a digital commonplace book
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The coworker I refer to here is really great with patrons, including the eccentric ones who challenge my patience. For example, if “Coin Guy” shows up when I’m on the desk, I go get her to swap places with me for a while. It’s the other way around on Mystery Book Club day.
Just goes to show: it takes all kinds.
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I know this poem is hard to understand. Let me try to explain… or at least sympathize with the reader’s confusion.
For a short time, I had a wonderful counselor who had me bring poems to our sessions as a basis for discussion. This poem, prompted by a literal book, would be an interesting one to discuss. I intentionally injected words suggesting conflict. Do you see them?
For what it’s worth, I do actually like books with relaxed binding. And such a book was actually the inspiration for this poem!
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“She” in this poem is “Christian” Nationalism. She was revolting to me when I first came to the United States as a ten-year-old, fresh off the mission field. She’s every bit as revolting to me now. Christianity that’s in control, that dominates society, soon ceases to be Christianity. Lord Acton explained it: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
If you don’t know what “Christian” Nationalism really is, there’s plenty of good literature out there. I personally learned a lot from Matthew Taylor’s “The Violent Take it By Force.“
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REPRODUCTION? REPLICATION? REPLENISHMENT?
If you read the first chapter of Genesis with fresh eyes,* you may notice an insistent, almost annoying repetition of the phrase “according to its kind.” Then you get to the creation of man, and the phrase in English translations is usually “in our image.” Was the author’s intent to draw our attention to a SIMILARITY or to a DIFFERENCE in God’s creation of man vis-a-vis the creation of all other things? [Look at the Hebrew and ask yourself—or better yet, ask a Hebrew scholar—if the words are radically different]
If you look at some commentaries on the passage, you’re likely to find that they consider the mention of plants’ SEED as an indication of God’s provision for replenishment. Are they correct?
So what’s in view here? Reproduction? Replication? Replenishment? All the above? And how does this affect our behavior in the world today?
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*for example, eyes unclouded by a debate over creation and evolution
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“Where does it hurt? asks the doctor. “In this area,” says the patient, putting a hand on his neck. The doctor starts probing, trying to narrow down the exact location and source of the pain.
This poem is me saying the equivalent of “My neck hurts.” It could be my knee, or my foot, or my shoulder. But the pain is even more general than any of those vague locations. It’s a dull emotional pain that mutters a self-important, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”*
The poem hardly qualifies as a poem, but it prompted responses from wise friends. They read between the lines and reminded me that old age and its pain are not meaningless, and certainly not abandonment.
One incisive friend wrote
As our natural vigor declines, the “slog” provides opportunities to reveal God’s presence with a strength that cannot be easily written off as merely the fruit of happy circumstances. “My power is made perfect in weakness.”
My friend was the doctor saying “Maybe your neck hurts because you’ve been straining to keep an eye on this mirror. Put the mirror down and look up!”
I wrote back, “This may be too out-of-context to make sense, but you remind me of some lines toward the end of one of my favorite poems:
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal,
The new wine’s foaming flow,
The Master’s lips a-glow!from “Rabbi Ben Ezra” by Robert Browning
In other words, the emotional component of this painful slog comes in part from forgetting that God takes pleasure in us… not in our pain, but in our loving, grateful, and Spirit-enabled response.
As I grow up, maybe I’ll come to really understand that.
Here’s another poem that expressed the same frustration I experience with aging:
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*I don’t mean any kind of blasphemy by what I wrote here. What I intended is actually self-deprecation. I’ll have to give this more thought….
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(background image by WikiImages on Pixabay)
Robert Frost wrote that, “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” I think he meant that literally. The connection between a strong emotional state and the urge and inspiration to write poetry is palpable. But it isn’t just negative emotions that set us poets off! Euphoria will also do it. Oh yeah… speaking of Frost: for inspiring, euphoria’s also great and will suffice.
Enough generalities! The other night, I was sipping some whiskey. One ounce in and working on a second, I suddenly recognized this euphoric urge to write poetry. It’s a feeling that “Suddenly the world looks different; suddenly I see with new eyes. I must capture these realizations, I must net these butterflies!”
