The Killing of George Floyd

No criminal was he.
but rather, the victim of one,
as on the video we see.

No violent man was he.
but rather, a disciple of
the Prince of Peace he be.

No vagrant was he.
but rather a tireless worker
for the Lord in eternity.



As the slain blood of Abel
cried out to the ground
up to the Lord a sound

So now does George’s breath
cry out to the atmosphere
for God, and us, to hear:

“I can’t breathe,’
cried he
as the killer
pinned George down
to the ground.
Now Big George’s breath cries out
from the ground,
a righteous sound!
On the net it’s found
around the world, all ‘round.

“A life well done, my faithful one,”
the Lord says to George
as Big George went home
never more to roam.

As for the one who pinned him down,
the writing’s on the wall
to be seen by all
all the world around.

Mene
Mene Tekel
Upharsin
Peres

In Mene appolis,
in Mene appolis
You forced him,
Derek.

The writing’s on the wall
to be seen by all:
“I can’t breathe!”
As America seethes.

King of Soul

What do you see?

Look at this.

What do you see?

Two lines crossing?

Yes.

Use your imagination. There's more to this symbol than meets the eye.

Maybe you see an X/Y axis where mathematical equations can be graphed in two-dimensional space.

Maybe you see a crossroads, a place where a traveler, perhaps you, would retain a straight path, or make a turn.

And we know there's the possibility that you see here a religious symbol.

Maybe you see organized religion fastened irretrievably to a stiff framework of dead tradition.

Think about this. This configuration has been used, at different times in history, as

an instrument of torture,

where one human being might be nailed, even unto death, by other human beings.

Or perhaps can you see, in the crossed paths of historical nations,

the desires of different people groups at cross-purposes with each other,

or the interests of different ethnicities at cross-purposes with each other,

or the dogmatic stubbornness of different religions crossing each other in warfare?

You may even see any possibility of World Peace nailed to this cross--

straightjacketed hopelessly to the hard reality that this world is a cruel, bellicose place.

Maybe you see any hope for true justice in this world bound repeatedly by the terrible deeds that men do.

Stretch you imagination. Canst thou discern Peace On Earth nailed to our inescapable propensity toward war?

Can you, perhaps, even see the hopes and dreams of fearful Syrian citizens nailed to a ubiquitous grid of war?

Or, the lives of black men and women that matter, strewn lifelessly across an intersection of corruption and injustice?

Maybe you can visualize, in the collective memory of our history, a cross burning in front of Great-great Grampa Tom's cabin.

Can you envision all the wasted time that Saeed Abedini spent in an Iranian prison fastened to a cross of injustice?

Can you imagine all the terrible deeds of mankind throughout history nailed to this cross?

There was a man crucified on it at one time. But he is not bound to that cross any more.

A couple of days after our sentence upon him was passed, and the execution complete, he was carried to to an intersection with eternal life.

Can you imagine eternal life on the other side of that deathly cross?

I can. I've been to the crossroads.



Glass half-Full

the Irish I knew

Born into this world seventeen days

before the crash of '29,

he was a contender,

a fight'n man,

not a troublemaker, mind you, but

you knew what I mean;

life's no bowl of cherries, and for a while

it was like him against the world,

even later on, after the War,

to keep his family fed and well-heeled.

He never kiss'd no blarney stone, him,

nor anybody's arse.

It was a hard world he came into

a Jersey boy

hard work'n man

with a woman who loved him his whole

dam life, and the Church to

back him up, as he needed so much

grace and mercy

to balance out his rude legacy upon the world.

Oh, he was a well-built man, stronger than Ulysses

and pretty dam smart too, an engineer.

A man who built bridges,

although he might have burned a few too

if you know what I mean.

Hell, it was men like him who built

America.

So here we stood today in southern shade

gentle breeze blow'n from somewhere far away

eighty-six years after the fact

of his life, which has passed into eternity.

The nine+ souls gather'd round,

grown up now and left behind

to contend as he did with every dam thing that's wrong

with this world.

Now here's the dear friar waiting patiently,

in gentle character so different from the fierce Catholic whose ashes now

we set aside, to await the great awakening,

the communion of the saints,

a big host of them, raised up

by the nail-scarred hands of Him upon that cross

hung there upon the nearby wall.



All these living offspring, celebrants of their father's recent

life,

hard workers, nine of 'em.

They don't make 'em like that any more--

all of 'em stay'n ahead of the game

keep'n up with the Joneses,

aint no potato famine go'n tie them down.

