Midsummer dreams have been interrupted with the yells and screams of a preposterously clamorous late-season election, so I am going to do something revolutionary: let the screamers and their worried targets disappear in the rear-view of my summer world and get back to dreaming.
Ah, midsummer: fireflies and comets hanging in a warm night sky, the alien ‘wizzz” of dragonflies as they hover and shoot off with physics-defying speed, the green leaves and changing colors of wildflowers, and, yes, even the sting of hungry deer flies and ever-present mosquitoes - all of it a dream, an escape from the hardness of winter and from existential cares.
You have your own dreams and I mine, all of them circling around the security of a living summer that seems eternal, even though we know it isn’t, but seemingly enough so that we can allow ourselves to relax and let our minds wander. And so I did this morning after checking the garden with its foot-long squash and ten-foot-high sunflowers, and then shaking my bare feet to free them from dew and grass clippings before re-entering the house. I thought of this and that and of what I might write today, finally fixing upon a subject of lightness, that is, of no consequence, like dandelion or mild-weed fluff, a mere triviality that could nevertheless make someone very wealthy: that is, David’s stone.
The idea did not come from nowhere, like existence and the law of seasons, but from my reading of the Old Testament which has revealed itself to be at times boring and at other times as rapid-fire an action story as ever has been written. I am at One Kings now, about a third of the way into the Catholic version of the Old Testament, where we have already passed through the demand of the Jews to have a king, the rise and fall of Saul, the first king, and the rise of David, the greatest-ever leader of the Jews, referred to over and over again in the New Testament for his familial connection to Jesus Christ.
If we have not been informed or have forgotten, we might be brought back to David for his heroic battle against Goliath, the gigantic leading warrior among the Philistines. The set-up is this: the two armies are arranged on two ridges separated by a valley. The Philistines call over to the Jews with, “Hey, why not save a lot of killing by having our champion, Goliath, fight your champion? The losing side will become the subjects of the winning side, so, fair enough?” Then they trot out Goliath, who in my Bible was not really a huge man, but only a normally large man of about 6’4”, but who carried a sword that weighed several hundred pounds, making him an obviously strong man who must also have had one hell of a wicked grin, maybe like the face of the last biker you saw in a bar before you woke up in the hospital having your face reconstructed.
So anyway, Goliath stands alone in the valley (the challenge taken by the Jews without a vote or a thought. They were different then) and all the Jews tremble in fear until David, who had been a guitar player for Saul up until then, a youth probably in his mid-teens who still was without a beard, tells the king that he will do it. Questions abound until David insists that God told him that he was so favored – not because he was all ginned up, mind you, on the violent impulse of unthinking testosterone - and so is allowed to go into the valley with only his sling and one fine, perfect stone. We all know what happens next – Goliath laughs, then Goliath dies from that one perfect stone lodged in his forehead. With that one stone, all of history was changed: David became king, solidified Israel, and also became the father of Solomon who made the first temple in Jerusalem, those two acts setting into place the rest of Jewish ancient history that for Christians culminated in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, direct descendant of David. Goes to show what one act of inspired bravery can do, like that one comment you made to the girl at the party that set you apart and made for your future family, and so on.
So here’s the light fluff of summer that could make millions of dollars. Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? How a great movie was made about the recovery of the Ark of the Covenant, which I found out was simply a box (adorned, of course) that contained the tablet of the Ten Commandments, the Rod of Aaron, and a clutch of manna from the days in the desert? Well, how about the Stone of David? The perfect stone that killed Goliath and set Israel on the long road to bring the world its Messiah? Don’t you think that such an item would have been saved by the Jews after the battle? Don’t you think that it, too, would have been placed in a special box or some container or somewhere special for (hopefully) eons of Jews to look upon to remind them of their special relationship with God? And don’t you think that such an item would have magical, spiritual power that might, oh, I don’t know, kill off godless communists who, after they find the stone hoping to use it as a weapon alone, are killed by its power? Or maybe crazed Al Qaeda acolytes who believe themselves to be worthy, only to find, when finally put into use, that they are the unholy ones destined for death by its righteous wrath?
