Kierkegaard’s Ghost

(News that’s fake, but credible)

Kierkegaard’s Ghost has acquired, through an anonymous source, a copy of the original draft of President Trump’s December 17, 2019 letter to House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, prior to editing by the president’s communication team. The text is printed below.

Deer Pee pee Pelosi

This impeechment thing is so unfair! You are just mad cause I beet Hilery 2016 by a land slide. You are just jelus cause I am the best president the cuntry ever had. The ameriken peeple love me. Fox news poles that say they want me out are rong. Fox is fake news. They sed they were my frends. But Fox and frends are not frends. Except Tucker Karilson. He is still my frend. The rest are not frends enymore.

Impeechment is an ugly word. But it is an importent word. It is an expensive word. Expensive things are good. I have all expensive things. Very expensive things. The best things muny can by. But you took an expensive word and made it cheep. That was very bad of you. It shoes you are a bad person. All the democrat party is bad persons. They are all very bad to me. They have been bad to my famly. Very bad. They made my famly feel bad. And that is bad.

You shud be ashamed of yourself. The founding fathers would be ashamed of you if they knew you. But they don’t know you cause there dead. But if they were not dead, they would be ashamed. Ashamed of you. Not me. They wood be proud of me. Cause I am the best president ever. I made a big wall to keep bad people out of the cuntry. I made a tax bill that made the stok market go up. I made lots of jobs for black people even though they do not like me. But they shuld like me cause I was very nice to them. I gave them lots of jobs.

You sed my call to valdumer zelincky was abusing my power. It was not! It was a perfect call. The perfectest call there ever was. It was a butiful call. All my calls are butiful. But this call to mister zelincky was the perfectest call I ever made. But you sed it was bad. All the democrats sed it was bad. That is a lie! It was a very very very good call. Everybody says it was a perfect call exsept you and your very bad frends. You shud be ashamed!

You are very unfair! Joe Biden goes to ukrane and does many bad things and you say, oh, that’s joe. We like joe so he can do what he wants. Donald Trump has a perfect fone call and you say, oh Donald is bad! He did a bad thing! We have to impeech him. You just like joe Biden beter than me and so you treet him nice and me mean. That is very unfair. You are a very unfair person and so is the democrat party. Very unfair. Rudy juliani knows who the bad person reely is and he is going to tell evryone how bad joe Bidan is.  Rudy is my frend. He is not mean to me. He helps me like you shuld help me. You wud help me if you were a good person. But you are a bad person so you don’t help me.

Adam shiff is also a very unfair, very mean person. He was very mean to me and said things that are mean. He sed I put myself in frunt of the cuntry but I did not! I put the cuntry ferst. I always put the cuntry ferst. But nobody in the senate is going to lisen to shiff. The democrats will lisen, but there are more republicans than them so they can think what they want. It won’t matter. The republicans, who are more, lisen to me. They know I made a perfekt call. They know I did not do bad things. They know I do good things. So they will akwit me no matter what the bad democrats say. Akwit means say I did not do anything rong. And that is what they will do. You can’t stop them from akwiting so buggers on you!

Yours truly

Donald J. Trump

P.S. This is you.

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FAKE NEWS ALERT: The above article is satirical. The events it describes didn’t happen.  “There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn’t necessarily a lie even if it didn’t necessarily happen.” John Steinbeck

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25

Prayer of the Day Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. With your abundant grace and might, free us from the sin that hinders our faith, that eagerly we may receive your promises, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 1:20.

Matthew’s Christmas narrative begins with an unplanned pregnancy. There is no romanticizing this narrative. No angel appears to Mary with glad tidings about the child she is carrying. The angel speaks only to Joseph and only in dreams and only after the baby is well on the way. We can surmise, I think, that the engagement of Mary to Joseph was arranged as was usually the case in 1^st Century Palestine. Marriage in that context was more a business arrangement between two families than the culmination of a courting ritual between two individuals. Thus, Mary’s pregnancy threw a wrench into the workings of a carefully negotiated social contract, thereby threatening not only her own reputation, but the peace and stability of the community. Given these realities, Joseph’s resolution of the problem appears both humane and pragmatic. Setting Mary free to marry the father of her child will keep peace between the families, preserve public respectability and spare Mary the stigma of adultery.

