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Month: December 2020

David Walters: “Why doesn’t God like us?”

David Walters: “Why doesn’t God like us?”

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The last of the poems I will publish in memory of David Walters’ life and in tribute to the power of his poetic voice, a most timely word for us in a time when we wait “for a promised dawn …”

Why doesn’t God like us?

Have you ever noticed how God deserts you
When you most need Him?
He hangs around for awhile until he’s through,
Then his bright light grows awfully dim.

God reminds me, sadly, of the sun,
Here now, made known, then gone!
Shines his spotlight, it seems, for fun,
Then makes us wait for a promised dawn.

But a patient scientist pointed out to me my error:
The sun, he said, is almost in the same place today
That it was happily playing in yesterday.
It was only the earth and we who moved! So there!

But I, from living, and the logic of each day’s sharp realities,
Remembered when living wells of faith dried up,
And sincere efforts to live and love or to be kind weren’t enough,
Haunting me with their weak and uncompleted activities.

Still, like a desperate soldier, we choose the forlorn hope,
To rush high stone walls that were laid to injure and damn!
It seemed only right then that we become the sacrificial goat.
Only, I decided instead to stand with the one who had already
          died for us as our Passover lamb.

A dear friend helped me see what we too often miss:
God, he reminded me, is always present – right now!!
          – everywhere and in each moment with all of life.
Even when ignorance blinds us so that we will not heed,
          or we are afraid even to risk!
This is the time of constancy as He walks beside us in our dark
          and loneliness, and simply, loves us.

david walters
February 2015

David Walters: “Charlottesville”

David Walters: “Charlottesville”

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A poem written by David after the white supremacist demonstrations in Charlottesville. His language is raw and vivid and impassioned, but hopeful, too, always hopeful. And there is even room for pity for the demonstrators themselves: “Were they ever shown loving kindness?”

Charlottesville

Animated ideas rise as gray ghosts in the summer night,
Feral cats prowling littered alleys looking for a fight,
Drawn hungrily to rotting smells of offal’s slippery bed,
Cold bodies dragged up that many had thought dead.

Barefaced lies unearthed approved by Nazi hate,
An archaic power wakens to separate the righteous race
From Jews, blacks, gays, and brown faces,
Eliminate race pollution, keep order, divide to make safe.

Our enraged brothers and sisters wildly brawl pell mell,
Burning lava bursting into bigotry, racism and hot hell!
What terrible wounds torment such desperate souls!
Were they ever shown loving kindness instead of woes?

Will death hunt us all down till there’s no more light?
Or will we bestir ourselves to face white supremacy’s alt right?
Moments come when the living stand up against the cruel,
An ancient remnant remembers that it’s time to speak true.

Declare with untethered strength who God created us to be,
Love’s children strong and creative, tall trees growing free,
It’s not too late! though hounds of Hades loudly bay,
In each age and place we have to begin, today.

david walters
August 2017

David Walters: “watching sparrows”

David Walters: “watching sparrows”

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A wonderful poem about humility, about neither overstating or understating our own place among all God’s creatures …

watching sparrows

I don’t think that I like house sparrows.
Brassy, aggressive and flying in feathered gangs,
Scaring smaller chickadees, nuthatches and juncos
who are eating and singing their carols.
Sparrows can use their thick beaks like sharp fangs.

They crush and eat our cracked corn or sunflower seeds,
Pushing and shoving away even their own kindred.
They don’t wear prayer shawls, read a bible or use rosary beads,
Each one is too busy fighting for victory and to get ahead.

Then one day I watched a sparrow stop, and ponder,
Or so it seemed, as he reminded me of me.
Did he pause to see how hard he strove and did he wonder
Why he scrabbled all out to fill his belly in each deed?

Because I have often judged sparrows they may not like me.
But I see now they are only being who God created them to be.
And since in truth, “God’s eye is on the sparrow!”
He seems happy with them just as they are,
so maybe there is hope for you and me.

david walters
February 2015

David Walters: “I am content”

David Walters: “I am content”

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Two a half years ago, just before my retirement, David sent me this poem. He wrote in his email:

“I very much enjoyed reading your book on Ecclesiates!! Made me look not only more deeply into what he was saying but also into how I understand and how I live my life with insight and faith as one.

The following is a poem that draws from some of the book and my own faith. I am submitting it to a poetry contest in Northfield with the theme, “Poetic Living Wills,” as we are asked to write about how we look at death and living.”

It is now, some two years later, an extraordinary testament to David’s readiness for death, because of how grateful he was for his life. It reflects the wisdom and clarity of a man who has learned what it is that matters, who understands the wondrous privilege of loving and being loved.

I don’t know that I have reached the point of his unquestioned contentment, but I am working on it!

I am content
“…chasing the wind…”

I am content!
Time will come when no one remembers me,
Family, friends gone, leaving not a hint!
Nothing I have done, or built, is left to see,
Hard work, success, achievements, illusions!
I am free,
Relieves me of confusion,
I am content.

Today, I love and hold you close,
Dearest wife! you my brothers, sisters,
Strangers became friends giving me hope!
Still, does not death come ever closer?
Joyfully we make plans for tomorrow!
Confront our terror, trust in something greater,
Accept the final loss that brings sorrow!
I am content.

Crossing through dark waters of death,
I will forget things I left behind,
Except for when I loved without regret!
Not when I was right! but whenever I was kind,
Working for justice with humor our human majesty.
Moments I forgot myself the best times!
The wise man of Ecclesiastes speaks of mortal frailty,
Be thankful, he says, “All else is vanity!”

I am content.

David Walters: man of faith, husband, father, grandfather, poet, friend

David Walters: man of faith, husband, father, grandfather, poet, friend

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My heart is broken. I am devastated to learn today of the sudden death of my friend, David Walters. He and his wife, Debbie, were members of our church in Waterloo, Iowa, faithful and engaged members, careful and honest practitioners of their faith, both of them highly intelligent and introspective, unparalleled in their commitment not merely to mouth the values of the gospel, but to live them.

David WaltersDavid was a poet, sharing his poems with me during my tenure at the church and still as we have both lived in retirement half a country apart. His poems are sometimes hard to read, because they expose the world as it is in all its cruelty and hypocrisy and injustice, but never, never despairing, always holding up the bright light of hope, hope rooted in a compassionate and faithful God, for all to see.

I grieve for a world without David’s voice, his voice that will not let us look away from the hurt and need around us, his voice that prods our consciences and pricks our apathy, his voice that invites us to rest, to believe and to rest and to live, within the loving embrace of the Lord.

As a tribute to David, and as avenue to permit his voice to be heard still, I intend to publish here in my online journal in these days before Christmas some of the poems David has shared with me. I begin with a poem especially dear to me because it was written during a sojourn shared by David and Debbie and me and other dear friends from the First Congregational United Church of Christ to Scotland and the Isle of Iona. Here is his poem …

finding Iona

Soon, the moment will pass and Iona will be a memory.
But the pictures we colored in our minds each day,
Of Scotland’s undomesticated beauty and perfect symmetry,
Will long remain etched beyond what words can say.
Yet I believe that the heart of Iona is not in what we see.
It lies at the center of where we feel
The love of One who lived and died without asking a fee.
And now dances laughing with anyone who would be free.
The vision of Iona reminds us of what we forgot,
Of two people who walk side by side willing to accept the cost.
They are you and me, broken and lost,
Until by faith we joined hands and became one with Him
whom we sought.

david walters
May 2015,
Isle of Iona, Scotland