 |
 Calvin Miller "When the Aardvark Parked on the Ark" Program #3324 First air date March 25, 1990 |
Biography
Dr. Calvin
Miller has been pastor of Westside Church in Omaha, Nebraska
since 1966. During that time, the congregation has grown from ten
members to more than 2,500. Calvin is a remarkable poet and the author
of twenty-three books of popular theology and inspiration including, The
Singer, The Song, A Hunger for Meaning, When the Aardvark Parked on the
Ark, Leadership and A Requiem for Love. [Biographical information is
correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]
"When the Aardvark Parked on the Ark" I understand now why Paul says in Ephesians 5:20 that we should give
thanks for everything maybe, even the letter "B." Blueberry Terry I think this little poem illustrates that it is sometimes dangerous to
play hard to get in case you don't get got. Catherine Caterpillar
Some years ago I became interested in
children's poetry. An artist friend of mine, Mark Harrison, and I were
standing in the back of a Walden's Bookstore reading the latest offering
from Dr. Seuss, which I think at that time was The Butter Battle Book.
As we read through it, he turned to me and said, "You know, somebody
should be writing this kind of thing for the Christian marketplace." I
thought about his proposition and before long we were actually into it.
I developed four or five poems and gave them to him. He laid them all
out and made them ready for publication. We looked at them and decided
that maybe this was a good idea.
We worked up more and finally, after a few months, there were about a
hundred leaves of the book, When the Aardvark Parked on the Ark. We
mailed it to Harper and Row. The publisher called me back within a
couple of days and said, "We like this stuff. When can we have the rest
of it?" I said, "Well, actually the rest of it isn't written yet, but as
soon as it is written I will be glad to mail it to you." They put up
with us for a period of three or four more months until the book was
finished.
It was a wonderful new experiment for me. I think I have fallen more and
more in love with children's poetry. There is a certain sound to it a
certain mesmerizing rhythm and rhyme that makes it all so alive.
Children are so flattering. They learn them, not because they set out to
memorize them but because they read them over and over, or perhaps their
parents do. Before long, it is a part of their life and their world.
I'd like for Barbara and I to read a few selections from the book When
the Aardvark Parked on the Ark. The first poem I would like to read is
called, "If There Were No 'B's." I am speaking of the letter "B," of
course. If there were no B's, for instance, ABC, CBS and NBC would all
be in big trouble. This book celebrates how thankful we can all be for
one little letter of the alphabet.If There Were No "B's"
If there were no "B's,"
it sure would be sad.
We'd have to ride "ikes"
and sleep in our "eds."
And kids who played trumpets
would play in the "arid."
We'd eat our "ham-urgers"
at the "ham-urger" stands.
At ice cream cafes
Eating "utterscotch'' sundaes
Arid "anana" splits
So utterly "affled,"
We'd just sit and sit.
All hares would be "unnies."
(It sure would sound funny)
And sweet little "a'ies"'
Would not seem so huggy.
Their mothers would stroll them
In "lack" "a'y" "uggies."
If muscles were "iceps"
And minds were all "rains"
We'd all hit an "ase-all"
Or play with our trains,
And carry "um-rellas"
To keep off the rains.
We'd have to ride "uses"
And "uckle" our "oots"
And "utton" our "lazers"
Down over our suits.
And sweet little "irds"
Would fly as "irds" do
High in the sky
Where the skies are quite "lue."
Ever since I was "orn"
I was thankful for skies
And good "ooks" and "row-oats"
And "straw-erry" pies,
Chocolate milkshakes
and "ras-erry" freezes
And maples and oaks and "mul-erry" trees.
"Ut" mostly I'm thankful
Whenever I please
To use hundreds and hundreds
And hundreds of "B's.
One of the poems I developed a little bit later as I was writing this
book was a poem called "Thin Minny." "Thin Minny" celebrates that
eternal neurosis that Americans live through. We are always too fat,
trying to be something else and release the thinner person who is inside
of us. Barbara and I would like to read this little celebration of an
agonizing problem.
Thin Minny
I think about James Thurber who said, "It is about as bad to fall over
on your face as to fall over on your back." And, what Paul said in I
Timothy 3:11, that we probably should use a little temperance in
everything we do.