But things are not always what they seem. Turns out that Mary’s pregnancy, is “from the Holy Spirit.” That changes everything-though it might have been cold comfort to Joseph.  The Spirit has been known to work God’s redemptive purposes out of some very unsavory circumstances. If the lengthy genealogy set forth in the previous seventeen verses had been included in our gospel reading, we might have been better prepared for this.  The royal line from Abraham and Sarah to the promised messiah leads right through the middle of incestuous unions, prostitution, seduction and adultery. From all that we can discern in the text, the assurance of the Spirit’s involvement, whatever shape that might have taken, was all the information Joseph was given when commanded by the angel in his dream to do the counterintuitive, namely, take Mary as his wife. This is the Christmas story as we have it from Matthew.

The gospel narrative does not tell us anything about how Mary became pregnant or how the Holy Spirit was involved. The temptation to fill in the blanks with what we think we know from Luke’s gospel or to negate the scandal with doctrinal assertions is strong. Yet I believe we need to resist that temptation if we are going to hear this narrative faithfully. I believe Matthew wants us wonder how the Holy Spirit could possibly be working in the midst of this seemingly unholy circumstance. I believe Matthew wants us to wonder why, after going through the painstaking effort of recounting the holy family tree from the patriarchs and matriarchs down to Joseph, he begins his narrative with a pregnancy wholly unconnected to that lineage. I believe that Matthew’s gospel would have us stand squarely in the shoes of Joseph as he contemplates the command given to him in a dream that must grate on his every instinct.

This is a timely exercise as we seem to be confronted with a whole panoply of circumstances from which nothing good appears to be coming anytime soon. The grim news given to us regularly by the scientific community concerning the progress of climate change does not admit of any “silver lining.” Moreover, just when global leadership is required to meet this crisis, global institutions, international treaties and strategic democratic alliances are falling apart before a wave of populist nationalism giving expression to the darkest and most violent human instincts rooted in blood, soil and nation. You have to look long and hard at this dark picture to find even an inkling of light.

In the face of what well might be the dawn of global catastrophe, the story about a dream, a promise and a child is a slim reed upon which to hang our hope. Yet this fragile gospel tale that begins with so much scandal, doubt and ambiguity is, in fact, all that the church has ever had to offer. For those with ears to hear it, the Nativity story blows like a fresh wind over all the stale hopes that have disappointed us. As Americans, we have always believed in our constitution and our democratic institutions to ensure justice. We have always looked to our superior military might to defend our freedoms. We have always believed in the innate goodness of our nation. But today we find our government paralyzed, our military powerless to achieve the lofty objectives of peace and security we set for it and our politics beset by a rising tide of racial hate and nationalist sentiment calling into question our national character. Nevertheless, in the darkness of this dying empire expiring in the midst of a disintegrating world, “God is with us.” The Spirit is moving. The young woman has conceived. The child has been pushed out into the glaring light of day. God has become human, holds us with human arms, loves us with a human heart and makes room in our tortured existence for divine hope: hope for the healing of our past; hope for newness in our present circumstances; hope for creation’s future.

Disciples of Jesus are realists in the sense that they recognize and acknowledge the full scope and extent of evil. But they also recognize that evil is not the only thing out there. As the anonymous poet says, God slipped quietly into the world through the messy consequences of an unplanned pregnancy. That changes everything. Because “God is with us,” the Spirit of God is also always an active part of the mix in whatever is going on. For that reason, we often witness surprising, unexpected and redemptive moments in the middle of the most painful and hopeless circumstances. The wasteland created by the Chyrnobyl disaster is recovering faster than scientists anticipated and has become a thriving refuge for animals threatened with extinction. The demilitarized zone between North and South Korea has likewise become a revitalized stretch of jungle habitat that in recent decades has become all too rare in Asia. The election of Donald J. Trump has awakened us to the ugly reality of racism deep in our psyches and the systemic perpetuation of white privilege in our schools, our workplaces and our government. More importantly, the recognition of that reality has spurred many of us to break our silence and to speak and act boldly in the face of oppression.

