Be Thou my vision.

And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. Exodus 13:21

I am a wandering Israelite who sees the flame in the sky above, the pillar, the smoke from the mountain, the earth open up and give way, and still I forget. I am beset by chronic soul amnesia. –Voskamp

And last night as I was leaving Heather and Dustin’s, having tucked little Everette into bed, well, she fell asleep after I read Spot Goes to the Park fourteen times in a row and we pointed out the cat and the ball on every page and she liked the Quack sound that the duck made too, and having finished grading every single last one of the papers in my manila file folders, I stepped into a man. A big man who had been a sergeant in the army. And he was walking out of an argument with his sister who was comforting her tears with a bottle of vodka, and maybe he had some too because he was a little wobbly but maybe he had just been drinking tears. And we both comforted one another there under the streetlight in the October chill. And we hugged each other, and he yelled back down the sidewalk–Do you feel better? I feel better. I was in the army and we never give up.

And it is a long, long road. With many a winding turn.

Bowed at the edge of the world, Jesus ask me spun in circles, me coming to, only to hope and to forget again, He asks soft of me who is yet again lost what He asked to the man born blind: “What do you want me to do for you?

Has He called me because He wants me to do my own plumbing of the soul? What do you want?

A summer of pain. Always the running. A summer of grace. Always the revelation. Pain is everywhere, and wherever the pain there can be everywhere grace.

Even under the streetlight on Sixth Avenue.

The kingdom laden with glory, this, the pearl of great price, the field I’d sell everything to possess.  And I know all about The Pearl, since I just graded forty-four not-so-good literary essays about The Pearl of Great Price and the hold it has on our being.

The only place we have to come before we die is the place of seeing God.

I whisper with the blind beggar, “Lord, I want to see.”

And Rachel is all grown up and wants to be an astronaut

I wait for the LORD; my soul waits for Him; in His word is my hope. My soul waits for the LORD, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. Psalm 130:4

The thing about watchmen in the night is that they never really doubt that the sun will rise.

Not really.

It might feel like it sometimes, as they pace the rampart both to warm cold bones and to keep from falling asleep. They might jump up and down a few times to regain feeling in stiff joints. Certainly time moves slowly. Even without a watch or cell phone, the seconds swell into silent drops whose surface tension builds, slowly slowly, and finally explode into the waiting puddle below. One, one thousand.

But our God is not bound by this fourth dimension any more than the pulsing particles that wrap their strands around our experienced existence. It too is held loosely in the palm of His hand, much like the billions of galaxies that made Brandon and Cameron and Rachel’s eyes sparkle last night at family dinner. So many times the childhood Rachel would wrap up in a thick blanket and sit outside in the night and watch brilliance spin across the sky.

Our God is mighty and who can stand against Him?

That was the click of the blinking red light alarm clock at 4:15 this morning. And may that be the click of my heart today, the railway track sounds marking the seconds. Without the static of a GE AM/FM clock radio fuzzing the clarity as I move through the busyness of the day, beginning with stepping out into the starlit near dark with a blue towel draped around my shoulders, and ending with final crunching footsteps up the gravel driveway under the self-same stars. As I pause and look into each pair of eyes, may my heart too sing.

Our God is mighty and who can stand against Him?

And in Steinbeck’s The Pearl the people of the Gulf know this: Part of the far shore disappeared into a shimmer that looked like water. There was no certainty in seeing, no proof that what you saw was there or was not there. And they expected all places were that way, and it was not strange to them.

Nothing is wanting to me. In green pastures He hath settled me.

Winking and glimmering under the setting sun

Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! Matthew 18:7

So my head hurts. Seriously. And I have seven more fourth drafts of The Pearl literary analyses sitting next to my computer, neatly paper-clipped with the peer revision sheets and the double-column quote and inference notes. And because this is my ninth graders’ first step into the big bad world of parenthetical citation and an inviting introduction and satisfying conclusion leave reader with sense of resolution and clear, comprehensive thesis statement in introduction sets up entire essay and details follow logical, effective order in body paragraphs and thoughtful transitions show how ideas connect through essay, I am dragging them towards doing it over and over until it is done right.  And they are all good sports about it, and not complaining, and smiling at the challenge of excellence, but I am reading and reading, over and over about how “being rich isn’t bad,” and writing over and over in the margin “focus on what Steinbeck is saying in his story and not what you personally believe” until my pencil lead breaks.  

And the mysterious google forces linked today’s verses to the 2350 Bible verses, one out of seven in the New Testament, that speak about money and possessions.  Boy oh boy, ol’ Steinbeck sure understood God’s heart on this one as well, as he traces the almost destruction of a kind and innocent man descending into the hell of greed. 

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. 1 John 2:16

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Matthew 6:24

But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 1 John 3:17

And of course in the NPR background drones the twisting pontification of our elected officials trying to squeeze the destitute into one more reelection slogan.

And this one might as well be the thesis statement of every sharp word of this parable, the parable of the Pearl of Great Price: But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. 1 Timothy 6:9-10

And I wonder about Mr. Steinbeck and the power of his words that also seem to rightly divide the heart of man. Are the prayers of dear faithful Juana making the magic of prayer, her face set rigid and her muscles hard to force the luck, to tear the luck out of the gods' hands, so very different from my homeroom students who mutter under their breath every morning, “I pray we have a good day and do good on our tests and if anyone is sick please make them well in jesus name amen and can I please copy your geometry homework?”

And at the end of the story, when all is lost: his home, his livelihood and his only son, Kino wrenches his soul back from the pearl, the pearl with its music of promise and delight, its guarantee of the future, of comfort, of security and drew back his arm and flung the pearl with all his might the ugly grey malignancy into the sea and what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?

The music of the pearl drifted to a whisper and disappeared.