When Parks Are Pentecostal

I.

When Judaea was in foreign hands

and Ovid wrote of changing things;

when London was an infant town

and Romans learned the use of soap;

the Cooper of the barreled vaults of space,

the Jeweler of the far flung skies,

decided to en-flesh.

The one who carried God to term,

who bore the wonder/pain of birth,

not far removed from birth herself,

not expert in the grip of power,

too young to know rapacity,

was terr-amazed, humble-stunned.

But adolescence did not blind her

to the re-arrangement God could do

where humble folks are lifted up

and wealthy ones receive a jolt.

The carols say the manger bed was sweet.

The carol writers have not slept in one.

The gift of God became en-fleshed

with infant breath

despite the ’no-room’ slant of those who saw

another mouth to feed.

A tremor of historic size,

which shook the cosmic walls

and everything between,

sent joy throughout the jeweled skies,

so grand that travelers had to stop and gawk.

And follow.

Silent, tender, awesome.

The universe stood still.

The cosmos did not breath.

A single star halted

And there were no light years,

only light.

II.

But darkness still remained.

The silent night was smashed

with sounds of Herod’s thugs

hunting for a swaddled king.

A frightened father,

warned by Goddreams,

took the tiny, holy thorn in Herod’s side,

and his justice-singing mother,

on an uneasy, unwanted exodus.

And God, who does not have a watch,

but always knows when time is ripe,

loosed the knots of dread

and sent another dream.

This adolescent trust,

this sophomoric faith in dreams

that bear the deepest truth,

became a paving stone

on a most unlikely path.

The path was filled with faithful,

fateful, fatal steps.

The boy who took his place

among rabbinic cedars

and was no seedling;

the one whose questions

went to the base of the well

instead of skimming the top;

the hillside teacher whose holy mathematics

said that full was empty; empty, full;

the one who wept because he knew

that pain cannot be vanquished,

even if death can;

the sand painter who stoked the

fury of the professionally righteous;

the bread breaker who embodied I AM

and gave us a meal where everyone

finds a place card;

the one who could have jumped

the garden wall and saved his skin

but chose instead to save our skin.

And we have loved him,

and mocked him,

and killed for him,

and maimed his words,

and felt his touch,

and fled his call.

III.

The trees of Eden dripped with

the nectar of promise,

and instead of opening our mouths

and drinking in divine sustenance,

we found it sticky, and swabbed our skin

with disdain.

And now we face what is to come.

Will it be like one unending storm

with sheets of woe and strife

so constant that no rainbow can appear

and signal that the liquid death of flood

has given way to olive branch?

Will it be volcano-like,

so violent that centuries of molten hate

which bubbles in the veins of foes

who do not know the genesis

of their abhorrence

will erupt and make a blood-red moon seem pale?

And when our children say,

“Tell us of the lion and the lamb,

who play and tease, and the little one

is not the big one’s meal!”,

will we say,

“No, there is no story like that”?

Are we so far east of Eden

that we do not smell its fruit?

So removed that the flight of eagles

and the quiet propulsion of their wings

is neither seen nor heard?

So distant that dew’s morning kiss

on tall grass has been mown down

and covered with tar and brick

and mini-mart?

Will it be life or half-life?

“Choose this day whom you shall serve..

As for me and my house,

we will be radio-active?”

IV.

Or will there be a day...

when fences are found

by archaeologists,

not built by those who

treasure up their stuff on earth;

when nigger isn’t heard,

when spic is paired with span

and faggot means a bunch of sticks;

when parks are pentecostal

because the play of children

has a language all its own;

when greed is endangered

and every company has a

full time fool

whose job is to help people laugh

and dream

and cry

and hope

and laugh again;

and water hoses cool people off

instead of mowing them down;

and neighborhood means care, not crime,

dreams, not drugs,

gardens, not graves;

when needles are for vaccines;

when clothes are laundered

and money is not;

when music makes people dance,

and films make people think

instead of kill;

when talk is rich, not cheap;

when courtesy, disguised as love,

decides to open up

and lose control;

when bread is broken..

esta es mi cuerpo

when lives are mended..

when freedom,

like a child when the cousins arrive,

springs up and out

and cannot be persuaded

to be calm;

El Señor es contigo

is with you

es contigo

with you

contigo.

Written for a millennial celebration on the Day of Epiphany, January 6, 2000, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas, commissioned by the Greater Dallas Community of Churches.

© 1999 John Thornburg