Gentle, Bearded Men

Matthew 7

By the time he was 11 years old, John Muir had the New Testament memorized.  Not purely out of interest (though he loved and used the language), but because his over-zealous father punished him if he didn't.  But the language stuck with him.  You can hear it, this undercurrent, in everything he writes.  He said, "Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places we can play in and pray in."  He's this bearded 19th Century prophet ambling through wilderness and writing sermons about Yosemite and the water ouzel.  Besides founding the Sierra Club (and helping Yosemite become a National Park), his most famous work is petitioning to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a valley technically part of Yosemite Park that, by his estimation, was the prettiest site in the park, and, as it just so happened, the favored spot for San Francisco city to dam and use as a water source for its growing population.  He wrote letters, garnered a group of supporters, employed the newspapers to publish his plea.  If they did this, the flora, fauna, geography of the place would never be the same.  It would be unrecoverable.  Besides, there were other places they could use instead, places that would hold more water and do less damage.  He was a famous writer already, so I'd guess a lot of people listened.  But, then, the city wanted this place.  Politicians got involved.  They were hungry (okay, thirsty) for it.  And they claimed it wouldn't hurt anything.  Everything else would be left intact.

Centuries before Muir lived another tender-hearted, bearded man.  Incidentally, he was also a great writer, and he too loved nature and celebrated simplicity.  I read Thomas More for the first time about three years ago, when I was forcing my English 2010 students to read an excerpt from "Utopia," and what surprised me the most was how much I laughed.  He had a quick answer for everything, but he wasn't malicious, and he was honest in a way that would make most people uncomfortable.  Fashion: "those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and they never turned into anything better than a sheep."  Excessive "pleasures" (getting drunk.etc.) that become addictions: "...if you think that sort of thing will make you happy, you'll have to admit that your idea of perfect felicity would be a life consisting entirely of hunger, thirst, itching, eating, drinking, rubbing, and scratching - which would obviously be most unpleasant as well as quite disgusting."  He was known to be not only highly intelligent but also kind, gentle, and loyal.  But, then, he didn't agree with his friend Henry VIII's decision to marry Anne Boleyn and create his own church.  As Lord Chancellor to the King, he had to take a stand somewhere.

I was sitting in the bathtub thinking of this week's reading, how Jesus says we shouldn't give that which is holy to the dogs or cast our pearls before swine.  How many good causes are thwarted.  How many people - innocent, gifted, vulnerable - find a sad end.  Of course, life is life, you can say.  It has to have the good and the bad.  I get that.  But sometimes seeing what is precious fall into the hands of people who are mercenary at best and totally unconscionable at worst wears on you.

Maybe I'm taking this more personally because on Saturday I went to the funeral of my friend Diana, who I wrote about a few weeks ago.  It was always sad that she had health problems, but to add to it, just when her health was starting to decline, just when she needed family and friends the most, she was whisked away to live in another state in social isolation by her older sister, the sister she had never liked, the sister who had given her so much anxiety that she would get physically sick when she came to visit.  The same sister who has sued or alienated nearly every relative (save her own mother).  This is who oversaw the care of my sweet friend.

Yes, "the end" is not really the end, if this whole story of the New Testament is true.  But the end in this life can still be hard to face.  Hetch Hetchy was dammed.  Thomas More was beheaded.  Diana passed away peacefully but thousands of miles away from most of her family, who never got a chance to say goodbye.

When he's standing in front of Pilate for questioning, Jesus doesn't talk much.  I always figured it was because he knew Pilate wasn't ready to hear the truth.  But looking over the general workings of the world, there are other ways that pearls are cast before swine, every day.  Maybe what Jesus gave wasn't just good advice (we should avoid doing it if we ever can), but a chance to spare us the intense pain that inevitably accompanies such an error.

In context, that advice comes just as Jesus is telling us how to judge wisely.  By their fruits, he says.  A park.  A book.  A life.  That's a good place to start looking.