Author Archives: Neil

Deuteronomy 16: Celebrations, Remembrance and Justice

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Painted Sukkah with a view of Jerusalem, Late 19th Century, Austria or South Germany

Painted Sukkah with a view of Jerusalem, Late 19th Century, Austria or South Germany

 

Deuteronomy 16: 1-17: Passover, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Booths

1Observe the month of Abib by keeping the passover for the LORD your God, for in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night. 2 You shall offer the passover sacrifice for the LORD your God, from the flock and the herd, at the place that the LORD will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3 You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it– the bread of affliction– because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt. 4 No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days; and none of the meat of what you slaughter on the evening of the first day shall remain until morning. 5 You are not permitted to offer the passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you. 6 But at the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, only there shall you offer the passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, the time of day when you departed from Egypt. 7 You shall cook it and eat it at the place that the LORD your God will choose; the next morning you may go back to your tents. 8 For six days you shall continue to eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly for the LORD your God, when you shall do no work.

9 You shall count seven weeks; begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. 10 Then you shall keep the festival of weeks for the LORD your God, contributing a freewill offering in proportion to the blessing that you have received from the LORD your God. 11 Rejoice before the LORD your God– you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, the Levites resident in your towns, as well as the strangers, the orphans, and the widows who are among you– at the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 12 Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and diligently observe these statutes.

 13 You shall keep the festival of booths for seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your wine press. 14 Rejoice during your festival, you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, as well as the Levites, the strangers, the orphans, and the widows resident in your towns. 15 Seven days you shall keep the festival for the LORD your God at the place that the LORD will choose; for the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all your undertakings, and you shall surely celebrate.

 16 Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose: at the festival of unleavened bread, at the festival of weeks, and at the festival of booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed; 17 all shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you.

 

One of the gifts of the congregation being located next to a Hindu temple is seeing the way their community orders their lives around the various festivals that come up throughout the year. Especially since we share some of our parking spaces with them we can see the way their community swells around festivals like Diwali. The festivals we celebrate as a Christian church may look very different from our neighbors but our community is also significantly larger around our high festivals of Christmas and Easter. The Jewish festivals of Passover, weeks and booths were intended to be ways in which the community gathered together to share their story, to share their prosperity and give thanks to their LORD for the bounty of the previous year and to pass on the faith from generation to generation. It is an extension of the sabbatical way of living where the people are not to work on the Sabbath day, to forgive debts in the Sabbath year and then also there are these three weeks within the year set apart from the working in the fields to celebrate their identity as the people of Israel.

The Passover celebration is originally outlined in Exodus 13 and it is a ritual enactment of the beginning of the exodus journey out of Egypt and into the wilderness, away from slavery and into the dangerous freedom of being the people of the LORD. The people are called to enter into the story themselves, and much as the emphasis throughout the book of Deuteronomy insists that it was not a previous generation that the LORD gave the law to or spoke to or performed wonders on behalf of, so now the people who celebrate the Passover become a part of the story with their ancestors who were once slaves in Egypt. They are a people redeemed by the action of the LORD, not by their own military muscle or economic might. They are to gather together around the tabernacle or temple of the LORD.

The festivals remind the people each year of who they are and where their abundance comes from. They in their ritual action hope to reduce the amnesia that will come when the people enter into the abundance of the Promised Land and forget the way the LORD was present with them in the journey. They are symbols of hope as Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro states when he says:

Our story is instead a vision that promises something better can always happen…True there is much sadness in our Jewish experience and the overall human experience. That is why you can’t have a Seder without salt water and maror. But you also can’t have a Seder without sweet charoset and freedom bread matza, without four cups of wine, and without the ultimate punch line-L’shana ha-ba-a b’Yershalayim (next year in Jerusalem). (Thompson, 2014, p. 133)

            The festival of weeks and the festival of booths are agricultural festivals which celebrate the harvest of the grain and the completion of the work of the harvest of the year. They are times to bring together the blessings of the year and an annual reminder that the harvest is a blessing of God rather than primarily a result of their own hard work or practices. Again they are to set aside a week of rest and celebration as they bring the harvest in and celebrate with those who are the vulnerable in their communities. The stranger, the orphan, the Levite and the widow are all to be included in the celebration of the landowners along with their children and their slaves. Everyone is to have a time of celebration and an ending of labor. Everyone is to share in the festival and the eating and drinking.