Trust me: very little of my poetry is whiskey-induced. In fact, most of it starts in the early-morning fog soon after rising. Perhaps my brain would like to go back to bed where it’s free to spin dreams.
Anyway, there it was… that feeling of euphoria, and the confidence that I could see new connections, find new analogies, devise new metaphors…. But I sensed danger: this is how writers turn into alcoholics. So I jotted down two lines and gave my thought a possible title:
SR-71 Blackbird
I really can’t afford this muse
Who leaves my troubles all behind
TOWARDS HEAVEN BIDS ME GO
How can I write that line about something as dangerous as whiskey? Well, I’m convinced that God gives us many glimpses of Heaven, including intoxicants. I do long for a time when I can see things anew, with eyes unclouded by the cataracts of trouble and worry. As I said once before to myself in the mirror,
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CHILDISH AND CHILDLIKE
I think I’ll start a new theme in this poetry blog: Protestation. The truth is, my muse has thin skin, and she always starts spitting out ideas when something offends her. She needs to grow up.
Don’t get me wrong—my muse isn’t all bad. She also takes childlike delight in things that are rarely ever recognized or celebrated… but should be.
By the way, I don’t believe that song lyrics are inherently inferior to other poetry. But I bet some poets do.
(background image by HubertPhotographer on Pixabay)
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A friend’s photograph of blooming yarrow reminded me of this curiosity I photographed in December. I think now it too must have been yarrow. Where each small flower had once been, there was a neatly-wound gravecloth protecting the developing seed within. At least that was my best guess. I’m a poet, not a botanist.
Someday, I hope to publish chapbooks of my poetry. One of those short collections will probably be titled “Flourishing,” and it will draw from poems I currently group under the theme “Seeds” (see the poems in that section). I think we tend to miss out on the beautiful, fascinating, and inspiring lifecycle of plants, and how much more of it represents flourishing than the short time of flowering. Of course I’m thinking of more than plants.
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I began this poem in February, and I recall a keen insight then about my lingering selfishness. Today, I add the final two lines and title with a prayer that God will indeed cause me to grow more like Jesus as described in Philippians 2.
Being others-oriented with regard to the physical needs of food and drink is pretty elementary. When I grow up, I may extend the principles I learn here to other, less obvious aspects of life. But food and drink are a place to start. Even Jesus fasted. Could we say that fasting was part of him learning obedience? Recall Hebrews 5:8, which reads, “Though he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”
Where are you full, and need to leave room to grow?
(background image by Hans on Pixabay)
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I try to always write poetry quickly, sign my name, and NOT go back to edit. My official, virtuous-sounding excuse is that I believe that to be the way I’ll become more fluent as a poet. If I’m always questioning my muse, she’ll become shy and hesitant. Right? It doesn’t hurt that this approach perfectly fits with my laziness! See another poem where I do some other self-justifying: “Socks Like Poetry.”
Today’s poem is one that I edited TWICE after publishing it on social media. In some respects, it’s better… otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered. But it has one downside: it runs the risk of suggesting that I think of myself as more enlightened than some who read my poetry. That’s generally not the case. When I write poetry, I’m usually grasping at things I barely understand! We’re all benighted, to one degree or another. We all need each other’s help to see the light, and experience God’s delight.
As for the overall concept…. The revelatory power of poetry is something I am increasingly experiencing in other poets (George Herbert comes to mind!), and hereby pray for regarding my own poetry.
(background image by Marc Pascual on Pixabay)
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I think I should start a new category under Poetry Themes. I’ll call it “Experimental.”
This poem belongs in that category.
Recently, I noticed that specific locations get attached to my memory of significant conversations (see “Entertaining Possibilities“). In today’s poem, I explore how an object gets attached in the same way, in this case, “walking shoes.” There’s a particularly poignant memory I have of a conversation with a friend. He/she had come to the realization that they must leave–“walk away from”–something they loved. We were meeting for a casual stroll, but as I approached our rendezvous point, I could tell from a distance that something was amiss. My friend was wearing dress shoes, not walking shoes.
I set out to write a poem about that memory, not knowing where it was going to go, except that I must guard my friend’s privacy. By the end of the third stanza, I had told all I felt safe telling. Was it enough? Would the reader be upset that I ended so abruptly, and without resolution? I don’t know. I’m still thinking about that. Comment below, if you have an opinion.
