Exposing the toxicity of our times;
Why is Dallas Green So Blue? ;
The “Ask Not” Speech Remembered

What’s Happened to Civility?
Exposing the toxicity of our times

The landscape of our politics
is littered with (it makes me sick)
all kinds of garbage thrown about
that’s toxic and untrue.

The air’s polluted by our hate.
It’s everywhere in every state.
The donkeys act like jackasses.
The elephants like beasts.

Campaigns are viewed as holy wars
where words (like weapons) aim to score
a victory at any price
while peace is left to die.

What’s happened to civility?
Without it our democracy
is window dressing (nothing more)
and likely doomed to fail.

Why is Dallas Green So Blue?
Reflections on a 9 year-old’s tragic murder

So why is Dallas Green so blue?
I’m thinking that you would be too
if your granddaughter was gunned down.
You might be red with rage.

A yellow sun up in the sky
that watched that little princess die
observed a blacktop stained with blood
and turned white-hot with scorn.

But in the brownish Tucson sand
the footprints of one guilty man
remind us all of our gray hearts
most vulnerable to sin.

A highly-prized World Series ring
is not worth much. It’s only bling!
When it’s compared to human life,
there’s not much to compare.

* Dallas Green, who played for the Philadelphia Phillies in the Sixties, went on to manage the team two decades later. In 1980 he led the Phillies to their very first World Series title. Sadly, the nine year-old girl who was one of the six killed in Tucson last week was his granddaughter.

The “Ask Not” Speech Remembered
What a remarkable speech it was!

Fifty years ago this week
I heard my childhood hero speak.
He asked me not to seek to get
but rather seek to serve.

A boy of eight (that’s all I was)
inspired by this leader’s cause
and captured by a Boston brogue
I’d never heard before.

Although I later came to learn
what JFK should well have spurned,
his “don’t ask” message was Christ-like.
“Don’t seek to be served!” “Serve!”

“For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45

What would the Generals say?;
Confronting Taller Ants

Don’t Ask? Don’t Tell?
What would the Generals say?

Generals Patton and Mac Arthur
had no clue just who was gay.
But now that you can ask and tell,
I wonder what they’d say.

Would they accept it as the norm
or would they think it queer
that gays who shower next to straights
can scan the crowd and leer?

How would they view esprit de corps
with troops who don’t agree
on what it means to be a man
or who their crush might be?

Would they prefer to not take sides
and look the other way?
Or would they buck what Congress did
in tolerance of gays?

Confronting Taller Ants
What bugs me about our culture

Taller ants. They’re all the rage.
They are the mascots of our age.
But lest we think they’re all so great,
remember they’re still ants.

It bugs me that they think they’re hot
and act like shorter ants are not.
But ants are ants and nothing more.
How dare they rule our lives?

It’s time that taller ants take note.
There’s no free pass for those who gloat
about what culture claims as fair
that actually is not.

* taller ants is often spelled “tolerance”

Cradling hope in our arms

The old year’s passed. Another’s born.
But lest we grieve what’s gone and mourn,
let’s hold the baby to our heart
and dream of what’s in store.

Let’s contemplate what lies ahead
acknowledging the past is dead
without fixating on regrets
or paralyzed by guilt.

The birth of what we now embrace
is diapered in God’s boundless grace.
Within the face of this new year
the gaze of hope is seen.

Here’s to a new year just begun
that first will crawl, take steps, then run.
This brand new baby represents
all that the Lord intends.