While on vacation, they sit enjoy-
ing a cup of coffee at a sidewalk
table in front of a bookstore/coffee
shop. A woman stands in the street
between them and the bookstore.
She is talking on her cell phone. A
man stands behind her. She asks
into the phone, “Where are you?
We’ve been waiting.” She hangs
up and the man behind her, her
husband, asks her, “Where are they?”
She says, “They are in the grocery
store parking lot. What are they
doing there? I told them to come
to the book store.” “No, you didn’t,”
he says, “You don’t know north
from south, east from west.” Then
to no one in particular and anyone
who happens to be within earshot,
he says, “Look out. My wife is
giving directions.” Then after
moving to the curb, he says to her,
“You better get out of the street be-
fore you get hit.” The car next to
where she is standing starts to back
out directly into the line of an on-
coming car. She yells, “Stop,” looks at
her husband and says “See, if I was not
out in the street there could have been
an accident.” He shrugs his shoulders.
Another woman passes by on her way
into the bookstore and asks into her
phone, “Where are you? I’m here at
the bookstore. Okay, see you soon.”
The friends finally show up and stop
to pet the Chocolate Lab who belongs
to the people sitting at the table. The
woman who had stood in the street,
says to her out of town guests, “All
right, we better go inside.” Her
husband sighs and walks behind the
guests.

Eva Cassidy could play the guts out of a
guitar. I said could because she died in her
30’s. She could tear the heart out of a song,
too, like in her rendition of “Over the Rain-
bow.” I told a friend how I loved her “Over
the Rainbow,” but he who hadn’t heard Eva sing
or play anything dismissed her with a flick of
the wrist claiming no one will ever out do the
standard-bearer Judy Garland. True, Judy had
known real sorrow and hardship, but my friend
hadn’t. He ended his tepid, prejudiced protest
with a sigh. See, that’s the difference. Eva
ended “Rainbow” with a sigh but not before touch-
ing the hem of some angel’s robe with heart wrench-
ing high notes. When she hit and carried forever
those searing notes of the last refrain “Some-
where, over the rainbow,” those notes flew
from the East Coast to the West Coast raising
from the grave every unjustly treated human
who ever suffered the tragedy of great loss.
Even the petroglyphs in the Painted Desert
leapt off rocks, soared on Eva’s notes and
pleaded to the heavens in that final sigh,
“Why, oh why, can’t I?” before returning to
the rocks.

He watches the fish who have been
around for seven or eight years who

used to swim when tiny in clean, clear
water, but over the seven or eight years

now swim in the water that has accum-
ulated leaves, twigs, dead frogs, dead

brothers and sisters of the fish — debris,
which has deteriorated and turned to

muck. The fish keep swimming having
adapted to their environment and as

long as the water keeps circulating, the
fish keep living. He is glad life keeps

circulating around him as he adapts to
the pond of life as others outside

that particular pond have watched for
seventy years .

“This world is not my home;
I’m just a passin’ through;
my treasures are laid up
somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from
heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home
in this world anymore.”
So goes the Negro spiritual,
pooh-poohed in the hallowed
halls of theological ivy as
escapist, but it served a purpose
to keep the blacks going under
the most dire of circumstances.
“You are not of the world.
You are in the world,”
spoke Jesus in the most dire
of circumstances. Aren’t
we in the most dire of
circumstances with “wars
and rumors of wars.” guns,
guns, guns, greed, greed,
greed, itching ears willing
to embrace fascist fear-
mongering to justify their
anger and discontent and
desire to retaliate against
anyone and anything they
fear, fear, fear? Are we not
“apart from” while “a part of”
— mindful of the beauty of the
earth, sky and water while we
ravage, “apart from” while
“a part of” the fear that grips
the hearts of brothers and sisters
who don’t know they are “a part
of” each other, “apart from”
while “a part of ” knowing there
is a home right here, right now,
our home in the heart of God?
Fear not, be mindful of the
opportunity in each moment to
see, feel, experience the
Realm in our midst, in our
hearts, in the marrow of our
bones, in the center, center,
center of being. No-Thing,
Every-Thing, All-Things, into
thy hands I commend my
spirit. Peace be with you.

