Category: Poetry/Prose

“Happy are the Peacemakers”

The following is a poem by Dorothee Sölle that she added to her sermon at Lübeck Cathedral on September 6, 1980. (Translation, mine; I made slight adjustments/specific word choices to render it closer to her theology and toward cultural English)

Intercessory Prayer

Happy are the Peace-makers

Jesus, our Brother,
shatter the gun
and make those who follow you
unafraid and fierce
Those who rule over us
speak of “backfitting”
and “my re-arming”
they say “defense”
and “my intervention” and “first strike”
they say “peace”
and “my oil”
Jesus, let us become like you and not endure the lie
we will not endure Militarism
not over us, not beside us, not in us.

Lord, have mercy…

Jesus, our brother,
you interrupt the transaction with arms
you have intervened
you have organized resistance
we have hidden ourselves from the affliction of the poor
we live in an arms-decorated luxury-palace
we re-arm and leave the people to starve
Jesus, let us be like you
and not endure death
we will not serve militarism
not with words, not with gold, not with the time of life

Lord, have mercy…

Jesus, our brother,
you make the killing-industry lame
you chase the desire for sterile security out of our hearts
you make us free to resist ourselves;
the Military in our land
want to wear military-decoration again
it only costs 150,000 marks
to have you extradited once
only cost 30 silver pieces.
Jesus teach us to understand what life is,
whoever does not resist lives backward
let us become your brothers and sisters,
the ones who make peace.

Lord, have mercy…

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“Let Us Keep Going”

The following is a poem by Dorothee Sölle I stumbled upon while reading some of her later correspondence with the public (as an activist and teacher). My English translation follows the German. [Translator note: I opted for word choices that I felt best reflected the bulk of her theology and allowed for poetic evolution in the poem.]

German:

Lasst uns Gehende bleiben.
Wir sind nicht ganz
zu Hause auf dieser Welt.
Wenn wir pilgern,
sind wir nicht nur wir.
Er geht mit. Er ist dabei.
Wir sind unterwegs
mit Dir, Gott,
durch Dunkel und Nässe,
durch Nebel und
oft ohne Weg,
und nicht selten ohne Ziel.
Wir sind Wanderer.
Wir sind Gehende.
Wir sind noch nicht
ganz angekommen.
So wandert Gott
mit uns und lehrt uns
das Gehen und das Suchen.

English:

Let us keep going.
We are not quite
at home in this world.
We are making a pilgrimage,
We are not merely we.
[God] goes with. [God] is there beside. We are on the way
with You, God,
through dark and damp,
through haze and
often without way,
and usually without purpose.
We are migrants.
We are going.
We are not yet
quite wandered in.
So God migrates
with us and teaches us
the going and the search.

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where did it go

Where did it go?
It’s like it was here
and now it’s not;
I saw it but now
I don’t.

Where did it go?
Did it slip into a void
that opened under it?
Swallowed it whole;
it’s gone.

All the bricks and
mortar, the frame and
the foundation, all gone
down into nothing.
Vanished.

Once a symbol of
enduring love and
life, now *poof* just
gone from under
my feet.

A place of refuge
even of revolution;
a declaration of
advocacy, even of
resistance.

But now, I look
and it’s gone.
Like up in smoke,
or submerged into
the ground.

I was silly to think
that the wood inside
would always save it.
But they all forgot
to look.

They lost sight of
the wood for the gold,
silver, silk, and satin.
Power and prestige
blinded.

Two simple planks
of wood cannot save
those more concerned
with their own blood
turned wine.

They consumed his body
and those of the neighbor;
flesh turned into cheap
bread. And now blood runs
in streets.

So, it’s gone…
but wait! Oh, it’s here…
If you look just right,
you can see it
right there.

It didn’t go away;
it just became
like everything else
made by man and
greed.


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Love Me Again

Before any of you were, you were with me.
Deeply embedded in the folds of my skirt,
hidden from light’s illumination, cloaked
in my warm darkness, protecting you.

Having to release you into that other realm,
kills me each and every time; my heart breaks.
We were one and now we’re rent asunder,
and a piece of me always leaves with you.

I know you intimately, even when you go
into that other existence, and I long for you
to come back to me; arms aching to feel you
once again held, enfolded in my embrace.

I wish you knew how much I miss you.
I watch you as you move through one stage
into another; form and shape changing, grow-
ing, learning. I watch and smile. I’m proud.

I keep my distance, though; this is not my place, my
realm, or my existence. Sometimes I forget myself and
get too close to you, and you see and feel my shadow’s
presence. Look of horror! I weep, receiving your hate.

