within the scope of their churches.  Bosses at work have this quality. Politicians have it, God help us.

A word from them one way or the other can affect the way we feel.  Recognition from them can make our spirits soar; retribution from them can crush us.

People who go to church will skip church on days when the pastor is on vacation--even if they don’t like the pastor.  People who are often absent from Rotary will show up when a politician is there--even if they don’t like the politician.

Not everyone who has this (quality/power/charism) acquits themselves well.  The Kardasians who are famous for being famous use it as a cash cow.  There are people who would swoon in their presence.  They are like insects which the wind has lofted to a great height. Everyone can see them and there is money to be made as long as people keep looking.

Queen Elizabeth was wise in the sense that she allowed tradition to protect her.  She guarded her gift so that it could be a boon to her people. When she bestowed an honor upon someone, it meant something to the person who received it.  It lifted them up.  It buoyed their spirit.  

Those who share this quality would do well to follow her example.

Those who know sociology or psychology will understand this all better than I do.  I am just a child, a child walking through magic doors looking in wonder upon it all.

You weathermen out there, you with all your power and charism.  Be careful. And when you send a child screaming from your presence, be kind.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

A Grain of Sand Held at Arm’s Length

 A Grain of Sand Held at Arm’s Length

By Bobby Neal Winters

How do you love God?

Christians are taught to love God with all your might and to love your neighbor as yourself.  And it’s not just us, it’s there in Judaism too. 

The older I get, the more I think about it, the harder it becomes.  I suppose that’s why we are told to come to Jesus like little children.

God, we are taught, created the Heavens and the Earth.  The Earth we’ve had a lot of direct experience with, but for so long, the heavens were just up there completely out of reach. Now, there are those who will say that in this context the heavens are symbolic.  They represent something that is completely out of our reach, something that is completely beyond our understanding. I will grant that.

Let me make that symbolic value a bit more powerful by--ironically--making it more concrete.

In contemplating the heavens, we’ve created instruments to help us:  First simple telescopes; then more sophisticated ones;  then radio telescopes; then telescopes in space. 

Right now we’ve got the James Webb space telescope that is positioned in space at a place called the L2 point, which is out beyond the orbit of the earth, out beyond the moon.

One of the first things the James Webb space telescope did was to take a “Deep Field” picture.  This was inspired by the Hubble Deep Field picture which had garnered a lot of attention. In each case, a picture was taken of what to the naked eye was just a tiny piece of empty sky.  In the case of the James Webb space telescope it was a piece of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

A grain of sand...at arm’s length.  Do this yourself to see what it’s like.  It won’t matter if you drop the grain of sand because you won’t be able to tell.

What they saw was like what they saw in the Hubble Deep field. Galaxies. Thousands of them.  In an empty spot. Behind a grain of sand. At arm’s length.

This does nothing to diminish the value of “the heavens” as a symbol of the unknowable.

Each of those thousands of galaxies contains something like a hundred billion stars. Most of those stars have planets around them just as big as Earth.

And that is just the stuff we see.

So it’s big.

For the religious person, you can roll that into wherever you keep your idea of the Majesty of God stored.  Even if you are an atheist, you should experience something like awe.  I know of a few who do.

For the Christian, it presents a question. We are to love God.  How can we express that love to the creator of something that is enormous and complex beyond our imagining?

I will be turning 60 next month.  Don’t send me any presents...please.  Last April I was asked three times in a 24-hour period by three people independently of each other whether I had retired yet.  Not if I was thinking of retiring, but whether I’d done it yet.

I am getting old.

Experience is one of the few fruits of old age.  Indeed, it might be an only child. You get older and you get more stuff.  Anything you want, you’ve bought it yourself. What can anyone get you to show you that they love you?

Well, they can give their love to your children or grandchildren.

Seeing that is a gift.  We can see something of God in ourselves even if it is the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

Loving your neighbor is loving God. Loving God’s other children is loving Him.

This brings us to potentially a harder question. How do you love your neighbor?  Have you seen some of them? 

Well, you work on that.  They are not hidden behind a grain of sand held at arm’s length.  They are right there.

You’ve got your homework now. Work on it.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )