Peace and Chicken Grease

"Peace and Chicken Grease, Sister!" the greeting/farewell my teenaged brother delivered, his grin and two fingers outstretched.  I'm so thankful God has given me a brother with such a magnanimous spirit and a whole lotta wisdom.  He can make me laugh when that's the last thing I feel like doing.  He reads people better in five minutes than I do in five months.  And he gives the best advice, partly because it's succinct but mostly because it is sheer wisdom laced with humor that brings peace to a troubled mind.

Although he would probably deny this and laugh at me for saying so, he brings to mind Colossians 4:6, the theme verse for our recent Classical Conversations training, "Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person."  That salt, by the way, is the Truth, capital "T."  My brother was there for me yesterday when the sorrow akin to that described by  Hamlet's usurping King when he bemoans his plight to Gertrude in Act 4:  "When sorrows come, they come not single spies/But in battalions."  With just a few short texts from my brother, I could see an end to the battalion.

Funny, too, how corporate worship can refresh the spirit.  Don't get me wrong; God honors the broken and contrite spirit and comfort is found in pouring out my heart to God, allowing his Spirit to pray what I cannot find words for.  But today, I found that "peace of God, which surpasses all understanding," (Philippians 4:7a) in our worship together as the body of Christ.  One of the hymns we sang:

Just when I need Him, Jesus is strong,
Bearing my burdens all the day long;
For all my sorrow giving a song,
Just when I need Him most.

That happened--Thursday, Friday and Saturday's sorrow which I was drowning in as a result of some things that happened to my eldest at his school--that sorrow which seemed insurmountable has been replaced by song.

A song of joy.  Here's a poem I wrote about a year ago that captures this sorrow to song experience--it's following the form of Dadaism, as closely as I am able, cutting out words/phrases/lines from another text and randomly placing/pasting them into a new whole:

Broken Psalm
.

weak with sorrow, they fail.

how long must I wrestle

be merciful to me, Lord

day after day have sorrow in my heart

my eyes grow—

for I am in distress—weak with sorrow,

my soul and body with grief.

Give thanks to the Lord

sorrow was turned into joy

mourning into a day of celebration:

lyres, harps and cymbals.

They shouted for joy

for He is good.

Be joyful at your festival—

and fell face down.

His love endures forever

joyful and glad in heart for all the good things.

That last phrase "for all the good things" reminds me how my middle son revised his dinnertime blessing from thanking God for everything in the "whole entire universe, especially heaven" to "thank you for everything good."  I guess he had learned the catechism that God can do "all his holy will" instead of everything--all good things come from God and it is impossible for God to do evil, contrary to what the current Noah film might suggest.   

I'll finish with a fun one from Richard Wilbur that I read as about the soul, its longing and tomorrow's possibilities:

Flying

Treetops are not so high

Nor I so low

That I don't instinctively know

How it would be to fly

Through gaps that the wind makes, when

The leaves arouse

And there is a lifting of boughs

That settle and lift again.

Whatever my kind may be,

It is not absurd

To confuse myself with a bird

For the space of a reverie:

My species never flew,

But I somehow know

It is something that long ago

I almost adapted to.