Beloved Community

The 'Beloved Community' by Rick Folker One beloved community in God's world Where each soul honors the Image of God in the other Where neither Jew nor Greek Woman nor Man Delivers the 'manifest destiny' From Sinai's peak Where all are called to Isaiah's mountain Eunuchs and lepers Publicans and saints Lips humbly muttering prayers they cannot speak Where all observe Jesus from afar On lonely Gethsemane Sweating blood For the sleeping, satisfied, selfish crowd The torpor of disciples, deaf to the Impending flood One beloved community, Or... Some fairy tale kingdom struggling To become a living thing or tossed in the trash Or the mountains where "used-to-be" crumble from sorrow into a mournful ash And well-meaning Christians hurry For shelter, cowering in sack cloth As the complacent sleepers of Gethsemane creep back Into the darkness, covering their ears lest they AWAKE! to the night that is far gone And hear of light and justice Escaping the righteous rebuke of WRONG! Wrong! Wrong One beloved community That Martin gave his soul and his life for; A King who was prophet and priest Whose dream was smothered in the still-born birth in a would be manger in some slum in Montgomery Where no sun rises in a forgotten, hopeless east 'Move to the front please' One beloved community shattered and now praised for its greatness, its whiteness, its bravado and hubris in soul-grinding waves Ignoring the please of the blacks and the browns and the braves One beloved community that exists in a dream And one loveless community that ends in a scream with a lone,frightened individual Praying to be redeemed