In the Turn of Time - poetry

 And, so, in the turn of time,

the wheeling of the stars, if you can see ‘em,

the earth swinging around the light,

and the light swirling amid the Milky 

expanse of a small to middlin’ galaxy, 

in one far corner of something

beyond imagination and grasp,

measured in time impossible, and distance

at the speed of light.

And, so, here I am.

A blip … a speck … a mote of dust.

Dust, would you believe?

The Bible says God shaped the dust,

and then blew something of God’s heart

into the dust, into it’s nostrils, the nose.

The nose knows, I suppose, what the rest of the body

has been trying to figure out forever.

Where did this stuff come from?

This dust, this breath, the nose, the madness.

I’m here, and so are you.

And we’re working at something called love.

“Love one another” says Jesus.

And we can barely manage it.

What we do well is hate.

We do that with skill and cunning and brilliance.

For every love we might manage, we’ve got a ton

of hatred, ill-will, suspicion, and malice of forethought.

The nose still knows … the breath of God.

Like a dog on a walk, suddenly stopping

to sniff the air, we catch a hint of the original wind

that made this little heap of dust become a living being.

A soul, a nephesh, nearly divine, even as the dust

swirls around our feet, and fills our homes with

the past.

DNA and tribal instincts makes us hate.

Original sin?

We wanted … and we suspected God

cheated us.

We took it, and damn, if God wasn’t right.

Take it, and you’ll die, said God.

And we thought God was b-s-ing us.

But God wasn’t, not at all.

Death has been stalking us ever since, 

and to ease the burden on our minds,

we give death away by the handful, 

every day … we give it away,

and dress it up with our righteous hatreds,

and wonder why death still clings to us

like some kind of black mold in the corner

of the drawer.

Ah, yes, so here I am … this little dust mote, 

a fly speck, some might say.

A smear of nonsense on the wall.

A stench to the earth and its water.

A blot upon the snow.

The nose knows … and I pause for a moment

in the hush of the morning, and I lift my

head to the hills, just north of town.

And I think of God … and hardly know

what to do with it.

But God remains in my mind, stuck there,

like a nagging thought, that I am what

I am, and then some … a bit more than

meets the eye.

Could be, I think, could be.

Well, It's Sunday!

Well, it's Sunday.
Now what?
For me?
Church.


Been there all of my life.
Early-on memories, dark
Vaulted, beamed
Ceiling.


Pews too high for
Short legs.
Swinging away.
Listening.


Parents, brother.
Preacher in the pulpit.
Windows, glass, stained.
Light.


Pot luck dinners.
VBS, and I didn't like it.
Not one bit.
Played a seed in the Sower Drama.


God.
Early-on memories.
Presence.
Good and kind and loving.


I don't know what religion means.
I don't know what church is all about.
It's my DNA.
It's bone of my bone.


I cry with music.
I nod my head in hope.
I pray to be mindful and kind.
I want things for my family.


Life is short.
And gets shorter all the time.
Days hurry on.
Time passes on.


It's Sunday.
A time to think about
Passing things, and things, that may be
Permanent.

Is There a God?

Is there a God?
Perhaps ... maybe not.
Whether there is or isn't doesn't seem to make a lot of difference ... as folks seem to make of it whatever they darn well please ...
A god of hate?
A god of love?
A god of damnation?
A god of welcome?
And a little of this and a little of that.
We all know the tired and dangerous claims: god spoke to me ... god said to me ... it's in the revealed word of god ... god's spirit convinced me ...


And, yes, a lot of goodness comes from that ... but so does a lot of evil.
Hospitals and schools built ...
and slaves to farm the cotton and cane ...
and prisons for those who would make trouble for those who own the cotton and cane ...
and visions of social justice in the likes of a Martin Luther King, Jr. ...
and the healing hands of Mother Teresa ...
and the gun-slinging patriots who believe that Jesus favors open-carry ...
and every form of nobility and love ...
and every form of bigotry and hate.


This pretty much leaves the question open.
I guess its up to you and me to chose.
And like the Knight said to Indiana Jones, "Choose wisely."

Freedom and Abortion

I share this here because of what it means for me - that it's easy to question and judge people whose lives we can see only at a distance, and from that safe distance, render decisions and observations that satisfy our own need for holiness by diminishing that of the judged. 

So many of our painful discussions here are about the "sins" of others ... and how to stop them ... in this regard, I'm a Calvinist - sin is part of the human reality, and there's no sense in getting all hot and bothered about it, especially the sins of the other ... I've got more than enough in my own closet to keep me busy for the next thousand years.

As I see it, there has always been abortion, and there will always be abortion ... to even suggest that we put a stop to it is unreasonable and full of self-holiness. What we can do is lessen the circumstances that prompt it. And, please, let's stop jumping on poor women - the wealthy get abortions, too ... fact is, they have always gotten abortions - if not available locally, they fly elsewhere ... or can always buy a doctor to perform the procedure.

What's needed is mercy ... not judgment ... 

I believe in a woman's right to choose ... that's so fundamental to me, so basic, so essential to our freedom in Christ ... a freedom that welcomes us, and allows us, to be as we are, so that in time we will become a little bit more of what it means to be a human being created in the image of God.

