“REVOLTING AGAINST ACCEPTED THINGS:
Notes
for
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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“Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to
it! How often have I desired to
gather your children together as a hen gathers her young under
her wings, yet you were not willing!
See, your house is left to you, desolate. For I tell you, you will not
see me again until you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the
Lord.”
Matthew
23:37-39
When the
weather gets bad
and winter is
long
there’s a
place in the woods, an opening
where little
ones of the earth come.
They rush in
from thickets
at daybreak
from a hollow
behind the hill
where they huddle
on branches
through predatory nights.
All hurry here,
hungry yet glad
for a place
such as this, a clearing
with a
tablecloth of white-linen snow
covered with
some grain under a pine.
In Washington,
a pirate captain and crew
slither like
rats down the hawser
rope from a
leaking ship of state
they have
plundered to fatten the few.
So many birds,
beasts, and peoples
from near and
far places now shiver,
crowded into
hollows behind hills,
every branch
full. It’s been a long night.
When the
weather gets bad
and winter is
long, who will be left
to make a place
in the woods, an opening
where little
ones of the earth come?
– Angus Watkins
I’ve always regarded a poem as being a story that
points in some way to a larger story. It’s
a verbal snapshot of a scene, a moment that has gotten our attention.
And as we take the picture, or write it or read it, we are wading with
some ignorance, wonderment and even trepidation into its murky waters
concerning what it might have to DO with us, how it connects with us and the
world. I never know where the image is going to go until I’m well into the
process, the journey of writing.
Like the message of the Gospels and Lent and our own life experience,
the story often takes us into uncomfortable territory.
Nevertheless, even as we fasten our seatbelts for a bumpy flight, we
have each other to hold our hand and to hug as we try to grow and make a
little progress, thanks be to God!
As surely as birds flit into important scenes in the
Bible stories– like the dove that brings Noah evidence that there really IS
solid ground to be found at the end of the big flood, like the ravens that
brought a hungry Elijah a little food to eat in his hideaway cave, like the
dove that swoops in with Spirit power to guide Jesus, like the old rooster
that crows in Lent signaling EVERYONE’S capacity for failure and betrayal–
so also have WING-ED beings always been indispensableto my very existence,
because they DO bring hints of solid ground beyond the flood of my life, they
DO bring Spirit food when the soul is hungry, and they DO invite us to look
for wings within ourselves...to rise up and follow, trying to make a
difference in the world.
For all the bags of sunflower seeds, niger seed,
scratch grains and suet blocks that I’ve purchased at Agway and Tractor
Supply to stoke feeders at home over the years, the gift of birds’ daily
appearance in all seasons-- like hungry little angels– restores the soul,
lifts us again and again from the valley of whatever shadowy moments we are
passing through.... THIS
time of year, when there’s a crust of snow out there, I spread several
scoops of scratch grain each day under a big pine tree in the clearing at
home. Not long ago, I was watching a big flock of wild turkeys all come
RUNNING into the clearing for a little cracked corn under the tree to stave
off starvation. And it struck me
as a beautiful thing, but a critical thing as well to find a sanctuary and
enough to eat in a hard season, particularly when coyotes and foxes are really
on the hunt most nights...
In the midst of marveling at these birds RUSHING in
for something to eat, because in a sense their life DEPENDS on finding a
modicum of safety and enough to eat in bad weather, I realized HOW MANY
wing-ed beings, HOW MANY four-legged beings, HOW MANY living things,
and HOW MANY peoples are pushed to the margins of existence in the
world by the stronger, more powerful predators!
And speaking of predators and poetry, I think Thomas
Hardy said it straight and true when he said “Literature is the written expression of revolt against accepted
things.” Hmmm...
Literature is the written expression of revolt against accepted things!
By “revolt,” we mean some form of protest; and by “accepted
things,” we mean certain policies and practices– the public lies and
deceptions, the tendency toward arrogance in high office, or simply a
prevailing attitude that has become fixed and false to contemporary reality.
So we have poets like Neruda, Blake, Auden, Pound,
Eliot, Williams, Bly, and many other greats who understood the importance of
moving in their work “from intrinsic
beauty to social passion... and political economy.”
And we should add
the poet-prophets like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah...
...but even moreso we must add Jesus whose LIFE is a
poem that revolts against the status quo of injustice, corruption, violence
and callous indifference to the little ones!
In ALL of Matthew’s chapter 23, we see the prophet-poet Jesus HAMMER
the so-called “faith-based” leaders in cahoots with public officials in
If Jesus weeps over Jerusalem in his final days for
the failure of those in positions of leadership and power to do the things
that make for peace, when there is no peace, then surely the work of the
Church in OUR time is to do the same: to be insurgents for PEACE, to be a
COMPASSIONATE shelter and advocate on behalf of the little ones of the earth,
and to re-direct astronomical sums of money from excessive militarism to the
work of healing the land,
re-building institutions whose public trust is the safety, health, and
well-being of all. This is why Jesus was born, what his ministry was about,
why he got into trouble and was killed. And
this is what the Church is to be about, if it truly is the BODY of Christ for
these times– speak truth to power, and shelter little ones of the earth
under our wings.
We close with these four lines from the poem, which
is really the message of Church to all at the margins, and to the world:
All hurry here, hungry yet glad
for a place such as this, a clearing
with a tablecloth of white-linen snow
covered with some grain under a pine.
Amen.