WHO ARE YOU?
An Advent Meditation
by James M. Truxell
Comedian Jack Benny, affecting his trademark tightwad persona, once told of being held up at gunpoint. The robber demanded of him: "Your money or your life!" For a longish time, Benny didn't say anything in reply. The robber, getting agitated, asked, "Hey, Buddy! Didn't you hear me? Your money or your life!" Benny replied, "I'm thinking . . . I'm thinking!"
If someone asks us, "Who are you?" we too might pause to think, for it's a good question. And if we pause too long, our questioner might say, "I'm waiting! I'm waiting!" This Advent season that impatient reply might cue us to appropriately respond: "I am one who waits."
Not everyone waits. Merchants, of course, needing to bring their balance sheets into the black before year's end can't wait. You mustn't wait either or you'll miss the fabulous deals. So leave your family and guests early . . . let them do the dishes . . . no sense having to wait in line.
Since Black Friday has retrogressed to begin on Thanksgiving Day, it needs to have a new name. I propose "Blackguard Thursday." "Blackguard," as a noun, means "a thoroughly unprincipled person, one who behaves in a dishonorable way; a rude person." As a verb, it means "to use foul or verbally abusive language." Those definitions seem to fit, variously, the merchants in their callous disregard for their employees well being, and many of the shoppers who . . . sacrificing all their other needs save that of scoring a good deal, scramble through the doors with their sharp elbows out.
Here, as a service to those beleaguered and beleaguering shoppers is a Blackguard Thursday carol to sing as you shop. Click on the image to hear its composer, Tom Lehrer, singing it. Ever the helpful ones, we've printed the lyrics below that.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
by Tom Leher
Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly,
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don't say "when."
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens,
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.
On Christmas day you can't get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore,
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.
Relations, sparing no expense'll
Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil.
"Just the thing I need! How nice!"
It doesn't matter how sincere it
Is, nor how heartfelt the spirit,
Sentiment will not endear it,
What's important is the price.
Hark the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
God rest ye merry, merchants,
May you make the Yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high
Tell us to go out and buy!
o let the raucous sleigh bells jingle,
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Driving his reindeer across the sky
Don't stand underneath when they fly by.
Enjoy your shopping, especially on Blackguard Thursday!
Blackguards or not, most of us in this culture have an intense dislike of waiting. Like every infant and toddler, we want what we want and we want it now! Yesterday would have been better. Someday soon, not having to wait for the comparatively slow UPS truck, Amazon will drop goodies on our welcome mat from aerial drones. Who are we? We're impatient.
Yet a lot of things take time and it's foolish to rush the process. Red wine, for example, usually profits considerably by waiting, allowing it to age, first in the barrel and then in the bottle. You can drink it green, but it's better if you wait. The same is true of a savory vegetable soup with chunks of chicken or beef in it. On cold winter days, it's a welcome menu item but particularly so if you can warm yourself up by other means for a day or two while you wait. You'll a taste a bit of culinary heaven after it has marinated.
Assuming we could tame our impatience . . . and that's a very large assumption . . . what or who might we be waiting for?
In his gospel, Matthew writes that John the Baptizer was one who waited . . . and he knew what he was waiting for.
"John, meanwhile, had been locked up in prison. When he got wind of what Jesus was doing, he sent his own disciples to ask, 'Are you the One we've been expecting, or are we still waitng?" ~ Matthew 11:2-3 The Message
Spoiler alert: Jesus turns out to be exactly the One John had been waiting for. We'll tell you how John knew that at the end of this piece. For that you'll just have to wait.
Someone else who, at age 94, is still waiting is Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, painter, and activist. In his 1958 book, A Coney Island of the Mind, he published a poem called "I Am Waiting." It's a delightful, easily accessible poem filled with rich, humorous references. Punctuating its 120 brief lines, like a response in a litany, are seven instances in which he writes "I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder."
One stanza goes like this:
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
As it turns out, Ferlinghetti and John the Baptizer had a lot in common. To see why, again, you'll have to wait.
So who are you? Are you one who waits? Or are you, perhaps, one who keeps on asking that question of another: "Who are you?"
Who's that entering this essay now . . . down there . . . stage left? Who is it? The Who . . . that's who . . . the punk/rock/whatever group. If you're too young to have caught them the first time around, the theme song of the long-running TV series, CSI, is one of their signature songs, "Who Are You?" That Who, that's who.
