TAPPING: prompts toward integrity of soul and community

By Herschel E. Moore

The turmoil of uncertainty and regret that we human people so often feel within ourselves is intensified by the violent conflict we witness raging throughout the world. Who could not feel shaky when so many governments are disintegrating and so many institutions are crumbling and the earth itself is threatening catastrophe?

Does our inner turbulence, conversely, contribute to the instability of the world around us? Surely it does. Whether borne in silence or released in violent outbursts, what goes on inside us affects those around us, including those we encounter only briefly as well as those with whom we share the days of our lives.

Our injured pride, our well-nursed grudges, our arrogant dismissal of those we consider less important than ourselves, our idolatry of power, and a thousand other factors unsettle our souls, deny us the integrity that would make us whole, and extend our inner storm far beyond our immediate contacts. Ripple effects from the turmoil within one personality have been known to destabilize nations.

         Notwithstanding the futility we feel at all this, we hope for a better world, and we pray to be better people. In much the same way that Robert Frost's poem, "Tree at My Window" suggests the tapping of branches on his windowpane, whether gentle or violent, may either awaken or reassure, so each of these brief essays is a tap on the shoulder to prompt, however obliquely, the deep human prayer for a truly integrated soul and community. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HEM BOOKS
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223813446

Herschel E. Moore

The author is a Christian minister and a retired high school and college English teacher. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees and has done extensive post-graduate work as visiting scholar in the Summer Programme in Theology at Oxford University and in ecumenical studies at Centro Pro Unione in Rome as well as the Kirkpatrick Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and other programs. He grew up in the Texas Panhandle town of Sunray, has travelled extensively, and now lives with his wife of over fifty years in Houston. They have two married children and six grandchildren

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Herschel E. Moore

FOREWARD

Ihave known Herschel Moore since we struggled through Herr Melvin’s German 101 at Amarillo College. Years later, he became my pastor at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Alpine, Texas. It is no surprise that each essay in his new book takes the reader to a place of spiritual devotion. His background as both English teacher and Christian minister is evident throughout TAPPING: Prompts Toward Integrity of Soul and Community . He lifts scriptural truths from the Bible and gives them contemporary relevance by relating them to familiar literature and popular culture as well as to experiences of his own life in Christ. 

The poetry and essays are brief and are easy reading, but the messages they convey are profound and challenging. Whether you turn to TAPPING for your daily devotional readings or for a time out from the frenzy of the day, you will find comfort in Pastor Moore’s exploration of God’s word for us.

Dr. Jimmy Case, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Public Administration, Sul Ross State University.

PROLOGUE

The turmoil of uncertainty and regret that we human people so often feel within ourselves is intensified by the violent conflict we witness raging throughout the world. Who could not feel shaky when so many governments are disintegrating and so many institutions are crumbling and the earth itself is threatening catastrophe?

Does our inner turbulence, conversely, contribute to the instability of the world around us? Surely it does. Whether borne in silence or released in violent outbursts, what goes on inside us affects those around us, including those we encounter only briefly as well as those with whom we share the days of our lives.

Our injured pride, our well-nursed grudges, our arrogant dismissal of those we consider less important than ourselves, our idolatry of power, and a thousand other factors unsettle our souls, deny us the integrity that would make us whole, and extend our inner storm far beyond our immediate contacts. Ripple effects from the turmoil within one personality have been known to destabilize nations. Notwithstanding the futility we feel at all this, we hope for a better world, and we pray to be better people.

One of my favorite Frost poems, Tree at My Window, suggests the tapping of branches on his windowpane can be either comforting or disturbing depending on the mix of the weather outside and his own internal weather. May each of these brief essays be such a tap on the shoulder to stir, however obliquely, the deep human prayer for a truly integrated soul and community. 

HEM 2022

INSIGHT AND OUTSIGHT

The sky hung over me like damp batting,

Held me warm and made me indolent,

Closed me in and blocked my aspiration,

Recalled the walls of the womb –

Soft and comforting for a while.

But I was awakened in wonder by a bump

And a thought.

I thought I heard something:

You cannot take this lying down.

(Feeling pressure all around)

"Get up and strive for something here.

"Ask for vision if not a view.

"Others are under cover, too.

"No one can see beyond what’s near.

"Imagination is pushing through:

With outsight shut, insight is dear.  

HEM 2020

I

SPIRIT RIVER

The Source of Integrity

THE POET AND THE SCIENTIST

The poet and the scientist are really quite alike.

You’ll see the very twist (should inspiration strike)

Of lip and squint of eye in both as if they’re under

The strain of seeking knowledge or the mystery of wonder.

Yet, the poet and the scientist are not alike at all.

One sees what lies before us, and one looks beyond the wall.

And if they share a single brain and live within one heart

Then pray the God who made them that they never fall apart.

HEM 2021

THE HIDDEN STREAM 

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. (Psalm 42:1)

One evening in springtime , I pulled down a volume of Robert Frost’s poetry from the shelf and opened to a poem I had long since forgotten. It was titled, A Brook in The City and portrayed a man who wondered, as the city had expanded into the country, what had been done with a brook he used to know as a child. After all, one can’t just take water out of an eternal spring the way you would take trees out of a forest for lumber.

After investigation, the man discovered that the brook had merely been redirected into a storm sewer under the street: 

In fetid darkness still to live and run

And all for nothing it had ever done

Except forget to go in fear perhaps.

No one would know except for ancient maps,

That such a brook ran water.

The brook in the storm sewer dungeon may serve as a metaphor for the human spirit or for the Spirit of God in Man. We could say that the city, the primary tool of Man’s drive for domination, paves over the spirit, not killing it, just keeping it out of our consciousness and thus impoverishing the soul.

But there are ancient maps by which we may find renewed access to spiritual waters. One marker on the map is Matthew 6:25 where Jesus reminds us that we are more than what we eat or drink or put on. Another is Matthew 4:4 where he teaches us that we do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from of the mouth of God.

Following the ancient maps laid out in scripture and accessed by prayer, we can find those places where the stream of the spirit emerges from its dungeon and glistens again in the sunlight of our consciousness, refreshing our souls with the power of beauty, peace, joy, and love – allowing not our domination of, but our participation in the life-giving flow.

HEM ca. 1998

THE QUARRY OF THE SOUL

Think of the rock from which you were hewn, and the pit from which you were dug. (Isaiah 51:1)

We human beings tend to forget where we came from, especially when our origins are humble (and what could be humbler than dust?)

In Julius Caesar, Brutus observes that

Lowliness is young ambition’s ladder

Whereunto the climber upward turns his face,

But when he once attains the upmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back

And looks in the clouds,

Scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend.

People of faith, by contrast, are called to remember where they came from. "Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there," says Deuteronomy 5:15. The fact that we are given a special facility for doing so is illustrated in Eudora Welty’s memory of the hymns she sang as a girl in the Methodist Church.

Those hymns always sounded very happy, even when

The words ran quite the other way. "Throw out the

Lifeline! Someone is sinking!" went one cheerful