Staring at Uncle Ben’s beautiful,

bronzed  “chrome dome” with

snow-white fringe on the package

of converted rice, the man thought

about being a bushy haired young

man of twenty-seven or eight and

visiting another Uncle Ben and

observing his beautiful, bronzed

“chrome dome” and the snow-white

fringe in the little, four-room

cinder-block house converted into

a restaurant Uncle Ben owned in

rural Kentucky. He and his wife

fixed fine, fried chicken dinners

family style.  Now all these years

later, he’s envious of  those beautiful,

bronzed “chrome domes.” He is sure

Bardstown Ben has passed on to glory,

but the other Uncle Ben is frozen

in time on a box on a shelf. The

man now stares at a pale, white

skinned “chrome dome” pate

every time he looks in the mirror

or at his reflection in the window

of the grocery store as he passes

after having visited Uncle Ben on

a box. 

How can it get anymore

basic than water breaking,

amniotic fluid flowing

down legs, placenta

popping and a baby

emerging from the darkness

grunted out of the watery

womb into life with deep,

deep breaths by Muslim,

Jewish, Christian, Buddhist,

Taoist, Sikh and, among

others, atheist women?  Why

do their men insist on killing

those children as they grow

into soldiers and why do

those who suffered so much

in childbirth and experienced

that common thread of pain

and joy and ecstasy permit

it and when, oh, when will

they join in the solidarity

of birth and say, no more

to the pain that knows no

joy or ecstasy only the

termination of that joy

and the blood lust of

killing another male’s

offspring?

1. We jogged among trees

till the conservationists

cut down the red pines,

2. then we jogged no more

in the place we ran for years

but then we went back

3. and realized that

the plan was all for the best

observing the growth

4. of new, native plants

and all the budding white pines

that started to grow

5. as we made our way

with native Michigan plants

blossoming in sand.

He wants poetically to speak out

on the issues of the day,

but so many with greater clout

have left him in dismay,

by speaking cogently about

an amount

of injustices in great array,

and so he has decided to

take account

and let the greater voices

have their way

and refrain from speaking

at least this particular

day.

The parks’ people,

khaki-clad,

daypacks stuffed

with official documents

and some granola

bars, surely,

stopped and looked

around at us jogging

up from behind.

I quipped, dog leash

in hand, “I know

I have to have the

Chocolate Lab on a

six-foot leash, but

does the leash need

to be in my hand?”

Slightly officious,

and somewhat

less than amused, one

stated, ”There’s

a joker on

every trail,” and then the

other

said, rhetorically,

“Of course.”

We stopped and chatted

while the dog took the

opportunity to collapse

on the ground after

the thirty-minute

jog on leash because

labs just want to have

fun, stop, sniff, pee, poop

and then catch up in a

real romp but

could not.

The officials mentioned a

remote but not

too far park where dogs

get to run free.

“The dog will love it, “

they opined. We went and

jogged up and down and up

and down steep sand dunes,

sand filling our

running shoes as we went.

Eventually, we arrived

back where we had

started barely able to

lift our sand laden shoes.

Collapsing on a log to

empty the shoes, we

sighed and the dog

just wagged his

big behind being

wagged

by his big bushy

tail as if to ask, “Can

we come back?

Please, please,

please?”

Still, somewhat warm light reflected

weakly off the pale, green, soft, toothy,

leaves of the beech speaking

toward the blazingly

bright, red, five-fingered maples typing

out silent, glistening code as they

fluttered in the breeze toward

brown oaks which

wouldn’t pass on the word because of

their unreflective dullness, so

the leaves held the message

close to their trunk and

kept the secret longer into the winter than

any other tree, including the

reluctant beeches,when

the oaks, too, called out

the code announcing, as they finally

dropped their leaves onto the cold,

white tomb which would soon

cover their tough,

leathery but lifeless leaves beneath

another layer, the death and

burial of the now completely

finished season.

