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Barabbas
Release of Barabbas - artwork by Wenceslas Coehergher
Another acrostic poem by Steve Shoemaker, April 16, 2012, a reflection from the standpoint of Jesus Barabbas, the man released by Pilate. He is variously described as “among the rebels,” “a notorious prisoner, ” and a bandit/terrorist. Jesus of Nazareth is crucified. Jesus Barabbas is set free.
BARABBAS
Because my father was a Rabbi, when
Assassinations became part of our
Rebellion against Rome, my friends were then
Amazed that I would kill. But victory
Belongs to us: power yields only to power.
Being arrested, jailed, soon a martyr,
All will help the cause! Peaceful ways never
Save a soul. Blood alone will set us free…
The desire for the society that is beyond up-and-down, oppressing-oppressed, haves-and-have-nots takes many forms. Steve’s “Barabbas” is the son of a peaceful rabbi, a man of peace. Unlike his rabbi father, Barabbas knows that “Peaceful ways never save a soul. Blood alone will set us free.”
What do you think?
Ist Barabbas right that “Power only yields to power!”
Is violence – the taking of blood – necessary “to the cause”?
There are two Jesus figures in the story. One takes life; the other gives it.
How do you understand Steve’s last line?
Alice in Wonderland – Did I Miss Something?
Official portrait from the George W. Bush Presidential Library
Sometime my stuff gets published. Other times it doesn’t. This one was submitted to several major outlets eight months before the 2004 Presidential election that re-elected George W Bush. It never saw the light of day.
I wrote this following a Presidential Bush news conference. I was disturbed by the President. I was equally disturbed by the press. Here’s the piece as originally submitted…and rejected. This morning, all these years later, the editor of “Views from the Edge” accepted the submission!
Did I miss something? I watched the President’s news conference Tuesday night and scratched my head over the media coverage that followed it. Time after time when asked to address reasons for concern about his truth-telling, the President of the United States sidestepped the question like a running back seeking to avoid the hit of a middle linebacker.
Question: “What about the pre-Iraq war claim that we needed to invade Iraq because we knew beyond any shadow of doubt that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that we knew where they were?”
Sidestep: Saddam Hussein was an evil man. He was a threat and the people of Iraq and the world are safer because a brutal dictator is gone.
This question and response typified virtually every exchange between the questioner and the President. It was as though one were speaking English and the other Greek, as though the one responding were deaf, or as though the President believed that if he just repeated his handler’s lines again, the American people would follow him. Does the President believe that we’re willing to trust authority, exchanging truth for falsehood, for the sake of security?
If ever there were grounds for impeachment, surely it is this President’s use of disinformation to mislead Congress and the American people into a war and occupation that have alienated traditional allies and fanned the fires of hatred of the U.S. across the Arab and Muslim worlds. In the name of a “war on terror” this President continually makes up reality to suit his mission: the export of Western democracy everywhere in the world, supposing that of course everyone would want what we have.
Did I miss something? At virtually every turn of the press conference the President repeated answers to questions that were not being asked and refused to answer the question that was being asked. Nowhere in the mainstream press or television media have I seen this most obvious disconnect addressed head on. They all back off, like bit players in a king’s court.
In a recent interview with Bill Moyers, Kevin Phillips, the conservative Republican critic of the Bush Presidency, author of The Bush Dynasty, spoke the truth about this President’s deception and the long-lasting devastating consequences of his policies. Asked about John Kerry’s presidential candidacy, Mr. Phillips answered that it remained to be seen whether Kerry had enough fire in his belly to “go for the jugular.”
What will it take for us, the American people, to recognize that this President has taken us into an Alice-in-Wonderland world where up is down and earth is sky and falsehood is truth? What will it take before all of us insist that the Mad Hatter not define our reality? Have we become so cynical about our democratically elected officials that we expect evasion from our questions?
Did I miss something? Did not this President once again refuse to take any responsibility for peddling disinformation that has placed 135,000 American soldiers directly in “harm’s way” while putting all of us at home in the sights of growing numbers of people around the world who see the truth and hate us?
Impeachment will not happen, of course, because no one has the stomach for another partisan wrestling match, and because a Presidential election is only eight months away. As the recent DFL ad here in Minnesota regarding sexual offenders reminds us, neither party is immune to demagoguery. But in the name of sanity, this President must be turned out of office and our political discussions must shift boldly to insist unfailingly that real questions receive real answers rather than shifty side-step speeches that only take us further down the rabbit hole of national illusion and implosion.
Stone (Dennis Aubrey)
Stone (Dennis Aubrey) re-posted from Via Lucis: Photography of Religious Architecture (also on Views from the Edge blogroll).
Pontius Pilate
Ecce homo - "Here is the man"
“PONTIUS PILATE” – (acrostic) – Steve Shoemaker – April 14, 2012
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 or 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….
If you like Steve’s poem, you might also be interested in “You don’t get to have a non-Jewish Jesus” (CLICK HERE), posted earlier on Views from the Edge on Christian anti-Semitism.
Art work Ciseri, Antonio, 1821-1891. Ecce Homo – “Here is the Man”, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55115 [retrieved April 14, 2012].
A Lightness of Being
Dew Drops on a Spider’s Web – Kay Stewart Photography
This spider’s web, covered with early morning dew – a natural miracle nearly invisible to the naked eye – was in the corner of a flower box on our deck. Kay, whose camera is always nosing around for the things we do not see, took this photograph. The poem was inspired by the smallness I felt – the beauty of smallness – seen in the magnificence if a spider’s web in morning light and in e. e. cummings’ poem “who are you, little i”.
“A Lightness of Being” – Gordon C. Stewart
who are you, little i, sitting above
the world so high (e. e. cummins)
on the high perch home
hammers and saws have made
on land filled and leveled by
bulldozers and gas-guzzling graders?
then i see it in the morning sun
the all-but-imperceptible home
spun from inside a spider self,
wet with drops strung like beads
so small, so delicate, so light
they leave the spider’s home intact,
a natural grace respecting strength
and weakness – a lightness of being
that does not crush or break
this hidden part – this most amazing part –
of a larger Web of life we barely see
Say “Yes!”
Here’s an uplift for your day.
It comes fresh from a blogger named David from New Zealand. I came across “Say ‘Yes!'” this morning following up on a comment left yesterday in response to Steve Shoemaker’s poem “Denial” on Views from the Edge. I’m glad I did.
Click Say “Yes!” and embrace your life.
What do you think? Are you having a Yes, No, or Maybe kind of day? Remember, it’s the only one you have and no one else gets to live it. Thanks for dropping by.
Rep. Allen West: Joseph McCarthy Reincarnated?
Do you believe in reincarnation?
- Rep. Allen West
I didn’t until I read this story of FL Rep. Allen West (22nd District, FL), pictured here, acting like Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose search for closet Communists dominated the era of American politics now remembered for “McCarthyism”. Click Rep. Allen West says 81 House Members are Communists” – ABC News to read the story and see the video.
Click Rep. Keith Ellison (5th District, MN) for information on the Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I know Keith, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress. When Keith left the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, I succeeded him as its Executive Director. Keith is always breaking new ground, but becoming the first Muslim member of Congress who is also a hidden member of the Communist Party isn’t part of his ground-breaking. It’s a lie. He is profoundly religious. If being one’s brother’s or sister’s keeper, caring for the poor, makes him a Communist, as Senator Joe McCarthy, once thought…well..McCarthy’s and West’s claims say more about them than about those they fear and love to hate.
U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy
Rep. West’s allegation that 81 members of the U.S. Congress are Communists, leads me to re-post this social commentary previously published by Minnesota Public Radio in September ’09, a year after the crash on Wall Street.
SORROW FLOATS
Gordon C. Stewart, 9.10 09
“Sorrow floats.” Perhaps the line from a John Irving novel in which “Sorrow,” the stuffed family dog preserved by a taxidermist, floats to the surface of the lake after a plane crash, helps explain what is happening in America.
Erin McClam’s “5 weeks on the brink: Reliving meltdown of ’08,” (September 5, 2009) recounts the series of chilling events that almost led to a national crash just one year ago.
Something dear to the American family died last year. Most of us lived in the illusion of economic and financial health until the day it was rushed to the emergency room for a government rescue.
Since then our memories of the pre-September ‘08 world have taken the turn that families often take at funerals where the eulogies bear little resemblance to the reality of the deceased. We’re quarreling over what was real and what is mythical re-construction.
Following the plane wreck that takes the lives of the Berry family parents in The Hotel New Hampshire, the stuffed family pet bobs to the surface of the lake, floating among the wreckage. Sorrow floats. So does the thing we lost in September-October 2008.
What died was the assumption that an unregulated free market system was the best way to organize an economy, the natural partner of democracy. The market almost crashed. It didn’t because the government intervened before a reoccurrence of the crash of 1929. Sometime between mid-September and October 7, when Congress passed its bill to stabilize the financial markets, the myth of the virtue of deregulated capitalism died. It was stuffed by the taxidermy of government intervention, but it still floats.
When a conviction or a myth dies, it doesn’t go away. It continues to bob to the surface. Sometimes, as in the case of the Berry family, Sorrow is much easier to love after it is dead. Sorrow – obese, lethargic, and persistently flatulent in its old age – no longer waddles through the dining room to foul the air. The real life Sorrow gives way to the stuffed Sorrow, a thing of nostalgia that lives on…even after it’s dead, and long after the plane has crashed.