I don’t mean to say here that God causes bad things to happen in order to bring about a greater good. Rather, it is the case that God takes whatever evil the world throws in God’s direction and works redemptively with it. So however apparently hopeless the circumstances, there is always a “God factor” at work that frequently surprises us with good news where we least expect to find it. Sunday’s gospel, along with all of the other Advent scriptures, challenge us to plan for the unplanned and expect the unexpected.

I Sing of a Maiden

I sing of a maiden
That is makeless:
King of all kings
To her son she ches.

He came also still
Where his mother was
As dew in April
That falleth on grass.

He came also still
To his mother’s bower
As dew in April
That falleth on the flower.

He came also still
Where his mother lay
As dew in April
That falleth on the spray.

Mother and maiden
Was never none but she-
Well may such a lady
God’s mother be.

Anonymous verse composed sometime in the 15^th Century. Source: Chapters into Verse, Edit. Robert Atwan & Laurence Wiler (c. 2000 by Oxford University Press) pp. 251-252.

Kierkegaard’s Ghost

(News that’s fake, but credible)

Today President Donald Trump signed an executive order cancelling the 2020 election. “The president feels this is the best way to prevent foreign powers from interfering in our elections,” said White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham. “No election, no interference.” Democratic leaders expressed outrage at this latest of Trump’s moves. “This is a bald face affront to the United States Constitution,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “It’s lawless and intolerable!”

Representative David Nunes scoffed at the Speaker’s remarks. “There they go again. Unconstitutional this and unconstitutional that! All this proves is that the Democrats are singularly focused on taking down the president.” He went on to say, “They [Democrats] complained because they were afraid the Russians were interfering in our elections. They cried when Donald Trump identified the real source of interference in Ukraine and tried to put a stop to it. Now they whine because the president finally fixed the problem once and for all. Nothing this president does will ever make the Democrat Party happy.” Representative Kevin McCarthy also criticized the Speaker, saying “They are still just sore because they lost in 2016. They should thank us for sparing them the embarrassment of losing again in 2020!” Representative Jim Jordan agreed, telling reporters “first they used an impeachment proceeding to remove the president. But now it looks like that isn’t working for them, so they are trying to use an election to take him down.”

Democrats announced that they will be seeking a ruling from the courts on the President’s executive order. “Let ‘em,” said Attorney General William Barr in response to inquiries to his office. “We will drag this through the courts and by the time it gets to the Supremes, the old lady will be retired and we’ll have another of our own boys on the bench. Once that happens, the constitution means whatever we say it means.” Speaking to reporters later this afternoon, Chief of Staff Mick Mulvani similarly shrugged off the Democratic claim of constitutional illegality. “Presidents violate the constitution. Get over it,” he said.

Phone calls made to the Democratic National Committee concerning the fate of the upcoming primary debate remain unanswered to date. However, an anonymous source within the organization told us that, as far as she knows, the debate will be held as scheduled. “I suppose that, given the president’s order, the candidates won’t have much to talk about,” she said. “But then again, what else is new?”

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FAKE NEWS ALERT: The above article is satirical. The events it describes didn’t happen.  “There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn’t necessarily a lie even if it didn’t necessarily happen.” John Steinbeck

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Isaiah 35:1-10
Luke 1:46b-55
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11

Prayer of the Day: Stir up the wills of all who look to you, Lord God, and strengthen our faith in your coming, that, transformed by grace, we may walk in your way; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

John the Baptizer is in a bad place. Sitting in Herod’s dungeon with no prospect for release and, as we know, soon to lose his head, things are looking pretty dark. The coming of God’s servant to baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire failed to materialize as John had announced. The mountains of oppression remain as high as ever and the valleys of suffering too deep to plumb. John must be wondering whether the prophetic word he received and preached was not, after all, a delusion. Perhaps he had been mistaken about Jesus, whose ministry thus far has failed to dislodge corruption, oppression and violence in order to make way for God’s coming reign. Maybe he had been wrong about everything. Perhaps the way things are is the way they always will be and, in the words of a presidential chief of staff, we just have to “get over it.” Out of this dark place comes the question posed to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Matthew 11:3.