"I'm simply too fat!" cried Minny McBride
When she found herself stuck in a slippery
slide.
And there halfway down she wailed and she
cried.
"I must lose some weight, I've grown far
too wide.
I"m embarrassed to find myself wedged in
this slide.
I'm giving up chocolates," wept Minny
McBride,
"Spaghetti and bonbons and everything
fried."
Six firemen came, they pushed and they
pried,
Until they popped Minny right out of that
slide.
"I then lost some weight and regained my
pride
But I went overboard with my calorie
guide."
So Minny grew skinny just three inches
wide.
And the first gust of wind
Blew her back up the slide.
It is always dangerous to play hard to get. We want to celebrate a
little poem that tells how dangerous it can be. This poem will make
utter sense to you if you remember that Razberry Mary worked on a dairy
and Strawberry Sherry ran a ferry boat and Blueberry Terry worked out on
the prairie.
"Sweet Strawberry Sherry,
will you ever marry?"
Asked Blueberry Terry,
but she shook her head.
"I find marriage scary,
dear Blueberry Terry,
Ask Razberry Mary to marry instead."
"I'll not marry Terry,"
said Razberry Mary,
"for Blueberry Terry
Resides on the prairie:
I won't leave my dairy
to follow him West."
"Then you I can't marry,"
said Blueberry Terry
"I won't leave the prairie
To work for a dairy
Dear Strawberry Sherry.
Please marry me now."
"No, Terry, like Mary,
I do not like prairie.
I live on a ferry
And never would marry
A man so content to care for his cows."
"Very well, Sherry.
Very well, Mary.
I'll leave the prairie.
Will one of you marry
Me now?"
"I don't find you handsome,"
said Razberry Mary.
"I don't find you wealthy,"
said Strawberry Sherry.
And since you're not handsome
and do not have wealth,
We think that we'll soon marry
somebody else."
So Blueberry Terry
returned to the prairie
and rarely saw Mary and Sherry,
but then
Mary and Sherry
at their ferry and dairy never
Were asked if they'd marry again.
At the dairy and ferry
they grew old and thin.
They were both nearly ninety
when they hobbled in,
"Dear Blueberry Terry,"
said Strawberry Sherry,
"I"ve changed my mind Terry,
I'll marry you now."
"Yes Terry, Dear Terry,"
said Razberry Mary, "I'll
Marry you Terry,
I'll marry and how!"
"I don't find you pretty,
I don't find you wealthy
And since you are ugly
and have no real wealth
I think I'll return to my cows
and my prairie
And there I may marry somebody else.
I don't really know who I'll marry now,
I'm living alone surrounded by cows."
In a small cemetery
they buried old Mary and
Poor lonely Sherry,
whose tombstones there read:
"Here Strawberry Sherry and Razberry Mary
were buried, unmarried
both single and dead."
Old Blueberry Terry
their man from the prairie
Felt so alone as his final years sped
He married his Guernsey
far out in the prairie
Delighted he'd finally
found something to wed.
I would like to read a poem that I think illustrates that it is also
good to know when to call back the struggle and strife in life and to
ease back a little bit. This is about a lobster named Leonardo who got
caught because he didn't know when to quit charging ahead.
Leonardo Lobster
Perhaps if we did a little more looking up and a little less charging
ahead, we would get a little further.
It was senseless, but Leonardo kept
charging the cage.
He was caught in a trap and he
swam in a rage.
He knew he was done for and
soon would be dead
When he suddenly thought what
his father once said.
"If ever you enter a trap, Leonardo,
you don't have
To find yourself stewed, baked, and dead.
You can't fight the trap,
my two-pincered son,
By charging the steel that
lies out ahead."
Leonardo grew calm and quit
charging ahead.
His BB-like eyes rose up from his head.
He looked at the floor of his trap
for a door
And clearly could see there was none.
But as he swam up to the top of his cell
He found the small window
through which he fell.
He swam swiftly up, and rid of his rage,
He soon found himself outside of his cage.
"The reason all lobsters wind up in pails,
With elegant people eating their tails,
Is that they don't
try enough different ways
To escape from the prisons of men.
