Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
- Aeschylus
Pre-ramble:
The theme selected as the virus effects indicated flattening and knuckleheads celebrated the premature to normalcy seemed to be clear. Topics might include:
No masks.No social distancing. Demanding the opening ore-pandemic status quo activities and enterprises. Some suggested that their prayers were nullified since the holy places of “official worship” remained closed. (It was implied that the divine has difficulty listening to the silence of hearts and our own receptors are defective outside sacred ground.)
Then the cold rain began to dissipate, and the sun made a late but dramatic appearance fulfilling fading winter hopes and dreams. Citizens flooded streets, parks and any corners they could find. The prospect that the quiet prayers were answered was ignored for the most part. No gratitude as the crowds moved on. The scientists shouted from the roof tops “Be Careful! Stay Home! Wear masks! There will a spike and a second wave!” Closed minds and some ignorance prevailed as crowds bumped each other coughing on beaches , rivers, parks and bars. “If you are worried then you stay home’ they sang. Now doctors and health officials calculate new cases.
It all seemed like a good theme with supporting topics for a narrative but reality came crashing like a knee on a poor man’s neck and the world changed again.
The lost recipe:
Know Peace. Know Justice.
Fueling the burning embers of late night street fights
Working on continually slowly ignorantly
building up pascals until the point where something
Is bound to blow the lid off everything.
Rosa’s ride a simple beginning,
Ghosts of the Tulsa war and Mississippi burning ,
memories of the march from Selma to Montgomery
And Martin’s dream seem to have been swept aside.
41 shots and the so-called inadvertent continuance of the perpetual “bad mistakes’ of killing first
and second guessing later became the status quo.
Then the knee on the neck.
The world watched over and over how
A black man took his last breath as his hopes, dreams
And fears were squeezed out of him slowly for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Take outraged citizens black, white and all colors
add a slight touch of professional firebrands from all sides of the political spectrums -
A touch of Antifa, a sprinkle of Boogaloo boys
And mix with BLMers and Neo-Facisits and voila
- the perfect bomb !
Musk’s Falcon to the stars has become a second thought blocked out by the smoke rising from American city streets below.
Were MLK and RFK myths?
Are the lessons of Gandhi and Dorothy Day
Voices in the wilderness?
The imperfect but accepted Judeo-Christian ethic and "In God We Trust" seem to be blown away with the winds of change. .
The recent echo of someone proclaiming that he has 2,000 rounds and he is “ready for the animals” frightens me more than COVID-19. My prayers , hopes and dreams shift.
- JF Sobecki
—————————————————
Martin Luther King Shot - Robert Kennedy
( a man , a time and place when wisdom and grace mattered)
American Skin - B. Springsteen
Peace - Subdudes
Change Myself- Todd Rundgren
The Word - The Beatles
Song For Sam Cooke - Dion
What’s Goin On? - Marvin Gaye
We Can Work it Out - The Beatles
The Public - The Movie Trailer - as must see
now streaming on TV
The Holy Longing
poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.
In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you,
when you see the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.
Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.
Translated from the German by Robert Bly
The Sermon:
So the priest seemed to repeating the same ole sermon week after week and the congregation elected a representative to speak with the priest about the repetition each Sunday. They met and the priest was cordial in his reception. Well, weeks went by and and the sermon hadn’t changed. So, the representative went back to the priest about the problem sermon. This time the priest was surprised and he asked the representative to kindly repeat the message of the sermon. So the representative gave it a shot “It’s about loving your neighbor as yourself ; serving the sick and the poor; being selfless and kind and patient; respecting nature and seeing the divine in all things, creatures and people.” The priest was surprised and said ,“Wow, that’s really good.” The representative said “Well, the rest of the congregation would respond the same.”
The Priest then shook his said and said “ That’s surprising ,by the way they act during the week and the theme of their confessions I didn’t think they were listening.”
The lesson:
An American Tune - P Simon
Amdg
Copyright 2020 JF Sobecki All Rights Reserved
