personal

A Letter to My Children (and Yours)

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“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” Barack Obama, Victory speech, 11/4/08

What Obama’s election means to each of us who voted for him is different, but within a shared context. We have all been participating witnesses to something far greater than the election of a new president, and each of our stories- what this election personally means to us- is important.

This two year long election process has changed many of us, and those changes have combined together and will continue to bind together in ways that will cause historians to one day mark this past year in particular as revolutionary.

(If you are one of those people so fortunate as to be frequently within range of my voice, you know I often engage in hyperbole to make a point. The word “revolutionary” in the above sentence, is not a hyperbolic statement. Just so you know.)

How this revolution will play out over time is as unknown as the future of the American Revolution was at its beginnings in 1776. That revolution, too, was undertaken in audacious, courageous but not specifically definable, hope. The colonists’ eventual victory over the British began a political, sociological, and economic process, one that continues, and which includes this revolution of 2008. The history of the War for Independence is important for us, as Americans, to know about and remember. And one of the great primary sources for written histories of that time is the personal correspondence of not only the Founding Fathers and Mothers of our country, but of the soldiers from both sides of the fight.

Those letters reveal the hopes, the dreams, the frustrations, the confusion, and the love of their writers toward those to whom they were writing. Taken together, those letters are a snapshot of a particular time in history, yes; but they also reveal human commonalities that transcend time. So, let’s jump to my point here: I think we should be writing letters to each other right now about the revolution we’ve been a part of. British or American; blue, red, or some lovely shade of purple- what we are thinking, feeling, hoping, or fearing as individuals is part of a larger context and that context is important . We all know this election has been unlike any election we’ve witnessed (don’t think that’s true? Check your emotions over the last few days. Compare them to what you felt in 2004, 1996, 1980, or 1972. See?), and there is historical importance in what we write down and enable others to know about us, and about our country, as we have experienced it.

Therefore, to my children..

Dear Joshua, Darcy, and Sarah:

Thank you for the things you did, each in your own ways using the resources you have, to make this election of Obama possible. You are part of a generation that was able to have hope and to have that hope realized. You have been part of a movement that reached its first important goal. You have done something that has far greater implications and meanings for others, than for yourselves- as lofty and high as your own ideals are.

My generation started out that way, but by the time we were your age, it seemed the whole world of politics and culture was Nixonian and white. One by one, with few exceptions, Baby Boomers turned their energies toward gross exaggerations of the very things they had at one time rebelled against. The generation that felt their hearts beat wildly with newly found passion when they heard JFK say, “Ask not what your country can do for you..”, and who listened to MLK Jr. speak, “I have a dream..”, and watched as RFK said “Some men dream dreams, and others say, ‘Why not?’ – that generation also had to hear the horrible silence that followed. And we filled that silence with illusions of happiness: drugs, debt, suburban sprawls, selfishness and all the attendant fears that accompany each of those false ideals.

From real hope for a better world we descended into “Me,Me,Me” politics, created false gods that looked and thought like us, elected superficial sound-bites to office, and lulled ourselves to a semblance of sleep with a Pandora’s box of pharmaceuticals, swelling bank accounts sucked from the national dirt and human hearts of Third World countries, and the conviction that our country was THE best, THE strongest, and the only country on earth that should not, could not, dare not be questioned about its God-given, wealth-confirming, pollution-belching, trinket-loving role in the world.

Somehow, somehow, though..somehow, in the midst of that self-absorption and between episodes of “Dallas”, “Charlie’s Angels”, and “Miami Vice”, my generation gave birth to yours. Generation X, Y, or whatever the media pundits try to reduce your names and ages to, you have not let the hope inherent in being an American dry up into an unrecognizable husk of veneer-thin words. You have gone to school with and worked with people of all colors, sexual persuasions, nationalities, and religions. And you saw them for who they really are- not as the categories your parents warned you against, nor as people who were separated by law and religion from you, but as humans, like yourselves.

Then, one of you rose high enough to ask, in a way that more and more people were able to hear, “Can we?”

And your answer spilled over into the hearts of many of your parents, because we remembered again what it was like to act out of love, rather than fear. We remembered that hope didn’t have to lie dormant under disappointment. We responded, because you responded first to the question, “Can we?” with a loud, put-your-money-and-time-where-your-mouth-is, “Yes! Yes we can!”