I met a man who said he was Joe King.
I asked him if he were kidding and he said
he was not kidding about being a man named Joe King.
I had no idea what he was thinking
when he said he wasn’t kidding but Joe King.
I started to laugh at Joe King but he wasn’t kidding.
He was really serious about such a thing as kidding
saying he wasn’t kidding about any kid who called himself Joe King.
To the best of his knowledge he had no kid
and he really resented being accused of kidding
about a kid Joe King, when he had no kid, no kidding.
So I decided to get serious about Joe King’s protest
about having a kid king and asked him if he were
kidding. He told me he was a kid King to a Joe King
the First but that was his father and he would really
like to be just Joe King, with no kid King, no kidding.
I said, Okay, well, I guess there’s no kidding Joe King .

The Rev. Dr. Thomas Eggebeen, friend for many, many years, wrote the following response to my poem “One Potato, Two Potato”:

The dreariness of wealth …
utterly boring after a while…
no one’s impressed any longer …
ostentation grows heavy,
like carrying a load of old National
Geographics bound together by twine –
trying to look smart with stuff…
no one cares about.
Ah well … and soon to the graveyard …
the truth hated by all,
but especially by the 1% –
the greatest affront to their sense of
invulnerability.

John Calvin saw law as growing out of
grace, a way for us to treat each other
justly and equally. Law is the response to
unconditional love. Unfortunately, through-
out history there have been bad laws that
grow not from grace and not from a way by
which we can live justly and equally with
each other but from the bad motives of those
in power who wish to retain power and oppress
others. People of conscience have opposed
those laws as laws opposing justice and
equality under the law. But the vast majority
of laws are good and there to guarantee equal
justice. And that is the test. Does the law
ensure justice and equality for all or just
for a select few? There are those who mis-
understand law established to assure equal
treatment and refuse to respect such laws
thus showing contempt — contempt for those
protected by the law and, as another theologian,
put it, contempt for themselves.* The poor,
misguided county clerk in Kentucky, one entrusted
with executing the law for the sake of justice
and equality of all, in this case following
the Supreme Court decision regarding same
sex marriage, put her misunderstanding of
faith in the place of her oath of office. Her
inability to see how this law works for justice
and equality has resulted in her winning the
trifecta of contempt — for the very law itself,
for those protected by the law and for herself,
yes, contempt for herself, a child of God’s
grace and beneficiary of the protection of
those very laws that grow from that grace.

* Michael Jinkins, President of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary,
in his September 8, 2015 on-line newsletter, Thinking Out Loud.

A little boy in 2004, he saw his
parents, uncles, aunts, cousins burn
brightly in the desert sun.
He watched them jump and run
and writhe but there was no fun.
They were caught in a mire of crossfire
and bombs bursting and the swirling spire
of sharp metal and glass shrapnel slicing
through his loved ones’ flesh.
Horrific images began to mesh
and he, as years went by, began to plan
vengeful retaliation right there in the desert sand.
He and a multitude of other horror-stricken
orphan boys now lean with a streak of meanness unhidden
call on Mohammed and invoke Allah’s name
to wreak vengeance and squarely place the blame
on those Chicken Hawks in Washington who in 2003
invaded Iraq, a nation they said to free
from the bondage to Saddam
when in fact, they just didn’t give a damn.
It was oil they were after
when they started the disaster
that just won’t end, just won’t end
and the blood-letting just won’t end.

He read Sandburg poems heralding
blue-collar working folk, railroads,
stockyards and those of middle-east-
ern European descent picnicking along
the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago.
He thinks about how manufacturing jobs
are almost a thing of the past, rail-
roads are converted to cycling paths
through the heartland and the stock-
yards are a distant memory in old folks’
minds, but there are still ethnic groups
picnicking along the shores of lakes
all over the country on holidays. He
wonders where they go to work on Monday
or Tuesday morning, if they go to work —
service jobs, fast food restaurants and
the hospitality industry cleaning other
peoples’ bed linens, wiping down showers
and sanitizing commodes? What are their
hopes for their children? The same as
Sandburg’s immigrants? Hope springs
eternal as the cliché goes or maybe it’s
that dreams die hard.

The little child arrived on the scene right on time.
He left the homey womb without much fuss.
He had thick black hair like his mother’s line
and long fingers and toes — his father’s touch.

Surrounded by brother and sisters and cousins, too,
he would not want for attention at any time.
His two big sisters want to cuddle him through and through,
while big brother just looks and says little brother seems fine.

Aunts from both sides want to hold and cuddle the guy.
Uncles who haven’t seen him yet will beam one day
and with all that attention there is no way he will grow up shy,
and as long as his nourishment is near he is a-okay.

He’s pretty lucky to be born into this particular clan,
and he stands a good chance to be a well-adjusted man.