A Story that Rhymes
Each week during my sabbatical, I’ve been leading a story circle with the five-year-old preschoolers at Old South Church in Boston. We recently began our time together by talking about what makes a poem what it is. One of the kids hit it right on the head: “It’s a story that rhymes!” Of course not all do. But many do tell stories, and they often rhyme. We practiced some rhyming words to their great delight, and they had all kinds of ideas – sounding out real words they knew and making others up because the sounds were right, which is one of the ways language evolves through the generations.
The story we read on this particular week was from a book I received as a gift when I was about the age of these children. The poet John Ciardi, who in the 1970s and 80s had a five-minute spot on NPR “On Words” (now, Garrison Keillor offers it as “The Writers Almanac”), was a friend of my dad’s, and during a visit brought along a copy of his recently published book, John J. Plenty and Fiddler Dan (Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1963). I vividly remember sitting on the sofa in our living room with him as he read it, with great delight, and seeing my enjoyment gave it to me – autographed, of course! – before leaving. I’ve treasured it ever since.
What I love about this story – and what the children delighted in when I read it to them – is the playful way the poet makes the lines rhyme. One of the children astutely suggested, in fact, that rhymes make our words sound like they’re singing to each other. Which, of course, is exactly right! This one is a fable about a workaholic ant named John J. Plenty, his sister, and a grasshopper named Fiddler Dan. But as a fable it tells another story: beneath the surface it is about the joy of song and the durability of music. It reminds us that we need play as much as we need work, delight alongside duty. Of course, John (Plenty) has other ideas: as he puts it over and over again: “More! Get more! No time to play! Winter is coming!” And so this busy little ant devotes all his energies to hoarding food, while his sister falls in love with the fiddler named Dan, and they make music together through the autumn until winter’s arrival. In a sense, the fable reminds us that we do not “live by bread alone.” The poets know this, as do those creating in other media. We seem to be made to make beauty, in any way we can – with our hands and mouths; with our eyes and ears. In fact, as Nietzsche once put it, we need to dance at least once every day, because “there is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.” Precisely. The artists know this, and remind us when we have forgotten.
The story is predictable, I suppose, which is what makes a fable work as it does: John J. has stored away mounds of food, but refuses to eat any of it for fear he won’t have enough to make it through the winter; his sister and Fiddler Dan, who’d spent the summer and fall making music, do just fine without such provisions. When spring comes, John can’t believe his ears when he hears the sound of music rising from Dan’s fiddle, since he had never stopped playing and was “still singing for time to turn. . . .”
The morals of the story – every fable is written toward some bit of wisdom for life – are these:
Happy listening to the music of resurrection, not only from the choirs at church but also as it comes forth singing from the earth. Because even during these often wet and dreary-dark-days of March, the music “never stays stopped.” Never. Perhaps our laughter and song – and all the rest of the “reason” in our bodies – tells the rhyming story of Easter more effectively and eloquently than all the rationality our words can manage. It all seemed to end, after all, with the disciples’ fear and confusion; only in the silence of a garden and on the long road home did confusion give way to recognition, despair to hope. Resurrection is probably often like this, a rhyme that comes to us at the places where we learn to sing – and, perhaps, even to dance – again! Amazement in the ordinary: the delight of unexpected touch upon our weary flesh; the opening of an forgotten truth by a stranger who walks among us; the meeting of our hunger with an unhoped for breakfast on the beach. Rhymes that make meaning at unexpected places! It might begin this way yet again – in the church that knows how to voice this “story that rhymes,” and in this world that still “won’t turn without a song.”
The story we read on this particular week was from a book I received as a gift when I was about the age of these children. The poet John Ciardi, who in the 1970s and 80s had a five-minute spot on NPR “On Words” (now, Garrison Keillor offers it as “The Writers Almanac”), was a friend of my dad’s, and during a visit brought along a copy of his recently published book, John J. Plenty and Fiddler Dan (Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1963). I vividly remember sitting on the sofa in our living room with him as he read it, with great delight, and seeing my enjoyment gave it to me – autographed, of course! – before leaving. I’ve treasured it ever since.
What I love about this story – and what the children delighted in when I read it to them – is the playful way the poet makes the lines rhyme. One of the children astutely suggested, in fact, that rhymes make our words sound like they’re singing to each other. Which, of course, is exactly right! This one is a fable about a workaholic ant named John J. Plenty, his sister, and a grasshopper named Fiddler Dan. But as a fable it tells another story: beneath the surface it is about the joy of song and the durability of music. It reminds us that we need play as much as we need work, delight alongside duty. Of course, John (Plenty) has other ideas: as he puts it over and over again: “More! Get more! No time to play! Winter is coming!” And so this busy little ant devotes all his energies to hoarding food, while his sister falls in love with the fiddler named Dan, and they make music together through the autumn until winter’s arrival. In a sense, the fable reminds us that we do not “live by bread alone.” The poets know this, as do those creating in other media. We seem to be made to make beauty, in any way we can – with our hands and mouths; with our eyes and ears. In fact, as Nietzsche once put it, we need to dance at least once every day, because “there is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.” Precisely. The artists know this, and remind us when we have forgotten.
The story is predictable, I suppose, which is what makes a fable work as it does: John J. has stored away mounds of food, but refuses to eat any of it for fear he won’t have enough to make it through the winter; his sister and Fiddler Dan, who’d spent the summer and fall making music, do just fine without such provisions. When spring comes, John can’t believe his ears when he hears the sound of music rising from Dan’s fiddle, since he had never stopped playing and was “still singing for time to turn. . . .”
The morals of the story – every fable is written toward some bit of wisdom for life – are these:
Say what you like as you trudge along,
The world won’t turn without a song.
And – Fiddlers grow thin and their hands turn blue
When winter comes, but they pull through.
There’s this about music – and, oh, it’s true! –
It never stays stopped. Just listen, and you
Will hear it start over, as sweet and new
As the first pale leaves and the first spring dew.
And that’s what John J. never knew.
Happy listening to the music of resurrection, not only from the choirs at church but also as it comes forth singing from the earth. Because even during these often wet and dreary-dark-days of March, the music “never stays stopped.” Never. Perhaps our laughter and song – and all the rest of the “reason” in our bodies – tells the rhyming story of Easter more effectively and eloquently than all the rationality our words can manage. It all seemed to end, after all, with the disciples’ fear and confusion; only in the silence of a garden and on the long road home did confusion give way to recognition, despair to hope. Resurrection is probably often like this, a rhyme that comes to us at the places where we learn to sing – and, perhaps, even to dance – again! Amazement in the ordinary: the delight of unexpected touch upon our weary flesh; the opening of an forgotten truth by a stranger who walks among us; the meeting of our hunger with an unhoped for breakfast on the beach. Rhymes that make meaning at unexpected places! It might begin this way yet again – in the church that knows how to voice this “story that rhymes,” and in this world that still “won’t turn without a song.”
Mark S. Burrows
Theologian-in-Residence at Old South Church (Boston) and
Professor of the History of Christianity at Andover Newton
posted by Andover Newton News at
3:01 PM
<< Home