Resurrection is a Threat, Not a Promise

Resurrection is a Threat, Not a Promise

Shared Thoughts of Julia Esquivel and  Parker Palmer

from Jane Tawel

April 13, 2019

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It seems a “good” time to share once more excerpts from this poem by Guatemalan Poet, Julia Esquivel.  This poem, written as witness to the horrors inflicted on the people of Guatemala in the 1970’s and 1980’s, is now perhaps even more tragically relevant to us in this place at this time. Who are we in light of this current onslaught of naked need?  I include as well, a short meditation on this poem by Parker Palmer from The Active Life.

If we are not being threatened with resurrection today, and especially if we are the sort of people who are still planning on celebrating the upcoming Good Friday and Easter / “Resurrection Sunday”, perhaps we still don’t really “get” this whole Christ thing? Perhaps we don’t even get this whole Human thing? To paraphrase Palmer, “If we are to take seriously those who complete their own “marathon of hope”, The Christ’s calling, perhaps we too must undergo some form of dying.” I fear and feel deeply and spiritually that if we do not, join the “least of these”, the lost, the poor, the sojourners and needy, in, as Esquivel writes, this “marathon of hope”, we will never reach “the finish line which lies beyond death”.

I hope you will read Ms. Esquivel’s searing poem and I hope, as I am, you will be threatened by it.   Resurrection is not a promise for believing in Christ’s life, my friends, it is a threat for those willing to die with Him. The King of The World lived not in the safety and cushy-capitalistic “Christianity” of my lifetime, but in the threatening and threatened world of self-imposed poverty and outcast status of the Judeo-Roman last century B.C. Jesus has threatened us with these words:  “For as you have done it unto the least of the world’s humans, you have done it as unto God.” Those words are either terrifying or hopeful, depending on whether we hear them as promise or threat. Perhaps we need to hear them today as both threat and promise.  As Esquivel says, “then we will know how marvelous it is to live threatened with Resurrection”.

Hear the threat. Seek the threat. Embrace the threat. Be the threat.

 

“They Have Threatened Us with Resurrection”

by Julia Esquivel

It isn’t the noise in the streets

that keeps us from resting, my friend,

nor is it the shouts of the young people

coming out drunk from the “St. Pauli,”

nor is it the tumult of those who pass by excitedly

on their way to the mountains.

 

It is something within us that doesn’t let us sleep,

that doesn’t let us rest,

that won’t stop pounding

deep inside,

it is the silent, warm weeping

of Indian women without their husbands,

it is the sad gaze of the children

fixed somewhere beyond memory,

precious in our eyes

which during sleep,

though closed, keep watch,

with each contraction

of the heart

in every awakening.

 

Now six have left us,

and nine in Rabinal,

and two, plus two, plus two,

and ten, a hundred, a thousand,

a whole army

witness to our pain,

our fear,

our courage,

our hope!

 

What keeps us from sleeping

is that they have threatened us with Resurrection!

Because every evening

though weary of killings,

an endless inventory since 1954,

yet we go on loving life

and do not accept their death!

They have threatened us with Resurrection

Because we have felt their inert bodies,

and their souls penetrated ours

doubly fortified,

because in this marathon of Hope,

there are always others to relieve us

who carry the strength

to reach the finish line

which lies beyond death.

 

They have threatened us with Resurrection

because they will not be able to take away from us

their bodies,

their souls,

their strength,

their spirit,

nor even their death

and least of all their life.

Because they live

today, tomorrow, and always

in the streets baptized with their blood,

in the air that absorbed their cry,

in the jungle that hid their shadows,

in the river that gathered up their laughter,

in the ocean that holds their secrets,

in the craters of the volcanoes,

Pyramids of the New Day,

which swallowed up their ashes.

 

They have threatened us with Resurrection

because they are more alive than ever before,

because they transform our agonies

and fertilize our struggle,

because they pick us up when we fall,

because they loom like giants

before the crazed gorillas’ fear.

They have threatened us with Resurrection,

because they do not know life (poor things!).

 

That is the whirlwind

which does not let us sleep,

the reason why sleeping, we keep watch,

and awake, we dream.

 

No, it’s not the street noises,

nor the shouts from the drunks in the “St. Pauli,”

nor the noise from the fans at the ball park.

It is the internal cyclone of kaleidoscopic struggle

which will heal that wound of the quetzal

fallen in Ixcán,

it is the earthquake soon to come

that will shake the world

and put everything in its place.

 

No, brother,

it is not the noise in the streets

which does not let us sleep.

 

Join us in this vigil

and you will know what it is to dream!

Then you will know how marvelous it is

to live threatened with Resurrection!

 

To dream awake,

to keep watch asleep,

to live while dying,

and to know ourselves already

resurrected!

 

 

The longer that one dwells on the poem, the harder it is to say exactly who threatens us with resurrection. The poem itself is like the kaleidoscope whose image Esquivel uses; each time you turn it a new pattern appears. So the poem imitates life, in which the “threat of Resurrection” comes both from those who dispense death and from those who have died in the hope of new life… If it is true that both the killers and the killed threaten us with resurrection, then we, the living are caught between a rock and hard place.  On the one hand, we fear the killers, but not simply because they want to kill us.  We fear them because they test our convictions about resurrection, they test our willingness to be brought into a larger life than the one we now know. On the other hand, we fear the innocent victims of the killers, those who have died for love and justice and peace. Though they are our friends, we fear them because they call us to follow them in “this marathon of Hope.”  If we were to take their calling seriously, we ourselves would have to undergo some form of dying.  (Parker 147-8)

 

 

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The Liebster Award for Jane Tawel and Thoughts on Blogging

On and To Bloggers (but maybe we need a prettier name?)

from  Jane Tawel

April 8, 2019

 

One of the very great things I have discovered about blogging, besides my own creating and thinking with words, is being made aware of how many other creative people there are in the whole wide world posting their creative words, art, and ideas in the medium of online personal “blogs”. This idea of blogging has changed greatly and I think for the best, as it is now a huge, flexible, and fluid medium for expression of all kinds. It is so huge that it is hard to know how to find those folks out there that might appeal to one’s aesthetic or personal needs and desires. Just by luck and through my own blog,  I have come to find out about people I would never know about otherwise — people in Germany, India, Canada, Atlanta — people who make pottery and write about it as if the pots were darling children much like I write about my own darling children; people who create pen and ink drawings and then write heart-searing essays, full of “the warp and woof” of human experience; and people like Tebatjo, someone I may never meet in this lifetime but hope to someday in Eternity — people who dig into their need for writing that most modern-age maligned of arts, poetry, digging much like Scarlet dug potatoes from her decaying plantation, promising “I will never go hungry again”. We who write poetry, feel the metaphoric hungers of the world, and share our own provisions to stave off the starvation of soul-less-ness.

