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My Renegade Sunday School Teacher
Aunt Mary was a small and wiry mother
of six;
four by birth
and two by informal adoption.
She sang in a small querulous voice
yet spoke boldly
filled with loving EarthMother
indigenous wisdom choices.
Aunt Mary was a serenely quiet mentor
and suspiciously happy
Sunday School teacher
in our stern Christian evangelical Bible Church
where divine Revelation
ended with the last apocalyptic
King James chapter.
Closed "Father Has Spoken" inspiration
was not quite so All or Nothing clear
from our Teacher's polycultural gardener
and permacultural farmer perspective,
with her animal husbandry perceptions
offering a more inclusive Holy Spirit articulating view
Of personal
and communal peak therapeutic experiences,
naturally revealing,
spiritually fulfilling
universal salvation
seeking unitarian redemption
finding ever more expansive
universal EarthTribal sensations.
Aunt Mary led our high school class
theological reflections
always in her quiet
compassionate way
A question and respond style
she may have learned from reading Gospel Jesus
The outdoor itinerant Teacher
responding to both hostile
and admiring fan questions
Speaking in Beatitudes,
spoken word Psalms
Proverbs,
impromptu Sermons on Mountains.
"What did Jesus mean
when he said Abba is love?"
I might have asked,
hoping to catch her explaining herself away
from the Patriarchal personal knowledge
our straight
white
good-news privileged preacher
shared from his bully pulpit
about what demonic
not straight
not white
not strong warrior behaviors
God hates.
"Abba is ComPassion"
invites us to become liberal
only in love"
she responds.
This is the reverse side of becoming more conservative
about risky behaviors
and negative attitudes
and demonic platitudes
steeped in hate
anger
fear
greed
narcissism
anthro-supremacism,
ignorance,
traumatic abuse,
and chronic emotional neglect
remaking god into our own dog-
matic worst
bad excuse for a good-news day
degenerative lack
of healthy imagination.
"The devil made me do it"
in jest
curiously reminds me of
"Jehovah demands I hate it"
excommunicating those who sin
against my limited
and exclusively safe
peak resonant experiences.
Judgmental
"Violence is mine"
loudly speaks StraightWhitePrivilegedMale
way back in old weaponized Testaments.
This love we choose
to renew each morning
we often think of as compassion
and Mom-inspired peace
and blissful nurturing light
In contrast to the traumatic night
of a darkened daddy soul
Yet love of God's creation,
creativity,
music,
musicality,
natural Truth
and supernatural Integrity
of wholesome holonic Spirit,
is also openly
and relentlessly curious
About the depths of Earth's empowering summer soils
and disempowering winter snow,
About resonant healing
yet also dissonant harming,
About both dawn's light
and dusk's revolving night.
Embrace liberal love
of our co-arising bicameral
dipolar
appositional`Spirits
And conserve deep disregard
for competing bipolar
oppositional Souls
More clear about which sheep
we must be against
than why God created all sheep
for us to adore
Who define alien Others
by whom and what we are commanded
and reprimanded to hate
Don't even try to understand
and don't slow-grow the courage
to appreciate
To become more resiliently curious about
how
and why They/We can
and do love each Other
in some mysterious non-Othering way
beyond LeftBrain dominant understanding.
Liberally love
reform
refine
refinish your human healthy Self
and sacred natural Others
by uniting with whom
and what we love
and faithfully hope to stand.
Explore radically profound courage
to become more deeply
organically
integrally
inter-religiously curious about
how to more resiliently choose
Each mindful day
each inclusive hour
each thoughtful moment
within each healthy relationship,
each communion,
each love song
of liberating compassion
Thereby worrying less about
conserving slow-burning
political dispassions.
Copyright ©
Gerald Dillenbeck
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