Here’s another question that this poem raises for me: Does the mind routinely intermingle literal and figurative meanings (in this case, two uses of “walk”)?
Children explore their world and the questions it raises by playing. I’m “all grown up,” but I still explore my world by playing in a sandbox called poetry.
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THE PLACE OF HOSPITALITY IN CONVERSATION
Terrible and terrific conversations are both so notable to me that my mind stores them with a seemingly unimportant fact: precisely WHERE those conversations took place.*
I was standing over there when the young lady shut down brainstorming by proclaiming, “That is impossible!”**
I was sitting at my desk when the young man ended all exploration with his boast, “I have studied computers, so I can confidently say you are wrong.”***
The old professor and I were both sitting in recliners in his den when he allowed, “I hadn’t thought about that interpretation of the poem we’re discussing; let’s see what additional support we can find for your idea….”
What is it about PLACE that attaches to the memory of hospitable—and inhospitable—conversations?
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*I previously explored this in discussing my poem, “Outcropping of Hospitality”: https://www.bhepp.us/2021/07/outcropping-of-hospitality/
** I was speculating about if and when translation software will be able to do contemporaneous translation of sign language.
*** I was pondering whether fax sending numbers are inherently identified to the fax receiver; my default position was “Surely they are.”
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It’s probably just distractible little me who feels this way….
For some reason, my sieve of a memory recalls occasions when I was trying to concentrate in a library, but could not because of one or another distraction. In college, it was students who walked around in flip flops: “Flip, flop; flip, flop, flip, flop.” There were also the ones who were struggling with term papers. They would loudly wad up one sheet after another to protest their own bad writing. Then there was that librarian in seminary. He always sat in his office with the door wide open, cheerfully whistling his library tunes.
I’ve never tried to concentrate in a monastery… or do anything else there, for that matter. But I’m guessing that tap shoes are frowned on in that sacred place.
(background image adapted from one by Manfred Richter on Pixabay)
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“Unsaid” That’s the word my little poet brain wants to supply. And I struggle with the blank, the silence. How about you?
It’s no coincidence that this poem came to mind after I spent time with some exceptionally bright AND wise people.
Did this little poem break a sacred rule of poetry? The ghosts of Emily Dickinson and E. E. Cummings are here saying, “It’s okay, Brad. It’s okay.”
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Let’s see if I can explain this one to you as successfully as I explained it to my wife….
I think most of us heard this little rhyme sometime in our youth: “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.” Of course that’s superstitious nonsense. But for some reason, it sticks in my head all these years later. It’s an intrusive thought that needles me every time I stroll down a city sidewalk. I can be listening to a narration of George MacDonald, or C. S. Lewis, or Dostoevsky. My head can be in the clouds, but my eyes don’t miss those cracks, and I’m repeatedly tempted to adjust my pace to match their spacing.
I wish I were free of this nonsense. I wish I were on a mountain path, where the disorder of roots and rocks may fix my attention, but more in the way of a friendly conversation with companions. I’d gladly go that way. I’d gladly submit to the slight difficulty they impose. There, I’d gladly undergo.
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Last night, I sorted three piles of junk into five piles of junk. Susan assured me that this was progress. Then, in my dream, a math professor was mumbling his way through a problem I couldn’t understand, or even care about.
And that’s just on my carpet, in my house, in my head. These are small problems…. In the larger world, we’re being conquered by chaos.
(background image adapted from one by congerdesign on Pixabay)
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[NOTE: This was a visceral response to reading an early, immature work of one of my favorite authors. I have experienced that profound disappointment before, with other authors, especially those of whom I had high expectations.]
SEETHING AND SOOTHING
I sometimes SEETHE when authors expect me to import a world of authority or beauty into their writing. Here are some things they do….
But good writing? Really good writing? It SOOTHES me. My brain says “Thank you!”
Now, where’s a mirror?
*Yes, I thought about this, and decided I was NOT being flippant with God’s name.
(background image loosely adapted from an original photograph by Deborah Hudson on Pixabay)
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When I posted this on Facebook, I noted that “Sadly, this poem will anger some Christians.”