This blogger award to bloggers was a very wonderful thing that the originators came up with, because it is named Liebster, which in German means, “kind”. And it is truly about kindness, isn’t it? It’s all about kindness, not niceness, but about being kind; kind to the planet, kind to others, kind to self, kind to God. I have found the world of fellow bloggers that I personally have heard from or have read to be a community of kind people, people from all walks of life, genders, colors, places, ages but people who share  the quality of kindness.They share kindness through comments, through encouragement, and through this award. I think any one who attempts to create art or who tries to teach other people something about how to live, no matter how bad, unjust, angry or frightening the world is — those people must have a core of kindness in order to create.  No matter how much one rants or provokes in one’s art, art itself will bring one back to a sense of a world of nature and other beings, who are just waiting — just longing — to be kind; if we open ourselves to it, it is there.  I have found the kindness of creativity in a “nation” of fellow bloggers. 

It helps my own wee soul tremendously to know there is an unsung “nation” of souls in the world who create because that is what humans should be doing. Whether you get fame or money is beside the point, the point is as beings created in the image of a Creator-Being, we must. That’s it, we must. Creating may not be our job, but we embrace it as necessary for our lives.  So it is with humility and joy that I accept this nomination (prizes awarded in January 2020), which may seem silly to some, but to me represents a whole world of people that I respect greatly and people that the word “blogger” does not do justice to.  The word “blog” rhymes with things like bog or fog or smog — not things that one wants to immerse oneself in or at least stay in for long.  The bloggers I am privileged to be a citizen with in The Nation of Bloggers,  are thinking, creative people who give a lot of time and energy, heart and soul, to making the world a better place, whether they have one follower, one reader, or thousands. They are the liebsters of the world, whose prizes wait for them, awarded in Eternity by that Great Creator and Lover of all those who with suffering and kindness, create in Her Image. Thank you all for rest, inspiration, provocation, and joy in the journey. You are “liebstered” — you are valued.

******You will find below the award details,  the intriguing questions I was asked to answer; the blogs I am nominating but also recommending for readers to check out; and my questions for the nominees.  As a reader, you might have some fun answering all or one of these questions and posting them in the comments.

 

 

THANK YOU, TEBATJO MALAKA!

A hearty and heart-felt thanks, to fellow blogger and poet, Tebatjo Malaka for nominating me and my blog for the Liebster Award. You can find Tebatjo’s profound blog at https://onhillsofglory.wordpress.com/.

 

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What is the Liebster Prize?

The Liebster Prize is an award that exists only on the Internet and is awarded to bloggers by other bloggers. The first case of the award goes back to 2011. Liebester in German means sweet, kind, dear, charming, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome. It really is an excellent way to meet other bloggers and gain more visibility in the community.

There are some simple rules to follow:
Add a link to the Official Liebester Award page in your blog post the Global aussie

https://theglobalaussie.com

Rules:

  • Thank the blogger that nominated you.
  • Display your award.
  • Answer the questions you were asked.
  • Nominate at least 5 other followers to do the same post.
  • Ask 6 new questions to your chosen nominees.
  • Let each nominee know you’ve nominated them and give a link to your post.

 

Nominations: 

  1. Literaa Poetry
  2. DaleGreenArts
  3. The Alchemist’s Studio
  4. The Mad Servant
  5. kumarshanu1212
  6. beautybeyondbones
  7. Deanne Davis at Tablespoonoflove

 

Questions I was asked to answer by Tebatjo:

  1. How do you define life?

Wow. Right out of the gate, a question that leaves me a bit stunned and silent and the point is to write about it, but I’m assuming I can’t write a 5,000 page tome, which is what it would take. So, for now —I define life, I guess, as something we are given on our birth date, a great and wondrous and often, ponderous,  gift, and then as we live, each human has the choice to accept life as gift or to see life as work. We can use our lives to construct something meaningful, or we can choose to deconstruct or destroy those essential and unique elements we are given as human beings. Now, some people are given more viable and good options in this lifetime than others, who get the short end of the stick or are exposed the evils of the world in ways that are completely unjust.  And whether you are born into a life of ease or a life of hardship is not at all fair, but if you believe, as I do, that we also have the choice to not let this short passage of time that we live out on Earth, be the only and finite life, the only definition of what a life means;  then the option of choosing a spiritually-led life is yours no matter your circumstances.  In fact ironically, Jesus makes an interesting comment that scares some of us fat cat first worlders — he said, it is harder to live a meaningful life if you are rich and powerful than if you are poor and unjustly persecuted.  But as all things are possible with God, even entering the life of God’s Kingdom, then seeing life as gift, no matter our options, will ensure that someday, somehow there will be a life of justice and truth, love and peace, and a wholistic life that for now we can only see and experience dimly or in pieces. However, the crux of the matter is, how I define my purpose in living, for just this morning, this day, this moment even – that is a reflection of how I truly define “life”; which should be paradoxically sobering and freeing.

  1. Based on answer in 1. above, how often do you think about death?

I think about death pretty much every night before bed and first thing in the morning, when I am pleasantly surprised not to be dead.  I wouldn’t say I think much about death in between those times, except to rather daily frantically pray for the people I love to not die that day. If you do read my blog, you will no doubt fairly soon discover that I have more questions and more thoughts about what comes after death than about death itself. I do find this question interesting because I think Americans and perhaps all First World-ers are in dangerous denial about the one certain fact of this life – we will all die.  You can use all the Botox, build all the safety nets (or walls) you like; but you cannot protect yourself from the certainty of death.  However, see the John Donne poem below in my answer to Question #6 for some hopeful philosophy on our deaths.  Or I might recommend a meditation on  The Christ’s view of life after death as found in the book of John, particularly John 5:24 and 11:25

  1. If you had a clone, would you be pleased in telling him/her your life secrets? And how would you accomplish the task of reassuring him/her that everything is going to pan out alright when he/she is about to give up on life?

So, I have to assume that my clone doesn’t know everything I know. (For a wonderful meditation on whether we would really like to have a clone or not, watch that old chestnut “Multiplicity” with Michael Keaton). And I have to assume that I know or have “life secrets”. And are these life secrets about my own life’s journey, or about the “secrets of life” or are both always connected? And then I have to assume I am dealing with someone who is suicidal – Yowza!  In terms of telling someone my life secrets, I would tell them to someone I trust and someone who could learn by them.  I have told my children some of my “life secrets”.  But the tough part of this question of course, is how to talk with someone who is “giving up on life”.  I come from a dynasty of “cheerleaders” who believe in the old “buck up” method of encouragement and that the best thing to say is always: “I’m proud of you and you are great and all is going to be fine for you”. But then your kids grow up or your spouse gets sick and you realize, “so what if I’M proud of them? And also, things do not by any stretch of the imagination always turn out fine.”  And isn’t pride actually, in the end, the problem, not the solution; either the lack of the right kind of pride or too much of the wrong kind of pride. 

So what to say to someone who has gotten  so far along the road in life undetected, or unswayed by the cheerleaders and encouragers, that he / she feels life is not worth living? The problem starts with thinking life is all about me; which in the end, even for those who are famous, wealthy, powerful etc. is never enough, as we find to our sorrow with the famous, powerful, wealthy, people who commit suicide.  The deeper issue is with making me, myself and I the trinity idols of my life. And this is such an insidious religion of humanism masquerading as Christianity, or Judaism or Islam now, at least in my country, it is.  What blindsides us in the end, is that people don’t realize that self-worship is what they actually believe.  They think they believe in God or have faith in Jesus or practice living like Buddha, or will die for king and country; but we have so long been afloat in the sea of materialism, humanistic idolization, greed and power masquerading as success and fulfillment; and self-pride, that with the first moderately strong waves of despair, depression, fear, or failure that eventually assault our sense of meaning, we are capsized into despair or we drug ourselves with religious feeling or pharmaceuticals or more stuff to make the bad feelings go away. But the waves keep rolling. So I guess if my poor clone wakes up one day, as truthfully, I do some days, and says, “Original Model Jane, I don’t feel like living.”  I hope I would simply give Clone my time, that most precious of treasures for now. I hope I would simply sit and hold her hand and make her some tea and maybe a scone or two.  I hope I would stop talking and advising and cheerleading, and just listen – even if it means just listening to the small, faint sound of her heartbeat and the miracle of her breath.

  1. If beauty was defined in terms of a moment, what/how will it be?

Looking at my baby’s face, breathing in the scent of the back of her neck, caressing the little limbs, chubby and soft and helpless, hearing his little bleating cries or his soft coos of contentment as he nurses nourishment from me, looking up from her soft downy head at the great big world, and feeling that sense of awe that this beauty has been given to me.

  1. Between cooking and eating, what’s best, on the assumption that none of the two is obligatory?

Cooking, because cooking means that I will have family and / or friends around my dinner table, enjoying something I have made just for them. The joke in my family is that I cook as if all the field hands on the ranch were coming in hungry to chow down.  I cook as if all four kids were still coming in to dinner each night, along with all their friends – hungry as only kids can be and wanting leftovers of their favorites for later.  I am not a gourmet chef but I cook as generously as I hope my heart is generous.

  1. Do you believe life is a function of fate or destiny (note: destiny is the direct antithesis of fate.)

Ah, the old Shakespearean conundrum:  “Is the fault in the stars or in ourselves?” As asked by Brutus, that most wretched philosopher /friend in the play “Julius Caesar”  or take Edward in Henry IV: “What fates impose, that men must needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide.”  Or The Player King in “Hamlet” “Our wills and fates do so contrary run, That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.” 

Alas, these are all quotes from plays in which people die and die and die some more. So what does Shakespeare or any one for that matter, do with the great Worldview Questions, especially the one about death and dying, when they answer it with, “well, that’s fate”.  I posit that the great poets and artists and philosophers of our times, know quite well, that “fate” or “destiny” is never actually an answer – it will always remain a question. It is one of the ultimately unanswerable questions because only God can look at us, our world, and the element of Time from outside those elements and determine the true meaning of anything. We are not even 20/20 in hindsight, as there is always our very personal interpretation of what we see in the rear view mirrors of our lives, compared to what any one else might see or assess.

I’m also not entirely sure I agree with Tebatjo that destiny is the “direct antithesis” of fate.  See my answer to question #1 on life, but if we have any kind of Judeo-Christian philosophy, then we believe that all human beings are created for the same destiny: to love and glorify The Lord God, Creator of All; to live a life of justice-seeking peace, kindness, truth, and fulfillment; and to work at loving others as we love ourselves.  This is everyone’s “destiny” but not of course the end result of every human being’s choices.  In fact, woe is me, it is the end result of very, very few of us.

Of course, Shakespeare is also wrestling with this conundrum of fate and choice; God and humans as little gods; and none of his characters have it completely right, only pieces of it, which is why Shakespeare keeps on asking his characters and his audiences this question.  Shakespeare’s questions on fate and human beings versus Providence or A God are much like you can find in the Biblical book of Job – a play with characters worthy of Shakespeare for sure.  As you can see, I find it necessary to turn to those great Questioners of the ages in terms of questions like this one.  If you check out Job, you will find that God Himself questions Job.  The gift of art is the gift of living in the questions. And this for me includes the question of  “fate or fault”, “fate or destiny”.

 In terms of fate, I refer readers to find some munching on material in, perhaps, the views of two  great poets –John Donne and Emily Dickinson. 

Superiority to Fate (1081)
Emily Dickinson

Superiority to Fate
Is difficult to gain
‘Tis not conferred of Any
But possible to earn

A pittance at a time
Until to Her surprise
The Soul with strict economy
Subsist till Paradise.

 

Death Be Not Proud

The Holy Sonnets by John Donne

 

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

 

  1. If you were to write a five-line poetry for that one person in your life, how would it look like?

 

I do write a lot of poetry for the people in my life, my husband and children.  Yesterday my husband and I had one of “those” fights.  So here is my poem for Raoul, my one person, for today.

For Raoul

Five Lines, by Jane Tawel

You and I, muddling through.

There are days you hate me and I abhor you.

But we keep living the gift of a long-term love,

which all but God fall badly short of.

We both mess up badly, but our love remains true — you know, I love you.

 

 

Jane’s Questions for the Nominees:

  1. If you could get out one all important message to the world, what would it be?
  2. You can build your house on either a mountainside, in a forest, or by a body of water. Which would you choose and why?
  3. What one book of fiction would you recommend everyone read at least once if not many times in his / her lifetime? Why?
  4. You must choose between lots of money and fame right now or being recognized after your death as a profound and meaningful artist. Which do you choose and why?
  5. Pick at least three different artistic mediums and name someone who has effected your life through their creations.
  6. Why do you keep doing what you do?

 

The Center Now Holds

The Center Now Holds

By Jane Tawel

April 1, 2019

I never had a center until now.

It took me many years to make

My center sometimes appear.

And now it often all a-sudden,

Shows up–

Solid, sure and unafraid.

 

It was sort of lurking long inside me,

Always a jiggly mess though;

Like a cake without a finished middle,

Still raw and sloshing left and right;

Unable to hold still enough for

Me to feel I even had

what other people easily used,

As nourishment or weaponry.

All my parts were always flying off in pieces.

 

Now sometimes I quietly sense in me

a firm center

Unbroken and unyielding.

But this annoys or terrifies you.

So many times, I  just sit quietly holding my center

While it holds me.

But while I hold myself in place,

And you stare blankly, wonderingly

At what you sense

 and is now un-hidden from even me,

I let you look at all the missing and shard-ed bits,

I once hurled your way.

And instead of pieces,

I often times feel peace.

My center now holds.

 

 

Hope is Not Now – an essay by Jane Tawel

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Hope is Not for Now

By Jane Tawel

March 23, 2019

We mistake all kinds of things for things they are not, because the only gods we have left are ourselves. We mistake religion for humanism; we mistake God for personal best buddy; and we mistake faith for self-empowerment.  And then there is our mistaken idea that somehow we should and can “choose” hope in order to be happy. We mistake hope for happiness.

