"Shocked and Awed"
Some folks born, and again, to surround
altar-towers of Table and Font?
Help us find Everyday Holiness,
positioned where we least expect?
No matter how cautious, bound to bump into?
Troubling waters, crumbling bread,
sloshing cup, up-and-down, side-to-side,
reaches of cross, extending, embracing,
arms everlasting, everyone's plea for A World:
"Make way for the Image of God!"
With every child born, another world ending.
What world is ending? Is it ours? . . .
Who breaks in upon our normalcy,
the illusion that we are safe, and
steals the ground beneath our feet,
the changed course that marks our fate
We will never be the same.
Going out like children under bright familiar skies,
we return changed, older, shock-eyed, trembling . . .
Whose time of anguish gives birth to new life,
the long sorrow that yields to new worlds . . . .
(Patrick Marrin)
Dare we suspend disbelief, presume a
New Word to be exhumed and uttered,
new "gift of tongues" inflamed and exhaled?
Tongue guiding body, like bit in horse mouth,
small rudder turning whole ship:
Language "most intimately physical of all
artistic means. We have it palpably in
our mouths; it is our langue, our tongue.
Writing it, we shape it with our hands.
Reading aloud what we have written . . .
our language passes in at the eye
out at the mouth, in at the ears;
words are immersed and steeped in
senses of body before they make
any sense in the mind." (Wendell Berry)
Are we even listening, hearing at all?
Wisdom's Spirit-Voice, crying from corners,
Wisdom's Spirit-Voice, crying from corners,
busiest streets; counsel, reproof, calamity,
panic, interrupt us, keep us interrupted;
refusing to force herself on us, free wills,
full hearts alone change, her offerings of
life beyond fear -- What else do we long
so to leave with our kids? Fear not!
Be not afraid! You are loved! Your
universe friendly, Listener Eternal!
"Perhaps then, if we listen attentively,
we shall hear amidst the uproar of
empires and nations a faint flutter of
wings, a gentle stirring of life, of hope."
(Albert Camus)
How can we, of this culture, help but be
taken for lost? Strayers from home,
ficklers toward friends, needers of rescue;
found by our losers -- sheep by sheep,
coin by coin -- whose feel for completeness,
wholeness so strong as to know in an instant
when single subtlest particle of us missing --
as Jesus detects any power escaping through
faintly-touched garment -- lost earring,
lost shoe, lost glasses, lost keys -- lost pet
bad enough, not to mention lost child,
even, in these days, searching through
rubble, through ashes, for lost ones,
for pieces of lost ones, pieces of us --
welcomed back, partied over, restored!
Jeremiah: All losing, all wasting away,
none of us, any tradition, acting as if we
"know God!" "Stupid children!" "No
understanding!" "Skilled in doing evil!"
Helpless in "how to do good!" Yet,
Good as News gets these days,
"I will not make a full end!" Like Potter,
reworking, reshaping, repairing, restoring:
Like One Who Never Gives Up!
Resurrecting from our executions:
"I have not relented nor will I turn back."
The human heart is the first home of
democracy. It is where we embrace our
questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be
generous? Can we listen with our
whole beings, not just our minds, and
offer our attention rather than our
opinions? And do we have enough
resolve in our hearts to act courageously,
relentlessly, without giving up -- ever
trusting in our fellow citizens to
join with us in determined pursuit of a
living democracy? (Terry Tempest Williams)
Questionings of a Relentless Asker . . . .
For we are all children of Israel now!
In need of New Exodus now! If waters of
troubling now may, even may, be
waters of Global Warming, why, in God's
name, on this one precious Earth,
would we gamble lives of all children?
Imagine Moses, organizing Exodus!
So accustomed to slavery's nobodiness!
How many never intended leaving at all?
Ready to turn back at slightest excuse?
We who have just changed our minds?
Ten plagues, and you're out!
What number are we up to now?
The women wept and I wept. I too
cried for the lost people, their ancestors
and mine. But I was also weeping with
curious joy. Despite murders, rapes,
suicides, we had survived. Middle passage
and auction block had not erased us.
Not humiliations nor lynchings,
individual cruelties nor collective
oppression had been able to eradicate us
from the earth. We had come through
despite our own ignorance and gullibility,
the ignorance and rapacious greed of
our assailants.
There was much to cry for, much to mourn,
but in my heart I felt exalted knowing there was
much to celebrate. Although separated from
our language, our families and customs,
we had dared to continue to live. We had
crossed the unknowable ocean in chains
and had written its mystery into "Deep
River, my home is over Jordan!" Through
centuries of despair and dislocation,
we had been creative because we had
faced down death by daring to hope.
