The Flatpickin' Pilgrim's Progress

The Harrow

Gary Allison Furr

 

In the years I lived among the peanut farmers,

I breathed October dust and prayed for their harvests.

The church and all of the town waited for the yield,

To tell us what sort of year it would be.

Only a few restaurants, drugstores and movie rental places

No movie theaters, theme parks or malls,

But we had a John Deere tractor dealership out on the bypass

Where the farmers’ trucks had to pass by.

On the most prominent corner, right by the road

the latest double wheel model

with the air-conditioned cab and stereo system.

Plowing without dust and sweat! Hard to imagine

we were so far from the farmers with their mules in the old days,

on a forty-acre farm, working like the Devil to survive

lest the mule be repossessed or die.

 

But always there was the harrow, evolved from ancient times,

At first, only a tree branch, sharpened to punch open the ground,

The Romans first made them of iron to mass produce

And now they are rows of teeth or knives neatly arranged

Or deadly discs, sharp enough to kill a man, but modern

in their symmetry of tearing open the earth,

They rip open the crust so the seed can go deep, down

Into the moist fertility, then burst open and seek the light above.

 

“Harrowing” is near-death, danger, all our protection

Torn away from us, some sharp and deadly threat

Gashes open the layers of careful habit and insulation

until death and I stare back at one another

waiting for one of us to make a move.

 

The medieval Christians said that on Saturday Jesus,

Punched down under the tomb, all the way to the underworld

and preached to the souls in hell.

He led out all those who had no chance to know Easter,

Satan, surely, filed an immediate lawsuit against God

for breaking the rules and letting a dead man breach the underworld

to claim souls Satan thought were a sure thing.

“The Harrowing of Hell” was kept in the Creed

We shake our heads

at the primitive believer thinking He “descended into hell”

Even as we still survive by eating the bounty of earth’s puncture wounds.

Farmers still dig down to the only place where life can emerge.

We are deluded by surface coverings of asphalt and wireless noise

“Virtual” cannot feed the hungry or raise the dead.

For that, earth must be broken, hearts pierced, nails driven.

 

Down went the Son of God, into Hell itself.

I’d like to think a little disc-plowing is called for,

Some holes punched in hell still on this earth,

Right through hard-hearted souls who deny

there is anything under here worth looking at or saving.

I’d like to think the Son of God, even in the grave,

Cannot help but vanquish every poison weed and pestilence

that threatens the Garden that God put here for us all.

 

This is a poem I wrote two years ago.  During National Poetry Month, my youngest daughter, who teaches middle school in NYC, and I write poems to each other.  Many of mine should never see light of day, but that year I wrote poems each day of Holy Week about the events of that day.  I stumbled across the tradition of calling this “Spy Wednesday,” after the plotting that was going on that day.  Treachery, using, selling out–they are the deepest pain that wells forth from human beings. The deepest pain of Holy Week is the revelation of betrayal of the innocent Jesus by his friend.

What a great name for the day

A friend’s fate was sealed,

Sold out by the man for whom

Dante created an ice rink on the lowest level of hell.

 

Betrayed.

The word sends icy shivers down the spine

Because it requires loving trust as its precondition.

People betray love, not hate.

Enemies try to kill you.  It’s what they do. No surprise.

Only friends, lovers, teammates

Sisters, brothers, colleagues betray you.

It has to rip a hole where you felt safe to do its work.
It’s a sordid business—

Traitors sell you out, stab your back

Let you down, break your trust, turn on you

Ruin your faith in people and undermine your capacity to trust again.

Only double minds and hearts, labyrinths of secret compartments

With cracks in the walls, broken floor joists and low light,

Can pull it off.

A loyal spy is still a patriot

But a double agent is up to the highest bidder

At the cost of a soul

 

Thirty pieces of silver for Jesus puts the condemnation at Simon’s house

In an even more painful contrast. Hers was of love found

His was of love disdained.

 

His only hope now is “all have sinned and fall short of the glory”

A tiny speck of hope that his wretchedness is but one more evidence

Of what stares back at us in the mirror sooner or later.

So the drama unfolds,

which character, bent, long before it would be set in motion.

This Wednesday evening we come to the final of four outstanding speakers in our 2019 Speaker series.  Each week, a speaker has taken us inside the journey of Christian calling.  Too often we have turned the Christian faith into a series of ideas or reduced it to a buttress against our fears and anxieties rather than what Jesus revealed it to be: a dynamic and life-changing adventure.  Our final speaker is Dan Haseltine.

For more than two decades, Dan Haseltine has been the founder and primary songwriter for the Grammy-winning music group, Jars of Clay.  From a band formed among college friends in Illinois, they skyrocketed in the mid-90s to crossover fame.  Their self-titled debut was released in 1995. When the single “Flood” began to climb the charts on mainstream radio stations, Silvertone Records started to heavily promote the song, turning it into one of the biggest mainstream hits ever by a band on a Christian label. The album has since reached multi-platinum certification according to the RIAA. Over the next decades came touring, more Grammys and successful albums. 

I met Dan a few years ago while on an interfaith advocacy effort in Washington.  We were paired together to talk to congressional leaders about the importance of global health and hunger funding, so we spent a day together. He is one of the most engaging and thoughtful, down to earth people I have ever met. Many years ago my youngest daughter, then in high school, pressed me to go down to the old Boutwell Auditorium, May 2, 1998, to hear Jars of Clay. I had never heard them, pretty well being into acoustic music and bluegrass then, but I went along.  I liked them. I didn’t know I’d ever end up walking around DC with that young singer someday.

Dan visited Africa in 2002, which in turn inspired the founding of Blood: Water Mission, a non-profit organization created to raise awareness Continue reading “Callings That Find Us: Dan Haseltine” →