“Christ Climbed Down”

Christ Climbed Down

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody’s imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings

—Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
in A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems

Thanks to George Amoss, Jr., on his blog, The Postmodern Quaker, for reminding me about this poem.

Blessèd Be,
Michael Bright Crow

Hebrews 12:7-13

I have posted “Endure trials for the sake of discipline” – Hebrews 12: 7-13 on the Bad Quaker Bible Blog.

Blessèd Be.

Jeremiah 31:33-34

I have added my first contribution to the Bad Quaker Bible Blog.

Blessèd Be.

Waiting worship

Waiting worship

alpha and omega
are not
yet completion

because
there is a
huge
gap
in the middle.

the life which spills
from the wound
does not satisfy
but increases
our hunger.

therefore
we are not ready
to eat
at that table.

instead
we want to
dance.

dancing hungry
is
sometimes
better than
eating
another man’s
bread.

if we
sat in the trees
and waited
perhaps
manna would fall.

even so
it would taste
stale
and dissolve into
rust
on our tongues.

so
we go on
dancing.

not joining
the table

even though
we
dearly love
the
host.

A sweet metaphor…and one not so sweet

Two simple metaphors to enrich the meta-conversation about faith and practice across the boundaries of religious language.

In the first, Hystery on Plainly Pagan writes about why she “resists theism”:

For me, what some might call “God” is that which is both intimately real and even commonplace and wholly Other and Ineffable. If I use the word “God”, people think I mean what I do not mean.

The butterfly is pinned and people think I mean wings and legs and antennae when what I meant was flutter and delight and tenderness.

The essence of the butterfly cannot be pinned. The Essence of the Divine also cannot be described. To me, this is the real meaning of idolatry, to settle one’s faith in any given word or concept.

In the second, Siegfried Goodfellow crafts a tale called “Trickster and the Tree” on Heathen Ranter. Here is a piece of that tale:

So Trickster was out and about walking through the world of people as he often did, and he came upon a group of people in a meadow, and he went up to one person and he said, “Would you like to know what kind of tree the world hangs in?” And the man naturally curious wanted to know, and Trickster told him, “It is an ash tree in which the world hangs”. The man was interested, and Trickster then went on to the next man and asked, “Do you know what kind of tree the world hangs in?”. The man asked, “What kind of tree is that?” And Trickster said, “It is the yew tree,” and then went on his way and found a third man, and said, “Do you know what kind of tree the world hangs in?”, and the man asked, “What?”, and Trickster said, “It is a giant ficus tree.”

Then Trickster just laid down on his side in the sun beneath the lazy shady tree and watched the events unfold…

Be sure to read both blog posts in their entirety. They have much to say.

And so it is.

Blessèd be,
Michael