A new FB friend* responded, “If it angers believers, then they don’t want to follow the words of Jesus from Matthew 5. If they aren’t okay with this truth, then they shouldn’t claim to follow the way of Jesus.”
Exactly!
*Taylor Standridge
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President Donald Trump, with his usual bombast, has declared that his second term will be a new “golden age” for the country.
CNN, January 21, 2025
One of the few comforting thoughts these days is that we’re witnessing the death throes of a dying beast.
Within a week of the recent inauguration, I wrote the following:
I’m seeing first-hand evidence that foreigners, here in the United States on a thoroughly LEGAL basis, are now hiding. One can say they’re being unreasonable. But imagine what it would be like to have to carry YOUR proof of citizenship or legal status with you everywhere and at all times lest some over-zealous authority arrest you and detain you until… until… until what?!. Wouldn’t happen to you? Why? Because of your skin color?
Have you paid attention to how the recently-installed administration has appealed to fear of the foreigner, of the stranger? How have foreigners–especially people of color–been characterized? (answer: in RIDICULOUS, OUTLANDISH WAYS that appeal to people’s unreasonable fear). Fear breeds brutality breeds fear.
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I know plenty of us experience this… at least the part about thinking of too many things at once. It may be less common to think long and deep about one thing.
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I wrote this poem in the pre-dawn darkness as I struggled once again with a passage in Romans. It’s so easy to think I understand something… until I think again.
I have always struggled with remembering the “right” answers. So I turn my mind again and again to solving the same problems. It can feel like defeat. It can even feel like moral failure. However, I am slowly but surely learning to not beat myself up for this weakness, but to celebrate its advantage. Better to be continually seeking the truth than to proudly give up the search, having arrived at half-truths.
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My recent writing probably makes it obvious: I’m struggling with disappointment and irritability. I’ll not bore you with the many, many irritants that swirl around me. Just know they are there, and some of them are even real!
Anyway, I thought I’d better have a little chat with my boss, the library manager. When I’m struggling internally, paranoia kicks in and I falsely assume that any smart observer can see right through me. What a relief to learn that my boss completely understands–and sympathizes with–my stress. In fact, he himself had recently published a blog post specifically dealing with holiday stress. That doesn’t mean I’m free to be a Grinch. I still have to be polite to patrons and coworkers. But if I’m feeling irritated, at least I’m not afraid of a secret and powerful judge of “mere” FEELINGS.
(background image is AI-generated and submitted to Pixabay by Jeanette Atherton)
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This poem is not about mountain climbing,* or litter, or relief maps. Rather, it is an indirect way of expressing the anger and disappointment that chatters persistently in my thoughts. While I do have much to be thankful for–it IS Thanksgiving morning as I write–I’m finding it hard to escape or ignore disappointments and annoyances. But let me explain the imagery in the poem….
I started climbing mountains over forty years ago. Back then, we didn’t have the Internet to help us plan routes. In the weeks before a climb, I’d take trips down to the Dallas Public Library and spend time with topo maps prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey. I’d spread several maps on the big tables, stand to the side, and view them together to familiarize myself with the general contours of the land surrounding my destination and chosen route. I’d pick out likely camping spots, based on the terrain and water supply. Then I’d mark up my own copies of the maps, circling key points, including landmarks I could use on the trail for triangulating my approximate location.
Climbing mountains was an exciting adventure. There was mystery and danger, even though I prepared in advance. When I got to the mountains–generally with two or three companions–there was also solitude. We’d find evidence of prospectors and hunters who preceded us there by many decades. But we generally had the place to ourselves. The few fellow climbers we did encounter–particularly at higher elevations–were immediately recognizable as kindred spirits. They were honest, hard-working fellow climbers.
As the years passed, the Internet, and GPS, and smart phones opened up the mountains to a whole new group of casual adventurers. When we reached the summit of mountains in latter years, it was not uncommon to encounter a gaggle of college girls in yoga gear, doing yoga poses… bless their hearts. While man–including precious young ladies–is the height of God’s creation, it was vistas of another sort I had climbed the mountain to admire.
