Reflections on Robert Frost, “The Runaway”

Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall,
We stopped by a mountain pasture to say, ‘Whose colt?’
A little Morgan* had one forefoot on the wall,
The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head
And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt.
We heard the miniature thunder where he fled,
And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and grey,
Like a shadow against the curtain of falling flakes.
‘I think the little fellow’s afraid of the snow.
He isn’t winter-broken. It isn’t play
With the little fellow at all. He’s running away.
I doubt if even his mother could tell him, “Sakes,
It’s only weather.” He’d think she didn’t know!
Where is his mother? He can’t be out alone.’
And now he comes again with a clatter of stone
And mounts the wall again with whited eyes
And all his tail that isn’t hair up straight.
He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies.
‘Whoever it is that leaves him out so late,
When other creatures have gone to stall and bin,
Ought to be told to come and take him in.’

*A Morgan is a distinctly American breed of horse, said to be common in Vermont.

Before getting to the subject of this delightful little poem, I have to comment on form. Bear with me if this discussion makes your eyes glaze over, as it does for many, but for me, much of the delight of a poem is in form. This poem does not fit the pattern of any standard poetic form that I know about, but it appears to be a variation on the sonnet. The sonnet has 14 lines, usually with 3 groups of 4 lines and a couplet (2 lines) to conclude. Here in “The Runaway” we have 21 lines with a complex rhyme scheme. Using letters abcd to designate rhyming words at the end of the line, we find a pattern that appears to divide up the poem into three stanzas, as below, with a new set of rhymes marking the begnning of a new section. Try following it through for yourself —

stanza 1 (6 lines): ab/ac/bc The appearance of the colt (ends at “fled”)
stanza 2 (7 lines): abc/aa/bc The colt and the snow (ends at “know!”)
stanza 3 (8 lines): aa/bc/bc/dd the frightened colt and appeal to the owner [or 6 lines plus 2, if you wish]

Notice that as in a sonnet (though this is not a sonnet, strictly), the last two lines form a rhyming couplet that don’t rhyme with anything else in the poem. The couplet at the end of a sonnet was frequently the moral, or at least the “zinger” of the poem. The poet intends to draw our attention here; we’ll come back to this later.

Also notice that, as in the sonnet, the rhythm, with a few minor deviations, is iambic pentameter: ta-DAH ta-DAH ta-DAH ta-DAH ta-DAH. It’s a familiar rhythm if you’ve read Shakespeare, but what’s remarkable is how Frost can make such structured rhythmic poetry out of the daily language of everyday people. Nothing here sounds forced or artificial, torturing language in a Procrustean bed to make it fit the form and rhyme scheme. The language is relaxed and natural sounding, a realistic sound of everyday country folk out for a ride and talking about what they see. If you’re familiar with Frost’s “Death of the Hired Man,” you see the same thing there: a long conversation between a farming couple, relaxed and natural, but in iambic pentameter. Frost had a particular gift in this regard, seen in many of his poems.

Well, then, what to make of this scene about the lost colt? Most of the poem is what we expect from Frost: sharp observation, humor, affection for the land and living things. You want to smile at the picture of the young colt terrified by snowflakes, as he’s never seen snow. There is no reason to think the colt is in any real danger (“‘Sakes, it’s only weather!”), but his fright is real nonetheless, as much a product of his lack of experience as of the situation he’s in. The same unidentified voice as in lines 9-14 (presumably one of the narrator’s companions) returns at the end: whoever has left this colt out ought to be told to come and take him in. The poem ends without a response to this appeal, really just spoken to the other companions — the owner is not there.

Is there more to this poem than a delightful scene? Of course. Frost liked to style himself not as a symbolist or allegorist but as a “synecdochist,” referring to the poetic trope of synecdoche where a part represents the whole. In nearly all Frost’s poems, the whole poem can be seen as a small world which in some way points to or characterizes the whole real world. And so here as well. The real world is full of creatures like this runaway colt — creatures on two legs as well as on four — frightened, abandoned to the elements, not really comprehending what’s happening to them, and looking about for help but unsure if those they encounter are helpers or further dangers. Whoever left him out so late “ought to be told to come and take him in” — but there’s no such person around to whom one might direct this appeal.

Hidden in this humorous bucolic scene is Frost’s gentle complaint against God, who often seems to be absent in the face of suffering. This poem hints at a dark element in Frost’s work which is not not widely appreciated. Frost wasn’t above questioning whether all God’s works were lovely and kind (see “Design”), whether the world was a safe place (“Acquainted with the Night”), whether God’s intentions, or some of them, should provoke terror (“Once by the Pacific”). In this poem, there is humor, affection, and sharp observation in Frost’s account of the colt — but the last two lines suggest an unanswered question about why such an innocent creature should be left out frightened and alone. The colt is not about to die, but the anxiety of feeling alone and threatened in a world you don’t understand is just as real a form of suffering as a more tangible threat. And all of us some of the time — and some of us all the time — are as frightened and alone and uncomprehending as this lost colt, and whoever left us out is nowhere we can find to bring us back in. And the One who left us out in the cold, Frost gently suggests, needs to be told — “ought to be told” the poem says — to make it right. To admonish God is not only allowed but an obligation: He “ought to be told to come and take him in.”