And- holy cow- we did.

Lead on. You’re doing a damn good job so far.

Love to you three especially, but also the millions and millions of others like you,

Daddy

Was Blind, But Now I See..Part I

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Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see. (Blindness, Jose Saramago, pg. 326)

Luke 4:16– When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

I once was lost, but now am found..was blind, but now I see.. (“Amazing Grace,” John Newton)

I’m not anticipating with any glee whatsoever, what I am about to begin writing. Most of what I write (or think, or preach, or eat, or do) is motivated by Want– I want to write about nature; I want to eat mashed potatoes with hamburger gravy; I want to go to South Padre Island next week. And I will do, because I want to, all of those things.

But, kind of like the occasional serving of greens peas that I eat at a dinner party so I do not appear to be rude, there also those things which I, or any of us, must do. These personal essays about being blind are, therefore, motivated by Must, rather than Want.

(There are few things I find more repulsive to eat than green peas. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know why. You’ve got an illogical, indefinable revulsion about some food, too- I know you do. So I know you know something of the feeling I’m talking about. I put the peas in my mouth, try to keep my tongue from touching them, dare not chew [!], then swallow quickly, and hope I don’t obviously gag.)

After reading Jose Saramago’s Blindness several weeks ago, enough of a new vocabulary permeated the boundaries of my thinking, that previously unformed groups of thoughts, ideas, and even dreads began to coalesce into what has become, for me, a new coherence. Vague feelings of confusion and concern which have a way, when they are inexpressible, of descending (personally, anyway) into anger or depression, seem to be backlit now; I have been able to begin to think about them in new ways, shadowy as they might still be.

I was emerging, with a language, from a very real blindness which had been caused in large measure, by an inadequacy of words with which to communicate, to myself or anyone else. But it was not a good feeling: it was flat-out alarming! I had gotten used to living with a mild, unfocussed alarm over “what it is I do not know specifically.” But vague shapes and washed-out colors have now begun to gel and brighten; I can see them well enough to feel the need (I apologize ahead of time) to shout them.

This entry serves as a warning then: future entries will begin with this same title but be followed by a specific word. You will see words like Life, Death, Religion, Time, Science, Technology, Politics, and Evil following “Was blind, but now I see..” My point in telling you this is that you may not want to see, or you may be highly interested in the particular word of the day, but not want to read about what I am seeing. So be it. Skip that day’s essay, or all of them. My personal therapy is to write, and plant seeds of curiosity and thought in doing so. Some of those seeds will blow away, some will be eaten by birds, some will be washed downstream, but some might take root and grow.

And I think some of them, all of them eventually, must. And soon. We have lived under a veil- luckily, some of us- for so very long that it feels comfortable in the darkness. The air might be stuffy, we may rarely be able to discern real Light, but having gotten used to such things, we don’t even notice we are breathing harder and struggling to see with less and less success.

I think we’ve been blind; I know I have been blind, much of my life, to much of what I have only begun to see, to look at critically, and then to observe contemplatively. While we’ve been blind, others have been dying and suffering en masse because of the majority’s inability to see.

I know I’m not alone in my “shouting.” I am simply one more in a long long line of known and unknown men and women throughout the ages who could not stop seeing, once they had begun. I also hope there are many millions more that will transcend my voice and vision with greater eloquence, insight, and urgency.

Tomorrow’s word: Hope

For the Beauty of the Earth..

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These are pictures of my “Lake Office.” That “office” consists of two concrete picnic tables erected sometime in the 70’s beside a local lake. It is a place I have spent much much time visiting with others, reading, and writing Sunday messages.

But I hadn’t been there in a couple of weeks and when I went there today, I found the place had been trashed. It had become a littered monument to Sonic Drive-In, Subway, Budweiser, and Marlboro Lights in the box. Mr. Trojan had also left a few calling cards.

So I picked up. Normally I do that each time I’m there, and day by day it’s not a difficult task. But today I filled a small dumpster. There are about 118,000 cigarette butts remaining to be raked up but that’s for tomorrow.