God, too, had to make plenty of painful decisions that were costly, both to God and to humanity - life isn't easy, even for God. 

And for millions of people, life isn't easy, either, and the last thing they need are some self-holiness seeking folks jumping all over them for their lapse. What they need, first of all, is kindness and welcome, and the support of a society that decides to stop the killing of the poor by withholding social services, the killing of Iraqis and Afghanis by ceaseless warfare, the killing of women by ignoring the violence of men, the killing of children because we're drowning in guns.

The larger social issues need our attention first of all ... to focus on secondary and tertiary matters only assists us in our quest for self-holiness and will never ever come close to offering solutions.

The Promise, So I'll Stay

Been thinking a bit … always slightly dangerous …

Sure, we have our ills, who doesn’t?

Been reading 2 Samuel … who doesn’t have their ills?

But it’s the promise of God …

To be faithful … faithful to the likes of us … Joabs and Davids and

Absaloms and Bathshebas and Uriahs and lusters and lovers and

Killers and plotters and avengers and women and men who still

Somehow, are after God’s own heart, because God is steadfast in faith.

That’s what counts … that’s the story … that’s the gospel.

God.

And, sure, we have our ills.

But it’s the promise that sustains us.

We can’t build it.

We can’t kill it.

We don’t get there.

It comes to us!

The promise.

Glad to be a Presbyterian … we have some of that promise-sturdiness in our gut …

Something of that hope, because God is greater …

And maybe it’s God who’s shrinking us …

Like reducing a good sauce, to intensify it’s flavor ..

And teaching us to weep.

Some would quit and walk away to their own peculiar brand of ills.

But I’ll stay, and I’ll weep, and I’ll hope and work and stay the course.

Because of the promise.

It comes to us.

Again!

In These Times ...

In These Times …

I find fear creeping in at the edges of my mind and heart.

Every newscast brings more sad news for tens of thousands of Americans and folks around the world.

And, then, Citi Group purchases a $50 million dollar corporate jet – get this, it carries 12, and get this and then some, ordered from a French company. Ha! And when challenged by Keith Olbermann, they declined to comment, saying, “security reasons” prohibit us from commenting on our fleet. Yeah, sure – security? No, shame! Plain old shame!

Sadly, their avarice is my money at work, and I’m not real fond of that.

Oh sure, it’s Capitalism, some say. It’s the Free Market, and we all love that, don’t we?

Naw, it’s just plain old greed at work – over-the-top entitlement – the worm in the apple gnawing away at our character and our economy.

I think we’ve got ourselves into a real pickle.

And certain forms of Christianity haven’t helped one bit:
¸ The feel-good, advance-yourself, Jesus-loves-you-always, let’s-clap-our-hands-and-love-one-another, kind of Christianity.
¸ The James Dobson brand of Christianity, with his snarling intrusion into the American bedroom.
¸ The psycho-babble kind of Christianity, where Sunday morning is nothing more than a couch for therapy and learning “five steps to happiness.”
¸ And Americanized Christianity where flag and faith are all entwined in one another, and no one knows where country and Christ begin or end.

Here’s where I have hope for mainline Protestant Christianity to regain some traction. Ours has been a faithful voice, crying in the wilderness of prosperity and evangelical power. As the megachurches zoomed into view and climbed to the top of the numbers heap, we all hung our head and slinked away, ashamed of our faith, and wondering why we were such a failure.

But we’re not a failure at all. And though the numbers are not likely to change in the foreseeable future, it’s all about integrity and responsibility, and the numbers be damned, if you will.

This is not Wall Street after all. It’s not about some bottom line of success. It’s faithfulness and critical thinking. Do we really have anything at all to say?

We’ve been studying the prophets and the kings of Israel and Judah, background to Jesus our LORD. Here we find some grit to throw on the road for traction. Here is where we find some guidance in such times, when the bastions of power and religion have proved hollow!

Yes, I find fear creeping in at the edges, because bad things happen when human beings forget one another, when a nation worships at the alter of prosperity and condemns millions to a life of hardship. Bad things happen when religion loses its bearings and can no longer muster the courage or the conviction to tell the truth to itself, much less to anyone else.

The simple truth, at least as I read in the Prophets and in the life of Jesus: our nation has spent way too much time at the alter of Wall Street and allowed wealth to be concentrated into the hands of a strange breed of royalty who lost their bearings, who spent corporate profits foolishly, who lived high on the hog and damned the rest of us, and way too many Christians, enamored with visions of Jesus and wealth, lost their minds and their souls, as well.

But I think God for God!

God’s Spirit yet strives with our spirit, and when God’s people dig into the Word thoughtfully, intelligently, looking not for ways to condemn others, nor for ways to feather our own bed, but to discern the will of God and to seek ways by which we can effect salvation – shalom – here and now - real peace and a prosperity that leaves no one behind – when such things become our purpose, there will be showers of blessing from on high!

It’s time for decency, a kindliness toward one another, an honest humility, and it’s time for the powerful and the wealthy, for the super-religionists of the world, Christian or otherwise, to remember, that even on the loftiest of thrones, we’re still sitting only on our own rumps (Montaigne), and our task on earth is not to build thrones for ourselves, but to sew pillows for one another, to make the sitting a tad bit easier!