Sorrow floats every time fear sounds the alarm of “socialism.” Sorrow floats every time we shout each other down in town hall meetings. Sorrow floats every time nostalgia forgets that it was only by government intervention that Sorrow is still around. The stuffed Sorrow floats every time we forget the greedy obesity that led to the deaths of Lehmann Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns, not to mention insurance giant AIG and all the banks that had taken the plunge into a market of deregulated derivatives and mortgages that led to the epidemic of home foreclosures, bankruptcies, pension fund disappearances, and job losses. Sorrow floats a year after the crash when the mind forgets and nostalgically remembers a system we thought was working in our interest.
Old convictions die hard. The economic forces that grew fat over the years when government was viewed as the people’s enemy will stoke the fires of anxiety and anger, taking advantage of the Sorrow that still floats to remind us of something that we love more in retrospect than we did when the day it died of its own obesity.
DENIAL
Peter's Denial by Carl Heinrich Bloch
Any faith worth its salt recognizes our capacity for denial, betrayal, and flight, as well as our capacity for truth, love, and courage. Steve Shoemaker’s poem about the Apostle Peter, “the Rock” who crumbled, takes us into the heart of the matter. It;s a reflection on Peter denying that he knew Jesus (represented by Carl Bloch’s painting where he looks away from the woman who claims he knows him) and the post-resurrection appearance where the resurrected Christ offers forgiveness.
“DENIAL” – Steve Shoemaker, 2012
The future Bishop began badly. He
was “rude, crude and lewd,” as they say.
His fist would shake, would hit,
his mouth could often be a sneer, or leer…
but Jesus chose him first.
The fisherman was big and brash, yes,
bold as well at times. But after the arrest
a servant girl confronted him and
told those listening that Peter was with Christ.
He swore and then denied it, then again
and still again–she would not stop.
The cry then came of rooster telling of the dawn,
and he wept because he had told a lie.
But Peter felt forgiveness full and deep
when Jesus three times told him,
“Feed my sheep.”
Peter “the Rock” was no rock. Nor are we. He was sinking sand. So are we.
Like “the future Bishop,” we slip badly and yet we are raised up. Betrayal, denial, flight are part of every human story. But grace… even more….so much more, abounds! And to the likes of Peter and of us, there comes to our three-fold denial the Voice of forgiveness with a gentle but bold command: “Re-gain your courage. Live in love!”
It Happened in MIAMI
Today’s news reports three high-profile personnel moves.
- Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino was fired for “the decision to mislead the public.”
- Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn resigned. “Certain issues were brought to the [Best Buy] board’s attention regarding Mr. Dunn’s personal conduct…and an audit committee investigation was initiated.”
- Miami Marlins (that’s a baseball team) Manager Ozzie Guillen was suspended five games. This is the one that’s interesting.
Why was Ozzie suspended five games?
Well…he said something. And now, he says, “I’m on my knees to apologize.” He was speaking at a news conference at the Marlin’s new baseball stadium that just opened in the Cuban-American neighborhood of Miami.
So…what did he say? Did he utter a string of profanity? Did he assault an umpire? Did he steal money? Was he having an affair with one of his ball-players? Was he insubordinate to the front office? Well…sort of the latter, maybe, in a round about sort of way.
He said something positive about the man Miami Cuban-Americans love to hate. He had outraged the very people the Miami Marlins owners are hoping will fill the seats of the new stadium.
“I love Fidel Castro. [OOPS!] I respect Fidel Castro [OOPS again!!!], you know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but [he] is still here.” – interview with Time magazine.
Ozzie is Venezuelan. Maybe he doesn’t remember that it was Miami Cuban ex-patriots who led the United States into the Bay of Pigs disaster. They tried to kill him. Instead they brought the world to the edge of nuclear holocaust. You don’t get to say that, Ozzie. Your fan base loves to hate Fidel. They hate Fidel more than they love the Miami Marlins, and more than they love the Marlins’ new Spanish-speaking Manager.
Ozzie has a history of sticking his foot in his mouth. That comes with the territory when you hire Ozzie. Now he’s back-tracking, claiming the statement came out wrong because he wasn’t speaking in Spanish. It came out wrong in English. Time magazine stands by its story.
The Associated Press reports this morning that “Guillen said the uproar he created has left him sad, embarrassed and feeling stupid. He said he accepted the team’s punishment. ‘When you’re a sportsman, you shouldn’t be involved in politics,’ he said. ‘I’m going to be a Miami guy for the rest of my life. I want to walk in the street with my head up and feel not this bad, the way I feel now.'”
Bobby Petrino and Brian Dunn have lost their jobs. Ozzie still has his… in Miami.
Given the history of the intended fan base of the Miami Marlins, if I were Ozzie, I think I’d stand by my words and take the first flight home to Venezuela while I still had time before I became the surrogate for the man they love to hate and want to kill in Cuba.
Views from the Edge 