Before I began:

lakedirtyb lakedirtya

Litter is the ugliest but- in reality- least harmful of the many things we humans have thought to do with the surface of the planet. Deforesting it, paving over it, pouring on it everything from chemical manufacturing wastes to Arkansas chicken poop, burying under it whatever can be buried including nuclear waste and formaldehyde- filled bodies enclosed in oaken coffins which are themselves enclosed in sealed concrete vaults, piling on it newspapers, Styrofoam, and other plastic which will still be recognizable for the convenient crap it once was for the next 30,000 to one million years, and digging into it constantly so I can drive my car a quarter mile to the grocery store or burn fossilized carbons to keep my TV on- those are planetary superficialities with deep, deep ramifications. Litter of the Sonic and Subway kind is just aesthetically injurious.

But it makes me crazy.

Richard Bode, in Beachcombing at Miramar, writes this: “I am infuriated by these empty cans, disillusioned by the abuse, the flagrant insensitivity to the beauty of the land. And yet, despite the evidence all about me, I can’t let go of my conviction that the quest for beauty is as inherent in the individuals who litter..as it is in me, as it is in every woman, every man.

“Why do they do it? Why do they carry their beer cans to this lovely isolated beach when they could just as easily sit on a city curb or beside a garbage dump? I believe it is because they have no choice. They are drawn to the beauty of this place; this is where they have to be.

“But when their party is over, it’s as if some imp of the perverse takes over- as if they have to prove to others..that they are immune to the force of nature that lured them here. To behave otherwise would be a tacit admission that they feel a connection to the land, an attachment to the sea and sand, a bond with what they perceive as sacred in the world.”

I think (I have NO data to back this thought up, by the way), but I think that men are the primary perps of most litter. It is feminine to like pretty things, yes? It shows sensitivity to want things to look nice, correct? Thus (follow me here), intentional mess-making becomes one more way for a man to assert his hyper- heterosexuality (he hopes!).

To extend what may be proving to be an impossibly complex metaphor, isn’t littering akin to a dog claiming territory by peeing on every vertical object he passes? Isn’t that grand sweep of Sonic litter from the picnic table onto the floor of my office a goofy form of arm wrestling at the bar, wherein the guy with the biggest biceps has first dibs on the new waitress?

OK, I’ll stop. Call me gay, but here’s what the place looked like about an hour after I arrived:

lakecleanb lakecleana

The Womb of God

/ barryweber / 5 Comments

(This was the message I gave last Sunday. I know it’s a long read, but new birth never happens all-of-a-sudden. I’ve decided to continue adding the occasional “message from Sunday.”)

(Update, October, 2014: Six years later, this still says what I mean,,)

The Womb of God

One of my favorite biblical authors is Abraham Heschel who, in 1962, wrote the definitive book on the prophets, called The Prophets. He described the time period around 400-500 B.C. when some of the great Old Testament prophets had begun to write and speak in alarming, revolutionary, and largely unlistened-to ways (I’m going to paraphrase just a little, because his words can be difficult at times):

Heschel wrote of that time- “Religion had declined not because it had been successfully argued against, but because it had become irrelevant, dull, oppressive, uninteresting. When faith is replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crises of today are ignored because of the remembered splendor of the past; when faith becomes an inherited heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority and rules rather than the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”

Part of my personality- my vision of the world, the universe, God, and all things and beings contained therein- is summarized in that statement. I listen to and read other preachers, so many other Christian teachers and thinkers, and I end up feeling lonely sometimes, embarrassed even because what I see and believe seems so different from what I hear being proclaimed as God’s Truth, God’s Word by almost everyone else, including many of my own denominational colleagues. And that sometimes leads to a kind of situational depression on my part. I wonder if I am wrong, and if I am even being fair in sharing some of my deepest insights and doubts and wonderings with you because they so often seem to run counter to what is considered orthodox and traditional in Christian thinking and doctrine.

That is this preacher’s burden. Robbie, primarily, and some others of you catch the brunt of that odd depression from time to time, maybe too often. But I hope all of you also hear and feel- underlying that confusion and what is a very real sadness at times- I hope you also hear a real hopefulness on my part. I don’t believe Jesus intended to lead us in circles around and around in 2000 year old cultural realities and perceptions. In fact, I think that following Jesus is God’s way of leading all people, in all times, out of the Bronze Age that religion had irrelevantly, dully, oppressively, and uninterestingly become stuck in, and into an always-being-made-new Creation.

