December: Creative Platypus

December

Loving Christmas is easy
As a child;
You have to learn to hate it.
Business encroaches and
Seasons fall out of joint
The further finance forces you
From home.
Moloch always did hate children.

I tried to find the snow
That fell at Christmas
But it withered with the
Carols that Anglicans are
Too holier-than-thou to
Sing.
Or maybe it was just the
Commercialism Harvey blew
All the way to the windy side
of Thanksgiving.

There was no magic
In those eight lost years
When we hauled our own
Christmas trees from the
Jones' and set them up
Beneath the vault of a
Cathedral ceiling.
There was pain in every
Movement of the saw.

These words are blood upon
The snow.
They lead past the river to
Our exile.

Comments

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My wife and I were listening the other day to Dr. Fred Sanders give a paper of California Theological Localism. It was one of the more technical pieces we've heard from him, and it was fun to stretch our brains a little. If I understand it right, the main idea of Theological Localism is that place matters and will shape the theology of its inhabitants in certain ways. This could be seen as determinative, or merely as fodder for apologetic engagement, both of which Sanders rejects as insufficient or problematic. What exactly is wanted seems to be a theological engagement with place, specifically California, in a way that Sanders and company feel has been neglected. If that's not clear, the fault is mine as a listener or a writer. Of course, the idea of a theology of place caught my attention and my immediate response was "someone should do this for New England." New England, after all, is its own peculiar place with, by American standards, a long, va...

Platypus of Truth

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