Category Archives: Poetry
showers of blessing
Warm gentle showers –
Waters of life freely
Given to the bad as well as good alike
With no strings attached – blocked
Personas shaped by families of
Origin, genetics, cultures,
Influences of all kinds
Carve trenches, ruts, wadis of
Preconceptions, bias,
Pragmatic naturalism, and
Skepticism of the spiritual into
Brains and souls, so that
Loving rains of grace cannot
Penetrate the soft black loam of the
Heart where seeds of mercy wait to
Sprout into justice
Loving baths of benevolence
Wash away in ditches of self
Leaving the spirit dry and
Thirsty
Wash away,
Only to gather again in
Oceans of belovedness
Waiting to try again
a memory
That miracle-working rabbi is near
Quick! Bring your baby
Perhaps he will condescend to touch
Even an insignificant child.
Insignificant!? Not to me
For this child is the light of my life.
This way to Messiah.
Blocked. By his disciples.
Too busy. Don’t bother.
But he comes, indignant at them,
A stern rebuke then a gentle smile as
He takes this precious babe from my arms
And not only touches, but
Holds, hugs, cuddles, coos, smiles, laughs.
I have but a faint memory of that time
It was so long ago and I was so small
Perhaps no memory
Perhaps only memory of the story
And yet
I can feel those arms,
See that smile,
Hear that gentle voice
Sense that heart throbbing
I can see those eyes even now.
Nothing has ever been the same.
One
Singularity
Infinitely dense
Infinitely small
Containing all the
Energy, matter
All the potential of
Exploding star-factories
Manufacturing the fundamental
Building blocks of life.
Interconnected
Made of star dust
Birthed from the heavens
Incubated in the sea’s womb
Each part of all
ex uno multis
Rather than e pluribus unum
Focus
Bring together your senses
Concentrate, connect,
Eyes, ears, pencil to
See all that is there
Under the scope
Gentle fine tune
Up and down
Layer upon layer reveal
A world of microscopic
Creatures emerges
Martha, Martha
Distracted with doing
Achiever, go-getter, ambitious
There is need of only one thing
Sit, stop, contemplate with Mary
Purity of heart is to will one thing
One Thing that contains all things
In Whom we live and move and
Have our being
Insight
May I lead you outside of town?
Away from expectations,
Opinions and well-meaning advice?
Away from the “you shoulds,” and
“You ought to”?
Take my hand and let us walk to
Where we are alone, apart from the
Crowd to where we can hear the breeze.
Do not be afraid if I touch your eyes
Once, twice, again.
At first all may be blurry –
It is for all of us – but focus as
Best you can, look closely at
Yourself; study the trees and the
Ants that crawl up their bark.
Listen deeply to the inner voice of love.
Notice how gradually, slowly,
Meanings
Purpose
Truth
Understanding
Self
Others
Creation and the
Divine
Are coming into focus.
Don’t go back into town.
FREEDOM
Freedom
Mark 12:41 [Jesus] sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” (NRSVUE)
Such amazing freedom this impoverished widow had –
Clinging to nothing, but rather,
Freely giving all to God, knowing
God would take care of her.
As free as the birds of the air and
The lilies in the fields.
In times past, I pictured her old, bent, in rags,
Walking with a cane; but now I see her as
Ageless, happy, joyous, stepping lightly with
Sparkles in her eyes, full of peaceful contentment.
I like to imagine the women who were always with
Jesus rushing to her with love, embraces, and joy –
Taking her into the fold – this widow now joining the
Disciples at Jesus’ feet, learning and loving; with
Him at the Passover Seder, aghast at the mock trials,
Weeping at the scourging post and the cross;
Dancing with the risen King,
Aflame in the upper room.
a film review
A Film Called First Reformed
My son turned me on to a deep movie. All really good art lends itself to a variety of interpretations. The film First Reformed is one such work of art.
Trigger alert: It is dark, at times surreal, and contains a graphic suicide scene. It’s also brilliant.
