In the Gleaning (World Communion)

"In the Gleaning"

After the Harvest, the Gleaning,

gathering what's left out, behind,

overlooked, even blown, thrown away,

valuing something rejected,

making do with what's found,

rescued, salvaged along the way -

recycling, thrifting, yard-saleing,

dumpster-diving -- discipling?

Jesus calling on those in whom

little or nothing generally seen?

Himself gleaned from a dung-heap?

Think it's easy being gleaned?

Lowest on food chain, closest to Earth?

Anawin, animals, littlest of living things:

Elephants fighting, grass suffering --

Who thinks we're the Only Elephant now?

O LORD, what are we human beings?

That you are even mindful of us?

Much less that you who make

everything care pointedly for us?

What are we lacking that you

make us little less than yourself?

Waste image, dominion, communion on us?

Among all exquisiting works of your hands?

A spiritual seeker should carry

two stones in a pocket. On one it

should be inscribed, "I am but dust and

ashes." On the other, "For my sake was

the world created." And the seeker

should use each stone as needed.

(Rabbi Bunam)

Shofar sounds, Jubilee echoes, all is

forgiven, again and again! "Every morning

you wake up to something that in

all eternity never was before, and

never will be again. And the you

that wakes up was never the

same before, and will never be

the same either."

(Frederick Buechner)

"We all need somebody to glean on!"

Who is not born to sharing?

Borrowing future, inheriting past?

Paul exhorting Timothy: relish your

mother, your grandmother, three

generations of faithful already!

Holding our past with their hands!

Handing past off, and on, to us all!

"Not too far away and busy with

eternal things to take notice of

one small child . . . The line still holds."

(Marie Livingston Roy)

Tiniest faiths, tiniest seeds, made up

already of everything needed to grow,

mature, bud, bloom, burst forth in fruit;

humans alone among creatures unfinished?

Anything else in all creation not been here

since everything else created --

even as we now discover anew?

Seeds represent entire civilizations,

miniaturized to fit into palms of our hands.

When a venerable seed perishes, as with

the loss of a human manuscript,

human culture dies by degrees --

vanishing seeds, vanishing species,

forests, habitats, languages, cultures --

for ravenous sake of standardized trade,

excluding thousands heirloom varieties;

monocropping, maximizing every efficiency,

patenting modified seeds, unintended

crossbreeding, intended downsizing --

We're collapsing ownership of

the land into hands of very few people.

We're indenturing farmers in different

ways -- to land and to bankers owning

the land. (William Weaver)

"We cannot do great things, only

small things with great love."

(Mother Teresa)

Word, Law, Spirit tied up in

our very beings -- guts, throats,

laughters, tears, foods, drinks --

Universal Law: "Eat, and be eaten!"

Jesus no legally "strict constructionist,"

more like "judicial activist:"

You have heard it was said of old . . .

But I say unto you! Bearing my own

witness! "Liberating renovationist!"

From illusions of past to presumptions of

future! Shocking hearers and fearers

alike: "I am the Holy One, your God,

who brought you out of bondage!"

Law for remindering, who brings

who out of what, over and over again,

"Households of Freedom," living

ecologies, working economies, out-

reaching ecumenicities, room in

each for all peoples, traditions,

"House Rules," Commandments,

fleshed and souled out, everyone

partners, partying to one another,

none finally saved, freed, healed apart,

especially cast out, or never cast in,

else insiders never rest easy, tenants

no longer serving interests of

absentee landlords, laying their

law onto others -- "The law cannot

make you love me; it can make you

take your foot off my neck!" (Dr. King)

Manly Moses, numerically nimble,

calmly declaiming, Commandments

relating to "God."

One, Creating us all from One Source,

all persons, all peoples, thus equals!

Two, Creating each directly, no lesser

gods, religions, cultures between us!

Three, Creating Name's use, for

building up, not tearing down,

blessings of life, of love, never

vain violence, docile destruction.

Four, Creating life once and each day,

timelessly, spacelessly, treasuring

holiness, task to be freed.

Commandments relating us each to

other, interpersonally, intercommunally,

world risking each instance our existence --

Five, Connecting all generations,

descendants, ascendants, inheritors

all, less like landlords sending for

harvest, fomenting world fear, of

whose rightful reapings we

rip off, more like meek

mass-inheriting Earth.

Six, Connecting to all other lives,

taking any life act of self-violence.

Seven, Connecting by words --

promises, vows, covenants, commitments,

potentially living, lasting, forever.

Eight, Connecting through

plenty for all, Earth's resources

held in common, meant to be

shared, weakest fed first,

weapons stealing from

starvingest children.

Nine, Connecting, evolving,

unfixed, unfixing, answering above,

askings below, "experimenting in

truth," trusting true-given

witness in each, seeing, hearing for

selves, brightening with believing.

Ten, Connecting World House,

Many Rooms, for us all! Together!

Beloved, Beloving Community . . . .

How forlorn our cities would be,

absent thirds of their populations,

even more in work force and kids:

Singing Spanish in this Foreign Land!

Solidarity now, sustainability then,

what wars do they wage, what

weapons brandish, what in the

world but word, work, worship?

Life, labor, love -- undocumentable?

We, they, unavoidable, inescapable?

Nation-state's long, as we see it,

not altogether constructive,

historical contribution complete?

Dinosauric? Debauched? Displaceable?

Immigration not enforceable, only

embraceable? One birthplace as

meet as another? No foreign

lands left to sing in?

Commandable people, rekindled,

smoke above Sinai, stench below

Calvary, unallured, unalloyed, with

lyings like gods from high places,

sacraments pledging allegiance,

resistance, visibly signing

where we are standing,

whom we are standing with,

whose orders we're standing under,

God helping us do no other,

releasing fruits, abundance of

Jubilee Harvest, lest landlord

go looking, less troublesome lessees!

Commanded what we are to do,

reminded what is done for us,

everything asked of us also supplied:

Following orders of one liberating,

risking death for one giving life,

obeying law justing, gospel rejoicing,

confessing to one forgiving, hearing

No from one shouting Yes!

Take! Bless! Eat! Drink!

Wash! Serve! Love! Go forth!

Not to kill but, as need be, to die!

Re-member me! Render me

present again, and again!

Fatigue of Seeing Things (September Ordinary)

"The Fatigue of Seeing Things"

Time to look up to whom we look down on,
stand over with those who have stood under us,
ground of our being deeper than
any appearance, any avoidance,
infectiously incognito as Jesus.

God, grieving god, weeping god,
"at love withheld, at strength misused,
at children's innocence abused;"
God, grieving god, bleeding god,
"at anger's fist, at trust betrayed,
at women battered and afraid;"
God, grieving god, crying god,
"at hungry mouths, at running sores,
at creatures dying without cause;"
God, grieving god, waiting god,
"for stones to melt, for peace to seed,
for hearts to hold each other's need."
(Shirley Erena Murray)

What other species grows so grievous,
randomizing, recidivizing, rampaging
harm at expense of Creation's intent:
Meaning to squander abundance on all,
Holy Spirit of Just Distribution,
gifts and graces, riches, resources,
Pentecost pivoting history's world wonder:
None gathering left living in needs unmet!

No matter that no office-holder or -runner
ventures revealing how fractured our world,
what deep-chasmed chaos --
countable wealthy, infinite poor,
so many Haitis, like Lazarus, washed
up on doorsteps, traversed everyday,
never seen, never known, "failed
nation states, world without winners --
our every adversity somebody's
"growth opportunity?"

We brought nothing into this world,
so that we can take nothing out of it.

Vineyards of unimpeached Promise,
Vineyarders welcoming last-comers first,
no one worth less, no one worth more,
Human Rightings, affirming actions --
full employment, livable wage, daily labor,
daily life, daily love -- passionate economics,
ecologics, ecumenics -- each leading to other --
Spirited Spiraling, out of control!

Abeyance of war one long conversation,
cosmic redundance, promising yes,
doing no; promising no, doing yes;
endless exchanging -- words, symbols, vows --
actions following fittingly from them?

Pausing, beginning again;
multiple covenants, at odds and loose ends,
ever legible, speakable, negotiable, changeable,
forgivable, even perfectible?

From reading minds to speaking hearts --
World, save the United Nations!

Wherever, whenever, two or three gather,
flowing forever, fantasy to and from Fate --

"You are contained in me. But how can we
contain you in ark or tabernacle or --
You cannot. Where, then?
In your heart. Come. Still?
I will be with thee. Who am I?
You are that I will be. Come."
(Madeleine L'Engle)

Troubled Talker, trapped in
trepadacious interpretation, God to people,
People to god; People forever searching a home,
perceiving all image as refuge:
Synagogue: "house of study, house of prayer,
house of assembly;" School: "house of books;"
Hospital: "house of sick people;" Cemetery:
"house of the buried;" All the Above: "House of Life!"
(Myra Soifer)

Biblically-wisdomed women, unconquerably
strong of spirit, free to choose, equal of any;
hardworking, undomesticated, organized,
skillfully buying land, greenly growing it,
outreaching, resourceful, entrepreneurial;
able to "laugh at the time to come," already
deep-grounded in common good, public life:
What benefits all belonging to all, increasing
sum over its parts, "gentleness born of wisdom,
steeping connection, abiding relation, unhaunted
by wondering what it was, would
have been, like to belong.

"What would people
look like if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
pinned against time?" (Ellen Bass)

We cannot be found without losing,
cannot come home without going away.
Where have we been? Who have we been?
Who have we been with? What have we done?
Paul's only credential: "invective, witch hunts,
arrogance" -- What more may we say of ourselves?
Does best in us even matter to Matter-Maker?
When worst in us always seems to suffice?

Jeremiah like day dead in summer,
globally warmed, hot brutal wind
scorching with hopeless exposure, on
barren heights of remotest desert,
encountering loose parts of ourselves,
forefacing with portents of dangerousness:

"Burning Man," Joan and John Baptists, putting on,
taking off, sackcloths, ashes, masks -- newly prophetic!
If catastrophe faces a people, a species, and sentinels
fail to warn those under their care . . . We live in
such a time: Global Warming. Ozone Depletion.
Overpopulation. Massive Starvation. Air and
Water Pollution. Topsoil Erosion. Deaths of
Coral Reefs and Oceans. Extermination of Species.
Continuing Threat of Nuclear Radiation from
Leaks, Dumps, Accidents . . . At a time when
every human resource should be trained on
surmounting these crises, torpor reigns.
(Walter Wink)

Where are our Jeremiahs, shitting, spitting
fire, saving matches, spilling out prayerful
guts for our wars; our sense of respect for failure,
that we can do nothing to stop them; our joy?
Grief overwhelming, hearts sickened with
cries of the poor, hopes shriveled by
misspent integrities.

Dare we incite, insight, ever darker interiors,
Mother Teresa, brightly surfaced for
charitable viewing enjoyment -- Yet,
"Who am I that You should forsake me?
The Child of your Love now become the most
hated one . . . thrown away as unwanted . . . ."
How much more water? How many more tears?
How much more lost are we able to be?

Jesus extending, perfecting prophecy, offering,
ransoming, once with his death, repeatedly with
resurrection, commending "dishonest wealth,"
surcharging self, canceling debt, building
relation, winnowing wealthy to healthier limits,
no longer gorging on greed out of
sore-gutted world: Steward of urgent shrewdness,
instant action, losing whole way of life off
those who owe him, whole way of warring,
all the wrong reasons, learning to live with
so little still left us to lose, looking, like Steward,
not upward but down, relieving, releasing
most desperate from debt.

What if Mother Teresa's darkness is a warning? . . .
What if she was just like us, saw problems,
responded, and got deeper and deeper into
the suffering of others because
there seemed to be no end to it? . . .
We suffer the fatigue of seeing
things we don't know how to
change without disturbing the world in
a way her wonderful works did not seem to do.
(National Catholic Reporter)

"Shocked and Awed" (September 11)

"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,

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)

"Living Wage" (Labor Sunday)

"Living Wage, Waging Life"

"Our life is more than our work.

And our work is more than our job." (Charlie King)

We are gifted, before anything else about us.

We are called, beyond anything we can be paid.

Do pickers, sorters, salvagers, packers

find Jesus in peaches? Jesus gritty,

under our nails? Jesus sticky,

all over our hands? Jesus shouldering

in on relentless routines on the line?

Job on the line, work on the line,

life on the line? Aching Jesus

invading our biceps? Sinking into

the smalls of our backs? Groaning out

from the balls of our feet? Jesus embodied

in peaches? In very slimmest of pickings?

Two hours' work buys a dozen eggs,

four hours a kilo of beans, eight hours

a kilo of beef, 12 hours a box of 30 diapers.

Work-dirty, wash-worthy, hands that defile?

Jesus' whole days touching, being touched,

open markets glutting, flaunted mortality,

teeming germs, diseases of deathly duration,

lying there waiting for, wailing for, him --

Defile no longer a drawer in the desk!

Desperate hearts trump dirty hands,

Purity Codes.

Moses the Sheep-Worker, Organizer of

Brick-Workers, Mentor, Model to

Prophetic Herd-and-Vine-Workers;

Paul the Tent-Worker, Truth-Worker,

could not be paid to preach, or to lie?

Jesus the Wood-Worker, Organizer of

Farm-Workers, Fish-Workers, the

Occasional Tax-and-Sex-Worker --

Working Class roots seeping deep among

Biblical Peoples -- Cursing of First Couple,

outsourced from Garden to Labor, Field-Work,

Home-Work, immeasurably marking

All Human Being.

Jesus, Rest from all Labors: Sabbath-

Worker? Jubilee-Worker? Curse-Reverser?