What happens to the colt? As a story, the poem is open-ended, so we’re not told. Perhaps the owner will suddenly just appear and take the colt in — it’s possible. Or maybe the colt just stays out in the cold, alone and frightened. But there’s another possible ending, because there is someone else who is there: the “we” of the second line, the narrator and his or her companions who are watching the colt. And perhaps here lies the point: by all rights the colt’s owner, who got him in this situation, should come and take him in. But as the owner’s personal appearance seems unlikely, it falls to “us,” the ones who found the colt and saw his situation — we are the ones who ought to come and take him in. That would be the “neighborly” thing to do for the owner, who will be glad to have the colt back and safe, and the kind thing to do for the colt. And perhaps that is the point. We who come across the frightened creature can act in the owner’s place and bring him to safety, “take him in.”

Someone asked Mother Teresa how one can respond to a world with such an overwhelming amount of suffering. Her response: “Start with the one in front of you.”

One response to the Problem of Innocent Suffering is not philosophy or theology, but simple kindess. To see the lost colt, to take him to his home. Like the Gospel of Mark, the story in the poem is not finished because we must finish it.

Mark A Plunkett
Columbus, GA Feb 2023

Reflections on Robert Frost’s “The Silken Tent”

The Silken Tent

She is as in a field a silken tent

at midday when a sunny summer breeze

has dried the dew and all the ropes relent

so that in guys it gently sways at ease,

And its supporting central cedar pole,

that is its pinnacle to heavenward

and signifies the sureness of the soul

seems to own naught to any single cord,

but strictly held by none is loosely bound

by countless silken ties of love and thought

to everything on earth the compass round.

And only by one’s going slightly taut,

in the capriciousness of summer air

is of the slightest bondage made aware.

– Robert Frost

A poem written by a man in praise of a woman would seem to have the basic features of a love poem, but closer examination shows otherwise. There is no hint of any erotic relationship between the woman and the narrator; for all we know, the woman may be the narrator’s grandmother, or the narrator might also be a woman (note the female voice narrating Frost’s “Wild Grapes”). The real subject of this poem is not the woman as a lover but the qualities observed in her: a delicate tension, like that of a silken tent, between being oriented to the heavens and being bound to the earth. But, as the last line indicates, her being bound to the earth is not really “bondage” in the sense of constraint, but rather she is “loosely bound by countless silken ties of love and thought to everything on earth the compass round.” Though it shatters the realism of the image, this line expresses beautifully one of Robert Frost’s most oft-repeated themes: the natural world as the source of our strength (“supporting cedar pole”) and our authentic existence (“through ties of love and thought”). Thus, with neither cynicism nor sentimentality, Frost offers his alternative to the sterile artificiality of “civilization.” Indeed, this poem, in the end, turns out to be a love poem after all, of a deeper kind – a love poem for the earth. Here Frost speaks love which does not whisk us to heaven or isolate us in pairs, but delicately anchors us in the earth, by countless silken ties.

Mark Plunkett, 1994

submitted as part of my application to Case Western Medical School

with minor revisions July 2018

Some inconvenient truths on abortion

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe vs Wade, the decision about abortion in the U.S. goes to the states, meaning the debate has simply shifted from federal to state government. So there are decisions to be made and votes to be cast. And a lot of popular talk on both sides (especially in memes) consists of non-factual nonsense. As an obgyn and a Christian Bible scholar, I want to see the discussion grounded in facts, but also a lot more compassion for each other and for the people involved in abortion. In that light, I’ve listed a number of inconvenient facts that will have to be considered. They are inconvenient because neither side takes them all into account. (A few of these might be subject to reasonable argument, but for the most part they are just facts, like them or not). Statistics from Pew Research. We won’t all agree, but we should be able to share a common set of facts and straightforward moral judgments.

