And the horse you rode in on
26/04/14 05:28
I have never owned a horse. We didn’t’ grow up with horses, except for an occasional mare who was brought in to breed with Johnny, our Jack donkey who was the father of occasional mules, usually sold to the Forest Service for trail work in the high country. But we grew up in horse country in a time when there were still plenty of working horses in the country. Our father thought it was important for us to learn to ride and we did, aided in part by a summer of “lessons” on a very calm and quiet horse owned by a family on the edge of town. I probably learned more about horses from adventures with my friends who lived on working ranches with horses and several adventures riding with classmates whose parents ran dude ranches int he area. I did not become a good rider, but learned enough to be comfortable around horses and can still ride when the occasion presents itself.
For the people in the churches we served in North Dakota, there is a story about me and a horse that is still occasionally retold. For the eight years prior to being called as their pastor, I had focused on my academic work, the last four of those years in Chicago. I hadn’t ridden a horse since my high school days. The tradition in our county, however, was to have an annual trail ride to raise funds for CROP. The original CROP walk to end hunger was held in North Dakota, in Bismarck. People walked the same distance as folks in an African community had to walk to obtain water. The walk raised money to dig a new well to provide safe water for that community. The program evolved into an annual walk to raise funds to combat hunger, sponsored by Church World Service. In North Dakota, in the years we served there, the walk was reserved for Bismarck. Other communities varied their fundraisers so as not to detract from the walk. In our area the trail ride was the annual event.
As an eager young pastor committed to mission and outreach, I immediately signed up for the walk, arranged to borrow a horse and saddle, and hit up the members of my congregation for donations. They were very generous and more than a few giggled as they made their pledges. When the day came, I was prepared and swung up into the saddle. As I remember the ride wasn’t really a day-long affair. I think we rode for a couple of hours, had lunch and then rode back.
That was on a Saturday. I dismounted from the ride just a little bit stiff, but feeling no particular distress, happy to have had such a successful adventure. The next day, Sunday, I had to be in the pulpit of our Reeder Church at 9 am. By then I was pretty much stove up and stiff as they say. Not having ridden for eight years or more and then spending part of a day on an unfamiliar horse resulted in using a few muscles that were a bit out of shape. I hobbled up to the pulpit and led worship, sometimes hanging onto the pulpit for strength. The show was repeated two hours later in the other church we served.
My, oh my! That was about as amusing a thing that those western North Dakota folks had seen from a preacher in decades. They loved it. They thought it was the funniest thing they had seen in years. The preacher who got so stiff that he couldn’t walk straight from riding a horse.
My credentials as a dude firmly established, both communities embraced me and our ministry and we always felt at home among those people. I rode a couple more times during our North Dakota years, finding that while I was good for a couple of hours, much more than that was too much for a guy who didn’t spend much time with a horse underneath.
I’ve gone longer without riding a horse in the years since that time. I suspect that a couple of hours would leave me stiff and hobbling.
I can’t remember when I first heard the phrase, “and the horse you rode in on,” but it seems to me as if it has always been a part of the culture in which I live. “Curse you and the horse you rode in on!” is a polite version of the phrase that sometimes is used with words that I choose not to repeat. The basis of the phrase is the sense that you can insult someone directly and in addition attack his means of transportation. I don’t remember ever hearing the phrase when the person receiving the curse was actually riding a horse. It has sort of become a euphemism for criticizing everything about a person. I’m told the phrase is still used in urban slang - perhaps it is a criticism of the car that someone drives.
I know plenty of people who have close connections with their horses. Horse people often see their animals as part of the family and become very attached to their horses, studying their personalities and developing deep bonds. A good horse can get a poor rider out of quite a bit of trouble and horses used for specialty work such as barrel racing or cutting develop abilities to do their work with minimal input from their riders.
Today I will officiate at the second funeral in a month of someone whose horse outlived he rider. in the time of Genghis Kahn, a horse was sacrificed to serve a fallen warrior in the next world. We’ve come a little ways since those days and, gratefully, we no longer sacrifice the horse. The tradition that has been developed of a caparisoned horse or riderless horse is to saddle up the horse and parade it without a rider and the boots of the deceased inserted backwards into the stirrups. There is a famous and memorable photo of the riderless horse at the funeral for President Ronald Reagan.That has been occurring for presidents at least since Old Bob was draped in a mourning blanket and led mourners to President Lincoln’s burial spot.
