Sunday Sermon: "Our Three Gifts"

Like the magi paying homage to the Bethlehem baby, we bring the things of the world and lay them before the altar of God. Our gold, frankincense, and myrrh may be nothing more glorious than a tendency toward anxiety, guilt, and an excessive preoccupation with what other people (such as park rangers) may think of us. Whatever we offer in faith, God can use for his glory. My sermon for the second Sunday after Christmas is here.

Grievous

Why has Gram Parsons' makeshift memorial in Joshua Tree National Park been removed, and why don't park service personnel acknowledge that it's been done?

As a member of the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers and a solo artist, the Florida-born Parsons mixed rock and country music, setting the stage for the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt in the '70s and the alt.-country movement in the '80 and '90s (Wilco, the Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo, Ryan Adams, those guys). He distracted Keith Richards in France when the Rolling Stones were trying to finish "Exile On Main St." and helped launch the career of his talented backup singer, Emmylou Harris. His recording of one of his greatest songs, "Return of the Grievous Angel," is available here; hers is on a 1982 live album, "Last Date," that iTunes hasn't made available yet. You can hear and see her performing the song in July 2008 here.

After he died of a drug overdose in 1973 at the age of 26, an overzealous friend stole his body and set fire to it in Parsons' beloved Joshua Tree. Fans have been making the pilgrimage to Cap Rock every since, carving and painting crosses, poems, and other tributes. I visited in April and took the photos at right.

When I returned on Tuesday to what I was pretty sure was the spot, everything had been sandblasted away. While my photo below doesn't show it, the red cross and the legend "God Bless GP" are gone.

Thinking I just might have gone to the the wrong place, I dropped by park headquarters in Twentynine Palms to check. Two guys behind the counter, one a uniformed park ranger, insisted that the memorial was intact. The one in street clothes said he'd been there in the last two weeks and even drew me a map. Just to be sure, I returned this afternoon. I'd been right the first time. The crosses and inscriptions were gone.

The devotion of Parsons' fans notwithstanding, I can understand the feds being loath to appear to be celebrating drug overdoses and illegal cremations. Nor should people be permitted to deface publicly-owned natural wonders. As a nostalgic babyboomer, I could see making an exception in this case; I can also understand closing it down. What I can't understand is why my two friends at park HQ didn't just cop to it.

Missing Samuelson's Rocks By That Much

San Bernardino Mountains from rough vicinity of Samuelson's Rocks

John Samuelson came to Joshua Tree in the 1920s, living in the wilderness with his wife, Margaret, and working his gold claim. In 1928, when he tried to acquire the title to his homestead, the land office learned that he was a Swedish citizen and turned him down. He sold the claim and moved to Los Angeles, where he got into a fight with two men at a dance in Compton and killed them. He ended up in mental health facility from which he escaped in 1930. He died in the 1950s in Washington state after being injured in a logging accident.

This information comes from a National Park Service web site. Not so easy to find is the cluster of rocks in the Lost Horse Valley in Joshua Tree National Park where Samuelson carved his reflections on life, the universe, and everything. When Kathy and I inquired in a park office this morning, a ranger told us that the trail to Samuelson's Rocks wasn't officially maintained. She did give us a slip of paper telling us to look for mile marker 22 on the main road through the park and an old road trail nearby. A mile south was a braided wash. Turning west, we'd find the rocks after walking another half mile or so. "I think the mile marker may be missing, though," she added.

Using the odometer on the mighty Saturn to measure the specified 1.7 miles from Quail Springs, we found what looked like an old road trail and then a wash running east to west through the valley. We hiked back and forth but couldn't find Samuelson's Rocks. It occurred to us that the National Park Service wasn't exactly making it easy for us to do so. Who knows why. Perhaps in the next stimulus bill there will be money to improve the trail. In the meantime, here's a photo from the feds' web site showing the wisdom of John Samuelson on matters theological and scientific. Another of his carvings, apropos of his times if not ours, reads:

The milk of
human kindness
ain't got thick
cream on it for
all of us
Ask Hoover