1. Public opinion in the USA on abortion rights has been pretty consistent for about 30 years, 60% in favor of abortion rights, 40% in favor of abortion restriction. No reason to think this is going to change much in the foreseeable future.
2. 35% of women support banning abortion, vs. 41% of men. Abortion restriction is not about men vs women. Women make up a substantial part of the voice opposing abortion.
3. 52% of Protestants and 42% of Catholics support abortion rights. This is not about religious people vs non-religious people. Christians make up a substantial part of the voice supporting abortion rights.
4. The issue of abortion is complex involving three very different judgments: a moral judgment (what’s right), a legal judgment (what’s legal, or should be), and a personal judgment (if you’re in that situation, what are *you* going to do?). These three do not necessarily align.
   1. E.g., almost everyone would agree that adultery is immoral but is not and should not be illegal (we don’t want the police chasing adulterers and nosing into our sex lives). And then still you have to decide what *you* are going to do.
5. The moral judgment on abortion involves the conflicting interests of the mother and child. Given that, no moral solution is going to be completely satisfactory. Either way, someone’s interests are going to suffer, and we’re going to have to live with that moral ambiguity, like it or not.
6. The Bible offers no guidance whatsoever on abortion. The issue is never brought up. No point continuing to quote Jeremiah or Psalms about how God cares for us even before birth; these verses are not about abortion and offer no guidance on just when our moral responsibility for a child begins. There is no single “Christian response” to the problem of abortion, like it or not. The Bible offers no guidance, and Christians do not agree on what we should do.
7. Discussions of when life begins or whether the fetus is a person are unanswerable or circular, not helpful. The focused moral question is at what point we have a moral responsibility to protect the life of an unborn child.
8. It is unfair and untrue to claim that abortion opponents don’t really care about the life of unborn children (or their mothers). They really do, regardless of whether they may hold contradictory opinions in other matters like social policy or whether other issues about gender and sex may also be in play.
9. It is unfair and untrue to claim that abortion rights advocates don’t really care about unborn children and their mothers. They really do, simply offering a different judgment about ending a pregnancy versus the woman’s autonomy to accept all the consequences of pregnancy and childbirth.
10. Almost everyone believes (in general) that we do have moral obligations to children not yet born. This comes up all the time in discussions about what kind of world we leave them. We have some obligations to children not yet even conceived. The question remains at what point our obligation to them overrides obligations to the living.
11. To end the life of a fertilized single-celled egg is not the same as ending the life of a 3 year old. It’s just not. Talk of ‘murdering babies’ is inaccurate, unfair, and inflammatory (i.e., tends to provoke violence).
12. It is arbitrary to pick one point at which our obligations to an unborn child go from zero to 100%. Human development, from egg and sperm to born baby, is a continuous process without sudden leaps ahead.
    1. Most people focus on developments of emotional impact, such as heartbeat, movement, ‘looks like a baby,’ fingers and toes, etc. Emotional impact is not the same as moral significance.
13. No reasonable person supports abortion in the third trimester, when babies are fully formed, neurologically active, and able to survive outside the womb. You *would* have to actually kill a baby to do this. Even Roe vs Wade did not permit this. (Contrary to a lot of silly talk, including from a certain former president).
14. It is unfair and untrue to trivialize the anguish of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. For her, this is not just an inconvenience but a personal disaster. While occasionally you come across irresponsible people using abortion repeatedly for birth control, most women who seek abortion do so in anguish, at the worst moment of their lives.
15. What makes sense from a moral point of view is a graduated obligation to protect the life of an unborn child, an obligation increasing with increasing gestational age. At some point (most obviously after birth) it becomes morally untenable to simply end the life of the child, regardless of the mother’s (very real) anguish. But early on it makes sense to value our concern for this mother’s situation and autonomy over the continued life of an embryo. In between these two points, issues are harder to decide, from a moral point of view.
16. A legal judgment about abortion will not allow for shades of grey. It’s either legal or not, at any given point. Here’s where moral judgment and legal judgment have to part ways.
17. Given the real and insuperable difficulties in making a clear moral judgment reasonable people would agree on, the legal judgment comes down to who is going to decide. At the worst moment of her life, is a woman going to make this decision herself or have it dictated to her by the government?
18. The American tradition of personal liberty speaks strongly against government interference in our personal lives where the public interest is not at stake. Given the unclear moral issues concerning abortion in early pregnancy, it makes sense that the government should allow women to make their own decisions about their lives and bodies. That does not mean that everybody (or anybody) thinks abortion is great, or even OK; it’s just the difficult choice made by a woman in a crisis.
19. Abortion rights are consistent with conservative principles of minimal government and personal liberty (Barry Goldwater supported abortion rights).
20. Since the law requires a watershed “before and after” point, where abortion is either legal or not, the most reasonable legal watershed is viability. Roe vs Wade did not permit abortion after viability, and that seems a reasonable approach to continue. Even in the worst circumstances (e.g., a teenage rape victim who didn’t reveal the pregnancy until very late), at some point the life of the child has to be protected regardless.
21. If you are in this situation yourself (the personal decision on abortion), the decision comes down to a simple question: regardless of what anyone else thinks, what decision can you live with? This is a decision between A and B with no third option, and if you can’t live with A, you go with B, even if you’re not really happy with B. And after you implement your decision, you don’t look back. Whether you have the baby or abort, you’re making the best decision you can in a crisis, and it’s useless to look back with regret.

Mark A. Plunkett

Columbus, GA

August 2022

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost’s most famous poem is also his most misunderstood, starting from the almost universal misquoting of the title: “The Road Not Taken,” not “The Road Less Traveled.” The poem, it turns out, is not really about taking roads no one else has taken but is really a reflection on all those other roads we could have taken.

As usual, Frost begins not with ethereal reflections on ‘life’ but with concrete observations about a mundane affair: traveling through the woods and encountering a fork in the road. The word ‘traveler’ in the third line is important, because here we have not someone casually perusing local woods that he can go back to again and again but someone on a journey. No signposts are mentioned, the traveler simply has to pick one. But picking a road means going one place, not going another place. How to choose? He can see a little ways down the road, but where the road ultimately leads, who knows?

So the traveler chooses, imagining that he might travel the other road some other day, but on reflection notes that this is really impossible: ‘way leads on to way,’ one road leads to another, and having traveled on, this particular choice will never come up again.

In the last stanza the poet imagines himself telling the story of his journey long afterwards and reflecting on the critical choice he made, and he offers an explanation: he chose the road less traveled by. So as a storyteller, our traveler makes himself out as a rugged individualist who picked a path precisely because few had taken that path.

What is interesting here is that, as in several of Frost’s poems (I’m thinking of “Mending Wall”), there is a contradiction between the memorable conclusion and the rest of the poem. When we go back to our traveler standing at the fork in the road, he notes that one road had “perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear,” but in fact “the passing there had worn them really about the same.” Indeed, he goes on to note that “both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black.” So the road he chose was not, in fact, the road less traveled. The roads were the same, and since he had to pick one, he picked one. But the choice was in fact not a matter of some high principle, it was essentially arbitrary, a coin-flip, but one that determined the rest of his journey.