Nowadays, the closest I get to mountain climbing is taking long hikes through neighborhoods, fording a busy stream of traffic, and cutting across the fields around White Rock Lake. Bad hearing isolates me from the few birds, but not from the ridiculous rumble and roar of traffic. A terrible floater in one eye and cataracts in both eyes have robbed me of the clear eyesight I have always treasured. Addressing these annoyances is delayed by tight finances. Maybe next year I’ll be a bionic man, but for now I am an active mind shackled in a deteriorating body.
The annoyances I complained about above may be the most manageable of all my annoyances. Last week, I wrote a short poem of complaint about the direction our country seems to be taking: “Recall the Future.” The recent presidential election was extremely disappointing.
BUT BRAD… ISN’T IT THANKSGIVING?!
As I mentioned above, it is Thanksgiving morning as I write this. I feel the pressure to end this lament like most of David’s Psalms, with an answer to all my complaining. But right now, I think it’s best to acknowledge where I’m “at”. Perhaps I can consider and even take consolation from a paradox that occurred to me on one of my long walks:
To be increasingly content in this world is a virtue.
To be increasingly satisfied with this world, not so.
*[To understand how mountains form the backdrop of my thinking, check out some of my other poems in the category “MOUNTAINS”.]
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This is a bit of conflation, and I’m not going to apologize for that. It’s what we poets do.
[NOTE: I am truly sorry that the following will likely offend some of my friends. If it helps, let me say that this post is NOT about Democrats versus Republicans, or even about Liberals versus Conservatives. Both sides have serious problems!]
I am extremely disappointed that the United States just elected Donald Trump for a second time. The man is a narcissist, rapist,* felon, and shameless liar with fascistic tendencies. I cannot erase the picture of him twiddling his thumbs for three hours while his violent minions brutalized police and ransacked our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021. I cannot forget his juvenile insults of everyone who opposes him. I cannot forget how he claims that everything is rigged against him unless he prevails. I cannot forget how he denigrates immigrants (especially if they are people of color), always appealing to our latent racism. I cannot forget the number of times he has claimed that he knows more about any number of things than anyone else. I cannot forget how many cabinet members from his first administration warned us that the man does not belong in the White House. But we know better, right?!
The Poem
He’s a bully, and a wannabe “strong man” like those who ruled Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union in the 1930s. But what percentage of our population know even the basics of pre-World War II history? What percentage of our population recognize how history is repeating itself as we give up freedom and pave the way for tyranny?
I suspect many, if not most politicians DO know the relevant history. But they turn a blind eye to how history is repeating itself. It is their duty to stand up for the rule of law, to uphold the Constitution. But how can they stand up when they are spineless in their self-seeking exercise of power?
*While he was convicted of “sexual abuse,” Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegation was “substantially true.”
(background image from a photo by Ron Porter on Pixabay)
Previous: On The Ridge
Next: Flying Buttresses
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Promise not to laugh at how poorly this poem expresses its inspiration…. I was reflecting on what some different Christians emphasize in the Eucharist (aka Lord’s Supper or Communion). For some, it’s primarily retrospective: remembering how Jesus sacrificed himself for us. For others, it’s primarily prospective: looking forward to the Feast in Heaven. For others, it is mainly about God’s provision here and now. Do really clever believers celebrate it all three ways at once?
A related poem: Looking For The Real Lord’s Supper
(background image adapted from one by Bertsz on Pixabay)
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First, the occasion for this poem: I’m slowly working through Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and I thought I should figure out if–and how–Paul actually defines the key word euangelion (usually translated “gospel” or more literally “good news”). He certainly goes a long way toward characterizing the word.
When I was a little boy, my father—ever the seminary professor—had no use for mere parroting. We’d read a passage of Scripture in family devotions, and then Dad would say, “Now put that in your own words.” I have written elsewhere how annoying that was… and how right he was!
Eugene Peterson would probably have done the same thing. He and Dad both knew that real understanding can be lost in overly familiar words.
If you do a search for “gospel” in the helpful (and FREE!) YouVersion app, you’ll find that most English versions choose that word–“gospel”–to translate euangelion (https://www.bible.com/search/bible?query=gospel). But specify Peterson’s “The Message” as the version in your query and you won’t find it used even once. Does that mean that Peterson didn’t value “the gospel”? I’m guessing the very opposite is true: It was because he valued the gospel SO MUCH that Peterson insisted on using his own words. He didn’t want its glory obscured by familiarity.
