Thursday, November 27, 2014

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.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Gold
words
set in
silvery
silences prepare
a table spread beneath the tree
whose leaves are life. Bless'd
enemy
come share
good
fruit.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

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.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

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.


Saturday, November 15, 2014

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.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

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.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

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.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

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.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014


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.