Now it is true that Robert Frost was proud of his stance as a rugged individualist who refused to follow the crowd, and any number of other poems preach this approach to life (“The Lone Striker,” “Into the Woods,” and many others). He was indeed exactly the kind of person who would have chosen a road precisely because no one else was going that way. But in this poem Frost turns his dry, teasing sense of humor against himself, imagining himself telling his life story as an application of his personal philosophy of not following the crowds. But the poem gives him away: nothing so grand as following the road less traveled was happening, just a more or less arbitrary choice: “what the heck, I’ll go this way.”

“The Road Not Taken” is, in part, about how we construct stories to make sense of and justify the course of our lives. It doesn’t feel quite right to describe the course of your life as determined by arbitrary decisions, so we concoct stories that make the course of our lives seem determined by high-minded principles (whether it’s rugged individualism or whatever principles you like), as if it had to be this way, had to turn out the way it did. But it’s not true. That other road was wide open, and we could have taken it. It all could have been different, a completely different journey, a completely different life.

So the poem is a gentle rebuke against our tendency to tell our stories and view our lives through the filter of some self-congratulatory lens that makes everything determined by high-minded principles. No better is the unbiblical notion that “God has a plan for your life,” that God has already laid out the map for all these forks in the road and your current journey was picked out by him in advance, so that the story of your life becomes the story of your correct and faithful reading of all God’s signposts – a more subtle but spiritually arrogant misreading of one’s own life. There are many forks in the road for all of us, no obvious way to choose between them, and at any of them we could have chosen another road. It all could have been different.

I remember as a high school senior deciding between going to TCU or to Transylvania for college. Nothing earth-shaking or grand here, everyone goes through this. But reflecting on the consequences of this one decision illustrates Frost’s point about how ‘way leads on to way.’ Going to TCU set the rest of my journey in more ways than I can count: exploring religion and psychology with Ken Lawrence, biblical theology with Bill Baird, from there going to graduate school in biblical studies, and also the people I befriended, meeting my first wife at TCU and the children we had together, and now grandchildren. Everything in my life, it seems, followed one way or another from that simple choice: TCU in Fort Worth or Transylvania in Lexington? If I try to re-imagine my life along that other road – what if I had gone to Transylvania? – it all would have been different: different family, different children and grandchildren, different career path. Would it have been a better life? A worse life? Who knows? Could I get a ‘do-over’ if I wanted to, and go back to take the other road? No, even if I enrolled at Transylvania, today, it’s obviously not the same thing. Frost was right: way leads on to way, and there’s no going back.

Realizing the consequences of such decisions can be paralyzing when you’re standing there at the cross-roads. How am I going to choose? What if I pick the wrong road? Especially for young people, it can feel like the weight of the world on you to realize what’s at stake when you make these choices: take this job or that one, move or stay here, go to college here or there, marry this person or that one or no one for now, buy this house or not, keep this job or switch. It is tempting to fall back on one of various schemes to put responsibility for choosing on someone other than myself, whether this means grand principles or thinking God is going to make the decision for me. These approaches are false, inauthentic, because as tempting as it is in decision-making, and consoling as it is in hindsight as a storyteller, to attribute our choices of road to grand principles or divine guidance, these approaches disguise the real situation, which is that the course of our lives depends on choices made by us, and no one but us, without being able to see precisely where the road is going.

Authenticity means seeing things as they are, that our entire lives in past and present could have been entirely different than they are, and that our life in front of us could go any of various directions but when faced with choices we can only see a little down the road. To accept this is to acknowledge ourselves as human, mortal, able to see only from where we stand and unable to see all roads at once.

The authentic approach to life is part of what it means to have faith: not that God has made all these decisions for me but that whichever road I take, God is with me and I am with God. Should I pray for guidance at the crossroad? Of course. Should I use my best observation and judgment to weigh different roads in front of me? Should I choose in a way that I remain faithful to God, to my family, to my community, to my country and the human race? Of course. But all those high-sounding notions don’t necessarily result in an arrow pointing down one fork in the road. Most of the time, ‘both roads equally lay,’ and we just have to choose.

So choose. Bonhoeffer described faith as ‘throwing oneself into life,’ and so we must, taking a road without looking back, trusting to God for faithfulness along the road we’re on, trusting God that even if we can’t go back, we can make course corrections along the way. And in faith we can look back over our lives authentically, that even though (for better or worse) it all could have been different, we can be grateful for the blessings we have and not bitter over the roads not taken, humble in the grace that has brought us safe so far, even with momentous but arbitrary choices, rather than constructing self-serving accounts of how our grand principles have put us on a predetermined path and outcome.

It all could have been different, and who knows what’s down the road, but in the end what matters most is not which road we take but our faithfulness along the road we take.

Mark A Plunkett
Columbus, GA

2017

Why we need the health care mandate

Why we need the health care mandate

Perhaps the most controversial part of the Affordable Care Act is the requirement that everyone have some kind of health insurance coverage that meets minimum standards, whether that’s Medicaid (for the poor), Medicare (for the elderly and disabled), private or employer-sponsored insurance, or participation in one of the new health insurance exchanges created by the Act. The exchanges are the only new programs, the others being there long before. But the key is that people without insurance are not only offered the opportunity to sign up for heath insurance, they are required by law to do so, facing stiff IRS penalties for failure to do so. This part of the law has raised all kinds of libertarian and free-market objections: how can the government require you to buy something?  Why can’t you just decide for yourself to buy or not buy and live with the consequences either way? It’s been described as a gigantic overreach of government power. I want to argue that, like it or not, the mandate is actually necessary. (Full disclosure:  while I’m a physician myself, I’m a salaried civilian employee of the U.S. Army, treating exclusively soldiers and veterans and their families whose care is paid for in full by Uncle Sam, so in my present job I don’t have to deal with the problem of the uninsured. But I’ve done in so in the past both as practice owner and employee in civilian life.  And as a patient, I pay health insurance premiums like everyone else.)

