eight adults were at the party
all were sharing air and stories
three were couples two were singles
married folks heard few surprises
tales were old though some were funny
one would listen as their partner
heard a second use a keyword
and would know the family legend
for the thousandth time told retold
the same pauses the same laughter
the same pride that in our family
there was such an odd character
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, December 7, 2013
This morning’s Washington Post ran the story “Think tank’s criticism of Elizabeth Warren’s populist policies leads to Democratic feud”. Click HERE to read the story.
The story runs the day after the death of one of the world’s great leaders who turned his vision into reality in South Africa: Nelson Mandela. It was reading the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and biographies of Gandhi that Mandela became the voice that changed Apartheid.
Reading the online “comments” on today’s Washington Post article about Senator Warren led me to leave my own comment, as follows.
Elizabeth Warren rankles the feathers of all who have yet to see the insidious assault of crony capitalism on the integrity of a democratic Republic. Right, left, and center thinking people in this country recognize we have a VERY serious systemic problem that required redress. Think tanks, like political parties themselves, belong to the people who pay their bills. Senator Warren does not work for a think tank, and does not work for the Democratic Party. She represents the people with conscience, clarity, and boldness that cut to the quick. That’s to be applauded. Dismissing her as an unrealistic idealist is also to dismiss Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and, particularly apt for today, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu who saw something better for their societies.
Chime in with your views.
“Cashing in on public service by lobbying for unethical corporations is offensive to the American people….” Click HERE to read the petition to stop a former U.S. Senator from turning her Washington, D.C. public service into private insider influence on behalf of the likes of Monsanto.
It’s called “Crony capitalism.”
Cutting the umbilical cord that keeps money flowing from the public treasury to private sector corporations whose lobbying resources are unmatched by the voting public is an act of patriotism on behalf of the integrity of a democratic Republic. A nation governed by Crony Capitalism is not a country “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Consider signing the petition and passing it along to your friends. Thanks!
Nelson Mandela
A Light
In the
Dark night
His light
Does not
Dim.
– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 5, 2013
…L
…I
…G
…H
…T
For ten
Hours
Power
Was off
With the
Storm.
After
Sunset
We lit a
Candle
In each
Room.
The fire
From the
Grate
Kept
Us all
Warm:
We each
Prayed
No one
Else
Came to
Harm…
– Steve Shoemaker, Dec. 4, 2013
Compare the spirit of Steve’s poem with that of the survivalist at last February’s public dialogue on guns who challenged the audience to think hard about the time when the little girl from next door comes to your home because you’ve stockpiled food and her family hasn’t prepared for the catastrophe. He was making the argument against gun control. “Ufdah!” as we say here in Minnesota. There are many rooms, but we all live in the ONE house. “In my Father’s house are many rooms.”
Light a candle and say a prayer.
Fear.
“There is no passion so contagious as that of fear,” wrote Michel de Montaigne.
During the five minute drive to Auburn Manor in downtown Chaska Monday morning, I turn on the radio to hear what they’re saying about the Vikings’ overtime victory over the Bears.
I turn to the ESPN sports channel. But it’s not about sports. It’s Glenn Beck advising listeners to buy food insurance. On the heels of the call to buy food insurance in preparation for catastrophe comes the advice on how to buy your first gun.
Passion. Contagion. Fear. They’re everywhere. Not just Glenn Beck and the far right, but on the left, in the middle, and among the apathetic and the cynical. Fear does not have one opinion. It is a contagious passion that has a thousand different voices. While the foundations of the familiar shake, we are infected by a pandemic of fear.
Fear does terrible things to a person and to a society. It is for this reason that the New Testament Gospels see fear as the root source of ill-will, self-absorption, greed, and war. The “Fear not” uttered by the heavenly messengers in Luke’s birth narrative is repeated in the middle and at the end of the Christ story. “Fear not, little flock.” “Fear not, for I am with you.” It is both invitation and command: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear…”.
We are always prone to fall back into fear. We fear because we are mortals. We die and we know it. We seek to secure ourselves against the threats, overt or covert, that cast death’s dark shadow over us.
In such times the psalmist comes to mind. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” I will buy no food insurance. I will buy no gun. To do so is to run straight into the arms of death as a living power that robs us of life’s goodness and meaning.
“Man’s self-absorption is the movement of our flight from death,” writes Sebastian Moore OSB. “This is what is meant by the scripture’s description of man as ‘under the shadow of death’. It does not mean ‘man knowing he will die’ but ‘what man does and becomes under this knowledge.’. It is not to our mortality, our animality, that scripture offers a remedy. It is to the death that we become in our self-absorption. It is to what we allow death to become in us by fleeing from it in the hopeless pride of man.” (The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger, Paulist Press, 1977)
I turn off the radio. I dial back the passion. I interrupt the contagion of fear by repeating an old psalm, and drive over to the community food pantry to volunteer.
Pyrenees-Saint
Bernard and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
Most large dogs ignore Barclay’s constant pawing for attention, but not this dog. Aside from their size, Sophie and Barclay could be mother and son. The fur is the identical. Its texture is the same: soft and fluffy. Slightly wavy. Beautiful to the touch. The coloring is identical: patches of auburn painted on new fallen fluffy snow white.
Watching Barclay and Sophie following each other around the crowded room on Thanksgiving after the huge meal at the retirement center lightens the air in the room and makes me thankful for these amazing creatures who we presume know nothing about conscious acts of thanksgiving, but who demonstrate the simplicity of joy and relationship that too often escapes families of the species that doggedly presumes its superiority to the canines.
We are thankful for the momentary intrusion into the relationships we take for granted. Joyful for the shared DNA and the union of two dogs who couldn’t be more different or more alike, an attraction of opposites whose fur and color mysteriously share the same DNA. Caught up in the ecstatic union of self-forgetful play that is everyone’s desire.
Footnote on the photograph:
The photograph was published by The Ipswich Star with the caption “King Charles Cavalier Spaniel Fred meets St Bernard Chopin at the Landguard Dog’s Day on Sunday, 19 May” with the following description by the photographer.
“I have to say I love this photo. I stopped to take a photo of St Bernard Chopin whose owners where feeding him his own ice cream at the Landguard Dog Day when he flopped down and Fred, a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, a fraction of Chopin’s size came right up to his face sniffing away.
“Their colouring was so close it was perfect.”
tree house pulley
We finally just tied a rope
to the pulley’s long steel hook
that hurt our young and weary hands.
We fell to hell, but screamed with hope
– Steve Shoemaker, November 30, 2013
“The Soul-Size Kingdom” was preached after an emotionally draining week watching one of Shepherd of the Hill’s members take a turn for the worse in the memory care unit here in downtown Chaska, MN. Toward the end of the week I stumbled upon a sermon by Robert Hamerton Kelly, New Testament scholar and gentle soul, the former Dean of Chapel at Stanford University. His sermon spoke so meaningfully to me that I delivered Roberts’ entire sermon six years to the day after he had preached it on Christ the King Sunday. Robert died in July of 2013. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” RIP
Poem by Sebastian Moore OSB, Downside Abbey, England
Dom Sebastian Moore OSB, a Benedictine Monk at Downside Abbey, England, was featured yesterday on Views from the Edge. The poem in the form it appears here was featured in an Archbishop’s e-newsletter. In his later years Sebastian Moore has come to express himself increasingly in poetry. This one is from his book The Contagion of Jesus: Doing Theology as if It Mattered, Orbis Books, 2007.
Views from the Edge 