Imagine a tree where a meteor fell…
Its radioactive decay
Thus hidden by roots in the soil, and from roots
To limber above. From the North,
Such blustery winds – like a forcefield of cold –
Entangled and twisted the tree.
The struggle within and the winds on the bluff
In time formed a hideous sight.
The lumberjack saw no good use for the tree:
Its gnarled, knotted wood sold as scrap
To light an old pen-maker’s stove.  What was weak
To one became strength to the next:
He chiseled the scars of the mangled Krummholz
Until he released an ink pen.

Imagine a man who acquired that pen
Enthralled by its heavenly source.
His saw the Divine, its unfolding through time,
And “proved” his tradition of faith.
But the Hist’ry he told was so certain and fixed,
Transformed Christian faith to a proof!
Believing so easy, so cheap, and so sure
Where sitting and nodding is all
One needs? Be like Abraham, child! Just believe!
Beyond faith was the Lutheran goal.
Insurance that’s sold on the side of the road,
Discounted, but placing at ease.

But then came a man who could see that this pen
Possessed all the power to throw
The world on its head.  Not through spiritual roots,
Ideas so divorced from the world…
But struggling material force, carved by winds
Of change in the worlds that we’ve made
Where longstanding tensions ignite into flames.
The pen in his fist told a tale
Of monsters, invisible masters we feed,
That one day must be overthrown.
There’s no one to save us but hist’ry itself
But heaven on earth still awaits;
So give up the faith that numbs your poor lot
And cast off your chains to unite!

A delicate poet then found this same pen,
Desiring no proof nor new worlds:
A tormented soul, authenticity starved,
He swallowed the pen in his search:
With knots in his stomach new landscapes were mapped
On dunes made of sand he embarked.
He brought down the eternal truths from the skies,
He smashed the foundations below.
He authored an internal hist’ry of faith:
Embracing the scandal of Christ,
The poet embodied the clash of that tree
Where time and eternity met:
The faith that he needed, the truth that he sought
Were forged from the internal toil.
His Name that he heard in the heart of the storm
Can only be whispered by wind.