Leaven

A simple meditation on the reality that evil appears to be everywhere in our world and good is also everywhere, but the good is fainting, fragile and susceptible to infection from all the evil that exists.


Leaven

I have seen it well, the jewel of Earth suspended
in a vacuous black ocean…

sublime beauty growing among the weeds…

bountiful vacant horizons interrupted by
exceptional peaks and the solitary oasis,
filled to overcrowded with those
hungry for beauty and those simply hungry…

sleek bodies fashionably adorned to obscure
the imperceptible daily marks of decay…

music, dancing, wild laughter in the foreground;
wailing, funeral dirges, moaning for bread
in the background…

an unattractive, unpopular prophet provides a constant
stream of divine revelation while the oblivious mob
tramples over every gentle, fragile, beautiful thing
on their way to the orgy of the superficial…

it is little more than a circus din of pleasure,
followed by yawning, clutter, stilted speech,
callousness, distance from everything,
and flickering forgetfulness as days
loudly and lustily lived simply slip gently into the shadows…

transfixed lovers gaze at each other, drawn
powerlessly into a vortex of passion,
while every day Jews who love kill Muslims who love,
and Muslims who love kill Jews who love,
and they slaughter because they love…
their gods…
their families…
their things…
their promised holy dirt…

There is no good in the world because any good remaining in it
is infected by all this damned leaven!


September, 2004

Polytheism

This poem was inspired by the court case in which the phrase, "under God," was deemed unconstitutional. It speaks to the expectation from many evangelicals that the state conduct its business according to God's revelation in Scripture.

One Nation Under Gods

They say polytheism is dead,
but I am too American to believe it.

We call it diversity, pluralism,
the eclectic spirit—an enlightened land
where disagreement is our only agreement.

But this is the land of many gods,
each dutifully worshipped in congress
by those too clever to worship any one
exclusively.

Deferential homage is paid to our
celebrities, politicians, religious leaders and their gods,
like Lincoln in his majestic Parthenon.
And each in his proper turn.

We Americans look back on prior civilizations
with haughty eyes,
in the manner a modern physician looks
upon the barbarism of bloodletting.

Who can compete with the sophistication
of the American Pantheon?
We offer no Messiah!
We offer a thousand Messiahs—each
dancing for our amusement, and,
more importantly, each subject to our approval.

The American spirit abhors the
Theocratic tyranny of a single Deity!
No solitary god will enjoy a monopoly here!
In America, the best Jesus can hope
for is to be one of our many representatives,
like Ted Kennedy.

Americans demand their options!
Our options define us. Without them we
are controlled, but this freedom must
extend to our gods as well.
Our gods must be subject to fluctuating
market conditions and the complex
variety of our appetites.

We must be free to find the god that suits us!

And the prophet says,
“Perhaps it is we who must be transformed to suit God.”

November, 2001

Pearls

A poem written after my 3rd or 4th year of teaching.

“Do not cast pearls before swine”
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl of great price”
~The Words of Jesus

Pearls

While the teacher stood and expounded the ancient truths of God
heaven opened,

and a shower of pearls rained down upon the students,
clacking and dancing upon the tile floor,
bouncing off petrified hearts
like hail on concrete.

The sound was deafening, but no one heard,
no one reacted, grasped the priceless pearls,
no one noticed their presence.

Seeing they could not see and hearing they could not hear.

Stillness settled over the room. The dance of the pearls was over.
An insolent student asked,
“When does this class end?”

Whereupon the bell rang
and the students herded for the door
like suffocating desperate animals pressing for air,
trampling and kicking the pearls
now scattered aimlessly about the antiseptic tile.

A few tripped over them and cursed them,
incensed that they had impeded progress to the exit.

But at last they were free of the classroom.

Later that evening,
the night janitor was puzzled to see that thousands of pearls were left behind.
He assumed they were worthless, having been so abandoned.

And so, these pearls,
the sublime treasure of God,
the fruit of God’s mind,
offered freely in order to be treasured as ornaments of the human mind,
were both regarded as trash and discarded as trash.

May, 2005

Is America a Christian Nation?

Why is it so difficult for American Christians to see that this is not a Christian nation?

Christians should treat America as the Christians of old treated pagan Rome. For what really is the difference?

We don't have infanticide, but we do have the sterilized, cosmopolitan version of it in abortion. And we have slaugtered many more babies than the Romans ever dared to kill.

We don't have slavery, but we do have massive debt, crony capitalism, illegal immigration and cheap outsourced labor.

We don't have rapacious ambitions to conquer the world, but we wouldn't mind it if the worlds indirect subservience to us should remain exactly as it is.

We don't have the moral compromises of paganism with its sensuality and temple prostitution, but we do have Las Vegas and the Internet.

We don't have a silly system of multiple deities to whom we bend our uncritical allegiance, but we do have celebrities and politicians and athletes.

We don't have gladiators, but we do have our fascination with violent forms of entertainment.

It is time for Christians in America to live and articulate something better than America!

It is time to stop pandering to people who expect that the next argument, politician or law will restore Eden for us at last!

It is time for Christians to promote the stark and austere theology of Paul when he claimed that only in the cross of Jesus can man or society be healed. "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks."

It is time for the cross of Jesus to be a scandal in America and not a mere accessory.