The boy lingered by the Big Lake one day.
He listened to what the waves would say.

They spoke with such incredible strength.
Startled, he almost forgot what to think.

They crashed upon the sandy shore.
Scared, he asked them not to speak anymore.

But they just kept calling his name
and he realized they were playing a game.

They didn’t want to scare him this day.
Really all they wanted to do was play.

So he ran up to the edge of the shore
and dared those waves to crash some more.

He wasn’t scared of all their bluster.
He stood with all the courage he could muster.

Then they laughed and doused him with spray.
And as they left he decided, a while, to stay.

He stood his ground daring them to return.
He knew they would when it was their turn.

And so they came back with great gusto.
To which the boy said, “Sorry, I’ve got to go.”

The waves then begged the boy to stay.
They just wanted to play all day.

I wanted a guidon
to guide me on
to victory.
But it only led
to misery —
violence in
the name of
The Great God —
Guidon,
blowing in
the wind.

Coat hangers became a hot item — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v. Wade.
Back alleys became highways — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v. Wade.
Buckets of blood covered dirty, back room floors — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v. Wade.
Airline tickets to Europe sold out — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v.Wade.
Women were barefoot and pregnant — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v. Wade.
Women’s bodies were abducted — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v. Wade.
Women were criminalized — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v. Wade
Babies were born into a society that
couldn’t care less about them out of the womb — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v. Wade.
Time turned back fifty-years — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v. Wade.
The music died again — the day
the Supreme Court reversed
Roe v. Wade.

Yes, Don McLean, you sang
that the music died
between 1957 and 1969,
but the music of justice
died Saturday, October 6, 2018
at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time,
on the floor of the US Senate
when old, white women and men
in a last gasp power grab
with their era to rule passing away
elected a severely flawed,
privileged white man on this dark day
to do their bidding
and to judge with unlimited
authority you and me
each and every day
and for years and years to come.

I hesitate to call the back side of our property a backyard. The image doesn’t work. The backyards of my past were enclosed spaces with grass that needed to be mowed regularly by a gas-powered push mower.

This is a little piece and slice of paradise along the shores of the Big Lake, just down a dune. There is a thousand gallon pond with a waterfall on the east side containing goldfish that have lived in the pond from the beginning of the pond, ten years. The water is circulated with a pump requiring a miniscule amount of electricity.

The pond is surrounded along the back and sides by cedar, white pine and birch trees. Along the sides and front are various seasonal flowers and ferns.

On the west side of the property are ferns, red pines, white pines and Norway Spruce trees. There is an open space in the middle which is filling in with ground cover and flowers. It is called the Pine Grove.

None of this property needs to be mowed. Our front yard only requires cutting once a year because it is covered with dune grass.  Our property reflects the dune area in which it resides. A neighbor who has an immaculately manicured yard of what we have come to know as regular grass which is mowed twice a week by a landscaping company using riding mowers, once asked facetiously how our weeds were doing.

My wife and I love to sit around the pond. There are three sitting areas — two on the west side of the pond and one on the east side which is accessible along the east side and over a stone bridge from the west side.

We are now discouraged from sitting around the pond by the presence of mosquitoes — hordes and hordes, swarms upon swarms of mosquitoes. I wondered if it were just our property but found out that Southwest Michigan has become a mosquito haven.

I told an environmentally aware neighbor that we probably will all die of Malaria. He didn’t laugh.

To say that God exists, in its literal
interpretation, means that at some
time God did not exist, because that
is what exist means — here now, not then.

To say that God does not exist,
taken metaphorically, means that
God is beyond not existing —

kind of like two negatives making a positive.

Theologians tried that but didn’t explain it very
well and it certainly didn’t go over very well
to the literal mindset — the place where most
of us live most of the time, unfortunately,
if for no other reason than it’s kind of boring.

Some said God is dead. Really poor choice of words.
It has some shock value but shock leads to fear and
fear to anger and…well, we know the history of literal
interpretations.

They could have said something like “The old, literal,
tribal god used by factions to their own
own ends which usually end in violence — this
literal god is dead. However, the mysterious,
metaphorical Formless Presence is being revealed
especially to those of us in university divinity
schools.”

They would have been lucky to make it out-of-town alive.

*idea from a meditation by Frederick Buechner
and the phrase “Formless Presence” was used by
Richard Rohr in a meditation

It is said that poetry
is autobiographical.
Do I use humor because
I’m so laughable?
Sometimes.

He’s more than old enough now
to know better than to continue
tilting at windmills. People
don’t ever want to be told

anything, however directly
or indirectly, harshly or
sweetly, it is presented
— even posed as a question

for consideration. They
are always right, always,
and to have that questioned
is beyond verboten, absolutely

without a doubt. It is simply
an opportunity for Newton’s
Third Law of Motion — vehement
objections and fingers wagging

back in his direction. And so
we just smile at each other and
make nasty, behind the back,
attacks. Better to live in false

community and pseudo peace, so
his advice to himself is to
desist and cease and live in
his own separate peace and give

his emotions, spirit and body
a little rest, at the very least.
Perhaps he should join a monastery,
and like Merton, send missives

from the hermitage like “Confessions
of a Guilty Bystander,” and have
a notion to chant a Gregorian chant .

His wife might second that emotion.

Three retired minister friends
sat discussing difficulties in
the lives of their children —

three in their early fifties,
one in his late forties. You
could see the strain on the

friends’ faces and hear the
fear and vulnerability in
their voices. One remarked

that they all used the word
“kid” when referring to those
post middle-age people. They

paused, reflected and then
chuckled in a moment of blessed
comic relief. Those post middle-

age persons would never use
the word “kid” in reference
to themselves but they would

use the word “kid” in refer-
ence to their children now
and when they discuss the

troubles of those children
when those children are post
middle-age persons and for

years and years afterward
for as long as those parents
are alive and kicking.

Artist wife Chris McKinley Dahl’s mixed media sculpture “Esther Williams and Friends” won second place in the juried fall show of the Holland Friends of Art at the Holland Area Arts Council, Holland, MI!  Congratulations, Chris!