Today we’ll observe all of the ceremony, with the casket loaded onto a buckboard, the riderless horse and the slow procession to the cemetery for our final farewells. Jokingly I asked the funeral director if they’d have a horse for me to ride. He was thrown by my question and sputtered, asking if the ceremony required that I have a horse to ride.
Actually, I’m not at all disappointed that I’ll be riding in a car to the cemetery.
For the people in the churches we served in North Dakota, there is a story about me and a horse that is still occasionally retold. For the eight years prior to being called as their pastor, I had focused on my academic work, the last four of those years in Chicago. I hadn’t ridden a horse since my high school days. The tradition in our county, however, was to have an annual trail ride to raise funds for CROP. The original CROP walk to end hunger was held in North Dakota, in Bismarck. People walked the same distance as folks in an African community had to walk to obtain water. The walk raised money to dig a new well to provide safe water for that community. The program evolved into an annual walk to raise funds to combat hunger, sponsored by Church World Service. In North Dakota, in the years we served there, the walk was reserved for Bismarck. Other communities varied their fundraisers so as not to detract from the walk. In our area the trail ride was the annual event.
As an eager young pastor committed to mission and outreach, I immediately signed up for the walk, arranged to borrow a horse and saddle, and hit up the members of my congregation for donations. They were very generous and more than a few giggled as they made their pledges. When the day came, I was prepared and swung up into the saddle. As I remember the ride wasn’t really a day-long affair. I think we rode for a couple of hours, had lunch and then rode back.
That was on a Saturday. I dismounted from the ride just a little bit stiff, but feeling no particular distress, happy to have had such a successful adventure. The next day, Sunday, I had to be in the pulpit of our Reeder Church at 9 am. By then I was pretty much stove up and stiff as they say. Not having ridden for eight years or more and then spending part of a day on an unfamiliar horse resulted in using a few muscles that were a bit out of shape. I hobbled up to the pulpit and led worship, sometimes hanging onto the pulpit for strength. The show was repeated two hours later in the other church we served.
My, oh my! That was about as amusing a thing that those western North Dakota folks had seen from a preacher in decades. They loved it. They thought it was the funniest thing they had seen in years. The preacher who got so stiff that he couldn’t walk straight from riding a horse.
My credentials as a dude firmly established, both communities embraced me and our ministry and we always felt at home among those people. I rode a couple more times during our North Dakota years, finding that while I was good for a couple of hours, much more than that was too much for a guy who didn’t spend much time with a horse underneath.
I’ve gone longer without riding a horse in the years since that time. I suspect that a couple of hours would leave me stiff and hobbling.
I can’t remember when I first heard the phrase, “and the horse you rode in on,” but it seems to me as if it has always been a part of the culture in which I live. “Curse you and the horse you rode in on!” is a polite version of the phrase that sometimes is used with words that I choose not to repeat. The basis of the phrase is the sense that you can insult someone directly and in addition attack his means of transportation. I don’t remember ever hearing the phrase when the person receiving the curse was actually riding a horse. It has sort of become a euphemism for criticizing everything about a person. I’m told the phrase is still used in urban slang - perhaps it is a criticism of the car that someone drives.
I know plenty of people who have close connections with their horses. Horse people often see their animals as part of the family and become very attached to their horses, studying their personalities and developing deep bonds. A good horse can get a poor rider out of quite a bit of trouble and horses used for specialty work such as barrel racing or cutting develop abilities to do their work with minimal input from their riders.
Today I will officiate at the second funeral in a month of someone whose horse outlived he rider. in the time of Genghis Kahn, a horse was sacrificed to serve a fallen warrior in the next world. We’ve come a little ways since those days and, gratefully, we no longer sacrifice the horse. The tradition that has been developed of a caparisoned horse or riderless horse is to saddle up the horse and parade it without a rider and the boots of the deceased inserted backwards into the stirrups. There is a famous and memorable photo of the riderless horse at the funeral for President Ronald Reagan.That has been occurring for presidents at least since Old Bob was draped in a mourning blanket and led mourners to President Lincoln’s burial spot.
Today we’ll observe all of the ceremony, with the casket loaded onto a buckboard, the riderless horse and the slow procession to the cemetery for our final farewells. Jokingly I asked the funeral director if they’d have a horse for me to ride. He was thrown by my question and sputtered, asking if the ceremony required that I have a horse to ride.
Actually, I’m not at all disappointed that I’ll be riding in a car to the cemetery.