Jack Pelham

I’m reminded this morning of a great scene in the movie, Sergeant York. I believe it has one of the richest metaphors ever to make it to the silver screen—the kind we could sit and ponder for an hour and still not be wasting our time. And it’s a metaphor that comes up again and again in my own personal life, as I wrestle with the lessons of life that ought to have been learned better by now—about how problems left to fester end up costing us a great deal of strife until they are finally solved.

Let me set the scene:

Alvin York is a young and unruly subsistence farmer, plowing his poor family’s top land up in the mountains of East Tennessee. He’s using a mule and a turning plow, as had his father and grandfather before him. And even though we will watch Alvin clearing several watermelon-sized rocks from his family farm, there’s a very large rock in that field that he had been plowing around for many years, as had his father and grandfather before him. Alvin’s been a long-time hard worker, church-goer and songleader, even, but can’t break his bent for drinking and fighting. One day, at Alvin’s mother’s invitation, Pastor Pyle comes to see Alvin, hoping he can influence him to “get religion”. And the pastor makes use of that huge rock to urge Alvin to fight to improve himself. Here’s that favorite scene from the 1941 Gary Cooper film. (If you want to watch it a second time, you’ll have to refresh the page.):

Here’s a snippet from the dialog:

Pyle: See that rock, Alvin? (He points to a large boulder in the field.) You been plowing around that rock a heap of years.
York:  Sure have.
Pyle:  Did you ever think when you start plowing your furrows crooked, it’s mighty hard to get ’em straight again?
York:  I never thought on it much.
Pyle:  Well, it’s that way, I reckon—with other things besides plowin’.

I think that Pastor Pyle was right. It is that way with other things besides plowing. And now in my later years, I turn my attention to clearing as many of these “rocks” as I can from my field while I’m still alive. And it seems the way of this world to leave these things unsolved, even from generation to generation. But what if a person were to take a mind to clean up his own field?!

It’s quite a chore—quite a quest, even, and it seems such the right thing to do as I learn more and more just how big those unfinished “little things” can be.

Now I’ve got to tell you right up front
That you’re going to need to sit down
While you hear me out.

There are standing up talks
And there are sitting down talks
And this is one of the latter kind.

So let’s get started here:

The one trainer swears up and down
That if you know his fitness secret
You can eat any food you like
However egregious
And that it will bring you no harm.

Because I trust you so much
I will risk to admit to you—
Even after my big pushback
To your suggestion from yesterday—
The possibility that deep down in my heart—
Beneath those often-traveled levels
Where the words play out
And the feelings are felt
And the plans are made—
Down at that most distant part
Where the very will of me resides—
I am refusing to love
What you have said I should love—
And what I very well could have
Loved by now—
That I am in fact stubbornly
Refusing to embrace it
And to hold its hand
And look it in the eye
With a soft heart—
In the way that bonds people
Into the best of friends.

What is it—
This new manna—
This joy that comes
Fresh with the morning
Except on the very darkest of days—
Which I cannot explain—
And gives me a nudge
To start all over again—
Even when I had run out
The night before
And had little hope
But for the morning?

Isn’t it the most remarkable thing
That one person might invite another
To come over and help
Rearrange the furniture in his heart—

It would be a sin
He says
To judge the churches
For their dysfunction.

It is not his place
He says
But God’s
To declare such opinions.

Whatever else one may make of it all
There is that ever-troubling fact
That she does not in fact deserve
The treatment she gets.

And then there’s the worse fact still
Which is that she will probably tend
To believe that she does.

There are
To be heard
The voices of
The Shepherd
Of the other Sheep
And of the ancient Wolf.
And even so there are many
To whom it never occurs
That some distinction
Ought to be made
Between them.