ONE OF THOSE DAYS... and then, standing at the edge of the Great Pacific at a place where sediment has turned to rock at Ocean Beach beyond the pier where I perched waiting to see if a bigger wave than usual would come to demonstrate the "event," as newscasters call it... I glanced down to see where somebody carved his love in the rock, notice I didn't say "she carved her love," because girls don't do that; some perversities only boys do... and then I remembered the earthquake and Tsunami and suffering... and wondered how Pat Robertson will explain what the Chileans have done to offend God... and those poor souls on some lonely atoll out in the middle of the vast ocean... Are theirs sins of omission or commission? Anyway, as I waited and thought I wrote not in the hardened sediment but on very temporary paper... and then posted it here on this BLOG, which I can't explain at all, to shoot it out into cyber space, also which I don't understand. Same song, second verse...I'm trying my damnedest to find reasons to excuse the church for its silence, which as you can see, on this last Saturday in February, I've once again failed to do.

HEAR THE SILENCE

Snow capped elder shadows sing slowly.
Mute pipes rise above the choir.
The organist strides boldly from the closet
wrapped securely in the flag of Jesus
whistling Dixie in C major...
Just as I am!
No sharps!
No flats!
No!

Rock hard silence sits in the rector’s chair.

The congregation waits,
afraid to ask the obvious question
about why truth hides itself in church.

Be silent before the Lord
may be good advice mostly;
but not now,
not now.