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Author: Tim

Senior pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ. Ordained in May, 1983. Called to First Congregational UCC in August, 1994. Retired July 1, 2018.
Denali

Denali

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Denali
pinnacle of the continent
prince among mountains
imposing massif
intimidating summit
bowing to no one
honoring no one
except the One
who laid your foundations
when time began
the One bearing no other name than
“I am”

Denali
long before us
long after us
heedless of politics
careless of human whim
you remain you
you need no name
we might give you
bearing only the name
that is already yours
Dee-naa-lee
“Tall One”

Denali
what you are
is what you are
irrespective of moniker
your dignity
irrevocably bestowed
may we too
wear a dignity unbesmirched
by narrow-minded defamation
each bearing the name shared
with every son of Adam and daughter of Eve
“Child of God”

A warning

A warning

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When the separation between church and state is erased, the one is subsumed into the other. It is not the state that loses its identity and purpose. It is the church. It is already happening.

When a large part of the evangelical church weds itself to the MAGA agenda, it sacrifices its distinctive message. There is no gospel in Trumpism: no grace, no mercy, no compassion, no love, certainly no love for enemies as Jesus commanded, and even little love for neighbors.

“Be on your guard against false prophets; they come to you looking like sheep on the outside, but on the inside they are really like wild wolves. You will know them by what they do.” (Matthew 7:15-16)

Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie?

Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie?

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Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie,
Preaching hate in the name of love, Charlie,
Disparaging the least of these, Charlie,
Betraying the Lord you claim, Charlie?

Last Wednesday, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a self-identified evangelical Christian, complained about the ASL interpreters taking up half the screen during Los Angeles fire briefings, calling them a distraction. “We can’t do this. We gotta get back to how it used to be … It’s just too much. The reason is they do these emergency briefings for fires or terrorist attacks, and you’re looking at this and you’re not listening. I don’t like it … Closed captioning’s perfectly fine.”

Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie,
Preaching hate in the name of love, Charlie?
But what if your daughter were deaf, Charlie,
Would you be singing a different tune, Charlie?

A year ago, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a self-identified evangelical Christian, said: ”If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie,
Preaching hate in the name of love, Charlie?
If you broke down on the edge of the road, Charlie,
Would you take help from a man who is black,, Charlie?

At America Fest, in December, 2023, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a self-identified evangelical Christian, said: “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s … The courts have been really weak on this. Federal courts just yield to the Civil Rights Act as if it’s the actual American Constitution.” [It’s] “a way to get rid of the First Amendment.”

Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie,
Preaching hate in the name of love, Charlie?
Shall I hate you in return, Charlie,
Or pray for a change of heart, Charlie?

This last summer, while introducing the Republican presidential candidate at a campaign rally, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a self-identified evangelical Christian, said: “I worship a God that defeats evil.”

May God have mercy on your soul, Charlie,
The God who says vengeance is mine, Charlie.
Pray God show grace to you, Charlie,
So much more than ever you’ve shown, Charlie.

On Salamander Road

On Salamander Road

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There is nothing like a morning breeze
Arustling through these ice-coated trees,
The briny air a wintry tease
On Salamander Road.

For thirty years I’ve lived this lane,
My nearest neighbor a sandhill crane,
But she went away with September rain
On Salamander Road.

Loud squawks of gulls disturb the quiet,
They swoop and twirl in exuberant riot.
If I were a bird I’d have to try it
On Salamander Road.

Pale sun sits low in the clouded sky,
Across its face two ospreys fly,
Their whistles echo, a haunting cry
On Salamander Road.

A tufted titmouse alights on the limb
Of a scruffy tamarack, perhaps on a whim,
But bringing delight as I gaze on him
On Salamander Road.

A pileated woodpecker, that prince of birds,
Circles a cedar in a dance of thirds,
Its plumes a sight that beggars words
On Salamander Road.

Our Maine state bird, a black-capped chickadee,
Twitters its song and hops about merrily,
Its antics cheering, but only temporarily
On Salamander Road.

There is nothing like a morning walk,
A January check on all my flock,
Escaping all the poppycock
On Salamander Road.

“Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies”

“Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies”

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Gathering in the tender hours of a crystalline winter morning in Maine, eleven members of the Deer Isle Writers Group enjoyed the blessed bounty of a Bayley buffet before pausing, after some persistent chatter about Thanksgiving dinners and two-year-old puppies and three-thousand-acre broccoli fields in northern Maine, to listen with careful consideration to a prompt delivered by erudite writer cum gifted artist, Frederica Marshall, the prompt curiously provocative, a line from an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, “childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies,” prompting, as it were, from some of them immediate protestations to the contrary, those writers maintaining that, of course, goldfish die and pets die and, yes, people die, too, when one is yet a child, except that, if you read Millay’s poem, you realize that is not her point at all, that she readily acknowledges that cats die then to be buried by a weeping child in the backyard in a box bigger than a shoe-box, engendering a grief that, though entirely real, does not burrow deep into one’s soul eliciting an outburst of “Oh, God! Oh, God!” in the middle of the night two years hence, and that distant relatives die that the child hardly knows and, therefore, “cannot really be said to have lived at all,” all of this a prelude to the crux of her poem which is that “childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,” meaning mothers and fathers, meaning mothers and fathers don’t die, except they do sometimes and do eventually, which is her point, that the death of a mother or a father, of one toward whom all of one’s kingdom is oriented, knowing intimately their routines, their foibles, their quotidian pleasures, their well-earned pride, the death of this mother or this father leaving one standing alone in their house drinking tea now gone cold, is the death of childhood.

Her name is Eilidh

Her name is Eilidh

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Her name means Radiant OneEilidh
Bright and brilliant and exuberant
Blazing orb at the center
Of her own universe
Our bodies and hearts bound
                        in her orbit.

Her name could mean Eccentric One
Odd and abstruse and outlandish
Baffling behaviors defying explanation
Compulsive routines taxing toleration
Our bodies and hearts bewildered
                       by her id.

Her name should mean Indefatigable One
Tireless and tenacious and temerarious
Jumping in with all four feet
Sprinting, bounding, leaping, flying
Our bodies and hearts drained
                       by her zeal.

Her name means Radiant One
Bodacious and beautiful and beguiling
Commanding our complete attention
Even is spite of ourselves
Our bodies and hearts utterly ensnared
                       by her charms.

Her name is Eilidh

Oystercatcher on Iona

Oystercatcher on Iona

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Ungainly and unperturbed
Amidst croppings of fuchsia heather
Solitarily standing on spindly salmon legs
Sprouting from a squat white breast
Improbable orange beak
Highlighted against the cobalt sea
Unblinking claret eye
Nearly invisible against its coal black head
Preternaturally perched atop an elongated neck

The isle is yours as well as mine
Each of us blessed and a blessing
An I mo chridhe, I mo ghraidh

Oystercatcher

The life and times of Umberto Cannelini

The life and times of Umberto Cannelini

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I have been asked to tell you my story, to share with you the particulars of the kind of life I live, myself and those of my ilk. If you have any passing interest or even mild curiosity, I invite you to listen. Otherwise, well, I will completely understand.

You will not envy me. First, there is the fact of my name — Umberto. It is neither strong nor beautiful. It does not roll easily off the tongue or inspire awe, but catches in the throat and lands like a splat on the ears. It’s as if someone hadn’t an idea in the world what to call me — um, um — and then was convulsed by a sudden sharp cough — berto. But it is the name I have and I will have no other, so I simply have to live with it. I do understand that the meaning of my name is “famous,” but that merely adds a cruel irony on top of the disphony of my name, because I have no claim to any sort of celebrity or even notoriety.

Because, you see, I am a bean, a humble white kidney bean, Phaseolus Vulgaris. There you have me: humble, ordinary, vulgar.

My life is short, my existence constrained. I do not travel. I see nothing and know nothing of the wider world. All I know is the inside of the green pod that I share with a half dozen or so of my brothers and sisters. And my destiny? Our destiny? Our reason for being? To be eaten. We are torn from our home just as we have reached maturity, thrown into boiling water and eaten, or stuffed and sealed in a tin can later to be eaten, or set out to succumb to a slow desiccation so we may we rehydrated weeks or months or years after and be eaten.

What kind of life is that, to serve no purpose other than the benefit of another, to be nurtured only to be sacrificed, to be denied any and all greater glory?

I will tell you what kind of life that is. I have said already that you will not envy me and, doubtless, you will not. But maybe you should. My life is not about glory, but about service, not about aggrandizing my own treasures, but about putting the richness of my substance to good use, fulfilling the need of beings with whom I share this planet.

And though my life is short, while I live it is a wonder. My mother is the earth and my father the sky, and the Maker of all that is that sees me, sees me and calls me good. Is there any better reward than to be called good, to know that your unique beauty is unmatched, to be useful, appreciated, valued?

If you have listened until the end of my story, I pray that you will not envy me, but that the particular glory of your being, your humble purpose granted you for the sake of an other, your real goodness won not by achievement but vouchsafed as gift will be revealed to you, and that you too will have a story to tell.