faith

A Cleared Site – Rumi

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

The presence rolling through again
clears the shelves and shuts down the shops.

Friend of the soul, enemy of the soul,
why do you want mine?

     Bring tribute from the village.
But the village is gone in your flood.

     That cleared site is what I want.
Live in the opening where there is no door
to hide behind. Be pure absence.
In that state everything is essential.

The rest of this must be said in silence
because of the enormous difference between light
and words that try to say light.

/ Bill Schulz / 1 Comment

Our suffering today is psychological, relational, and addictive; it is the suffering of people who are comfortable on the outside but oppressed and empty within. This is a crisis of meaninglessness, which leads us to seek meaning in possessions, perks, prestige, and power-all things that lie outside the self. When these things fail to give us meaning, we turn to ingesting food, drink, or drugs, or we become mass consumers to fill the emptiness within. Bill Wilson and his Alcoholics Anonymous movement have shown us that the only way to stop seeking, needing, or abusing outer power is to find the real power within. The movement’s twelve-step program walks us back out of our addictive society. Like all steps toward truth and Spirit, the twelve steps lead us downward, to the power within, which the program rightly refers to as our Higher Power. – Richard Rohr

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People who are oppressed or poor know every day that the current system is not just. They have little to lose and everything to gain by seeking justice. People on the top invariably support the status quo. Why wouldn’t they? It’s working for them. You will always want to “conserve” the system that has got you where you are. Without empathy for those Jesus called “the least of the brothers and sisters,” our politics on left or right will reflect self-interest and show little concern for the actual common good. Starting with the Exodus, and Yahweh’s identification with the enslaved Israelites, the Scriptures consistently show a rather clear bias toward the bottom of society as the necessary starting point. Any other starting point has far too much to protect and cannot hear or speak what is necessary for the common good. – Richard Rohr

Found In A Storm – William Stafford

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

A storm that needed a mountain
met it where we were:
we woke up in a gale
that was reasoning with our tent,
and all the persuaded snow
streaked along, guessing the ground.

We turned from that curtain, down.
But sometime we will turn
back to the curtain and go
by plan through an unplanned storm,
disappearing into the cold,
meanings in search of a world.

grayscale photo of waves

Photo by Matt Hardy on Pexels.com

Saint Judas – James Wright

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms.