I think there is something very
enlightening about the mid-twenty
year mark in a marriage. Enough
time has passed to realize to whom
you are married, the person and
all those blood relatives back to
Adam and Eve, and how all those
relatives aren’t ever going to leave.

Chlorophyl changes
through all our machinations;
colors brighten still;
for all our shenanigans,
nature continues to thrill.

A young, naive, wannabe preacher looked incredulously at a renegade, social-activist, outrageous, foul-mouthed Southern Baptist preacher and asked why he ever went into the ministry. The preacher’s response? “I was called, God-damn it, I was called.”

Sometimes, I feel that way about the ministry and, of all things, writing poetry.

About forty-five years after ordination and about the time of retirement, I realized that I actually loved that of which I had the privilege of being a part. Mostly, until then, I just got through it because “I was called.”

“Coulda, woulda, shoulda been a lawyer?” kinds of questions nefariously crept in along the way. Taking home the congregational conflicts and parishioners’ rejections and then, in what my late wife called “misplaced aggression,” taking them out on family? “Lord, Have Mercy.”

And about poetry? Why blog it? No tangible rewards as judged by our status-seeking-society’s standards. Not getting rich, not selling tons of my books, glad to hear from a few friends now and then and always appreciative for the one or two “likes” about which I get notified. Nope, if I delusionally sought after that I would be deemed a “dope.” It’s called “Being Called.”

It has been eight years that I have been blogging poetry, consumed at times by it, obsessive perhaps, unable to stop for any other reward than the simple doing of it — in other words, “Being Called.” And I’ve been reading poetry every day for those eight years and today having written a poem and having read the two poems in my inbox and having looked up two or three others, I realized that I actually love writing and reading poetry. I’m glad it didn’t take forty-five years.

I retired from ministry and haven’t felt the need or desire ever to do the tasks of ordination again. “Thank you, Jesus.” Don’t get me wrong. I loved preaching but enough already, like the retired baseball pitcher who is content to toss a ball with his granddaughter, if she asks, but has no desire to stand on the mound ever again.

And poetry? But like the retired minister who will die in the pulpit, I probably will die with a blank Pages’ page before me and a rhymed couplet on my mind.

“We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists ‘of conspiring to teach to do,’ but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial
capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York,”*

Or anywhere else for that matter, but we are too lazy
in our comfortable (no working out one’s salvation
with fear and trembling —
done anything for the poor, the prisoner suffering?)
individual salvation in Jesus Christ,
anti-biblical, falsely-scriptural lazy, hazy, crazy
days of summer kind of white, evangelical religion
where all I have to do is accept
and win the capitalistic bet
to go to heaven — hell to forget
except that hell is the cell
of my selfishness and
buying into the system,
“which breeds such suffering
in the whited sepulcher of” my
complacent, privileged, yet angry,
resentful, hateful, fearful, lily-white,
anthracitic, arthritic lump of a
hard-hearted heart.

*Dorothy Day,
The Catholic Worker, September 1956, 6, 7.

You can always get out of it by saying what
the culture says is quite enough of an apology,
“I apologize.” That is what you could say in
everyday circumstances such as when you
bump into someone in a line. You might even
toss off a quick, “Hey, sorry,” and go on your
way.  However, when having seriously offend-
ed (sinned against) someone, an “apology” is
not quite sufficient. An “I’m sorry,” a sincere,
heartfelt, “I’m sorry,” is bare minimum followed
by the requisite “Please forgive me.” Now, we
are talking confession (No shortcuts here, please.)
and request for forgiveness — or as the commercial
says, “Heaven,” oh, yeah, de sine qua non, de
fait de accompli or as a theologian might coin it,
“Expiation.”

We are seeing the
incredible,
unbelievable
descent of honor
into dishonor,
honesty
into dishonesty,
integrity
into chicanery,
right before our eyes,
in open sight;
that’s what makes it
such a fright —
men and women
selling their souls
like Faust to the Devil for
a few years more
of unlimited knowledge
and worldly pleasures —
an ungodly measure.
It has been written,
“What you have said
in the dark will be heard
in the daylight,
and what you have whispered
in the ear
in the inner rooms
will be proclaimed from
the roofs.”
There is nothing new
under the sun;
do you need any-
more proof
than what is happening
right now
under our nation’s roof?

If “I think therefore
I am” is what I am,
and God is love,
how do I know
if I am loved?
Do I just think it?
Is thinking love
or just thinking
about love?
Does God think,
therefore God is
what God thinks
or is God love
and thinking
and therefore
the Love that
allows me to
think and love
and think about
that love and that
I am loved and that
I am love and that
helps me think about
what Jesus said —
that I am to love?
I think so. René
Descartes, the
thinker, might have
been proud. I’m not
so sure about God,
the Lover. God might
say, “Oye Veh, it’s
all a mystery and
I love you anyway.
Think about that.”

Years and years ago I would drag out
old articles I wrote and be pleasantly
surprised, saying, “Wow! Did I write
that? That was pretty good.” Now,
once in a while, I click on posts from
years gone by and read a poem and
have the same response, “Wow! Did
I write that? That was pretty good,”
reading it from afar and hoping that
my fellow artists — visual, literary,
musical, have the same experience.
I’m proud to say that I would, could
and did say with sincere surprise,
“Wow! Did I write that? That was
pretty good.”

If you hear someone shout “Corruption,”
look for that someone’s corruption.
If you hear someone shout, “Treason,”
look for that someone’s treason.
If you hear someone shout, “Spy,”
look for that someone’s spying.
If you hear someone call others “names,”
look at that someone calling the names.
If you hear someone shout “Rude,”
look for that someone’s rudeness.
If you hear someone shout “Violence,”
look for that someone’s advocacy of violence.
If you hear someone brag about his or her “This and That,”
look elsewhere for all the this and that.
If you see someone pointing a finger,
look for the fingers pointing back at that someone.
If you hear someone say he or she will “Drain the Swamp,”
look for the gators and snakes in that someone’s swamp.
We hear and see all this and more every day.
We see the worst of ourselves in that someone.
We need to be careful not to project just like that someone
does all day.

So now I find out, (Ouch!), that pesticides and herbicides
might be causing my inadvertent, unintentional suicide.
By consuming big farm fruit, vegetables and grains,
and, by derivative, the animals who consume the vegetables, grains
and the vegetable and grain
which is called corn on these farms
I, and everyone else, have cause for alarm.
From birth defects to hormonal imbalance to arthritic inflammation,
these farm products’ producers are more than culpable and to blame.
So, it’s small, organic farm products for me
listening to Wendell Berry,
the Dandelion Guy, the environmental advocate
and writer of prize-winning poetry.
Go small, go healthy, go organic;
I know my joints heartily approve and endorse it
and I definitely agree.