Good morning…
A line lingers from yesterday’s post.
“Looking out the window, we might ask: ‘I’ve got to raise kids in this?'” Multiple wars. Gun violence. AI explosion. Financial worries. Racial injustice. Deadly disease. Deep deep division at home and abroad.
God, I’ve got to raise kids in this?
I met a poem this week which brings to life our strife.
*******
“Of The Empire” by Mary Oliver
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
******
Reading the poem, I come away with two questions.
What does the word penury mean? Vocabulary.com teaches me this. “Penury means extreme poverty to the point of homelessness and begging in the streets. Economic downturns, job loss, shopping sprees, and weekends at the high rollers’ table in Vegas can lead to penury.”
Sounds like the world we live in.
I also wonder, “When did Mary Oliver write this poem, and what was going in the world then?”
The poem was published in 2008. From tellingthetruth1993.com, we learn: “Mary Oliver wrote the piece as a political and cultural critique. Primarily, it was a searing meditation on the trajectory of the United States. She sought to express her dismay over a society that rewarded power, the amassing of material goods, and death, while remaining completely apathetic to the suffering of marginalized people and the exploitation of the natural world. The poem is structured as a looking-back from the future, predicting that future generations will judge this era for having a heart that was ‘small, and hard, and full of meanness’.”
Small. Hard. Full of meanness. Sounds like the world we live in now. Sounds like the world Jesus lived in too.
In Matthew 23:23, Jesus calls out the corruption he saw. “So woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. You hypocrites! You tithe from your luxuries and your spices, giving away a tenth of your mint, your dill, and your cumin. But you have ignored the essentials of the law: justice, mercy, faithfulness. It is practice of the latter that makes sense of the former.”
Justice. Mercy. Faithfulness. When might we begin to practice these? Now other words return to my mind from yesterday’s post.
The darkness you see today?
It’s not new. It just changed outfits.
Leviticus 18 proves this battle has always been here.
God chose this time for you (Acts 17:26).
Yes, the conversations will be hard.
Yes, they’ll be awkward.
But the Light came into the world —
and darkness still can’t win.
Following the glimmers of God’s eternal Light, Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night… (Philippians 2:14-16a, MSG).
…Sue…
