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.

Before More Damage Is Done

There are times when the very word "christian" rests bitter in my mind and heart.

What with the media's fascination with evangelicals and their bigotry, and what with the megachurches trumpeting their special brand of power and miracles, with their steel-jawed preachers and their bosomy beauties, in the minds of many, this is what Christianity is all about.

Meanwhile, more thoughtful Christians, and, yes, there are plenty of them, sit back, mostly stunned into silence, hoping the whole mess will sort itself out.

Perhaps it will ... I get the feeling that evangelicals have gotten about as crazy and mean-spirited as they can get, short of resorting to arms and killing the "heathen" (I guess some of the swamp-bred militias are doing just that, or at least, want to).

I have always believed that Americans are mostly sensible. Religious, yes, but with a certain restraint and will not long tolerate religious extremism, of any kind.

I have always believed, as well, in the primal character of the Spirit of God, the Creator God - that the Spirit always hovers over the chaos and darkness, calling for light, and bringing forth a degree of order, process and progress toward cohesion, creating an environment in which life can emerge, evolve and prosper.

How it works, I don't know, but it works; that much I know.

I can only hope that it works soon enough, to contain the monstrous distortions of the Christian Faith, these days combined with the fascist instincts of wealth and power, before any more damage is done.

Butterflies and Bullfrogs - Creation, Evolution and Celebration

Sometime in early college, maybe earlier, when I had a chance to think about it, I became an evolutionist, a theistic evolutionist. I believed that God created the world, and gave it life, and its life took off, evolving from one from to another. At every moment, the creative impulse of the Creator was there ... always and forever moving the universe along with love, for billions of years. 

I love this kind of a world - it's big. I mean, really big. And I like big things, loud things, like thunderstorms and diesel locomotives ... and waterfalls and fast cars and airplanes.

My scientist colleagues know that the world, the universe, is really, really big, and I find in their musings something of the greatness of the God in whom I have found myself living all these many years.

For me, there can be no religion that denies the material world, for the material world is of God, a marvelous creation full of wonder and mystery and bewilderment for us, mostly always exceeding our grasp at the moment, and I think it'll be that way for as long as human beings ponder and probe. I think the material world has an infinite dimension to it, and if not infinite, at least really big, big enough to keep us studying for millions of years.

To look at the Grand Canyon or any other structure of the universe and to see the expansive nature of God is great joy for me. It's big in its material form, it's big in its immensity of time; it's just big! And somehow or other, that bigness is God for me. But as big as it is, there's a kindness to it, a gentleness that creates butterflies and bullfrogs, and dancers and poets, and little girls and boys who love Gummy Bears and ice cream.

I know that others see something else, and that's okay ... I'm just glad when anyone sees anything that's great and large and mysterious and wonderful. Who find in the world they see love and passion and justice and mercy. 

For me, I see a great personality, a great love, whatever, at work in the eons, the ages ... and love has left its mark, because love creates life, a myriad of forms, large and small, enduring and momentary, much of it consigned to the mud, compressed over millions of years to be found by us, dug up and put on display in museums.

To affirm this, and celebrate it, is to affirm God, and to celebrate Creation - something really big, big enough to delight us and keep us from getting uppity. 

I'm an evolutionist - makes sense to me and affirms what my scientist friends find in our world, a world trustworthy to the eye and mind and heart, a world that intrigues, but doesn't trick; a world of much mystery, but not unkind deception.

I'm a theistic evolutionist who loves the imagery of Genesis 1 - a God of great order creates a marvelous world full of marvelous forms ... and the imagery of Genesis 2, the God of dirty hands - who takes a little mud and forms a creature and dares to blow God's own breath into it, and it lives - a little bit of mud, and a little bit of God, all wound up together in something quite beautiful, and sometimes downright mean and nasty, too. Our meanness, I don't think is of God, but of our mud trying to hold on to the breath of God, and it's a lot of work, and sometimes the mud gets scared, and angry at other mud flopping around. And yet the breath of God holds on to the mud, too, and keeps pumping breath into it, for another day, another go at it. 

Anyway, that's how it is for me, a theistic evolutionist ... 

The Fatal Flaw of Creationism

Creationists have committed themselves to a fatal flaw that will end badly for those who sign on to it. And what's the flaw? Contrasting "revelation" with "reason," "faith" with "science." By positing the contrast, Creationists, unwittingly, perhaps, or worse, purposefully, suggest that God is a house divided - that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is opposed to, or different than, the revelation of God in God's creation. And worse: that the devil created fossils, or God did, by some means of deception, in order to "test" our faith.

As Jesus rightly noted: A house divided cannot stand for long. And the house-divided crafted by Creationists cannot stand either.

For those who have signed on to the house-divided, it will result in one of two options: 1) some form of cynicism wherein folks simply pack up their bags and leave the faith behind, either because they cannot believe in its dogmas or because they can no longer trust their teachers; or, 2), some form of absolutism, wherein the dogmas are taught with an increasingly blind force and the teachers are "trusted" with an absolute devotion.

Either way, the goodness of God's creation is lost ... it simply becomes "existence" for those who cannot abide the false god of the Creationists, or it becomes irrelevant for those who can abide only with the false god of Creationism.

If I have to choose, I'll choose some form of cynicism, because it, at least, keeps the doors and windows open. But for me, there is another choice, and it's simply the affirmation that what God has given, and continues to give, in Christ AND in creation is consistent and honest and open to our senses, our minds, our examination - all of this subject to the ambiguities of our existence.

With another affirmation - that what we cannot fully grasp grasps us in grace. Whether it be the glories of creation or the wonders of the cross, we can see these things and welcome, consider and examine them, but more than anything, they welcome us, consider us and examine us ... and in that moment, there is no contrast, no contradiction, no pitting of one against the other. No more a house divided!