Health care is different from the other goods and services in the economy, and even the most fervent believer in the free market has to admit that applying pure free market economics to health care yields bizarre and unacceptable results. When sick or injured people show up at the hospital, we take care of them regardless of their insurance status, their citizenship, or their ability to pay out of pocket. We have to do this —  it’s the law. It’s a law we could change, I suppose, but really, do you want hospitals putting sick people, laboring mothers, or trauma victims out on the sidewalk because they can’t pay? No. So we (doctors and hospitals) take care of them anyway, and hospitals and private practice doctors eat the costs if the patient can’t pay. You can try to play hardball and send the bill collectors and lawyers after them, but for the most part getting paid for no-pays is hopeless. In the end, if you persist, they’ll just declare bankruptcy and you get nothing. So keep that in mind the next time some hothead legislator decides to cut off Medicaid funds for some group of people he doesn’t like. We in the medical field have to take care of them anyway, but without Medicaid we do it without even the puny reimbursement Medicaid provides. Cutting off payment only hurts doctors and hospitals, not the people you’re trying to punish.

The point is that free market economics is predicated on the possibility of not having a transaction at all if the two parties can’t agree on a price. Can’t afford a car? Walk. Can’t afford a restaurant meal? Eat somewhere else. Can’t afford a new pair of shoes? Wear your old pair of shoes. In health care, we can have free market practices among more affluent people, who can pick the doctors and hospitals and health care plans that give them the best service. But at the bottom end, we cannot put people out on the sidewalk with no money and no insurance. We – doctors and hospitals – have to take care of them, whether we get paid for it or not. And that, in a nutshell, is why health insurance has to be mandatory.

Most people have forgotten one of the most talked-about issues in the 2008 primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Both were advocating for universal health care, but Obama balked at the notion of requiring health insurance, which Clinton insisted was necessary to make the system work. Obama never broke with that line during the whole campaign. But once in office, when he and his staff started doing the math, it became clear that you can’t get universal coverage without requiring everyone to be in the system in some way, requiring everyone to pay their own way (for now leaving aside Medicaid, which long predates Obama and Clinton). When it came down to it, Obama saw that Clinton was right on what had previously been a hotly contested point: if health insurance is going to cover everyone, everyone has to have health insurance.

And of course, now the mandate is the most controversial part of the Affordable Care Act, widely despised by people who say they don’t need it and can’t afford it. Now upheld by the Supreme Court and a survivor of uncountable attempts to overturn it in Congress, the health care mandate is the law of the land.

But let’s think about what people are asking for who want the right to forgo having medical insurance. What they really want is to mooch off of everyone else. They expect to be cared for if they have an auto accident or catastrophic illness, but almost no one has the personal means to pay for it even if they have good intentions to do so. So the costs of their care are eaten by health care institutions and professionals who necessarily pass these costs on to people who actually pay into the system. Furthermore, if they’re not getting the (relatively cheap) routine management of their health problems like hypertension and diabetes, they end up in the hospital later with major problems (heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, gangrenous limbs to be amputated) that are very expensive to care for. A Pap smear is dirt cheap compared to treating cervical cancer.  Routine healthcare is a good investment, as opposed to paying for the consequences later. And believe me, we do pay for it, all of us.

The unfortunate reality no one really wants to face is that health care is unbelievably expensive. This is not a matter of politics, this is just medical economic reality. There is a certain amount of waste and inefficiency in the system, but it’s mostly a function of getting the best health care in the world, from people who are paid like the well-trained professionals they are. You want people on minimum wage taking of you? No? You want the best medicines, procedures and medical devices available? Yes? Then get out your checkbook. It’s an expensive business.

This is why we can’t have people not pulling their weight by paying into the system. Paying health insurance premiums is painful for young couples and people just starting careers and businesses – but it’s painful for the rest of us, too. There is an economic level below which we can’t reasonably expect people to pay what it takes to take care of them – hence Medicaid – and we can have a legitimate argument about what that level ought to be. Should we lower the Medicaid threshold and have more people paying, even if they say they can’t afford it? Or should we raise the Medicaid threshold and provide more relief for starting and lower end working people, at taxpayer expense? But wherever that threshold is, we can’t have a whole class of people with jobs who pay nothing into the health care system. There’s a fair share for everyone to bear.

So the free market argument against the health care mandate simply doesn’t fit the reality of caring for human beings. Ironically, the free-market advocates are actually facilitating healthcare freeloaders, who want the rest of us to pay for their healthcare. We need to provide at least basic healthcare for all Americans, but we can’t do it for free, or for cheap. And everyone is going to have to pitch in. Everyone.

There’s a bigger question here, of course:  what’s really behind the fury of the Right about the Affordable Care Act?  Is all this drama really about political theory about the size and role of government, or economic theory about how free markets should operate?  Do everyday people, even among conservatives, really care that much about this sort of thing? Or is there something darker lurking in the corners?  Of course there is, but we’ll have to save that less pleasant conversation for another day.