It does little good
when you know you are caught
To keep charging at walls,
again and again."
Leonardo became a great liberator.
He moved through the traps
and swam without fear.
Whenever he saw a brother entrapped,
He was careful, but unafraid to swim near.
"Look up, look up!"
He would cry through the gloom,
"Or this trap where you struggle
Will soon be your tomb.
The reason all lobsters wind up in pails,
With elegant people eating their tails,
Is that they don't try
enough different ways
To escape from the prisons of men.
It does little good
when you know you are caught
To keep charging at walls,
again and again.
Look up! Look up! Look up!"
When I write children's poems, I am always deeply concerned about how a
child is going to see the event. I try to see it through their eyes. One
of the things I have tried to see through a child's eyes is what
happened to Jonah when he was in the belly of the fish and when he tried
to pray for God to get him out. I think this is what he prayed:
Jonah's Prayer
As pastor of a very large church, I do lots of weddings. Most all of
them are formal and well, well planned. Sometimes I get a little weary
with all of them. There are so many. I can see this kind of wedding
perhaps as a break to the normal sort of wedding. It is about two rather
large animals who got married in a swamp in Africa.
When Jonah was swallowed by a fish...
Slosh, slosh, slurp, slurp!
He felt so foolish kneeling down.
Slosh, slosh, slurp, slurp!
He prayed: "Help God, help..."
Slosh, slosh, slurp, slurp!
"If you can make a fish this big...
Surely you can make him burp!"
Formal Wedding
Back to the Bible poems. Often I have wondered what Abraham at 90
thought about that day he came in from the field and found his wife,
Sarah, knitting booties. I have a feeling that this is the conversation
that might have occurred between them.
A great hippocerous and a rhinopotamus
Fell in love in an African swamp.
They were muddy and cruddy,
but fully agreed
To be wed in the weeds and the reeds.
The guests who attended spoke
words that were harsh.
They marveled that marriages
made in a marsh
Were such murky affairs
that the clean nearly cried
When they sang, "Here comes
the scum-covered bride.
While stuck in the muck,
they both said "I do."
Inspired in the mire,
they pledged to be true.
The music was brought
by an African duck,
Who quacked out "Because"
and "God Bless the Muck."
When the guests were all gone
on the honeymoon night
The swamp had become
a muck-lover's delight.
They plunged 'neath the mud
and kissed in the muck
And wished each other
the best kind of luck.
The hippocerous cooed,
"My sweet rhinopotamus,
There's just you and I,
but there's still quite a lot of us.
Our wedding was lovely,
all formal with crud.
Oh, bliss that is ours
to be stuck in the mud."
I'm Gonna Have a Baby, Abie!
What a wonderful little story to come from the Bible. It is a story of
inspiration and faith.
Haven't you found
that the mothers you know
Quit having babies at forty or so.
But Sarah at eighty
though wrinkled and gray
Sat knitting booties
through most of the day.
When Abraham said to her,
"Sarah you're knitting,
I feel that it's fitting
that you tell me why."
Old Sarah just winked,
then smiled and replied,
I'm going to have a baby, Abie."
It sounded so funny,
they giggled out loud,
They bellowed and laughed
and attracted a crowd
Who asked Abraham:
"What is so funny
could you tell us maybe?"
"My Sarah is eighty, expecting a baby!"
When one of them saw
she was knitting some booties
They broke out in laughing
and roaring and hooting.
One of them mocked her:
"She's quite off her rocker!
Dear Lady, you're eighty,
you can't have a baby!
They hooted and howled;
for nine months they roared.
They made so much noise
that they nearly ignored
The sound of the postman
who knocked at the door,
"Hey fellas! A letter from Abie has come.
Old Sarah his wife has a new little son!"
At last they quit laughing,
And yet they felt joy,
And all ran to Abie's
To see his new boy.
They all smiled at Abie
and said "Happy Baby!"
While Abraham beamed as proud as could be.
But God smiled down on nobody other
Than Sarah, the old one,
the happy new mother!
The next poem has a principle of the Bible. It says that it is good for
us to be obedient. If you have been a parent or anticipate being one,
this either has or will happen to you. It is about a little boy who
would not eat his veggies.
