Forgive Us

 

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

Forgive us, dear Lord:

  for whitening you up
  to match our own
  mirrored reflections;

  for declaring our own
  personal experience of you
  to be normative;

  for lashing you
  to an anemic
  nationalist paranoia;

  for attempting to cleave
  our fawning over you
  from our created
  responsibility to neighbor;

  for disguising
  a self-protecting interpretation
  of holy writ
  as divine word itself;


  for confusing
  a comfortable cultural enclave
  with your cosmic community.

Forgive us, dear Lord,
and deliver us
from ourselves and
from the tiny hotbed
of hopelessness
 with which we have
surrounded ourselves!

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

10-8

 

Injustice is war
in its most clandestine
and heinous form,

where suffocation
slowly chokes the breath
out of all whose place
has been deemed
to lay beneath dignity,

whether from differences
of language, ethnicity,
religion, nationality, or
some other contrived metric;

all baptized beneath the flags
of sociocultural acceptance,
legal justification,
and economic necessity.

When the echo
of this violence circles ‘round,
splattering blood on our faces,
let us dare to recognize it
as a call to action.

Let us risk our very lives
to be among the dismantlers
of hate’s shackles,
and the reconstructors
of hope’s house.

   ***

Jesus is on the mainline
Tell Him what you want
Jesus is on the mainline
Tell Him what you want
Call Him, call him
Tell Him what you want

“Jesus on the Mainline”

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Abundance

 

Economies built
  on a model of scarcity
  have no place or patience
  for gifts that grow
  when they are freely shared.

These oddities are a threat
  that cannot be controlled,
  and the system will go
  to any length
  to limit, and
  eventually destroy them.

In the end, however,
  the love of power
  doesn’t stand a chance
  against the death-defying
  power of love.

It is abundance
  that will rule the day,
  in the end;
a rule made manifest,
  not by vicious grasping,
  but by open-handed sharing.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Saints Alive!

 

There lies deep within
   the human heart —
   yours, mine,
  and everyone else's —
  a vision and desire
  for how life is supposed
  to be lived.

Some days,
   we feel it clearly
   in our bones.

Other days,
  it might as well be junk-mail,
  relegated to file 13,
  or the spam folder.

On our best days,
   when the hallway
   between heart and head
   has been swept clear 
   of ego’s debris,
  and the wall lamps 
  are filled with oil,
   wicks trimmed,
  and shining their light
  for all to see,
   we can glimpse the incarnation
   of divine desire.
  Here is what we see:

images of connection
  without coercion,
   dreams of enough
   without competition,
  hunger for community
  without uniformity,

thirst for intimacy
  without betrayal,
   hope for understanding
   without judgment,
  longing for love
  without condition.

All this is within us;
   divine spark planted
   before we were born.

There are but two impediments
   to our bringing
   this vision to life:
  fear and scarcity
  as primary motivators.
   Fear, as leader
   in life, is a liar.
  So is scarcity.

That’s why so many stories
   of divine encounter begin
   with the holy plea,
   "Fear not!"

Now is the time
   for the communion of saints
   to not only speak to us,
  but to come alive
  within and around us;
   to light a holy flame
   within us, collectively,
  so that we join forces
  with those who plowed and planted
  sacred seeds in our lives.

Now is the time for us
   to live from this deep place;
  to rise up to the grace
  for which we were created.

Now is the time for hope
   to reveal the strong roots
   she has sunk
   in communities of faith,
  to nourish our courage.

Now is the time
   to set aside a myopic view
   of scarcity, in favor
   of the divine lens of abundance,
   recognizing that resources aplenty
   are not a blessing themselves,
  but rather an avenue
  through which God’s blessing flows.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Release

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

  I wanted to give you something,
  but the Holy Spirit whispered,
  “Don’t give; share.”

   I wanted to share
   something with you,
   but I was struggling
   to decide what it would be.

  The Holy Spirit offered,
  “Instead of you deciding
  what they need,
  why don’t you ask them?”

   I looked at all I have,
   then looked in the mirror,
   and I realized that none of it
   really belongs to me.
   It belongs,
   and always has belonged,
   to God.

  The Holy Spirit smiled,
  “Now, we’re getting somewhere!”

   To be present to poverty
   is to realize that the things 
   we can hold 
   (and have held) 
   in our hands, 
   no matter how much of them 
   we can control and possess, 
   will leave us empty. 

  It is to be hungry 
  and know that something else – 
  a substance or quality 
  that is fully beyond
  our capacity to generate –  
  is necessary to be truly filled; 

   to be thirsty and sense 
   that something we cannot 
   pour, grasp, or control 
   is key to slaking our thirst.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 
(Matthew 5:3)

© 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

Re-Imagining

 

 

It is the very breath
of faith, but also
a monumental threat
to institutions;

the sacred call
to dig deeper,
into the flower pot of faith
and find rich humus
that pulls us
and all the universe
toward one other.

When the uncontrollable
breath/wind/spirit
of the holy breaks
into the buildings
of religion,
everything stapled
to the tidy bulletin board
of control is torn loose,
tossed into
the blender of love,
and spun into a concoction
of hope.

The prayer shawl
of grace
wraps and comforts
all who dare
to walk along
this roof’s edge
as the sun rises and sets
for another day,
another generation.

Lord, give us wings
to flap toward
your divine design,
that we may be reimagined
by the overflowing faith
you daily pour
upon and through us.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Planting

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

  Where there is violence,
  let us sow violins.

Where there is mistrust,
let us sow, “Join us!”

  Where there is fearing,
  let us sow endearing.

Where divisiveness is the tool most-used,
let us sow, “What’s it like to walk in your shoes?”

  Where there’s them-ing and othering,
  let us sow sistering and brothering.

Where hatred flies from flame-throwers,
teach us, O God, to be hope-sowers.

  Before the next flood and between
  lightning’s flash and claps of thunder,
  whatever’s been sown before
  needs to be plowed and turned under.

Time for replanting has been here
for a long generation or more.
What, in the name of all that’s holy,
are we sitting around and waiting for?

© 2019 Todd Jenkins