It is Sunday, mid-morning—Sunday in the living room, Sunday in the kitchen, Sunday in the woodshed, Sunday down the road in the village: I hear the bells, calling me to share God’s grace. I enter the living room, a Sunday man, carrying a folder of work—clippings, letters, small ungerminated thoughts in plain wrappers, a writer’s reticule. I stand a moment listening to the bells three miles away, the hopeful, chiding bells. Procrastinating, I snap the radio on, and it is Sunday in the radio cabinet, too. More like the Master is my daily prayer … a hymn singer in the Nazarene Church of South Blur, Maine, into my Sunday living room, spreading a frail soprano along the shelf among the geraniums and the freesia and the hyacinths where stand the authors without their jackets—Henry James, Willa Cather, D. H. Lawrence, A. P. Herbert, Frank T. Bullen, W. H. Hudson, Willard C. Thompson, their heads unbowed, looking straight ahead. We dedicate this hymn to Miss Nellie Blur, a shut-in of South Blend. Next Sunday we shall take up the first of the beatitudes and until then God bless you …
I sit down, opening the work folder. An organ prelude! The organ makes a curious whine, sentimental, grandiose—half cello, half bagpipes. A prelude, somewhere in a wired church, on this Sunday morning in this year of our … (somewhere into the church as into the church three miles away where bells have just grown silent must now be coming the people, the people to the Lord, singly, by twos and threes, and the usher seating them, and the bowing and the handing the printed program). Praise God from whom all blessings flow … hesitatingly the assembled voices, embarrassed at the sudden sound of their own once-a-week excursion in piety, the too weak, the over strong, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Ahhhhhhh men.
“Dad?”
My boy enters the living room where Sunday is. He wears corduroy trousers and carries a police whistle.
“What?”
“It sounds as though you had turned the bottom part of this house into a church.”
“Yes, it does.”
Acts the eleventh chapter … Acts, the ee-leventh chapter. The little boy picks up a book, subsides, unlistening, discarding the world of the room, the world of the radio, setting up for himself a tight little world inside the covers of a book. There are many worlds. I see by my folder that in Flushing, the village of tomorrow, the people are building a temple to the Lord at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or is it three. The world of tomorrow has so many responsibilities, and on top of everything, religion. We thank thee that Thou are murr-ciful.
The police whistle sounds a shrill blast. The prayer ends, and the organ takes up the burden. The people cough, and there is a rustling and re-arranging in the distant pews. I paw around in the folder, uncover the rules for the National Poetry Contest conducted by the Academy of American Poets—to select the official poem of the New York World’s Fair, 1939. The choir is singing again, something a little too hard for it this time, struggling bravely, tentatively. A poetry contest! An official ode for the world of tomorrow, a song in the future tense to stir blood that has yet to flow through veins … regular Sunday morning program emanating from the Durr Baptist Church of Runcible, New Hampshire.
Poems must be typed, double-spaced, on one side of the paper. “No contestant may submit more than three poems” (these inexhaustible poets!). Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within … who taught us to pray together: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name
Police!
and the power and the glory forever, amen
This house, this house now held in Sunday’s fearful grip, is a hundred and twenty years old. I am wondering what Sabbaths it has known. Here where I sit, grandfather H. used to sit, they tell me—always right here. He would be surprised were he here this morning, to note how the seams in the floor have opened wide from the dry heat of the furnace, revealing the accumulation of a century of dust and crumbs and trouble, and giving quite a good view of the cellar.
My retriever comes in from outdoors, full of greeting on a grand scale. He shakes himself and knocks, with his eager tail, the world of tomorrow from the table at my side.