The early community of Israel did not come together every Sabbath to worship in the central place and while there was practices that probably did take place within the home these festivals were also intended to be a major part of the community’s act of passing on the traditions and faith. Amazingly the Hebrew Scriptures (or Old Testament as Christians sometimes refer to it) very rarely refer to the Passover, much less the other festivals. It seems probable that there were times where the celebrations were not widely practiced, and the narrative that runs from Judges through 2 Kings seems to be a narrative of amnesia with moments of remembrance. In the Christian calendar the festivals of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost also become festivals which enact central parts of the Christian story and serve as ritual reminders of the stories that Christians are a part of. Yet, as Christmas and Easter increasingly adopt a more secular tone in the United States there is the continued threat (and reality) of amnesia in the midst of our own prosperity.

 

Deuteronomy 16: 18-20: The Necessity of Justice

18 You shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes, in all your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, and they shall render just decisions for the people. 19 You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. 20 Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

 21 You shall not plant any tree as a sacred pole beside the altar that you make for the LORD your God; 22 nor shall you set up a stone pillar– things that the LORD your God hates.

This is one of the places where the chapter break should be at a different place because verses twenty one and twenty two are more related to what comes at the beginning of chapter seventeen than what closes out chapter sixteen and I will address them in the next section.

From the very beginning of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 1: 9-18) there has been an emphasis on the need for a fair legal system to ensure that justice is done. One of the constant cries of the prophets is the way that justice is not being done for the people and particularly those who are vulnerable. Even today in our modern legal system it is difficult for people with limited economic means to receive the same type of treatment as those with the financial resources to ensure the best legal representation. Among the ancient world the people of Israel were to be a community of justice that did not favor the powerful over the powerless and ensured that the vulnerable communities, the orphans, widows, and the foreigners in their midst would receive justice as well. Even though bribes were common practice in the ancient world those entrusted with judging on behalf of Israel are not to accept them. The judges become an extension of God’s justice and the judges who are called upon to be a part of God’s law being lived out in community are to be unwilling to accept a bribe just as the God of Israel it.

Not of One Mind

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The Dragon Writer by 25kartinok@deviantart.com

The Dragon Writer by 25kartinok@deviantart.com

I argue with myself each day
Of what to do and what to say
Do I act polite or misbehave
Act the fool or face try to save
Each choice comes with voices who
Each try to tell me what to or not to do
One voice tells me to be responsible not risky
Another I seem to rigid and be more frisky
Another says just be you regardless what they think
Yet all these different voices can drive me to the brink
Sometimes I wish my thoughts weren’t quite so loud
But sometimes these dialogues can make me proud
For sometimes I solve all the problems of the world
And in the cacophony new insights are unfurled
This inner debate within the courtroom of my mind
Produces some amazing judgments and inspiration find

Neil White, 2015

 

Deuteronomy 15: A Life of Covenant Generosity

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Roman collared slaves-Marble relief from Smyrna (Izmir, Turkey), 200 CE

Roman collared slaves-Marble relief from Smyrna (Izmir, Turkey), 200 CE

Deuteronomy 15: 1-18 Forgiveness of Debts

1 Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts. 2 And this is the manner of the remission: every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, not exacting it of a neighbor who is a member of the community, because the LORD’s remission has been proclaimed. 3 Of a foreigner you may exact it, but you must remit your claim on whatever any member of your community owes you. 4 There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the LORD is sure to bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a possession to occupy, 5 if only you will obey the LORD your God by diligently observing this entire commandment that I command you today. 6 When the LORD your God has blessed you, as he promised you, you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow; you will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you.

 7 If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. 8 You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. 9 Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt. 10 Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. 11 Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

12 If a member of your community, whether a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and works for you six years, in the seventh year you shall set that person free. 13 And when you send a male slave out from you a free person, you shall not send him out empty-handed. 14 Provide liberally out of your flock, your threshing floor, and your wine press, thus giving to him some of the bounty with which the LORD your God has blessed you. 15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; for this reason I lay this command upon you today. 16 But if he says to you, “I will not go out from you,” because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you, 17 then you shall take an awl and thrust it through his earlobe into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. You shall do the same with regard to your female slave.

