Borrowed

 

When is the last time
you borrowed something;
a cup of sugar,
a tool or piece of equipment
from a neighbor;
a book
from the local library?

The sugar was used,
but the neighbor knows
you’ll return the favor
when it’s needed.

The tool or book,
though, was treated
with respect and returned
in good working condition.

That’s what
good neighbors do.

Our grandchildren
and great grandchildren
called the other day
to remind us
that we’re borrowing
the earth from them.

They’ll be along
to borrow it
from their descendants
in due time.

Let’s all be sure it’s
still fully functional.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Age

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

I am 60.
You may be older.
Or not.

  We may have grown up
  in different times;
  likely in different places.

   Our experiences weren't the same,
   yet we have shared
   an essential common denominator:
   life.

  It has shaped us;
  bent us, cracked us,
  sometimes broken and crushed us,
  stretched us, grown us.

   In the time and space
   that lies between us
   here and now,
   let us not use our differences
   to compare and compete,
   as if there is a prize
   or a finish line
   which only one or a few
  of us can reach.

  Let us, instead,
  place our stories and ourselves
  side by side,
  daring to reveal our true selves
  to one another,
  unvarnished and without the need
  for peripheral accessories.

   Let us weave the power
   of our collective selves
   into a garment of hope;
   a hammock in and from which
   the fire of love can be kindled
    in our souls;
   a quilt of grace
   to comfort the cosmos
   in all its fractured places.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Fireside

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

When our hearts tremble,
  and language ceases 
  to be a healing salve,
  O God; 

when we feel 
  ourselves falling through 
  the cavernous cracks 
  of grief or any number 
  of deconstruction’s 
  shape-shifting forms; 

when we’re neck-high 
  in a soul-deep ache, 

we pray you’d send us 
  folks whose own brokenness 
  is forming them 
  into wounded healers, 

and give them 
  wisdom and courage 
  to sit with us,
  close to the fire, 

less afraid of melting,
  and more concerned 
  about becoming 
  the chalices of grace 
  for which we’re all created. 

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Original Sin

 

And you shall hallow 
the fiftieth year and 
you shall proclaim liberty 
throughout the land 
to all its inhabitants. 
It shall be a jubilee 
for you: you shall return, 
every one of you, 
to your property 
and every one of you 
to your family.
(Leviticus 25:10)

   Pasty Euro-crackers
   dreaming of domination,
   reservationed all the natives,
   laying claim to their nation.

   With crops to be picked,
   and a dearth of willing labor;
   slaves were deftly stolen
   from our African neighbors.

   Everything was rosy
   ‘til the war that wasn’t civil,
   which opened up a can
   of enshrining racist drivel.

   A crow named Jimmy
   cawed from the field.
   His song was enacted,
   disproportioning the yield.

   More for those of us
   whose melanin is lighter.
   Power to the people
   whose skin’s a skosh whiter.

   Statues loomed, statutes passed,
   guaranteeing segregation,
   ‘til civil took a right turn
   bringing hope to the nation,

   which made the work harder
   concealing mongered fear,
   but school to prison pipelines
   grow larger by the year.

   Twixt taxation sans representation
   and for-profit quota incarceration
   lies but a stretch of generations
   and a smidge of pigmentation.

   Now we double-down
   on both language and skin,
   exploiting neighbors to the south
   for cheap labor once again.

   As hate’s become accepted,
   rising to a whole new level,
   we’ve become a poster nation
   for dancing with the devil.

   Make no mistake about it,
   this undercurrent’s strong,
   ‘cause it’s never gone away,
   and it’s still as wrong as wrong.

   Can we join our hearts and voices,
   confessing as a nation,
   that our sin runs to the core
   and it’s past time for reparations?

   © 2019 Todd Jenkins

The Heart of the Matter

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

In the midst of everything,
  isn’t most of humanity’s
  systemic othering
  really about exploitation
  for economic purposes?