 

I started out this morning, thinking about the world, thinking about myself, thinking about God, just like I do most mornings.  And I thought about things I’ve been thinking and writing and reading lately and I said to myself, “Self, you need to write a happy, hopeful little story that will cheer people up.”  And I drank my first cup of coffee with that determination until I read the headlines, read some Facebook posts, read a couple blogs I follow, re-read part of my own blog, and read the Bible.  The headlines assured me that there was hope the bad guys would be caught and punished, but I’ve been alive long enough and know enough history to know that won’t really happen until Christ comes again. Dashed hopes for justice are a part of being human if you live long enough.  A Facebook post by a friend of a friend asked for prayer about his suicidal thoughts. In the past year, I have personally known three young people who committed suicide because they just couldn’t believe there was hope for them. A blogger I follow talked about her childhood and sad memories of a father she never knew. I have my own sad memories of my childhood which no matter how old I am, can be rubbed raw by the hopelessness of ever changing the past.  My own most recent blog is about the decay of morality, truth, and gospel in people who claim to know God. I love, love, love people who claim to know God and yet in my current place and time, I feel a sense of terror at what so many of them are basing their future hope on. And the Bible passage I read this morning, from what we erroneously call the “Old” Testament assured me that I am nothing more than dust, a passing breeze on the winds of Time. And I realize how often I have let ego and desire lead me into a false and unbiblical sense of hopefulness that I am someone whom God might want to hang out with forever.  So I let our old dogs out into the yard and made my second cup of coffee. I take light milk and honey in my coffee, please.

 

I sat down feeling helpless and hopeless. Helpless to help fellow travelers across the world who suffer for belief, suffer for their faith, or who just plain suffer because they feel too much of the dark deep things that humans feel.  I sat down hopeless that I can be part of any real change, see any real change, not just in others, but in myself.  I look back over a life that has included so many, many whole days of pointlessness, and so many days I was filled with and following sin. Sin – hurting others, selfish talk and action, greed and coveting and lying – those sins God hates most; stealing, murder in my heart, lust – all of it.  And I am at a loss to tell stories of hope, because in the light of the reality of who I am, who we are; in the light of Now is the darkness of the real state of being of Forever and Never.

 

So I just put down all my reading and I looked up. And out. The vestiges of last night’s dew clung to the morning cheery grass and the dew pounced in on my doggies’ paws and I laughed with them instead of scolding them.  A floor is easily mopped.  The sun trickled through the filmy clouds’ filter in the same rhythm as my coffee trickled into my carafe and both waited to warm me, body and soul. The pan was still soaking in the sink, with a few strings of cabbage and cheese clinging to the sides of the now still soapy sea of dish water. The strings of leftovers played like strings of violins on my heart, reminding me that last night my son was home to join us for dinner and I made one of his favorite dishes. Because I could. Because I have enough money, enough strength, my hands still function despite early arthritic throbs, and I have time.  And there it is. Time. And if you have time to look around, then you have time for hope.

 

Time is what we have had, have now (if we’re lucky) but biblically it is what we will no longer have in The Kingdom of God.  And Hope? Well, how does hope fit into a future with no future, so to speak? Hope is one of The Big Three, that the entire Word of God assures us will last outside of Time, will last forever, and is part of God’s True World. Hope is one of the things we were created to Be, not have.  As it says, “So now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  The Psalmist says “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You.”  And in Hebrews, it says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  Isn’t it interesting that every single one of these verses uses the world “now”.  The reason hope is so tricky, so ephemeral, so fleeting, so ultimately unsatisfying is because of our imprisonment in Time, because hope can not exist, except fleetingly, in our constant “now-ness”. The proverb says that “hope deferred makes the heart sick” and it is so easy for others to impact our hopefulness and defer our quest for it.

 

Hope is not happiness, but rather hope is unhappiness with the ways things are now completely infused with the faith that the “Now” was never what God intended for us. Hope is the current tossed and turning belief that the “Then” will be something even more beautiful, lovely, true, and wholly wonderful than we can know or even imagine.  Hope is, as Dickinson writes, “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the song without the words and never stops at all.”  And though we can’t always hear Hope’s tune and we can’t always sing hope’s song to those in need of it; we can take our Time and as Isaiah said, “wait for the Lord; who shall renew our little birds of hope and give them wings like eagles”.

 

Sometimes in the noisy outskirts of Los Angeles, I have a difficult time hearing the birds.  But it is usually, frankly, because I am too busy, too preoccupied, too stressed, or thinking behind me or ahead of me, to listen. It is also because I am primarily a visual learner, I find my strength and major happinesses in what I see, whether around me or on the page of a book.   The thing about hope though is that, as Paul wrote to the Romans, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

 

The three things that remain are faith, hope and love. Love needs me to see others as I see myself and use my hands to care for them.  Faith needs me to speak to my Heavenly Father and honor Him with my words, speaking of faith to others who need it.  And Hope? Hope needs me to listen.  Hope is the thing that listens – to the birds of the air, the children in the next room, the music of the spheres, and the ticking of the clocks.  Most of all, Hope needs me to listen for the still, small voice of the Creator Parent Who has hope for me yet; to listen to The One Who has hope for the world, and Who Is The Hope of the Universe.

 

And now I confess I will go make myself my third cup of dark coffee with milk and honey.  There was once a man named Moses who felt hopeless to change his sinful past in light of a Holy God.  Moses felt hopeless about his present life since he had few skills and no real community of friends and family.  And Moses’ hope for the future, well, what is the future for a nomad with no place, no people, no plan? And then old Moses started listening to God. And listening to the cries of God’s people.  And what Moses heard God say is, “I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey”.  Milk and honey. Flowing. When Moses asked God, “Who shall I tell people you are.” God said, tell them that I AM. I AM outside Time and therefore, outside hopelessness. I Am Hope. Hope flowing backwards through your past, today in your present, and hope flowing like a river of milk and honey toward your future.

 

And so I get up. And hear the little chirps outside my back door. And hear my husband breathing in the next room. And listen to the tap, tap, tap of my fingers on the keys. And listen to the scratching of ears by my old dogs. And hear the sound of my next deep breath. And I stand up in the Now of Uncertainty with the hope of one more delicious cup of coffee with milk and honey. And I pray with faith and love of The Lord, that my hope will be not in anything – not in me, not in them, not any other gods – but only in He Who is Hope. And I listen for the still small sound of I AM. And I accept my calling, not to seek hope, not to require hope, not to expect nor see hope, but to Be Hope. Because Hope is one of the things I am which will never die. Hope is not Now. Hope is Forever.

 

Eat Me — a long poem — by Jane Tawel

A “Warning” I guess:  The following long poem uses an extended metaphor of God eating those who desire to be truly consumed by something other than the current fast food philosophies and religions of our time. As poetry  often attempts, I am attempting to come at Truth from a plethora of various angles and side streets. In this way, some may relate  to readers and “catch” and some may not. Some may now, some may later. In addition, the length of this poem reflects the fact that eating, drinking, thirsting, and food are not only  important, perhaps the most important elements in any culture or human life but are  also used frequently and strongly as metaphor. Various Biblical writers and The Christ himself, use these metaphors, symbols, and even actually use food, wine, water, fasting and feasting as spiritual and religious disciplines and ways of living a truly and completely “Good” human life. God Himself uses food and drink in His own love offerings to us and as symbol and metaphor for our souls.  However, this poem is mostly about the facts that we have forgotten; that God also demands actual food and drink to others less fortunate, and the metaphoric subsistence of our souls in our required sacrifices to Him.