Jesus does not answer John’s question. He gives John something better than an answer. He gives John a sign. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Matthew 11:4-5. These tidings didn’t break down the doors of Herod’s prison or put even a dent in the tyranny of Rome. But perhaps they were just enough good news to crack open the darkness of John’s despairing mood and ignite in his soul a tentative hope. Often, a sign is just enough to make all the difference.

Our psalmody is Mary’s jubilant song celebrating God’s victory over violence, tyranny and injustice. Note well that Mary is in a particularly vulnerable spot just now. Her people are living under military occupation. She finds herself pregnant and unmarried in a highly patriarchal culture. Mary’s circumstances provide a striking contrast to her bold declaration that the promised reign of God has broken in to set right the inequities and injustice under which she is living. Yet if we go back a few verses, I believe we will discover the “sign” that set in motion this lyrical hymn of victory.

We read that Mary, upon learning of her pregnancy, goes to visit Elizabeth who is herself pregnant with none other than John the Baptizer. No sooner does Mary arrive at Elizabeth’s doorstep than the baby in Elizabeth’s womb turns, evoking her well known declaration: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb lept for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”  Luke 1:42-45. Just as Jesus’ message brought light and hope to John in Herod’s dungeon, so John’s joyful in utero dance brought inspiration to the mother of our Lord for what we know as her Magnificat.

I have never been in circumstances as dire as those of John and Mary. But I’ve had days when it seemed like the church I was serving was coming apart at the seams; days when it seems like nobody in the church had the faintest idea what we are doing or why; days when petty personal disputes and inconsequential controversies sucked all the oxygen out of the congregation; and days when it seemed as though nothing I did made a damn bit of difference. It was on one of those days that I was passing through the hall of the nursery-kindergarten school my church operates. I heard the sound of several little voices singing a song entitled “Seek ye First the Kingdom of God,” a song I had taught the children in chapel just a few weeks ago. The singing swelled as the pre-kindergarten class came down the stairs. The teacher smiled at me and shrugged. “They just started singing. I have no idea how it got started.” All I could manage to say is, “Thanks everybody. You have no idea how much I needed that!”

Signs are not capable of creating or sustaining faith. Many people ended up rejecting Jesus in spite of having witnessed the signs he performed. Furthermore, Jesus makes clear on more than one occasion that signs are not an entitlement. e.g., Mark 8:11-12. We have no right to demand divine confirmation ensuring that we are on the right track every step of the way. Yet we can pray for eyes to see signs and ears to hear them when they do come our way.

God in God’s mercy often sends signs just when they are most needed. There is a remarkable episode from the The Two Towers, the second volume in J.R. Tolken’s Lord of the Rings, illustrating the point. Protagonist Frodo and his servant, Sam, have embarked upon an impossible mission in the dark land of Mordor. Against all odds, they must transverse a ruined landscape occupied by fierce enemies to destroy a ring whose powers threaten the very fabric of their world. Wearied and nearly broken by their journey, the two come upon the ruined statue of a once great king that has been broken and defiled by enemy forces. It looks at first blush like one more illustration of the enemy’s triumph. But then-a sign.

“Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king’s head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. ‘Look, Sam!’ he cried, startled into speech. ‘Look! The king has got a crown again!’ The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed. ‘They cannot conquer forever!’ said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell.” Tolken, J.R.R., The Two Towers, (HarperCollins e-books) p. 919.

The gospel does not tell us how John the Baptizer responded to Jesus’ message about his healing the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf and his raising the dead and preaching good news for the poor. But I would like to think that it brought a smile to John and caused him to remark to himself, “they can’t conquer forever!”