Unions, Churches, "Brothers," "Sisters,"

few places, few peoples remaining arenas,

Citizen-Work, Disciple-Work, picnicking,

plate-passing, singing, hearing-and-doing,

imitating of images in whom we're made --

"Those who hear and don't act are like

those who glance in the mirror and walk away,

and two minutes later have no idea

who they are, what they look like."

Equal rights, complete justice for all, in all

stations of life . . . principles of conciliation and

arbitration in industrial dissensions . . .

protection of the worker from dangerous machinery,

occupational diseases, injuries and mortality . . .

abolition of child labor . . . such regulation of labor

for women as shall safeguard the physical and

moral health of the community . . .

suppression of the "sweating system" . . .

gradual, reasonable reduction of hours of

labor to lowest practical point, with work for all;

and degree of leisure for all which is the

condition of highest human life . . . release from

employment one day in seven . . . living wage in

every industry . . . highest wage that each

industry can afford, and most equitable

division of products of industry that can

ultimately be devised . . . recognition of

Golden Rule and mind of Christ as

supreme law of society and sure remedy for

all social life. (First "Social Creed,"

Methodist Episcopal Church, 1908)

A Starting Place waiting to happen . . . .

Divine Shifts:

Cosmos: Six days on, one day off.

Creation: Six years on, one off.

Communion: Seven times seven years on,

Whatever It Takes off --

Rest, Restoration, Resource Renewal.

Once we were slaves in Egypt,

would have gone nowhere, become no one,

without Help, Who heard us in misery,

organized us, Direct-Action Plagues against

Pharaoh-Work, helped us escape and endure,

brought into land of fruits and good things,

as strangers, sojourners, aliens, exiles!

Who are we not to stay touched by this past?

Subject to visits, Stranger-Angels at any time?

"The stranger who dwells among you

shall be to you as one born among you,

and you shall love her or him as yourself,

for you were strangers in the land . . ."

Jesus simply ignoring distinctions,

who's legal, who's not -- any such

thing as "illegal" human, anyway?

Anything human "alien" to Who Makes Us?

Each in an Image, Images joined, Solidarity!

Walesa, Chavez, Huerta, Debs,

Mendes, Randolph, Ruether, Jones
Perkins, Lewis, Highlander, Hill,

Revs. Williams & Wyatt, Altgeld, Alinsky

Catholic Worker, Almanac Singers --

BeLaborous Legacy Lying on Line?
8-hour day, 40-hour week, fairer

wages, safer workplaces, child protection,

unemployment insurance, consumer boycotts,

pickets, Social Security, right to organize, bargain --

Participatory Democracy,

Practical Citizenship.

By piece, by hour, by job, by career,

every work, worker preciously co-creative --

Do I know who made this product?

Do I know who provided this service?

Do I see them make it or know they are there?

Do I know conditions of their lives and works?

Do I know if they are acknowledged, included?

Compensated in any progressive proportion to CEO pay?

Do they have any say, what they do, how they do it?

Do they feel any pride of achievement, investment of care?

What do I know about seedtime and harvest?

Assemblage and packaging? Transporting and

marketing? Selling and cleaning up safely after?

What do I know of damages products, services

do Common Good -- especially of children?!

Do I stop to consider insidious advertising?

Artificial stimulation, desire severed from need?

One thing to love a person -- even a working one!

But love a workplace? Employer? Huge corporation?

Burning Man meets Burning Bush,

Love on Fire with Justice, encountered, engaged --

Work of Witness: See people's sufferings;

Work of Attentiveness: Hear people's cries;

Work of Compassion: Move to people;

Work of Solidarity: Stand with people;

Works of Salvation, of Liberation:

Show people new-to-them Land,

nonetheless-promised others?

Moses now twice-removed --

rescued at birth, sisterhood of subversivity;

raised in privileged but flickering passion;

banished for exercised option of murder;

traceably glimmering, trackably glowing;

stammering, staggering, from place in

safe country home; from married and staked,

family business, shepherding patience,

persistence, endurance, resilience;

Imaginized improvisations!

Internalized oppressions!

Howard Zinn coaxingly calling us to

"revolt of the palace guard;" minimized,

muddled, middle and management classes,

keeping on track, sometimes on time,

all systems, structures, everyday life --

total cross-section, in towers, on planes:

like Peter, at once, Rock, Stumbling Block;

preaching 3000 to baptism first day;

40 years of it, have I reached 3000 yet?

To Peter, Jesus impossibly unsufferable;

yet, Rank-and-File, Peter, get back in line!

"Follow the Leader," bodies live ammo,

real lives burning, over, and over, not out.

Prophet-Making Moses (August Ordinary)

"Prophet-Making Moses"

No denying his destiny: Born to resisting unjust authority, redeeming unjust suffering, prophetically founding story shaping a people; echoed in Matthew's birth story: warning of parents, disobeying by magi, sneaking of baby past Herod to Egypt; everything else about us mere addition, comment, interpretation, to liberating, Exodusing, becoming archetypally a people; not yet, and never, quite, a nation, though at times we die trying, and even kill?
Are we sure we can handle being most feared? Within the nation, among the nations, we are trying to be and become?

Longtime covenanting one-by-one, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, sometimes their spouses; now all bound in Moses, Moses in all, assuming stiff-necked insistence, liberation's intentional discontent: Make us nation like any nation! Fraught tautly, with kings, with edicts, with armies, with war upon war!

Working-Class Origins, born into Slavery, only amusement making more love than war, even than bricks, belabored, belaboring, producing, reproducing, oppression breeding to proliferation, proliferation leading to infanticide: "hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor," contextualizing Mosaic beginnings; Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah, Puah, rebelling, refusing Pharaoh's commands, begetting us in disobedience, Hebrew mothers without spoiling, more than ready: "vigorous, giving birth before midwife comes to them."

My parents at first-birth time riffing on ease of Sacagawea, Birdwoman, Lewis and Clark Expedition, allegedly birthing so quickly, almost off-handedly, on open trail; my mother's doctor perplexed, her first words after unspeedy delivery: "To hell with the Birdwoman!"

Pharaoh breaks bodies, God of Moses makes souls? Subversiveness proving contagious? Sacraments of Sisterhood, Solidarity, transcending every conceivable difference; Moses' mother hiding him three months, trusting this god and this river, placing in basket to float amid very same reeds in time parting with first of walked-upon waters; conspiring, godlike example: Moses' sister strategically distanced to watch, to await, very daughter of Pharaoh, acutely surrounded, bathing alertly, spotting basket, summoning it, opening, seeing, embracing wholeheartedly; palace-based princess positioning status, attending, receiving, accepting advice of field-based slave; Moses' sister naming their mother his nurse for another mother, of whom there are never enough?

Raising Moses by cadre, revolutionary women, vesting in one here and now well-being of every child everywhere, hastening day, hosts of co-conspiring nurses and nurturers, refusing to order any one set of children off to harm any other, cooperating, communicating, crossing borders for saving a life, while their men and kings, even gods, play out vicious cycles of vengeance and grief.