Jonathan Herrington Barrington Green
I think this little poem illustrates how beautifully true is the Fifth
Commandment that we ought to listen to our fathers and mothers. If we
don't obey, we can miss a lot of life.
"You can't get down
'til you've finished your beans,
Jonathan Herrington Barrington Green!
It just isn't right to eat what you please
Seventeen helpings of 'roni and cheese,
One half a pie and a strawberry freeze
And not finish one little
helping of beans!"
On the thirteenth of May,
(ninety two seventeen)
Jonathan Herrington Barrington Green
Looked at his plate of uneaten beans
And said to his mother, Gladys Maureen,
"I won't eat these veggies.
I hate these green beans!"
"Then you'll never get down,"
said his mother.
So he sat them all day
and looked far away,
And all through the night
'til the fourteenth of May.
"May I get down now, Mother,
sweet Gladys Maureen?"
"Jonathan Herrington Barrington Green,
are you sure you have
eaten every last bean?"
"No!" said the boy.
"'No!" said his mother.
And so passed away
The fourteenth of May.
Jonathan sat with his chin stuck way out
For a month and a day
and a day and a month,
'Til the summer was gone
and autumn had come,
And a day and a month
and a month and a day
'Til skies became gray
and the snow fell around
And settled upon his old plate of beans.
"Oh, Mother, dear Mother,
sweet Gladys Maureen,
It's snowing all over
my plate of green beans.
Please may I get down
from this table and go,
For I hate my green beans
when they're cold as the snow."
"No, not 'til you've finished
every last bean!"
Another year passed, then twenty-one more
And Jonathan's mother was now eighty-four
And the beans didn't look so good anymore.
"Please, Mother, these beans are too old
May I go?"
His mother was aged but firmly said, "No!"
Jonathan Green never left home again.
He never played football
or made a new friend.
He nevermore studied or traveled or wed.
For fifty-five years he never ate bread
He never slept in a fluffy soft bed.
In his ninetieth year
when his beard had grown long
He choked down the beans
by the light of the moon.
"Mmm! These weren't so bad!"
said Jonathan Green,
"I wish now I'd listened
to Gladys Maureen."
As the final poem, I would like to read what is my favorite from this
little book. It is an eternal them the theme of a caterpillar becoming
something better than that, something more noble, something more lofty.
It is a theme that I suppose pleases every ear. Life ought to know some
transformation and some elevated living here and there. It is about a
reluctant caterpillar named Catherine.
Mother caterpillar turned to her daughter
one day
And said, "My sweet Catherine, I'm going
away
And I cannot come back I'm sorry to say."
She clipped the last threads on her bright
vnew cocoon
And then turned to Catherine again,
"Well, Cathy, I'm going in now
Are you sure you quite understand,
Can you spin the webbing
and knit the silk threads
And fleece the insides
of your own little pod?"
"Yes, Mother, I can,"
said Catherine Caterpillar.
"I've woven the uprights, just as you said
And tied off three hundred and seventy
threads.
I am sure that before the birth of the
moon
I'll be more than prepared for my own
cocoon."
They kissed goodbye on a dried milk-pod
twig
And the old woolly worm adjusted her wig
And crawled on into her vacant cocoon.
Catherine was scared, "Is it true I will
lose all my legs ..."
"Yes, Catherine, almost you get to keep
six."
"Only six oh, what then?"
Her mother knitted the last thirty threads
And answered her from her own downy bed.
"Catherine, you'll never walk, ever
again!"
She pulled the last threads and closed her
cocoon and was gone.
Cathy spent thirteen days weaving and
webbing,
Packing in fleece and cutting the threads.
When the day at last came to enter her
pod,
Catherine looked sadly down at her two
hundred legs
And spoke very sharply to God;
"God, this is Catherine Caterpillar
I don't mean to gripe, but you haven't
been fair,
And I haven't got long now to talk.
Already I feel a frost in the air.
"But God, it's like this, I've two hundred
legs
And while it's an effort to climb up a
stalk
I enjoy so much just crawling along
and taking a nice autumn walk.
Please God, if you don't mind, could I
keep my legs?"
But God only smiled and pulled out the
moon.
