Jack Pelham

Having done a good thing,
He may impatiently wish it to be celebrated
As the summary of his life,
Though it was, in fact,
Just one moment of millions
In an unwieldy saga,
So lengthy as to make dubious
Any particular snapshot
As a proper icon for its cover.

You can make a new rule
Every time some blockhead
Transgresses common sense
Or common decency
And fouls things up.

He’s long been pretty sure that the other party is incorrigible,
So he was glad to join this one.
But if he’s like most, he’ll invest a lot of years in this party
Without ever realizing that it has its own incorrigibilities,
And is not the champion of goodness he had assumed.

He had only cared enough in the beginning
To ask whether this party is better,
And did not care enough to ask
Whether it is good enough.

I must have missed that memo from Jesus to the Christians―long revered and frequently alluded to (though strangely, never cited)―where he tells them that they must passively put up with the nonsense of others, and where he explains abashedly that he himself has since learned better than how he lived while he was here.

If I ever find a copy, though, you can bet that I’ll post it right here.

At some point, won’t you be forced to face the fact that, even if you are the perfect patriot, fortified with all wisdom and diligence, the corruption in your own party runs so deep and wide as to reduce your influence in it to something nearing one big, well-intentioned zero?

Technically, there’s a difference
Between don’t-care and don’t-care-much.
If if you’re on the receiving end,
They’re pretty much going to feel the same.

“If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”

Ralph waldo Emerson, (1803-1882). Journal, 1855.

Must I be the peddler of my own wares,
Chasing the masses down that slippery slope
And begging them in their native Marketese
To want what they do not, but should?

Perhaps there were other indicators
That they were not listening,
But the most obvious always seemed to be
That they simply were not reading his book.

He had hitched his wagon to the church,
And the church, to the nation―
And off they went, waving their flags
And singing their songs,
And having no real need of Jesus
Beyond some name-dropping here and there―
Which seemed pious enough to them, even if
It infuriated the Jesus they never knew―
Who stayed aloof, anyway,
And never crashed their party.

The one Christian thinks his Christianity was fully settled from the get-go, and that all he has to do to please God from here on out is simply to be.

The second thinks that what happened from the get-go was just a starting pistol, and that to please God is to become like Jesus.

The third can’t quite accept the aloofness of the be idea, but neither can he wholeheartedly embrace the full accountability of the become idea. He will never settle into either camp, and has no other choice but to be confused between the two.