"God" learning well from these women? I Will Be Who I Will Be adopting whole Children of Israel? Parenting through Moses, "the one who draws out,"
specializing in organized obstinacy, in whom divine fission, position, action betraying class interests, in spite of First World rank and privilege -- Do we not wonder whatever befalls this renegade daughter of Pharaoh, raising own child to be enemy leader, remaining protected, or extending self-risk? Possibly, "even though she drew child from the water, she could not draw connection between her life of safety and luxury, and his life of poverty and danger?" Probably, with support of her base, seeing in sisterly subterfuge new way of life, "critical moment in her long defection from courts of Pharaoh and Egyptian empire," defections we have yet to make? This "oldest record of civil disobedience in world literature," how does it end? How do we end it?

Dead Dreams, Dreamers (August Ordinary)

"Dead Dreams, Dreamers, Walking -- on Water?

Caller ID, reducing risk? Softening surprise? Whom we'll find on the other end? Verification exactly who thinks we need speaking to? Suspicion caller might be divine? Pursuant to panic: Who is this? What do you want with me? How did you find my identity? Sure this is not a wrong number? Any way I can ID my way out of this call? Squeamish, Security-obsessed; next to Dictatorship, Police State, never so many means of Identity Check, fears of Identity Theft, Identity much an industry as Reality? Are we really who we say we are? Doing what we appear to be doing? Or are we just making it up to no good? Species ever such mystery to ourselves as today? Creator's last laughs, behalf of Creation? State Trooper to Stopped Driver: "You got any ID?" "'Bout what?"

Or is it Feminized Faces and Features we'd rather not recall? Woman Wisdom! Sophia! "Let us make Humankind in Our Image, according to Our Likeness."
To/Gether! Fe/Male! From everlasting I was firmly set, from the beginning, before Earth came into being . . . I was a alongside, a mythical mistress craftsperson, delighting day after day, ever playful everywhere in the world, fulfilled in my being with daughters and sons of the whole human race.

Questioning stoniest sources, external authorities, oppressive peer pressures; Sophia, Spirit, erasing, writing directly on hearts, assuring of cosmic belonging, relieving by dream of Solomon, born of David, out of and into blood-letting, no matter, "I am only a child!" Always about to be cut short at that! "No one like you has been before you! No one like you shall rise up after you!"

But circumstances helped me. To correct a natural indifference, I was placed halfway between poverty and the sun. Poverty kept me from thinking all was well under the sun and in history; the sun taught me that history was not everything. (Albert Camus) I can scarcely wait till tomorrow when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day. (Stanley Kunitz)

We conquer, we preside, we secure, we tame, we quench. We are mocked, we are flagged, we are chained, we are imprisoned, we are stoned, we are sawn in two. Disciplines of dysfunction? "Five in one household divided, three against two . . . " Families forever falling, growing, apart -- remnants of lived faith? Pastimes of Patriarchy: Who are the brothers pissed at, really? Jacob, now Israel, nation-tainting, "loved Joseph more than any other of his children;" child of old age, pride of persistent prowess, parental pet, resplendent in "long coat with sleeves," unsuited for manual labor! Plenty of time on pristine hands, lolling, laxly, like royalty, even then dreaming? Committing poetry? Flagrantly, faultfully, feelinglessly, dispatching the favorite: Report on your brothers!

Some honor even among sibling rivals, beset, besaddled by Cain, Abel's blood crying out still, rupturing rest of Cain's restless existence; subservient sons discerning, Joseph's death likely compounded by Jacob's as well, selling, instead, for less than Judas does Jesus? Blood-soaking cloak, good as destroying, life lived as if dead to own brother, now chosen son good as dead to him, too -- How to curb penchants for perpetual, peevishly petulant pain? "There's a pale horse coming and I'm going to ride it, I'll rise in the morning my fate decided, I'm a dead man walking . . . It's just a dead man talking . . . Between our dreams and actions lies this world." (Bruce Springsteen)

Dead dreams, and dreamers, walking again? Crossing to other sides, changing equations? Sobered by blistering bloods of our century -- treading, at last, senseless slaughtering, unuttered dreading, of Hiroshima? ID-immolating?

If we refuse to speak truth to power, says the story, we will end up speaking lies or silence to the powerless -- and doing murder. If we refuse to see clearly, truthfully, the world our parents have bequeathed us, says the story, then we will be unable to make the world we want to make . . . It is almost as if God learns from the mistakes and failures of the earlier saga and starts over to work things out in another way. (Arthur Waskow)

One side of us Jewish, one Gentile? Going over to other side? Isn't that treason? Betraying every good reason to stay in the boat? Wading no waters? Making no waves? Unsuspecting how far our "little faith" carries? Dead dreams, dreamers, walking, talking, parting -- starting somewhere.

There was once a group of believers in nonviolence who gathered along a waterway in the Pacific Northwest. A giant submarine that could destroy all life on Earth was coming. The believers practiced in rowboats how they would blockade the submarine . . .

All the people in the rowboats, whatever our tactics, had the same faith in nonviolence that Peter has initially in walking to Jesus over the water . . .

On the day the submarine finally came, so did 99 Coast Guard boats, which the government had assigned to protect its world-destructive weapon . . . The Coast Guard sank some rowboats with water cannons, crushed others, boarded the mother ship with drawn guns, and tied up the believers in nonviolence like pigs waiting for a roast . . .

When Peter became aware of the wind he got frightened and began to sink. When we were confronted with the Coast Guard, we also experienced fear and got sunk quickly. So, a lack of faith? I remember, too, though, that when Peter began to sink he cried out in faith to the Lord, who reached out and saved him. I think the real alternatives were posed in our case, like Peter's, by the more enduring question of whether to surrender then to fear, or to realize how totally reliant on love we were to continue such experiments in faith. "Lord, save us!" was our way, like Peter's, to continue in future venturing out on the waters in the midst of great winds. (Jim Douglass)

Youthful Idealism -- Sundays nearest August 6 & 8

"Youthful Idealism"

People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle our skin, but to give up our enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. (Samuel Allman)

To whom can we be given up? What other hope is there for Earth? For Children? By what delusion dare we abandon, despair? Hosea from depths of own suffering able to hear and feel all: His God's heart splitting open, compassion metastasizing, no longer able, willing, to execute, carry out anger: "For I am God! I will not come in wrath!" Wrath-making not God, but choice-making, change-making are, disposing of angers, deploying of strengths; in Jesus deciding to die before killing -- again -- if God ever did? God gravitating toward Anne Frank, "ideals, and dreams, and cherished hopes," toward Sadako, flickering, trembling cranes:

The kind of God we choose to believe in the end makes all the difference . . . Until I discover the God in which I believe, I will never understand a thing about my own life . . . Made in the image of God, we grow in the image of God we make of ourselves. (Joan Chittister)
Grappling, goading, pleading for each others' blessings, like Jacob, just wanting to live to tell about it; even as Holocaust deniers, resenters, begin to outnumber survivors, endurers, ideological renderings replacing, crowding out eye-witness accounts: Who lives to tell about Death Camps? Atomic Bombs? Genocides and Ethnic Cleansings? Each of us living to tell about something? Own unrepeatable- and unforgettableness? Long-distance invincibleness? Joining in stories, faith-foolish salvation-struggles, even, especially, for soul of "One Who Acts Crookedly," one who deceives, who hustles, rustles, wrestles, "gets over," at points of crossing, of crisis, of kairos -- Still getting away with world as our plaything? Peoples as pawns in our power games? Resources as weapons at our commands? (Crusty, crunchy Aunt Jessie and I sneak from our beds to the TV in my grandmother's house late at night, cheering in mime, Vern Gagne against Dick the Bruiser!)