~~

I sit by the ocean watching the waves in early morning moonlight and think about these things. I walk beside the evening’s incoming tide, watching the records of that Creation in the scampering of sandpipers and the 200 million year old ballet of pelicans. I stand on Carolinian sand dunes blown into existence by winds which blew across the continents of Africa and South America long before there was a human present to scratch boundaries of ownership across them. Around me are pairs of ragged claws, as T.S. Eliot called them, crabs scuttling in and out of their ancient habitats, in and out of holes dug among the tangle of vines, the cacti, the wildflowers, and the swaying salt marsh grasses.

One morning, as I am making what is for me a jaw-dropping discovery that the horizon is not a perfectly straight line, but a series of barely discernible ups and downs of tidal risings and forming waves, like letters, words, and sentences- a kind of oceanic story being written in circles around the globe, and on that morning that story is punctuated a mile offshore with two large spouts of water. A whale.

That same morning, a little later, dolphins- 3 of them- appear near my son and daughter and others, ten yards away, jumping from the water in perfect, almost friendly formation. Then, later that same day, two sharks- small ones- appear just beside the shore, gulping the small fish caught in a temporary lagoon caused by receding tides. Those who are swimming leave the water quickly, but are unable to stop watching this scene, an unchanging scene, a wild and eternal scene older even than the time of dinosaurs.

I watch episodes like these shoulder-deep in the water, or from my sandy seat atop a dune, or hunkered down beside the water’s edges where waves born in the meeting of Caribbean currents and sub-Saharan winds are wetting my feet as my toes curl into the million and millions of tiny worn shards of ancient shellfish, now grains of sand. Other shells lie all around me, saltwater shelters abandoned by ten thousands of mollusks and crabs, shells which one day, wave after wave after wave away, will also be pummeled into the granular debris of other beaches, other shores.

I am caught up again and again in the transcendence of moments and minutes, of time and eternities. All that is around me on this shore- on any shore, and on beyond these shores to the mountains far behind me and the plains and rivers and lakes and fields beyond; all that is around me, beside and behind me, over me and under me, from the verdant green of every flower, to the forests of trees beyond them in the Great Smoky mountains, from those creatures in the seas which are too small to be seen, to sharks and whales, to crabs and the pelicans, the gulls and sandpipers, to each and every animal that burrows, flies, swims, crawls, slithers, or hunkers down near the waves watching it all- all of it, all of them, emerged in their primary, first forms from the ocean. Life- all life- has been born in these salty wet depths. All life has surged upward and outward and forward from this womb of God, this birthplace of an always new Creation.

Above me, and I cannot look elsewhere now, the morning sun is rising between scattered gray, yellow, and white clouds moving from east to west in massive air currents I cannot feel, but only see. Clouds formed by the endless evaporation of water from the ocean’s surface in response to the 10 billion year old sun’s invitation to rise toward its light and warmth. Clouds which, when laden with the many tons of hydrogen and oxygen atoms formed into molecules of water, attracting each other, joining together and spilling in heavier-than-air raindrops on the lands over which they pass. Gentle spring rains or summertime deluges, the ocean pours through them onto lands beyond, where the grasses absorb them and grow. And then the oceans are eaten in their now green and leafy incarnations by cows. And dairy farmers gather the now milky white drops of the ocean together into pasteurization vats and stainless steel tank trucks, some of which, not far away, will be made into ice cream.

Lick the ice cream and savor the ocean’s journey onto your lips. Taste the ocean’s always new and endless Creation on your tongue. We are a part of it. It is a part of us. The boundaries of difference among living things are blurred and obscured by the commonalities of our origins. Our own saltwatery blood pulses in rhythms begun by the oceans and the moon in gravitational, tidal dances, and I am overcome, again. I put my earphones on and listen to the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” as I watch and wonder in gratitude and humility and I raise my arms in the same form in which I earlier saw the whale’s spouts, and I listen, and I try to sing, because I must. I must.

It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

When I come back up to the house and onto the porch my son and his girlfriend are sitting there drinking coffee and Joshua asks me, with a tinge of worry, I can tell- “Daddy, what in the heck were you doing down there?” (I didn’t think anybody would be out of bed yet!) “What in the heck were you doing down there with your arms in the air?”

