DRIVING TO ELLENSBURG ON I-90
TO STUDY BONHOEFFER
WITH STEVE
BEFORE THE 2024
ELECTION
--for Steve Hill
Driving home he says
these things
come up on his phone
every day--
I get the last one:
What good shall I do?
This thing called
grace, the cheap one,
what we talk about.
Steve’s catalogue
built from yard
sales, a garden with no
white space,
surrounded
(immersed?) by the
homeless
(and every homeless
plant
re-planted) is a
catalogue of things
to do daily
advocating for those
living in tents,
sleeping under tarps.
Shopping carts,
dogs, doorway
urinals, letters to
city hall, nothing
eliminated from
Steve’s agenda.
You don’t go off
the handle,
ever? Nope.
What would that do?
The book
in his bag, today,
Trash.
But I thought you
were reading Bonhoeffer?
Steve is costly
grace. Steve has
his twenty people,
it’s such a small
circle, he says,
walking me through
his compost system,
from kitchen
waste to aged-top
soil, showing me how
his sprinklers
keep things moist.
Here pick
some figs, he says.
This is Cedar
Monroe’s poor
white journey, Trash.,
still deep suffering
to attend to,
still much work to
be done,
Steve handing
Monroe’s book
to me in the car,
paraphrasing
his own neighborhood
full of color,
and poor whites: 66
million poor
whites in America:
If you are housed,
or at least a verbal
agreement to live somewhere…
Pastor Monroe. His
cross on his desk:
We are not trash.
The systems that kill us
are trash, his
epilogue his anthem. Steve’s
got his hat on, his
suspenders,
in cutoffs, looking
at a boarded up
Victorian house as
we drive
neighborhoods:
Wouldn’t it be fun
to get that house
and a bunch of kids
and fix it up!
Bonhoeffer knows
deeply, he knows,
how the Gospel
gets turned into its
opposite through
such easy moves. How
does Jesus
read scripture! So
interesting.
Where do you begin?
The way Steve opens
his phone--
Names what he’s
grateful for,
three things, asks,
What good shall
I do today, saying
Good things will
happen.
One can’t be
Christian and nationalist.
Answer your own
questions.
Jim Bodeen
20 September-1
October 2024
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