GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 5:24
Don’t Fence Me In
In 1934, Robert Fletcher and Cole Porter wrote the song “Don’t Fence Me In,” which expressed a desire for the freedom of the American West. Singers like Bing Crosby and Roy Rogers popularized the song.
Alice and I were in Cripple Creek, Colorado, which has a long history of for gold mining. There are still visible holes in the mountains around the city where miners dug into the hills, searching for the elusive ore. There was, of course, a tourist attraction: an old gold mine, which tourists paid to see. To get to the gold mine, one had to ride down to the shaft in an elevator. The tour operator crowded as many people as possible into the elevator car—“packed” would be a more accurate word. I was sandwiched between two women—a closeness that would have been entirely inappropriate in any other context. I can remember thinking about the song “Don’t Fence Me In.”
It seems that there is a loss of “personal space” in much of contemporary society. Airlines make seats smaller and squeeze the space between rows even closer in order to pack in more passengers. The operators of sports venues crowd people closer together. Even restaurants seem to push tables closer so they can get one more row of tables in the room. People with claustrophobia sweat and fan themselves in these crowded places. In church, if a couple has a choice of sitting in a row with only two remaining seats or an empty row, they usually take the empty row. “Don’t Fence Me In.”
At a large convention, I saw a national celebrity walking down a hall. A crowd of people pressed around him as he walked along. An even larger crowd trailed behind him. The expression on his face suggested that he savored the attention. He was not thinking of the song “Don’t Fence Me In.”
St. Mark tells about Jesus’ arrival on the seashore near Capernaum where a synagogue ruler implored him to come to his house and pray for his little daughter, who was deathly ill, “And he went with him, and a great crowd followed him and pressed against him.” (Mark 5:24) Mark used the phrase “great crowd” (ὄχλος πολύς, ochlos polys, crowd great) seven times in his gospel. The phrase can refer from a small number to several thousand. (Mark 6:34) In this instance, the writer said the crowd “pressed against him” as he made his way to Jairus’ home. Jairus, for his part, urged Jesus along. Would Jairus have been sympathetic to the song “Don’t Fence Me In”?
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