Jack Pelham

We are planted in this Greenhouse
To grow in righteousness,
Yet from the moment we sprout, the others
Start saying that it’s up to us
To decide what it’s all about.

The moment he figures out that
He has met someone smarter than him,
His heart sinks a bit, in recognition
That he himself should be smarter.

Not every true thing is conveniently obvious. And even so, large numbers of people may well operate on the assumption that all true things are—or should be—obvious. It is a common overestimation of human capability, often based on the assumption that what can be detected should be detectable without effort—and more particularly, detectable by our natural human senses.

Here are a few ways it happens:

In some things,
If getting help
Is beneath you,
Then so is success.

When faced with a reality in which your spirit was created by God and will have to give an account for what you’ve done when your life is over, these are your choices, as it appears to me:

1. Embrace the situation and sincerely do your best to please God, learning as you go.
2. Reject the reality, and live however you want, either:
   1. Forthrightly denouncing the reality in full (as an atheist might),
   2. Being sloppy about some of the details of what God wants, and pretending that sloppiness is OK, or
   3. Deliberately twisting some of the details into something you like better, and pretending you’re devoted to God as you do it. (Think about it: #2 is also an example of this #3.)

The not knowing is so untenable for his untrained mind
That he has learned to unleash his brain
And send it scurrying off into the weeds
To retrieve whatever it may for a narrative
By which to explain the situation.

There is the concept, however rare, that one might like to invest his efforts in the common good, without concern for how he might grow rich from it—whether in money, or in the acclaim of those he esteems.

He looks with disdain on the Churchers,
Recoiling at the sick hypocrisy he sees.
And he wants nothing to do with it—

With the Churching, that is.

Let’s pretend that it’s all
Somebody else’s fault,
And not our own.

And we can point our fingers at them
And feel happier than we would
If we were dealing with ourselves.

And they’ll get mad, of course—
Because they are like us—
And then we’ll get mad—
Because we are like us, too.

And life will be better that way
Than if we were to be honest and
Rational and responsible for ourselves.

There will not come a day
When diet and exercise
Are not important—
Though there will come
A thousand upon which
They do not feel important.

And one wonders how such a gauge
Could be so often off.