Live to be free

After I Peter 2: 13-17

We are to live

as people who

are free, not to do

all we want or

are inclined to do,

but free to serve,

free to serve others,

free to serve God.

We live free

to honor all.

We live free

to love our brothers.

We live free

to fear God.

We live free

to honor

the authority

placed over us.

 

Photograph by Mohamed Nohassi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Joseph and Bros Reunion, Genesis 43 – Doug Spurling.

 

An Elegy for Our Fireplace – Seth Lewis

In all things

After Galatians 6:1-10 

In all things, be

gentle, gentle

in reproof and

confrontation,

gentle in bearing

one another’s

burdens, gentle

in bearing one’s

own load. Be

gentle in sharing,

be gentle in sowing

and reaping, and

sow and reap not

from self but from

spirit. Be gentle

in doing good. Do 

not grow weary and

do good to all,

especially those,

like you, called

to be gentle.

 

Photograph by Margot Pandone via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

With Blistered Hands and Aching Backs – Tim Challies.

 

Christ Walking on the Water – R.R. Rodgers at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

2 Wrong (And 1 Right) Responses When Confronted with the Shortness of Life – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

 

Iconic Mont Saint-Michel Abbey Celebrates 1,000 Years – National Catholic Register.

Servant of God Stanislawa Leszczynska: The Midwife of Auschwitz Who Delivered Thousands of Babies and Saved Thousands of Lives – Meg HunterKilmer at Church Life Journal. 

 

The End – poem by Seth Lewis. 

A pair of sonnets for John the Baptist -- Malcolm Guite.

A conscious choice

After Galatians 5:16-25 

We make a conscious 

choice, whether to walk

the path of the flesh or

the path of the spirit.

We have no excuse;

we choose one or

the other, knowing 

full well that one path

leads to destruction

while the other leads

to life. No one decides

for you, for me, for us. 

We decide. We choose.

We die, or

we live. 

Some Sunday Readings:

 

Piety, Technology, and Tradition – Jon Askonas at Mere Orthodoxy. 

 

I’m Not Fatherless Anymore – Samuel Sey at Slow to Write.

 

“The Test” and “Deathbed Request” – poems by Alan Steinle at Society of Classical Poets. 

Two walks

After Galatians 5:16-25

Two walks, starting

together but quickly

diverging, a sharp

separation, leading

in different directions,

stark, utterly unlike

each other, at war

with one another,

in fact. Discern

the paths by what

they produce.

 

One: immorality, impurity,

sensuality, idolatry,

sorcery, enmity, strife,

jealousy, fits of anger, 

rivalries, dissensions,

envy, drunkenness, orgies,

and more.

 

The other: love, joy,

peace, patience,

kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness,

self-control.

 

One is flesh.

The other is spirit.

Choosing the spirit

crucifies the flesh.

 

Photograph by Oliver Roos via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

The call

After Galatians 5:1-15

You are not called

to slavery; you are

called to freedom,

the shackles dropping

from your wrists and

ankles, the darkness

dispelled, the door

opened to the light.

Your call: the freedom

to serve one another,

to love one another.

That is the call you

heed, and that is

the call to which

you adhere. It is

the call to life. 

 

Photograph by John Salvino via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Sidetracked

After Galatians 5:1-15 

You were running the race,

and running well, feet 

in motion and eyes 

on the goal. The end,

the finish line, was

in sight. And yet

you stopped, attention

diverted to another

goal, another song,

seductive but false, 

a siren singing

to attract the ear and

betray the heart. Was

the song that compelling,

that attractive, even

when your heart knew

better?

 

Photograph by Milan Degraeve via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Once free

After Galatians 5:1-15 

Once free, once

unchained to discover

what life is intended

to be, why return

to the yoke of slavery?

Why return the chains

to your ankles and wrists?

Why embrace the overseer’s

lash?

 

To return to what

you’ve been freed from,

to fall down and again

worship what put you

in chains, severs you

from freedom and

its grace. It is not 

a chain that saved you.

 

Photograph by Rolandas S via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Taras Shevchenko: The Poet of Ukraine

You read the newspaper and watch the television and social media reports, and you wonder how a tragedy like the Russian invasion of Ukraine could happen. You learn of atrocities and possible war crimes, and you say, “This is the 21^stcentury?” Well, yes, it is. You might ask, “How does this happen?” In the case of Russia and Ukraine, the poet Taras Shevchenko might have an answer. 

