riotheclown

Since April is a Poem a Day month and today is Earth Day:

We were on this
really long road and we knew
we could always lean in a bit harder.
And given half chance dance
like fools on the sawdust floor of losses.
But now
things too terrible to bare
stop up our mouths with unimaginable sadness
or break open a lifetime’s worth of curses;
It makes no difference
as we gaze into the maw
standing on this precipice
we thought we’d never reach.

Thoughts for Easter

“Saul on the road to Damascus” is a great story. Saul had a good job killing and persecuting Christians. The story goes, on his way to Damascus he fell off his horse and then became a Christian. The difference between killing Christians and then being one is huge. It doesn’t always mean a career change however, I mean, some skills are transferable, you could switch to killing non-Christians for example.

Saul/Paul/Saul/Paul sounds the same. He also changed his name, but the important thing was that he fell off his horse. While falling, during the weightless moment of neither being Christian nor Christian killer, while being just stuff, stuff that falls, he came to a new awareness. No, not about gravity, that was Sir Isaac Newton and he was sort of wrong but close enough with the math that it wasn’t an issue until Einstein, He came to an new awareness about God and stuff.

My question is, what if the planet fell away from Saul faster than he could fall towards it and he never became Paul, he just hurdled off into space? Okay, that would have been ridiculous. What if his horse was just glad to be rid of him, and galloped away a happy horse and he never made it to Damascus or wherever to start a new religion?

Jesus was not interested in starting a church but I think he got a kick out sneaking up on people. The story goes, Jesus wanted to know why Saul was being such an asshole so he did the spooky thing of speaking to Saul, even though he was dead… “Saul, why are you such an asshole?”

Was it dark?

Why didn’t Saul just answer with “it’s my job! Jesus Christ!!! God you really freaked me out. Dude, where’s my horse?”? Maybe several people got spooked on the same road and answered with that before Saul came along…

But if it weren’t for Saul being frightened, falling off his horse and becoming Paul the whole story about Jesus getting nailed to a cross would not have been passed down through the centuries and we would not all be enjoying ham and looking for chocolate eggs to celebrate at Easter.