Jacob's whole world-wrestling way of life, waxing from womb, springing forth foothold on brother, announcing self serious contender; inveigling, untangling, extracting -- birthright from brother, blessing from father, two daughters, many servants, animals from father-in-law -- all merely preparing this crossing again, re-entering land of promise, now com-promised, justly expecting the worst -- anything wealth cannot sway his way out of? Fruits from procuring now fruits for securing? Alerting Esau to how much he possesses, sporting, comporting position to bargain for life, forgiveness, forgetfulness; Esau advancing, four hundred strong, reducing brother to pretense and bribe, still missing no tricks, even praying! Poised on promise, glorious destiny, countless progeny, about to be certified "Israel," who strive to be blessed, and be blessing, "Israel," from "Jacob," who never quit!

No matter how sorely wounded, refusing to be defeated, encountering all mysteries, power and grace, Creation herself, face-to-face -- yet telling about it! "Israel" for whom world even now waiting, aching, longing, corresponding to Jacob's own deepest soundings of self, years of work, sacrifice, exile, reckless inventiveness, restless evasiveness, nonetheless fearful, nonetheless fugitive, strangers, refugees -- In our own lands? To own peoples? Closest relations?

Elie Weisel: "God" of Hebrew Scripture loves being shown new things, new ways, by "God's (Many!) Children!" "Both were wounded: Jacob at the hip, the angel in his vanity. Yet they parted friends, or was it accomplices? Jacob accepted his aggressor's departure willingly; the latter, as if to thank him, made him a gift: a new name which for generations to come would symbolize eternal struggle and endurance in more than one land, during more than one night."

Much as "God" dealing and and from settings of power, postures of strength, doing so only in ways building up, redeeming, invoking, provoking: How big is our God? Big enough to lose a few skirmishes with us? Inducing, seducing our growing toward fitter partnership, fuller responsibility? God wins some, loses some, exhausts some to draw, "no decision" at best, inviting less fearfulness of our own weakness! Warring madness! Sublimate more addiction to dominate!
Reapproach, reappropriate Jabbock, River of Rockstacked Reckoning, our Jesus a Jew, the Christ, so we claim -- Jewish Messiah! Not charging Jews, nor anyone else, but Christians with coming, confessing, costing, to Jesus! Suffering sacraments, solidarities in, to, and through each generation . . .

All these replacement parts, dislocations, hip sockets wrenched out of joint with own bodies, exemplary excruciation! "While there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." (Eugene Debs) Then he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. They ate and were filled -- beyond measure!

Weapons That Heal -- Sundays nearest August 6 & 8

"Weapons That Heal, Food That Endures"

Judgment on David, perversion of sun, illusion of invincibility, releasing scourge deadly to world as faithlessness to his own house; credit him with allowance of hearing to prophet, unbound to tell us what we want to hear, scandalous to self-invested perspectives; credit him with discernment of outrageous rich man, protecting own abundance, accumulation, seizing the little to poor man's name, deserving to forfeit a life, for restoring semblance of one in wronged other; but credit him not with failure to find his own face in prophets self-shattering mirror of words, far sharper than swords, so slow, if ever, to sight sliver of self stealing sustenance from all the rest.

Violence, vengeance, rape, retribution: Nathan before us, upholding our image: Thirty thousand nuclear weapons, one hundred thousand times more explosive than Hiroshima, Nagasaki; not even to mention six hundred thirty-nine million "small arms" squeezing life out of our children. "We live in a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. It is a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we do about peace, more about dying than we do about living." (Omar Bradley) And more about killing than we do about dying?

Colman McCarthy, Center for Teaching Peace, "looking for world where it becomes a little bit easier to love, a lot harder to hate -- where learning nonviolence means we dedicate our our hearts, minds, time, money to a commitment that forces of love, of truth, of justice, of resistance to corrupt powers are seen as sane! Forces of fists, guns, armies, bombs are seen as insane!" Where, it is dreamed, child care is fully funded, new weapons require bake sales! One student's essay in full -- "Q. Why are we violent but not illiterate? "A. Because we are taught to read."

What life is worthy of calling to which we are called? Memory we are to leave? What food will perish? What will endure? "The first thing to be disrupted by our commitment to nonviolence will not be the system but our lives." How to be both forceful, nonviolent, at once? Morally forceful? Persuasively so? Gandhi's "weapon of the strong?" Leaving to David the swords, learning from Nathan the words, more dangerous, more transfigurative, than any sword -- "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Military history of Japan as offensive as any other, no one with any room to talk, nonviolent elephant in every closet, so much to forgive, to be forgiven, only way anything new might happen? Each hearing Nathan, "You are the one!" One counted upon to get it -- and get beyond!

I too, born in World War, have lived and written against this particular stupidity and pointless, hopeless pain in my agonizing days. Has even a single life thereby been saved? Who can say? Except that doing so saved mine. Oh, I could tell you about saved lives . . . Yes, poetry saves lives. All wars begin at home within the warring self. No, our poems cannot stop war, not his or any war, but the one that rages within which is the first and only step. It is a sacred trust, a duty, the poet's avocation. We write the poetry we must. (Sam Hamill) And live the poetry we write?

Today is like a bomb in each of our gardens, like Jesus, warning even now, never knowing just how, when, for what, our souls are required; preferring procuring such properties in world as might protect us from world! But there is a bomb in our garden, not leaving of its own volition, going by so many names, disguising deadlinesses, set to go off any time -- taking everyone possible with them? Any one bomb threatening all, Cain's genocide wiping out half their generation.

There is a bomb in my garden. I know I should call someone but imagine the hubbub: men in mackintoshes leaving boot prints in the peas, their heels pasted with scraps of tender lettuce, and I would be shunted off, barred from my home while others muck about in what is mine. No, I think I'll just let it be. Clean the exposed parts, buff it up, perhaps. Build a gazebo; plant roses. Listen to it tick. (Meg Jeffers) Jesus' story applied to each of our souls, to the Soul of the World -- Listen to us tick . . .