The big, lumbering Chocolate Lab, frightened

by his own shadow, wouldn’t venture far out

into the pine grove behind the house before the

family retired for the evening, until his Alpha

male, hunting instincts kicked in one evening

at the sight of something wild behind the water-

fall.  He took off with torque previously unseen

by his new adoptive parents and having chased

away whatever it was, loped back to the house

after taking a minute to mark his territory. His

mother asked him, “Weren’t you afraid of  the

dark?” in a gentle voice, to which he simply

wagged his tail and retired to the bedroom for

the evening. As she closed the door behind

them, she thought to herself, thank heavens,

it wasn’t a skunk.

Here is a poem I shot off  to a very good friend, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Eggebeen, who just retired after forty-four years of ordained ministry.

He’s a great writer and I expect to see many posts on his several blogs.

He has been such a great minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA) that I give him the highest compliment of which I can think:  I would be proud to have him as my pastor.

Tom,

Good, good, good for you
and Ms. Donna, too.

Can’t come your L.A. way
this winter ’cause Buddy Baloo

has come our Holland way
and between there and Phoenix                                                                                           is here to stay,

But you two are more than a New Orleans’                                                               greeting of that jazz guy Harry Connick,
as long as you bring the gin and tonic

or a fifth of Ten High
for your best, old, buddy,                                                                                                    one bad Kentucky Bourbon sippin’ guy.

Congratulations!!!

Brother Bob and His Travelin’ Salvation Show

At a meeting of the Godhead and a few other bigwigs, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit or to be a bit more politically correct, the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer were having some thoughts among themselves.  The lesser Celestials broke the silence and wondered out loud if anyone was going to offer a suggestion for a solution to the seemingly intractable problem of the perennially shrinking church.

The Trinity said in unison, “Sorry, after so much time together, we just all know each other’s thoughts, so there is no need to speak; besides, silence is kind of nice once in a while. All we get around here these days is tech-speak and stats., stats., stats. and endless one line, mono-melodic  praise music, yadda, yadda, yadda,” at which point the three looked at each other and said simultaneously, “You two owe me a coke.” 

The others just shook their heads and looked at each other quizzically and one said, “This happens all the time.  These meetings are so boring and nothing gets accomplished.  We’ve done feasibility studies, market research, studied business plans from Harvard Business School from which George W. Bush graduated and still no answers, surprise, surprise,” at which point they all stared at the spread sheets in front of them cluttering the Ark of the Covenant.

Suddenly, the gates flew open while St. Peter was on break and Lucifer rushed in on an updraft of hot air.  Apparently, the once bright and shining Morning Star, now tarnished angel, had a rather bright idea.

“You guys and you, too, Ms. Spirit, need to get a little heat under your seat and spice up your life. I specialize in that stuff. The problem is that you all are so boringly prosaic. Cold, cold, cold. You need to think poetically.  Hot, hot, hot. You are all invited to our next poetry slam.  The winner gets a ‘Get Out of Hell’ free card good for one trip to El Dia de los Muertos or Cinco de Mayo, during which more beer is consumed than at any other festival in America.  My hunch is the choice will be  Cinco, and that’s a no brainer, because having been down here, they have worked up a big thirst and besides, who wants to hang around a lot of dead people?”

At which point the Godhead and all the other Celestials  thought, Qui pasa? and shouted,

“What, in heaven’s name are you doing here

but now that we too have worked up a big thirst,

please go get us some micro-brewed beer.

Why do you think we are all here?

Just to scare out hell and fear?

We just want to bring more love near

to those who live in mortal fear

and have sold their souls far and near

to the gods of money, power and fear.

Do we make ourselves clear?”

Lucifer thought for a moment and a light

bulb went off really bright

and said, “Well, before I take flight,

I must say your poetry is really, really light,

not too deep and not of much might

for such a weighty bunch,

but, it’s a start and you’re on the path just right,

so I leave you to your poetry and I am on

a down draft flight

to a place with not much light

but burning coals and red-hot

chili with lots of bite.”

