When you come across hopscotch chalk marks,
why not skip?
Isn’t it obvious why spouses leave spouses for scuba divers?
Why do things laundered, folded, set neatly away in your dresser,
begin to make noise in the night,
show up in the basement, under the stairs, deranged?
Why do we keep our windows rolled up against the gentleman
begging for change?
Why call them indigents instead of angels of revelation?
Isn’t it obvious
that forgiveness
is bad
for business?
Why is it the case, that those who cry
into a hollow they can’t construe or follow
are more merciful and loving than those
who crow the name of Christ with bravado.
Why, when the blooming gloom of this, our new dark age,
begs the epithetic gene,
have we never heard,
from the grand guilds of prose and prosody,
even in slam, or from any lectern,
the perfect curse?
When one considers the blind, or no, the passionate hypocrisy
of a significant swath of hail-Bible Christianity,
doesn’t logic suggest a Janus-faced God?
But suppose you read that same Bible
through the lens of a living Jesus, the one,
who while we were busy lynching,
was busy forgiving,
so making available a kind of love
where paranoia with its conspiracies,
where resentment with its rivalries,
is consumed by heart-rending self-understanding,
and life flowers open the invitation to live as forgiven,
which is to say, mercifully, and could this be
the coming reality of a new “we”?
And where would it all end?
Why not approach the barista on your knees?
Why not bathe in chrysanthemums?
Why not cradle the sunrise?
Why not call someone?
And why not share warm gentle kind supportive hugs with wonderful
People. These hugs are for you Deb and Steve.
Thank you Rianne!
Well that was a breath. So many evocations in your ‘prosody’. I had to look that one up. I enjoyed your progression from incongruity, ‘scuba divers?, deranged laundry! to indigents, to forgiveness. It’s ‘hard to stumble’ on your way to the barista when you’re ‘on your knees’. Thanks for this Stephen, much appreciated, smiling, Kirk
Kirk, thank you for that crisp and wonderful review!
Thanks Rianne. Hugs back.
And thanks Steve for the lovely assemblage of words into so many thought-provoking pictures.
Thanks, Deb!
I think I want a T shirt that says “forgiveness is bad for business”
I loved “a gentleman begging for change”.
and
cringed at “passionate hypocrisy”
There is so much in this piece that resonates with me as I seem to be confronted with passionate hypocrisy on a daily basis.
And this:
“Why is it the case, that those who cry
into a hollow they can’t construe or follow
are more merciful and loving than those
who crow the name of Christ with bravado.”
As we go into this holiday season, let us all try to show more mercy and to forgive more. And let us all cradle the sunrise and then call someone to share the beauty of what we witnessed.
Stephen – I am grateful for your writing and ability to make us think a bit more deeply about all things.