Bad Religion

4/29/22

Every word

wrapped in ether

that somersaults off our tongue

first splashes

then sinks deeply

into eternity.

 

If words are a bubbling brook

above the geyser of our hearts,

they’re poised

to say something about

the nature of our spirituality—

a disjointed but shared reality—

seeking comfort

in the womb of bad religion.

 

What then about true religion?

 

It’s not about finding one

that fits our personality.

 

It’s about conforming

our personality to the truth

and all that that entails:

 

our motivations,

and our self-defense mechanisms,

our prejudices,

and our prideful dispositions.

 

Only then

will we live happy

and fulfilled lives

worth emulating

to privileged youth,

 

whose generational curse

has blinded their eyes

from seeing the warning sign

in a blood red sky:

 

privilege without responsibility

breeds entitlement

with bragging rights

of insecurity.

 

God spoke into existence everything;

everything for His glory came into being,

consistent with a cosmic breath

and privileged sustaining,

 

a metanarrative,

words assigned their order

and prayed over,

etched in ether

across the multiverse

by the living Word,

 

a love letter

written in royal blood

to break the Adamic curse

 

so everything,

once destined for death,

can see its true reflection

and catch its first breath.

 

A bubbling brook,

a reminder of what’s within,

a life behind the life

that lies deeply hidden

 

like the scriptures of the sea

written in aqua marine

and navy blue

that invite us to dive deeper,

exploring the secrets of divinity

with the turn of a page,

unlocking doors,

rusted for centuries

to lead adaptable creatures

to their next clue.

 

And that’s to say nothing

of living above the horizon

to be kissed by the sun.

 

But better yet

what about swimming

with dolphins,

learning to breathe underwater,

retraining lungs

and reshaping organs

to speak sea mammal

with an echolocating voice,

crying to be accepted into a pod

and counted among the stars?

 

Every wave tells a story,

a microcosm of the Big Bang

with its metaphysical implication:

 

something stems

from something.

 

So, it smells

of dolphins decomposing

on jagged reefs

of brazen bravado

to suggest

something stems

from nothing

or life pulled itself up

by invisible bootstraps:

 

a pell-mell seeking

in a humanist manifesto,

a crescendo of special pleading

that requires more luck

than getting paid at playing Craps

or more faith

in spontaneous generation

than the inspired words of Genesis,

the something from Something

of Creation.

11/5/24

Kernels of gold sowed in sweat. Embodied husks designed to protect. Multicolored grain, a heavenly harvest. The plague in the Garden— one locust started— the Reaper ransoms to forget.   A rotted ear only hears the screams of its own dissection, an eternity of introspection. Rows of corn restless with guilt. The cup of wrath…

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10/18/24

Christmas for Ginny has always been the most important day of the year. It’s a magical day when anything is possible, like the unprecedented miracle of God taking on human form; it’s when a supernatural star led the Magi to the infant God-man, lying helplessly in a symbolic feeding trough; and it’s when men met God face-to-Face in a humble manger to worship him and feed from him. Ginny loves Christmas for both its majestic beauty and historical truth. She understands, however, that this sacred day has been tainted with folklore and commercialism, but experience and wisdom enable her to see these gilded traditions as a way to bridge the gap between the sacred and the profane. For Ginny, a gift for someone special on Christmas is a reminder of the greatest Gift ever given. So naturally Ginny wants to give Brad something special for Christmas. But she, too, finds herself without two pennies to rub together. Then, suddenly, an idea flashes across her mind that makes her eyes water, feeling the internal warmth that comes with giving wholeheartedly.

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10/17/24

Ten years ago, my parents, Robert and Sheila, were killed in a car accident on Christmas Day. A head on collision with a drunk driver took them away from me. It turned out that both front airbags were defective. They were coming back from looking at Christmas lights. My seven-year-old daughter was in the back seat. She was not wearing her seatbelt. She was thrown from the wreckage. She died instantly.

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