Showing posts with label Poem. Show all posts

The Pastor’s Wife

I post this in recognition of my lovely wife, who has been a "Pastor's Wife" for 18 out of our 20 years of marriage.


While the poem can be found here, I found it via Tony Jones' blog.

"It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." 

That is, apparently, a good translation for Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori. The line, itself, goes back to the Roman poet, Horace. But for many in the modern age, it comes from an anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen, who wrote the poem to recount a mustard gas attack during World War I but didn't release until after the war was over.

Owen, famously, calls this phrase, "The Old Lie." It is a lie, he says, that it is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one's country. Perhaps it is more of a lie today than it ever has been before.

I struggle with this.

I am in awe of veterans and also those who lose their lives in war. I'm in awe that they would willingly offer (no draft today!) to shoot and be shot at for their country. While I can conceptually wrap my brain around it if it seems there is a threat to our own country, to our homeland, to our families, I struggle, mightily, when it appears that the threat is farther removed...when it is someone else who is threatened...when we fight for vengeance...when we fight to "keep the peace." How do we convince young men and women that "it is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one's country" in these circumstances?

How do we make "the old lie" into a truth?

How, regardless of the fitting-ness of war, do we celebrate, recognize, and honor the sacrifices of our vetarns?

Can one even call out the lie while, at the same time, supporting our troops and those in harms way?

I leave you with the Owen poem:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

~ Wilfred Owen

Read more: http://theconnexion.net/wp/?p=11529#ixzz1dPYGGnGW
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“Said the robin to the sparrow,
“I would really like to know
Why those anxious human beings
rush around and worry so.”

Said the sparrow to the robin,
“Friend, I think that it must be
That they have no
          Heavenly Father
such as cares for you and me.””

- Elizabeth Cheney

That whole "Rob Bell Discussion" that's been going on here, there and everywhere has a lot of good discussion points about it. Universalism. Grace. Judgment. Christian discourse. Who's in hell? Who's in heaven? Who can be saved? What's God's will? What does the Scripture say?

I know my mom reads this blog (my most loyal reader, I'm sure) but I don't know if she was aware that the forwarded email letter she sent to me yesterday touches on the issues surrounding this debate. The email said it was the BEST POEM IN THE WORLD. I don't know if that's the case. However, it does ring with the words I often say, "When I get to heaven, I'm pretty sure I'll be surprised by all the people God let in that I might have kept out."  My understanding of God is that he'll be more gracious than I'd ever be...and I generally consider myself a pretty gracious person.

Here's the poem. There was no attribution when it came to me.

Image via WikipediaThis is an Easter Poem by John Updike.  It's called, "Seven Stanzas at Easter" and talks of the danger of diminishing the resurrection my making it a metaphor.  I've seen it around the last couple of days.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-maché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Image by rachelandrew via FlickrCame across this today.  Thought it was beautiful.  If you don't frequent The Internet Monk, you should.  This is just one of the many great things I've seen there.  I'm an avid reader (not commenter) and have loved their Stations of the Cross meditations.

color, color everywhere
greets the king on donkey’s foal
crowds are gath’ring! now, come quickly!
bless the lord with heart and soul!

pathway lined by royal sage
zion’s skies are dazzling blue
hail messiah! sing hosanna!
bless the lord who visits you!

bring green branches from the palms
shed bright cloaks and cast them down
run beside him! raise your voices!
bless the lord, sing his renown!

gleaming marble temple walls
magnify the glad refrain
onward, to the altar, singing!
bless the lord who comes to reign!

                            Image via WikipediaCame across this today.  There's a lot here.

If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;
We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow,
We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars.

The heavens frighten us; they are too calm;
In all the universe we have no place.
Our wounds are hurting us; where is the balm?
Lord Jesus, by Thy Scars, we claim Thy grace.
If, when the doors are shut, Thou drawest near,
Only reveal those hands, that side of Thine;
We know to-day what wounds are, have no fear,
Show us Thy Scars, we know the countersign.
The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

This was written by Edward Shillito -- an English minister who survived the horrors of artillery, machine guns, and trench warfare during World War I.

Image by Jezzebelle via FlickrText:  Matthew 2:13-23
Title:  “Christmas in the Rear View Mirror”

Waldo Beach was a rather old professor emeritus at Duke.  I never had him as a teacher but he came to the copy room to make copies regularly.  That’s where I worked.  He wrote a poem about Advent that I remember just the beginning of it at this point.  It said:

On coming to Christmas, misled, we forget
That the birth of God’s son was not lovely at all.
A stench filled the gloom of the bleak manger stall.
There was blood on the straw and a halo of sweat
Around Mary’s head.  Soon, warned they should flee
To escape Herod’s sword, by stealth in the night
The family of God was driven to flight,
As from Bethlehem’s inn outcast, refugee.

But as birth of new life is sprung out of pain,
And faith out of fear, so now once again,
If we come to the stable by way of the cross
And dismantle our spirits of tinsel and dross,
We can join with glad hearts and exuberant voice
To sing with the heavenly choir, “Rejoice!”

