AssemblyBoard

Happy New Year to all here.

You've been in my thoughts, believe it or not.

Here's a poem for y'all:

******

"Lawrence Is Watching"

OK all you hipster wanna-be's
Lawrence is watching now -
yeah I do mean Ferlinghetti -
ready to make you out

the fool you are or make you
a new icon in the bookstore
that he's running
beyond all city lights.

What he said. How Christ was
crucified on a Cadillac tree.
But write it now how
Jesus was a honeybee

who found a new stash of clover
who flew back to the hive
who did his crazy dance
at the walls of Jerusalem

to tell us wanna-be's about it

*****

Note: it is important when reading this poem to know the following.

It is an established biological fact that when a honeybee finds a new field of clover or other suitable flower, the bee will fly back to the hive and actually do a complicated "dance" on the wall of the hive to indicate to the other bees the general direction and distance of the field of flowers.

Also, some of you may not be aware that Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a famous "beat" poet of the 1950's-60's who ran a bookstore in SanFrancisco called "City Lights" and actually did write a poem containing the line "Christ was crucified on a Cadillac tree".

PS  to Stephen Fortescue - if you are willing to do some contract math work on a problem I know you can tackle (working WITH a guy in the SanFrancisco area), please email me at

dhalitsky@cumulativeinquiry.com

with your hourly rate.  I will also pay for dinner so you and he can chat in depth.

Hi David,

Good to hear from you & to know (presume) that you are well.  Your theology doesn't seem to have improved over the 2004 version :(, but who knows ???-- Maybe 2005 will be the year you respond to the Holy Spirit :o and receive Jesus Christ :)!

Wishing you all God has in store for you,
al

Al -

Thanks very much for the kind words; I was really afraid someone might interpret the post as a cheap intent to re-contact Fortescue (even though the PS to him occurred as an afterthought AFTER I decided to post the poem.)

I hope you and yours are well as well.

Anyway, with respect to the peom, please take a moment to look at this way.  

At a popular web poetry workshop site, I have posted this poem as a challenge to other poetry apprentices to come up with a different treatment of the same poetic image - Jesus as the dancing honeybee.

Four people have already responded.

So at least I in my own way am getting some people to grapple with their own personal sense of Jesus, which is where I personally think it has to start (regardless of where it ends.)

So I feel like I'm doing "what I can do" at this point in my life.  Living in the milieu of hard-core "LeftOfRightists" that I live in (whatever "LeftOfRightist" means), it is hard for anyone to get folks to stop thinking about abortion and gay marriage and start thinking about Jesus.

So I hope you know my heart is desperately in the right place, if not my head.

Thanks again.
Dave

David---

I'd have to go back through the threads, but I could swear you posted that same poem last year at some point and talked about Jesus being like a Honeybee.

I still don't get it.

--Joe

Joe -

You're right -  I posted the metaphor but not any actual poem.

Nor at that time had I used the poem (because it wasn't written) to trigger a challenge at any poetry site.

I am doing a very odd kind of missionary work, which I believe in though I know that y'all find it nonsense.  I am NOT talking about converting you guys away from traditionalism; I am talking about getting folks to think about Christ Jesus who would NEVER think about Him if approached in ANY standard way.

Best to you and yours this year.

Dave
PS - nothing new to say about the metaphor itself; you either get it or you don't (like in that old 70's movie: "if ya feel, you're healed".)

I trust you mean the one God raised from the dead?   :)
Verne

Huh ?