While Catherine looked down at her two-
hundred legs
And stomped her way into her fleecy
cocoon.
For a hundred and seventy days the frost
gathered.
God smiled as snowflakes piled high on the
thread
And Catherine slept warm in her soft
fleecy bed.
And seven cold moons smiled down on the
snow
'Til in May God came rapping on
Catherine's cocoon.
"It's terribly dark," said Catherine in
fright,
"I must clip these threads and let in some
light."
She chewed through the webbing and cut the
silk threads
And crawled out and stretched, then
suddenly thought
As she looked at her bed,
"My legs are gone ... Oh, what will I do?
I cannot go far."
She looked and saw a winged creature who
Landed in splendor on the old milkpod
twig.
"Catherine Caterpillar, the morning is
bright!"
"Mother, it's you! I've lost all my legs,
I think
I will die."
"Nonsense: you're at the beginning of life
You're not going to die.
You're through crawling, dear Catherine,
look up at
The Sky!
When God takes our legs he expects us to fly."
Catherine looked back at the weathered
cocoon and
Tried her new wings, they both rose and
flew.
"I never knew, Mother, that skies were so
blue."
"Stretch out your wings and float on the
wind
And tell me, do you want to be what you've
been,
And crawl in the dust and have legs once
again."
"Oh Mother, I'm flying! Today all is sky!
And surely God's watching as we flutter
by.
He watches the winters and guards the
cocoons
And smiles while the snow falls beneath
the icy moons.
He laughs at our fears while the winter
wind sings,
And wakes us to fly on filigreed wings."
Interview with Calvin
Miller & Luci Shaw
Interviewed by David Hardin
David Hardin:
You have heard a little bit about Calvin but let me tell you something about
Luci Shaw. Luci is a book publisher who commits much of her time to teaching and
writing. She is also a trustee of the Sunday Evening Club, for which I am very
grateful. She is just back from a teaching stint at Regent University in
Vancouver.
Let's start by talking a little bit about the fact that so many people are
interested in creative writing but are afraid to start or don't know how to
start. How did you get started, Luci?
Luci Shaw: I had a very minor start because
I started writing poetry as soon as I could put pen to paper. I had the
advantage of a British education. My parents read a lot of good literature to
me, even as a very young child. I wrote a lot of very melodramatic poetry in my
youth of which I am ashamed today. That's how I got started. I thought everybody
wrote poetry!
Hardin: How did you get started, Calvin?
Calvin Miller: I wrote melodramatic sermons
for a long time. I started out that way. I was down maybe five years in the
first little church I pastored before somebody in my congregation said, "Some of
these sermons really ought to be printed." During the Lenten season I was
preaching about the cross and that was how I got started. At her suggestion, I
put a manuscript together. She helped me edit it. Barb, my wife, typed it. I was
off and running.
Hardin: So that's how you got started. How
about you, Luci, who encouraged you or mentored you into having the courage to
submit something to a publication?
Shaw: I didn't submit anything for
publication until I was at Wheaton College. My mentor there was Dr. Clyde Kilby,
a C. S. Lewis specialist, and a wonderful teacher. He would regularly say when I
presented my poems to him, "Send this off to the Atlantic' tomorrow," or "Let's
get this into print." In fact, his mentorship continued over the years until his
death. When I was 29, I can remember that he gave me 29 stamped self-addressed
envelopes just as an encouragement for me to send off my writing. That was one
of the best gifts I ever received.
Hardin: Why do you write?
Shaw: I think something snags on your mind.
You hear a phrase or a rhyme or you catch a connection in the creative world. It
moves itself into words. You put it on paper and it gathers more words to
itself. It is a mysterious process.
Hardin: How about you, Calvin?
Miller: I think Luci is right. There are
just various snags. I think basically people write to be read as an artist
paints to have his pictures exhibited. In my case, I found myself thinking about
what C. S. Lewis said. Someone asked him about the functions of imagination
how did he imagine the "Narnia Chronicles." He said that he saw a fawn leaning
against a lamp post through his wardrobe. After that it got easy. I think when
you ask the question, "How do you do it?" it is pretty much a thing that
mandates its own direction. It looks on to us. We don't look onto it.
