Second Chances, Richard French [good books for 8th graders .TXT] 📗

and an ancient story in today’s styles. The world and its people always on the move, energy prized everywhere. Bing-bang-boom. Why doesn’t the bass drum go away?
If we – I – could get near – ride the source of the world’s energy – what couldn’t we accomplish? The earth moves in a somewhat stately way – orbit and rotation – with its atoms and molecules that we figure out how to speed up, which may distort their purpose – and be bad for us in the long run.
That’s what this piece is about – that there’s another way of thinking than adding up and putting together and digging into. I can’t find a good way to express my meaning. Oops, my entrance.

Tutti: slashing strings, golden brass.
The chorus clears its throat.
A snare drum taps for battle.
Piano, drum and chorus form a triangle of sound.
(The heart dismayed: we have no choice but to enter life.)
A fury of drums begins a dance.
(What path leads to freedom?)
Trumpets.


Mrs. Porter
Who would want this music? What do I get out of it from my seat in the 12th row as I follow the words in the program? It moves my thoughts to places I’ve never been. A picture of low-level order in sound and language.
I don’t like it. It should be much better. My thoughts stay in my own sphere while Threadly’s circulate around the world and contribute to our noisy bottomless bewilderment.
One of the sadnesses of work is when something is done well and no one likes it. What’s worse is when people pretend to like it.
I have other sayings to go with that one.
Lives are complicated tangles of relationships from far-ago past to present. I have relatives posted about the hall. We don’t all think alike, so Composer Threadly, striving from the middle shelf to the top brings in peculiar complexities. Who cares about what happened or didn’t at the beginning of our mess? We need help right now – or else to be left alone.
How did I become dry and cynical? I need to recover my peace and bring my neighbors joy. No wonder my relatives disperse themselves.
I’ll break through the sludge in my brain. I don’t suppose this piece of musical over-ambition will help me.

A clamorous medley:
A song of Nimrod, Oriental gongs,
Unexpected sounds
With intricate rhythms throughout.
And then one comes to the way.
(O, memory, bring us to fellowship and peace.)
Streams of living sound hint of water.
Diminuendo. Applause.

Daisy
The shell of this work is a picture of history and eternity. The kernel is one man’s view of what we’ve said over the years about the container that encloses us and protects us against the wilds of infinity. His befuddlement, anger, terror…words…beauty.
I wander through the world Threadly created for me – that I create for myself. I see my history and my future – in pearl, in coral red – waves of color – a faint fragrance of cedar, a taste of salt, corridors lined with petrified wood – tiny bright lights.
People gathered in groups that have no contact with each other – yet. But I am in them all and remain myself throughout. For my whole life. I will be myself wherever I go. A miracle of sorts. What will I do with this self? Hug it or spread it around? Hold on to me or serve – to give and lead, like Threadly.
Eternity, so large and immeasurable – we have a few facts and a skeleton of interpretation. Universe so large, yet all the words anyone has heard of are on earth or come from the earth. God knows all words and languages and everything that happens. We walk humbly before him – agape with awe and rejoice and pray that the seaweed of daily life won’t choke us.


