Forget Me Not
Wednesday morning is my commitment to post a bible study, comment, or something that's more holy than I'm, and I'll do that before I press "Publish". But something first.
This past Sunday morning as I rushed to finish getting ready to leave for church, I paused to scroll email. From A-Poem-A-Day, this caught my eye and, in all honesty, my heart, and I made mental note to return and find it. Yes, it's long; and yes, it's sentimental; and yes, its style and rhyme and lack of cynical sarcasm is out of fashion with most poetry preferred by today's self-anointed intellectual elite; and yes, for me to publish it tells more about me than generally I'm comfortable sharing. But no matter! To my knowledge, only my friend Robert is as sentimental as I about people and places we have known and loved in our many long years of life. So even if nobody else gets it, I know Robert will get it.
FORGET ME NOT
Ann Plato
When in the morning’s misty hour,
When the sun beams gently o’er each flower;
When thou dost cease to smile benign,
And think each heart responds with thine,
When seeking rest among divine,
Forget me not.
When the last rays of twilight fall,
And thou art pacing yonder hall;
When mists are gathering on the hill,
Nor sound is heard save mountain rill,
When all around bids peace be still,
Forget me not.
When the first star with brilliance bright,
Gleams lonely o’er the arch of night;
When the bright moon dispels the gloom,
And various are the stars that bloom,
And brighten as the sun at noon,
Forget me not.
When solemn sighs the hollow wind,
And deepen’d thought enraps the mind;
If e’er thou doest in mournful tone,
E’er sigh because thou feel alone,
Or wrapt in melancholy prone,
Forget me not.
When bird does wait thy absence long,
Nor tend unto its morning song;
While thou art searching stoic page,
Or listening to an ancient sage,
Whose spirit curbs a mournful rage,
Forget me not.
Then when in silence thou doest walk,
Nor being round with whom to talk;
When thou art on the mighty deep,
And do in quiet action sleep;
If we no more on earth do meet,
Forget me not.
When brightness round thee long shall bloom,
And knelt remembering those in gloom;
And when in deep oblivion’s shade,
This breathless, mouldering form is laid,
And thy terrestrial body staid,
Forget me not.
“Should sorrow cloud thy coming years,
And bathe thy happiness in tears,
Remember, though we’re doom’d to part,
There lives one fond and faithful heart,
That will forget thee not.”
++++++++++
For the Bible study I think maybe I'll work on the lesson (below, scroll down) from Romans a bit.
Part of it in my mind is thinking about what it means to, let's say, an Evangelical Christian I once knew, compared to what Paul meant when he wrote it, what? maybe 55 to 60 AD?
Countering my insistence that James is right, "faith without works is dead" and a Christian is bound to live a certain way, "strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being", a friend who described himself as an Evangelical Christian once told me I was wrong and, quoting the verse "if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved", and said all you have to do to be saved is accept Christ, confess him as Lord and believe God raised him from the dead.
His religious, faith, and spiritual concern was not Others, the poor and oppressed whom Jesus loved, but Himself, to be "Saved" and, again to quote Jerry Falwell, "as sure for heaven as if he was already there". As an Episcopalian, I think that's ridiculous and outrageous, I'm seriously problematic with it as a hollow and selfish excuse for religion. First, with the idea of being "saved": if the object of religion is to be saved, meaning get into heaven when I die, religion is rubbish, or to use Paul's word, σκύβαλον (look it up). That wasn't why Jesus came, he did not come to teach us to focus on Saving Ourselves so as to go to heaven when we die, he came to teach us to Live for Others; he came as Show and Tell, to tell us God's values (love God love neighbor) and to show us a godly life, himself the example of chesed, agapē, lovingkindness. When we become Christians - - officially at baptism, I suppose, as the church practices it, although Jesus would Take & Bless & Break & Give the Bread with unbaptized Gandhi - - when we become Christians we covenant to live life a certain way, specifically the Way of the Cross, a way of love and sacrifice. Being a Christian is, therefore, not what I believe, but how I live because of what I believe. And how I live because of what is Right, as Sunday's collect that I commented on yesterday prays, not in any way with an eye on earning or achieving or qualifying for afterlife.
And Paul's idea of salvation was not "to say the right words and believe the right things" so as to be as sure for heaven (in the sky) as if you were already there, but Paul's belief that the End Time was imminent (as signaled by God's raising Jesus from death to life) and that only those who lived under the Creating God, the God of Israel - - God and Father of Jesus Christ - - would qualify to be citizens of the forthcoming Kingdom of God on earth, which would be ruled by Jesus Christ at his Second Coming.
Again, Paul's mission as he saw it was to bring non-Jews into the faith of Christ (i.e., under the reign of the God of Israel who raised Jesus and would raise us also) so that when the End Time came (which, again, Paul was certain was imminent as shown by God's resurrecting Jesus, the first fruits of the upcoming General Resurrection, from death to life), one could, depending on how God judged one to have lived if dead, and to be living if still alive as Paul expected, be part of God's new kingdom on earth, which, with Jesus coming on the clouds to institute and lead it, would replace life on earth as known.
Like Jesus as a man, Paul was a person of his age, his era. A flat-earther, Paul never had the stunning experience of being taken aback by peering through a telescope into the heavens
and seeing what all is out there, or of knowing that earth is a speck in a solar system that is on an outer edge of a galaxy of billions of stars like our sun,
that, 100,000 light years across,
is one of some two-hundred-billion such galaxies.
I'll add that, considering Paul's "ignorance" in life as it was two thousand years ago, God only knows what, two thousand years from Now (as we Now are two thousand years from Paul), people will look back and see how ignorant we were in our self-assumed worldly sophistication.
So, what am I saying, what is all this for faith and religion in the 21st century? I'm not disparaging Christianity, except as it is blasphemed and depraved for reasons of Self instead of, as Jesus meant, lived for Others. I propose read, study, explore, discuss, learn, "seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will", to quote the inscription in the lintel over the library door of one of the (Episcopal) theological seminaries I attended forty years ago.
And finally, combining my sentimentality,
and Ann Plato's poem Forget Me Not,
around forget-me-not flowers,
and my love for charismatic Christianity
with its moving praise songs,
and the Romans lesson for Sunday,
and our Acclamation of Faith
Christ has died
Christ is risen
Christ will come again,
and the forget-me-nots once again,
I will add the lovely mantra from the Taize Community
Jesus, remember me
when you come into your kingdom:
T+
The Epistle
Romans 10:5-15
Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say?
“The word is near you,
on your lips and in your heart”
(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”