When the Dam Breaks

Here is the opening poem in God is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself, edited by Andrew David, Christopher J. Keller and Jon Stanley.



Praise Him by Brad Davis

As for idols, they are impotent. Not
one can see or speak or feel

a neighbor's ache--her dog dead
and child missing below the levee. I read

headlines and feel more
than all the idols that there ever were.

Even the idol that is our idea
of God is impotent--B is not A--

yet God does what he pleases,
the earth what is true to its nature.

We build cities and pay scant attention
to either, then cry foul when the dam breaks

Idols cannot save, nor theologies.
Only God, and that is no great comfort.

Memorable Words

I was listening to Bobby Kennedy tonight---his announcement of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Many in the crowd had not yet heard. He was calling for calm. He made reference to his brother's death, pointing out that he too had been killed by a white man. He quoted his favorite poet, Aeschylus, a playwright who lived in Greece in the sixth century B.C. Here are the memorable words Kennedy quoted:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart . . . falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.