A Meditation on the Epistle of James
You, O God, tell us not how we choose because we proudly say, “We can!”
“We can choose by ourselves!”—“We can choose what you say, ‘Not that!’”
“We can listen to snakes and the beast within our ‘complex dynamic systemology.’”
You tell us not how we choose because we forget your love.
We do not have because we do not ask—and if we ask we do so wrongly or impatiently.
We say we are smart. We slap the hand that guides us then jam our knuckles in our pride.
We spit and cuss and make ourselves disgusting with furtive elusion of the mirror.
We do not have because we drop and break.
I drink. I am no better, except that I feel ancient joy at the bottom of our sludge.
I am saturated with stories of riots and school shootings and congressional investigations.
My soul has been squeezed of the juices.
I drink whiskey and I drink scripture and I move it through my soul although I know not how.
You wait it out until you mark a sacred day through a steward stewed in stammer.
You make happen what you mark as the steward quakes in hope he hears aright.
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