Here is a poem by Alan Brilliant illustrating the promise of signs and the loss incurred by ignoring them.

Searching for Signs

I am searching now for signs and wonders
Which, when younger, I might have had
For nothing, nothing at all, but which,
When older, I threw, despised, in the street-
Things of little value, spurned by the stupid.
What were these things? The works that
Embody and in their time transform
All poets destined for great singing
When, in their maturity, the pluck up the pearl
Lodged and nourished in the treasure of the heart.
But, for me, cursed with sloth
There will be no art
No enameled bird, no cup, no forge.
When, in my youth, I heard the clamor
Of the mob and was afraid, I turned and ran
And since that time am unmanned.
Oh, I did not betray a gift, an artifact
But only what was me and mine.
Instead of winding the golden thread
Up in a ball and following
Until the tall trees and blood-red fruit
Screamed Paradise I examined and searched
Pretending I needed more: “I need more time,”
I said. And, stooping, bowed the head
To look in mud and in that mod
Lies the pearl but it is long gone.

Source: Poetry, (1969). Alan Brilliant (b. 1936) is the founder of Unicorn Press in Santa Barbara, California for which he served as Director. He was married to Teo Savory, who both wrote for and assisted in the editing operations of Unicorn. Brilliant was a good friend and collaborator with Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and author of the spiritual autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain and the well known New Seeds of Contemplation.

Kierkegaard’s Ghost

(News that’s fake, but credible)

Kierkegaard’s Ghost is proud to publish this editorial by our distinguished guest contributor, Rudy Giuliani, America’s Mayor and attorney for president Donald J. Trump.

Dear United States of America,

Let me dispense with the pleasantries and get right to the point. Donald Trump is your president today and will be after November 2020. Get used to it.

Please don’t bore me with your recitations of all of Donald Trump’s moral deficiencies, corruption and incompetence. I know all about that and so does his base. We don’t care. We don’t care about BLM demonstrations. They only help your president make his case for law and order. We don’t care that over 120,000 Americans have died from Covid-19. That is all the fault of Obama, Hillary, George Soros and the Deep State. We believe that Donald Trump is the one who is going to fix it and our minds can’t be changed.

Do you think I don’t know that Donald Trump’s base is dumb as a bag of hammers? That’s obvious. You heard Trump himself say his supporters were so hopelessly stupid that they would keep on supporting him even if he were to murder an innocent person in public. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have known then and there that they had just been insulted. Not our stalwart base! Donald Trump could torture a puppy to death in the Oval Office on national television and the base would still adore him. That’s what makes him invincible. You can shout facts all you want. Donald will just tell his followers that it’s fake news cooked up by the press and the Deep State. They, for their part, will swallow it hook, line and sinker, turn around and dismiss your facts as lies. They believe what they want to believe which is always what Donald Trump tells them.

And here’s the thing. As goes the base, so goes the Republican Party. It’s no secret that even moral ciphers like Mitch McConnell are somewhat concerned about the conduct of our president. But they will back him no matter what comes out of the Muller Report, the impeachment hearings, the BLM protests or how many people die from Covid-19. They will support Trump to the end because the Trump base is the soul of their party. There is nothing left of the Republican party beyond adoration of Donald Trump and they know it. Crossing Trump is political suicide. Ask Jeff Flake. That’s why Mitch follows Donald into the rose garden nuzzling his pant legs like a stray cat looking for dinner. That’s why Trump can call Ted Cruz’s wife ugly and his father a murderer, yet still Ted comes whimpering to lick the boots of his president and plead for an endorsement. As the Good Book tells us, the sheep know the vice of their shepherd.

