I once heard a politician who calls himself a Christian say, in effect, While Jesus encouraged personal acts of compassion for the poor, it doesnt follow that he wants us to use other peoples money [i.e., tax revenues] to put an economic safety net under the poor. Thats compassion on the cheap. I disagree with that politician on so many counts I cant enumerate them right now. Instead, Ill put a slight spin on a line from Anne Lamott: You can safely assume youve created God in your own image when it turns out that God agrees with your tax policy. But the politician in question is not alone in making this kind of intellectual and spiritual mistake. So heres a Memo to Myself: Avoid the bad habit of domesticating the prophet of your choice, turning him into a cheerleader for your way of thinking and way of life. Remember that all the great prophets were courageous and outrageous folks who railed against the powers-that-be, challenged self-satisfied piosity, threatened the prevailing social order, and would find you falling short in some significant ways. I cant speak for Jesus, but Id bet the farm that hed be very unhappy with certain features of American life, not least its gross economic inequities and its calloused culture of violence. Im also pretty sure that many of my fellow Christians would be extremely uncomfortable with Jesus were he to show up in their churches. Thats why I love this remarkable but little-known poem by Mary Oliver, who reminds us that Jesus was frightening, demanding, and full of melancholy madness, among other things. The poem is wake-call for anyone who assumes that the prophet of his or her choice would be all comfort and no cutting edge. And for Mary Oliver fans who know only her soothing, uplifting pastoral voice, this poem reminds us that its as big a mistake to domesticate a great poet as it is to make a household pet out of great prophet! Maybe by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, Volume One Sweet Jesus, talking his melancholy madness, stood up in the boat and the sea lay down, silky and sorry. So everybody was saved that night. But you know how it is when something different crosses the threshold — the uncles mutter together, the women walk away, the young brother begins to sharpen his knife. Nobody knows what the soul is. It comes and goes like the wind over the water — sometimes, for days, you dont think of it. Maybe, after the sermon, after the multitude was fed, one or two of them felt the soul slip forth like a tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion, that wants to swallow everything, gripped their bones and left them miserable and sleepy, as they are now, forgetting how the wind tore at the sails before he rose and talked to it — tender and luminous and demanding as he always was — a thousand times more frightening than the killer storm
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 19:59:24 +0000