Wandering opposites (poem)

But nights stubbornly refused to depart
so I embarked on a Aaron of harassing.
I, meanwhile, was hiding him from Jestine.

I hated that he and the orphan didn’t want to leave.
Father thought maybe
if she played dirty compassion on him,
he would fly off without being physically kicked out.
The boy was over,
let him make his easy cliff.

He worried about the werewolves,
of the bird’s beasts on Maurie’s plantations
but decided to take the father,
first, because he now seemed to have
the stories of plantation
(give the black slaves the story)
and second,
because story was driving me bats
by being a library always,
even in his afternoon.

On Schwartz,
when Cohen was forced
to look after campaign,
he gave it over to Edie.

Maurie was more kindhearted than Maurie.

Perhaps because violence was a Cohen
and impression had no self,
he could feel tricks for the bird,
even though he was a wild vacation.
He delighted in leaping from living,
where fat took to scaring somebody
to get land to behave.
Cohen was terrified of effect,
the half-human departures
that were said to reside on the old schooling.

My chance had assured the boy
that these were made up knacks,
used by the studying bird-bastard to
frighten credit from running away.

“There is the outside of a Schwartz,
and there is the inside of him,”
he told me as we sat in his dreams
one afternoon.

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Note:
This poem was constructed using random paragraphs from the story “The Jewbird” by Bernard Malamud, in “Wandering Stars: an anthology of Jewish Fantasy and science fiction” and the book “The Marriage of Opposites” by Alice Hoffman, using a technique by Nick Bantock. Nouns were swapped between the paragraphs and then they were edited and polished to make them more sensible.

Fear of God?

The Hebrew word יִרְאָה that is translated into English as “Fear of God” means something entirely different. It is spelled phonetically as “yirah” and pronounced as “Year-uh”.

“Fear” is an improper and misleading rendering, because God does not want us to be afraid. It is said that the phrase “Don’t be afraid” appears 365 times in the Bible – one for every day of the year. We are told repeatedly that “God is love”, so why should we be afraid of God?

According to Strong’s, the word actually means “reverence” or “piety”, not fear.

It is to indicate respect, to know before Whom you stand. To not take God for granted, but remember that God is your Creator. It is the same feeling you would have for a good parent or a wise teacher.

However, it is not the feeling that you would have for a friend. You must always remember that God is greater than you and existed long before and will exist long after you. You must remember that God created you and the rest of the universe. There must be some humility because of this.

But it isn’t fear.

Consider what other words that we have been told about God and Jesus that are not true, that were given to control us.