Day 3

I learned to play the piano from an elderly lady name Mrs. Green in South Haven, Michigan. She had perfect pitch, which was terribly annoying, because she heard every note on a piano perfectly and if you missed one she caught it immediately, even when she was feeding cats in the kitchen, she would holler out, "NO!" when a note was missed and you would have to go back and correct it.

We had two piano books that we played from, and one, John W. Schaum (or some spelling like that), had a red book with a song that I remember well to this very day - it was called the kanga-rooster and went like this: (ahem)

"In the land of let's pretend, there lived a kanga-rooster.
Half of him was kangaroo, the other half was rooster.
He could jump and he could crow, flap his wings and tap his toe.
In the land of let's pretend, there lived a kanga-rooster."

I think all my children know this song by heart as I would sing it to them from time to time throughout their childhood. From it, I would try to teach them a lesson, about being true to God. I would talk with them about this hideous creature, the kanga-rooster, who did not know who he really was, and therefore tried to be two incompatible things at the same time - a kangaroo and a rooster.

At the top of the music page was this hideous looking creater, un-natural in appearance, flapping it's wings and jumping around, I don't know if the artist intended it or not but the creature looked kind of miserable to me. And sitting in my piano teachers house, with the lights low except for the one over the sheet music and the keyboard, highlighting this ugly creature who didn't know who he was or how to behave - I learned something - always be just who you are.

Today, when I read certain passages of scripture, I still think of the poor kanga-rooster. For instance, when Jesue tells of the division between the sheep and goats - they are divided by who they are. Sheep were just sheep, the good guys, and the goats were unmistakenly goats, easily recognized for who they were, the bad guys. There was no part in the story where there was suddently revealed a new and mystifying creature who had characteristics of both creatures - let's call it a "shoat" or a "geep." The Lord doesn't step back and marvel over a creature that is able to be both the good sheep and the bad goat and still remain true to itself. That would have certainly had a dramatic change upon the parable, it might have gone like this: "Why look, a shoat, a creature who is both sheep and goat." Our Lord would have said, " Behold, the appearance of this creature has changed My belief system, I now know that it is possible to serve two masters, My bad. Now let us determine whether this creature is more sheep than goat or vice versa so we know where to put him. Let's form a committee to study him . . ." That didn't happen because there is no such combination - you are either a sheep or a goat. The same worked for wheat and weeds - there was to "wheeds" that had to be examined to determine if it was more wheat than weed so they would know for sure whether or not to cast this stuff into the fire.

Yep, even a little kid, scared to death of his ancient piano teacher with perfect pitch, who could hear a wrong note in the back part of her house while feeding her cats, can come to grips and own a life-long learned lesson. If you are going to be a Christian, be one. If not, don't pretend to be one, otherwise you look awful foolish, kind of like a kanga-rooster.