And it’s hard to remember how solemn and occasion Christmas really is as we’re leading up to it.  There’s all those presents to buy.  There’s phone calls to make and letters to get out.  There’s dinner parties to have and decorations to put up.  There are trees to cut down.  There are churches to get ready.  There are pageant clothes to mend. There are cookies to bake.  There’s music to listen to.  There presents to wrap. There’s mail to send out and to pick up.  There's magic to create and children to please and traditions to uphold a Christmas ideal to maintain and a God to be praised!

It’s been a long time since I had tinsel on a tree and we don’t decorate near as much as we used to.  It just takes that much more energy to keep our family going these days.  But I understand the grandness of Christmas…its anticipation…its execution…its celebration. 

And, as we approach it, it’s all angel choirs and halos, babies in mangers, and beatific visions of shepherds in bathrobes.

There is a wonder and a mystery to it and we love getting lost in it.  If I could close my eyes I could almost stay in this place singing “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” forever.  And it was beautiful on Friday night in this place.  I could almost stay there.  Almost.

But, Christmas comes and goes.  Yes, there are 12 Days of Christmas, with partridges in pear trees and ladies dancing and lords a-leaping….  Yes, we carry Christmas with us wherever we go, recognizing that the message “Joy to the World” is for all peoples…all days. 

But, December 26th comes.  The baby Jesus grows up.  His life happens.  Our life happens.

And so, with the festivities winding down, with the Christmas ham or turkey taking on its second life as soup or sandwiches, with a dump run of wrapping paper and boxes in order, we look in the rear-view mirror at the Christmas just past.

We have heard that “Jesus is the reason for the season.”  But what does the coming of Jesus mean for us.

Perhaps, in order to understand that, it’s best to think about what it means for God.  CS Lewis put it something like this.

Lying at your feet is your dog.  Many of us here have dogs.  Many of us here love dogs.  I love mine. Just ask my kids.  They’re all my second favorite children.  And your dog is lying at your feet. 

Now, think for a moment, imagine if you will, that your dog is in some deep distress.  He or she is hurting.  He or she is scared…in danger.  And it’s not only your dog but every dog that is in the same bind.  It’s not important what the problem is but you know…it has been revealed to you…that if you could only get your dog to be more like people, you could help your dog and all of them.  Would you be willing to become a dog to make this happen…to teach…to show the way?   Would you be able to give up your humanity, all the things that seem to make you…you?  Your loved ones?  Your job?  Your sports?  Your hobbies?  Your music?   Would you choose, instead of intimate communion with the beloveds of your life, the poor substitute of looking at your children or spouse or friends and only be able to wag your tail…no speaking…no smiling?

Would you give all that up to save your dog?...

Years ago, when we were living in Kenai, I was out on a walk with Samuel and our dog Maggie and just as we passed a snow bank we found ourselves directly next to a large moose in the road.  We started walking away quite rapidly and I remember looking, thinking, “I love you dog, but you’re going to be the one I leave behind here.” 

Fortunately a car came by and honked and that choice didn’t need to be made.  But, as much as I talk of loving my dog, when the time came for a choice, I was going to choose my family.

In the church we understand that Christ was with the Father from the creation of the world.  We say that, with those two and the Holy Spirit, we have a model of perfect communion.  With the carols and trees and the joy we share, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that Christ gave up the most treasured thing to him… perfect communion with his Father…to become human and walk with us and, of course, to save us.

Perhaps, as we look in the rear view mirror, we can see what it is Jesus gave up to be here for us.

This makes the whole religion thing very unsafe for us Christians.  J.I. Packer said:

The divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needed to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child... The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets.

It gets staggering to us because, when we tell this story of Christmas, we can clearly see the great depths to which God is willing to sink to reach us.  We cannot trust our God to leave us alone.  Once we look over the shoulder of the shepherds and see the very son of God comforted in his mother’s arms we can know that we have a God who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of us.  The king of kings, the lord of lords, and he shall reign forever and ever--is born to us in a most underwhelming, lowly, earthbound, dirty, humble way.

Where could we possibly hide from a God who is willing to do this?  Where you think he’d be least expected, he’s fully there.  Where you think he’d be most helpless, he’s most strong. 

We are not safe from God because we have Emmanuel…God with us.  Our God has pursued us and come to us.

We may put away the ornaments.  We may take down the tree.  But our God is here.  And he won’t be put away.

All of this talk about what the coming of Jesus means is really talk about “the INCARNATION” – the enfleshment of God.  And it goes way beyond the manger scene.  The baby Jesus is cute to talk about.  We love hearing the kids sing “Away in a Manger” at the pageant.  We like to romanticize that “sweet baby Jesus no crying he makes.”  But it’s not true.  It wasn’t true on the night of his birth.  And we know that, as the days and years pass it continues to be untrue.

Even in today’s text we begin to see what that whole “Silent Night” was really about; and it’s not pretty:

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”  Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt,  and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

And THAT'S the PLEASANT part of the text.

