Here is the Poem of the Week for September 20, 2024, a first draft classic Shakespearean sonnet in a first take video recording. The text is printed below. Springfield, Ohio was on my mind when I wrote it, and then last night I heard Tennessee state legislator Justin Pearson describe a meeting he had with Kamala Harris and other national youth leaders. She said that the best response to the racist, fear-mongering, hate-inciting lies (my words) being spread by Trump, Vance and MAGA was not to attack them or even stage protests, but to build community–diverse community that welcomes and serves all.

This Sunday I’ll be preaching about Beloved Community, quoting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s essay about the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement entitled “An Experiment in Love.” He said, “The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history. He who works against community is working against the whole of creation. Therefore, if I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do nothing but intensify the cleavage in broken community. I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love.” Here’s my poem, written a few days before all these thoughts came together:

We need each other. I mean left and right,
poet and grouse, the hunter needs her prey
and even somehow with enlightened sight
we see earth needs us, too. It’s nature’s way.
To love your enemies is common sense.
We’re “entertaining angels unawares”
constantly—photons, microbes—through our fence
come deer and woodchucks, skunks beneath porch stairs.
We need the immigrant, the refugee,
we need their stories, wisdom, all they know,
we need all loves, all yearnings to be free,
the fast need voices warning, “Wait, go slow!”
So do not trust the voice of fearful hate.
Be still and know each heart truth. Then relate.
9/14/24