Every year I quote a poem written by a college friend, Steve Kopelic, some years back. Steve? You out there? Do you remember this epic? I found out this year that my oldest thought it was an American classic and was surprised that it did not come up on google. I am pretty sure it first appeared in print on the noteboard on my dormroom door, and maybe never since, until now. :) Without further ado:
Mr. Tom Turkey, your white meat's a winner. What say you come to our house for dinner? There's 'taters, and stuffing, and cranberries too. But most of all, Turkey, the main course is YOU.
For me one of the deep truths - the sparkling ornaments that I learn from during Advent seasons (the time of celebrating Christ coming to dwell with us) is that victory really does not come from the kind of might I think it does. I have been mulling over some of the lovely sides of that ornament. ~ ~ ~ I remember one of the first latin phrases I picked up in junior high, probably from a poem. Amor vincit omnia. Love conquers all. True of God's love. We are reminded of that love with the birth of Christ, and then again, so much at his death and resurrection. ~ ~ ~ Not long after that, I got the same idea about God's love often conquering us quietly and seemingly from a place of weakness, in the Edwin Markham poem Outwitted:
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
We drew a circle that shut God out. But He showed how large His love is by drawing a huge circle with Christ to take us back in. ~ ~ ~ And James 2:13 includes "Mercy triumphs over judgment." Not the usual cry of power.
~ ~ ~
Last week at a Christmas concert we heard this song, new to me. It moves a little fast, so the words are posted below.
This little Babe so few days old, is come to rifle Satan's fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake, though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak unarmed wise the gates of hell he will surprise.
With tears he fights and wins the field, his naked breast stands for a shield.
His battering shot are babish cries, his arrows looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns Cold and Need, and feeble Flesh his warrior's steed.
His camp is pitched in a stall, his bulwark but a broken wall;
The crib his trench, haystalks his stakes; of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus, as sure his foe to wound, the angels' trumps alarum sound.
My soul, with Christ join thou in fight; stick to the tents that he hath pight.
Within his crib is surest ward; this little Babe will be thy guard.
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy, then flit not from this heavenly Boy.
"foil thy foes with joy" - there is the reminder that my soul longs for ~ ~ ~
I think the coming of Christ's kingdom is a bit like things growing in spring, they come silently, just pushing right through the dead stuff. And somehow God even uses the dead stuff for life.
~ ~ ~
and there is e e cummings:
Spring is like a perhaps hand III Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
~ ~ ~
God is in the business of changing everything carefully, without breaking anything. Isaiah 42:3-4 ~ a bruised reed He will not break, and a faintly burning wick He will not quench; He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for His law.
the best schooldays are when I get to do something I love. The Bananalets and I are mid-poetry unit and today was e. e. cummings day. We didn't do this poem, but it fits my mood and the season:
a wind has blown the rain away by E.E. Cummings
a wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think i too have known autumn too long
(and what have you to say, wind wind wind—did you love somebody and have you the petal of somewhere in your heart pinched from dumb summer? O crazy daddy of death dance cruelly for us and start
the last leaf whirling in the final brain of air!)Let us as we have seen see doom’s integration………a wind has blown the rain
away and the leaves and the sky and the trees stand: the trees stand. The trees, suddenly wait against the moon’s face.
This morning in worship I started to notice tiny bits of white falling past me. Most odd. One came by every maybe 20 seconds or so, and then occasionally a group of three or four at a time. Tiny. Random. And white. I ran possibilities through my mind. Not snow. We were inside and the day warm and the building tight. Not dandruff, they were falling straight down from above. Was the guy behind me launching some sort of fine cracker crumbs aloft? Or was the sky falling, I wondered, feeling a bit like Chicken Little? I picked up a tiny crumb and put it on a sheet of note paper and wrote a note to Devastatingly Handsome and passed it down, "Some tiny crumbs keep falling down on me." He read it, motioned at the crumb, and gave me the "you are insane" look. And still they continued to fall. Mr Music told me there was a ladybug crawling on the ceiling. Apparently the painter used the same paint right across the acoustic ceiling tile and the metal support and the paint does not really adhere to the metal. So, if something as rough and tumble as a ladybug crawls across it, it flakes down on the congregants in tiny bits. Mystery solved. Good thing I am not a Scottish poet or I would be writing an ode: To A Ladybug. Because I am easily distracted like that in church (actually, at all times). (apologies for the formatting. Blogger and I are not getting along today. And it is not worth, it, anyhow, just a ramble...) O Jenny do not toss your head, O congregants, do not fear above And set your beauties all abroad! Nor gather plaster in your eyes!You little know what cursed speed You little know what crumbs of paint The bugger's making! The ladybugs drop down! Those winks and finger-ends, I dread, Those crumbs and tidbits, I dread, Are notice taking! And try not to notice! O would some Power the good Lord give us Oh would some Power the good Lord give us To see ourselves as others see us! To pay attention as the sky falls! It would from many a blunder free us, It would from many a dropping spare us, And foolish notion: And foolish notion: What airs in dress and gait would leave us, What airs in spots and six small legs, And even devotion! Spoil my attention!
Surely every fan of T S Eliot wonders what their own three names may be if they've read this poem:
The Naming of Cats
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn't just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there's the name that the family use daily, Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James, Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey - All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter, Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames: Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter - But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular, A name that's peculiar, and more dignified, Else how can he keep his tail perpendicular, Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum, Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat, Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum - Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over, And that is the name that you never will guess; The name that no human research can discover - But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
- T.S. Eliot (from "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats")
I think God also has a new name for each of His people - just as he renamed Sarai, Abram, Saul of Tarsus, and Simon Peter. I am so glad God knows my name: Isaiah 43:1 ~ But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel; "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine."
This call must be by a somehow bigger or deeper name than we use here for each other, in the John 10 passage (verse 3) we read that the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. There is a unique response to that call.
And just as when a married woman takes her husband's name as her own, somehow believers wear God's name, Jeremiah 15:16 ~ Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts.
Challenge to myself: delight in the sweetness of God's words, and in the ineffable effable effanineffable name by which He alone calls me.