In this poem, I started out with the concept of words as suitcases of meaning. I began writing, and let the words take me where they would. As is often the case, it got a little dark.
If you ask around for people’s definition of “the gospel,” you’ll find there are different emphases concerning what the “good news” is about. Many will say it’s good news about God’s Kingdom. For some reason, I usually think of the gospel as “good news” about the availability of eternal life in a resurrected body in a restored creation. It’s very good news indeed! But that good news implies bad news, the news that apart from grateful reliance on God (my own words for “faith”), “life’s too short.”
See my closely-related prose poem “Prosaic Parrot.”
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[22] Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Romans 1:22-23 NIV
I’m slowly crawling through Romans these days. Currently, I’m pondering how and why God’s “wrath is revealed” against the unrighteousness of man (Romans 1:18). At the same time, I have perennial curiosity about what it means that man was made in God’s image. [As an aside, my current thinking is that man was fashioned to reflect God’s invisible character in the visible world. For instance, as God “sees” us metaphorically, we literally look and behold others (thus becoming aware of their needs and inherent beauty). It’s our behavior by which we image God—or fail to do so.] Given my fixation with the imago dei, it’s likely I’m unfairly injecting the concept into Paul’s exposition. You may notice the resulting conflation in my little poem.
Matting and framing are how I chose to represent “worship” or “idolatry.”
“On unpleasant paper” expresses the corruption of succeeding generations. It may also reveal something laughable in my finicky nature. Does anyone remember thermal fax paper that came in rolls for use in fax machines? Maybe you have to be old and “on the spectrum” to remember how gross that paper was to the touch!
“Self portrait” serves here as a metaphor for the imago dei–man’s being created in God’s image.
Leonardo da Vinci is not to be confused with God. He just happens to have done a self portrait that suited my poem. On the other hand, one could argue that he reflected God pretty well in terms of his own creativity and of appreciating God’s creation! When it came to seeing, da Vinci saw very well.
Did these comments open up the poem for you? I’d love to get your feedback! Reply by email or comment below.
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(frame image adapted from one by Alexander Lesnitsky on Pixabay; da Vinci self portrait is from Wikimedia Commons)
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As I continue to struggle—and mainly fail—to understand Romans, I was struck this morning by Paul’s parallel statements about RIGHTEOUSNESS and WRATH:
[17] For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” [18] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
Romans 1:17-18 NASB1995
PHRASES TO NOTICE IN THE POEM:
“Night and Day by moon and sun” depicts the impersonal, unending aimlessness of someone who scorns God’s guidance.
“Grateful, leaning pray” expresses my current understanding of saving faith: it is grateful reliance on God.
“Older Brother’s warm embrace” This re-imagines the story of the Prodigal Son. But in this case, the older brother is not bitter but embracing. Also, I chose “embrace” as an expression of the believer’s being IN Christ.
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A TIME FOR TELLING, A TIME FOR BEING TOLD
Back when I was eagerly adding clients to my website business, there were three memorable occasions when I turned down the new business after an initial interview. In each case, the would-be client was some older gentleman who spent two solid hours talking about himself and never asking me a single question.
I expect to be each of my clients’ “webmaster for the long haul.” So, years and years of disrespect is something I avoid when I have the choice.
That being said, I am thankful for some other memorable occasions, when the Lord enabled me to serve someone else by listening and asking key questions. I imagine counselors are richly blessed in this way….
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When you live in the same neighborhood for 30 years, and are moderately outgoing, you learn who’s pleasant to chat with and who you’d rather avoid. Racism is a huge turnoff, as are complaints like “the neighbor’s sprinkler is getting my grass wet.”
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In a short video that I watched recently, Neil deGrasse Tyson explained how it is that there are spots on Earth’s surface that are farther from the center of our planet than the summits of our tallest mountains. The continual spinning of Earth has caused its equator (actually, a latitude south of the equator) to broaden out. The result is that our planet is now pear-shaped.
