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Surrender Your Fear

Hear my poem announce, then refine and restate
its life lesson suggestion Surrender YOUR Fear!
Yes, Surrender Your FEAR, watch stick rafters release
(note: I’m ‘Missing, Roof’ too, and I still love my life)
see life’s cobbled roofs fly, the frail cobwebs we weave
(was the world kept at bay; can thatch hide one from God?).
Do a mudslide or earthquake, tsunami, a snow
that’s too heavy, tornado shed light on this point!
Is a cave found so deep one can hide from oneself?

Now is when write gets hard, I’d speak ‘truth,’ not inflate
my relations with God, for I trust Truth is dear
and the flip side of Love! Do I dream I’m at peace!
Is God real or abstract, who wears pants, who’s the wife?
These aren’t issues to me, though some say I’m naïve.
Yes, there’s “distant rhyme,” too. Does a rhyme scheme hint, “Fraud?”
Though we all rent life’s car, don’t we choose where to go
(when we’ve money for gas and roads serve)? ‘Out of joint’
is a choice some call life, all a tome tests is shelf!
*
*
Does it seem disrespectful to wrestle with God?
Or was Jacob not blessed when he did so and won?
Though he limped (from his pains), he saw God face to face
and survived! (1) As a boy, I would wrestle with Dad
on some Sundays, till Mom put an end to this joy,
drove a nail in the coffin of closeness males lost
(she claimed fear of torn sheets!), that commensurate pain?
I remember the spankings reserved, “Just you wait
till your Dad’s home!” Dad painted pains’ pawn (place defined!)

If the cross was His choice (Christ chose death!), is Grace odd?
With man’s blood debt now paid, who lives under a gun?
We’ve now lease to explore! Saints in Christ live to race?
Are we whipped for each time in our life we break bad?
Do sin’s prospects reward? Evolution’s a toy
(or what pleasures God’s heart?) Each beginning owns cost!
When I test what men call faith, God’s Truth, I sustain.
If I quail at religions’ extremes, I don’t hate
through my questions, pray souls will gain faith more refined!
*
*
I would not live in fear that defines who I am
if there’s choice, and I think that there is! We can choose
to see life as a gift sent from God that’s God’s gift
(not our ask!) Did we ask to be born? What a thought!
Yet a scoffer might say, “Hey, some lives seem more Graced?
What’s with that?” Evolution, I’d say, plays a role
here, my friend! Some don’t need Sun to tan, but don’t burn!
Some can’t carry a tune yet bring shame to a lark!
Are good looks, curse, or gift? Fool’s choice bad (where’s abuse?)

Not one ‘thing’ is a problem though you’re not ‘I AM!’
If that’s true, then what’s gained by this choice when you lose
(if you please)? What’s important is choice; why feel stiffed
by a thing (that exists or it doesn’t). You’ve bought
more a ‘pig in a poke’ (2) (it’s a joke)! Now disgraced
in the mind of some audience (You?) Take a poll
if you doubt me! Worth murdering loved ones you yearn
to feel love from because you believe they lack spark?
Or surrendering fear, Love’s love gets its best use?

Brian Johnston
13th of March in 2021
Poet’s Notes:
This poem had its inspiration in a straightforward process I encountered in a seminar called “The Sage Experience” led by Brandon Poso.’ Brandon, at one time, was a seminar leader for “The EST Training. While I’m not sure of its origin, I found the process to be quite valuable in my own life.

Simply stated, participants get asked to write down ten problems in their lives (that are long-standing issues for them) on ten different strips of paper, fold each one, and put them in a hat that got passed. Brandon then shook the hat’s contents vigorously and sent the hat around again, asking each participant to remove ten items and read them silently. If a problem did not seem important to a participant, he asked that we put it under our seats and return perceived problems to the hat as it next came by. Then the same process got repeated.

It rarely took more than four passes for someone to put everyone’s worst problem under their seat. There seems to be little agreement in the world as to what makes a problem important.

(1) See Genesis 32:22–32)
(2) ‘Pig in a poke:’ The idea is that only one very dumb would buy a ‘pig’ in a sack that remained uninspected.

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