                18 Do not consider it a hardship when you send them out from you free persons, because for six years they have given you services worth the wages of hired laborers; and the LORD your God will bless you in all that you do.

 

There is a narrative that is heard frequently in some political circles and among many conservative religious groups that reflects a privatized view of reality. The belief that an individual’s prosperity is possible without any obligation to the neighbor or the safety net for the vulnerable among us. Sometimes this privatized view of reality and faith is endorsed with the idea that, “there will never cease to be some in need on the earth,” (see verse 11) or Jesus’ saying in John’s gospel, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Pastors who preach with an emphasis on social justice issues, or who advocate for legal protections for vulnerable portions of the society are often accused of being too political. And perhaps this is on my mind after seeing several of my colleagues in Houston who were brokenhearted at the failure of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance after actively working to assist with addressing some of the fear based misinformation that often was circulated by other Christian groups. Perhaps this particular ordinance may not align with what Deuteronomy 15 is talking about, but Deuteronomy’s call for a society that practices debt forgiveness is opposite of a community that can endorse a privatized view of economics or of a religion that is uninvolved in advocating on behalf of those who are economically and politically at risk.

The type of economic forgiveness that is outlined here in Deuteronomy challenges the privatized world of economic gain. The people are called to live a life that is generous towards their neighbors, lending to them and providing for them in the time of need but not allowing for people to become bondservants into perpetuity. The life of the community is not to be tied to the ability of the people to acquire more property and wealth at the neighbor’s expense or parsimoniously trying to address the need of the neighbor because a time of remission of debt is near. Their identity is tied to the story of the Exodus, they were once enslaved and were liberated by the LORD of Israel and now they are not to return to the economic system of Egypt that they were liberated from but rather are to liberate their fellow Hebrews every seventh year. Also they are not to send them out empty handed but rather to give them the resources they need to not immediately be returned into slavery.

The demands of Deuteronomy 15 were a challenge for the people of Israel to enact. The enticement of being able to secure one’s own wealth and future by increasing one’s holdings or having more slaves to bring in more agricultural produce in ancient times (or the ability to keep people perpetually indebted through high interest in many people’s lives today) are difficult issues to address. An example from the book of Jeremiah tells about the people of Judah releasing their slaves only to enslave them once again during the days leading up to the exile in Babylon (Jeremiah 34: 8-22). It is much easier to allow amnesia to set in and believe that “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” (Deuteronomy 8:17). Yet for the people of Israel, and Christians who are also bearers of this story and message it is the LORD who provides. As the Lord’s Prayer can remind us we are to forgive our debtors as we want our debts to be forgiven.

What does this look like in a contemporary secular setting? This is a challenging question since the society that Deuteronomy envisions is not a secular society but a unified society where the people shared in a common covenantal identity. But perhaps in the secular and privatized society there is a great need for people of faith who take seriously the need to advocate for a just society. There will be disagreements about what this type of society might look like and there will be those who advocate for similar things for non-religious reasons. Yet, this vision that Deuteronomy shares (which may or may not have every been realized) is a vision that echoes throughout both the Old and New Testament and still continues to come back into public discourse today.  Yet even more than advocating for humane policies, which is important, perhaps we need to learn to be humane people. Rather than giving up because “there will never cease to be some in need on the earth,” as people of faith perhaps the first response is learning to “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

 

Deuteronomy 15: 19-23 Giving the Best To God

19 Every firstling male born of your herd and flock you shall consecrate to the LORD your God; you shall not do work with your firstling ox nor shear the firstling of your flock. 20 You shall eat it, you together with your household, in the presence of the LORD your God year by year at the place that the LORD will choose. 21 But if it has any defect– any serious defect, such as lameness or blindness– you shall not sacrifice it to the LORD your God; 22 within your towns you may eat it, the unclean and the clean alike, as you would a gazelle or deer. 23 Its blood, however, you must not eat; you shall pour it out on the ground like water.

