Wordtreasure

What Kind of God?

Hebrews 2:14-18

The gods consume nectar and ambrosia on Olympus
and amuse themselves by looking down on us
dispassionately. Cool detachment is a sardonic business.
Hellenism insists we see things as they are.
For right thinking, the body and its desires are a barrier;
we are cautioned to keep the mind completely clear.

Hebraism counters that the body and its desires
are a barrier to right action. The Lord requires
clarity of thought chastened by strictness of conscience.
The principal rubric of the Law is studied obedience
to the will of God. The Lord has a vertical presence—
aloof except to chastise with corrective fires.

The unknown author of the book of Hebrews crystalizes
the Christology of Paul by defining a different kind
of divinity in which the pioneer of our salvation identifies
with the human condition. Jesus is wholly man
as well as divine and, thus, he thoroughly understands
what it means for us to live imperfect lives.
 
But there is more. It is well and good to know
the Lord has empathy, unlike the dispassionate pantheon
or the distant God of Moses. It begs the question:
what can be done about our suffering and sorrow?
The pioneer of our salvation has come to earth to show us
exactly what we need for true consolation.

Contact: davebaldwin37@gmail.com

Inspired by Scripture

A Pinwheeling Leaf

Now for sale in paperback. The blurb is out of date. The book has 99 poems.

[tanka]

a bee swarm of ducks
lifts off from the wetlands,
then forms a V…
what kind of no-mind
makes them do that?

Perfume

Christmas was coming.
I walked into J.J. Newberry,
the five and dime on Huntington Drive,
and approached the perfume counter.
The saleslady could see
I didn’t have a lot to work with.
She tried to fit quality to my budget
by showing me a tiny container
of a popular brand.
I was not impressed.
I pointed to a larger rectangular bottle
with very pale blue glass.
The price was four dollars.
I put my money down
and left the store
feeling good about myself.
On Christmas morning,
Mother opened my gift
of cheap perfume from the five and dime
and made a great show
of thanking me for my kindness.
“It’s the thought that counts.”

NOTE: This poem is from my book Bud and Mary, which was just released on Amazon. It recalls an incident at Christmas 1951 when I was nine years old.

Abraham’s Bargain

Genesis 18:16-32

The Lord is angry. I ask the Lord,
“Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
If you are just, would that be fair?”

I stand before the Lord and ask,
“If fifty are righteous, will all be swept away?”
The Lord responds, “For the sake of fifty,
I’ll save them all.”

I am the master of the deal.
I got it down to fifty.
But then I wonder if we have that many.
I’ll bargain for a lower count.

I stand before the Lord and ask,
“If thirty are righteous, will all be swept away?”
The Lord responds, “For the sake of thirty,
I’ll save them all.”

I am the master of the deal.
I got it down to thirty.
But then I wonder if we have that many.
I’ll bargain for a lower count.

I stand before the Lord and ask,
“If ten are righteous, will all be swept away?”
The Lord responds, “For the sake of ten,
I’ll save them all.”

I am the master of the deal.
I got it down to ten.

(Slower)

Then the Lord went his way
And I returned to my place.

(Resume)

The Lord is angry. I ask the Lord,
“Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
If you are just, would that be fair?”

I am the master of the deal.
But I knew not the hearts of men.
Even ten was a count too high.
Ten souls were a count too high.

In the end, he saved the righteous.
The children of my children fan the earth
Because he was just, he was fair.

(All on the stage face the congregation, raise their arms, smile, and shout)

I am the master of the deal!

Announcement

I uploaded three of my poetry eBooks to Amazon this week. Go to Amazon.com and select Books. In the search engine, do this: (a) Type “Bud and Mary Baldwin”, (b) Type “Inspired by Scripture Baldwin”, or (c) Type “A Pinwheeling Leaf Baldwin”

On the Bridge

Hebrews 4:12-16

The word of the Lord is an oscillating dialog
of course-corrections from the officer of the deck to the helmsman
as the helmsman utters “Aye,” repeats the command,
and turns the helm and tiller to the new heading.

Except the word is a quiet voice within
and not a person bellowing over the main.
Brothers and sisters, it connects God with man—
a constant conversation for those who choose to listen.

Cigars

Cigars evoke the stadium.
Whenever I catch the drift
of a great cigar,

I revisit the Coliseum
where you and I
would cheer the darkest team
In white America.
The tunnels reeked of smoke,
cigars especially;
today I miss the stench.

Cigars evoke for me
our best of times as father and son.
Whatever I meant to you
and you to me
in real life,
together we loved the game.

Now That I Am Dead

After reading “Evening Land” by Pär Lagerkvist

As I stooped through the low portal of death,
I saw my human fate
emptied out into a lethe.

Life’s luggage of love and hate
was left behind the wall;
the gardener burned my once-essential freight.

I asked myself if this was all.
Intelligent souls clicked like dolphins in the wind
on either side of the wall,

discerning everything. My mind
came clean; discernment whirled ahead
as soon as I was schooled by the garrulous wind.

Now that I am dead,
I know that God did not create the soul;
the soul created God instead.

Now that I am dead, I know the soul
imagined heaven straddling earth
where God was hired to rule

irascible man and iterative death/rebirth.
I dreamed of an infinite life,
a dream encoded before my birth,

because one life was not enough.
I know that paradise was once inside my head,
now that I am dead.

NOTE: I read “Evening Land” and wrote this poem over 30 years ago. It was published in 2018. We wrote book reports when we were in school. “Now That I Am Dead” is like that. There is a poignant tone of regret throughout about Lagerkvist’s loss of faith. I tried to capture his point of view here.

[haiku]

nightfall
a cricket aria,
then the chorus

Residents Only

How is this different from the deep south?
There is no “Whites Only” sign
on the front of the Orange Grove Plunge.

That’s one difference.
The sign says,
“South Pasadena Residents Only,”

and you need an official
South Pasadena resident ID card
to show at the door.

That gets you into the pool.
How do you get the official ID card?
You have to live in the city.

How do you get to live in the city
when every residential property
in the City of South Pasadena

is restricted to persons
of the Caucasian race?
The admitting person at the front desk

of the Plunge
knows this is an all-white city.
If you are a person of color,

you can’t buy a home.
If you can’t buy a home,
you can’t get an ID card.

If you can’t get an ID card,
you won’t get into the pool.
Again,

how is this different from the deep south?
There is no “Whites Only” sign
on the front of the Plunge.

NOTE: This is a memory from the year 1955 when I was 13.

You Do Not Always Have Me

John 12:1-8

The flowing lake is always filling,
but is never full.
Once there was a true sense of fullness—
of which all that now remains
is an empty print and trace.
The lake strains for completion
with waters around it—
seeking in things that are not there
the help it cannot find
in those things that are.
Instead,
there is a chronic ache
that comes from feeling incomplete.