Called To Forgive

 I have seen the news this week,

and I have vengeance in my heart.

I would dearly love to wreak

havoc on those who tore apart 

the fabric of society 

with their vile and loathsome acts,

the parade of putrid cruelty,

but, my friend, these are the facts,

that those who perpetrated death

can be God's children, just like me.

They live from breath to breath to breath,

and though they are to blind to see

the evil that they choose to live,

Christ still calls me to forgive.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is PICK.

Forgiveness ain't what I would pick

for the monsters on our streets,

and it makes me kind of sick

that one only in forgiveness meets

the Christ that offers His salvation 

to even the worst of these.

I mean, really, my situation 

ain't that bad, so maybe please

let me be both judge and jury,

let revenge be mine, not Thine,

let me drop the jerks and bury

them somewhere in the sands of time.

Let me, Lord send them to hell...

"Fine, but you'll go there as well."

Sylvia says forgiveness is best served with ice cream.

Where The Wild Things Are (Tell His Story)

 I'm sort of too ill to put up a meaningful post today, but if anyone wants to know what life with a lot of dogs is like...the read-aloud of Where The Wild Things Are above pretty much tells the story. It's less than four minutes, but you'll want to pause often to savour the artwork.

And by all means, if you don't have a copy of Where The Wild Things Are

hie thyself off to Amazon posthaste.

Sylvia agrees.

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Nothing Personal

 Cancer's not a person,

never was, can never be,

but it's made a better version 

of the man I know as Me.

The petty needs all fall away,

ambition's cast aside,

and as I face my dying day

there is no-where to hide,

but in facing down the end

and looking past the veil of tears

I see the beauty 'round the bend

that folds away the fears

that came from avarice and sin,

and that now can never win.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is LEGACY.

If there's a legacy I leave 

to those I lived among,

let it be that I believe 

that Hope's a lot of fun.

Maybe it is odds against,

maybe folks say quit,

but I say, dude, don't fold your tent,

and just ride out the worst of it

because one day the sun will shine

from a clearer sky.

And you will know that dreadful time

was not your time to die,

so snap your fingers as self-goad

and boogie down the bricky road.

Sylvia things I'm a better man for sharing more ice cream.

It Sings! (Tell His Story)

 It has a voice!

The Flying V tenor ukulele actually sings (my hands are pretty stiff and awkward, but I'll learn).

It was fun to build, with a neck bought from Walmart, and the rest stuff I had lying around.

The picture was taken before the strings and tuning pegs were installed. The body is plywood, with blah grain, so I painted it. It's a gold undercoat, with misted blue and green.

I really enjoyed building it. Making an instrument that can produce music... that's

 special.

And Sylvia didn't even howl.

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Minneapolis, And The Normalization Of Hate

The Murder of the Innocents in Minneapolis wasn't about gun control or trans people.

It was about hate, and how our culture has normalized it.

Who hasn't laughed at an Internet troll? I certainly have.

But it goes so much further.

From Jew-free zones tolerated by college officials at public universities (yes, UCLA, that's you) to planting spies in Catholic and evangelical congregations (Joe Biden, take a bow!) to blanket bans on travellers from Muslim countries (hey, The Donald, are you here?), we've accepted and embraced hatred.

During President Trump's first term (as the 45th president), the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, had a sign on her desk: "8645".

To 86 something means to get rid of it, and the definition includes killing 

The former director of the FBI, James Comey, posted seashells arranged to say 8647...Donald Trump now being the 47th president.

The closest thing I remember from Joe Biden's term was a chant from a NASCAR race, " Let's go, Brandon!", being turned into "F*** Joe Biden!". It's maybe not as inducing of violence, but it's still wrong. (And it may be that the insult to Biden came first...it was first heard when the when the winner of a race at Talladega, Brandon Brown, was being interviewed and the sportscaster interpreted it as "Let's go Brandon!".)

The temptation is to say it has to stop, NOW, but that's just virtue-signalling.

It has to stop at the root, and the root is deep.