“The truth will prevail,” you say. Let’s have a little talk about truth, shall we? I have to confess that I love watching liberal politicians and the press go into conniptions whenever Donald Trump says something that is obviously inaccurate. “How does he keep getting away with it?” they ask with exasperation that amuses me to no end. They just can’t get it into their elite brains that facts don’t matter. Truth has nothing to do with facts. Truth is pictures, pictures deeply ingrained in the hearts and minds of white Americans-and not just those within Trump’s base. Frightening, disturbing pictures burned deep into the white man’s soul. Pictures of taxes eating away at their hard earned savings to feed social programs for people too lazy to work. Of course, we never said these folks were black. Nobody has to. It’s all in the pictures. Yes, pictures of lily white daughters seduced by the sons of dark skinned immigrants and foreigners with unchristian faiths-or no faith at all. Pictures of a nation where faith, family, patriotism and the flag no longer matter. Call Donald Trump ignorant, incompetent and inarticulate. But he knows instinctively how to summon up these pictures and employ them to convince white Americans that the America they know and love is being taken away from them-and only he can take it back. You can make all the fact based rational arguments you want, but it’s the pictures white Americans will take with them into the voting booth. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

And one more thing. After November 2020, it’s no holds barred. The press, the instigators of impeachment and disloyal members of this administration will-let’s just say “go through some things.” And having put the troublesome concern over re-election behind us, you can be sure the kid gloves will come off when it comes to dealing with protests.  “What about the rule of law?” you ask. “What about the United States Constitution?” Let me tell you something about the almighty Constitution. It’s just a piece of paper. In fact, it’s so frail it can’t survive outside of a helium-filled case in a darkened room at a temperature of 70 degrees and constant humidity of 25 to 30 percent. Expose it to the open air and the light of day and it falls apart like a cheap shirt. That’s your Constitution. Law is only a matter of words. Truth, the only truth that matters, is in the pictures: blood, soil, race, nation.

You, America, are not the only people driven by these pictures Donald Trump so skillfully evokes. You saw what happened in Britain with Brexit. You see what is happening in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Brazil and Argentina. You see the populist tide rising in Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and other places around the globe. This time there will be no alliance of democratic states to stop it. Trump is the future. Join that future or be crushed under it.

Sweet dreams America,

Your Beloved Mayor,

Rudy Giuliani

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FAKE NEWS ALERT: The above article is satirical. The events it describes didn’t happen.  “There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn’t necessarily a lie even if it didn’t necessarily happen.” John Steinbeck

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12

Prayer of the Day: Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming nurture our growth as people of repentance and peace; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.”  Isaiah 11:9.

In last week’s reading from Isaiah, the prophet assured us that the day will come when the nations of the world forsake war and turn their weapons into farm implements. If you thought that improbable, you must think utterly absurd this week’s oracle about predatory animals becoming vegetarians and living peacefully among those formerly their prey. Isaiah’s vision of such a peaceable world runs contrary to everything we know about the biosphere. Death is an essential feature of ecology. One generation dies to make room for the next. Healthy vegetation lives off the remains of animals and plants that have died and been absorbed into the soil. The population balance between herbivores and the plants they need to live is kept in check by carnivores. Take death out of the ecological equation and the biosphere implodes. A world without death and killing is unimaginable.

But that might well be the point. The problem is not the boldness of Isaiah’s vision, but the poverty of our imagination. The oracle diagnoses an inability on our part to imagine existence without violence and death. It has become axiomatic that death, along with taxes, is inevitable. That being the case, we make room for death in all of our thinking, planning and doing. Death is always the unacknowledged yet ever present elephant in the room guiding our financial planning, directing our politics and shaping the way we think about heath and medicine.

Violence, too, is accepted as part and parcel of what it means to live. Consider how thoroughly the language of warfare and violence has permeated our talk about every facet of life. Political movements are labeled “campaigns” with strategy meetings taking place in “war rooms.” When someone experiences illness, we say they are “battling” the disease and often say with admiration “he’s a fighter.” We “draw lines in the sand” when discussing issues critical to us and vow that we will “go to the trenches” defending our point of view. We speak of all our social problems in terms of warfare. Our government’s legislature has declared war on poverty, drugs, crime, illiteracy and a host of other abstract nouns, thereby illustrating the truth of the now well worn adage: when the only tool in your box is a hammer, all your problems start looking like nails. I sometimes wonder whether it would be possible for us to have a conversation about anything if all these battle metaphors were magically cleansed from our vocabularies. Or would having to choose new metaphors compel us to think differently, creatively and imaginatively about our world?

