Thursday, the Fourth Week of Lent

Thursday, the Fourth Week of Lent

Up against the wall Mother Church
waving your Standard Oil credit card
American flag and your Bible
pulling the lever that plugs you into the system
short circuit and all
sterilized for another four years.

You I love you because
God created the world
isn’t that strange
that I should love you because of that
the sun and moon and stars and dust
and a breath of fresh air giving life-giving air
wide open God left himself
and we gag on a diet of color TV dinners
and air-conditioned air
America you are beautiful
do you know you have made uncreation
your most treasured heritage
some of you have even gone so far
as to order law and order and uncreation
try it with Mom’s apple pie in the sky
off the tree off the wall
in the empty arena of the national past-time
God is the home team
standing up for the seventh-day stretch.

You I love you because
the the stone-hard-hearted law shattered
smashed in the confrontation with the golden calf
and your people were saved from choosing between
idolaltry of calf and idolatry of law
wide open God left himself
and in the wide-openness in the land without idols
wandering in the desert the gutted frustration
forty years a wandering god on a free no-home trial
portable god and solid no-state people
at his service call.

You I love you because
the angels finally got off their pinheads
letting the spirit of Yahweh escape
no longer fixed to the world by the cross
perhaps on a good day to crawl away or even fly
above the smog and small talk
that leaves a film of dust upon our souls
and burns our eyes red
white and blue gets into our joints.

America and Mother Church
joined in a civil ceremony
walking off into the sunset
you I love you because.