The man and his wife sat in the car
reading the signs in the window —

chipper advice, the up, up and away
kind — “I rise in the morning and

embrace Jesus,” “Life is full of
wonderful surprises,” “Love is

the only law in this house,” “Sweet
meals, sweet smiles, sweet children,

sweet, sweet Lord of All,” “As for
me and my house, we will serve

the Lord,” “Salt water taffy, the sea
and Thee,” “The Be-Happy Attitudes,”

clearly a borrow from Robert Schuller’s
now defunct Power of Possibility Thinking

take on the Beatitudes, and on and on
and on. They looked at each other and

grimaced. He approached the counter
and heard the owner cheerfully say

to the customer, “Best wishes with
that thing about your grandchild.

We have a grandchild who had so many
things wrong with her that when

we heard she was going to live but
be paralyzed we erupted in laughter.”

He erupted in laughter, “Yup, she’s
completely paralyzed.” He continued

to chuckle as the perplexed woman
backed away. The man just stood

there pushing his purchases forward,
muttering to himself, “Sweet Jesus.”

Cool, calm, collected is how the former am-
bassador always seemed when interviewed on
television (with a backdrop of the nationally

known university where he taught) before the
often bare-breasted former KGB operative
put out a verbal warrant for him and several

other state department vets as criminals and
our president sold the ambassador, et.al.
down the proverbial river with a “Gee, what

a generous offer.” Now, the very same former
ambassador seems a bit tentative, skittish,
nervously giddy as he rubs his neck and

tugs at his shirt collar at any discussion
of his being sent to Russia for interrogation
and torture and a quick permanent trip to

the gulag even though the senate of the US
backed him unanimously with two abstentions
because of absences and the president reluctant-

ly went along, oh, say forty-eight hours after
the fact. I’d probably be a bit skittish and
chuckle somewhat inappropriately as I rubbed

my neck if the former KGB operative went after
me and my president offered me up on a silver
platter kind of like the head of John the

Baptist being offered up by Herod to the
daughter of Herodias, extra-biblically known
as the dancing seductress Salome after whom

Herod lusted greatly.

So, weeks ago he sent an e-mail
to an aficionado of Islay Scotch,
the stuff distilled in heavy, heavy

peat bog country almost in the
middle of some nowhere island
off the coast of Scotland and he

heard nothing in return. Look
the guy is of Dutch descent and,
therefore, he is looking for a

bargain and this stuff was judged
best in the world and only costs
$24 a fifth. Still nothing. So he

sent another e-mail asking if the
Dutch-American got the first and
attaching the link to the inform-

ation. Again nothing. And so his
mind went to the worst places,
paranoia set in and he worried

that for some God forsaken reason
he had been ostracized from this
guy and the rest of the guy’s Dutch-

American social circle, perhaps be-
cause of his non-Dutch last name and
his left-leaning religious and pol-

itical views. He knew he should have
kept his mouth shut but after two
or three shots of the guy’s expensive

peat-boggy Scotch…Well. Then he thought
about that breed of Dutch-Americans
and how their ancestors came over

from the Netherlands in 1847 much
to the pleasure and relief of the
rest of the Dutch who stayed behind,

came to the docks to wave goodbye
and threw a party. It’s a quirky
bunch — stiff, religious literalists

and political hyper-conservatives
who hung around the same geography
and intermarried to the point of

raising eyebrows within the local
medical community and then, in his
time of resignation leading to despair

at the possibility of group rejection,
he got an e-mail from the guy thanking
him for the information and he realized

he got the whole thing about the Dutch
wrong, er…mostly, some? He was just
glad to get the e-mail.

*I read the following the day after writing
the poem. I am indebted to Henri Nouwen
for offering, in a meditation, an explanation
of what I was trying to get at in a narrative
poem:

When someone hurts us, offends us, ignores us, or rejects us,
a deep inner protest emerges. It can be rage or depression,
desire to take revenge or an impulse to harm ourselves. We
can feel a deep urge to wound those who have wounded us or
to withdraw in a suicidal mood of self-rejection. Although
these extreme reactions might seem exceptional, they are
never far away from our hearts. During the long nights we
often find ourselves brooding about words and actions we
might have used in response to what others have said or
done to us.

It is precisely here that we have to dig deep into our
spiritual resources and find the center within us, the
center that lies beyond our need to hurt others or
ourselves, where we are free to forgive and love.

