Lifting Up

Lifting Up

(“Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument.” 1 Timothy 2:8)

There once was a group of men who thought it their task
to trip up the unwanted (liberals or lesbians), and unmask
the true who they were, like they knew who were the true.
The unmaskers wore death on their own faces, handling
truth as if it was their own invention, rambling about who
drank champagne at a wedding, roaring about the collared preacher
sharing a drink with a constituent at the bar. They never
realized how unseemly and bizarre the anger and red truly seemed
while they shouted until their throats nearly bled. But truth be told;
they never doubted they were the redeemed.

There once was a gullible few who surrounded the local school,
having heard, (hushes please) that a practitioner of witchcraft actually
had a home room where their children sat every day. This witch
might take every bit of their faith and purity away and must be
stopped. Surround the building, pray it down, let the angry God
they loved so much, take away her means of existence, and send her
homeless to another school where they didn’t care quite so much
about pagans again and again filling children with campaigns of
walks in the woods.

There once was a Man who had lunch with a man the best had
run out of town. He was chained, far past the first stoplight, clad
in clothes and holes ripped from the rages he could not control.
But One
began to step right into the man’s pain and suck the poison out
just like you would any rattlesnake venom.

There once was a Man who did not hide His affection for drinkers,
or prostitutes, or sinners or thinkers or stinkers like me. He
(I finally realize) enjoys my company. And, having come to see
His love is the gravity that pulls us in reverent orbit around the sun,
I will not join another group who tries their best to make a lesbian homeless,
a pagan jobless, a pastor with a beer graceless. I am (finally realizing)
made of the same stuff as them. More weeds than garden, but full
of colors and enough seeds for next year’s harvest.