“Small as a peanut, big as a giant, we’re all the same when we turn off the light; red, black, or orange, yellow or white, we’re all the same when we turn off the light; So maybe the way to make everything right, is for God to just reach out and turn off the light”…..Shel Silverstein
My niece’s husband works for the county, mostly in charge of detention detainees who are put to task keeping our highways and byways free of people’s discarded trash. Yesterday he spoke to me of being so occupied on a nearby typical Kentucky one-lane road, the pavement following the small creek as it snaked through the country-side and a small church opposite but a few yards up the hill. Whether the pastor, or a deacon, or just another Pharisee, this fellow comes strolling down to check his mailbox and, informing the workers of two hundred dollars in an envelope he’s lost, asks if they’ll return it should they find it. Given a polite, affirmative reply, he then snorts at them, chuckling “Sure you will” before strolling back to his sanctuary. Mike wasn’t too happy, giving me promise of visiting the “reverend” in the near future, his mindset of the religious community, in general, already tarnished from previous encounters. I reminded him that everything marching around “in the name of Christ” wasn’t officially endorsed by the Holy Ghost; but healing wounds usually requires more than a word of truth. The second quote offered above appeals to me in that which it expresses concerning humanity. The author’s solution, however, gives me pause, indeed it seeming to me that he’s got it backwards. Having referenced our external differences, the poet then takes us inward, into that dark mysterious unpredictable intelligence inhabiting the vessel, a place illuminated only by our own thinking, our own reasoning, understanding, surely a mess in the making. Filling a pew doesn’t cure that. Baptism doesn’t wash anything away. Even a “born-again” experience doesn’t help if that which was supposedly acquired amounts to no more than a theology set in concrete. If all we possess is a Book and a membership card, the world around us isn’t getting much witness of a resurrection. He, alone, shines…….
That pastor probably suffers from road rage too, I presume. It screams insecurity to me.
ReplyDeleteA former pastor at my old church spoke of having to go talk to a Christian bookstore owner about the bad way he (or she, I forget) had been treating this pastor's assistant. He spoke about "the pecking order" and how it comes out in us.
"He, alone' shines..." Precisely.
PS. The Shel Silverstein reminded me of an old Auvergnat proverb that says: "all cats are grey in the dark."
My granddaughter is into Shel Silverstein and got me hooked a few years back.
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