 

Sometimes working in a church you get used to receiving castaways. A friend told a story how a woman drove up to church, dropped off a box and was irritated when they flagged the woman down to find out what was going on. The woman had dropped off a large box of water damaged books and very ratty toys figuring they could go in the church library or nursery. They were not good enough to be in her own home anymore but maybe they were good enough for the church. Yet, one of the reasons this discussion about sacrifices comes up multiple times throughout the book of Deuteronomy is to address various issues around the eating of these animals. While the animals are to be eaten together in community as a part of the festival, it is also not to be done with the ‘runt of the liter’ or the animal that is damaged in some way. The people were charged to bring their best to God and the community. Their actions in celebration and worship were to model their calling to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul and might. (Deuteronomy 6:5)

 

The Actor

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Various Balinese Topeng Masks, Photo by Gunawan Kartapranata shared under Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 3.0

Various Balinese Topeng Masks, Photo by Gunawan Kartapranata shared under Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 3.0

I wear the costume and take my place upon the stage of the world
Waiting for the moments when the spotlight shines my way
Learning my role, rehearsing my lines, hiding in my mask
Inhabiting an identity that fuses me and what is expected of me
Measuring pitch and tone and learning the moves to each dance
For that moment at center stage when the masses watch
And while in the that moment I become another thing
There is a small voice that wonders if they can really see me
The pretender trying to be something that he is not
Pulling people into the role I take on under the mask
Desperately wanting to fit in, to please, to hear the applause
And hoping the acclaim can fill the darkness once the lights go down
For when my time on stage ends who will I be?
Among all the roles I’ve played and the masks I’ve worn
My life that I have poured out as a libation for the audience
And the little pieces of each mask that refused to be left behind
While I wait for the next role where I can live someone else’s life
So that the world may delight in what they see through me
And wondering yet again if this time it is me or the mask I wear

The Whisper of Demons

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The Fool with Two Demons (detail) in a psalter, illuminations by the Master of the Ingeborg Psalter after 1205

The Fool with Two Demons (detail) in a psalter, illuminations by the Master of the Ingeborg Psalter after 1205

There are demons that whisper their words into our stories
And devils dwelling in the details that we created to fill the gaps
Creating conspiracies by blinding us to other possible conclusions
Filling in the places of doubt with stories told in the worst light
Fortifying the bulwarks of certainty by ignoring any contradiction
Allowing us to truthfully tell the lies in the story to others
Infecting them with the virus of paranoia, suspicion and hate
Blasting others in our blundering bluster as the enemies we fear
Naming enemies and traitors and the victims of our wrath
And the first casualty of this whisper is the life of the neighbor
We sacrifice as our enemy on the altar of our unyielding zeal.
 
There are other demons that whisper their words into our stories
And devils dwelling in the details that we create to fill in the gaps
Of the narratives we craft about ourselves in our world we live in
Highlighting all the failures and flaws and weighing them mercilessly
Using the unreal scales imposed upon us by a Photoshop reality
Allowing us to truthfully tell the lies in our story to ourselves
Tearing down our sense of self by whispering their damning words
Destroying our self image with the skill of a master assassin
Renaming our body and soul as unlovable and unattractive
And the first casualty of this whisper is our own life
Sacrificed upon the altar of an unreachable perfection

The Rains of Fall

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autumn by jjuuhhaa at deviantart.com

autumn by jjuuhhaa at deviantart.com

After the long drought of summer turned the fields to faded gold
The rains of fall return to refresh the dried skin of the parched earth
And the tears of the heavens work their healing magic upon the ground
Life briefly returns to the sun baked soils underneath the canopy of color
A flourish of colors adorn the trees and fields as the earth renews its raiment
Greens become mixed with jewels of flowers and the colorful patches of leaves
A season of dirt and dust are washed away by the long awaited water
And the earth emerges from its fall shower renewed and refreshed
Robed in the gold and red of the falling leaves that provide it a covering
As it prepares for the coming chill of the winter that will soon arrive

Deuteronomy 14: Boundary Markers and Celebrations

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Grigory Mekheev, Exodus (2000) artist shared work under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Grigory Mekheev, Exodus (2000) artist shared work under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Deuteronomy 14

1 You are children of the LORD your God. You must not lacerate yourselves or shave your forelocks for the dead. 2 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; it is you the LORD has chosen out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

 3 You shall not eat any abhorrent thing. 4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 5 the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain-sheep. 6 Any animal that divides the hoof and has the hoof cleft in two, and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. 7 Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cleft you shall not eat these: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you. 8 And the pig, because it divides the hoof but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you. You shall not eat their meat, and you shall not touch their carcasses.