Mark A. Plunkett

Columbus, GA March 1, 2016

Rape, revenge and horror in Gillian Welch’s “Caleb Meyer”

Rape, revenge and horror in Gillian Welch’s “Caleb Meyer”

[Click on the link to hear Gillian Welch and David Rawlings performing “Caleb Meyer,” here.  Lyrics printed at the end of this post]

Has there ever been a more bone-chilling song about a woman alone than Gillian Welch’s “Caleb Meyer”?   Much of the effect comes from the combination of Welch’s straightforward manner — refusing to be dramatic but just telling the story – with David Rawling’s relentless, merciless driving beat on the guitar.  But even for those of us who have not experienced anything like this, listening to the song is like watching a car wreck – you don’t want to see, but you can’t turn away.   

Gillian Welch sings often of the dark side of life, especially for poor folk in the Appalachian South.  Her protagonist Nellie Kane is alone, and therefore vulnerable, not by choice but by the conditions of her life.  She and her husband live in the mountains, but they don’t have a 40-acre spread with fences and security.   She doesn’t have a cell phone to dial.  Her neighbors are not vacationing yuppies but this violent drunk moonshiner. They are poor.  Life is hard in the hills, and this night it will be harder.

Nellie knows him enough to recognize his voice and to come out, however reluctantly, when he calls from outside the house.  As usual, the danger is not from strangers.  And tonight she underestimates what evil he is capable of, apparently surprised when she is attacked.  The shocking ending of the story finds Nellie in a pool of Caleb’s blood.

But here’s the key question about this song:  what is the overall point?  That is to say, what genre of story or song are we listening to?  The end of the story, where Nellie kills Caleb Meyer, might lead you to describe this as a revenge song.   But I suggest that this is dead wrong.  To describe this song as a revenge song is to completely miss the tone of the song, the direction of the story, and the character of the protagonist.  I suggest rather that this song is not about revenge at all:  this is a horror story.  

Two observations confirm this:  first notice the chorus, where Nellie tells Caleb that his ghost will “wear them rattlin’ chains,” like Marley in A Christmas Carol, bearing the burden of his sins after his death.  Only at the end of the song do we realize that Caleb is already dead as Nellie tells the story.  But notice the repeated plea:  “when I go to sleep at night, don’t you call my name!”  Nellie is haunted by Caleb Meyer, even after his death, like a recurring nightmare where he calls her out as he did that one fateful night.

The second observation is about the climactic event.  This is hardly the cavalry coming over the hill.  Nellie prays plaintively:  “My God, I am your child, send your angels down.”  What does she get as the answer to her prayer?  A broken bottle.  It’s an ironic answer to prayer:  “Is this the best you could do, Lord?  A broken bottle?”  But Nellie makes the best of what she’s got, and her “deliverance” is not a satisfying blow against evil but yet another horror, as she ends up with the carcass of this drunk fool on top of her, drenched in his blood.  No wonder Caleb Meyer haunts her dreams.

There is no payoff here, as in a revenge story where the afflicted person can finally burst out in righteous anger and enjoy the richly-deserved downfall of the evil one.  Nellie Kane survives, and makes no apology for doing so, but she gets no payoff, no satisfaction:  she gets only one horror following another and a ghost whose voice she can’t get out of her head.  The final chorus emphasizes the lack of closure by failing to resolve the chord sequence, finishing without returning to the tonic chord, which leaves the song hanging in the air, so to speak.

So if horror is the genre, what is the point?  Horror stories or movies, at their worst (think Friday the 13th), can be voyeuristic celebrations of violence, where the villain is actually the protagonist whose gorey deeds we are invited to anticipate and “enjoy.”   But at its best (think Stephen King in The Shining), horror is a way of acknowledging the darkest aspects of human life, things we deeply fear, or things we do not fear but should.  Horror forces us to look at things as they are, like it or not.  And in “Caleb Meyer,” Gillian Welch has given us a horror story that identifies steadfastly with Nellie against her attacker.  Here we are forced to acknowledge rape not as an accident, not a misunderstanding, not boys being boys, but as a life-altering horror.  There is no moralizing conclusion or political cause at the end, just the voice of Nellie Kane begging the ghost of her attacker to let her sleep at night.  If rape is horror, the conclusions draw themselves.

© Mark A. Plunkett, Fort Leonard Wood, MO  April 2012

 Revised Fort Benning (Columbus), GA February 2016

 

Caleb Meyer

Caleb Meyer, he lived alone
In them hollerin’ pines
Then he made a little whiskey for himself
Said it helped pass the time

Long one evenin’ in back of my house,
Caleb come around
And he called my name ’til I went out
with no one else around

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
but when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name

Where’s your husband, Nellie Kane
Where’s your darlin’ gone?
Did he go on down the mountain side
and leave you all alone?

Yes, my husband’s gone to Bowlin’ Green
to do some business there.
Then Caleb threw that bottle down
and grabbed me by my hair.

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
but when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name

He threw me in the needle bed,
across my dress he lay
then he pinned my hands above my head
and I commenced to pray.

I cried My God, I am your child
send your angels down
Then feelin’ with my fingertips,
the bottle neck I found

I drew that glass across his neck
as fine as any blade,
and I felt his blood pour fast and hot
’round me where I lay.

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
But when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
But when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name

© Gillian Welch

 

I refuse to recite the Creed.

 I refuse to recite the Creed.

