pop's poetry

Category: Religion

  • dear st. patrick

    We need you in America
The land now full of snakes
Too late we may realize
What will be lost
When the snakes have done
Their worst

We need a St. Patrick
To rid us of the snakes
Who will that be?

  • a mythical idea

    When belief overtakes knowledge
    And dogma overshadows facts
    Love succumbs to hate
    The other becomes the enemy
    Visible and invisible walls are built
    Every structure a testament
    To how creeds separate
    Gathering around belief
    In what can never be known
    The mythical idea
    Conjured to fill the gaps
    Between everything that is
    And what will still be discovered
    Only by returning to knowledge
    And embracing the unknown
    Like an old friend you haven’t met
    Can we erase the boundaries of love
    And expand into the wonder

  • lost love

    In the beginning of modern faith
    It was all about love.

    In the early days love ruled
    Love over hate
    Greater than faith or hope
    Both internal qualities, but love is
    The collective over the individual
    “They will know we are christians by our love”

    How do people see christians today?
    Fighting for the christian right
    Fighting the libs
    Fighting for pro-life
    Fighting against LGBTQ+
    Fighting wokeness

    As with any group
    You can’t lump them all together
    But as a community
    Christians were about love
    Until the hate came
    And then there was a cult

    A version of christians
    Focused on hell
    “Sinners in the hand of an angry god”
    Hate the sin, love the sinner
    Reduced simply to
    Hate the sinner

    Many embraced this version
    Though some never retreated into it
    But settled in to help where they could
    Now a new uglier version appears
    Red-hatted zealots, foaming at the mouth
    For revenge and to reclaim lost glory

    Not the glory of Jesus
    But the glory of religious freedom
    That early christians didn’t seek
    And Jesus never experienced
    And yet he never gave up on love
    To bring love’s kingdom to earth

    I’m not in the cult of evangelicalism
    I don’t believe in hell or heaven
    A finite life of love is enough
    And so I believe in love
    Its power to heal
    Even in the darkest of times

    Right now it’s a fight for humanity
    To dare to feed the hungry
    Care for the poor, the sick, the immigrant
    To seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly
    And even in this red-hat, deep-hate world
    The true way hasn’t changed

    There is no path to love
    Love is the path

  • world view

    world view

    There is a problem with the premise
    that the original sin is passed
    to everyone who ever lived.
    Even though millennia have passed,
    an angry god seeks retribution
    and still holds a young earth grudge.

    The problem of the premise
    is that that blood is required
    to appease this feuding god.
    The worst of ancient religion’s practice,
    shunned by civilization,
    is worshipped by faith communities.

    The problem is in the premise
    that genocide is the answer
    to build utopian societies.
    Yet millions hold out for the end of days
    and a god’s torturous massacre to
    bring a new heaven and earth.

    The problem throughout this premise,
    is that god is not better
    than the best of us.
    The worst of mankind breeds
    blood-lust and revenge.
    A god should be greater than, not less than.

    There is a promise with a new premise,
    not about bloody retribution,
    but individual and societal recalibration
    to align with ancient-future greater ideals
    of peace that compounds
    and love that surrounds.

    The promise of this premise
    is that peace and love are not postponed,
    but active in the actions of those who
    live out justice by leveraging peace
    and work out that peace by mentoring love
    as their legacy for this world’s future.

    The promise in this premise,
    is that together we can
    reclaim the world to what it could be and
    recalibrate society to how it should be;
    reclaiming peace, restoring justice
    and redeeming everything through love.

    The promise through this premise
    is that as others have,
    we can live in self-changing peace
    and live out world-changing love,
    nurturing justice through our commitment
    to walk this path and redeem this world.

    Pops 2014

  • loose faith

    Maybe I’m bad at spelling
But the idea
Of loose faith
Is something ever so
Appealing
Dropping the leash
Let go of the reigns
Open my hands and
Let faith free
From my grasp
It goes where it wants
And flies to the sky
To find nothing
And everything
As it should
I didn’t lose my faith
Just let it loose
It found the way
A path
To return home