And when you get to the deepest part of the root, don't judge, 'cause in God's eyes, you're there too, as am I.

Yesterday there was a child

ready for the coming day,

clothes in order, hair well-styled,

set for learning and for play.

Today there is a varnished box

with a picture set on top,

and it's closed-casket, so there's locks,

and we just weep for time to stop,

and for another universe 

in which the good do not die young,

that awful true and holy curse 

for us, condemned to live among

the idols of permissive hate

that we set up as our fate.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is BEHIND.

Look behind you, in the mirror.

Look, be sure and clear your eye

that you see them, ever clearer.

Look, and wave the dead goodbye.

See the children that we failed,

see the holes in feet and hands.

See how hatred has prevailed 

in this most highly blessed of lands

whose graces we have cast aside

to embrace a shallow wrath,

leaving these words, full of pride.

to be our grizzly epitaph:

"We are no babe, lost in a wood;

leave us! to find our greatest good!"

Sylvia will share her ice cream, because ice cream is THE antidote to hate.

Of Cracker Barrels And Wineskins (Tell His Story)

 Honestly, if the corporate reimagining of Cracker Barrel was the worst thing in the world, we'd be blessed beyond measure.

But it's still a thing, and calls to us to at least think about it.

Cracker Barrel had been a piece of Americana, a throwback to a less busy, gentler time. We didn't go there for the food (still ok, though not what it was). We went for the ambience, a cluttered awkward place where the past had presence. Where we could get an after-church breakfast of cholesterol and diabetes from a waitress named Mabel, who smoked three packs a day and called you Honey.

Now it's gonna be like McDonald's, with sanitized folk art on the wall over your booth (no need to coordinate with the neighbouring table, yeah?).

All good, except for what's been lost, and the condescending attitude of the CEO (who came from Mattel and Taco Bell) and the Chief Marketing Officer (who came from the Vegas casino world):

"The objections come from a vocal minority."

The real problem is that these people are trying to pour new, fermenting wine, in the form of a new demographic that they're chasing, into an old wineskin. The hipsters they want to lure in may like the decor on the Internet, but they're not likely to come. They have their places.

And the established, loyal customers feel rejected, and will stay away.

It's just a restaurant.

But...has this been the story of your church, your denomination?

Or, worse, have you done something I did, put your life into a new paradigm, and tried to pour your new wine into the old wineskins of long-term friendships, to see them sadly split?

They trashed Americana 

and took the old man down,

just words, now, like banana

on a field of muddy brown.

Inside it's now sleek and bright 

with craft-store wall displays 

in which all of the suits delight,

but they forgot who pays

them for their educated brains,

and for the Florida retreat.

They do not see the coming rain,

nor hoofbeats of defeat

as we who loved what's cast aside

find other places to abide.

We found a Mom and Pop here, that serves pancakes the way Sylvia likes them.

Not, by any means, a short stack.

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Making Fun Of Old Poets (Tell Hi Story Even When He Rolls His Eyes)

I've written I guess about 7000 Shakespearean sonnets; at around 100 words per, the total word count blew past War And Peace and is nibbling at the Bible's heels.

So I guess that makes me a poet, but I really cringe at the label, mainly because of what other posts did, and worse, looked like.

For example, to pick on someone who's long dead, consider Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and his opium-fueled "just what is this dude trying to say" poem Kublai Khan.

And the guy looked like a total dork, but I guess so did everyone in the early 19th century. 

And that, no doubt, is what they would say about me. But I do not use opium.

I drink beer.

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan

a stately pleasure dome decree,

but I style myself Marlboro Man;

a pleasure dome just ain't for me.

He built the thing right by a river;

Alph, of all things, was its name;

the Alien Life Form did deliver

beyond its too-long 80s fame,

but really, this poem's stupid stuff,

and Coleridge had a messed-up head.

He was a druggie, sure enough

and the narcotics killed him dead,

but I write fine, shove comes to push,

with an ice-cold can of Busch.

So there!

Sylvia, don't roll your eyes like that. They'll get stuck.

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