 9 Of all that live in water you may eat these: whatever has fins and scales you may eat. 10 And whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you.

11 You may eat any clean birds. 12 But these are the ones that you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, 13 the buzzard, the kite, of any kind; 14 every raven of any kind; 15 the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk, of any kind; 16 the little owl and the great owl, the water hen 17 and the desert owl, the carrion vulture and the cormorant, 18 the stork, the heron, of any kind; the hoopoe and the bat. 19 And all winged insects are unclean for you; they shall not be eaten. 20 You may eat any clean winged creature.

21 You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to aliens residing in your towns for them to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a people holy to the LORD your God.

 You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

                22 Set apart a tithe of all the yield of your seed that is brought in yearly from the field. 23 In the presence of the LORD your God, in the place that he will choose as a dwelling for his name, you shall eat the tithe of your grain, your wine, and your oil, as well as the firstlings of your herd and flock, so that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always. 24 But if, when the LORD your God has blessed you, the distance is so great that you are unable to transport it, because the place where the LORD your God will choose to set his name is too far away from you, 25 then you may turn it into money. With the money secure in hand, go to the place that the LORD your God will choose; 26 spend the money for whatever you wish– oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink, or whatever you desire. And you shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your household rejoicing together. 27 As for the Levites resident in your towns, do not neglect them, because they have no allotment or inheritance with you.

 28 Every third year you shall bring out the full tithe of your produce for that year, and store it within your towns; 29 the Levites, because they have no allotment or inheritance with you, as well as the resident aliens, the orphans, and the widows in your towns, may come and eat their fill so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work that you undertake.

 

If we look upon this chapters as merely a set of prohibitions of a couple practices and a lot of animals the people of Israel were not to eat we would miss the point. If we try to come up with rational explanations for why they shouldn’t eat certain things or imagine that the only reason these animals and practices are forbidden is because the Canaanites and other nations around them did it we would also miss the point. For the Israelites these are a part of bearing the identity of being a treasured possession or a people holy to God. As a people who bear the place where God’s name will dwell these practices also become a people whose identity is formed around certain practices that set them apart as holy. Part of being holy for Israel is living out of these practices for no other reason than they have been asked. As the Jewish writer Ruth Sohn can state:

According to Torah, God asks that we abstain from eating certain foods, not because they are unhealthy or intrinsically problematic, but simply as an expression or our devotion…These prohibitions are like the requests of a beloved; we may not understand them, but we are, in essence, asked to follow them purely as an expression of our love. (Thompson, 2014, p. 122f.)
The practices become boundary markers between the people of Israel who are called to be holy in a special way and who are to enjoy a special relationship with the LORD their God and the rest of the people. They are not called to impose these practices on others, in fact even within this section here we see ways in which these allowances can be used for mercy for the outsider, the provision that an animal that has died on its own may be used to feed the aliens residing in their town. It doesn’t mean that these are painless for the people who are living out of them. In a culture where meat was a luxury, as it is in most ancient agrarian communities, the prohibition of certain food sources that may have been readily available would have proved a constant temptation. Yet these eating practices proved to be one of the distinctive marks of Jewish identity for hundreds, even thousands of years. For example much later 2 Maccabees refers to the Jewish struggle against persecution under the Seleucid Empire in the reign of Antiochus IV with a specific reference to diet:

Eleazar, one of the scribes in high position, a man now advanced in age and of noble presence, was being forced to open his mouth to eat swine’s flesh. But he, welcoming death with honor rather than life with pollution, went up to the rack of his own accord, spitting out the flesh, as all ought to have the courage to refuse things that it is not right to taste, even for the natural love of life. (2 Maccabees 6: 18-20)

These practices of what to eat and what not to eat may seem strange to people who are not Jewish and have been a way in which others sought to get the Jewish people to relax their boundaries, yet for many Jewish people the food rules remain in practice in some form today.