The Plot:
First Reformed is a 2017 American drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader staring Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, and Cedric Kyles.
It’s the story of a divorced, bereaved, isolated, 46-year-old pastor of an historic colonial era Dutch Reformed church in upstate New York. The church building is well-preserved, but has become not much more than a museum. The pastor, a former military chaplain who talked his son into joining the army only to learn he was killed in action a few months later, is struggling with probable gastrointestinal cancer and self-medicating his pain with alcohol.
The surrounding countryside is stark, cold, and bleak. Old gravestones, barren trees, dirty cars, empty spaces. The soundtrack is often more the moan of a dying creation than lyrical. Traditional hymns about the comfort and transformative power of Christ are interspersed.
First Reformed church is supported by a megachurch called Abundant Life that is itself buoyed by the large donations of an industrialist who denies climate change and pollutes the environment. Abundant Life never challenges the sins of its financiers.
Mary, one of only a handful of congregants at First Reformed, is pregnant and married to an environmental activist who is filled with existential angst over humanity’s destruction of the planet. A central theme: “Will God forgive us for destroying his creation?” In despair, Mary’s husband commits suicide in spite of the pastor’s counsel.
Later, she and the pastor share an out-of-body experience in which they see the beauty of creation and what humans have done to it. It is beautiful and surreal, transcending space-time.
The combination of his struggle with the relevance of his faith in the light of human greed, his physical sickness, the loss of his son and then his marriage, leads the pastor to the brink of destroying himself and the church at the church’s 250th anniversary celebration, which is attended by the industrialist, the governor, and the megachurch pastor, among many others. Seeing Mary entering the building, he quickly decides against mass destruction and opts for intense self-flagellation. Mary enters, they kiss passionately, and the screen goes black.
Some Thoughts:
The lead pastor of the megachurch is a good man. He wants his church to do good things to help people. But, to keep it solvent, he compromises truth so as not to offend his biggest donor.
Abundant Life is huge and modern, but in the film, is never abundant. Its choir has four members; its youth group has maybe a dozen. When we see it, it is always mostly empty, just like its theology.
Mary’s husband is kind, caring, and brilliant. Everything he researches and reports is well substantiated. He sees no hope for humanity, no hope for the planet.
The protagonist is struggling with existential anguish. He is grieving the loss of his marriage, feels guilty over the death of his son, is sick with probable cancer, and is alone. He hates being nothing more than a docent, and longs to be relevant in the world. He reads Thomas Merton and G.K. Chesterton, and keeps a journal. The parsonage in which he lives is almost void of furniture. It is dark and empty, like him.
Mary is pregnant, like the Mary in the nativity stories. She alone has hope. She agrees with her husband’s conclusions, but still wants to bring her baby boy into the world. Like the Virgin Mary, she brings light into darkness, hope into despair. At the very end of the film, her love saves and redeems the pastor.
So many lessons:
- Speak truth to power. Ignore the budget.
- Stand for justice.
- Steward God’s creation.
- Eschew violence. In the end, it accomplishes nothing.
- Let yourself love and be loved.
- Love is redemptive.
- Love brings hope.
- Love conquers despair.
- The industrialist lost his way through greed.
- The megachurch pastor lost his way through success.
- Mary’s husband lost his way by abandoning hope.
- The pastor of First Reformed lost his way through grief.
- Mother Mary never lost her way.