I’m here, Hollywood, if you want me to write the story. I come cheap – one percent of the gross and all the craft brew I can drink during production, no cocaine or hookers necessary. Oh, and a hotel with a good pool, needless to say, but one that is surrounded not by beautiful young people trying to break into the industry, but by fat old guys and gals like me who would rather die than wear a Speedo. I would write your script after scrupulous research and change it around a bit to make it look like I didn’t steal the whole idea from Raiders, and it would not only be a block buster, but would also set out a real search for the stone, for it must be somewhere. Unlike the Ark, stone does not rot, and it must still exist, perhaps in the crown of a statue in some mountaintop monastery in Greece which, we will find, has never been guarded at all because, like Jesus himself, great things come to us from lowly sources that do not shout their greatness but simply are great, like the stone flung by David himself. This might be a perfect stone, yes, but otherwise still simply a stone picked from the ground, made great not because of its form but because of the will and courage of the one who used it, making that pebble into one of the greatest forces in all of history.
Just - as I would say in the script but also here because it is true - just as any of us could be guided to a stone, a tool of sorts picked from lowly dust, to be used, if not for great things, then for things of meaningful consequence, measured in minutes or perhaps even in eons. Just as any of us, inspired by a nudging of spirit, might come to speak that one just-right, perfect phrase at a party to that one girl who later…
But we get too deep. This is midsummer, and these words spell out only a mid-summer dream, a mid-summer dream that insists that all is a dream; and even though winter will always come, so does the dream that is also just as real as long as it is kept as a dream; as long as it is kept far, far away from the stones flung with hatred and rage. Floating free, it might then come to rest not in the forehead of a giant, but gently, like dandelion or milkweed fluff, on things of the earth that rise to the stuff of dreams, for the moment or for eons to come.
Midsummer dreams have been interrupted with the yells and screams of a preposterously clamorous late-season election, so I am going to do something revolutionary: let the screamers and their worried targets disappear in the rear-view of my summer world and get back to dreaming.
Ah, midsummer: fireflies and comets hanging in a warm night sky, the alien ‘wizzz” of dragonflies as they hover and shoot off with physics-defying speed, the green leaves and changing colors of wildflowers, and, yes, even the sting of hungry deer flies and ever-present mosquitoes - all of it a dream, an escape from the hardness of winter and from existential cares.
You have your own dreams and I mine, all of them circling around the security of a living summer that seems eternal, even though we know it isn’t, but seemingly enough so that we can allow ourselves to relax and let our minds wander. And so I did this morning after checking the garden with its foot-long squash and ten-foot-high sunflowers, and then shaking my bare feet to free them from dew and grass clippings before re-entering the house. I thought of this and that and of what I might write today, finally fixing upon a subject of lightness, that is, of no consequence, like dandelion or mild-weed fluff, a mere triviality that could nevertheless make someone very wealthy: that is, David’s stone.
The idea did not come from nowhere, like existence and the law of seasons, but from my reading of the Old Testament which has revealed itself to be at times boring and at other times as rapid-fire an action story as ever has been written. I am at One Kings now, about a third of the way into the Catholic version of the Old Testament, where we have already passed through the demand of the Jews to have a king, the rise and fall of Saul, the first king, and the rise of David, the greatest-ever leader of the Jews, referred to over and over again in the New Testament for his familial connection to Jesus Christ.
If we have not been informed or have forgotten, we might be brought back to David for his heroic battle against Goliath, the gigantic leading warrior among the Philistines. The set-up is this: the two armies are arranged on two ridges separated by a valley. The Philistines call over to the Jews with, “Hey, why not save a lot of killing by having our champion, Goliath, fight your champion? The losing side will become the subjects of the winning side, so, fair enough?” Then they trot out Goliath, who in my Bible was not really a huge man, but only a normally large man of about 6’4”, but who carried a sword that weighed several hundred pounds, making him an obviously strong man who must also have had one hell of a wicked grin, maybe like the face of the last biker you saw in a bar before you woke up in the hospital having your face reconstructed.