The prophet’s job is to kick our imagination into gear. That is important because faith is impossible without imagination. There are mysteries that only imagination can grasp. That is why Jesus always spoke of God’s reign in parables. It is why Paul, after speaking at length about the resurrection of the dead, finally dispenses with all analogies and says, “Listen, I will tell you a mystery!” I Corinthians 15:51. It is why John of Patmos resorts to the lurid images of apocalyptic literature to speak of Jesus’ final victory over the powers of death and of the new creation in which “death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” Revelation 21:4.

What we confess in our creeds to be true is bigger than what we are able to comprehend or even imagine. Yet if our imaginations can be stimulated to grasp even fragments of these mysteries, it becomes easier to imagine and visualize anew the things we can comprehend. The impossible becomes plausible. It becomes possible to imagine Israelis and Palestinians sharing the land and living side by side in peace; to imagine a world in which no one is food insecure or without access to medical care; to imagine an international forum in which disputes between countries are resolved without resort to warfare. Prophetic imagination is what “prepares the way of the Lord.” Matthew 3:3.

Here is a poem by Phillis Wheatly speaking to the power of imagination.

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44

Prayer of the Day: Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. By your merciful protection save us from the threatening dangers of our sins, and enlighten our walk in the way of your salvation, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.” Romans 13:11-12.

“Wake up, people.” That cry came from an angry teen at a recent forum on climate change. I think that young man was expressing the frustration so many of his generation feel watching the devastating effects of climate change in so many parts of the world as we “adults” remain in denial. Jesus uses “sleep” as a metaphor for denial in our gospel lesson and he warns his disciples that it is not their friend. Denial takes many forms. We are of, course, familiar with those who, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, insist that climate change is a “hoax.” Similar claims are made by fringe elements about the Holocaust and the Sandy Hook shootings. But denial often takes a more subtle form. Sure, climate change is real, but it’s not an immediate concern. Of course, the murder of six million Jews in Europe happened-but that was in the past. Antisemitism isn’t a real threat anymore. So, too, for decades we white Americans consoled ourselves with the belief that racism belonged solely to America’s past and that the election of Barack Obama was proof. The surge of racial hate and nationalistic fanaticism that brought Donald J. Trump to the White House has, I hope, dispelled that notion and caused us to “wake up” to the corrosive effect of these dangerous ideologies at work in government, the workplace and even in our churches.

In our second lesson, Saint Paul exhorts the church in Rome to “wake up,” but for an entirely different reason. His wake up call is made, not to warn the church of impending danger, but to alert it to the glad news of impending salvation. “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed,” the apostle declares. His call to wakefulness implores his hearers not to become distracted, not to grow weary with waiting and not to forget that, however deep the darkness, they are to live as though the day of resurrection has already arrived. This is not merely another form of denial. The dangers and temptations of the darkness are very real. The world as we know it is falling apart at the seams just now. It may be too late to avoid many of devastating consequences of our ecological irresponsibility. Our nation’s government and the democratic practices and traditions that once sustained it may be damaged beyond repair. The resurgence of overt racism in our country might have made its eradication the work of many generations to come. These are the undeniable realities. But Jesus would remind us that, in addition to being the death rattle of the old creation, these things are also to be understood as the birth pangs of the new. In the midst of what looks for all the world like death, God is at work bringing forth life.

At least for those of us in the northern hemisphere, the church calendar begins during the darkest part of the year. As I look out the window into my back yard, I don’t see a spot of green. Everything looks dead. The weather is dark and rainy. There isn’t much evidence of life. If I had not seen it happen every single year of my life, I would never believe that in five short months the dead underbrush will be producing slivers of green, then multi-colored blossoms and finally lush, emerald hued leaves. If I were a visitor from some other world, I wouldn’t anticipate the population of this acre with butterflies, dragon flies and birds of every color and description. The coming of spring strikes me as natural and expected only because I have seen it repeatedly. Indeed, it would be remarkable were spring not to come.

Advent is all about hope. It is the beginning of a journey through holy narratives that will teach our hearts to expect the remarkable transformation of creation from death into life. This pilgrimage will train our eyes to look for the day when the nations “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks [and] nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Isaiah 2: 4. Understand that by hope I do not mean mere optimism or a dogged determination to “look on the bright side” even when there is no bright side. Hope is grounded in Jesus’ resurrection. Resurrection, of which Jesus is the “first fruits,” is the end of creation. It is the end, not merely in the sense that it ends the reign of death, but in the sense that it reveals the end toward which creation is moving. Jesus’ resurrection is the future pushing into the present, the light by which it is possible to look into the present darkness and find even there the seeds of life that is eternal.

Understood in this way, Jesus’ resurrection renders moot the question of when the end will come. It came on Easter morning when Jesus rose from the tomb. It comes today when the resurrected Christ opens the scriptures to us and sets our hearts on fire. It comes when on playgrounds, in churches, across borders, on the streets and within families the divisive powers of racism, tribalism, nationalism and patriarchy come down in some small way. The end comes when the people of God, chosen out of every tribe, nation and tongue, worship the Lamb as one in the creation made new. That’s not something you want to sleep through!

Here’s a poem by Joanna Klink speaking about the fragility and resilience of hope.

Half Omen Half Hope

When everything finally has been wrecked and further shipwrecked,
When their most ardent dream has been made hollow and unrecognizable,
They will feel inside their limbs the missing shade of blue that lingers
Against hills in the cooler hours before dark, and the moss at the foot of the forest
When green starts to leave it. What they take into their privacy (half of his embrace,
Her violence at play) are shadows of acts which have no farewells in them.
Moons unearth them. And when, in their separate dwellings, their bodies
Feel the next season come, they no longer have anyone to whom
To tell it. Clouds of reverie pass outside the window and a strange emptiness
Peers back in. If they love, it is solely to be adored, it is to scatter and gather
Themselves like hard seeds in a field made fallow by a fire someone years ago set.
In the quiet woods, from the highest trees, there is always something
Weightless falling; and he, who must realize that certain losses are irreparable,
Tells himself at night, before the darkest mirror, that vision keeps him whole.

On the verge of warm and simple sleep they tell themselves certain loves
Are like sheets of dark water, or ice forests, or husks of ships. To stop a thing
Such as this would be to halve a sound that travels out from a silent person’s
Thoughts. The imprint they make on each other’s bodies is worth any pain
They may have caused. Quiet falls around them. And when she reaches
For him the air greens like underwater light and the well-waters drop.
They will see again the shadows of insects.
They will touch the bark and feel each age of the tree fly undisturbed
Into them. If what is no longer present in them cannot be restored,
It can at least be offered. Through long bewildered dusks, stalks grow;
Rains fill and pass out of clouds; animals hover at the edges of fields
With eyes like black pools. For nothing cannot be transformed;
Pleasure and failure feed each other daily. Do not think any breeze,
Any grain of light, shall be withheld. All the stars will sail out for them.

Source: Raptus. (c. 2010 by Joanna Klink, pub. by Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA), LLC.) Joanna Klink (b. 1969) is an American poet. Born in Iowa City, Iowa, she received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She earned her Ph.D. in Humanities from Johns Hopkins University. Her awards and associations include the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award; the Briggs-Copeland Poet from Harvard University; the Jeannette Haien Ballard Writer’s Award; the Civitella Ranieri; the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship; and The Bogliasco Foundation. Klink has published several collections of poetry, including They Are Sleeping; Circadian; Raptus (from which the above poem is taken) and Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy. She is currently a member of the poetry faculty at The University of Montana. You can find out more about Joanna Klink and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.