Hardin: What does it matter in your creative
writing that you take God so seriously?
Miller: I think all writers everybody
operate out of a world view. Christian writers like Luci and me believe that God
is in the universe. He is in charge of things. We understand our need for Him,
our debt to Him. Our writing, like everything else we would like to do that is
good, becomes a part of our gift to Him.
Hardin: Luci, how about you?.
Shaw: I think even though I don't write
always explicitly Christian or religious poetry, I write generally about the
creative universe. My view of God percolates up through the words. It is almost
a given for me. I don't always have to remind myself that God is at the center
of my poetry. He is the ground of my being. He is there whether I am aware of it
or not.
Hardin: What is different in what we are
trying to say or express when we write poetry, say from writing fiction,
preaching or whatever?
Shaw: I think that poetry deals almost
exclusively with emotions and experience. Preaching or teaching very often deals
with data or information. We are trying to inform people whereas in poetry we
are trying to catch their imaginations. We are trying to help them to see in
their minds what we as poets see in our minds.
Miller: Exactly. I think the words "mood"
and "mystique," things like this, come when I think of poetry. I think
information teaching comes when I think of more prosaic sorts of things.
Being a pastor, it has been nerve wracking for me because I love poetry. I read
a lot of it in sermons. At the same time, I am always aware that I have to teach
a little something in that sermon, too. I am always caught in the world between
the prose and the poetic.
Hardin: Aren't there things you simply can't
say any other way but in poetry feelings, emotions that just don't go down
an paper?
Shaw: I have often compared it to running
versus walking. We walk because we have to get somewhere. We run because we are
excited or happy. Poetry is a little bit that way when compared to prose.
Miller: I agree a good definition.
Hardin: What wisdom or guidance figure in
your life would you like to spend more time with than you have had available to
you?
Miller: That is a great question, David.
Being from Nebraska has had a lot of good things about it, but it is kind of
isolated from a lot of the people I would like to touch. I have often thought
that it would be wonderful if I could just sit down and have a cup of coffee
with Luci every time I had a great idea, or one that I thought was great. She is
five hundred miles away and so I have sort of lived and vegetated out in
Nebraska. Most of my mentors I have read rather than touched their lives. She
mentioned Clyde Kilby. He was quite an inspiration to me although I never got to
meet him. I wish I could have. There are many other people. I think if I just
had thirty minutes with them once a week it would revolutionize the way I do
things.
Hardin: How about you, Luci?
Shaw: I, too, find my inspiration through
reading the great writers of the past, particularly C. S. Lewis, who combined
such a variety of gifts. He was also a great poet as well as a great
theoretician, apologist, fiction writer. He combined so many gifts. I think
today the man whose writing speaks most to my heart is Henri Nouwen. His work
has that imaginative quality combined with Christian devotion and commitment
that makes sense for me.
Miller: When you get somebody who couples
imagination with a kind of hunger for God, those kinds of writers inevitably
move me. I really want to know everything that they do. I find myself reading
everything Henri Nouwen has written. There are plenty of others. I love Mother
Teresa of Calcutta. Her works blaze with a kind of light that comes out of her
sense of service her sense of love for people. She couples those ideas for me.
Hardin: You are both people who are
extraordinarily busy publishing, preaching, traveling. When do you find time
to be so productive in writing?
Miller: I heard Tony Campolo on a recent
Chicago Sunday Evening Club telecast talk about the God of the party. In a
sense, I guess that is where I am. I see life as a celebration. One should live
the moment one is now connected to, that is the moment that matters. If I do
that well, then I can go on to the next moment so I don't have to feel hassled
or pressured because I am not being productive. This precise moment has other
kinds of meaning. I try to live to the fullest, to be sure that I don't pass a
whole segment of time when nothing valuable is happening.
Hardin: How about you, Luci, when do you
have the time to write?
Shaw: Poetry comes when it comes. It is like
having a baby. Once it is on the way, you can't do much about it. It has to
happen. It has to be born. I am moving now and perversely this is the tine when
I am writing extraordinary amounts of poetry. I am packing and rushing down to
my computer and typing more words.
Hardin: I know that you both get it done. It
must be something called inspiration. It has been great having you both here.