Saint Patrick died on March 17th.
So we celebrate the day with green and drink.
Patrick, was kidnapped to Ireland as a slave,
a condition he never fully forgot or forgave.
Patty (as he was known by his friends)
was a sober, relentless, devout Christian.
As a missionary, he gallivanted methodically, converting heathens
and if he failed to convert you, you weren’t left breathin’.
He could burn you at the steak for ignoring ‘reason’.
To show Christ’s power, he ‘banished’ the snakes,
It’s amazing, the difference a miracle can make.
The year 461 pre-dated laptops and even the Internet,
so, I think it’s time we finally forgive and even forget
the sad, sordid history of Catholic conversion “therapy”
because today we need a reason to drink until we’re green.
.
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Webster: Gallivant: “travel for pleasure.”
My roommates and I went to Doublin, Ireland last summer.
In casual conversation we asked how they celebrated Saint Patrick's day and their celebrations are like ours, more or less - a secular overindulgence. But on a deeper level, this holiday, they say, is dedicated to the patron saint of heathen genocide.
Missionaries were cunning
Not less than a cat’s eye fixed on a meal with a waggling tail
Curiosity extended in those that heard them speak.
With a thorned crown of dead porcupine.
A pagan king and His ignorant servant standing taller than palm trees
Leaning forward like a falling tower to its knees.
”Story tellers.”
They bring stories on what lies beyond your majesties' kingdom.
A routine of tales sang under a silver silent moonlight
It was Entertainment at a day’s end of a successful hunt.
The tales told to kings articulated volumes of curiosity
As the red fire flowing its light on curious faces,
The missionaries had learnt to tread softly
Not less than a cat’s eye fixed on a meal with a waggling tail
And so they carried on and drew mass crowds in this likeness.
Not sure why
USA red
relentlessly white
and not so much blue WholeEarth patriots
have consistently
selflessly supported
medical missionaries
vaccinating against every unmasked
health threatening disease
erupting in tribal life
of darkest social systemic Africa
Yet fail to co-empathically embrace
basic
fundamental
win/win evangelically redemptive
bipartisan public health care
here in domestic
Straight White
USA Christian
flag-waving homes
Where live and breathe
our own at-risk children
And climate threatened grandchildren
And pandemonic RightWing denihilistic
degenerating public and private health prospects
for great grandchildren
Who might hope to survive
for more than another wealthy
humane-divine
nature-spirited century
Sacredly meaningful
unmasked
transparent
and multiculturally vulnerable
co-empathic
polypathic
EarthBound public and private
eco/theo-logical
Celebrating systemic
global inter/inner-connected
good-faith health consciousness.
I
"Good morning. Jesus Loves You," I say
To passers by, with my calm shalom
I feel good, they feel good. But ought we?
Since Columbus sailed the Ocean blue ...
There's been a holocaust on the earth
The other one, against the environment
They can't stop it in the Amazon
So, why talk of the last Orangutans
In Indonesia, or Malaysia: old Batavia?
Yes, I am a pastor, and I love Jesus
(Which Jesus? you ask. That's the question)
II
After these post-Columbian centuries
India and China seem to have managed without Jesus
It irks me, that with so much clout, empires fail
To show the side of Jesus we see individually
The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4)
The blind beggar who never had eyes, until made for him
By Jesus outside the Temple (escaping stoning, yet healing)
Read it in John 9. Or the Love of the Father, Luke 15
The one Jesus revealed to us as "Abba." Why not these?
I heard Romans 3 (verse 23) and John 14: 6 aplenty
It sounded better in my private devotions
Shall I mention E. Stanley Jones, Christian ashram
(Not Christian Yoga). How to be a missionary
And tell them of Jesus. Just Jesus. Not the "civilized economy."
MISSIONARIES FOR GOD
Putting their own lives in danger,
In foreign lands like a stranger,
They come and live and serve the Lord,
In God's eyes, what a great record!
Missionaries filled with His zeal,
Working for God, our hearts they steal,
Leaving their motherland behind,
To their own needs, they become blind,
God leads them in that distant land,
He guides them with His own right hand,
Midst trials, troubles and sorrows,
He's with their unsure tomorrows,
Struggling, they're still victorious,
Their sacrifice is glorious,
Going to ends of all the earth,
They spread God's Word, His loving worth.
8 syllables per line
09.17.19
Freezing water.
Many hours.
Prayer, hymns, and laughter.
Gray fins begin circling our group.
Day Three There are thirteen of us now.
Twenty-six numb legs stop moving.
Hymn singing stops.
Who will be next? I hold my breath.
Goliath is taken.
Pulled away from the circle.
His girlfriend screams.
Goliath makes no sound. Gives me a sad nod.
I watch in morbid curiousness
As he is pulled under the water hard.
The water fills with vast amount of red liquid.
Frenzied sharks swim in for their taste of the kill.
The rest of us hold our breaths.
The third day of our capsized non-rescue.
The ocean is deep. Eight others had already been taken.
Which is easier – to be taken or to watch those taken?
The sharks swim around us one more time.
We who are left give praise for another hour
Of life, each minute a reminder of how quickly
We are taken. Tears in our eyes. Who will tell our tale?
THE FEET OF THEM
How beautiful are the feet of them,
the pillars of strength, and stance of him,
the hands, the smile and face of him,
who brings to us good news.
How lovely are the voices of them,
the song, the Word, the sound of him,
the message of grace and love of Him,
sending them who brings good news.
How precious the hoary heads of them,
the glory of the Lord of them,
the birth, the life, and death of them,
who brings to us good news.
A missionary and a serial killer are not that way born.
Both evolved by the environment each experienced and individually came from.
If you switched both at birth with the other’s environment,
your otherwise missionary would end up a killer and your otherwise killer a saint.
That's difficult for people to accept initially,
because they have to drop “free will” and individuality.
If you can get past that one the rest is easy to understand,
including the need for a global entirely different kind of environment.
Inspired from the teachings of Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows.
A missionary and a serial killer are not that way born.
Both evolved by the environment each experienced and individually came from.
Marvelous ministers
meant to share the gospel
message, men and women
motivated by love
marked by God to go forth
making disciples, true
mentors of faith and peace.
Written on 4/20/2017