Just know we should call someone -- about Anne Frank, experimentation, extermination, concentration camps; about Sadako, radiation and "atom bomb sickness;" about Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium, "all this poison with half-life the age of the Earth." (Ellen Bass) How desperate, and how capable, capturing nuclear niceties, of healing, nurturing, saving, sustaining; yet with a bomb in our garden, our hearts, and nobody left to call about it but us.

Imagine! Half trillion dollars on weapons a year, distributed in and by us, governments in our names; some one-fifth world's scientists researching solely for military; relative peace some five hundred of thirty-six hundred recorded years human history; some three and a half billion of us (human beings) killed, murdered, in some fourteen thousand wars in short life of this species on planet, for whom all Species, Earth Herself, Sources, Resources, suffer -- no bullet random, no damage collateral, no anger extraneous.

Rich Fool: I need to Supersize My Economy! Lower taxes, drive-up interest, squander past, borrow future, tear down perfectly good barns, build even larger ones to replace them, hoard all goods, all grains -- as if to take them with me? As if Progressive enough, Successful enough, to outgrow the use of my soul? Consciousness? Conscience? Jesus: Not so fast! Never know what crisis, what call coming next, only that one, or more, coming; in all choices choosing for children or selves; "And a little child shall lead them." "God," if ever, no longer needingto sort who is to punish, who is to blame; rather, "like those who lift infants to their cheeks," longing to lead us to kindness, wrap us with love, bend to us, feed us, choose us over war.

Hiroshima Haunting, Hunting - Sundays nearest August 6 & 8

"Hiroshima Haunting, Hunting"

"We are all survivors of Hiroshima." (Robert Jay Lifton)

Reliving memory, reviving hope, works of the Holy Spirit, re-membering, re-calling, much, and far back, as we can; piercingly piecing together, new, different ways, all yet disfigured, dismembered, destroyed and deadened in us;
learning to listen, to, with, for Specific and General Dead, in and after the bombings, (Seventy percent war casualties now civilian!), speaking their language with us, "filling us in -- filling us in," (Daniel Berrigan) lest we dare try to "speak normal, words in the normal order," ever again! (Mark Kaminsky)

"It may be only by descending into this hell in imagination now that we can hope to escape descending into it in reality at some later time." (Jonathan Schell) War, violence first fettering failures of our imaginations: We are no good at creating weapons we then do not use? Or do not use us?

Of kings and worldly powers, David perhaps without peer, revered, respected, only retrievable root of Messiah; now covenanter turned coveter, arrogant by dint of power-position, right of might, doing what hardly ever is kept, by self or other, from being committed, uncovered, or covered up: "Do not be disturbed by this," David to General Joab, uncritical carrier-out, royal plot, betraying Uriah, loyalest subject-soldier of all: "Do not let this thing appear to be evil in your sight." No longer trusting in our own perceivings, what's being done in our names, without counsel, advice, or consent -- Is evil ever only if and how we behold it? How we are beholden? Beheld?

"More than one hundred seventy thousand people died instantly or within hours. Few of them were soldiers." (Susan Adams) How do we wonder where God learns to weep? Wars in our times, our technologies, lingering limitlessly, festering infinitely -- in every vacuous dissemblance, self-assured unawareness: "In a hundred years, nearly two hundred million civilians have died on this beautiful Earth of armies, governments, causes, and platforms." Any escaping Creator's anguishing as any parent? World's Children remaining best hope?

To go in the direction of the threat, to face the enemy with our precious lives,
and the lives of our children and our children's children in our hands, to seek humanity in the hearts of our enemies -- this is the great work of mothers and nations . . . A dead enemy cannot be our friend. (Jeanette Rankin)

Ours only atomic bombings world ever has known, or disowned? Only destructive use, ever, very Energies of Creation! Universe! Life Itself! Work of remembering all the more sacred, renewed every breaking of bread, every sharing of cup: Remembering Me! Remembering Them! Neither rejecting past nor projecting future horrors, assigning no blame, assuaging no guilt, acknowledging Humans, youngest, most precocious, precarious Species, like Icarus now challenging Sun, Creation's Source and Substance . . .

This fire represents the power of the sun, the power of light and heat, the energy that knits together the nucleus of the atom itself, the basis of all matter. For billions of years these great matrices of energy have upheld all existing things, the sun bringing light and warmth to our planet, causing all things to grow, the energy locked in the nucleus of the atom, holding together the foundations of matter itself . . . (Rosemary Reuther)

Nearing waters, bearing witness, insatiable thirstings, atomical victims; one day whole world holding breath for rescue of sailors off ocean floor; next day for safe return astronauts from outer space; who held breath then, held breath there? World's Life Continuum fragile, unstable, every last nation subject-hostage, nuclear terror -- Starting with us? Ending with us? Imaging Who?

Tolling bells, folding cranes, holding sunflowers, mixing ashes with waters, reenacting loving remembrance, active resistance, to "the human war with ourselves, the war against earth, against nature." (Denise Levertov) Trees rejoicing, our slightest attendings, lifeoffering light enveloping world, not condemning but saving, yet we, to this time, opting for light that destroys -- ever noticing war does not work? Weapons, for all trillions we spend on them, useless to God in us? Calling Earth "Home," depending on her disarmament, while never disclosing, uncloseting guns of our own bedrooms?

We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want peace with half a heart and half a life and will, war, of course, continues, because waging war is, by its very nature, total -- but waging peace, by our own cowardice, is partial . . . There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because making peace is at least as costly as making war -- at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake. (Daniel Berrigan)

Daring dreams, walking waters, step or two at a time, falling, flailing, trying, dying, uncertainly as any other; those doing least to cause bombings suffering most, even self-blaming; those causing most suffering suffering least, never self- but victim-blaming, weapon-excusing, -exonerating. Hauntings, huntings of horror, of hope, no matter how battered the boats of our lives, all we ever have held to, all holding us, shaken, shattered to shards, Jesus looming, ghostily, still modeling, step at a time, as we sink.

We are holding candles: we kneel to set them afloat on dark river as they did in Hiroshima. We are invoking saints and prophets, heroes and heroines of justice and peace, to be with us, to help us stop the torment of our evil dreams . . . Windthreatened flames bob on the current . . . They don't get far from shore. But none capsizes, even in swell of boat's wake. The waxy paper cups sheltering them catch fire. But still the candles sail their gold downstream. (Denise Levertov) Still the candles, all of us, in every land, of every age, sail our gold downstream -- and up?

Holding Out Where Ex-seed-ingly Hard!

"Holding Out Where Ex-seed-ingly Hard!"

Might as well take a whore as a spouse; vow-torn nation conducive to nothing but faithlessness, trustlessness; given so much, yet acting on no Source of Gift, no Covenant with one another, no marriage, no union, no mutual responsibility; hiring whores, feeling good without deeper cost, wishful for "feel good" God, of appearances; toxically dumping sins on our children, provoking their bitterest defamations:

"God Will Reap What God Sows,"
"These People Are Not To Be Pitied,"
"These Are Not Even My People!"