More recently, a friend was demonstrating the security footage that his Tesla recorded as we were approaching the car upon returning from a hike. There on the dashboard screen was this fellow approaching the car on my side and getting in. He, too, was a bit pear-shaped. Let’s just say the camera adds ten pounds–I’ve got to spin it somehow!
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Hopefully I don’t need to comment on this one. Right?
I’ve participated in a pancake toss once or twice. It was at Family Camp at Horn Creek Ranch in Colorado. Out on the porch of the cafeteria, the chef stood behind a griddle scooping perfectly cooked pancakes and tossing them out to us campers. We were supposed to catch the pancakes on our paper plates. I think we were successful 80% of the time. But we laughed 100% of the time.
By the way…. Log Cabin is what I grew up putting on my mother’s perfect pancakes. It’s what I like. Susan’s folks were from New England, so maple syrup is the only reasonable topping to her way of thinking. Oh well… you can’t be right all the time.
(background image adapted from a photo by Яна Тикунова on Pixabay)
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
In his letter to Jewish believers scattered throughout the Roman Empire, James has his readers imagine their response to a poor man walking into their church. Something I hadn’t noticed until this morning is that James has the poor man coming in AND going out in shabby clothes.
First the coming in:
For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in…
James 2:2
And then the going out:
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
James 2:15-16
The verses between this coming and going talk about impartiality. If you’re like me, you interpret that as “Don’t treat the rich visitor better than the poor visitor.” But James goes beyond such passive impartiality. He wants to know what you’ve done for that poor man between the welcome and dismissal, between the coming and the going. Are you sending him off just as poorly provisioned as when he came in? Notice the last of James’ examples of proper, faith-fueled hospitality:
And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?
James 2:25
First, the title “Put On Mercy” has two meanings. The Apostle Paul urges believers
Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering;
Colossians 3:12 (NKJV)
That’s the first meaning of “Put On Mercy”: be clothed in a virtuous manner of life.
But sometimes we fake it. Then our would-be virtue might just be put-on mercy: fake mercy.
In the last stanza, I cast doubt on whether or not the speaker is really putting on mercy. The speaker is assumed to have faith. Does he dress accordingly? Really? He’s warm and filled. Does merely wishing the same for the poor visitor amount to mercy?
Second, “shabby clothes” in this poem are an impersonal shell for the unloved, ignored visitor. The words don’t even acknowledge the person, but refer to him or her as “all that is–or, in poverty is not–within them.”
Third, “mercy me” is an odd phrase. We utter it to express alarm or agitation. But what if some non-standard English speaker thought that it constitutes an actual plea for mercy. Could we hear it that way? Would we respond with God’s mercy? Or would the mendicant leave without our response?
Finally, “all that is within” may serve as a faint bit of fake holy talk. It echoes a well-known Psalm:
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!Psalm 103:1 (ESV)
[Does that commentary help you understand the poem better? I’d love to hear from you! (If you received this poem via email, click on the poem title. That will take you to the blog where there is a comment form. If you’re shy in your response, just respond to the email!)]
(background image based on a photo by Gianni Crestani on Pixabay)
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Isolation and alienation have probably affected my outlook on life far more than I consciously understand. Consider the following from my youth:
In the decades since, I got along fairly comfortably in white evangelical culture… until my late 50s. Beginning in 2016, and then rapidly accelerating in 2020, I began to distance myself from that culture. Now, I once again feel the isolation and alienation of my youth.
Here’s how that came about…. At the very time I began to recognize selfishness and racism in my own heart, a large majority of white evangelicals began to embrace and trumpet these sins.* When terrible events of 2020 and 2021 afforded opportunities to inspect our hearts and to repent and reform, too many doubled down instead on their love of power and privilege. Their hard hearts led them to hate good men and to love evil men. (Here’s a poignant poem I wrote at that time: “Lord’s Day Vision.”)
Am I blameless in all this? NO! I played a small part in promoting the drive for power and privilege until I saw what I had been doing. Even now, I keep having to bury my former affections, to douse the flame of former loves.
Does this poem make more sense to you now if you read it again with that background? I’d love to know! Comment below (click the poem title if you’re seeing this on email; there’s a comment form on the blog).