Nothing changes how much I love you; rejection and
and denial cannot actually refuse me my existence.
You still carry with you a piece of me just as I still carry
that piece of you with me. You cannot forget me. Ever.

I’m threaded through everything; bringing forth the
echo to the sound, the shade to the light, the shadow
to the brightness, the undertone to the overtone; the
background to the foreground. Yet, I’m the villain.

“The Enemy” some call me. Oh! the books and papers
that have been written about me over the surge of all
time. A few get close, some too far afield, none really
know me; verbal streams feeding into the great void.

I’m painted as the one who devours, as if I’ve no love;
I’m decked with the cloth of tyrants, as if I’m boundless.
I’m cast as the pernicious rogue choosing my hapless
victims, as if my heart does not break with your pain.

My embrace at the end of your journey is not cold
but warm. I bring peace as I enfold you, my beloved,
back into me. Reverse birth, back into my womb.
And here you remember me; I’m threat no more.

I’m not the termination of Life; I’m the source and the return.
I’m in Life as much as Life is in me; we are friends, not enemies.
We’re twins, God’s Love coursing through all creation this side and that.
Her crown gleams in the sun light; mine glimmers under the moon.

Fear not the transition, my dear beloved ones.
Love leaves you not in one moment to the next.
From her hand you are passed into my arms;
I fold you into me, and you love me again.

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Here’s One

Here’s one…
…definitely two;
most likely three…
and now there’s four.
Ah…wait a minute…five.
In a moment: six.
Oh! And then there’s seven.
Over there…eight.
Ooops, nine.
Losing track, is that ten?

Outside too many to count;
inside too few to forget.
The strongest will survive,
devour the least of these.
Smells and bells,
rings and dings,
pageantry and celebrity,
pomp and circumstance.
The powerful strut,
the humble crawl.
Too many inside unseen,
too few outside to seek.

Resist the urge,
Stand the ground,
Stay the course:
People are the goal,
not a means to an end,
not dollars in plates,
not bodies in chairs,
not moths to flames
fanning narcissistic ego…
Risk doors closing,
Say something of substance,
Declare: beloved!

Not the hunt,
but the gather.
Not the place,
but the space.
Not for the seen,
but the unseen.
Not for the rich,
but the poor.
Not for the powerful,
but for the vulnerable.
Not for the greatest,
bur for the least.
Not for those who know
but for those who know not.
Not for hate,
but for love.
Not for death,
but for life.

Here are ten…
definitely nine;
most likely eight…
and now there’s seven.
Ah…wait a minute…six.
In a moment: five.
Oh! And there’s only four.
Over there…three?
Ooops, two.
Losing track, is that one?

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Who You Ask

The gospel isn’t political; it’s a missive
carrying divine words transmissive —
addressing the sinful state of humanity
deserving refusal of heaven’s eternity.

“If I could recollect before my hood days
I sit and reminisce, thinkin’ of bliss and the good days
I stop and stare at the younger
My heart goes to ’em, they tested with stress that they under”*

We don’t want to be like the activists now, do we?
We would fall to the ego’s restless insatiable vanity.
We must protect Christ from assimilation between
politics and action; forsooth, people would misween.

“And nowadays things change
Everyone’s ashamed of the youth ’cause the truth look strange
And for me it’s reversed
We left ’em a world that’s cursed, and it hurts”

The gospel saves souls from hell;
we must stay the course and tell
this message of surreal security
from flames eager for impurity.

“’Cause any day they’ll push the button,
and all good men Like Malcolm X or Bobby Hutton died for nothin’
Don’t it make you get teary? The world looks dreary
When you wipe your eyes, see it clearly”

Proclamation of the gospel of God: love for all;
but only those who hear—in heart—God’s call:
those who ascend to this dominant culture’s law
keep the message, don’t stray, lock tight the jaw.

“There’s no need for you to fear me,
if you take your time and hear me maybe you can learn to cheer me
It ain’t about black or white, ’cause we human
I hope we see the light before it’s ruined”

Expectation to be comforted by that ancient declaration
of God’s cosmic divine love, sweet gospel proclamation;
don’t alter the protocol, give me dear, mellifluous Jesus
salvation by words harmonious and never ever versus.

“Tell me, do you see that old lady? Ain’t it sad?
Livin’ out of bag but she’s glad for the little things she has.
And over there, there’s a lady, crack got her crazy;
guess who’s givin’ birth to a baby?”

Leaning heavy on the liberating baptismal covenant—
the spiritual waters washing me into the Remnant —
exhorted to combat evil (demythologized into oblivion),
charged to spread the Gospel (only in word, not action).