Yet and still, God being God, cannot help Godself, trying again, and again, God-set against giving up -- what else can it mean to be Resurrectionary! Nonetheless growing wiser about us, as any parent learns loving own children!
If ever God was a War-God at all, "I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war!" Shamelessly undeserving our saving, reachable only by One Being Like Us, a Child, unfazeable by bought-out priests, profiting prophets, patronizing splendor -- salary, sharkskin, skyscraper, success -- offering no options to kingly seductions -- Military-Industrial-Security-Incarcerational complexes, crass concentrations, craven corruptions.

Paul: "Instead of doubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us" -- Simply embrace! Miracles of provision, proliferations of plantings: from expectable eight-fold or ten-fold increase, to exhorbitant hundred-fold, sixty-fold, even thirty-fold -- exceeding everything! Exposing all our audacities of austerity, persuasions of poverty, mindsets of scarcity -- contradistinguishing sower's casual, carefree confidence; scatterings of plucky persistence, stubborn survival, no matter "conditions on ground," odds against us -- pecked, withered, choking as we are on circumstance and condition!

Sower even seeming to care, much less contain or control, how far afield seeds are flung? Oblivious to birdiness, stoniness, weediness? Attentioning less who we are not, what we lack, than who we are, what gifts are hid in whatever we got? No blaming of victims! No condemning of seeds that fail, soils that abet them. If we do not use all our seeds, just as they're given, spreading them freely, fully, apt to miss out on soil of best chance to grow in. Without trying, at least, to save, to liberate, free and include, everybody, surely will miss out on somebody -- run risk of not saving anybody -- Gospel Living so adamant: so all-or-nothing! Keep sowing seeds, no matter what -- only proposing, never disposing -- nor pretending worthiness to receive. Creation revolving around us? Or shining in us and through us? Ex-seed-ing endurance through rocking resistance: "I just want to go the distance? (Rocky) Even Sower lands one seed in four . . .

Grounding in "faith facts" as well as in natural ones, rejoicing in creative, dynamic in-tenseness, where religion and science, mundane and miraculous, engage and embrace one another! Who knows what finally happens -- or why? Faith communities born raising questions: What else is going on here? What else -- more than meets the eye? What else -- more than fits the tradition? What else -- more than suits the logic? What else -- more than avoids the risk? What else -- yet to be given new Pentecost, Jubilee, vision and voice? What kind of seeds do we think we are anyway? Yielding from isolation, insulation, to interdependence, acknowledging all share One Fate of One Earth! How easy, how arbitrary and accidental, for me, for us, to fall anytime, anyplace . . .

Seed to soil, leaven to loaf, salt to meat, light to hill, death to life -- If I should die before I wake, all my bones and sinews take. Put me in the compost pile to decompose me for a while. Worms, water, sun will have their way, returning me to common clay. All that I am will feed the trees and little fishies in the seas. When radishes and corn you munch, you may be having me for lunch! And then excrete me with a grin, chortling, "There goes Lee again!" (Lee Hayes)

No longer affording straight, narrow ascents, long-laddered escapings from Earth shared with every Other -- One hundred ninety-two nations -- and counting! (South Sudan making one ninety three!) How dare there be room only for One at the Top? One over All? Eternally questing perfection, upwardly mobile forever, heavenly state of comfort, personal glory, head trip right out of our bodies? Ladder our way up to rest in God? Or God's way down to wrestle in us? Who descends for no favored few but for all -- beginning with First Mother Sarah, laughing at angels, suspecting of old-aged birth announcement, dancing no more ups-and-downs, only ins-and-outs? Spreading Circle to all who come in -- or out?

"The image of Sisyphus pushing his personal boulder up the eternal mountain grips me as I push, transforms my labor into consciousness, reshapes my grasp on destiny." (Gerald Forshey)

Room always for more in the Circle; how quickly the Ladder is filled! Ladders tending to hierarchy, violence, ruthless independence; circles to democracy, strong gentleness/gentle strength, interdependence; ladders to jealousy, judgmentalism, abstraction, distance, linearity, ladder-likeness; circles to pride, acceptance, nurture, sensuality, curvature, circle-likeness; ladders either immanent or transcendent theism, separation love of neighbor from love of what's at the top, circles panentheistic, neither God in everything, nor everything in God, but both! All at once! Mestizo! Utter Transparency: Love of Neighbor IS Love of God! (Matthew Fox)

Jacob's whole life getting up, getting over, at odds with Esau even in womb; (Interests of Full Disclosure: We birthed a later-life Jacob, after adopting Jeff and Jane, who liked reminding him, he was mistaken, they were chosen -- Abraham, Sarah at it again!) life on lam, flight in fear, forever dread, meeting again! Yet, indisputably, stemming from Single Source. One Womb, Many Peoples! One Seed, Many Fruits. Jesus warning of premature judging -- judging at all? Letting wheat, weeds grow together; nothing outside can defile us, only psychoses, projections on others. How would we not tend to judge prematurely, impetuously? Jacob's whole laddered life circle-dancing toward Esau?

One of my hands is black and one white . . . One part of me is being strangled, while another part horribly laughs. Until it changes, I shall be forever killing and being killed. (Kenneth Patchen)

One hand black, one white; one male, one female; one young, one old; one gay, one straight; one Israeli, one Palestinian; one English-speaking, one any number of other tongues! One born in U.S., one in place we call "foreign." One of my hands is victim, one executioner . . . "Where can I go from your spirit, O LORD; Or where can I flee from your presence?"

Survival of the Fittingest

"Survival of the Fittingest"

Dr. King's campaign, Garbage Workers in Memphis, envisioned as "Going Down Jericho Road," "dangerous kind of unselfishness;" Jesus plucking question of "Eternal Life," out of repertoire, or thin air, positioning "on dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho;" one stopping there risking, "not to be passionate by proxy," choosing for common capacity of you and me, "to project the 'I' into the 'thou,'" Jesus -- routinely? -- reversing one question with another, or with parable, one never-ending question!

Nitty-gritty not Priest's and Levite's "If I stop what will happen to me?" but Samaritan's "If I do not stop to help, what will happen to him?" Diverting to "causal root," avoiding "individual effect?" Bypassers on self-important ways, organizing "Jericho Road Improvement Association?"! Akin to kids' cat-quick quip, "Daddy, we know you love the whole world -- what about us?"!
On the one hand we are called to play "Good Samaritan" on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we will come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed, so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they journey life's highway. (Dr. King)

"Given moment" deflects to "big picture," no way for us to pass by on some other side, nor to let ourselves be passed by! Jesus walking all roads, intrinsically interruptible, so much desperation forbidding him ever pass by!
Even Jesus' awareness expanding, consciousness rising, parabling to mirror us, turning up unturned parts of us, never found, or lost long ago -- So are we mostly the one attacked? The attacker? One or both of the waypassers? The stopper? Donkey? Innkeeper: Yeah, sure you'll be back to pay for it all!