And I tell him, “Becoming sane.”

~~

Psalm 24:

1 The earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof, and all who live in it;

2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.

I need those words. I need those words to wash over the curse of my own jabbering ego; I need those words to clean and scour the false priorities I schedule for myself constantly. I need those words, in waves crashing against my pride, I need those words to remind me that, at the bottom of everything I am nothing, but that me and you and every living thing are a part of the whole of everything. We are the intricately, intimately related parts of the earth’s fullness thereof. And we are loved very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.

Matthew 5 from ‘the Message’, verse 3: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

4″You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

5″You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

6″You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

7″You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.

8“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

Here’s the truth the ocean was drowning me in that morning, and during those days there. Here’s what I can see so much more clearly now- what Jesus is able to lead me, and all of us toward, if we are following him.

Continuing in Matthew 5, verse 13: “David, Let me tell you why you are here. (No, my name is not really there. But there’s a white space there- insert your own name in it!) David, let me tell you why you are here. (Do it, let Jesus talk to you here) David, Joey, Sarah, Nancy, Manuel, let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.

Verses14-16: “Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

So, I cannot be quiet. I dare not be quiet. If I feel the saltwater kiss of God on my lips, what else can I do but share that caress in these ways available to me, with you? I must continue to shout that I can learn almost as much about God from a wildflower field as I can from the first chapter of John. I must admit without embarrassment that I learn as much about the active presence of Jesus in a roomful of sentenced-to-life convicts as I do from the letters of Paul.

And I must stop being ashamed or otherwise discombobulated, when I tell you or others, or even admit to myself that an hour beside the ocean, lost in the eternal mysteries of blue-green waters tinged with golden sunlight, is better than any sermon, any day. Even this one.

So, on a gray Friday morning a week ago, August 15, the day after Sarah and Travis’ wedding, I got up, almost as usual before everyone else, walked down the catwalk across the dunes, sat on the last step, and wrote what follows. I didn’t know then if I would ever share it with anyone. Having read these words of Jesus just now, though, I know that I must:

August 15, 2008, Holden Beach NC

Abba, Father..

Through the smallness of my words, I cannot explain to anyone, least of all to myself, who or what you are.

Through the inadequacies of language and grammar, whatever I write leaves so much unwritten that it might be better to tear this blank page into a thousand pieces, lift them to the wind and, as they are blown across the beach say “There, there is God.”

But if I don’t write something, right now, I might cease to breathe.

I know that Genesis says humans were created in the image of God, but I think we have done a much better job of recreating God in our own image. I would rather watch the image of God I see in these pelicans, or in these scampering sandpipers, than think about the image of God which fueled the hundreds of slave ships which crossed these waters in front of me.

My heart soars as I watch the image of God in this rising sun, and know what the ancient biblical writers could not have known: that this is one of a trillion sun-stars, and a fairly minor sized one at that. I see God better in the golden explosion of these early morning, sun-reflecting clouds better- infinitely better- than I do when I read the church-blessed history of the “godly” men who came to these shores 400 years ago with ships full of guns, germs, and plans to baptize and bless the “savages” who had lived here 6000 years on land they called “Father” near the waters they called “Mother.”

My heart aches as I think about the Japanese trawlers chasing down with high powered, 21st century harpoons the whale I saw yesterday, because a Japanese god wants whale oil burning in his temples. And my heart breaks when I think of the creature-killing weapons-testing happening beneath these waters because an American god says “My country, right or wrong, my country.”

It is the man-created images of God which infect my soul, not this billions year old image in front of me! The truest maps of creation are written on the backs of these seabirds, and in the God-writ words on the horizon. I can taste God here in the spray of saltwater. I can hear God in the symphonies of the sun and moon and the harmonies of the ceaseless waves. I can see God in paths of crabs and the nests of sea turtles. And I can touch God here, simply by lifting my hands.

Hallelujah!

My Poetry Awards begin to roll in..

/ barryweber / 2 Comments

Special Announcement for all you nay-sayers, doubters, and s0-called critics!

See??? I was right! I knew my poem Kitty, Kitty, Kitty was worthy of real acclaim. These people- Poetry.com– know good poetry when they see good poetry. After all, they have a website dedicated to finding metaphorical wheat among the literal chaff that thousands of would-be but woefully untalented bumpkins submit to them every day.