And the Godhead spoke with strength and might

saying together, “I think we are out of our plight.

I guess we can learn something from this Once Star

So Bright. It’s poetry, good or bad, that we must write.”

Then they looked at each other and said in one voice very clear,

“You two owe me a really cold beer. We think we have some up here.”

The following is a bit of writing out of the ordinary for my blog site and is usually the kind of thing that appears only in e-mails I send to friends and family, but in light of Richard Rohr’s Spiritual Capitalism (See below.), I sent out an e-mail and then decided to post it.

So here goes:

The more I realize the counter cultural nature of Jesus in relation to every culture, the more I see God’s Realm as Jesus described it as the true system of all of life, the light of life — physical/material, emotional, spiritual — emptying of all, embracing all in love and living justly without fear.

Has our capitalistic culture transformed American Christian religion into one more “consumer culture” as Richard Rohr contends?  If so, no wonder I haven’t been going to church lately.

In light of this Congress and the growing gap between the very, very few super rich and all the rest of humanity and the ever more rapid descent into ecological destruction,  these words of St. Paul do not seem like just hyperbolic, anachronistic, mythic war language.

They have taken on a diabolical incarnation in its present manifestation, which points beyond itself: “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the host of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6: 12).

It does seem like all the illogical, rhetorical drivel coming out of Washington has a source beyond itself.  Just the usual babble from the Tower of Babel or is the sum greater than the individual parts?  What is driving all this lunacy?  When things get out of control, fear steps in and bad things happen. Why can’t we just give up our illusion of controlling anything outside of ourselves and “Let go and let God”?

Whatever happened to that time-honored notion of “compromise”?  Compromise is possible when people are wise enough to know that they don’t have all the answers and never will.  Give a little, gain a little and get on with it.

Don’t envy the billionaires. They, too, are being driven by something that has great power over them, and it makes them far more dangerous than most of the rest of us. A study was done by Boston University a few years ago on the psyche of billionaires.  By and large, they live their lives in fear — fear of losing what they have acquired and so they hang on tighter with the grasping pinchers of William Golding’s Pincher Martin.

The terrorists are onto all this. It isn’t rocket science, but it sure works in its diabolical simplicity. We spend trillions of tax dollars that we don’t have and terminate or incapacitate the lives of so many of our young when all the terrorists do is hijack a few planes for a pittance of flight training and slam into America’s Holy of Holies — the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  You don’t think our fight or flight fear reaction is overkill, do you?

I keep looking for a few streams of light piercing the clouds of our own darkness revealing a bit of hope here and there and ever and always looking for the perfect love that perfectly casts out fear. Then I practiced a bit of personal awareness, saw some light deep down there and then saw the day in a whole new way.

It was good to get in a few days camping without ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN and MSNBC and all the blah, blah, blah from the rarely sublime to the mostly ridiculous.

Thank God for PBS and NPR and poetry.

Bob
bobdahl.wordpress.com

From: Center for Action and Contemplation <no-reply@cac.org>
Date: September 30, 2013 2:16:08 AM EDT
To: bobe@macatawa.org
Subject: Richard Rohr’s Meditation: Spiritual Capitalism

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation:

The phrase “spirituality of subtraction” was inspired by Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), the medieval Dominican mystic. He said that the spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition. Yet I think most Christians today are involved in great part in a spirituality of addition, and in that, they are not really very traditional or conservative at all.

The capitalist worldview is the only one most of us have ever known. We see reality, experiences, events, other people, and things—in fact, everything—as objects for our personal consumption. Even religion, Scripture, sacraments, worship services, and meritorious deeds become ways to advance ourselves—not necessarily ways to love God or neighbor.

The nature of the capitalist mind is that things (and often people!) are there for me. Finally, even God becomes an object for my consumption. Religion looks good on my resume, and anything deemed “spiritual” is a check on my private worthiness list. Some call it spiritual consumerism. It is not the Gospel.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 114, day 123
(Available through Franciscan Media)