So anyway, Goliath stands alone in the valley (the challenge taken by the Jews without a vote or a thought. They were different then) and all the Jews tremble in fear until David, who had been a guitar player for Saul up until then, a youth probably in his mid-teens who still was without a beard, tells the king that he will do it. Questions abound until David insists that God told him that he was so favored – not because he was all ginned up, mind you, on the violent impulse of unthinking testosterone - and so is allowed to go into the valley with only his sling and one fine, perfect stone. We all know what happens next – Goliath laughs, then Goliath dies from that one perfect stone lodged in his forehead. With that one stone, all of history was changed: David became king, solidified Israel, and also became the father of Solomon who made the first temple in Jerusalem, those two acts setting into place the rest of Jewish ancient history that for Christians culminated in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, direct descendant of David. Goes to show what one act of inspired bravery can do, like that one comment you made to the girl at the party that set you apart and made for your future family, and so on.
So here’s the light fluff of summer that could make millions of dollars. Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? How a great movie was made about the recovery of the Ark of the Covenant, which I found out was simply a box (adorned, of course) that contained the tablet of the Ten Commandments, the Rod of Aaron, and a clutch of manna from the days in the desert? Well, how about the Stone of David? The perfect stone that killed Goliath and set Israel on the long road to bring the world its Messiah? Don’t you think that such an item would have been saved by the Jews after the battle? Don’t you think that it, too, would have been placed in a special box or some container or somewhere special for (hopefully) eons of Jews to look upon to remind them of their special relationship with God? And don’t you think that such an item would have magical, spiritual power that might, oh, I don’t know, kill off godless communists who, after they find the stone hoping to use it as a weapon alone, are killed by its power? Or maybe crazed Al Qaeda acolytes who believe themselves to be worthy, only to find, when finally put into use, that they are the unholy ones destined for death by its righteous wrath?
I’m here, Hollywood, if you want me to write the story. I come cheap – one percent of the gross and all the craft brew I can drink during production, no cocaine or hookers necessary. Oh, and a hotel with a good pool, needless to say, but one that is surrounded not by beautiful young people trying to break into the industry, but by fat old guys and gals like me who would rather die than wear a Speedo. I would write your script after scrupulous research and change it around a bit to make it look like I didn’t steal the whole idea from Raiders, and it would not only be a block buster, but would also set out a real search for the stone, for it must be somewhere. Unlike the Ark, stone does not rot, and it must still exist, perhaps in the crown of a statue in some mountaintop monastery in Greece which, we will find, has never been guarded at all because, like Jesus himself, great things come to us from lowly sources that do not shout their greatness but simply are great, like the stone flung by David himself. This might be a perfect stone, yes, but otherwise still simply a stone picked from the ground, made great not because of its form but because of the will and courage of the one who used it, making that pebble into one of the greatest forces in all of history.
Just - as I would say in the script but also here because it is true - just as any of us could be guided to a stone, a tool of sorts picked from lowly dust, to be used, if not for great things, then for things of meaningful consequence, measured in minutes or perhaps even in eons. Just as any of us, inspired by a nudging of spirit, might come to speak that one just-right, perfect phrase at a party to that one girl who later…
But we get too deep. This is midsummer, and these words spell out only a mid-summer dream, a mid-summer dream that insists that all is a dream; and even though winter will always come, so does the dream that is also just as real as long as it is kept as a dream; as long as it is kept far, far away from the stones flung with hatred and rage. Floating free, it might then come to rest not in the forehead of a giant, but gently, like dandelion or milkweed fluff, on things of the earth that rise to the stuff of dreams, for the moment or for eons to come.
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