NPR piece on divinity student Nate Klug, (sorry, ffed that up earlier), with a fine poem on visiting hospitals for National Poetry Month.


I'm always impressed with people who work as chaplains.  The things they must see.

It reminds me of something restaurant people do, in the course of work, in situations far more regular, less extremities over sickness and death, more just simply that day-in day-out struggle with keeping the mood up, providing a social environment, injecting a little good cheer where necessary in the battle against lonesomeness, hunger, the need to get out of the house.  That's close to where the majority of life and sanity is fought.  Not with God (all-knowing, personified wisdom) alongside as a parent is dying, but in the realities of daily life.  And in the realities of daily life, perhaps you have as good a chance to see meaning behind daily events.

Not always sung about, 'the scumbag waiter.'  An incidental.  And yet part of providing a place for people to live and talk, who goes home at night to face what we all face, his affable kindness and generosity coming out of a knowledge of the edges, wisdom coming if not through the awful grace of God through living.

What if we, being misguided or silly enough,
took it upon ourselves to be natural as creatures are natural,
to be like birds or beasts, going about our natural business,
not hemmed in by a thousand practical decisions,
were a bit like Christ was, just normal healthy run of the mill human.
Would we have to bear the cross of pain, to feel the good pass out
when touched by another's need?
He wasn't a divinity student, never a show-off,
but just could keep up with them, the priests and the wise,
the elders, singing youthful natural song,
a bird perched on their steps.

"Thou art that which is."  Therefore natural.
Would we then have the ambition to conduct terror,
ruin the planet for personal profit, put poor people in jail
because there aren't any jobs for them?