"When God's parachute failed along about the spring of 1945,
the sky in Texas jerked open and we all
sailed easily into this new strange harness on the stars."
With this, I'm going to stop for a minute and locate myself.
Over our country in many gatherings
like this travelers are starting with something like when
God's parachute failed and then presenting something that's
like a little report from the language we all use every day
just enhanced a little bit sort of dislocated
called attention to.
And they call these things poems.
And this is what I'm doing and I want
to identify what seems to me is happening.
Since there's such a world of this,
I think partly what it is we're realizing especially
in school communities like this that the language we use
every day is indeed the material for literature no matter
how exalted.
And we're telling each other in the words of everyday things
that occur to us.
And we're realizing that literature no matter how grand
it starts there with a report like when
God's parachute failed.
The part I read was part one of four short sections like that
called "Religion Back Home," the part about God's
parachute failing.
Now I'd like to stop and read the other three
parts of "Religion Back Home."
And it isn't all reverent.
But I can report that it was published
in the Sunday Supplement didn't seem to cause any trouble.
Part two.
"The minister smoked and he drank
and there was that woman in the choir,
but what really finished him, he wore spats."
Part three of "Religion Back Home"
is "A short review of Samson Agonistes
written for Miss Arrington's class in Liberal High School.
Our Father Who art in Heaven can lick
their Father Who art in Heaven.
[LAUGHTER]
Part 4, this is the last of my four parts of "Religion Back
Home."
"When my little brother chanted, 'in 1492 Jesus crossed
the ocean blue,' mother said, 'Bob, you mean Columbus crossed
the ocean blue?'
And he said, 'I always did get them two guys mixed up.'"
Well, now one thing it happened as a result
of this being published in a Sunday Supplement it was back
East and someone sent a clipping to Miss Arrington now retired
from Liberal Kansas High School.
And she sent me a note by way of publishers back East,
finally found me out in Oregon.
And she said, I apparently were in one of my classes
and but I don't remember you.
And then she made various guesses--
were you the one who said at such and such a place
and so on?
No, none of those places.
But I remember her vividly.
But I didn't really write that review
Samson Agonistes for a class.