At ease in our own Zions? Watching World Struggles pass distantly by? Passing by them in return? "It takes great humility to step aside for a parable's sake! And without the parable I would never have been saved." (Stephen Mitchell) Seed into ground, as leaven in loaf, salt in meat, light in world, parable in reality -- losing, dispersing selves in one another? Imagine numbers through centuries helped -- even "saved" in some way? -- by this story! Connecting experiences everywhere, discovering ourselves in discovering others as well, many lives, many stories -- Like Trojan Horses? Never know whom we'll end up in?

Activist Art, Artistic Action, art, like action, of inward and outward selves, albethey imperfectly balanced -- My AA: Activists Anonymous: "My name is John, I am helpless to do nothing about it!" Wears me out, gives me grace to go on, rathering "yes" than "no," some method to every waking Wesleyan moment? After all, who are we -- to be of any assistance to First-Born? In Whom, by Wisdom, all things created? Bearing Creator's own irresistibleness, even to thrones, dominions, rulers, powers? Head of the Body, First Raised from the Dead! Mansion of Rooms for All! Reconciling wickedest weaponers to Service of Life! As yet still revealing, in and through US? Finding, fitting, holding, keeping together every last lonely dislocated Piece of Universe? In Culture so frenzied, so doing without discerning? Church so sedated, so discerning without ever doing?

Beyond all fixingness, one of another, foundation of fittingness, each one with all others; Mary, Martha, Lazarus more faith community than blood family; Early Church welcoming women surely, securely, as men -- studying scripture, teaching, preaching, traveling, evangelizing -- all baptized in Jesus! Uniquely! One among equals in every last witness and service! All things fitting, at last, together for good?

Coming in from the Cold; So Few Artists, So Many Arts

"Coming in from the Cold; So Few Artists, So Many Arts"

When did every Christian become a Jew? Every Muslim become a Christian? Who knows who becoming a Muslim? What "New World" as "Family," as "Household," now looms at hand, and at mind? Miracles happening while we're yet ensconced in self-interest, self-investment, no world before ours connected in such opportunity, such obligation, to know and be known, relate and be related -- Everything is everything! Everybody is everybody!

Yet David trying to hide here, building self House of Cedar, coming in from the cold, from relations frozen in maddened mistrust, trading tent in upwardly mobile direction, wanting to do same -- in shame? -- for God? Whom we still share with nomads and shepherds? Outdoor God of all open spaces, in and around? Who becomes flesh and dwells among us? Pitching tent, booth, hut, shack in our assorted midsts? Neither lingering long in any one space, nor attaching to any one people? Enduring all seasons, directions, elements, weathers? Nothing human, about us, happening to us, any more alien than anything naturally is?

Relinquishing all removal, all isolation, distance and ignorance of us, detachment and safety from us, releasing Only Child, Every Child, into fearful, murderous world for us, submersing in state of "sin," more like "struggle," wont to say now, at stake no longer sharp separation, some into bad, but subtle survival, all into human -- What God of Job, of Jesus, seeks indoor solace?

We're now together on this -- insiders, outsiders -- house-builders, tent-dwellers -- both! Christ tears down the wall, the distance between us -- and that means all of us! -- for God in Christ plays no favorites -- with any people of any faith or nation any place in this world. God repeals the very code that puts some over others! God starts all over -- creates a new human in a new world -- a fresh chance for everybody! We are made equals again in Christ -- no matter who we are! We partake same Spirit -- who gives us all gifts, all graces, all sacraments, all solidarities! To share for the common good of the whole -- in fact, the whole human species -- and all other species as well!

This is the Jubilee, once and for all! This is the only "home" God has made for us in Christ -- in whose very body we all belong -- together! -- no matter how, or whether, we name "God!" Every one of us in a part -- every one has a part to play! The tent of God has become our own skins! God uses all -- no matter how we get here. No matter how long we take. No matter how many false starts, wrong turns, dead ends -- God is not done with us yet! God is building us brick by brick. (Paul and Me)

* * *

"Not everyone can be a great artist, but great art can come from anyone." (Ratatouille) Few think of ourselves as artists, yet anything we love doing, and try doing as well as we can, becomes art with us: "We know more than we know!" (Beverly Shamana, et seq) Each Created, in Creator image, for Creativity! Something worth expressing "scribbled on inner cavity of our bones!" Even creative recycling, what others call junk, form in itself, as we are.

Till we go off to school, ninety percent showing "high creativity;" between ages five and seven, dropping to ten percent! Adults letting down to two. Creating from nothing, ordering chaos -- or chaoticizing too much order? Selecting, combining, existing elements into new things? Light out of darkness, life where none appears yet to be, pathways to holy, to worldly, to selves and to others, doing without neither potter nor clay: "Every person is a special kind of artist, and every activity is a special art."

Sankofa bird of West Africa: "Go back and fetch what you forgot," to roots, to origins, ancestors, reclaiming Source, resources, gathering, honoring best past has to offer, forward in new, empowering ways, neglecting no history, flown or on wing; in art as in life, best-meant institutions of early life -- family, church, school -- even in spite of selves, "saving" us from own creativeness, solemnizing free-spirited troublesomeness?

Sankofa flies forward while looking back, egg that is future treasured in mouth:

"A heart embellished with two circles that meet in the center." Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise" -- "Healing power that comes linking hands across Sankofa bridge with ancestors who, like hers, trod in the dirt of history." How might our history/histories/herstories heal?

Bezalel constructing God's dwelling among us, where we come seeking Source and resources, with every kind, craft and artistic design -- gold, silver, bronze, wood, yarn, linen, wool -- We find it, we name it, it can be used! Where "kairos" meets "chronos" lies "creos," gifts offerable, by grace, meet gifts receivable! "IT IS GOOD!" Whatever it is, however it's done, "Love Made Visible."

The persistent love of God speaks to us in the language of our heart -- in dreams, music, clay, canvas, the wind, the mountains; through color and stones; and we learn again that creativity is a collaborative process between the Spirit, our gifts, and our yes. Our part of the process is to watch and pray -- to listen and be attentive to that divine presence, the voice of the holy, the flap of angel wings and notes in the breeze. Then we act!

God "painting with crooked lines," our creativity one shaky paintbrush! "Art" manifesting "connection," piece by piece, peace by peace, aesthetics of ethics, corralaries of communion, community, re-membering, re-fitting, re-joining, AIDS-quilting a common life, Whole New World, New World Whole.

Create your own official title. Put it on your refrigerator door, your license plate, your office door, your lunchbox: Artist/Engineer, Artist/Gardener, Artist/Father, Artist/Artist, Artist/Cook, Artist/Punster, Artist/Videographer, Artist/Birdwatcher, Artist/Calligrapher, Artist/Bookkeeper, and so on. [How do we name our own art/s?] Jesus said let your light shine . . . .