Sorry, but I’m going to be stubborn about this.  I refuse to recite the Creed.  I won’t recite it, won’t pledge allegiance to it, won’t swear or even affirm that I believe it.  When I worship in a church that uses the creed in worship (which is more often than not), I’ll stand there politely, I won’t frown and tsk-tsk the other worshippers – but I won’t participate either.  I refuse to recite the Creed.  If I’m looking to join a church (my membership currently in limbo due to my sojourning lifestyle) and they insist on a commitment to the Creed as a condition of membership, then we’ll have to part ways.  I won’t do it.

And it matters not which creed we’re talking about.  Most creedal churches seem to use the Apostles Creed, but I don’t really care if it’s the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Westminster Confession, the 95 Theses or the preacher’s laundry list.  I won’t be bowing down to worship in front of it.  Creeds are destructive of Christian fellowship, and more importantly, they’re bad theology.  I don’t mean that they contain bad theology – the theology in them might be perfectly fine, or might not – but the point is that the idea of the Creed itself, as a test of fellowship and summary of “the faith,” is bad theology.  

The tradition I grew up in, the church that ordained me into the ministry, is the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), part of the Stone-Campbell movement that also includes the Churches of Christ and independent Christian churches.  The three estranged branches agree on little, but all three have remained faithful to Alexander Campbell’s rejection of creeds in the church.  I remain faithful to this conviction as well, not as a matter of tradition or denominational pride (“denominationalism” is a sin in the Stone-Campbell churches), but because Campbell’s reasons for rejecting the creed were sound.

In Campbell’s day (early 19th Century), the Presbyterian church he was originally part of was divided by numerous schisms, and creeds became a way of distinguishing which group you were in, marked you as inside or outside “our” church.  Creeds have in fact always functioned that way since early catholic Christianity, drawing a line around orthodox (“correct”) teaching and excluding heresy (“wrong teaching”).  Anyone not willing to affirm the creed had marked themselves as a heretic to be excluded from fellowship.  In Campbell’s day, you had to affirm the local church’s version of the Westminster Confession to get a token which you could present to receive communion.  One day Campbell walked to the front of the church in worship, tossed his token onto the table, turned his back and walked out never to return (fond of drama was Mr. Campbell).  And in the churches he founded, which became the Restoration movement, the slogan became “no creed but Christ” – no test of fellowship other than faith in Jesus Christ.  So this first objection to the creed seems to me a sound one:  it is an unnecessary barrier to fellowship with other disciples of the one Master.

But there is a much more important problem with the creed, and that can be seen in the introduction to the recitation of the creed in worship:  “Let us say what we believe . . .”  This is a theological error, and a serious one.  The issue is the proper object of faith.  In what, precisely, does the Christian believe?  The very existence of the creed – any creed – contends that Christian faith is the affirmation of certain ideas:  one God the creator, Jesus fully human and fully divine, virgin birth, worldwide church, predestination (or not), whatever.  It makes no difference what ideas you throw in here, the whole business is wrong-headed.  The proper object of faith is not an idea (doctrine), nor is it a book (the Bible).  The proper object of faith is a person.  Christian faith is faith in Jesus Christ.  Faith is not assent to any idea, however noble, but personal trust and commitment to the person of Jesus Christ.  To be a Christian is not to believe a set of ideas but to trust your life to a person, to the God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.  

One cannot overstate the importance of this distinction.  How many people won’t listen to the Gospel because they refuse to accept certain doctrines and teachings “on faith”?    How often have various doctrines or historical claims been stumbling blocks, and unnecessary ones, to people coming to faith?  On the other hand how many people continue to cling to doctrines and historical claims that don’t make any sense, on the assumption that we know these things, and “have to” believe them, “by faith”?    The truth is that we don’t know anything by faith.  Faith is not a way of knowing things.  Knowledge is a human endeavor, and it’s carried out by the usual human tools:  think, study, explore, listen, consider alternatives, weigh the evidence, come up with what makes the most sense.  Faith is about none of this.  Faith is about the fundamental trust that my life depends upon God, that I belong body and soul (or, with all that I am) to the God revealed in Jesus Christ.  That is faith.  Everything else is an afterthought.  Neither the Bible nor theology are proper objects of faith.  Not to diminish either one, they’re simply not the proper objects of faith.  

Theology is, to use a classic expression, the “languaging of faith,” putting our faith into human language that we can communicate to others and with which we can reflect on the significance of faith in our lives.  It all starts with faith, this personal delivering of oneself to Jesus Christ.  Theology comes later, as we try to make sense of our lives in light of faith.  Theology, then, is a human endeavor, subject to all the frailties and errors of human judgment.  Every attempt to claim otherwise, to make some theology “sacred,” “divinely inspired,” “infallible” is horse hocky at best and idolatry at its worst.  

The Bible, on the other hand, is our witness and testimony to Christ.  It is, as Luther said, “the cradle that holds the Christ child.”  You’re looking for Christ?  Where you going find him?  With the preacher on TV?  In your “heart” (just as likely your imagination)?  The Bible is where we look to find Christ, it’s the witness and testimony that bridges the centuries so we can know the Master ourselves.  Strange then that so many insist on worshipping the cradle rather than the Christ child.  We don’t take the Bible “on faith,” as if salvation was promised to “whosoever believeth in this book” (I’m pretty sure it says “whosoever believeth in him”).   Faith, then, is not in a book, not in an idea or a doctrine, not in a miracle story whether in past or future.  Faith is in Jesus Christ – or it’s not Christian faith at all.