(Maya Angelou)
Horrible as this crime is, we forgive you.
Forgive us as well, that we may make a
way past the ways we always have done
one another.
"Listen, only listen. Do not pursue me
as though you were God. The gift I need
is your hearing and your heart.
(Thomas John Carlisle)
Jesus: "Ephphatha! Be opened!"
Identify self with "others" of every kind!
Who and what are we deaf to? Dumb to?
Who do we need to see, who is not
visible to us now? To hear, who is not
audible to us now? To touch, who is not
tangible to us now? Whom do we need to
encounter -- embrace, engage, endure --
who is not even imaginable to us now?
Have we ourselves never felt unseen?
Unheard? Unspoken to? Unimagined?
Ignored? Irrelevant? Are there not
painfully others learning nothing of us?
Directly? Deeply? Urgently? As we fully are?
How vitally, viscerally, Jesus shares humanness,
attending to deaf man for man's sake, not crowd's,
slipping finger in deaf ear -- yuck! And spitting!!
Where? On whom? For what? Touching man's
tongue -- without rubber gloves! Only then speaking
a whole-making word, earning trust enough to open
a whole man to healing, discouraging any church
growthers, advising to silence about what he's doing,
knowing how well we keep secrets!
For Jesus, healing nothing but trouble? Nothing but
risk? Holding to same lowered profile crossing border --
illegally? -- sneaking to Tyre, to Sidon, never escaping
notice, those who need him, need healing, most;
tempted, attempting to talk mother out of healing her
daughter, preferring to leave her invisible, therefore
dismissible; no such luck, not about to let go,
desperately self-respecting enough to identify self with
dogs eating crumbs from the table, shaming Jesus to act,
catching him "with his compassion down," understandably
human, "like us" in every way, as we are "like him"
more ways than we care to confess. What a difference
made us who still issue from her by this woman, winning
for her child, all children, in Jesus' sight,
healing where there is no healing.
Every war wanted enough to begin? Good idea
seeming to someone at time? Jesus in earliest
glimpses, copious crowds encompassing, looking
like winner, recruitment trending straight up,
start of something big? In "Good Jesus, Bad Jesus"
kind of a way, soon saying what none wants, or can
bear, or knows how, to hear, subverting premises of
own encouragement, accomplishment, establishment,
attainment; masses now melting away, only hardcore
disciples to work with -- or not! Stunning us with
self-doubt, distraction, disappointment, despair:
How could Jesus be so wrong about us? We about him?
What happened to gameship, winners and losers?
Jesus playing deadly-games-only now.
How can Christians, Americans, disciples, citizens,
fixate on myths of winning? Bible all written by losers,
about losers, for losers, underside, underdog history;
America, invaded, occupied, losers, misfits, unable
to make it, or take it, where they had been, fleeing,
indenturing, selling soul to, one last best possible start;
always appearing to need taller tower, bigger
something or other showcasing superiority,
obsessing from Babel through World Trade,
and counting; always appearing to need a more
winnable war, fought "at all costs," we contend,
as we send kids of others, costfree to us, incalculably,
unconscionably, no one but victims left
every side, self-defeating, mass-destroying . . .
"None of you can become my disciples if
you do not give up all your possessions."
In line with Jesus, everything else on the line;
free of possessions, protections, what's left to
war for? Substitute true "Days of Awe,"
root-deep in bare self-reflection, nobody else
can do for us, changing direction, trying new way,
Days of Repentance through Day of At-one-ment,
returned, restored, perfecting arts of imperfection,
essential unfinishedness, we who possess most,
most to give up, winning through losing, finding.
"How do we celebrate what good we have wrought,
and turn from our misdoings into renewed joy and
dedication?" How do we observe, absorb, with
Cosmic, Comic, Eyes, Ears? Whole Vision, Voice,
Wit, and Wisdom? History "from just outside its
own boundaries?" "Not a closed circle to repeat
the past?" Not locked into vicious cycles: violence,
vengeance; domination, control; nor "a straight
line into the future," no "manifest destinies,"
inexorable progress and growth; but history as
spiral, "always going back, in order to go forward,"
remembered to be forgiven,
letting go without getting lost.
"Living in the midst of a great dance of God" --
"from greater Control to greater Community --
from greater Mastery over our planet and each
other to deeper sense of Mystery that calls us
to live together" -- These are the days to believe
there is hope for us all! Moving from Shock to
Wonder and Awe! Dancing from Warring,
Dancing from Warming! "The world has become
an earthquake!" Who's to win an earthquake?
"There is no way to stand still upon it! For the
earth is leaping! Our only hope is to join in
the dance . . . ." (Arthur Waskow)
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