 

Eaten

By Jane Tawel

February 1 – March 15, 2019

 

The incremental decay of our belief

Festering by now

Bacteria-laden and rotten

At the bottom of the maggoty worship mount;

With all the slaves that Abraham left behind below;

While Abe and Isaac took the food and water with them;

Becoming themselves, holy Food

To be eaten by God.

 

As we offer the unholy, unwholesome sacrifices

Of our unearned bucks and gamey games, poached and rotting

On the idol-strewn pews, while we,

Rancid, perfumed meat praying next to our hunting guns,

gorge on pilfered blessings.

And while we bless our own bought bounty in the

 bistros of our imagined coziness with God —

–Judah and Ishmael wander in the wilderness,

Famished for meaning and manna.

As our corpses engorge themselves on the

More-ness of our filched American Idols,

The “ingodwetrust” religion of corporation-run focus groups

Feels angry and afraid that those hungry for righteousness

Stand outside our alarm-strewn kitchen windows looking in;

Making the bile of our chosen status rise up at the

Less-ness of their browned and stewing children.

When all we really ingodwetrust in, is the unbiblical belief

That pagans should not abort.

It is so easy to digest the unborn,

Never having to see their open maw-ed mouths,

Hungry for the least little lint lining our pockets.

The unborn are untested and untasting of

the confections of our capitalistic constitutions.

But we, pampered and as eyeless as new taters, deliver

 far too many chemically modified tots.

 

 

Our humanistic individually wrapped soul-food

worships the laden self-shelfs packed full and breaking under the burden of

too many, too much, too useless – our – us—

–Healthy-wealthy leftovers.

We have no other cause than

Refusing the aborted ones to follow

The Pie-ed Piper to Nirvana,

While the planet sags

Like a bag of rotting bananas

No-longer fit for consumption by even us devolving apes.

 

We now seek exile from a world we fumigated

One indulgence at a time,

While we stood by and witnessed to our own weight gain.

So empty are the containers of our hearts, that

 truly hungry exiled nations have to bomb us to get our attention;

Or be served up as appetizers teasing us in our slobbering anticipation

of an imagined heavenly meal, they aren’t invited to share.

Oh, the finger foods of Jesus’ hors d’oeuvres are now

Outside the work of our idle idolized own tastes.

 

And The World says daily, “Bite me”.

And so, we do;

Taking bites from the rotten core of that same apple.

It is so easy to deny the 6 million and more and more, and more

Of That Good Man’s Relatives;

Killed by a Church that claims a Jew’s death paid it all.

He didn’t. He couldn’t.

Your check is still outstanding.

And you don’t get to keep the Server’s tips

Without serving it up as the Server did.

 

As I ratchet up my worldly consumer debts,

How can I claim that somehow, Someone paid for my final funeral feast

before I actually die?

That kind of fast food will kill you, one heart attacked at a time.

You can’t pay for the funerals of people who just won’t die.

 

God has to kill you before He can consume you. Ask Isaac.

God won’t eat meat with blood still in it,

Ask Moses and the Levites.

I must spill my blood, as The Son did;

Before I can be eaten;

Making myself a tender, “well-done, good and faithful” meat

worthy to meet my Maker.

 

Like Elisha’s widow, uncircumcised, unknown,

I ask with understandable fear of the fire, nonetheless, I ask:

 “Can You? Will You?

Test me? Taste me?

Multiply the oil that simmers me?

Ah!  My God and my Chef–Use the meager ingredients of my soul

And add Your anointed oil,

So that You might eat me.”

 

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord, my soul to eat

If I should wake before I die

I pray to be God’s apple pie.

 

God, forgive my poor table manners,

Thinking that I don’t even need to bother to take Isaac up the hill

Since Jesus #lovesmethisIknow.

I won’t clean my unholy mouth with the serviettes of serving the Savior,

Oh no!

Oh, no we have stopped wolfing down The Word;

Stopped marinating our souls in righteousness; we have long stopped longing; and

Stopped killing the fatted lambs of our lives;

Ever since we started starving ourselves to death

With our bulimic anorexic Faith

that throws up the good with the bad,

we have stopped partaking in Your daily gluten heavy bread.

We have made the world so hungry,

Ever since we started convincing the masses that

 one Lamb-chop is enough

For a ravenous, consuming God!

 

 

What holy feasts are these?

 When Santa grows fatter and Uncle Sam is obese

 while God looks anorexic!

And the disciples don’t even bother passing out

The fish and loaves to the multitudes;

Instead the apostles are in spin class,

flying first class with their Disneyland pass.

Instead the wannabes sit as food critics, hiding behind the apron strings of Jesus,

Watching chefs on TV rather than buying the street food of the homeless;

Trusting that there will be enough of just one Peace of Piece of Christ to go around.

We mini-me-messiahs gnaw on the edges of Gnosticism

Ignoring the need to nosh on Tanakh;

Ignoring the requirement to fatten up ourselves enough for

God to see and consume us.

We keep skipping ahead to the dessert

Created on a dare by the Nouveau Roman Cuisine Cook  Saint Paul.

Hey all you diners,

Those final additions to the Menu

are meant to be the whipped cream on top, folks,

Not the entree.

The Inheritor of the Real Cookbook, the Son of Chef,

Offers up the A La King special:

“Fatted Calf of Covenant Served with a sliced side of

Hot Crossed Messianic Passover Lamb.”

But our mouths are full of bargain bought plasticized oleo

And the precious oil bestowed

On the bridesmaids,

Is considered oh-so-yesterday’s testament to good fuel.

 

We honor the ones who make money selling Christ’s cross,

 claiming the titles but remaining nice fat babies

sucking on the teats of Mother Church,

never working at the hard task of fishing like grown men

never throwing out the heavy nets of faith

never growing the incisor-ed teeth of Truth

but sitting on altered perches

raking in the dough

with no desire to feed the hungry with real bread, real perch.

Well, you’ve eaten in the halls of the gourmands

but one day that Son of man

will demand to see the recipes we all made in secret.

“Lord, when did we see you hungry?

Lord, when did we hear you thirst?”

God cries: “I Thirst!”

Christ shakes His blood-marinated head,

“Oh, I have food in those unsung, unknown, starved morsels of men,

those wee women, and crumbs of children

that you well -known hoarders and self-serve busy-busies

know nothing of.”

And God cries, “Feed Me!”

 

 

 

And so the feast of fools, once

Stomped into wine by the nail-scarred feet of Christ;

Topped off with the risen bread-body of Christ;

Goes untasted, untested, undrunk by us,

While the sugary cheap-grace bread-pudding and

watered- down wine

Fail to keep us alive.

 

And while the calorie-free dessert is served up in the pews,

Promising it will taste almost heavenly;

 the hellish desert of arid wasted-ness within and without grows larger and hotter.

Spiritual food creating thirst not living water.

And the mirages of our salvation

Keep leading us ahead to a false heaven

While the Earth boils and toils.

And God dines elsewhere.

