Seventy times seven

Ferguson is burning. We watch uneasily from a distance. We may be miles from Missouri, but this raises questions that are all too close to home.

My facebook feed has erupted in fiery arguments.

What is behind the violence? Is this all about systematic racism and scripted oppression?

Or is it about sin?

Yes.

Both.

Sin is systematic. Sin is a script.

If sin was just a matter of isolated individual decisions, racism wouldn't be quite so hard to deal with. Neither would fatherlessness, or any other sort of abandonment.

Everybody should just make good choices, and the world will be happy. Easy as pie, right?

But none of us make our choices in a vacuum. Not anymore. Not since Adam and Eve.

Our first parents made their choice to sin in a peaceful paradise with a perfect father, but the rest of us can only dream about that kind of privilege. In different ways and tho different degrees, we are all struggling to cope with the fallout from that first fall.

Ashamed of his disobedience, Adam tried to justify himself before God by throwing Eve under the bus. Cain learned the art of betrayal from from his father, amped it up a bit, and became the world's first murderer. Their descendants took this legacy and paid it forward with ample interest. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy times seven, and so on and so forth until the whole world was full of violence, and God regretted ever making mankind in the first place.

And then, when the world was shiny and clean again, when the dove with the olive leaf had finally found a place to rest on the blood soaked earth, when human civilization consisted of a single family homestead and a rainbow.... Granddad passed out drunk, cursed the kid whose dad had dared to laugh, and the cycle began all over again.

It's a script that we copy out for our children every generation in fresh red ink. This is what we humans do, and it's only natural. We take the hurt that we've been given and pass it on and on.

Jesus shed his blood to write us a new script, with a different kind of seventy times seven.

It's a costly script, but its our only hope.

Gold

words

set in

silvery

silences prepare

a table spread beneath the tree

whose leaves are life. Bless'd

enemy

come share

good

fruit.

As

my

flimsy

windblown dust

holds these anxious

flutterings, makes uncertainty

solid, so may my mind, relieved by your gift of flesh,

find syllables and sounds to hold

the shape of mighty

rushing air,

your breath

in

me.

This

is

mercy 

perfected:

have pity even

on the pitiless. Remonstrate 

gingerly, gently; confident, but without delight.

Wait patiently for morning's hope

in the blossoming

wilderness

where love

just

is.

There

is

surely

absolute

truth, independent

of our fluctuating knowledge.

Respect its vastness. Child of dust, your life is a breath.

Breathe while the wind blows within you.

Listen to its voice.

Absolute

love calls

to

you.

You

may

in fact

have arrived.

Perhaps you’ve achieved

more than you have dreamed, and perhaps

there is nothing left for you but sleep. You may have reached

the center where the frozen flames

hold you motionless.

Perhaps. Pray

it is

not

so.

He'd

hoped

to learn,

but didn't.

Failure is the best

teacher, but what is there to learn

from lack of learning? Still, stagnation itself provides

a certain sort of resistance.

Eros surely finds

propulsion

out of

the

void.

The

gods

give out

many fine

gifts. Gifts matching all

their many fine plans. Fine plans

that are well worth any pains you could possibly take

to avoid them. Small earthly joys

like justice outshine

these splendid

treasures

of

death.

Why

yes,

indeed,

Socrates,

your words are a drug,

bewitching your hearers, whether

you will or no, stringing them along like iron rings,

held by your magnetic daimon.

This, too, can corrode,

leave the youths

creaking

with

rust.

Sing,

muse,

between

rage and me,

with words fine enough

to seep into the crevices,

and swelling, break. Pry me from myself, that divided,

finally seen and seeing, I

may share with myself

solitude's

friendship

and

peace.

You 

must

become 

perfect, just

as your father pours

blessings down upon the righteous

and the unjust both. This mystery is far too deep

to grasp. There is no grasping here,

just mercy's wildness

and the wind.

Enter

who 

can.