Tag Archives: politics

Jul 22 2013
4 Comments
learning to live, poems, what they are teaching me

but all it takes

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it’s a great fear we all have, of course
that silence that is so sharp it cuts the breath somewhere  between our guts and our lips
people can hear us swallow when nothing is in our mouths
and the rattling of the air vents, or the cicadas, or the clock in the kitchen becomes ridiculously loud

and because we all fear those moments
we often leave the conversation safely above the grit of our worlds
above the fears we have about how we are seen
above the dreams we have about the things we could do
above the loneliness we hear as they speak about their lives
above the hopelessness that seems a bit stronger than the chance for something better

and because we fear those moments
where we’ve said something that can’t be handled
or because we’ve asked something that no one else has thought to ask
or because we think something we’ve all been told cannot be thought
because we fear that if we were to say it, ask it or think it
we would lose our breath
they would hear our spit
the clocks in the other rooms would get loud
we stay silent
we don’t say it
we don’t ask it
we don’t think it

and because we
the icons of the morning star
are afraid to speak and ask and think
the darkness continues.

but all it takes is a word.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

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Jul 14 2012
1 Comment
poems, Quotes

half ready. half afraid.

We watch as the jets fly in with the power people and the money people, the suits, the budgets, the billions.

We wonder about monetary policy because we are among the haves, and about generosity because we care about the have-nots.

By slower modes we notice Lazarus and the poor arriving from Africa, and the beggars from Central Europe, and the throng of environmentalists with their vision of butterflies and oil of flowers and tanks of growing things and killing fields.

We wonder about peace and war, about ecology and development, about hope and entitlement.

We listen beyond jeering protesters and soaring jets and faintly we hear the mumbling of the crucified one, something about feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty, about clothing the naked, and noticing the prisoners, more about the least and about holiness among them.

We are moved by the mumbles of the gospel, even while we are tenured in our privilege.

We are half ready to join the choir of hope, half afraid things might change, and in a third half of our faith turning to you, and your outpouring love that works justice and that binds us each and all to one another.

So we pray amid jeering protesters and soaring jets. Come by here and make new, even at risk to our entitlements.

+ Walter Brueggeman, “The Noise of Politics”
from Prayers for a Privileged People 

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Oct 30 2011
2 Comments
learning to live

rise up

We were sitting around a table spread with pads, pens and leftovers a few feet off of Beale Street in Memphis. We had a two-day staff retreat for Area Relief Ministries, and we were closing up our time together with some overarching reflections on our different ministry areas, what we were seeing and feeling, and where we wanted to go in the days ahead.

Having been through the National Civil Rights Museum together, a staff of half women and half men, half black and half white, we were reflecting on our own experiences and those of the people we serve every day at ARM.  One of our staffers, Vakendall, started talk-praying in a kind of musical tone that he often speaks in; what came out of his mouth has been lingering in my head since then.

In reference to the photos and pictures throughout the Civil Rights Museum of men and women standing up to oppression, racism and violence with a kind of sharp meekness seldom see, Kendall asked, “Who told them they were somebody?”

As I think of the people who walk through the doors at Area Relief, the kids who show up at The HUB Club for tutoring and mentoring in the afternoon, the clients that sit in my office at Pathways fighting bravely against all shades of mental illness, I am now wondering who is telling them they are somebody.

Churches often get swallowed up in the business of deciding who is and who is not…somebody.

There seems to be a task at hand, a responsibility and a privilege bundled up together the moment eye contact is made with another. Just as we hope to be bearers of a holy image, we feel a call to look another in the eyes, reach down deeply, and speak of their somebodyness.

The people not in those photos at the Civil Rights Museum were likely their teachers, neighbors, postal carriers––maybe if we are lucky, even their pastors––the women and men who made it clear over and over again that they were somebodies. People who were made to be kings and queens, even if nothing else in the world at that moment suggests that is anywhere near the truth.

I’ll be more satisfied if I ever end up not being the person who speaks at the pedestal for the world to hear, but rather the one who told him or her that she was somebody.

djordan
Pine Tree

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