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.  Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:  “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

While many persons were oblivious to the INCARNATION…had no idea that God had indeed entered the world, Herod, with an assist from the magi saw that there was a threat in Bethlehem and he took matters into his own hand, killing all the children two years old and younger in the community.  But Jesus was safe.

Christmas looks different when we get past it, because, after the angels stop singing and the eggnog gets taken off the shelf, we can see a little more clearly what lies ahead.  It begins with Herod hoping to kill young Jesus.  It moves to people hoping to hear a word from him.  It carries on to broken and hurting and hungry people hoping to be healed.  We then find disciples hoping he could stay around forever and women hoping he would be declared innocent.  Hope dies.  And then lives again.

It makes Christmas look different, when we look at it in the rear-view mirror.

Some people worship gods of the heaven or gods of ideas.  Some persons put their faith in an entirely transcendent God…other worldly.  We don’t.  Our God has put on flesh to be with us, to save us.  It's an inside job.

Barbara Lunblad wrote:

As his “body,” the church, through us, members of the body, the living Christ is always intruding, going where he is not necessarily wanted or expected, taking up space where people did not expect God to be.

In his earthly ministry, Jesus intruded into the homes of sinners. He showed up at a wedding and caused a scene. He came into places of death, where people hardly knew him, and brought forth unexpected life.

Maybe that is one reason people try to keep religion theoretical and spiritual. [But] Christianity is not a “spiritual” religion: it is an incarnational religion. It believes that God has a body, that God takes up space, that God will not remain ethereal and vague, distant and detached.

That is our God.  Incarnational in the world, involved, immersed, giving everything.

We are his church.  We must be incarnational as well…involved, immerse, giving everything.

May it be so.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Professor Beach was a Professor Emeritus at Duke Divinity School when I was there.  He wrote this poem that I will forever remember as Christmas approaches, and, now, as I look back at it.  The poem is "Advent Sonnet" and is found in his book Christmas Praise.

Image by ckpicker via FlickrOK.  This is the last one.  We're lighting the LOVE candle on our Advent wreath this Sunday and the sermon is going to focus on how that LOVE which came down at Christmas is to be shared with the world.  Bishop Robert Schnase, on his website FivePractices.org has a poetry theme up, with some very nice poems for this season.  The following poem was found in the comments.  It's a poem by Ted Loder in his book Guerillas of Grace:  Prayers for the Battle. 

It's not a big poem but it packs a punch.  Check out that last few lines.   Asking the coming Christ, the very gift the world needs, to make the reader into the gift needed by others in the world.  Gives me goosebumps.

Image by Rae Whitlock via FlickrThis is another poem about the LOVE of Christ coming down at Christmas.   This one is called "From Heaven's Porch" and is written by John Thornburg.  



FROM HEAVEN'S PORCH


Infants don’t pretend.
They want to recreate
the warmth and comfort of the womb.
They cry to say, “I’m really cold.”
They coo to say, “Thank God I’m warm,”
or words to that effect.

When all grown up,
we put on a veneer
to hide the fear
that we cannot be loved as-is;
to cover up the righteousness
that we pretend to feel
when ‘someone’ doesn’t do
the things that make for peace.
Our words too often hide the truth.
We say, “I’ll do it,” then we don’t.
We say, “I love you,” then we won’t
confirm our love in what we do.
Pretending is a practiced art;
and practice makes imperfect.

There was a baby once
whose birth was trumpeted
from heaven’s porch.
But unlike us,
When he grew up
he did not hide the truth.
He loved us as we are,
and called us to abundant life.
In what he spoke,
in who he touched,
in what where he walked,
in how he bled,
he showed us why a star
had pointed out the place and time
that truth came down
and donned our uniform.

No wonder angles sang of him.
And they still sing…


I love the following line:  Our words too often hide the truth.  We say, “I’ll do it,” then we don’t.
We say, “I love you,” then we won’t confirm our love in what we do.  Pretending is a practiced art;
and practice makes imperfect.  How do I "pretend" to love others during this Advent/Christmas season?  I spend so much time talking about love but how do I actually show that love to others by what I DO and not only but what I SAY?  At Christmas, LOVE gets a lot of lip service.

I found this over at Bishop Robert Schnase's site, FivePractices.org.

You can see more from from John Thornburg at his site, www.congregationalsinging.com.

This was sent to me by my mom.   Thanks Mom!

It's almost two weeks ago now, on July 4th, when Della Waghiyi passed away.  She was the Alaska United Methodist Conference's lone ordained native Alaskan pastor.  I had known Della for 20 years, from when I first went to Nome back in 1990.  And over the years I got to hear more and more of her stories.  I remember her sharing about her childhood among the Siberian Yupic.  I remember her stories of going with my friend Rev. Jim Campbell to meetings in New York and Nashville and other large cities.  One of the things she said that I've used in sermons at Advent time is the following:

White people wonder what we do all winter. They wonder if we're just waiting around for the sun to come out. No! In the winter we are fixing our boats and mending our nets and making our clothes so that we can be ready when the sun comes.

That's the waiting we have at Advent -- waiting, actively, so we're ready when the "son" comes.