Peace

The Novel

Posted on by stephen t berg / 6 Comments
Churchill Square, Edmonton, AB, October, 2009

 

I joined a ‘Free Palestine’ protest in 2009. Today that moment seems almost quaint.

Netanyahu’s Zionists and Hamas extremists, are mirrors, twins, locked into an escalation of extremes. A war not aimed at negotiated peace, but for suffering. Israel’s superior machine, supported by America, will succeed with its eradication of Gazans, if not their genocide. What happened in the Warsaw Ghetto is happening to Gaza.

Still, there are moments of light. Movements initiated by Israelis and Palestinians, linking arms, dedicating themselves to building peace. There are people on both sides willing to live in peace.

But the trauma of this war, visited on common people, will, for most, be impossible to overcome.

The lessons of the Holocaust have been betrayed. The short distance between victim and victimizer has been crossed. Will it surprise us, when arises a more terrible Hamas?

Those lessons, however, can be lost on any of us. We are all susceptible to the darker lusts of superiority, hatred and vengeance. All capable of hurling our poison at those we deem as evil, inhuman.

Nothing but some kind of spiritual awakening can open us, and keep us seeing one another as embodiments of the sacred, and so bring a collective renunciation of aggression.


The Novel

When a bomb comes for a book, the whole library
is gone.
But meanings survive.

Sometimes they scatter.
Then, needing individual attention
they knock on the doors of listening poets.

And sometimes they organize,
quite naturally, into a family,
and visit a young woman living above a health food store,
writing her first novel.

But some meanings, like old men with privilege,
can be lazy,
and some can be tempted, greased
to recite the same old myths.

The same tired stories of redemptive payback,
same contagion of sanctified hate,
same deadly eye-for-eye, and up-the-ante:
and the hill-dwelling shepherd, becomes a savage giant.

But the cooling breeze, the holy flow,
the dawning Spirit–whispering to the human heart–
cuts its own current, curates the new dance.

It was Pilate that roared, “Don’t you know who I am?
I have the power to lynch you!”
“And I Am the one,” said the incommensurate Son,
“who has the power to love you, the power to let you.”

And just there, her novel took shape.

 

~

Natural Theology

Posted on by stephen t berg / 10 Comments
Nadezhda Bogomolova “Lilies of the valley” Watercolor on paper

 

As the loquacious preacher expounded
on the inerrancy of the Bible and the existence of God,
and I, mesmerized, by his tide of words and hefty claims,
rose to raise my hands in surrender to his theological loft,
two wasps flew through an open window
and stung my palms.

And when the preacher went on about the woes
of doubting and straying from the fixed exegesis
of The Book, that “covered everything,”
and I was about to join in with a hearty, Amen!,
the piercing cry of a golden eagle,
struck my ears and rendered me mute.

And after the service, in the parking lot,
where a group had gathered to discuss the sermon,
and praise the irrefutable preacher, I paused to listen;
and when I was about to nod my acquiescent head,
a Pacific dogwood threw a branch over my shoulder
and spun me around,
and when I was about to protest — you guessed it —
a lily of the valley pressed a petal against my lips,
and led me away.

 

~

Four Miles North of Springside

Posted on by stephen t berg / 17 Comments

 

Every year around this time I call the farm.
I listen to the muted ring of the rotary phone, and wait.
Mom says, “Hello?” Her voice, careful at first, then,
“Oh Stephen, I was just thinking of you.”

The low January sun is bouncing off the drifts into the kitchen.
Sunny Boy cereal is bubbling on the enamel hot plate.
Dad has stepped out of the porch into the snow
and is using the steel grain shovel to clear a path to the tractor shed.
The line crackles and mom says, “Will you be coming home
in the spring?”

The drifts are high from last night’s wind.
But now there’s a vast great plains calm.
It’s cold and there’s a reverence of hoarfrost on the grey poles,
and the drooping lines, and the green glass insulators;
and chimes of snow crystals hang in the blue refulgent air.

With braille eyes I reach through the receiver to touch
mom’s face. Her eyes are lakes of kindness. And I say,
“Seeding time — I’ll try to be home by then.”

Now the voice goes quiet and I listen to the hum of the line,
which really isn’t there — nor the telephone,
no longer the house, or the shed, or the prairie farm.

 

Happy New Year!

Grow Mercy’s Evolving List of Gentle Propositions

Posted on by stephen t berg / 20 Comments

 

– To pray for the peace of all peoples,
will add a grain of hope to this flickering new year;

– a contented soul is paradise;

– heaven, if we have the eyes for it, is us, in our unfolding inclusiveness;

– the Big Bang is God’s dancing body; the shimmering fallout is yours;

– is not miracle still the best word to describe how we got here? and our stories? each one, surrounded by suspense and mystery;

– a flash of insight can sky-rocket your life, but don’t go making a religion;

– you want meaning? behold the earth, love her array of inhabitants;

– the heart is a spotted peach — there’s no getting through without some bruising;

– a glib apology creates another wound — a word of mercy is healing;

– friendship is full-bodied wine, a fine acquaintance is the bubbly kind;

– pavement, like a hard heart, longs to be pierced by grass;

– we are lonely pilgrims, prodigals returning, ready now to receive the love that’s waiting;

– since we receive our selves through the eyes of others, let us go tenderly;

– the crushed grapes of letting go, can be Beaujolais for the soul;

– good art enlarges our lives, and challenges autocrats;

– a side dish of skepticism is good for you, but a main course is constipating;

– truth languishes in the theatres of politics, flourishes in the cries of children;

– God is haiku, Jesus is free verse;

– snowflakes are the angels of leaves;

– do not shush chrysanthemums;

– don’t drag with you what’s dead — everything you need you’ll find along the way;

– don’t vomit outright — let the poison pass through and teach you, what to hate, what to tolerate;

– despite the crazed magnificence of our vanities, our true longing is to be each other’s joy;

– everyday, set your cherished certainties on the sill of an open window — discard what doesn’t fly, what does will return;

– theology says I come from the heavens, poetry says I come from a farm, four miles north of Springside;

– rest your head on your easel, it will open a door.

– intelligence is a window, fame is tinsel, kindness is a temple;

– gender is both river and riverbed, and as enigmatic;

– the twin sister of praise is grief;

– don’t scold yourself, worry is a form of prayer;

– flawless diamonds do not sparkle;

– approach an orchid on your knees,
lift your eyes to the dawn,
listen with the ear of your heart, and
love will find you in the grief-fractured layers of your life;

– when we meet, I’m fine with a hug, if you are.

Wishing you a bright and beautiful New Year!