We have stopped maintaining our weightiness

On the required kosher-ed ketogenics of

The Lamb as Protein  IAM Diet.

We prefer to let us eat cake

Instead of swallowing whole

 the Ezekiel Scroll-based smorgasbord.

We think we are safer eating from

our FDA-approved, second amendment earned trophy-letters of that

latter day Saint Paul

no red letter signage to create hunger

but the dulcet tones of brown and green, rot and mold concealed.

We are encouraged to sit on our fat rears

keeping a food journal  about our own decaying feelings and worries,

Instead of following The Jew’s Recipe for True Life.

Out there serving it up as He did

On the food lines of Heaven on earth.

 

You know,

The one about following The One

And dying to our own self-inflicted wounds;

The one about giving it all away;

The one about no other gods and no personal effects

Except the effects of Love?

You know that one? That is no joke, no fortune cookie faith.

 

True Love proposed to me

 and like an engagement ring in a champagne glass,

Surprised me with His offer, to marry my starved heart to His.

But only if I offer the burnt sacrifice of self,

So that I might Rise like a sweet scent —

Like a cinnamon yeast roll baking in the

Furnace of my serving platelets

Rising to fill forever, the nostrils of Abraham’s God.

 

Oh, ever since we got on that kick about that Diet of Worms that

Martin Luther customized and almost died from;

We have forgotten about our sure future treat of being the snack of worms.

We prefer the cheap-date Jesus with his cheap-grace Savor-y fastfoodmeal ticket and

A home without any chores  or clean up on our part.

Oh those fun Yuletide eggnogs, buried to be found later,

Hatched in an easy-bake Easter ham and oh so ready to bless the food cuz

Jesus will cook it, serve it, wash up after

While we celebrate winning the lottery ticket to eternity.

And we can take our doggie bags of faith to our new home in the sky,

Like all those good Gentile but not gentle dogs who begged at

Jesus’ table.

 

Our theology, reduced to “to-go” sack lunches

While I-saac munches

Next to Rehab, Gomer, and Zipporah.

We zip-lock bag up our plastic menorahs

and reduce our beliefs to the guile of Jacob

and the greed of Esau

with a little salt of Lot’s’wife thrown in for flavor.

Are we too far comfortable in hell

To live homeless in Bethel?

Will we ever fast

For that which lasts?

And not for the 30 -day diet

Where-by it

Starves the body

But feeds not the soul?

 

Bread cannot rise without the sacred yeast of death

And grapes will not ferment without being crushed.

Justice will not flow if we don’t give a dam,

About unclean water for a thirsty dirty world.

And Christos is outside the wall trying to knock it down

To immigrate and dine with us.

And Religion marches on and on and on and on

While the Sheep run out of pasture and the grain rots and the grapes dry up

And The Water that heals all thirst

Is plasticized on Sunday

And on Monday the oil will not mix with it

As it sticks to the wings of the sea-sparrows

Instead of lighting the empty lamps we carry.

And Eden has nothing good left in her to be eaten.

 

So we keep eating Saccharine -sweet blood and fiber-less bread on Sunday

And our Soul-food is Weak, tepid, spice-less stuff,

That would never make any one think we were drunk on God.

We pay up big time to the sermonizing sous-chefs who preach about

what’s good on the menu like making laws against  people not like us

And what to avoid like the Beatitudes;

Cutting and pasting a nutrition free diet plan from

The Bible’s hard to swallow manna, in order

 to fit into the American dream-siccles we buy from

The nice-cream trucks imprisoned by their lack of faith.

 

And while highly paid motivational coaches of calorie free theology

 still expect to get a King’s ransomed big tip someday

we are overcharged on our credit lines with He who holds the Scales.

And still the Church’s 9 x 13 inch casseroles of catechism

are bought with bitter bonds.

 A long while back I got that party invitation

 From A Jesus that just wants to Party with us in the pews and Dance like David,

While wine gushes, flooding from the baptismal fount

And fresh baked baguettes and caviar fill the offering plates.

I accepted the invitation at the time

But since then, I have struggled to fit into new clothes like

old wine in new wineskins,

While Continuing to gorge my soul on His Feast of Famine.

That first taste of Christ whetted my appetite

And now friends and family point out that my mouth is dirty

Smeared with bits of Christ’s blood.

But I point out that my hands are still far too clean.

The professionals all agree though:

“Come instead for a quick Sunday tasteless, wineless Brunch at our food-free service.

Let’s quickly eat some gluten-free consumer friendly atom-sized wafers of Jesus

 So we can all head home for the real Communion

of booze and nachos and wings to watch the real-fun and buff gods in the Big Game–

Go Team, Our Idols!”

 

While the world starves for a God who ain’t playing around with His Food.

 

We just need to keep adding on gods to the menu, I guess.

The number is up to at least Four now: Trinity of Three plus their Mom.

Gobble, gobble, gobble, since we’ve added a turkey and bald eagle as well.

And even those are not ever enough to convince us we truly crave the pollution-freed and

The Tree to Table Meal

Of Yahweh’s Kingdom Come.

 

Ah, Creator-Chef,

Take me from Eden

To Eaten.

 

I am Hagar-ed by my flight

From Your Truth.

While the flights of wine keep flowing

Keeping us high,

My flight to you is grounded.

The proverbial wine of violence

Is headier than the Baptizer’s head

Lopped and served up on a garnished garish platter;

While Your water turned to outrageously expensive wine was

Offered me.

 

Messiah took his time making a cross-hatch next to the names

Of those with

reservations at the 12-Star Kingdom Wedding Feast.

But we are all too busy to come and dine

 except for a short time.

 Peter the maître d’

stands at the gate wondering

Why so many don’t bother to show up on time for

Their reserved Eternity-pool Jewish-mikveh-ized seats,

The whole Kingdom Hall, bought out at great price

By The Bridegroom.

 

That old joke about Jewish food being bland

Wasn’t a joke for the Jew from Nazareth

As He served up God.

Fish and bread for the multitudes were just the Costco-sized samples

Enticing us to pay the price for sharing in the meal-Life of

The spitted Lamb, marinated in tears and blood,

Swallowed whole by the Sin-a -men he bore,

Brought out of the stone-fired oven,

Smelling of sweet sacrifice,

Ascending to become Sous-chef

Forever at the right hand of The Chef,

Creating masterpieces

In the serving staff.

Ah, Abraham and Sarah –

If you can still bear to look down on us, your children, now,

Please help me crawl back onto the wilderness altar, a sacrificial daughter,

Subsisting only on Your Substance,

My substance only for Your Children’s subsistence.

Make me willing, as Your Son Isaac was,

To die thirsty,

To cry as your Son and God’s Son did,

“I Thirst!”

I fast!

For Love

Of The Lord.

Create in me a new heart, Oh,Yahweh, a heart that

Wants You to eat it completely,

A heart inhaled by Your Spirit,

A private sacrifice attended by Only You.

God, eat me.

 

Ah, Father Abraham and Mother Sarah,

My limbs have become so weak with ego

I can barely lift The Cup of Christ to my lips.

