Skip to main content

take

You will not have this - its mine!
Words that a 5 year-old says when someone reaches for his toy.
Words that a woman shouts when confronted by a thief demanding her purse.
Words that a landowner utters when threatened by an invading king.

You cannot take this away from me!
Words that the slaves sung to remind themselves that freedom can always be carried in your heart.
Words that martyrs cried out as they offered their lives for their beliefs.
Words that lovers whispered when they were parted by war.

Why are you taking this away from me?
Words that Job flung at a God who seemed to be deaf to his pain.
Words that don't know how this can end well.
Words that the chronically downtrodden have forgotten how to form.

Why did I give that up?
Words of regret spoken in hindsight.
Words that cannot bring it back.
Words that reveal powerlessness and perhaps a lack of courage.

Can you help me get it back?
Words that carry hope.
Words that have put aside self-reliance.
Words that refuse to accept injustice as the final answer.
Words that look for another way: not payback, but redemption.

Can I give you some of what I have?
Words that recognise how poor we all are at times.
Words that invite instead of force.
Words that give and receive with equal grace.
Words that open instead of close.
Freedom.
The word that silences all other words.

This is a poem for all those who have had precious things taken away from them in the name of religion, including my father. Let me be one who, instead of taking, learns to give precious things in the name of Jesus.
This is a photo of Dean's empty guitar case.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...
3 comments
Read more

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...
9 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   C...
10 comments
Read more