what if

What if there was a movement,
in every town and city,
(some successful and some not)
a movement whose founder aimed
for the destruction of empire
whose chapters struggled
(some successfully and some not)
for radical justice-loving,
and love-justice radicalism?

What if this movement has hovered
around the periphery of Western culture
for a thousand years, or two,
and its greatest successes
were usually kept silent?

What if it was made up ordinary souls
with penchants for sin or poetry or manual labor,
who bring themselves to the struggle,
or drift along obliviously
(sometimes successfully and sometimes not)?

What if there was a movement,
of myth and macaroni, of bread and jokes and power?
And what if they were recruiting?

[insert your church name here,
and photocopy or scrawl on torn-up advertisements.]

reformation sunday

Let our bones be broken,
and re-knit anew.
Will you break our walls and teach us how to fight?
Will you break our genders and classes?

Our hates and habits are calcified:
Sedimented with the weight of race and nation.
Are you strong enough?
Are we strong enough for the breaking,
and for the reforming?

Make our pretty old churches new and ugly,
marked with the dirt of tragedy and fertility.
Mark us with ashes,
make us your own.

We are always in need of re-forming,
and we are always being re-formed.


(words are not enough... we must resort to bread...)