| The Cravens
Original and Traditional American Music |
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 Chris Thvedt and Spencer
Taking Jane To Chicago from Jungle of Faith by Tim Craven, Ephrata, Pennsylvania
August 20-21, 1989
I drove my motorcycle to Delaware to pick up Jane
I had promised her a ride to Chicago
where she is busy redefining ministry for the whole freakin' Lutheran Church
She has always impressed me as being a very important person
and a best friend and the best pastor in the world
So naturally I was slightly excited when she agreed to
drive to the Division of Ministry Board meeting with me
on the back of "Bathsheba"
though I suspected that by the time we got to Indiana
she'd be driving
We said good-bye to our spouses and kiddies and houses and diddies
and farewell to our little sticker note pads
stacks of heart attack mail, possessive appointment books, and death row parishioners
bye-bye to imaginary counseling (God's got the only empathy that matters)
see ya later to electrified moussed-up wedding parties and hammered grieving widows
no mo fo now Mormons flipping through magazines in the waiting room
ripping out the underwear ads
We rode out of Wilmington at 3 AM so no one in the parish would see us
past the last bus out, past the donut ladies and highway walkers
The monstrous lights of the oil refineries
and sleeping Bank of Delaware Corporate Buildings winked
and gave us a suspicious once-over as we entered rolling Pennsylvania
Mr. Howard, Esquire, stood on the shore of the Delaware River
under the chemical moon
briefcase at his feet, one shoe on, one off
his naked foot suspecting water
A weeping orphan named Howey nestled in his loving arms
They were flipping baseball cards
Mr. Howard laughed when Chicago Cub Ernie Banks came up smiling
They suspected they might never see us again
We rode through the deep mushroom country of southeastern Pennsylvania
Jane holding on to me and me holding on to "Bathsheba"
"Bathsheba" holding on to the road
it was an appropriate romance
it was an intentional romance
it was a healthy Christian romance
it was a romance in which expectations and goals were clearly defined
it was a romance proper within the context of our family and career responsibilities
it was a focused romance
it was a tempered romance
but it sure was a hell of a lot of fun
Jane was wearing her usual insane clothing
socks that scream at you telling Sioux City that LA isn't far behind
her cellophane ear rings and leather sunglasses
dangling in the blind, transparent, amethyst wind
I had on my blue jeans, folk singer boots, cab driving gloves
She was James Dean's angel, phylacteries attached
And I was just a crazy Hungarian from Pittsburgh thinking about Andy Warhol
driving hot in patchy fog
making the road a historical document/ like the Constitution/ like the Dead Sea Scrolls/
like that last letter you sent me
(I thought I could see your handwriting, a splattered rainy victim,
like headlight-tail light reflections on the black moving asphalt carpet
right after the sign which said "Grooved Pavement Ahead"
the calligraphy and graphology of your signature
wiggling like a rumble strip inside my phrenology.)
We took the back roads.
It took us 37 years to get to Chicago.
By the time we got there Jane found out that she had been elected Bishop 20 years ago.
But at that time we had been working as migrant potato farmers in Fargo.
We got side-tracked.
Jane never got side-tracked in her life but just outside Steubenville
I slipped LSD into her coffee and for 12 years she thought she was a waitress
and that I was a Hollywood producer taking her to do a movie in North Dakota
about the plight of the Spanish workers, Indians and Air Force Police.
It would be called "Social Gospel Zombies"
By the time we got to Chicago, Ministry had mistakenly been defined in the church
as taking out the garbage
but there was nothing we could do
so we said the hell with it
I knew it would come to this, Jane
I knew we would wind up on the windy shores of Lake Michigan
taking out the garbage
recycling faith every week
aluminum faith/ glass faith/ paper faith
us old people baptized a hundred years ago it seems
still having to put up with TV slicks wanting to know if we're saved
if we've seen Jesus
Yeah, we saw him
Yeah, we had a personal relationship with him
Yeah, we had a personal "thing" with "the least of these"
Yeah, we witnessed
We witnessed so much our pious little eyeballs turned into broken light bulbs.
Jesus was wondering in Columbus if that check I wrote at the grocery store would bounce
Don't you remember, he was in the parking lot with the security guard uniform on
He was under an assumed identity that cold night in Ohio
when the snow and the rain were dancing together in the air
I think he was calling himself Henry
He worked at the shoe factory until they closed
His wife had cancer, His kids went to Arizona
A Jewish doctor with the help of an Italian nurse
not knowing what they were doing stuck a balloon in his sick heart
and accidentally crucified him one Friday afternoon at three o'clock.
