One fifth of this adventure remains. Counting on my fingers, I want this fifth to be the thumb and not the pinkie. I want this to be the clincher. I want these weeks to be the most distinguished. With all but weariness, my summer here shall be finalized with the power of experience and the prayer for stamina.
Here is a poem I have worked on this summer:
Commissioned by the Roman guard, those men who built the cross,
so long ago when Jesus was a body in the crowd,
would never know the impact of that coming sacred loss
in mass-producing replicas of that same wooden shroud.
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So many times I’ve heard it said in sermons here and there,
with so much pride, the reason why the cross our logo be.
“Isn’t that symbol like to our modern electric chair?
The glory of his death upon that alternated tree!”
“That is why we have these shrines, splayed up atop our steeples.
And this religion- unified. And our church here- you may now come.
Whether it’s hung upon the walls, the books, the necks of peoples,
because of it you need not worry that they may be Muslim.”
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An easy way to move your goods in this consumer group,
is recreating that same cross that Pilate delegated
when Jewish priests-they delegated Pilate in their coup
to kill the King, the hard Truth, the Messiah predicated.
And still I think the symbol stands. Wherever it is found
is where attempts to muffle revolution are revealed-
where robes of high authority cast votes to cloud the sound
of Truth and how the kingdom rips apart our modern seals.
The path to usher Zion has been translated for all.
And what if, in theology’s thick mist, there was but one
green Gideon: It’s all we’d need to sound the trumpet call.
And we could start the era foretold by the risen Son.
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But me, my symbol is the air that filled the tomb door gap
which Jesus breathed- the same air in my nostrils that abounds.
And me, my symbol is the ground, once having bouldered lap,
but angels threw it off so that the path to life was sound.
The cross is not the symbol of Jesus’ suffering. It is the gateway of his temporary submersion through death. Jesus who is God knew that He would boomerang back up.
In my opinion, the iconic image of Jesus’ greatest suffering was the constant misunderstanding that plagued his followers.
One kilogram of dirt, one kilogram of air, and one kilogram of diamonds have different market prices. But if I had to pick between them, I could do without the diamonds. In the Kingdom of God, rarity is irrelevant to value.
If God is love, abundance determines value.
When abundance determines value, we shall scrutinize the similarities, and not the differences, of the contents of this creation earth.
Look at the planets that abound from our discoveries. If we trod this earth, breathing this air, we all live in the rich part of town- as designated by God.
If I make a request to God for anything aside from the kingdom, do I concede to lacking an appreciation for the ten trillion blessings I already have?
