Moral Mormon, yes, at Church and home.
Is there, though, a hint that he objects
To the rules that women have the same
Trouble with the Priesthood that kept blacks
….
Restricted out of the Church for years?
Or that Morman kindness to the poor
Might be a good model for the U. S.
Nation? Can we even up the score?
Everybody knows he’s handsome, smart,
Yes, and rich–but does he have a heart?
– An acrostic verse received this morning from Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL.
The Industrial Complex that
doesn’t even need the Military
Corporations have a soul
the Supreme Court decreed.
So it’s better, on the whole,
that they are built on greed,
for the money trickles down
to all of us that way–
CEOs may own the town,
but I still get some pay.
Bailouts go to the big guys,
too big to fail are they.
I have had to lose my house,
Too small to count am I…
I pay my taxes, glad to help!
They hire their big law firms:
here a shelter, there a fudge,
if needed, buy a judge!
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Oct. 23, 2012
I’m exhausted…spiritually exhaused. They’re exhausting me…all the emails…and the voice mails telling me that if I don’t give one more dime one more time…my candidate is going to lose…and the world will come to an end…and it’s going to be… my fault.
Anyone else feeling that way?
I’m also torn up inside. I’m trying to be civil…trying to understand why this election is even close…and trying not to be haughty and naughty.
I’m missing my afternoon nap. I love my afternoon nap with Maggie and Sebastian, my buddies here at home. They still sleep like logs…the way I used to…before the Presidential debates and emails that clog my inbox and the phone calls from chummy best friends I’ve never met who want just one more donation of “just $5” so so-and-so knows s/he can count on me.
It’s an illusion. Anyone else feeling that way?
Meantwhile…between the emails and the phone calls…I visit the dying…in hospice care…who live on the edge of existence itself…who sip comfort from the deeper wells. My spirit is strangely quieted. Strangely calmed. We sit in silence. I read a psalm or two. We…the dying…and I are refreshed. Ready for a nap.
I go home and stumble upon a prayer by Wendell Berry “To the Holy Spirit”:
O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,
By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.”
Wendell Berry, Collected Poems, North Point Press, 1964.
A big bus moves
Like a hippopotamus.
It starts quite slowly
For it weighs so very much.
It carries many people
Who are very glad to ride
Along the busy highway,
Safely tucked inside.
…
Special Warning:
Never ride
Inside
A hippopotabus!
…
Extra Question:
Busses are so big and heavy,
Who could ever
Catch a bus?!
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL
(Published some time in the early 1970s in “Award-Winning Poems” by the North Carolina Poetry Society. Since, set to music and widely known by my children and grand children. Ask any of us and we’ll sing it for you…)
Kind of makes you want to smile, huh!
The bus
Looking for advice on how to stay together? A wise old owl speaks in verse this morning:
It takes two, of course, since either one
is free to leave at any time.
But if both are strong and firm to come
and work together, you may find
problems can be solved. Sit side-by-side
and face the issue–not your mate.
Listen, learn, respect, rephrase, repeat
before you even start to speak.
If the conflict is not solved, you still
have both shown that you have the will,
faith, and hope to stay together. Love
will not come floating from above:
love is built by kindnesses and care–
hard work can save you from despair.
– Steve Shoemaker, host of Keepin’ the Faith with Steve Shoemaker on WILL, Urbana, Illinois, celebrating 47 years of marriage to Nadja.
H2O – a Verse published an hour ago was missing a important LINE:
The missing line is printed below in bold. Apologies to Steve. My bad!
1% of water
on the earth we can drink
(all the rest is salty.)
Since our bodies, we think,
are more than half water,
then thinking is faulty
that will waste and pollute.
1% of water
on the earth we can drink
(all the rest is salty.)
Since our bodies, we think,
are more than half water,
then thinking is faulty
that will waste and pollute.
…
U.S. Senator Paul Simon, b.1928, d.2003
Senator Simon said
the crops need to be fed
that life-giving liquid.
Can we be resolute,
look into the future,
change wasteful behavior?
…
Will the glaciers all melt
and the deserts expand?
Will there always be drought?
Will our rivers run dry?
Cumulus clouds
Will there never be snow?
And will anything grow
with no clouds in the sky?
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL Sept. 26, 2012
Exercise Your Franchise
….
Voting is our duty,
One person-one vote.
Together we matter,
Each voter take note!
– Steve Shoemaker, acrostic verse written in early morning hours, Sept. 25, 2012.
It’s all about citizenship. Trevor Potter said it last week on Bill Moyers & Company (PBS). He had said it earlier in interviews with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report.
Go back and click his name to see Mr. Potter’s full professional biography on the Bill Moyers and Company website. Here’s the beginning of his bio and why the Moyers interview with Mr. Potter is important to us.
A former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Trevor Potter has been fighting for campaign finance reform through the Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit organization he founded to track and pursue legal cases related to campaign finance, political communication and government ethics at the federal, state and local level.
Mr. Potter is a Republican who believes that the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision threatens democracy itself. In the interview with Bill Moyers, he states as clearly that a democratic republic’s integrity depends on the nation’s voters seeing themselves as citizens. For Potter, citizenship – which means putting the larger good above one’s own narrow self-interest – is seriously at risk. Campaign financial reform is not the whole answer, but it is essential to democracy itself.
Click on Bill Moyers & Company to watch the conversation in part or in whole.
When only six, our son , Dan, was in school
and heard read there “The Ugly Duckling” tale.
The teacher asked, when putting the book down,
“How did the duckling learn he was a swan?”
Dan waved his hand and shouted his answer,
“He saw his erection in the water!”
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL. Sept. 22, 2012
The Ugly Duckling
Join with Plato Oct. 23: “Poetry is closer to vital truth than history” … or a political campaign.
An evening with Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen
MN Poet Laureat Joyce Sutphen
Joyce Sutphen’s first collection of poems, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize; Coming Back to the Body was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and Naming the Stars won a Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. In 2005, Red Dragonfly Press published Fourteen Sonnets in a letterpress edition. She is one of the co-editors of To Sing Along the Way, an award-winning anthology of Minnesota women poets. She is also a Renaissance scholar and has published essays on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. She grew up on a farm in Stearns County, Minnesota, and she teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Her latest collection, First Words, is a “memoir in poems,” and was published in 2010. She is the second Minnesota Poet Laureate, succeeding Robert Bly. Joyce will read and discuss her own poetry and works of other poets:
“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history” – Plato. Take a break from the campaign season to look through the eyes of a poet.
Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012 7:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church, 145 Engler Blvd., Chaska, MN 55318.
*First Tuesday Dialogues: examining critical public issues locally and globally” is a community program for the common good, re-creating the public square in the southwest Twin Cities metro area.
www.shepherdofthehillchurch.com
“A place for the Mind and Heart”
Views from the Edge 