FLOATERS--a poetic reflection on coastal warm days, shortly before winter

Floaters

I’m spent to despair,
For lost hope yearning,
Tried for years to rescue others
Caught in tangled news hours
Of hellish hate, intolerance, despair,

Wrong right-leftist spinners,
Those creedalists and secularists
Both deniers of the morally real--
Their abyss of modern sheol winter
Stop!
Abandon this somber cellared lament!

Instead,
My sweetheart suggests, Let’s visit
A coastal winery,
Say, I do,
We do.

Driving along a winding river valley,
We arrive, expectant,
Hoping for respite;
Then, listening to soft music,
Sipping small glasses of moscato and merlot

Enjoying a glad lackadaisical day,
Mellow and casual,
Light of heart,
Carefree, contented
In California’s autumn’s wonder
Below tall sycamores and elms;

After Thanksgiving before winter;
We bask in 86-degree warmth,
When unexpectedly a slightly curled
Leaf floats down before
My eyes,
And lands gently on my lap,
A died wonder for us to behold;

Then another drifter
Lets go from a large limb above,
A deep rust-brown leaf spattered
With light tan highlights and vein-lines,
Descends in front of us,

Swaying back and forth,
Languid,
Lightly
Floating down
Inches away from us,
Landing nearby
On the lawn;

I lay with my head way back,
Gazing up to the sky's azure blue,
As other gifts let go every few moments
From high above,
Swinging wide and graced,

Falling beauty in slow motion,
Floating, swaying;
I realize—here, now--
With this Present--
I could die free, released.

Dan Wilcox

MOVING toward CARING for the BIOSPHERE as a starting VEGETARIAN

Beginning of a new article I am writing: Moving toward caring for the biosphere as a starting vegetarian

Prologue Disclosure: I am NOT a fundamentalist about this, or anything for that matter.

I’m neither an absolute pacifist nor a warrior for God. Not at all like the Hindus such as a Hindu priest in LA in 1966 who told me I should go to Vietnam and kill because, after all, humans kill insects regularly!

And at that crisis time, almost all Christian leaders, when I asked about whether I should apply for conscientious objector status against all war, told me that God calls all Christians to kill our enemies. Only one Mennonite family and a retired missionary encouraged me to oppose war as a follower of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Nor am I of the passive sort who wouldn’t try to stop an Islamic jihadist from killing civilians or one who is a strident, total vegan.

However, why is it that the vast majority of humans--a somewhat smart species--continue to justify slaughter of other humans in the name of their God, their nation, their religion?

How can such a species as ours justify the intentional slaughter of other intelligent, conscious species such as the pig?

1. Let’s face it, the natural world is many ways “tooth and claw.”

Whether its our cat, Smoke, bringing us a small bird he killed as a present
or the violent deaths of many thousands of animals every year on their massive migration on the plains of southern Africa, the natural world isn’t one of moral truth, but of harsh survival and death.

-- Having said all of that, I do think it is morally and spiritually true that all intelligent, conscious, moral species ought to refuse to kill, to harm, to destroy. We ought to seek to care for all of the biosphere.

To be continued--

In the Light

Dan Wilcox

GUEST POST from Professor Randal Rauser to William Lane Craig's Claim that God May Command Us to “Drive Out Canaanites” in Our Day.

FROM the BLOG of Randal Rauser, a Canadian professor of systematic and analytical theology:

William Lane Craig Says God May Command Us to “Drive Out Canaanites” in Our Day. I Respond.: Reasonable Faith just posted a short video from William Lane Craig in which the esteemed apologist defends the prospect that God may command Christians today to target people groups in the same way that the ancient Israelites targeted the Canaanites for extermination. In this video, I provide a response.
from Randal Rauser

Yeshua, Child of the Masses

Yeshua, Child of the Masses

So awe fulled the birthing
of God's presence, new cauled
in humble manger's destiny,

The base and apex of
a starred cave's presents
of all future festivals

Yet abandoned, forsaken to
the crowned world's nails,
every man's cursedness;

Farthest reach of faith
this Apocalypso dancer
crosses the Cosmos,

Morning us night-less;
he compassions Earth
ever peopling Heaven,

Emptying the pitiless bottom
zeroing Apollyon
into ever's Now

Beloved one, Yeshua
child of the masses
point man for us all.



--- A poem I wrote 15 years ago that I think still distills the Good News message. It still warms my spirit during this cold, intolerant, dysfunctional time, though I no longer think the lines are literally true.

Hopefully, the poem will speak to all of you.

May you have a blessed Christmas month, filled with hope, joy, and kindness.

Dan Wilcox

First published in The Green Silk Journal