THIS IS HE, THE BOY FROM NORTH DAKOTA
LOOKING STILL AT BETHLHEM LUTHERAN CHURCH
“Whatever stains you, you rubbed it into yourselves”
Seamus Heaney, Bann Valley Eclogue
Our yard, fenced, full of lilac,
large enough to pasture the pony.
Front doors of the white-board church
across the street, large as our front porch.
Jesus at Gethsemane, my mother’s tears,
farmers in suit and tie, wearing hats.
My father’s blue feet in a bowl of hot water.
Looking in and out, ever-present God.
Jim Bodeen
6 November 2013
“YOU WILL RECEIVE AS MUCH AS YOU BELIEVE YOU RECEIVE…BELIEF
ALONE IS THE BEST AND ONLY CONDITION…” MARTIN LUTHER,
MAUNDY THURSDAY SERMON, 1518. NO BLESSINGS ON OFFENSIVE
WAR FROM LUTHER, AND WARS WAGED FOR THE GOSPEL ARE
WORKS OF THE DEVIL. LIBERTIES TAKEN IN PARAPHRASING BY
HEIKO A. OBERMAN IN HIS BOOK: LUTHER, MAN BETWEEN GOD AND
THE DEVIL, ARE EQUALLY INTOXICATING AND FRUSTRATING. HE
MUST HAVE BEEN IN HIS LATE 60S WRITING THIS BOOK, AND HE WAS
DEAD AT 70. IMMORTAL. EVERYONE IS EXPOSED
IN HIS UNWORTHINESS. LOOK INSIDE WHAT CRACKS MEDIEVAL:
ALONE IS THE BEST AND ONLY CONDITION…” MARTIN LUTHER,
MAUNDY THURSDAY SERMON, 1518. NO BLESSINGS ON OFFENSIVE
WAR FROM LUTHER, AND WARS WAGED FOR THE GOSPEL ARE
WORKS OF THE DEVIL. LIBERTIES TAKEN IN PARAPHRASING BY
HEIKO A. OBERMAN IN HIS BOOK: LUTHER, MAN BETWEEN GOD AND
THE DEVIL, ARE EQUALLY INTOXICATING AND FRUSTRATING. HE
MUST HAVE BEEN IN HIS LATE 60S WRITING THIS BOOK, AND HE WAS
DEAD AT 70. IMMORTAL. EVERYONE IS EXPOSED
IN HIS UNWORTHINESS. LOOK INSIDE WHAT CRACKS MEDIEVAL:
Obermann crosses into Luther with gusto.
And Luther falls into the confusion of the last days.
At table with a genuine folk Bible.
A folk Bible. “We are only beggars.”
What would he have done without the devil?
The new layman is an old monk.
The 95th thesis: be confident entering heaven
through tribulations rather than false security.
True theology rejects the urge for power.
Take in the food, not its meaning.
This alien faith separates Luther.
The reddish brown magisterial beret.
Not from Saul to Paul, but from the world to the monastery.
The illustrious Black Monastery.
A wanderer between two monastic factions.
Time and again, led where he did not wish to go.
God is closer to me than I am to myself.
Resorting to the German; Latin being one cool remove.
A word could be translated in very different ways.
The alien word goes to the root.
The alien word is the Gospel which is not my own.
My knowledge does not suffice if I do not rely on the alien
word.
I cannot trust my own conscience.
Odd statements of despair needing the other.
I do nothing but receive, but I must spend a lifetime
dealing with this, turning treasure in my hands again and
again.
Ordinary water. New layman in the old monk.
Method in the invective in the battle against slander.
The protest against merciless fathers.
The historian opposes the poet with all his might.
Luther can be seen as a follower of Bernard of Clairvaux.
A reform catalog lacking any claim to eternal validity.
A monk proclaiming last days, not a modern age.
Occupying places only as strangers or pilgrims.
The elephant in the room being the Third Reich.
God everywhere. But God being here is not
God being here for you. No career path to Rome.
The divinely noble business of marriage.
God-present in sexual instinct.
Shunning wisdom and moral strivings.
Make love to yours while I make love to mine.
Profession and vocation. Walking the narrow way.
Not a straight gate. The painful way
opens when I’m torn from my own conscience—
the one seeking peace in its own holiness.
A Huckleberry on a raft.
Down river raft-running with God.
Burning detritus in campfires as we go.
Jim Bodeen
Days of the Dead, 2013
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