America’s Scrooge Intervention | A Waiting Still/GoT Mashup
America’s Scrooge Intervention
Day Six | Waiting Still + GoT Mashup**
The rich man begged
when he saw Lazarus
in Abraham’s Bosom
It may be too late for me
he said
but my five brothers…
The answer he received was no
They have, already, ample voices
calling them to mind their neighbor
and act with compassion
Dickens, then, that Hound of Heaven,
is lavish with Divine Love
What a gift
a visit from three
Christmas ghosts!
When the living prophets
are not enough
To be sent Marley
What grace!
•
God, America needs a Scrooge-inspired intervention
The living voices
of Earth and our neighbors on the margins
The living, hungry voices within
Their calls and cries
continue to go unanswered
continue to be drown out
by White noise
us v them
and never enough
How loud
How much more persistent
must our living prophets be
before we see in the mirror
clearly
Maybe the voices of the living
will not be enough
if so
God, send us spectres!
Show me where I was hurt
Show me both
the possibility I am missing now
and the pain I am perpetuating
Show me where all this unchecked fear
this untended trauma
and this uninhibited greed will lead us
May these visions be enough
to Resurrect me from this
cold and lonely coffin
•
Pull back the bed curtains
Open the shutters
Look at the Snow
“I will live
in the Past, the Present,
and the Future!
The Spirits of all Three
shall strive within me.
Oh Jacob Marley!
Heaven, and the Christmas Time
be praised for this!
I say it on my knees, old Jacob,
on my knees…
The shadows of the things
that would have been
may be dispelled. They will be.
I know they will!”
Friends,
let’s listen to the Christmas Angels
and the generous ghosts
It’s not too late
It’s Christmas Day
and the one you once
despised or ignored
has set a place for you
at their table
Those who have ears, listen!
________
**For those of you just tuning in with Intertwine, we’ve been exploring, since September 2020, the 114 sayings of the Gospel of Thomas (GoT) — an ancient wisdom text from the early Christian movement. For centuries, the GoT was thought lost to humanity, but in 1945 near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, a farmer dug up a sealed jar full of ancient scrolls including a full text of Thomas. Attributed to Jesus (i.e., Yeshua, in his native language), these sayings reflect the indigenous wisdom traditions of his time and place. We are exploring one logion (i.e., wisdom saying) a week.
We’ll incorporate one GoT reflection a week during our 25 Days Waiting Still. If you’d like to explore previous sayings, check them out here: https://medium.com/intertwine
breathe in + breathe out
*
logion 65
A good and fair-minded man
had a vineyard that he gave over
to tenants to work and make productive.
When he sent a servant to collect
profit from the vineyard, the tenants
took him and nearly beat him to death.
When the servant returned
he told his master, who said,
“Perhaps they did not know him.”
So he sent another servant
and they beat him as well.
Then the master said, “I’ll send my son.
Maybe that will shame them.”
But those tenants, because they knew him
to be the heir to the vineyard,
seized and killed him.
Whoever can hear this, listen!