If the bottom line
  is a number,
  indicating cash/profit
  in a bank account,
  or stockholder dividends,

I can justify
  taking all I want
  from your labor,
  leaving you
  with a pittance;

I can lock you in chains,
  or even completely erase you,
  via outright degradation
  and the questioning 
  of your very humanity.

When we get to the core
  of relationships and community,
  we will find ourselves,
  not at the bottom line, but
  at the heart of the matter,
  where loving people
  and using things —
  not the other way around —
  is the divine order
  of creation.

  © 2019 Todd Jenkins

Freedom

Photo by Gay Jenkins Howell

 

We are free — uninhibited —
to use whatever physical,
emotional, and cultural resources
we find at our disposal
(AKA, our privilege,
power, and possessions)

to do whatever it takes
to unbind and unshackle
other people from
whatever is keeping them
in chains,
physically, mentally,
emotionally, economically.

Everything else we do
that is not specifically aimed
toward expanding freedom —

including doing nothing,
looking the other way,
or denying the
potential for change
that exists within
our own status —

all of this action and inaction,
adds to our own enslavement.

The further we move
from expanding freedom’s reach,
and the longer
we hoard it for ourselves,
the closer we are coming
to a world
that will be uninhabited.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

$$$

 

   Dollar, Dollar, Dollar,
   you are our only god.
   No matter our protest,
   you drive our every thought.

   We drag you deep and deeper
   into a very private pod,
   creating our own selves
   as what everyone else ought.

  Imagining worlds of dearth
  where enough doesn’t live,
  we scapegoat other folks
  and count them as inferior.

  You mesmerizingly teach us
  it’s better to receive than give.
  We fall for it day after day,
  constructing ourselves as superior.

 Thought and taught for generations,
 now disdain is proclaimed aloud,
 withering the world with bucketfuls
 of icy hate and caustic vanity.

 Before it’s too late, teach us, Lord,
 none can put pockets in our shroud.
 Give us abiding fire in our souls
 to live and breathe respect, dignity, community.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

The Table

Then he told them a parable, “The land of a rich man 
produced abundantly…” (Luke 12:16)

What if, instead of having a dialogue 
with himself alone, 
and deciding to build bigger barns, the man 
with beyond-bumper crops had decided to build 
a bigger table and sit down with his neighbors 
to listen to and learn their stories? What kind 
of world would that create?

The Table

  Fear trolls the neighborhood,
  like a creepy ice cream truck driver
  on a summer afternoon,
  his drama divisively blaring
  a dissonant angst
  from his rooftop speakers;

   but Hope, standing steadfast
   and firm in the front yard,
   her roots sunk deep
   into the garden of faith,
   laughs Love into the story,
   until we all realize the deep chasm
   between drive-by sweets
   and the magnificent feast
   of divinely designed community.

    Hope’s picnic table
    has a seat for everyone.

   Her splendid meal is always prepared
   with the richness of mercy
   and the tenderness of forgiveness.

  With her words, her eyes,
  her heart, her actions,
  the invitation is clear,
  “Come to the table of grace.”

   Yes, 
   “Grace is the word
   that’s spoken here;
   we seek to let it flow
   as hope and comfort far and near
   so everyone will know.”

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Be the Flame

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

    It may seem random,
  but I have my doubts,
  when the passion and pain
  of life overpower
  the entrenchment
  of cultural anesthesia;

    when the fire within us
  refuses to be extinguished
  by the sprinkler
  of status quo.

    The divine spark
  of the cosmos
  has hidden treasure troves
  of holy phosphorus
  deep within
  each one of us,

    hoping against hope,
  praying against rain,
  for the flint of love
  to strike against
  the granite of power
  and influence,
  thus kindling
  sacred possibility.

    Be the flame
  igniting the fuse
  of transformation.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Freedom

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

      Freedom, when coopted
   by ego, hubris, and greed,                   
      loses its essential
     collective component,

 and devolves into nothing more
  than a privatized commodity
    available to the richest
    and most powerful, alone.

       It becomes tyranny,
    turning “E pluribus unum”
  into “Pauci ex multis sumptibus.”
  A few, at the expense of many.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins