Category Archives: Poetry

A Verse for Children

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A series of exchanges on Via Lucis about the history of human cruelty led me to publish this children’s prayer for sanity. There are supposed to be line breaks, but they keep disappearing.

Dear God,

Please teach me how to pray.

We have more questions every day.

Our minds and fingers seem to find

and make a mess (we leave behind)

for other’s hands to fix and clean.

(Sometimes we’re even mean.)

Often we feel that we’re so small

that we don’t matter much at all.

And yet we know you made us right

and even called us “good” in spite

of all we do. So help us know,

dear God, how we should grow.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 27, 2012

Steve’s program “Keepin’ the Faith” can be heard anytime @ www.will.illinois.edu/keepinthefaith, including archive programs.

The Gardener’s Friend

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Steve must be working in his garden. This acrostic poem arrived this morning.

compost as mulch

Moisture is retained

Unwanted weeds are smothered

Leaves above are sustained

Cut trees are recycled

Hard hoeing is avoided

– Steve Shoemaker, May 28, 2012, Urbana, IL, host of “Keepin’ the Faith”, can be heard anytime @ www.will.illinois.edu/keepinthefaith, including archive programs.

Mary Magdalen

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Women were not allowed to testify

in many ancient courts…emotional,

too sympathetic, might believe a lie

told by a child…too kind, too spiritual,

too likely to forgive, to set one free

who owed a debt…

A woman might think love, a family,

a whole community more vital than revenge–

might choose to save a life, not kill.

The Gospel writers must have paused before

reporting that women were at the tomb the third day,

and were first to find it empty.

Mary Magdalen, who had a quite sordid reputation:

is prime witness to Christ’s resurrection?

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 6, 2012, host of “Keepin’ the Faith”, can be heard anytime @ www.will.illinois.edu/keepinthefaith, including archive programs, two with Gordon C. Stewart.

The Bus Tour

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See the Windy City!

Learn About America!

Two Hours by Bus–Hop On & Off!

The Tour Bus

….

The tour guide obsequiously spoke

into his mike to the polyglot group

aboard  the double-decker bus that took

them slowly winding through Chicago’s Loop

…

He thanked each one who put a buck into

the duct-taped peanut jar on their way out,

but few responded generously to/ his hints.

He had a tendency to pout.

…

He kept repeating “Stay in your seats when

the bus is moving!”  But the kids would run

the aisles and up and down the stairs.  He then

would yell, “Sit down!” –but did not spoil their fun:

…

He was forceful in his use of language,

but few foreign visitors spoke English…

– Steve Shoemaker, host of “Keepin’ the Faith.” Archive programs, including two with Gordon C. Stewart, can be heard anytimee @ www.will.illinois.edu/keepinthefaith.

Remind Me

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One:  God, remind me of my neighbor,

take away my pride.

…

Two:  God, remind me of my power,

don’t let me run and hide.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 26, 2012

How’s it going with your neighbor, pride, power/ powerlessness, running and hiding? Just a question. Steve’s poems sometimes get under my skin! 🙂 How about yours?

Swallows

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tree sallows

My brother tried to plant 2,000 trees

each spring.  Eventually there were 13

cut-your-own Christmas tree varieties.

…

While helping mow the grass, swallows were seen

around my noisy tractor darting, diving,

staying close wherever I would go.

…

I claimed the swallows felt the same strong love

I felt for trees, the sky, the clouds (although

in secret I thought they felt love for me.)

…

The tree farm had so many birds that experts

came out from the university.

I asked if the swallows had become pets?

…

The ornithologists said that the birds

were chasing bugs thrown by the mower’s blades…

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL May 22, 2012

Prepare our hands for touch

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This  prayer by Ernesto Barros Cardoso of Brazil is a nice follow-up to yesterday’s post about the need for embodied spirituality and the need to recover the senses, including the gift of touch.

God of Life Prepare our hands for a touch

A new and different touch

Prepare our hands for a touch

A touch of encounter

A touch of awakening

A touch of hope

A touch of feeling

Many are the worn-out gestures

Many are the movements frozen in time

Many are the useless excuses just to repeat attitudes…

Give us daring

To create new titles of community

New links of affection

Breaking away from old ways of relating,

Encouraging true, meaningful ways to move into closeness.

Pontius Pilate

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Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, May 19, 2012

“Pontius Pilate” arrived this morning by email after five days with Steve Shoemaker and other former seminary classmates. Each of us is increasingly aware of our mortality. We know that position is not the most important thing. We know that power is not ours. We’ve learned to listen to our spouses. Some of what we’ve done comes back to haunt us.  There are no “clean hands” among us. How we will be remembered is not for us to decide.  Following the man who was mocked as “King of the Jews” leads us down a different road…of thanks for all that has been and for all that we have yet to become.

Acrostic Verse: “Pontius Pilate”

Position is the most important thing,

Of course..   You say your reign is not in this

Nasty world, but here you are suffering…

Total power is mine.  If this grim choice

I make (and ignore my wife’s dream), nothing

Untoward will come back to haunt me!  I wash

Sand and dirt from my hands as I wash you…

 

Prefects are not required to be perfect.

If I send tax money to Rome, a few

Lies told against me soon will die.  A sect,

An uprising I stamp out now will do

The most to make my name remembered.  Fact:

Even if I call you “King,” you die a Jew…

A Song from the Cross?

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“Before 1400 A. D., all music sung in church was in 3/4 time–the Trinity, you know…” –  OLLI class on Madrigals.

“A Song from the Cross?” – Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 22, 2012

On the cross, Jesus sang (maybe) the first words from the XXII Psalm,

(most Psalms were sung by the Jews), “My God, my God, Why have you forsaken me?”

The words showed his humanity:

doubt, fear, loneliness.  That he (perhaps) sang, showed divinity.

These words being in the Bible at all are one more reason we can trust

the Bible to tell us what happened:  if this was made up, it would

have been Psalm XXIII put in his mouth, “The Lord is my shepherd…”

If Jesus sang then, why does the Gospel writer not tell us he did?

I propose because everybody knew then that most Psalms were sung.

And music surrounded Jesus:  angel choirs at his birth, and the

disciples singing a hymn with him at the last supper…

Before my mother died four months ago at (almost) 91, we sang together

old church songs for kids:  “Jesus Loves Me,” “Jesus Loves the Little

Children, All the Children of the World.”

It comforts me to think that Jesus might also have sung before he died…

The Trinity

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The Trinity

This piece of art hangs in my friend Steve’s living room on the Illinois prairie. I’ve always thought it was a little weird.  Actually, more than a little. Here’s Steve’s interpretation. I never would have guessed. He calls it

“The Trinity”

It is a triptych, three panels joined together.

There are three hands, three feet, three heads (see the profile– lower left).  White triangles are found everywhere.

The fan (pneuma) is, of course, the Holy Spirit.

The prayer- hearing ear of the unseeable God is just barely discernible in faint profile.

The painted wok, an ethnic face, a real human naturally is Jesus Christ. Christians remember him with food…  The brand of found fan is “Tripl-aire.”

Dave Ellis, a big city, secular painter, is the grandson and the son of a pastor.

Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, Illinois, is host of  “Keepin the Faith…” @ http://www.will.illinois.edu/keepinthefaith. This Sunday (May 20), his guest is Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Professor Garry Wills of Northwestern University on “Ambrose, Augustine and the Mystery of Baptism”