My psyche is

Fueled by the Saul-isms of The Chosen Ones Part Two.

I need Holy Fire to consume me,

Instead of the lie of a one-time for all sacrifice by that other Son of Ruth,

She the one who lived because she gleamed the kernels of God’s truth.

Yes, That Son did what Isaac did not have to do

Then.

But later, oh later, Isaac, Ruth and

All sons and daughters must be eaten up

By The Fiery Mouth of God.

Consummation is the only Communion with You.

Your  Holy Maw is the only orifice into

Your Eternal Promised Land of Feasting.

 

Just as You ate Your Son,

God, eat me.

 

May I starve myself

To gain the fasted weightiness of Your Son.

Let me char the

The choicest morsels of my life,

Sacrificed, shaken and stirred in terrified worship of You.

 

Cannibalize me, Oh God,

As You did your only Son.

That by Your devouring me

I may devour Your Son’s own body and blood – His True Life-force;

Cannibalized into Your Bounty now, this moment,

As it will be forever.

 

The Psalmist’ hymn: “Oh, Elohim! “You alone are my portion”.

I add to and cry, “Adonai!  Make of me Your portion.

.

Oh, Great Creative Genius,  IAM

Today I am sending you back the ram

caught in the thicket of my sinful days on earth.

Thank you so much

But I need You to imbibe me such

 that I may truly gobble up

Messiah’s bread and cup.

 

As I ingest You, today

I pray;

Eat me,

Completely,

Oh, God.

61ac1-abraham

 

 

Lent – a poem— by Jane Tawel

Lent

The First Day

By Jane Tawel

March 6, 2019

 

Lent, surprising season,

And for good reason,

One’s never sure when it draws near.

Each year its start

To ream our hearts,

Will suddenly appear.

 

 

This first of Lent,

Our souls should rent

With sobering contrition.

But like Succoth,

Lent fills our cups,

With God’s Chosen’s commission.

 

 

The change of date

Just like our fate

May throw us a curve ball.

For loving chaos

We suffer pathos

Ever since The Fall.

 

 

Today’s descent in

This season Lenten,

Requires of me a price.

But that is little

If only it’ll

Bring me closer to The Christ.

 

 

The Only Son of Only God,

When on this earth, Christ trod,

Took up our lent

When God’s will bent

To die upon a cross.

 

 

And so today

In some small way

I suffer by election,

To become like the only Man

Who sinless, Resurrected.

 

 

Each Lent’s first day surprises me

Like did Christ’s death upon that tree.

But suffering for our human doom,

In this dark season of Lent’s gloom,

Is the only way to be surprised,

In the same way at long past sunrise,

Those women who loved The Christ who died,

Saw Him Arise.

Surprise!

 

 

 

Zombies in Your Head

Zombies In Your Head

By Jane Tawel

March 2, 2019

 

Thanks to my son, Gordon, I was introduced to a profoundly spiritually wrenching song called “Zombie”.  I try to listen to this song weekly at least. This song was written and originally performed  about twenty-five years ago by Dolores O’Riordan of “The Cranberries”. Dolores was raised a Catholic in Ireland and was a great admirer of Pope John Paul II.  O’Riordan bases her song’s haunting lyrics  largely on the religious violent catastrophes that have on and off engulfed Ireland since 1917.  The second version of this same song that  I listen to as often as possible is by “Bad Wolves”. It was supposed to have included Dolores’ vocals, but she left the world before it could be recorded. The version by Bad Wolves, opens up the specific context; the singer, Tommy Vext remarks, “(Dolores’) lyrics in that song still reflect social unrest, political turmoil and humanity’s persistence in modern struggles,” Vext told Rolling Stone. “The reasons might change, but there’s still collateral damage with people’s struggle for power and freedom.” Tommy Vext  is an American heavy metal singer who had to testify against his twin brother who, while high on drugs,  tried to murder Tommy.  Tommy speaks at 12-step groups and for relapse programs across the country.

 

The refrain of “Zombies” repeats, “in your head, in your head” followed by phrases like “they are fighting” or “they are dying”.  I try to listen to this song at least once a week as an important prophetic message.  It reminds me of what humans can become if they allow violence and the worship of money or power into their heads, hearts, religions, and politics. Humans all too easily become zombies.  Today when I listened to “Zombies”, I was suddenly struck by the irony that earlier today I had been listening to Selah’s version of “O, Sacred Head Now Wounded”.  The historical attribute of the words of this song, go to Bernard of Clairvoux, a medieval lyricist and poet. Bernard grew up in Burgundy and as a young nobleman, he was stinking rich and powerful.  He gave up all his wealth and power to follow The Christ and remains one of the most revered historical followers of God; revered by people across the spectrum from John Calvin to Martin Luther and is considered to be Dante’s last guide in The Divine Comedy.  The actual lyrics and music of this hymn were composed by a man named Paul Gerhardt, a Lutheran in Germany who lived in the mid-1600’s.  He spent a lifetime composing hymns and trying to convince his church going brethren to stop attacking and fighting with other over doctrinal issues within the church. He died  primarily of a broken heart and his last words are reputed to have been “us –no death has power to kill”.

 

I guess what I am thinking with a heavy heart and spirit today, is that perhaps, as that profoundly heady writer, C.S. Lewis (an agnostic when young who later became a leading voice in Christianity) wrote, we might make it “further in and further up” into Christ’s Kingdom on earth, if at the start of every church service, we listened first and prayerfully to the lyrics and music of the world’s prophets like the Doloreses and Tommys of this world. The prophets of the ages who sing the songs of change were and are all very flawed humans, but the words of their prophetic messages survive the ages because they are true Truth, whether we call them hymns or alternative music.

All of God’s Truth in fact presents to us an alternative music of sorts.  But singing the hard words of songs that demand change; singing boldly and feelingly on the shores of Israel or Babylon or Ireland or America as the ancient souls and prophets of all times must, can be dangerous; sometimes dangerous to others and sometimes dangerous to themselves. Bernard believed in the persecution of Muslims and Dolores most probably died of a drug induced suicide. Alternative music doesn’t make us perfect; truth doesn’t keep us from sin and brokenness; and prophets are human like every one else; but at least they are trying not to be zombies.

There’s a movie I have never seen, called “The Zombie Apocalypse”.  The title is enough for me because I think this is what the end of the world will look like to the angels: a bunch of zombies who still honestly think they are human, killing each other. The human race has, since the first murder by Cain of Abel, been stupidly and fearfully at war with ourselves. We are all at war with God. We long for peace but defeat ourselves with our mutually exclusive longing for power. Maybe if we began each day by personally accepting our vulnerability as humans, we could reverse the zombie process. Maybe if  before church or synagogue or mosque members try to  perform super-human Godlike, spiritual acts, they would face their own inner zombies, then just maybe we could truly begin to create a kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven — a kingdom of peace and love and joy and hope and real boys and girls created in the image of God. Perhaps if we realized that most days we are behaving like Zombies rather than the human beings created in a God’s image that we are called to be, maybe then we would really begin to understand how to worship the Savior who is the Protagonist of Paul’s lyrics in “O, Sacred Head” but who is also the Protagonist who dies in Dolores’ wars.   Maybe to be fully in Christ’s image,  we need to hold within our own heads and hearts the contrast and paradox between these two sets of lyrics.

