New Poems, February 2014

Stupidity

It’s always a misstep,
That first move
Out of yourself,
Sparked by the desire
For enlightenment,
God’s favor,
Or peace of mind.
Later, you’ll be grateful
For the stupidity that
Set you off in the wrong direction,
For what else could have brought about
Your voluntary adventure
Out of stasis?
Call that stupidity faith.

God and Me

An article from the Guardian by Chris Arnade entitled The People Who Challenged My Atheism Most Were Drug Addicts and Prostitutes recently made the rounds of the social media world I inhabit. In it Mr. Arnade chronicles the abandonment of atheism that came about for him as a result of his contact with people of extreme social and economic disadvantage who were sincere believers in God, through the impression of honesty, wisdom, and compassion he got from them. In the process, he observed that atheism is related to class and economic background, and that atheists are found in greater numbers among people of education and privilege.  The article, which was posted widely, generated a lot more conversation than I would have imagined.

New Poetry October 2014

Untitled

Words fail,

Only if you let them:
Only if you ignore the Silence
From which they arise
And refuse to give them back to It.

Barriers Become Gates: Reflections on Interfaith Dialogue

I recently read Father John Garvey’s book Seeds of the Word: Orthodox Thinking about Other Religions,¹ which is, among other things, an admirable effort toward encouraging Orthodox Christians to gain insight into the religious traditions that inevitably surround us these days and toward discovering the proper way to regard them.  Father John recognizes our understanding of these other faiths to be limited by our inability to enter into them completely, yet, with an

Three New Poems

An Offering to My Enemies

Until I’m able

To understand
The boundary
Between us

A Brief History of Christianity

Those who manage to connect

With God don’t use the intellect.

It isn’t “it” (nor “he,” nor “she”),

Nor “is” (nor “was” nor “yet to be”).

The mind quite reasonably balks

When faced with this great paradox,

New Poetry, Summer 2013

People Might Get the Wrong Idea

To pray for you

May be nothing other than the impulse to hold you

In my arms and share what you’re going through,

To take the suffering away from you

And give you whatever part of me happens not to be sad or afraid.

This being the best I can do in face of the fact that
God doesn’t usually honor my requests to eradicate your suffering.