Released by The Who in 1978, it was written by Pete Townshend after a very difficult meeting with record executives in which he'd successfully negotiated finally getting paid what he thought their music was worth. Exhausted, and worried that The Who had lost its edgy, rebellious genius, he left the meeting in a sour mood. Wandering into a bar in London's Soho district, he got thoroughly trashed. Eventually he left, and laid himself down in a gutter outside the bar so as to stop the world from spinning. A Bobby on the beat recognized Townshend and, in a very kind way, said, "You can go home and sleep tonight (instead of in a jail cell), if you can get up and walk away." Townshend's response from his woozy stupor was, "Who the f--k are you?"
While that's not exactly the way in which we're phrasing the question (but why not?), "Who Are You?" may have its provenance in that incident. But when The Who's founder and lead singer, Roger Daltrey, sang it, it morphed into the prayer of a destitute man on the street looking up to the sky and asking God "Who are you?"
For God's answer . . . wait for it . . . you'll just have to wait until the end of this piece.
Minus the extensive "who who-ing" of the frequently repeated chorus, with its insistence that the singer really wants to know, here are the verses which you can hear, including the "who who-ing", here.
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
I woke up in a Soho doorway
A policeman knew my name
He said "You can go sleep at home tonight
If you can get up and walk away"
I staggered back to the underground
And the breeze blew back my hair
I remember throwin' punches around
And preachin' from my chair
I took the Tube back out of town
Back to the Rollin' Pin
I felt a little like a dying hound
With a streak of Rin Tin Tin
I stretched back and I hiccupped
And looked back on my busy day
Eleven hours in the Tin Pan
God, there's got to be another way
I know there's a place you walked
Where love falls from the trees
My heart is like a broken cup
I only feel right on my knees
I spit out like a sewer hole
Yet still receive your kiss
How can I measure up to anyone now
After such a love as this?
"After such a love as this." What kind of love is that? As I read The Who's lyrics, it's a love that just falls from the trees and we can catch it if we're looking up . . . available, unexpected fruit . . . a Presence perhaps . . . that doesn't judge, but helps us to get back on our way . . . a love that points us homeward.
Well, who waits for that? Might as well wish for the sun, the moon, and the stars . . . all tied up in a bow and, if not air-dropped from an Amazon drone, then by a flying pig.
Who waits for a love like that?
We might, if we have ever heard the gospel . . . the good news. The gospel is good news because it proclaims that something new, transformative, and liberating is happening in the midst of this bad news world. It isn't completely here yet, but the entirety of it is coming. And when we learn to look for evidence of it, we'll find ourselves grinning . . . perhaps with tears of joyful relief in our eyes at the same time.
Maybe that's how the shepherds responded to those Amazon drones, er, make that "angels," who issued them, of all people, an invitation to a royal birth. I mean, they had sheep shit on their sandals and were just passing through town. No one would give a loan to a shepherd, much less bother to include them in something like that! A love like that was (and is) madness . . . it was preposterous . . . it must have pissed off the establishment. How cool is that!
That's one way to state the gospel . . . one we'll soon be hearing a lot . . . and it's a good one . . . if you don't let its questionable historicity get in the way of the incredible, heart-opening truth it otherwise has to convey to us all.
Or maybe, when you see the beginnings of what you've been waiting for, maybe you'll break out in song, like this one by Phil Ochs:
What's that I hear now ringing in my ears?
I've heard that sound before
What's that I hear now ringing in my ears?
I hear it more and more
It's the sound of freedom calling
Ringing up to the skies
It's the sound of the old ways falling
You can hear it if you try
So what was Phil Ochs hearing? Probably something like what the imprisoned John the Baptizer heard when his messengers brought back Jesus' reply.
Since you've been waiting so patiently, here is the rest of that incident Matthew wrote about . You might also consider it God's answer to that destitute man in Townshend's song:
"Jesus told them, 'Go back and tell John what's going on:
The blind see,
The lame walk,
Lepers are cleansed,
The deaf hear,
The dead are raised,
The wretched of the earth learn that God is on their side.'
(And the Bobby on the beat doesn't arrest you!)
'Is this what you were expecting? Then count yourselves most blessed!'"
So, who are you? Who am I? God knows. Better hurry up with our answer: we don't have forever to find out!
What are we waiting for?