And the Franciscan here, like Francis himself,

so different from

the Irishman I loved-- rough around the edges he was--

when in those last days he'd alienate

his attendants at the nursing home with his

racist nuances that could never really despoil

his helpless heart of love.

He so needed the grace and mercy

of the One who went to the cross for him,

and who went for me too.

Now we're standing here with St. Francis

with knots in his waist-rope

and I wonder what the knots signify

but it doesn't matter compared to eternity

of which I'm reminded, as this gentle breeze with bird sing'n,

and it makes me think of the day his daughter my wife and me,

we went

to Assisi, over there in the old world

and now I'm think'n of this new pope and

how long its been since I was a Catholic.

But that's okay. It's all good. I'm saved by the blood of the Lamb

and he is too.

Here these ashes inside a brass box

ashes hidden from me, not like those

smeared upon the heads of Irish on how-many Ash Wednesdays

since the day of Calvary.

We'll be there with him, and with his bride

by 'n by, you and I.



Smoke

Conquest

Several thousand years ago, the people of Israel threw off a bondage of Egyptian slavery.Then, in a 40-year odyssey toward freedom and their own identity, they wandered through desert areas until the people occupied a new homeland where they would eventually set up a kingdom.

The establishment of that twelve-tribal homeland required some conquest of the native peoples. Jewish use of military might under the auspices of divine direction was, and is, a matter of perpetual dispute. Even today, the controversy intensifies, with each new generation, about whether or not the Jewish people are entitled to that narrow stretch of God's earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

Their perseverance to build a kingdom secured in righteousness and prosperity reached its golden age of fulfillment under David and Solomon. But it was a flash in the historical pan. After Solomon's death, their progress as an identifiable entity among the kingdoms of this world took on a downhill devolution, until finally the descendants of Israel were overrun by Assyrians, Babylonians, Seleucids, and the Romans.

Their collective push to establish a worldly kingdom actually reflect a rather typical pattern in the development of people groups and their respective nations. But one unique element of the Israel contribution to world culture is their legacy of prophetical writings, which have since achieved universal distribution through a myriad of spiritual apropriations, most notably the Bible. The core of that prophetic heritage is a call to righteousness, or living rightly: morality, the Ten Commandments, etc.

About a millenium and a half after the Jewish diaspora, from out of the Arabian desert came Mohammed. He also issued a powerful summons toward righteousness; he set forth five pillars of right-living upon which the practice of Islam, and its ordained proliferation, would be founded.
I am not a Muslim, so I cannot claim an authentic understanding of their traditions and intentions, but it seems to me that Mohammed pointed out to the world that Jewish and subsequent Christian efforts to establish a correct teaching about God--the One true God--had failed. A ubiquitous presence of idolotry and immorality among the people of Arabia and beyond were evidence that men/women still needed a new infusion of religion, and he, Mohammed, was going to provide it. So he wrote the Q'uran.

But understand this: Mohammend was a conqueror. After his treatise of corrective religious dogma had begun, he went out and conquered multitudes of people, just to teach the world a lesson or two about rigteousness. The conquest of infidels that Mohammed and his immediate successors imposed on surrounding lands was immense. Islam established, through unprecedented levels of conquest, a religious dominion far beyond anything that Moses, Joshua, David or Solomon ever dreamed of.

In the middle of all this religion-spewing history came a gentle man from Galilee. His input to the spiritual heritage of mankind was not an advocay of conquest over peoples and nations. Whereas Jewish religion had been founded upon conquest of the Promised Land, and Islamic religion would later require conquest of the Infidels, Jesus' only advocacy of conquest was a conquest of self.

He counseled people to "take up your cross and follow me." By allowing the strong-armed conquerers of this world to crucify him, he wielded the ace of eternal life, and demonstrated its authority to trump this world's conquestive trick-taking.

He set in motion a narrative of redemptive power that has reined in the depraved hearts of men and women for almost two thousand years now. Jesus' resurrection out-performed the legalistic limitations of Mosaic and Shariah Law. What better way to assure miraculous spreading of the news than rising from dead.

We don't need to conquer the world; we don't need to save it. That's already been done, in the individual hearts of all persons who are willing to receive that deliverance.

Go tell it on the mountain. Go tell the Israelis. Go tell the Islamists: Forget about your conquests. Instead, let God conquer yo' bad self so that you can rise to the challenge of eternal life, and therby overcome this goddamned world.

Glass half-Full