We never made it to the Board meeting
and you never got to be Bishop
You never wanted that any way
You introduced me to Jesus that night in the singles bar in Fort Wayne
She was singing blues in a tattoo band
I had to work for 19 years selling hamburgers at a White Castle joint in Springfield
but yeah, we saw Jesus
He went to the newsstand every day
with his social security money to buy a lottery ticket
hoping that he could go back to Greece before he died
Remember Mike, the guy in Grand Rapids with one brown eye and one blue eye,
who had his room full of Christmas cards in July
who had his room full of ten year old newspapers and bad sandwiches
who had twenty-five harmonicas
who could add up a column of figures in his head in a second
and his children, Bonnie and Clyde, who took a cab 75 miles
to get their free cheese from the government
Remember how I laughed when you suggested they go to budget counseling
and told you that the cop told me
that she'd had five children and the state took away all of them
the last one was born falling out onto the street
and they scraped up the baby
He'll probably grow up to be President
Yeah, we saw Jesus
Remember that time at Motel 30 near Rockford
I drank that bad whiskey and took all the telephone books
and scratched out everybody's name and wrote "Jesus" in instead
Jesus Adams/ Jesus Jones/ Jesus Smith/ Jesus Kawolski/ Jesus Goldstein/
Jesus Nixon/ Jesus Louise/ Jesus Chang/ Jesus Jesse Jackson Jefferson Davis Eugene Brown/
Jesus O'Toole/ Jesus Lopez/ Jesus Mogato/ Jesus Stoltzfus/ Jesus Betty Davis.
That's how we can make the church inclusive: change everyone's name to Jesus.
Remember I burned all the Gideon Bibles and stayed up all night
watching bizarre Sam Shepherd plays over and over again on public television
and then ran out into the neighborhood knocking on everybody's door
screaming, "Knock and the door shall be opened!"
while you stayed in the room and reorganized the Committee structure of the church.
It was that night that Jesus came to you
When I returned at sunrise I was jealous and didn't talk to you for a week.
That week was the week you drove
You took us all the way from South Bend to Pratt, Kansas
And we didn't talk
Somewhere near St. Louis we crossed the Mississippi
and you regained your memory of yourself as a pastor
and reminded me of my memory of mine
"NO," I screamed desperately,
"JUST LEAVE ME WITH THE OLD MEN ON THE PORCH IN PRATT
PLAYING WOODY GUTHRIE SONGS AND COMPARING SPIDER BITES!"
but instead you silently guided us to Chicago
up into the flat fields of southern Illinois
Planning to return, I dropped tears like bread crumbs under the moon
and held your waist, an easy cross
I was Jane Dean's angel
and you were just a crazy kid from New York going to a Board meeting.
My sleepy face was full of formica as I dragged it up from the table
Peering gracelessly through the styrofoam cup skyline
decorated with "Aid Association for Lutheran" insurance commercials
I realized that we had been at the Board of Ministry meeting all the time
Not 37 years had passed but rather 37 cups of coffee later
a definition of Ministry was prepared for the National Church Assembly
An 80 page document clearly explaining
the identity and role of the ordained Christian Lutheran pastor in contemporary America.
I carry it with me everywhere I go.
I get nervous if I don't know where it is.
It's like a son to me.
I'm waiting for the paperback version.
I use it to teach parishioners and remind me of who I am.
Still, when people feed me cake they ask,
"Have you seen Jesus?"
Sure, I saw Jesus
Taking Jane to Chicago.