ABRAHAM AND SARAH
I know you’re displeased with me, Mary Beth. Let me explain why I haven’t called.
I introduced you to the Claymores a while back, Harold and Jocelyn, my friends who made biopics years ago – Napoleon and Josephine, then the Lincolns. They called me last year for advice because they wanted a spiritual theme with universal reverberations. I suggested Abraham and Sarah and a story from the culture the two of them escaped. I put together a scenario and gave it to a young screenwriter who’d just finished his studies. A cable network took the script, hired my two friends, and sent fifty people to Lebanon. Howard and Jocelyn called me after they’d been there a week, but not to talk about the film.
They’ve worked hard for decades and mostly avoided the trouble that befalls many actors after the age of fifty. All North America still knows their names. “It’s a scandal,” Jocelyn said. “We have money, health, and busy minds, but our talent for love is shriveling. Every conversation ends in a squabbling fit.”
“Worse than that,” Howard raised his voice a notch. “Shouting matches.”
“I never shout,” Jocelyn corrected him. “Years without rest have caught up with us.”
We’d been friends and colleagues off and on for two decades. We worked on a film during the months the country dragged itself away from our last Asian war and other projects later.
Two scripts I wrote in my late thirties made money. With a steady income from investments, I dabble in my favorite subjects – ancient history and how the hidden God reveals himself and the troubles that people who follow him get into.
I told Jocelyn and Howard that most couples pass through choppy spells, as my own experiences attest, but adversity can help us build a sturdy love.
“Here we are making a film in the Middle East....,” Howard said.
Jocelyn interrupted to clarify what he meant, “...not far from where Roland was shot in Iraq. That hasn’t helped us.”
“Surely not,” I said. I was with them when Roland, their only child, died in a military hospital. I can still see the staff and volunteers moving quietly about; I shared the numbness of the family as they clung to each other. Now I realized that I’d unwittingly contributed to their discomfort by arranging a situation that was awkward and painful. What could I do to help them? “How is your film going?” I asked.
“The director’s reached a stone wall,” Howard said sullenly, as if he blamed me.
I knew what the problem was. The screenwriter and I hadn’t done a good job integrating the two parts of the script and the director couldn’t decide which was more important – Sarah and Abraham or the secular setting, partly based on the historical record, that we put them in:
A war with Amorite tribes
Who’d been pestering Ur
Lasted longer than anyone expected.
King Isin went to the front with his troops.
The Amorites continued to resist.
It took Isin and his men several days
To soften them up.

“Our challenge is not to recover our old love,” Jocelyn said in her vanilla-smooth voice “but create a stronger bond than we’ve ever had.”
“We should spend a year or two away from each other,” Howard said.
“I know a few couples who tried that and never got back together.” Jocelyn lowered her voice and softened it. “You know we can’t separate. Our agent has lined up stage work in New York and London.”
“It’s always been a marriage of convenience,” Howard grumbled with an air of finality. Actors often thrash around while they’re learning a role. He’d never portrayed a man of faith and the challenge made him ornery.
“We got along fairly well before Roland died,” Jocelyn said with a grieving sharpness. “We have a choice – run away or make our marriage better.”

Sarah asked if he was sure he’d heard correctly.
It was a privilege, he said,
That God should claim such earthy folk as they.
He wanted to obey these new instructions.
“But to kill!” she exclaimed, “and after His promises.
I wish He’d spoken this to me.”
It was time for sleep, said Abraham.

I am poured out like water.

I learn slowly, Mary Beth. The years have taught me about human nature – the rewards we lust for, our sacrifices and compromises. I can imagine a rich man’s life or someone burdened with trouble. I understand the actor’s calling – what it means to become another person for a few hours a day. I know what happens when love fizzles out. But how do parents feel when their only son dies in combat? Badly enough to let their marriage sink? What will heal their wound? I began to think about ways to help them.


Victory worked on Isin like a drug.
Instead of heading back to Ur
As he’d planned and promised,
He sent for supplies and marched on.
They subdued one tribe and city
And another and another.
Bodies of wounded and dying
Littered roads and fields.
Isin didn’t listen to advisers
Or heed the pleas of his wife.

I’ve confronted a few challenges, Mary Beth, and haven’t always come out ahead. I feel at home with reading, study, creative thought. I can bring two time periods together in my head, for example, and see where they coalesce and diverge, but it took me the longest time to find a link between Ur 4000 years ago and today. I was stumped a second time, though not surprised, when I couldn’t lead the Claymores to the strength of love they craved. I’ve never kept a relationship going myself. I’ve floundered...till you came along.
The Creator and Sustainer whom I think about from various angles brings millions of unlike things together into a unified whole, keeps it going, and by grace solves problems every day that perplex the likes of you and me. Thoughts of his ability should make us humble.


While the sun warmed the land of Canaan the next day,
He got their things together: wood for fire,
A donkey fed and saddled, a newly-sharpened knife.
They had some conversation on the road,
As Isaac learned about prayer and sacrifice,
And silence, too,