A Different Kind of Old Age

This is not how I expected to spend my old age.
I pictured late mornings over coffee,
Days at the studio, painting. Long walks. Good books.

I did not anticipate the unraveling.
The abandonment of valuing each other.
The tarnishing of truth, being asked
to believe lies instead of my eyes.

How could we have so many hungry?
How can we shoot with impunity?
How can we leave so many to freeze?
How can we twist our holy books,
so often written in the script of love
into volumes of hate and power?

I am too old to understand.

Oh my brain understands.
I am a student of history,
ancient and current.
I see the patterns. Have seen them for years,
but even so, even knowing,
my heart cannot grasp it.

I spend too much of my time hearing the cries
of the hurt and abandoned. Not all of them are poor.
There is a fear in the air I had only read about
but now, here, it surrounds me

and I am left with a different kind of old age.
Feeding the hungry. Listening to the broken.
Serving immigrants the government reviles,
living love in the shadows. Wondering, worrying,
watching the unraveling,

A bit determined. A bit angry
that I ever opened a bible and learned its wonders,
its truth, and yes, it remains true despite the corruptors,
angry to be living in an age and at an age
where I believed I was meant to rest
and instead, find myself called to resist.

It is not where I expected to be.

About this poem.

The problem about using poetry as therapy is how often the truth of you leaks out. So, a gentle rant

I barely recognize my country anymore. Are there good and kind individuals? Oh yes, oodles of them. I am surrounded by them. But fewer and fewer in the corridors of power care for anything but power and money. It’s hard to ignore. Impossible really. Power trumps compassion most of the time. Power trumps the comprimising and respect for others who think differently.

As a pastor, I never preach politics. I preach the love embodied in the New Testament. I believe that when we truly feel the gospel in our hearts, we will care for other. We will make wise decisions I try to live it too, but the angrier I become, the harder it is. That is the truth. As a student of history, I want to scream – we’ve seen where this leads. Every time. And here we are, lemmings on the run.

So, I am not retired. I am not stopping. I am not ignoring. I do what I do, what I was made to do, in the name of love that our nation’s government has largely abandoned. I am probably, for my small acts of resistance, in a database or two I’d rather not be in, but doing nothing does not feel like an option.

The photograph is from the USS Constitution. It somehow felt appropriate.

Thanks for putting up with me. Regular poetry tomorrow, I promise.

Tom