He loves the Impressionists’
music as meditation,
with seeming simplicity
but deceptive complexity
of melody and harmony,
carrying one into tranquility —
immersion in nature,
rumblings of the sea,
pavanes of broken-hearted love
echoing sweet agony,
the rhythmic repetition
of erotic play.
He is taken away
from the routinized
chaos of the day —
idiotic blather meant to sway
opinions and keep
investigators at bay,
hoards of lemmings following
whatever third-grade talk will say.
Ah, but sweet serenity
is his temporary trip through eternity
until the station plays Tchaikovsky’s
1812 Overture and he is
abruptly brought back to
the harsh reality
of the day
and then he smiles
at the reality
that 1812 was a prelude to
Napoleon meeting his 1815 Waterloo
and he wonders if,  in this day,
as history repeats itself,
that might also be true
and a wannabe Napoleon
will soon meet his own Waterloo.

Frederick Buechner wrote:

What makes lying an evil is not only that the world is deceived by it, but that we are dehumanized by it.*

Now think about the president and his sixty million supporters. Through his lying and their acceptance of it and endorsement of it are they dehumanizing the rest of us, dehumanizing to the point of being willing, in fact wanting, to eliminate the rest of us?

We are already seeing the dehumanizing of Blacks, Latinos and Muslims by the president’s lies. Are they being set up for elimination? That is what war does. We dehumanize the “other” in order to destroy that which we dehumanize. That is what happened in Germany in my lifetime. Jews were dehumanized so they could be “eliminated.”

Hitler lied
and the Nazis loved the lie
and millions died.

We can’t laugh off the president’s lies. Do not be deceived by them. The lies are evil and the logical consequence of evil is death.

We are given the gift of speech and with that gift we praise God and curse our neighbor.

Speak truth to lies before the devil stands at the door and knocks pretending to be Jesus.

*originally published in Beyond Words.

Unike the unbiblical notion about Balaam tying his donkey, I tied my 
      ass to a tree and walked a mile and then my ass snapped back;
I would pull my limbs apart at the joints and
      watch and feel them jump back into place;
I would bend my legs forward at the knees doing what they
      weren’t meant to do and they would
spin round and round and flip this way and that
      right back the way they were intended to be; 
I would pull up my knee caps and twist them around each other
      clockwise and watch them fly fast counterclockwise and 
snap back into place; I would bend my fingers back till they 
      touched the top of my hand; I would let them sit there for 
awhile and then I would give them permission to go back to 
      the way they needed to be for me to type this;
Now, I don’t do any of those things (I actually never did); 
      I’m just glad most of me is still fitting pretty well together 
without tugging and pulling or pushing and shoving.

I have read three meditations
this morning, ironically all

dovetailing in the topic of
compassion and the question,

“Who is my neighbor?”. Now,
I will turn to the headlines

of the day and read about
the movers and shakers and

their idle antics and struggle
to muster compassion for those

I have an incredibly hard
time seeing as my neighbor

and who surely wouldn’t
see me as one of theirs.

We’re going through the motions,
trying not to think about our emotions
but there are those nagging commotions
that are the kiss of death to romantic notions.

We aren’t getting enough sleep
for thoughts and fears do creep
into our hearts and minds so deep.
It doesn’t even help to count sheep.

It’s all the events of the damnable day,
to which we shout — bleep, bleep, bleeple-dee bleep!

Out of nowhere the image that
popped into his mind was an
evening, English class on
Shakespeare when he was
in junior college. It was a year
after his dad died brutally
by his own hand. It wasn’t
exactly a time of security and
serenity in his life but, obviously,
that class and that professor
left a comforting image. That
tells him something about
the absence of security and
serenity and comfort now in
a, basically, leaderless country
that the comfort would come
from a time of such utter
vulnerability — that life for
a lonely, scared kid compared
well to now.

life floats by;
home movies by
the sea;
tragedy strikes;
a beautiful woman,
young mother of five,
suffers a debilitating
stroke;
her husband
remains faithful;
home movies in the nursing
home;
he dies prematurely —
exhausted? heartbroken?
woman’s parents help;
children are afraid
of the debilitated
woman;
where’s mother?
some leave;
years later,
a son returns —
tentatively;
he keeps visiting;
she drools;
they talk
through a machine;
she misses her
husband always;
they hug;
they laugh;
they kiss;
he’s home
by the sea.
life floats by.

*idea from the short film
Rewind Forward