Gardener

For most of the years that I taught at Dordt, I walked or biked the 10 or 12 blocks between my home and the college.   At some point in my career I began looking for a poem on my way to Dordt.   The flowers that inspired this poem were planted in the narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road—what some of us call the terrace—about 4 blocks from Dordt.   Every year I looked for them, and every year they popped up—always naked as jaybirds. The Naked Ladies ( Amaryllis Belladonna )* Ten naked ladies dally on the terrace slender and supple in their pale pink skin. Arms raised to heaven they are nonchalantly naked as they dance in languid steps to the rhythm of the breeze. They have never toiled or spun only frolicked in the sun. Ten naked ladies shiver on the terrace blotched and wretched in their weather-wrinkled skin. By hot winds harassed they silently struggle to hold up each other as they bend to the curb. They hav...

I once received a short letter from theologian Stanley Hauerwas in response to an article I had written in Perspectives Magazine .  It was a pretty extraordinary thing for me to get a written letter (this was a bit before email responses became easy) from anyone and especially the man whom  Time  called the best theologian in America. Since then I have read just one book by Hauerwas, his memoir  Hannah’s Child , and I can assure you it is a wonderful read.  I read it several years ago but went back to it recently because I remembered that he was concerned with what might be called today “Christian Nationalism.”  Here are a few sentences from a  Time  essay he wrote shortly after 9/11: G. K. Chesterton once observed that America is a nation with the soul of a church.  Bush’s use of religious rhetoric seems to confirm this view.  None of this is good news for Christians, however, because it tempts us t...

I once received a short letter from Stanley Hauerwas in response to an article I had written titled “The Vigor of Wild Virtue.”   It’s a pretty extraordinary thing to get a written letter (this was a bit before email responses became easy) from anyone and especially the man whom Time called the best theologian in America. I have read just one book by Hauerwas, his memoir Hannah’s Child , and I can assure you it is a wonderful read.   I read it several years ago but went back to it recently because I remembered that he was concerned with what might be called today “Christian Nationalism.”   Let me just tease you with a few sentences from a Time essay he wrote shortly after 9/11: G. K. Chesterton once observed that America is a nation with the soul of a church.   Bush’s use of religious rhetoric seems to confirm this view.   None of this is good news for Christians, however, because it tempts us to confuse Christianity with America.   As a result, C...

A friend recently asked me to explain the roots of the word crotchety .  I am not sure why she wants to know the history of the word.  I hope it is not so that she can use it with more vigor as a descriptor of her husband or her boss.  Perhaps she, herself, feels crotchety. The word crotchet means “forked or hooked or bent or curved,” and it comes from the same root as crook , the hooked staff of a shepherd.  Those of us who remember grandmothers or aunts who crocheted (pronounced cro-shayed ) know what the crochet hook (a redundancy) looks like.  We can also understand that the robber we call a crook is someone with a bent moral sense.  And if we call our husband or wife or boss crotchety, what we are really saying is that he or she has a personality full of little hooks and forks. I know we usually think of crotchety as an adjective with negative connotations.  But think for a moment how boring life would be if people were not crotchet...