“I don’t trip or let it fade me
From out of the fryin’ pan we jump into another form of slavery
Even now I get discouraged
Wonder if they take it all back, will I still keep the courage?”

Don’t risk the active pace, preach only the “Gospel”,
never straying from that saccharine comfort (fiscal).
God forbid disrupting that flow of donated wealth
and lose privileges in the gentrified commonwealth.

“I refuse to be a role model
I set goals, take control, drink out my own bottles
I make mistakes but learn from everyone
And when it’s said and done, I bet this Brother be a better one.”

Atop this kingdom of table and pew, hewn stone and wood,
Ruling by myth and cloth, condemning those who withstood.
With clenched fists and jaw, eyes shut so tight: adoro deum;
disturb the self-righteous seat: beware narcissistic tantrum.

“If I upset you don’t stress, never forget
That God isn’t finished with me yet
I feel his hand on my brain
When I write rhymes I go blind and let the Lord do his thang.”

Confer with the others—self-appointed judges—and we agree:
the gospel remains purely spiritual; dialectically, materially free.
Lest—shudders—the people wake and reform to revolutionary,
we must remythologize those divine words of Love incendiary.

“But am I less holy
‘cause I chose to puff a blunt and drink a beer with my homies?
Before we find world peace,
we gotta find peace and end the war on the streets;
my ghetto gospel.”

*This and all other right hand side citations are from Tupac Shakur’s “Ghetto Gopsel”

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I Walk in Translucence

I walk in translucence
live within substance
thick and transparent;
material iridescence.

Things feel neither this
and definitely not that.
Chaos feels normal now,
so too: one step at a time.

Definitions feel too heavy
and desperately craved.
Reaching back fails, yet
Straining forward is loss.

My vocation is pointless
rendered to dust by those
who care more for their own
spirituality than the story.

I’m embarrassed to don
cloak and collar; a cloth
representation of violence,
an archaic cairn of lost ways.

No one looks for a priest
anymore; a bygone call
ushered eras ago, long since
silenced by human stubbornness.

The Church is dying…
I need to touch the host
The people are perishing…
Where are my robes.

Ethical praxis amounts to
nothing more than matching
colors of reds, purples, greens
and the occasional pink.

Forming opinions on things
that bring not life but perpetuate
death and night among the people,
stealing life; irony: we think we live.

Reigning top-down in fluid fear
making our own bodies the apex
of the entire structure and story.
Grandiose expressions of pomp.

Bloated ego mixed with adorned
body, ready for worship blurring
distinction of my body and Christ’s.
My body wasn’t broken; his was.

Jesus died held on wood by nails,
stuck to an instrument of death
designed by the state to kill those
threatening their claim to power.

Jesus died held on wood by nails,
identifying with every oppressed body,
the same who watched on and listened
as those with more hubris mocked him.

All who found themselves trapped as he
watched as this man, God of very God,
refused to play the way those in power
wanted him to play; he chose another game.

Not strength, but weakness.
Not power, but compassion.
Not authority, but solidarity.
Not death, but life.

He died not in fine robes, but stripped naked.
He died not on rare stone, but simple wood.
He died not with fanfare, but ridiculed.
He died not for himself, but for the people.

Is this not the story of the church?
Is this not the fabric that is the
material of my call and my life as
a priest in this church, in this story?

Yet things feel neither this
and definitely not that.
Chaos feels normal now,
so too: one step at a time.

I walk in translucence
live within substance
thick and transparent;
material iridescence.

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A Good Man…

“Jesus was a good teacher and man,”
a statement most people like to say.
But, the statement causes me pause:
“Would you have said this in that day?”

We make this claim, so certain of ourselves
that this one man in history was quite good;
but the people in that crowd didn’t think so,
as they clamored for the nails and wood.

Maybe I’m too negative, refusing moral
evolution; but are we actually improved
in making sound judgments than those
who lived in eras and times far removed?

If we were them and they were us, everything
would occur as it already did. We’d demand
his life be given and then release Barabas;
that choice they’d examine and reprimand.

We don’t like rabble-rousers any more now
than we did then. One need only to mention
“Malcolm X” of “Martin Luther King Jr” to recall
how we treat those who light fires of revolution.

“Jesus was a good teacher and man,”
they say as if it’s a universal statement.
In many ways, it is very much true; he was.
Jesus was good, in the way “good” is meant.

But hindsight is 20/20, we say this now.
Though…we wouldn’t have said it then.
One thing I keep coming back to on this point
is that all should be silence from way back when.

