Blasphemy! How Sweet!

I like how Brent gets a book published and then starts bossing me around (See what would Jesus do comment below). Man, I thought it might take at least a month to go to his head but I was wrong. So, in response to Brent's needs (cause it's always about him) here is a new post. And a blasphemous one at that. These candies could use a better name, one that doesn't sound like a bad line from a bad romance novel, or a basement softcore video. Thanks to my wife Bethany for sending me this morsel.

So What Would Jesus, or You, Do?

Doing Nothing

When I passed him near the bus stop
on Union Square while the cops
cuffed his hands behind his back, while he
said, “I didn’t do anything,”
I didn’t either,
do anything but look away,
a little afraid they might cuff me
if I paid too much attention,
and walked on still wondering
what he might’ve done
and still more what I
might’ve done.

Dan Gerber, Primer on Parallel Lives


What would you do?

Guatemalan poet, Otto Rene Castillo, who was killed by government
forces in the ambush of a guerrilla group in 1954 when President
Arbenz was overthrown by the US mercenaries, asked the same question:

[excerpt] ..... One day, the apolitical intellectuals
of my country will be interrogated
by the simplest of our people.
They will be asked what they did,
when their nation died out,
slowly,
like a sweet fire,
small and alone.

Early, Really Early Spring?

Mid 50's today here in Akron. In February. How f---- up is that, my friends. Pass me the jar ...


Rinsing sorrows of a thousand forevers
away, we linger out a hundred jars of wine,

the clear night’s clarity filling small talk,
a lucid moon keeping us awake. And after

we’re drunk, we sleep in empty mountains,
all heaven our blanket, earth our pillow.

Li Po (A.D. 755-762)



At White Deer Spring

A little fishpond, just over two feet square,
and not terribly deep.
A pair of goldfish swim in it
as freely as if in a lake.
Like bones of mountains among icy autumn clouds
tiny stalagmites pierce the rippling surface.
For the fish, it is a question of being alive …
they don’t worry about the depth of the water.

Yuan Hung-tao (1568-1610), trans. Jonathan Chaves