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Poem – God and money

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I saw a church sign that said
“Did you give back to Him this week?”

I’m pretty sure what they meant
was money.
But what God wants
is work.

God wants your service.
God wants you to use your talents
to help someone,
to feed someone,
to clothe someone,
to visit someone in prison.

Bono said
“The God I believe in isn’t short of cash, mister.”
I think he’s on to something.
If God wanted money,
God would make money.
Instead,
God made people.
God made us
to help each other.

God doesn’t want your money.
It isn’t as easy as that.

To give your money
to a church
or a charity
is to pay someone else
to do
your
good deeds.

What God wants
is for you
to help people
directly.
When you give money
to a charity
or a church
you’re letting someone else
get that good feeling
that comes
from helping someone
directly.

Poem – experts try

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Experts,
masters in their field
are only experts
after years of trying
and failing
but not failing
to try again.

Be an expert.
Make every day
a new day
to make something,
something better,
something new.

This includes,
but is not limited to
yourself.

Getting jealous
of another’s success
is your failure,
your choice to compare
their ten years of work
to your
ten weeks of
thinking about it.

Do. Just Do.
There is no thinking.
Try and try again
and fail
and learn
and become
your own expert,
your own master.

Poem – Alive

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I was never introduced to a living Jesus
in church.
He was a character in a story
that happened
long ago and far away,
to other people.
He was a boogeyman to come
in the future,
when I least expect it,
to settle accounts
and even the score.

He never was real,
never was solid and present,
always Christ,
never Jesus,
never a friend,
always more like a big brother
who beat up your enemies
and might
beat you up
if you talk smack.

Then I met Jesus.
The real one.
I met him in the Gospels,
I met him on retreat.
I met him in a spiritual director.
I met him in myself,
hiding there in plain sight.

Poem – 40 days

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Noah spent 40 days in the water,
waiting for a new world.
He had in his ark one of each animal.
He was the savior of the world.
Every animal would have died
if Noah hadn’t saved them.

Noah listened to God.
God called him,
and asked him to do this crazy thing.
God said Hey, build me an ark – take in all the animals.
I’m ticked off at the filth
and the mess
and the pain
that people are causing each other,
and I’m going to wipe them out.
I need you to help me out here.

Then…

Jesus goes into the desert for 40 days,
just after being baptized.
He takes nothing with him
– no water, no food, no friends.
Alone, adrift,
he is in a strange land,
being tormented by the Devil.

God said to Jesus,
Hey, I need you to save this world.
I need you.
I need you to do this crazy thing.
I need you to die.
I need you to be the sacrificial lamb.
I need you to atone
for the sins of the world.

Job would pay for the sins of his children
even when
they didn’t know
they had sinned.
He’d pay extra, just in case.

The Jewish world
in the time of the Temple was
quid pro quo.
You sinned,
some animal had to die.
Some offering had to be made.
Some sacrifice had to happen.

40 days in the water to save the world.
40 days in the desert to save the world.

Poem – the two Josephs

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Joseph (of Nazareth)
held Jesus the baby,
wrapped in swaddling cloths.
Just born,
fragile,
holy child.

Joseph (of Arimathea)
held Jesus the man,
wrapped in burial cloths.
Just crucified,
fragile,
holy man.

Two different Josephs
attended Jesus,
as he entered this world
and as he left it.
Two different Josephs
were with him
and tenderly
held him,
wrapped him in cloth.
Two different men
cared for this man
who cares for all of us.

Poem – Our daily bread

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“Give us our daily bread”
isn’t really about food.
It refers to manna.
Heavenly bread, spiritual sustenance.
Just enough for today,
only one day at a time (Like AA).
It says
“Help me appreciate right now
– no worry about the future.
Help me trust that
You
have that under control.”

When we worry about our future
we are forgetting
the sovereignty
of God.
We are saying that
we
are in charge. We are making idols
of ourselves

God gave us the test
of the manna,
to see if we would gather
just enough
for this day,
to see if we would
walk in his ways
and trust him.

Eternal God, honor us
by giving us this day
our daily bread,
and may we
honor You
by gathering only enough
for today.

Amen.

Poem – becoming sober

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Becoming sober is like
doing surgery
on yourself.
Everything hurts,
because the things that you used
to run away
from the pain
are the very things
you know
you can’t do
anymore.
So you have to sit down
with yourself
and dig deep
and uncover
all the pain
that you ran away from,
no matter how long ago,
no matter how it happened,
with no anesthesia.

Nobody can do this work for you.
Nobody gives you the tools.
You can watch others
with their struggles
and pick up an idea or three
of what might work for you,
but you’ll only know what works
when you try.
It might work that week,
but not next year.
You’re a different person then.

When we drink or smoke
or do drugs or overeat or
blame others or make excuses
we put up walls
around ourselves
so we don’t have to feel.
We become divorced
from our bodies,
from our lives.
We become immune
to the day to day feelings
of being alive.

Being sober
isn’t just about
stopping using
whatever it was that you used
as a shield,
as a crutch,
as anesthesia.
Being sober isn’t about
forgetting
the past or
the pain either.
Being sober is about
being alive,
and facing your past
and present reality
with courage
and love.

Poem Wild

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It is the forest.
It is always the forest,
the wilderness.

The wolf didn’t torment little Red,
the forest did.
The wilderness was something to escape
all those 40 years.
This is the story we are told.

The untamed is the
uncivilized is the
dangerous.
We are told –
Leave the forest.
Leave the wilderness.
Because
There isn’t only wild.
When you are there
you are wild too.
Because you can’t control the forest
or the wilderness.
There,
you
can’t be controlled.

If a tree falls in the forest,
it does make a sound
but nobody is there to hear it
because they are afraid
to be there
afraid of what is lurking
behind the trees,
of finding their true nature
in all that nature.

The forest frightens those
who tell us these stories
because they are afraid we will return
to the forest
inside ourselves.
They are afraid
we will rediscover
our inner wilderness.

They aren’t afraid we’ll be eaten
by the wild animals.
They are afraid
we
are
them.
13
(A bronze sculpture from an exhibition at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, all about how fairy tales are dark. This is about Little Red Riding Hood)

Poem – the two trees.

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Sin and shame came into the world
at the same time.
Adam and Eve ate fruit
from the tree
of the knowledge
of good and evil.

After that,
they were full of shame
about being naked,
about who they were,
about their very being,
and so they hid themselves
when God came around.

Before that,
they were
as they were created.
God saw them exactly
the way
God created them.
All was well.
They could be themselves
around God
without any
fear or embarrassment.

Thousands of years later,
Jesus
was placed on the cross,
a wooden pole
stuck in the ground
with a horizontal bar across it.
It was symbolically a tree,
and in fact,
it was symbolically
That tree,
that same tree
in the Garden.

Jesus tells us that
He is the fruit of that tree,
and that we are to eat it.
We are to consume
his flesh
and drink
his blood.

He is the antidote
for that first tree,
that first sin.
He is the cure
for what ails us.

When we eat the fruit
that is Jesus,
we are restored.
We have re-entered
the Garden.
He makes us able
to stand
before God,
as we are,
without sin or shame,
without fear or embarrassment.