The Quiet Day
There are lots of things that you're not supposed to do on the Sabbath day, but in this busy busy world most of those restrictions have slowly fallen by the wayside.
I'm not going to run any of my chain saws today -- not that I did yesterday either, or the day before that, or the day before that, and I don't intend to tomorrow for that matter, or the day after that. But today is "the Lord's Day," and at this moment in the calendar I never run chain saws (more likely in these parts to be called "power saws.") I adopted this mode of inaction after I got the idea that no one around here jerks a pull rope on Sundays. I haven't been told that this is a recognized custom, and I don't know if anyone else has even noticed, but I picked up on the heavenly ambient silence every seventh day a long time ago. Sounds carry a long way over and through this tiny valley. So, though not religious in the usual sense of the word, I've gladly made the avoidance of all that noise my strict custom.
It's likely that I've been influenced in this by one of my favorite pieces of classical music, Cesar Franck's "Le Chausseur Maudit," or "The Mad Huntsman." This highly dramatic symphonic poem tells the story of a nobleman who couldn't get enough of hunting on horseback on Sundays. Finally a powerful curse fell on him, and he was doomed to ride hither and yon forever afterward without climbing off his horse or even getting something to drink or a wink of sleep.
I've noticed that also you're seldom likely to hear gunshots around here on Sundays.
I don't know if anybody or anything is really Up There monitoring things, but it just feels better to play it safe. Or, as the pioneering comedian of the 1960's, Lenny Bruce, ended one of his bits on religion, in this case one satirizing popes, "Watch out for the lightning!"
I'm not going to run any of my chain saws today -- not that I did yesterday either, or the day before that, or the day before that, and I don't intend to tomorrow for that matter, or the day after that. But today is "the Lord's Day," and at this moment in the calendar I never run chain saws (more likely in these parts to be called "power saws.") I adopted this mode of inaction after I got the idea that no one around here jerks a pull rope on Sundays. I haven't been told that this is a recognized custom, and I don't know if anyone else has even noticed, but I picked up on the heavenly ambient silence every seventh day a long time ago. Sounds carry a long way over and through this tiny valley. So, though not religious in the usual sense of the word, I've gladly made the avoidance of all that noise my strict custom.
It's likely that I've been influenced in this by one of my favorite pieces of classical music, Cesar Franck's "Le Chausseur Maudit," or "The Mad Huntsman." This highly dramatic symphonic poem tells the story of a nobleman who couldn't get enough of hunting on horseback on Sundays. Finally a powerful curse fell on him, and he was doomed to ride hither and yon forever afterward without climbing off his horse or even getting something to drink or a wink of sleep.
I've noticed that also you're seldom likely to hear gunshots around here on Sundays.
I don't know if anybody or anything is really Up There monitoring things, but it just feels better to play it safe. Or, as the pioneering comedian of the 1960's, Lenny Bruce, ended one of his bits on religion, in this case one satirizing popes, "Watch out for the lightning!"
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 2:00 PM
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