Fog
she was a day-sailor designed for
sounds, bays, harbors, lakes, not
open ocean, and indeed, she was not
in the open ocean, but instead well
within the sight of land when the
fog fell like a thick wet blanket
obliterating any possibility of sight
his left hand on the tiller, his right
holding the mainsheet, he could not
see her bow, nor the top of the mast;
even the jib was shrouded in grey
she had no motor, carried no compass,
no radar, no navigation aids of any kind,
not even a bucket to use as a sea anchor
only the airhorn he blasted at the
top of each minute as he luffed
her into irons and waited, drifting
with the tide, which he knew would
eventually suck him through the hole –
the narrows between the islands where
the current rushed with strength that
put many a large vessel on the rocks
he hoped the fog would lift before the
current gripped her in its clutches, but
it did not. helpless to do anything except
don a life jacket, lash to the boat,
drop sail and cling to the gunnels, she
spun like a bubble swirling down a drain
bumping rocks like a pinball, jarring,
dizzy and dazed, surreal as he observed that,
contrary to nature, he had no fear, but
instead was almost able to stand beside
himself observing with curiosity as the
salt spray burst through the fog to soak him
he licked the salt on his lips as a strange
joy washed over him, still spinning, still bumping,
Until
as suddenly as it began
the waters calmed and he knew he had
shot through the hole from the sound into
the bay without harm, but yet still
cloaked in thick fog, and now, with the
current against him, without possibility of
sailing back to the harbor, drifting, drifting,
as if veiled from
Reality,
sensing an unreachable connection, adrift from identity
the glass through which he peers is warped,
thick, wavy, malformed, scratched by
abandonment, smeared by envy – only
shadows, glimpses, hints of
Truth, yet
Enough
Enough to reveal the sunrays of
Perpetual Love
Life
Vast fields of ice
Pure white, blinding
Endurance wedged,
Groans as she’s crushed
The miraculous trek begins.
Through war-ravaged shambles
Across homeless encampments and
Hospital wards where respirators
Gasp and saline drips;
Past ice-cliffs of struggle,
Through foreboding canyons of grief
Among the starving children and
Newly baptized saints in the cages that
Overlook the cemetery where infants join
Old men and widows, and where reckless
Teenagers sleep and young widowers wail as they
Stumble for words of explanation for sobbing children.
Trudging on over blazing deserts
Snake mounds and petroglyphs
Where cactus wrens and roadrunners worship
Under the watchful gaze of the ram
Perched confidently on enigmatic assurance.
Sailing now on lashed barges with
Cotton sails, through inky seas of chaos,
Racism and fascist hatred; seas filled with
Macropredators slicing waves that
Can swallow the most massive ship.
Onward through sorrow, pain, grief, and loss,
Indominable women, scarves pulled
Tightly about their heads, sheltering
Babes in ragged coats in groups of four
Or, are there five?
“I know that during that long and racking march, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.” – Sir Ernest Shackleton, South
“Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you.”
– T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)
Discernment
Soft, warm, gentle, long-lasting,
First rain of Spring, soaking, softening the
Hard and cracked soil as
Earth takes a long, slow, deep
Drink and her flowers, grasses,
Bushes and trees absorb water and minerals.
Life. Soon, leaves, buds, flowers, fruit.
So comes the good spirit.
Blasting wind, icy torrents slicing, biting,
Snapping weighed down branches.
Shingles fly, villages lose power,
Topsoil washes away as
Creek banks cave in and
Basements flood.
Death. Destruction, chill, ruin.
So comes the evil spirit.
a door & a coffin
The carpenter made them both
Out of a fine piece of oak
That came from an ancient tree at long
Last felled by gale-force winds
Stirred up at the poles by
Rising temperatures elevated by
Human greed.
So, in one sense, they
Were both redeemed out of death.
The stately oak volunteered to be
Sacrificed for this cause.
Two fine pieces of artisanship planed and
Chiseled, carved and sanded
Both designed for one adult size human body
Both of wood; both made in the same shop by
The same craftsperson with the same tools.
Both stained in natural oak; both notched and
Pegged rather than nailed or screwed.
Both from the same source.
A door and a coffin.
A door hung at the entrance to the parish manse
Opening its whole self to welcome
Dignitaries and hobos alike
To a blazing hearth where warm stew and
Hot ale whisper gospels.
A coffin draped in cloth in the
Kirk storeroom waiting to
Open its whole being to welcome
Dignitaries and hobos alike
To the blazing throne where bread is
Blessed, broken, and given, and
Cherubim choruses ascend.
The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor 