Poets do it in fewer words.
Posted on 21 Mar 2009
I labor for hours to string together a meaningful song lyric and once in a great while do I suspect they actually move the listener–I usually hide behind loud production and bell ringing. I think songwriters could learn a lot from our poetic peers, they truly make meaning out of the most delicate little phrases. I am in awe of the theology in this bit that a friend sent me the other day–a picture of a possible Heaven with its memory, its emotion, its grace. I know you’ll shutter at this one.
It’s Passover in Heaven
have some gefilte fish!
They’re serving bread unleavened
raising toasts with Manneschevitz
Six million Jews at Heaven’s Seder,
the Holocaust amassed.
With Adolph Hitler, guest of honor,
they’re laughing at the past.
sarah
22 Mar 2009 (19:12)
so, wait, is hitler in heaven? unlikely.
DeAnza Spaulding
23 Mar 2009 (10:06)
i won’t propose to be god, but i’m having a hard time imagining hitler in heaven. i know god’s grace is something i can’t humanly fathom. yet, this picture still doesn’t sit well with me. perhaps there is even grace and redemption for hitler. perhaps there was a posture of repentance in his last few moments. i can’t presume to know, but if i’m reading this poem correctly– i read it in the ‘present’ tense. and if this is a passover meal in the present then it is difficult for me to understand the phrase ‘they’re laughing at the past’. my theology informs me that god weeps and is enraged by the injustices of our world in the here & now. genocide is not something of the past, but still exists and i cannot imagine a time in heaven of simple laughter– as if ‘water under the bridge’, but perhaps a rich joy that comes from a history of knowing the darkness in which we come from and that reveals to us a salvation all the sweeter.
Chad
25 Mar 2009 (14:21)
Not to be flippant and not disagreeing with anything above, but I am Hitler and I’m glad I’m invited. As a sinner and all….
Zadok
26 Mar 2009 (14:59)
D. I take your last thought as my thoughts as well–that once we get to heaven, the events on earth will be distant shadows that we will hardly have much care for since we will know the perfect beauty of union with our Creator. and the present tense for me was a scene in heaven after the earth has passed and we’re all around the table. you’re right, God hates evil, right here, right now. I am working this into a song and have it couched as a dream; I imagine some will think I’m a neo-Nazi–that would suck.