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Richard's Psalm Project Blog

The “Group W” Bench

January 21, 2008

Only Arlo Guthrie fans will get this, the pic taken outside our hotel in Des Moines. If you can’t read the plate on the bench, it reads “Group W”. The manager has a thing for folk music.

What does it say about me that my friends and I in high school had “The Alice’s Restaurant Masacree” completely memorized, to be referenced liberally among those from the Holy Grail, Life of Brian, Spinal Tap, Bill Cosby, the Far Side, Hill Street Blues… I think I need a question mark at the end of that sentence. But you’re with me, right?

Thanks to Dan, Eric, Gerald, Brian, and Rick. Here’s to Spanish camp, Face, and Cosby.

Original news story about The Ordeal from 1966.

Ah-da da-da-da-da dom
at Alice’s Restauraaaant.

Tom Bosley, Man of Mystery

January 18, 2008

When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them.”
-Chinese proverb

It’s just that when I hear Mr. Bleekman’s voice on Clifford , I always think of him It’s not, actually.

Thich Nhat Hahn has a poem about a bell: “Listen, listen! This wonderful sound calls me back to my true home.”

Today for me is about being re-Minded. A word overheard last week took me back to a dream I thought was lost forever. The scent of old yarn in boxes arouses my imagination backwards to my Grandma Lu’s house on the farm. Christ invited his friends to be re-Minded of him every time they ate and drank together.

On a sub-zero day like today here in Ioway, let me be aware that seasons turn again. Let me be re-Membered to the whole, gathered back into creation where all is good. “Jesus, re-Member me when you head home.”

I was at a Holocaust remembrance service a few years ago when I heard the man say, “Only that which is remembered can be healed.” I think those words hit all of us as hopeful, even though the remembering does take energy, time and work sometimes.

In a few months, it will be 100 degrees warmer! Memory of the past makes the future hopeful.

Oliver Sacks knows a man who has virtually no short-term memory. Memory is our link to identity. Great Radio Lab show about that here.

Mr. Bleekman’s voice-over guy reminds me of Mr. C, and the Fonz-style switch-comb I had when I was in 6th grade.

Today as I am re-membering elements of my life, I invite you to gather your past selves-- the You that once didn’t know how to speak words, the You that once called parmesan cheese “farmer john cheese” because you didn’t know, the You that never worried about the things you worry about now. There’s great value to remembering what is true from your past as a way to help make sense of the path forward. I wrote a song called “Better Git Home” about that idea a few years ago. Re-Membering means integrating.