The Real Thing stands apart from the riff-raffian attempts of pretend poets- and Kitty, Kitty, Kitty is the Real Thing!

Thank you, Howard Ely. You are a great man- the kind of man women dream about and the kind of man other men want to be. I humbly accept my ranking as one of your companions in composition- one of your poetic peers.

(Howard, When you send me my exclusive certificate- the one that is “beautifully typeset on archive quality vellum and mounted on a walnut-finish plaque under Lucite,” please get my name right. One of your screw-up underlings has called me “Audrey Hamilton!” Please, I know you’re embarrassed, but no apology is necessary. All of us manly, exceptional  poets understand how difficult it is to find good help these days, what with leaky borders and the dismal SAT scores so  pervasive in these drug-drenched times.  Why, just the other day I was at a McDonalds and requested some lemon curd for my pancakes..you’d have thought I was a space alien the way the young man behind the counter looked at me! “Dude,” he said, “what freakin’ language you be talkin’ in?” That’s what I’m talking about! And it’s WEBER with one B. Bless you, sir.)

Now..here’s the proof, my doubting Thomas friends:

Poetry.com Header

Dear David,

Recently, I was delighted to inform you that your poetry merited an invitation to participate in The Best Poems and Poets of 2007. Because your work displayed an original perspective and unique creativity, judged to be the qualities found most in exceptional poetry, we wanted to include you in this select group of poets. Congratulations on your achievement!

Commemorate Your Inclusion In This Exclusive Collection!

To be selected as one of the Best Poets of 2007 is a truly remarkable achievement. Your work is included in the same discussion as the greatest poets of our time, and you should be extremely proud of this accomplishment. We are offering a limited edition certificate plaque that commemorates your poetic milestone. This exclusive certificate is beautifully typeset on archive quality vellum and mounted on a walnut-finish plaque under Lucite. These 10 1/2-inch by 13-inch plaques are truly impressive ways to exhibit your poetic achievement.

The Best Poems and Poets of 2007

Poetry Best Plaque 2007

We hope that you will take advantage of this limited-time opportunity. Act now and commemorate your achievement with a beautiful plaque that you can proudly display for all to see! Again, congratulations on being named one of the Best Poets of 2007!

Sincerely,
Howard Ely Signature
Howard Ely
Managing Editor

God’s Love 3

/ barryweber / 1 Comment

It’s one thing to talk about it in church

with others who will agree with everything

that is being said about it that day.

And who will be reminded how good it is

for those around them to learn more about it,

and be better people for having done so.

It’s inspiring, to say the least.

Where are we going for lunch today?

But it’s quite another thing to watch

God’s Love

gather in the corner of his beloved’s eye,

drop onto her cheek,

and trickle down to her top lip.

When that happens, you can see

prayers being answered with

his Kiss.

God’s Love

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My guess is that

God’s love better resembles a stack of pancakes with

slathered butter, and soaking in Aunt Jemima’s syrup,

than it does the

the horrible slaughter of his own daughter by Jephtha*,

or God’s allowing the ten children of Job to die,

just to win a bet. **

Pass the strawberry jam, please.

*Judges 11: 30-40

**Job 1

Consider the lilies..

/ barryweber / 3 Comments

A mind-rattling, consciousness-caressing gift was handed to me today. It is so good that I want to share it right away because it could- I think- make a difference in your world, too, beginning right now.

It is one of those insights born within our language; it is a way of thinking that moves me from two-dimensional thinking (the easy, flat kind of thinking) to three, four, even five dimensional thinking- the kind of thinking that causes green and lively shoots of new questions to suddenly and profusely appear. Here it is:

See vs. Consider..

Do I see a person? Or do I consider that person?

When I see a person, I normally make a rush to judgement. I take the visual data before me, run it quickly through the sieve of my own preconceptions, develop a cursory evaluation and move on. I’m in a hurry, after all: there are more people, more things, more places to see. Why take time to linger when I’ve got all the information necessary to momentarily sate my well-defined and hungry ego? Now I have more to see!