 

“Zombie”
(originally by The Cranberries)

Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence causes silence
Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it’s not me
It’s not my family
In your head, in your head, they are fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs
And their bombs, and their drones
In your head, in your head, they are crying

What’s in your head, in your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What’s in your head, in your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie-ie, oh

Another mother’s breaking
Heart is taking over
When the violence causes silence
We must be mistaken

It’s the same old theme
In two thousand eighteen
In your head, in your head, they’re still fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs
And their guns, and their drones
In your head, in your head, they are dying

What’s in your head, in your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What’s in your head, in your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie-ie, oh

It’s the same old theme
In two thousand eighteen
In your head, in your head, they are dying

What’s in your head, in your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What’s in your head, in your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie-ie, oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh yeah

 

 

“O Sacred Head, Now Wounded”
by Paul Gerhardt, 1607-1676

  1. O sacred Head, now wounded,
    With grief and shame weighed down,
    Now scornfully surrounded
    With thorns, Thine only crown.
    O sacred Head, what glory,
    What bliss, till now was Thine!
    Yet, though despised and gory,
    I joy to call Thee mine.
  2. Men mock and taunt and jeer Thee,
    Thou noble countenance,
    Though mighty worlds shall fear Thee
    And flee before Thy glance.
    How art thou pale with anguish,
    With sore abuse and scorn!
    How doth Thy visage languish
    That once was bright as morn!
  3. Now from Thy cheeks has vanished
    Their color, once so fair;
    From Thy red lips is banished
    The splendor that was there.
    Grim Death, with cruel rigor,
    Hath robbed Thee of Thy life;
    Thus Thou has lost Thy vigor,
    Thy strength, in this sad strife.
  4. My burden in Thy Passion,
    Lord, Thou hast borne for me,
    For it was my transgression
    Which brought this woe on thee.
    I cast me down before Thee,
    Wrath were my rightful lot;
    Have mercy, I implore Thee;
    Redeemer, spurn me not!
  5. My Shepherd, now receive me;
    My Guardian, own me Thine.
    Great blessings Thou didst give me,
    O Source of gifts divine!
    Thy lips have often fed me
    With words of truth and love,
    Thy Spirit oft hath led me
    To heavenly joys above.
  6. Here I will stand beside Thee,
    From Thee I will not part;
    O Savior, do not chide me!
    When breaks Thy loving heart,
    When soul and body languish
    In death’s cold, cruel grasp,
    Then, in Thy deepest anguish,
    Thee in mine arms I’ll clasp.
  7. The joy can ne’er be spoken,
    Above all joys beside,
    When in Thy body broken
    I thus with safety hide.
    O Lord of life, desiring
    Thy glory now to see,
    Beside Thy cross expiring,
    I’d breathe my soul to Thee.
  8. What language shall I borrow
    To thank Thee, dearest Friend,
    For this, Thy dying sorrow,
    Thy pity without end?
    Oh, make me thine forever!
    And should I fainting be,
    Lord, let me never, never,
    Outlive my love for Thee.
  9. My Savior, be Thou near me
    When death is at my door;
    Then let Thy presence cheer me,
    Forsake me nevermore!
    When soul and body languish,
    Oh, leave me not alone,
    But take away mine anguish
    By virtue of Thine own!
  10. Be Thou my Consolation,
    My Shield when I must die;
    Remind me of Thy Passion
    When my last hour draws nigh.
    Mine eyes shall then behold Thee,
    Upon Thy cross shall dwell,
    My heart by faith enfold Thee.
    Who dieth thus dies well!

 

In Lewis’ end to the Narnia books, it is the unicorn, that almost angelic and mystical creature of lore and myth, who says on reaching the Promised Land, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!” I like to imagine that today while I listened to their music, Dolores and Paul and Clive were all singing together, “I Belong Here”. Someday we will all wake up to a new world the prophets of the ages have passed through to, and we will suddenly realize that either we spent our lives on earth as zombies and didn’t know it; or we thought we spent our lives as  mere humans, but were really fantastic and myth-like creatures of angelic stature.

All of us humans, just like Dolores, Tommy, Bernard, Paul, and yes, even Clive, spend our whole lifetimes looking for the answers to “that same old theme”, even in 2019. We long to see what this world is really like, could really be like and there are moments when the planet, the soldiers, the immigrants, the mothers, the fields all look a little bit like what we imagine they all could be — should be –but never fully are.  Some of us spend lifetimes singing against and fighting against the zombies of hatred, racism, prejudice, greed, lies,  violence, and self-idolization that surround us. Some of us spend lifetimes fighting those zombies who sidetrack us into theological quagmires and even try to convince us they are not zombies but Godly.  Some, like Dolores and Paul, just keep crying out truth in the streets until they die of broken hearts.  Some of us like Tommy and Bernard and Clive spend  lifetimes trying to fight the zombies of false idolatry masquerading as religion, and fighting the demons of greed and self-pride masquerading as guardian angels. Some of us may only have enough alternative music within us to give someone a jug of water at the border or our extra coat in the winter or a hug across the aisle, just trying to help other humans not become zombies. Some of us only have enough strength to try for just one more hour, to fight the zombies within our own heads.

Some of us look to The Christ; who layed down His sovereign God-head, and took us his creatures, “in to his head, in his head”. And took us into His heart. In His heart.  And then He layed down that Sacred Head,  despised, wounded and killed, so that we might never again be alone; so that we might have the ability to fight the zombie within; so that we might have the ability to destroy the zombies without. So that we might know how to survive the temptations and powers of the zombies, both without us and within us.  So that we might live as the humans Christ’s God created us to be.

Unless daily, His Sacred Head wounded and bleeding, bleeds from my own thoughts; unless daily His Sacred Heart beats within my own chest; until and unless His God-like humanity is revived and reborn in me, a zombie in need of a human Savior; unless all this and daily this, then I will be just another zombie pretending that I know what it means to be human and pretending that I know and am known by a God who loves all humanity. Pretending, not being; zombie, not human.  “For that Being who is neither human nor anything humans can truly understand, loves His creaturely humans so much, that He begot a human son and gave Him a life on our planet; and whosoever turns from his or her sinful and broken zombie-ways and follows the human life and death Way of God’s Son, shall not die a zombie, but live forever, more human, and more God-ly than we could ever imagine.” (John 3:16 paraphrased)

For safety and hope today, and for worship of a God who made me in Imago Dei, I pray these words  and sing with the saints of alternative music:

“My Savior be Thou near me. My Guardian,  own me thine. Another head hangs lowly. Heart is taking over. We must be mistaken. Zombie, zombie, zombie. Oh, Sacred Head, now wound me.  Remind me of Thine Passion. My Savior be Thou near me. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah…. Further up and Further in. Amen.”

 

 

The Cranberries: Zombie

https://youtu.be/6Ejga4kJUts

Bad Wolves:  Zombie

 

 

Selah:  O, Sacred Head Now Wounded