Shevchencko (1814-1861) was born in a village near Kyiv in Ukraine. Given his later literary fame, it’s surprising he was born to a family of serfs. The region had been under the control of the kingdom of Poland, but various dismemberments of Poland had eventually led to control of Ukrainian territory by Russia and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Russia controlled the area where Shevchenko was born, but it was a relatively recent control.

To continue reading, please seems post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Manacles, chafed

After Galatians 4:4-7

The manacles, chafed

and chafing, dirtied and

stained his wrists, flakes

of metal coloring his skin

like rings, tightening. 

The manacles, reminding

him of his status, his bounds,

his binding, his place

without future. The manacles,

too, bind his ankles, the metal

tattooing its presence,

a sign that he was a prisoner,

a slave, born without prospect

of redemption.

Someone, a voice, called him

a son, the voice heard first

in his ears before his heart;

he was called son. Manacles

snapped open, the stains

washed off. And then he heard,

first in his ears before his heart,

the voice calling him

with a new name:

heir.

Photograph by Stephen Hickman via Unsplash. Used with permission.

How should we then live?

After Philippians 1:27-30

It’s clear: yes, we have freedom,

our spirits and souls unchained,

unshackled. But no: that doesn’t

mean anything goes. Instead,

we have a command: to live 

worthy of the good news,

because the “how” signals

good reports, indicates 

a standing firm together, shows

unity in striving side by side,

and no fear of opponents. How

we live tells opponents that

their destruction will come;

it’s no wonder they hate us,

and will hate us. Belief and

firmness of spirit is inevitably

accompanied by hatred, 

by the heaping of abuse, 

by suffering. This is not

your prosperity gospel.

Photograph by Aaron Blanco Tejedor via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The sounds of chains

After Romans 8:12-23

The chains leave stains

of dirt and rust upon the wrists

and ankles, and a soreness

of the weight carried, a weight

so heavy that it seems to have been

always there, a physical defect,

with its pain, discomfort, a binding

that chafes, has chafed.

In the distance we hear

the sounds of chains breaking,

cracking, the metal fracturing

open, until it reaches these wrists,

these ankles, and splits, dropping

aside. The stains of rust and dirt

remain until washed by the rain,

cooled by the wind rustling the trees,

the groaning displaced by a song.

Photograph by Joshua Hoehne via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Poets and Poems: Ilya Kaminsky and “Deaf Republic”

Deaf Republic, the new collection of poetry by Ilya Kaminsky, is striking on at least two counts, and possibly a third.

First, it is a story, a narrative “in two acts,” that uses the poetic form. The 59 poems are a collective whole, tightly connected to the point where it’s difficult to imagine any of them apart from their fellow poems. The poems work like a narrative thread, weaving together people and events into a coherent whole. The narrative’s two acts read almost like a play, and to emphasize that connection the work includes a

The second striking feature is what the story is about – a time of trouble in an occupied country, set in the town of Vasenka. The occupation might be from the political left or the political right; the orientation is not important. The occupying soldiers are present; the people are feeling a kind of suffocation. Freedom and citizens’ rights are no longer functioning words and ideas. A command is given; all the people obey, except for a child, a boy who is deaf.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Nick Laird and "Feel Free"

It’s like walking into a traditional small bookstore. You see the shelves and tables set out before you. You inhale the smell of paper, ink, and binding. The counter clerk knows the inventory and can make a recommendation within 90 seconds of beginning a conversation. You see an elderly man sitting in an overstuffed chair, adjusting his glasses as he reads.

You think to yourself, “I’ve come home.”

That’s the impression engendered from the very first poem in Feel Free, the newest collection by Irish poet Nick Laird. And that impression is an odd one, given that the first poem (entitled “Glitch”) begins with splitting one’s temple apart after a fall at home. Except like most poems, it’s not really about an accident but about escaping the circumstances we often find ourselves in, creating “the sense / that lasts for hours of being wanted somewhere else.”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

To sit in chains

After Philippians 1:9-11

To sit in chains and see

the freedom, to smell

the prison pouring into me

and know the liberty confirmed,

to feel the dirt of the jail

on my skin and in my mouth,

and know the love showered

on me, to see the place

I occupy in the heart,

is to know these chains

represent the blessing given,

the heart filled,

the mind embraced,

the soul protected.

Photograph by Kaley Dykstra via Unsplash. Used with permission.