 photo by Dave Ihde
Arrival of You by Tim Craven March 21, 2001
Carry the moon and I
will watch you from the sun field
I will chew the grass in shorts near the pond and look
for you jumping over your career
When you are tired
When your jeep stops
When the night falls
When the crickets slap your face
I'll be waiting down the dark and wooded path
I'll be weeping without ending into the soft and simple fern
I'll be hiding in the hallway of the long and winding road
I'll be buying frozen flowers from the naked madonna
I'll be laughing on the sunflower train to checkered states
I'll be wearing new hats every hour
I'll be frantic with relaxation poems
I'll be there at midnight on neon Bucolic Avenue
waiting for the arrival of you
Leave your memory of destiny
and join me in ridiculous charades
of afternoons in twilight
and thunderstorm parades
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Sundown Fern (for Kim) by Tim Craven December 21, 2001
In the empty corridors of fate
mirages of the wooded path
burst so serenely in our stepping
The shadows secretly surprise us with good news
The lightning splits a tree
The smoke holds only promises
The sundown fern
The rainbow halo of your turn
dispel the truth about this journey
I cannot catalogue nor yet remember
all the leaves upon the trees which we have brushed
our shoulder to the wheel of marriage
though they are colored with the daylight of our lives
Nor can I yet imagine what tomorrow's meadow path will yield
but I can stop amidst the fog and rainy bliss
of morning in your tears
and thank you for your company
and comfort through the walking of our years
 Tim and Kim Craven at Lutheran Camp Nawakwa, Arendtsville, Pa.
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You Don't Have To Go Anywhere To Go Some Place
by Tim Craven October 25, 2006
You don't have to go anywhere to go some place
Everybody's already been everywhere you can go
You don't have to stand up so people can hear you
Everything's already been said
You don't have to wave good-bye to your son at the train station
He's coming back
You don't have to make plans to go with him for a drive
Because he already left
You don't have to sing Happy Birthday to your wife
Because you'll never be who you were
You don't have to call your parents because they're dead
You don't have to separate the recycling from the garbage
Because some day the sun will blow up and turn everything to ashes
You don't have to go to church or be nice to people
You don't have to leave a tip
You don't have to do a damn thing
Don't get used to having people around
Because soon you're by yourself talking to the dog
You don't have to do any of these things
But do them any way
Or else you'll wake up some day and discover
You're starring in a bad science fiction movie
Spinning hopelessly out of control in a cardboard ship on a rainy sea
Forgetting your lines
Getting bad reviews
Do them any way
Because somewhere, some place where everyone has been and no one knows your name
And where you'll never say, do or be anything anybody's not heard before
There will be someone who for some ridiculous and inexplicable reason
Will believe that the little thing you say or do
Your smile in a crowded hall
Is an act of courage and compassion
An example of belief
Which unbeknown to you
Gives them desire to go on
Go on into the darkness that you fear but still
Because of you has turned into a path of light
For someone you can't even see or hear
 Reverend Dennis Trout and Reverend Tim Craven Confirmation Camp Kirchenwald, Colebrook, Pa.
Morning Sucks by Tim Craven February 27, 2007
Nothing should start before 10
or 11 or 12
Why do people do this?
They walk around
criticizing donuts
No one should do anything
until something has started.
Trying to accomplish something
before anything has started
is premature occoccupation.
When the sunrise spreads its wings over the planet
Just exactly what are you going to add?
The Kings and Queens of Europe (a true story) by Tim Craven March 19, 2008
At the cold March graveside
with a couple of snowflakes in the air and a damp wind in the bone
two beautiful young women with tears in their eyes
told me how much my song meant to them
What more could I receive
from the Kings and Queens of Europe
their lavish luxuries and praise
a rusted crumbling hull
A simple freckled girl
lays waste the monuments of wealth
and hands me in a sigh
eternity
 I Resist The Temptation To Completely (for Earl and Oliver and Spencer and Connor)
by Tim Craven November 7, 2008 2:15-2:45 am
I.
I resist the temptation to completely
resemble my Dad
but once in a while I turn
and shrug my shoulders
in such a way that if
I was not me but someone watching me it would not be me that I would see
as if my action can also be observation
at the same moment
I see him as I be him
II.
The statue placed beside the frozen dusty lake
somehow took roots and spread
The young man with the comic hat
somehow is dead
The winter road of history and simple buildings
sees the bucket girl and clown millionaire
and cannot feel or laugh or weep
but outlasts them all and so we want
to be so close to her and move ourselves so slowly on her soiled breast
this story of our life, this beaten way
this green and cloudy wood, this road of dirt
like babies dressed in business clothes
we nurse upon the winding path of time
until the lovely lane on which we crawl
becomes our home
III.
I resist the temptation to completely
despair
for in the sunset East commences yet another
lad
in whom the bond between the sweet beloved adventure
the naked highway
and his own ignorance sets him free
free to serve the wind
and eat upon the table of the stars
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©2006 Craven Family Band. All Rights Reserved. 717-738-3838 |