Isaiah the fifty-second chapter. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings. The little boy has a hammer now, and a metal ball from a pin game. Psalm 66. We will read there David’s exhortation to praise God and after that the male choir … does your eye follow down now to the twelfth verse, the twell-fth verse: but thou broughtest us out into a wurring place … (where have I heard this voice before? was it the voice saying good night for Canada Dry, saying hello for Fels Naptha? if mine eye follows down now to the twelfth verse, can I win a Buick by writing twenty-five words?) The boy has returned to his book, is quiet. The book (I can read the title) is “All About Subways,” by Grof Conklin. There are two dogs in the room now, a dachshund has joined us for the reading of the sixty-sixth psalm. He feints at the retriever, steps back. Say unto God how terrible art thou in thy works! through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies … On the child’s face now a look of complete absorption, Grof Conklin triumphs over a terrible God, subways over the kingdom on high. All poems should be mailed postpaid to The Academy of American Poets at a wurring place and postmarked not later than the feet of him that bringeth good tidings … from the gospel according to
“This book is all about New York,” says my son, pleased at having discovered familiar ground. He listens a moment to the church service. “Dad?”
“What?”
“That priest just then said they were all going to read together, but I only hear the priest reading.”
No matter where we be or what the circumstances we may rest upon His word
He slips back into the subways. In a moment he is at my side, holding up the book for me to look at a photograph of children taking refuge in the Madrid subway from Fascist bombs.
“Is it true?” he asks.
“Sure it’s true.”
that the blood of Jesus Christ may cleanse us all from sin … that by Thy help we shall be different men and women (tomorrow, in the world of tomorrow perhaps?) and taste the eternal dividend of Jesus Christ our Lord. Be especially with our young folks … The retriever is asleep now. A telegraph key breaks in suddenly, the dit dit darr of the code message, high pitched, peremptory. God is wiring a confirmation. Yes, be especially with our young folks. The boy puts down the book, picks up an old copy of Life. There is a picture of a retriever on the cover. The boy shows the picture of the retriever to the retriever, waking him. The dog is unimpressed. A song of comfort, by a male singer. Trust in Him and He will give thee … From the next room, an announcement: one of the dogs has sinned under the piano, and the Dogtex is all gone. A problem in household management, inflicting itself on our Sunday morning. The boy puts Life down, blows a quick summons to the police, and settles down thoughtfully with a new book, called Starcraft.
… so that the kind of lives we live shall remind
“Dad, can we make a telescope?”
“Not today.”
The table is being set for dinner, silver against silver clinking, glass being set down, plates being placed around. God help us so to live … and now to get to work! Two letters from my folder, one from the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression …
“Look, Dad, here’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to know—it shows just what Mars looks like.” He shows me a picture of Mars. But the letters: Roger S. Greene, of the Non-Participation Committee, calling my attention to the fact that America is providing scrap iron to Japan, bandages to China. (Let not thy right hand know …) And a letter from the Audubon Society reporting on its sanctuaries, havens for wild birds that are sore oppressed. For without holiness no man shall … This is an N.B.C. transcription
The boy has given up the reflective life among the stars and is playing with an open jackknife on a chain, forming a bridge with his body so that the knife swings back and forth below his belly in a wide arc. Shall I help a wild bird, shall I give comfort to a dying Chinese, shall I ask a little boy to watch out he doesn’t cut himself with his knife? Thy speer-it, thy speer-it … I see the wild birds in the green and open forests, beautiful my feet upon the mountains, in the free air up toward levels of abundance, I see the children in the Madrid subway; save the wild birds, save the children, Oh God, save the children—the little boy with the knife, so safe, so safely swinging the knife, with nothing overhead but the wild birds and the planet Mars, wildly swinging.
He hath redeemed me and I am his child. “Telephone! That’s our telephone!” It is long distance. Somebody else answers. The boy is using the blade of the knife as a reflector now, throwing the sun around the room, on the ceiling, on the wall, on the retriever’s eye. “Pee-ew!” he says. “Something smells!” He goes to find out. A report from the kitchen: French fried potatoes (I wonder how France is this morning).
The folder again. Students at Hunter College will be analyzed at a beauty clinic.
“Dad, why do you have that radio on?”
yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful, riv—
“I don’t know why.”
“I mean, has it anything to do with your work?”
“No. Well maybe it has, in a way.” (A parent’s manly attempt to give an honest answer.)
Paris: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor returned by train from the Riviera today.
