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Separation (Free verse) by Dovina Scripture makes clear
let not evil corrupt.
Look at the Lutherans
liberal Methodists
tolerating beer
smoking, dancing
sunk as low as the Catholics
Neither hot nor cold
lukewarm Laodiceans
ready to be spewed
from the mouth of God.
God prefers an honest sinner,
the preacher drones,
to watered down make-believers.
Might as well lie
with a bottle of Baileys
and a sensuous man
as to indulge in a bottle of beer.
So she followed the sermon
thought herself Methodist at best
almost righteous
and plump.
But the sermon changed
In an office cloister
Your sin makes a sham of our faith
Disobedience turns the Lordâs face
abandons your soul to the foe.
If we hold a sinner not to account
Then the doctrine of separation is nil
So she walked away from her childhood faith
her fatherless son wrapped warm in her arms
And the sermon this fine Sunday morning,
Giving a little to the poor.
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Posted: February 7, 2005 7:56 AM PST; Last modified: February 7, 2005 7:56 AM PSTWeighted score: 5.5827065 Overall Rank: 2355 Comments:
Love the poem!
From someone with an Arab-sounding name, that means something.
Al-nafus (or, for Palestinians, nafish - written: اÙÙÙس) means "soul", "breath", and "self". I don't know where he got all those other sounds from, but I'm guessing, probably not Arabic.
Sorry, I don't get it. Most of the poem seemed as if the character is choosing among competing doctrine, then we find out she already has a fatherless son -- indicating she's already made a choice. Maybe I'm not steeped enough in christian sects to understand this.
You are fortunate not to be steeped enough in the Christian sects to get this. Funny, there were no Christian sects when Christ was here, no Buddhist sects when Buddha was here.
I very much doubt you are an authoritative source on theology, so anything you write about religion per se is going to be misinformed and consequently valueless. The bit where you bring together the Lutherans and methodists and catholics and represent them as a kind of hierarchy is I guess interesting, but you go too far in your conclusions later on, and what the hell is all this about spewed from the mouth of god. The metaphor is utterly random and unrelated to the rest of the poem. I thought metaphors had to be built up.
Thank you for your prejudice. Itâs so good to know forehand that anything I say about theology is worthless. You are so very encouraging. Therefore, my saying that the book of Revelation, speaking to the Leodiceans, says, âI know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarmâneither hot nor coldâI am about to spew you out of my mouth,â is misinformed. Also, the metaphor is utterly random and unrelated to the rest of the poem. And of course I am really too uninformed to decide about any hierarchy of religions. Thatâs why I didnât claim any, and only your prejudice claims that I did. Again thank you for your wonderfully enlightening clarification.
OK then. I read your poem, under what conditions should I accept it to be valid?
if you come from an evangelical or fundamentalist background, the whole thing rings quite true. That hot-cold thing is an oft-quoted passage. And the whole bunch of them, they're just a pack of pharisees accusing everyone else of being sinners, absurd since Christ hung out with sinners and shat on the pharisees.
Hey Dovina -- I grew up in the UPC. Yep, me. One grandfather, six uncles, a brother, and a brother-in-law were/are preachers. Church 3 times a week 'till I was 18. Memorized ENTIRE Romans & most of Acts when I was 15/16, went all the way to the finals on a bible quiz team. Would you have guessed it? lol
Yeah I think it takes that to really understand what I'm saying. But anyone could at least read the poem and take what he can from it. It's too bad that just because a person is from some other upringing, he takes it upon himself to downput everyone who had it poured into them from childhood and who know a lot of the Scripture from memory.
I understand that you have become somewhat hypersensitive during your time spent on poemranker. I know you had a previous alias and am glad you came back after facing a lot of Dark_Angel the lesser's twatishness. However I think you have become too defensive to accept criticism. The bible quotes I did not pick up on, but I think that they should really have been in quotes. The criticism I make is one of didacticism, to make grand statements in poetry is not done. The poet must at least first build up her argument so that the conclusion follows on logically. Otherwise it just looks like you are hiding behind a poem to make unsubstantiated claims. If the narrator is the one making the claims such as 'watered down make believers' and 'sin makes a sham of our faith' then it is up to the narrator to elucidate. Otherwise make the narrator the one responding to them. I get no sense of the poet in this poem, the sardonic voice, to seperate her from the fundamentalism she is trying to rail against. The other criticism which is part of the first one is your lack of discipline. That you have these feelings is not enough, you must craft them, deconstruct, show. For instance that bad things happen is a decent reason for not believing in an interventionalist God, don't tell me that, I have heard it all before. Tell me something interesting, something that as a piece of intellectual enquiry is yours.
Don't give in so easily, richa. She's full of beans and knows it.
DOVINA: I guess you're just prejudice and don't know anything about Jesus and blah blah blah. ZODIAC: I was raised Catholic in the Biblethumping South, went to Catholic school for 10 years, while also attending fundamentalist (and every other denomination's) youth groups, revivals and such (for the chicks, of course.) My master's thesis spends a good deal of time on Flannery O'Connor's religion. I've read the Bible cover to cover about a hundred times, including college courses as both an undergrad and grad student. I researched with the single most respected Bible scholar in North America. And I live within sight of Nazareth. So I guess you can say I've absorbed the culture pretty well.
I made no Bible quotes, only allusions, thus they are not in quotes. You missed completely that this is a story, not a didactic presentation of grand statements. I accept criticism when itâs honest and apt, but this is neither.
Oh dear me! Clearly richa the lesser has some serious explaining to do, what eh?
The reason you need quotes is because the 'allusions' are to a voice that is not that of the narrator. The same person that is saying 'Look at the Lutherans/ liberal Methodists/ tolerating beer/smoking, dancing' which I guess is your voice appears to be the person talking about ready to be spewed/ from the mouth of God.'. Another good reason for making clear your allusions is that half of them are copied word for word from the bible which is plagiarism.
For there to be a richa the lesser there must be a richa the greater and there is only one. I was only referring to D_A the lesser (the less educated one who chased off hypatia) so as not to offend you :( but as this has not worked; your face.
Is Dovina really hypatia?
If so, I'm flabbergasted. And truly sorry.
are you that thick? I didn't think you were.
I'm still not about to rush to judgments. I've thought Dovina was hypatia for some time, but then I remembered that hypatia came on this site talking about (a) logic, but badly, and then (b) how poems don't need logic, she was just going to write poems using the language of logic for her own unfathomable purposes so all the people criticising her for (a) could figure out where to shove it. Until she went and deleted everything and vanished. The idea of her doing it all over again in exactly the same way was - and is - simply mindboggling. If Dovina is hypatia, she probably thinks we all knew who she was from the beginning and have just restarted our old personal attacks on her. Dovina, I'm telling you, if it's true I didn't know. I just really have a problem with people's floundering illogic.
I also had no idea she was hypatia. I'm still not sure if she is, but it seems pretty likely that if she wasn't she'd have denied it by now. Unless, of course, she's in one of her 'rising above all the immaturity' moods :(
re: "You missed completely that this is a story, not a didactic presentation of grand statements."
We tend to do that with your poems. That is an honest and apt criticism. So there. And for that matter, what do you mean by "honest and apt" criticism anyway?
I think it's obvious what she means by 'apt'. Not too sure about the 'honest' part, though :(
As I've said before, I'm not a big fan of the Bible poems. This is mainly because I am wholly uneducated regarding Christianity, and mainly because what I have learned about it is utter bollocks. Due to my limited knowledge of the subject matter, I'll hold my vote.
How dare you.
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A doubleminded man is unstable."
I love the beginning of verse two--Revelations