The Difficulty with the Amen

FOUR JANUARY SONNETS

TO CONDEMN OUR UNBELIEF BEFORE GOD AS LUTHER SAYS,

KIERKEGAARD ADDING, IT CAN BE DIFFICULT TO BE ABLE

TO REACH THE AMEN

1. My mother cleaned house

on hands and knees

washing the kitchen floor

and that's the way I learned,

too, about God and cleaning house.

Severe North Dakota winters

and pastors in black contrasted

with snow in their German names.

I refused them, even as I took them in.

I sang for my friend Dee Dee Sagness

at his funeral. He wasn't yet ten

when he died after they opened his heart.

I was in the junior choir laughing at practice

ashamed by my sobs as they carried him out.

2. Luther and Kierkegaard were as natural

for one like me as baseball games

coming to Mom and I from the Philco Radio

in the kitchen during summer.

I played with baseball cards

on the living room floor

while paying attention to all

that went on with God.

I had my own skeptical take on grace.

I knew the medicine man.

I sent smoke signals.

I had a camp out back.

Even then I had the pipe.

I didn't know a single person who lived close.

3. After I came back from war

I read Works of Love. I understood.

Right away I understood. I understood

what repetition gave. I knew

fear and trembling like the back of my hand.

By then I had a son. I walked up that mountain

with my hand on his shoulder, a loving father.

I gave him up. My own son. Gave him to God.

When I told my wife she was horrified.

I told her about the black ink on the knife.

I told her about cleaning it on my shirt.

I told her about vows taken for the poem.

She demanded to see the ink-stained shirt

and called me a pretender.

4. Believe me, I've walked past my share

of pretenders. And so many people

of wonder. Word men. Men handing out

epiphanies on the street. One who called himself

Jheezus Joyce. I named my grand daughter

Dheezus. My mother used to say, Jimmy,

you've gone too far this time.

When Kierkegaard's Sermons arrived

from Pastor Ronnie, I was in my 70s.

Jheezus God, where did my life go?

Welcome to the Kierkegaard Hotel

my friend says, Lots of rooms.

Could be heaven, could be hell.

Our foolish minds are weak, willing to be drawn.

Jim Bodeen

4 January 2017

LETTER TO PASTOR RON MARSHALL

AFTER READING HIS SERMONS ON KIERKEGAARD:

KIERKEGAARD IN THE PULPIT: SERMONS INSPIRED BY HIS WRITINGS

What you've done, here Ron, what you do,

with your two books, for me, is to bring him into our home.

Perhaps a second subtitle: Making Kierkegaard Familiar.

Going further, homely. Part of the furniture.

Knicked-up like the coffee table where your books rest.

Underlined and folded over corners. As old-fashioned

as he is young and uncomfortable in company.

That's him over there, sitting by himself. Not

with Dana Gioia on an airplane. Not at university.

 Not the bookstore at Holden Village, and not

in some backpacker's pack hiking the Crest Trail.

Not even the Church Library in West Seattle.

First Lutheran wants it closer. Faith

is not light as a dance, but it is heavy and hard...

the help looks like a torment, the relief like a burden--

Walking out the door after Sunday worship.

Disturbed at Starbucks with coffee cake,

interrupting Father Brown on PBS:

...there is mortal danger you will be by yourself.

Martin Luther understood through polar opposites,

repentance central to forgiveness, a requirement.

Luther in your voice clearer than in biography.

We are the offenders...God is the offended.

And this fearlessness: for we know how to rejoice

in sadness, and mourn in happiness. You

are a weaver, Ron Marshall, your fabric tight.

This is rich work, and you're the village pastor,

wily, and vigilant. Endure rejection. Like Christ.

This sentence, pure Ron Marshall, my favorite:

Can we believe in him for who he is,

rather than for what he does? Here you surface

in your own pure voice, as an author must.

Here is the question that validates.

Who he is cuts both ways.

Doesn't what he does do the same?

Atonement means that you step aside

and that he takes your place. I didn't

learn that from Kierkegaard, I got it

from a country church in North Dakota

as a child before I was ten. You set the table

for us in each of these 27 sermons.

That God may bless us rather than condemn us.

This is a breath of fresh air. 'Common bread,

heavenly bread.' Come to the altar today.

This is a sit-down dinner I can attend.

Dana Gioia's poem witnessing to refusal is framed in our kitchen.

Your footnotes filed as recipe cards.

You are the third voice denying yourself,

giving thanks for everything, never doubting God.

Jim Bodeen

4 January 2017