This post is part of ARC’s Chronicles of Change and Hope series. This is a curated project for sharing stories, songs, prayers, poems, images, or insights that capture a moment of connection or new life. It is a place to share small acts of resistance or transformation you want others to know about. Rights remain with the contributors. To contribute to Chronicles, read more here.
Today’s contribution is a piece of poetry. The work comes to us from ARC member Karel Reus, who wrote to us from Melbourne, Australia and shared the piece with us as part of a status update. Recently, Karel said we could share this piece with you all and we’re excited to do so here. Speaking about this piece among others he shared, Karel said the following:
At 82 I embark yet again on one of my periodic life-reviews. In retirement I look back on latter-day pursuits: photography, the writing of poetry, a brief return to pastoral ministry (abandoned in 1980) along with a re-exploration of theologies long put aside. The poetry developed in step with the honing of photographic skills and the realisation that these two arts shared an interest in images. The theology kept making return appearances, and insistently laid claim to shaping my images, be they visual or verbal. My major preoccupation in recent years has been with the poetic, which I have come to understand as infusing the crafting of images in visual and verbal terms.
The poetry is pretty much a late interest. It has been encouraged by poet-friends. I have not been much interested in the formal aspects of poetry. I wouldn’t know an iambic pentameter, or a sonnet, if I tripped across one in the street. What I wrote, from the beginning, was free-form and it’s content was determined by experience and a toying with truth. The theology crept in, unbidden, almost unnoticed.
A Plain Man’s Take on Theology (Chalcedon 451 CE)
There’s a meeting up the street.
A bunch of churchy heavies
pomping about in fancy dress,
making points
in language unfamiliar
to me.
Maybe I’ll pop in,
or maybe not;
there are bouncers at the door,
and no seats for plebs like me.
I’ve got a mate that did get in
because he carried baggage.
He heard a crazy argument
about Jesus being a godly man
and being a manly god -
at the same time
would you believe?
If that’s what an education does for you
I’ll give it a miss.
They do this with straight faces,
would you believe?
There’s a bunch that will look you in the eye
and tell you there is no difference between
one and three,
and will tell you
that your salvation
depends on it.
“Trust me” they say,
but they ask questions I have never asked,
and don’t begin to know the questions
I hold dear.
“Get a life” I say.
“It’s all codswallop” to me,
and I don’t give a rat’s arse
for your wordplay.
Tell me something that matters;
about my work and my death,
about my trembling hand,
about my sick child,
about my crook back,
about paying my rent,
about flood and drought,
about helping and being helped,
about diabetes,
about aching joints.
Tell me Jesus is a friend.
Tell me I will find God within me.
Tell me my sins are not dead ends.
Tell me my life has meaning.
Tell me my church is for me and mine,
and let those gladiators
who brandish words like weapons
leave us, and pursue their power games elsewhere.