by

John W Frye

Heidi spends her day in a wheelchair.

She’s 25 years old, blonde and brilliant.

Ray spends his day usually alone.

He’s 85 years old, gray and grandfatherly.

Heidi and Ray sang a duet last Sunday in church.

Heidi’s strong voice and Ray’s soft voice

Zig-zagging through the melody,

Heaven hushed to hear them sing,

Hearts opened to the artistry of glory,

Wet with the tears of beauty undefinable

In this sacred space and holy time.

“…when we all see Jesus, we’ll sing

And shout the victory,” they sang.

When Heidi and Ray finished,

I saw heaven opened

And George Frideric Handel

Was standing and applauding,

Falling to his knees dazed in wonder.

Jesus, standing, shouted to all

“I love those two!”

]]> http://www.jesustheradicalpastor.com/the-duet-a-poem/feed 2 http://www.jesustheradicalpastor.com/listening-to-the-silences http://www.jesustheradicalpastor.com/listening-to-the-silences#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:10:25 +0000 John http://www.jesustheradicalpastor.com/?p=873 Listening Between the Words

by

John W Frye

We talk of “reading between the lines,”

Meaning that meaning dwells in the white spaces

As well as in the words obvious on the pages.

Meaning, too, hides in the silences between spoken words–

Silences saturated with eternity-shaded content.

Listening between the words is an art and risk–

An art for discerning silence as the mysterious speech,

A risk in believing silence has its own alien voice and

Giving that voice, most still and small, fragile utterance.

In every conversation twice as much and more is said

Than heard to the one who has ears to listen.

A friend, a loyal companion, listens to our silences

And hears our soul, though shrouded in eternity,

Address most perceptibly the cadences of time

Accumulating into a life.

by

John W Frye

Jesus has become the poster boy for love.

He’s been reduced to a fine example to follow.

Jesus as a loving example does me no good, though.

Jesus as a poster boy does no one any good.

We can have all the good examples in the world,

including the Son of God,

And it doesn’t mean a thing or do a thing.

The assumption is flawed at the core.

I don’t have it in me to follow the Example.

No one does.

Poster boys just take up space.

I need an invader, not an example…

I need a virus of rightness to infect me and disease me.

A lot of people are dying admiring the poster boy Jesus.

I want the Jesus that comes in, takes up space in me.

I want him dragging his bloodied cross, too.

I am not ashamed of those criss-crossed Roman boards that are

so suspiciously removed from poster boy Jesus.

I don’t need an Example.

I need a deliverer who delivers me from sin-damaged me.

Oops, did I write “sin”? I can’t find that on poster boy Jesus, either.

Isn’t the emerging world grand?

by

John W Frye

Choose each moment

passion or perfection.

God is a jealous God.

We want a perfect God more.

Perfection means clean and tidy.

Passion is wild, ruthless, messy.

Passion reverberates with danger.

Perfection is safe. We like safe.

Perfection has sharp corners,

Right angles, clean lines.

Passion gets sweaty and dirty

Evoking decisions in the dust.

Perfection likes the clear air,

Clean white pages with the rules.

The God of passion wrestles us to

             the dirt and cripples us.

The God of perfection allows us to

               debate what to do on Sunday

               that’s “legal.”

Our God of Passion was made flesh.

The God of Perfection lives in a book.

Passion thunders, moving and shaking.

Perfection, mute and paralyzed, sits.

The choice meets us every moment:

Passion or perfection.

The jealous God of the Bible or

The tidy God of clean systems of thought.

Choose this day the God you will serve.

Their words seemed like nonsense.

The women were crazy and the Eleven knew it.

Not finding a body to bathe with spices.

Seeing two men in lightning clothes

Asking the women why they sought the living

         among the dead.

Nonsense. Their words carried no meaning.

We need new categories for new creation.

Resurrection is new creation. The empty tomb

      is a wardrobe into Narnia.

What looks like madness to the mind

Makes absolute sense to the eyes of faith.

“He is not here. He has risen!”

We needed a leader for our divided nation.

Pharisees were smothering us with Torah regulations.

Sadducees were scheming to keep their positions of prestigious power.

The hot-headed zealots were murdering Romans and Jewish compromisers.

The Essenes slipped away into the desert as the only righteous ones.

The Herodians gave our nation away to the “son of god” called Caesar.

Jesus of Nazareth, the radical prophet, will unite us and liberate us.

“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of Yahweh!”

Dead. Dead as rock.

We had hoped he would set us free.

We now are hopeless. Jesus is dead.

“Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews”

A dead Messiah is a failed Messiah.

The sun will come out tomorrow…I hope.

by

John W Frye

The thin dark thread does not break-

The button holds, fragile against the wind.

The coat shields her baby from the cold

Piercing deadly as frigid gales blow.

The mother’s face burns red, her slit eyes wet;

Her hands tight, numb with cold;

Her feet take the long, dark, silent road.

The thread holds,

The button stays;

Her baby, oblivious, lives.

O warmth of the mother’s heart

In the journey called life.

painting:  Jaro Polk Art “Lonely Road” (google images)

This Wall Street/Main Street crisis has a face for me. Pray for many, many small business owners who, through no fault of their own, are wondering about the futures of their businesses.

Here is an older poem I sent to my friend and to our house church:

by

John W Frye

Words dipped in deadly poison

                    pass for “breaking news,”

While battling political parties

                 jockey for the most November votes.

Congealed anger replaces considered reason

           as political energies

               sink

                   very

                       low

under the “spin”

of acting so valiantly.

Yet, consider: ballots are still

              better than bullets;

And the raucous American media circus

             better than most others paths

                     in this world

to change “the powers that be.”

by

John Haines

Suppose there are no returns,

and the candidates, one

by one, drop off in the polls,

as the voters turn away,

each to his inner persuasion.

The frontrunners, the dark horses,

begin to look elsewhere,

and even the President admits

he has nothing new to say;

it is best to be silent now.

No more conventions, no donors,

no more hats in the ring;

no ghost-written speeches,

no promises we always knew

were never meant to be kept.

And something like the truth,

or what we knew by that name–

that for which no corporate

sponsor was ever offered–

takes hold in the public mind.

Each subdued and thoughtful

citizen closes his door, turns

off the news. He opens a book,

speaks quietly to his children,

begins to live once more.

            –from Many Mountains Moving

* * * * * *

from The Best American Poetry: 1999 edited by Robert Bly and David Lehman (Scribner Paperback Poetry)

John Haines was born in 1924 and wrote this poem in response to the 1992 election.