The tithe, which is discussed in the final seven verses of the chapter is also a distinctive practice of the people but it is more about celebration than a burdensome requirement. The practice is in a sense a tax and a way to acknowledge the sovereignty of their God, yet God doesn’t need the grain and the wine and the animals. They are to bring them together and to enjoy together in God’s presence the produce of their flocks and fields. To take the ten percent of an accounting of the field and the firstlings of the flock are to be used to celebrate. Acknowledging the spread out nature of the community there is the provision to be able to convert the produce into money and then come and spend the money for whatever the family wants to use to celebrate. Meat in the ancient world would be eaten primarily at celebration times when a large group is gathered because there is no refrigeration to preserve the meat and so it would be an invitation for a large number of people to gather together around an ox that had been slaughtered. God allows for the people to purchase wine and strong drink as a part of the celebration as well. This is not a burdensome practice but rather a joyous one.

Within the celebration is also the provision for the needs of the unsupported ones of the community. The Levites who have been set aside for the operation of the tabernacle or temple need to be provided for so out of every third year’s tithe they are to be taken care of. Those who are the vulnerable of the community are also to be cared for out of this third year tithe: the resident alien, the orphan and the widow. They are to be the beneficiaries of this practice as well. As the claimed ones of God the people are to be the ones claiming responsibility of caring for those no one claims.

Sounds and Syllables

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Creation by Selfish Eden (deviantart.com)

Creation by Selfish Eden (deviantart.com)

What power lies within the syllables and sounds?
Do they merely describe a reality fully formed?
A mimetic act of the glorification of creation
Reflecting upon a completed picture imperfectly
A flawed simulacrum of what sense can comprehend
Or is there something more in the words?
Do they reflect or recreate?
 
In these syllables and sounds is there the power of creation?
Do the songs and poetry open up new worlds of possibilities?
Can a statement or the stroke of a pen start a reality?
Can the sounds dance along the chaotic creative waters
Or commands give shape to the formless clay
Or is it something less contained in the words?
Do they reinvent or refract?
 
And perhaps the answer isn’t in the words at all
For maybe it is the potential of the creation already latent
And words may describe the reality that is already present
Or serve as a key that opens up some preexisting door
Echoing the preordained syllables that resonate among the stars
Copying the creative wisdom that predates the cosmos
And perhaps they are only words and yet, they are words
Resurrecting, retelling, recasting and realizing

Extracting Wisdom

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Stooges

They sat me in a chair today
My wisdom teeth they pulled away
And though my jaw may swollen be
The wisdom it remains with me
 
For pulling teeth is a painful thing
But extracting wisdom has far more sting
Lying deep within its sheltering host
And to pull it out one creates a ghost
 
And yet there is another way
To bring wisdom to the light of day
To take the time to lend an ear
As wisdom is shared by mouth to hear
 
To listen close to stories told
To things once learned, to lessons old
To ask the questions that bring out
The wisdom we cannot live without

Neil White, 2015

Have to have a little fun with the experience.

Banished Monsters

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Old Tree Wallpaper by Deligaris@deviantart.com

Old Tree Wallpaper by Deligaris@deviantart.com

Maybe there was once a time when magic ruled the world
When wizards and witches cast their spells upon their watchers
Where dragons flew beyond the mountains and wild children lived in the forest
Giants and trolls and goblins inhabited the wilderness beyond the safety of town
And brace heroes marched out into the wild lands to defend our boundaries
But no longer, the dragons are gone, the giants of old are dead,
and the children of the forest forgotten
Lost to the fog of some long forgotten time
beyond the shade of our parents’ or our parents parents’ memory
The demons that once dwelled in the wilderness now have only our minds to haunt
And the devils live among us wearing our own skins
For in arming ourselves to conquer the dangerous world of monsters
We became that which we sought to banish, the reflection of our nightmares
For where else will the monster roar if not within the heart of man?

Neil White, 2015