Nothing should have survived the trials of time,
Jesus should have gone the way of the wind…
into the distant whirling dust devil that is the
constant erosion of time’s battling headwind.

The only reason we have the audacity to say this,
“Jesus was good,” is due to the very early Church
feeling it necessary that if anything held through time
twas a whacky claim: the Son of God wasn’t left in a lurch.

Through the words of Paul, that extreme and energetic guy,
and the reply of those other four writers some years belated,
we have with us a story of divine activity rejecting
death, which is a story to people weekly narrated.

Jesus wrote nothing down, neither did any of his disciples.
For all intents and purposes, this man should never be known
for how good he was or wasn’t; Jesus should have slipped
into all that was and never will be again, the great “unknown”.

But we do because small groups of people dared to retell
something crazy, a thing which caused them to live in a way
different than the rest, a story so crazy their own lives were
not worth keeping if they couldn’t tell what they had to say.

“Jesus was a good teacher and man,” so good God raised him
from death into life so that we could also partake in this, his, life.
We owe this hope to scared people, desperately clinging to crazy
words of a crazier story, ignoring other words threatening antilife.

Had these small sects of people, scattered in the middle east,
never thought this worth their time, not worth this great danger,
we’d be now without such a story of metaphysical engagement
starting in the midst of hay and straw, a mere babe in a manger.

“Jesus was a good teacher and man,”
I say now with an eye to this humble past.
Thank you kind people for passing on this
crazy story surviving time in words that last.

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Rebirth

The backside of loneliness is longing; or
maybe the backside of longing is loneliness.
Either way both forces seem to draw forward
and backward, surging sideways: left and right
grabbing and dragging its victim into its shadow
and there pummeling it with once held dreams
and desires, leaving shapes and husks of human
form once was. Hissed and slithered words of
comfort uttered from longing and loneliness add
insult to the injuries, conjuring up consuming
spirits from the belly of fear: you are nothing.
Whispered words from the consuming darkness
of the shadow encompassing your entire being
as you lay on your own cold ground among the
shards and shrapnel of those dreams and desires.
And you give in. You succumb. You agree. Yes.
I am nothing. Nothing else comes up; no other
words present, no other thought arises, no other
comes to your rescue. No one can see you in
this tormenting and tortuous moment. Loneliness’s
weight grows heavier as longing steals more and
more of your form and shape, pulling strands of
inner life out like pulling and stretching playdough
until there’s not enough firmness and resistance
to snap back. Elastic broken; shape broken. And
again to sooth the pain of this madness you agree:
I am nothing. And again: I am nothing. And again:
I am nothing. Love is gone now. Confidence has
fled. I am nothing. Light has been eclipsed by the
shadows and oppressive darkness. And then:
out loud: I am nothing. The words are bullets.
The strength of confession is that the thing con-
fessed becomes real and external, a life of its
own over which and at which you can look and
examine, peering at this side and that side.
In the concession I am nothing, you become
something. And like conception of your being
happening all over again, you are reborn. I am
something. To speak these words, to affirm, I
am something. Dark and shadow dissipate and
begin to slip off. I am something. Hands touch
now reanimated and emboldened substance.
I am something. And for this moment, as you sit
regathering and regathered, you watch as you
witness the backside of longing trail away and
you wave goodbye to loneliness and longing…

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One Moment

Experience tells of lessons learned and lived—
choices made, words spoken, actions done—
all done once and unable to be undone once.
Choices hem off certain options in the moment—
though new opportunities come again activating
choice’s functioning sword of swift severance.
Words leave no trace over lips as they leave
but they hit like sticks and stones where ever
they land; leaving welts and bruises, even scars.
Actions flow from bodies as if summoned by a
divine wizard; like embodied incantations they
altar space—for better or worse—in a single blow.
And it’s all once: one choice, one word, one action;
that’s all it takes to forever change anything in a
specific way that can and will never be undone.
One
Moment
One
Choice
One
Word
One
Action
Changes
Everything
So maybe we should slow down when we are
faced with seemingly innocuous choices,
tempted to say that seemingly little thing,
provoked into that seemingly small gesture;
take that second, take that pause, slow down
and breathe—think twice, see well, listen more.
These choices, words, and actions do not fall
idly to the ground and flip-flap about like fish
pulled from waters and left to wither in the sun.
They are always given to others to carry away;
we pass on our choices, words, and actions as
if we are mail-carriers delivering both wanted
and unwanted packages to suspecting and un-
suspecting individuals traversing our journeys.
One
Moment
One
Choice
One
Word
One
Action
Changes
Everything

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