An old sermon illustration I’m quite fond of:  you come across a man working on a boat on the shore of a river.  He asks you,”Do you believe this boat will navigate this river?”  You say, “Sure, it looks like it will.”  “Great,” he says, “hop in.”  Faith is not about the first question but the second.  The issue is not your knowledge or opinions about boats and rivers, but whether you’re going to get into the boat.  Now, accurate knowledge of boats and rivers would certainly come in handy once you’re in that boat on the river — theology has its place — but better a misinformed or misguided person who actually got into the boat than someone who just talks about boats and never gets in.

So let’s be clear in our preaching and our worship about where our loyalty lies, about where our faith dwells, to what we would invite others as we preach the Gospel.  We preach not a system of ideas, not an orthodoxy, not an institution, but a person Jesus Christ.  So if you are a pastor or worship leader, consider dispensing with the Creed in worship and practice.  As for me, while the Creed is recited around me, I’ll quietly recite to myself the New Testament confession:  “Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord . . .”

 

Mark Plunkett

Columbus, GA  Feb 2016

Human and Divine Love and Yeats’ Girl with the Yellow Hair (“For Anne Gregory”)

For Anne Gregory

“NEVER shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.’

“But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair.’

“I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.”

–W. B. Yeats

I’ve always loved this poem. Yeats has a wonderful way with words: concise but eloquent, few words but the right ones. But most of all is the discovery that on close observation there’s more here than a pretty girl with yellow hair.

The narrator warns her that no young man will be able to love her “for herself alone and not her yellow hair.” It’s a mixed message: her beauty will be striking enough to throw young men into despair, but her beauty will also be a barrier of sorts, preventing anyone from seeing past her hair to seeing her. So in the middle stanza she objects to this arrangement; she wants to be loved for herself alone, not her yellow hair. And who could blame her? Who wants to be loved because of some external feature, like a room decoration? She even suggests altering this one distinctive feature of hers, her hair color, precisely so anyone who loves her will love her, not her hair.

And this is where the twist comes: the narrator says it won’t work – even if she dyes her hair, people will love her for her yellow hair. How is that? How is it that with her hair dyed black, people will still love her for her yellow hair? Something else is going on here.

The key is deciding just what is meant by “yourself alone” and just what her yellow hair signifies. The yellow hair is clearly a synecdoche, a figure of speech where a part stands for the whole. She may dye her hair, but her beauty, of which the yellow hair was simply a part, remains.

But she need not give up her appropriate wish to be loved for herself alone, for there is one, and only one, who can and will love her for herself alone, and that is God. This is no small consolation, and we’ll come back to it. But why does it take God to love her for herself alone? Why couldn’t some faithful human lover, who knows her well and cares for her as a person, love her for herself alone?

I doubt Yeats had any particular biblical text in mind that his “old religious man” discovered, but I think the story of Samuel choosing David (1 Sam 17) illustrates well the biblical idea behind Yeats’ reflections on love. Samuel is instructed to go to one of the sons of Jesse and anoint a king for Israel. At God’s direction, Samuel passes over David’s older brothers, who have all the visible characteristics of sturdy manhood, but Samuel is commanded to anoint David, the scrawny youngest brother. The explanation is that “the LORD does not look at the things humans look at. Humans look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7). The story of David and Goliath in 1 Sam 17 shows that Samuel chose right.

“Humans look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” This is why God can love her for herself alone, and why humans cannot.  For “herself alone” is essentially what the Bible calls the “heart,” the inmost self, the real self where one’s true inclinations and loyalties lie.  None of us can really see the heart of another. You can hardly be sure of what’s in your own heart without self-deception. So the desire to be loved for yourself alone, while understandable, is doomed to disappointment among humans.  You can be married for fifty years and not really know what it is in the heart of the person next to you.  We humans look at the outer appearance because that’s all we have access to.  What else are we supposed to look at?  Human love is inevitably what the Greeks called eros.

Erotic love (eros) in the original sense is not strictly sexual love but any kind of love that is evoked by the characteristics of the beloved. We may love a lover for their beauty, a landscape for its majesty, a food for its taste, a friend for their personality. Even love for a person based on what modern folk would say is “on the inside” – their personal qualities – is still erotic love, because it’s based on inferences from the externals: what people say and do. We can only infer, not see, what’s inside another. Erotic love is not to be despised because it’s based on externals: it’s simply the love humans are capable of.

So there’s no point castigating the young men in despair who love her for her yellow hair. Indeed the whole poem is intended as a kind of elaborate compliment to the young daughter of Yeats’ friend, as if to say, “you’re beautiful, and you might as well get used to the fact that no one can look at you and not see it.” No one ever accused W.B. Yeats of denigrating human beauty and erotic love. Nor should he. All beauty, along with excellence of any kind, belongs to the goodness of the created order, and appreciating it glorifies God.

But there’s more. The girl’s objection in the middle stanza suggests that as fine as erotic love is, we humans long for something more, to be “loved for myself alone.” No other human, Yeats suggests, will ever be able to do this. And in this respect it turns out that Anne Gregory’s predicament is no different than anyone else’s, for all of us, whether or not we have fine yellow hair, have characteristics that people may (or may not) love us for, but it won’t be our real selves, our “self alone.” There is only One who loves us for ourselves alone, the One who has searched us and known us (Ps 139). When human love fails, or at least fails to reach our real selves, it is the divine love that sustains us.

Mark Plunkett, Columbus GA Jan 2016