New York: Trichinosis, a disease caused by eating raw or underdone pork, has infested seventeen million persons in this country and resulted
“Lunch is ready.”
This is the voice of the radio pulpit in Peaceable, New Hampshire. “Lunch is ready.” Let us make this world a better place in which to live. “Lunch, everybody!”
Thus the Sabbath morn. Not a very wholesome report. Having turned the radio on, I simply let it go, as so many people do with radio, allowing it to function as a chatterbox, roiling the air. How far the word of God has tumbled, in families such as this in the world of Today!
In this house we cling to a few relics of religious observance, but there is no heart in it. If we possess faith (and I guess we do) it is of a secret and unconsecrated sort ill at ease in church. Once or twice a year we go to church, as we might visit the Museum of Natural History, on a sudden impulse to see a strange sight, such as a whale suspended in air.
There was a period in the little boy’s life when he begged to be taken to church. He had heard about church and was hot to discover its mysteries at first hand. His demands became so insistent that the situation grew embarrassing: we felt mighty cheap, withholding God from our young zealot. At last we made the effort and took him, twice. He never asked to go again.
The church sometimes seems painfully unimaginative in its attempt to perpetuate a faith that has been gutted by so many fires. Whether or not people are essentially less religious than they used to be I don’t know, but it is obvious that something has happened. I often think the Christian church suffers from a too ardent monotheism. In my house are many gods. With the boy, Jack Frost is ahead of Jesus, although we have never promoted Jack very hard. I see no harm in Jack and am not sure he shouldn’t be taken into the church. He is a gifted spirit with an exciting technique and a gay program. And he is not terrible, like the Lord.
When I feel sick unto death, I cry out in agony to God; when I speak boastingly, I knock on wood. Here is a clear case of divided responsibility, for there appears to be for me a power in wood that God doesn’t possess. My boy, likewise, is firm in certain pagan beliefs. One of them is that if you don’t say “Rabbit rabbit” on the last night of the old month and “Bunny bunny” on the first morning of the new month, bad luck will attend you. (I can’t imagine where he got this fantastic idea, unless it was from me.) He says “Now I lay me down to sleep” each night with a certain sing-song abstraction and an induced piety of demeanor—a far-away sound in his voice. But when he says “Bunny bunny” his mind is on his work.
As parents, we have never worked out a religious program—we just drift. I go to church once in a while and sing the hymns very loud; it clears the blood, and I love the gush of holiness when the old bone-shaking anthems ripple up and down my spine and crackle in my larynx. But for the most part, religion is tucked away in a bottom drawer, among things we love but never use. In two generations there has been a great falling off. When I was a child, I could feel heaven slipping. My father was a God-fearing man, but he never missed a copy of the New York Times either. At sixty he began changing back and forth between the Congregational and the Baptist church, grumbling and growling. At seventy he let go altogether, and for the next ten years lived in a miasma of melancholy doubt and died outside the church, groping and forlorn. By the standards of a hundred years ago, my family today is a group of misguided agnostics, seeking after an illusive beauty and fumbling for grace on a frequency of 860 kilocycles.
But the Lord is persistent and lingers in strange places. He enjoys an honorable position among typographers, for He is always upper case. He enjoys a unique legal status, too, in the “Act of God” code, where elemental violence affords exemption from responsibility. Germany thinks she is ousting the Lord, but she fools herself. I am sure that even in Germany holy words are still used in cussing; and though religion may be in abeyance in home or church, one can always find ample assurance, in the God-damning of a nation, that one’s Redeemer liveth.
One of the chief pretenders to the throne of God is radio itself, which has acquired a sort of omniscience. I live in a strictly rural community, and people here speak of “The Radio” in the large sense, with an over-meaning. When they say “The Radio” they don’t mean a cabinet, an electrical phenomenon, or a man in a studio, they refer to a pervading and somewhat godlike presence which has come into their lives and homes. It is a mighty attractive idol. After all, the church merely holds out the remote promise of salvation: the radio tells you if it’s going to rain tomorrow.