A related poem, especially with regard to God’s mercy in reforming us is “To A Misguided Cedar.“
__________
*I say “began to embrace and trumpet….” A better word may be “revealed.”
(background image cropped and tinted from a photograph by Peter Balog on Pixabay)
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(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
I don’t really have much to say about this poem. The image of waves licking the world’s shores simply jumped out of my waking mind one morning. I’ll blame it on my silly muse.
Here’s a simpler version:
I awoke from a snore
With this curious thought:
The waves are licking
The melting shore.
(background image by Alexa on Pixabay)
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
I don’t have the energy right now for yet another essay on the frustrations stemming from my leaky memory. But here are some bullet points. Is there a pattern?
How about you? I’d love to hear your bullet points!
(background image by Andreas Lischka on Pixabay)
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I keep thinking about what I was trying to communicate in this poem. It may be this: we all have a different tolerance for assumptions. I have trouble with people who jump to conclusions with hardly any thought (the first stanza).
Others are better about checking their assumptions (the second stanza), but they still skate over many facts without considering them. Such people are efficient in their thinking (think of Daniel Kahneman’s “thinking fast”). Still, such people can get irritated when their assumptions are questioned. They don’t want to slow down to consider weaknesses in their thinking. I get along fine with such people… for the most part.
How about the third stanza? One cannot live without making millions of assumptions every day, so nobody REALLY lives fully in the third stanza. But some of us come closer than others. Just ask my wife. When something goes missing in the house, I am methodical in my search; I look in places where she doesn’t bother looking. She’s being efficient; I’m being thorough. I once found something valuable that was missing (keys, if I remember correctly) IN THE TRASH BIN IN THE ALLEY. Yeah, remember that? Boom! I’ll always have the keys in the trash can story to excuse my slow thinking!
(background image cropped and tinted from original by Albrecht Fietz on Pixabay)
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
When I posted this on social media, more than one of my really bright Facebook friends responded with a laughter emoji. One of them even wrote, “You have a sense of humor.”
Honestly… I wasn’t feeling very humorous. My sarcasm was dark humor at best, and I was mainly feeling the darkness. It’s the darkness of a fear I’ll never find my audience in this lifetime.
Artists, including musicians, painters, and poets, are candles burning in the night. We try to shed light on beauty and truth, but feel snuffed out instead by those who are content with darkness.
I HAVE THIS COMING TO ME
I confess habitual laziness of my own when it comes to art I don’t understand. For instance, I’m woefully ignorant of meaning in great paintings. But when someone explains a Caravaggio, or a Rembrandt, or a Bruegel, I listen in humble appreciation. Then I realize how much of beauty and truth I’ve been missing.
(background image is cropped from a photograph by Perlinator on Pixabay of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”)
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CONFESSION
This last week has been unnecessarily tough for evangelical Christians. Some were deeply offended by the world.* Others were dismayed** that the first group took offense. I’m solidly in the latter camp. But I’m NOT PROUD of an unloving, disdainful edge in my own response. I must answer for my own response, not for others’.
(background image by Alberto Adán on Pixabay)
*For future reference, this was about the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
**There are good reasons for the dismay, but that’s not my point here.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Do you ever feel like, “God isn’t pleased with me and never will be”? I suspect that is a thought that hangs over many of us, even those who are saved through faith in Jesus Christ. Well, every now and then, I just feel like saying “Go jump in a lake” to the accuser. In plain language, I suspect that in Heaven, God will express far more pleasure with us than Satan would have us anticipate.
There are two odd, but purposeful wording choices in this poem:
1) “be proven to have been” That could easily have been “prove to have been,” which would be far easier to read! But I wanted to steer clear of any mistaken notion that the “wine” will do the proving. It’s God who will prove anything. I can imagine Him saying “Here, look at this,” or “Here taste this,” or “Consider how this servant demonstrated my goodness.”
2) “favored year” was originally “favorite year.” But then I realized that was too exclusive, which was the opposite of my intent! More than one year can be favored. When God’s the one favoring, all the years can be favored. And again, “favored” suggests the year receives God’s grace and provision, not that it earns his approval. From my reading of Scripture, “favored” is closer to reality than “favorite.”
(background image by “beasternchen” on Pixabay)