But, when I consider the stranger standing in the line at the grocery store, or the friend who is in front of me speaking- when I consider that person, and not merely see him or her, then their multi-dimensionality begins to be revealed.  Their faces, the tilting of their heads, and the movements of their hands became the introductory sentences of a whole narrative that is begging to be read. The strand of curly hair hanging over the young girl’s left eye, or the blurred tattoo over the old man’s right hand knuckles are not mere visual data anymore. Considered, they become colors that give depth to the feelings behind words; they make more resonant the music of a person’s being.

To consider someone is to stop and to experience them. It is to stop the timer in my mind that is always clanging, “Move on!” It is to search (albeit, most of the time, in an unobtrusive manner) for the pain and the joy, the happiness and the suffering that all humans experience in a multitude of ways. It is to seek, because now I must, the tangible and outward evidence of that which is most often hidden and quiet.

To consider a person also involves something else- and in fairness I must warn you about this.  It is also draws me toward that person’s life. It causes me to want to know more, reflect on what I learn, and to begin to make the innumerable connections between myself and that person which are possible between all of us and everyone else.  It makes love very real, and always possible. And sometimes my heart- I can’t speak for yours- but sometimes my heart just doesn’t feel like it can stretch anymore than it already has.

It’s worth the risk, anyway.

Consider, after all, the alternative.

The Pieta

/ barryweber / Leave a comment

Step 10 of the 12 Steps of AA:

“Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

We talked about this step last night at a meeting. Step 10 speaks of the necessity for the recovering addict (or anyone for that matter) to periodically step back from themselves, and examine which of the old habits, ideas, or self-misunderstandings which got them into trouble in the first place, may be re-forming themselves. Which of those old, easily-defaulted-to behaviors or thoughts might be ready to reach out and grab whatever weak link in one’s recovery might be revealing itself anew? It’s a good thing, obviously, to know about, and a group of like-minded others can help one to more ably do that.

Some of us were remembering incidents in which we were confronted by someone or something outside ourselves in a way that was self-revealing, sometimes jarringly so. I remembered two pieces of art, both seen when I was only 17-18 years old, that did that for me in a way that I can still remember. Michaelangelo’s Pieta, and Picasso’s Guernica shook my understandings of how the world might be perceived in ways that I had not known it was possible to perceive the world. They were both doors of discovery that I could not stop myself from entering, nor that I could make practical sense of once I had entered.

pieta

The Pieta, Michaelangelo, 1498-99, St.Peter’s Basilica, Rome

I saw this in the Vatican with a tour group in 1967. I was one of a few teenagers in a group of adult construction company owners and their wives who had gotten free trips to Europe for buying backhoes from a particular implement dealer in Ohio. Since 1972, the Pieta has been on display behind bullet-proof glass and must be viewed from twenty feet away, because of a hammer attack that year by a crazed man, Laszlo Toth. But in 1967, there was no protective glass, and the Pieta was there- ten feet in front of us.

I saw it and forgot who I was. It was not a spiritual experience in the sense that I was overwhelmed by Mary’s sorrow or Jesus’ death. It was an experience of encountering Beauty in a form I had not known was possible. This was marble, caressed into fingernails and upper lips. This was rock, tapped gently into folds of cloth, and pressed-upon skin. This was cold stone, fashioned into eyes brimming with tears, freshly pierced wounds, and pulsing veins.

The tour group continued on to whatever-it-was that was next be seen. I stayed because I had no choice. I saw tonnage that was ethereal and floating. I traced the edges of Mary’s robe with my eyes until I could see the cloth moving in her shudders. My eyes filled with tears that I didn’t understand and knew I would not be able to explain or share with anyone. (Not that I wanted to, anyway; this was the kind of brand new emotional reaction that I worked to hide even as I could not.)

It was a personal inventory that was forced upon me- a realization of something about myself that I have never (thank God) stopped getting used to. I learned that it is not the tour group that needs kept up with, it is what I am seeing and experiencing, right here and right now, that is the most important thing. It’s taken me all of the forty years since then to put that revelation into words, and I could regret those decades of inarticulation. Instead, I choose to be thankful for finally being able to understand why, in retrospect, I always felt apart from the crowd up ahead, and wanting- all the time- to know more, more, more about (it seems) everything I ever saw that reminded me of the way Michalengelo was able to make marble sing.

Tomorrow: Guernica