Friday, September 15, 1944
1g
DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and The Legal Chronicle
Fire Poems -
VAN PAASSEN
(Continued from Page 13)
By LIONEL J. ZIPRIN
Or when returning warmth dic-
tates their cheer,
Festival
We who will summarize each day, Birds can have joy though only
grave-yards hear.
And make the festival at yearly
IV
end,
Harvest
Who turn to eagles when we say
The sky is clear enough to send The leisure to attend the earth
Our spirits deeper into heaven's Is hardly misspent if we feel
heart,
A bright flower is worth the
We who clarify each motion's
faith,
breath,
One harvest enough for age.
Who turn the wilderness into an
The gardens have not pretended
art,
How far can our lives ever be New colors, or let old ones go.
The rose, the tulip, they have
from death
How far from pain our lives not
Become no rose, no tulip.
depart?
II
Fit to every weather, rain, wind,
Spring
They petal off and brown when
cold
If where we look we miss the
Suggests this is the time for
southing bird,
them.
The song that calls the leaf back
Will not writhe, never balk at
from its sleep,
death.
If everything that's sweet de-
parts unheard,
V
And only winter threats itself to
Autumn
keep,
If lakes still frozen let the So wonder what the closest sea-
son is?
skater glide,
And chill the surging lark to Spring?—not spring, because we
long too much,
warmer clay,
What power has the Spring which And thus behold her in anxiety
Than honest love: comes slowly
I now chide
like an age.
To dare the blizzard's blind and
And summer is something too
flaunting play?
physical,
But ah, the Spring is lady-like
A growth of flowers in the plas-
and wise,
tic heat,
She sweeps each finger pearled in
A covering leisure rolled from
lightning thread
heavens
Like molten bars across unbound-
Filling in the space between C V-
ed skies,
Till doom itself must kneel in
cloud.
And ery
as for
the winter, that's a
saintly dread.
season
As one who melts the stars
Hardly to be spoken of, a clean
with pains and fears,
threat
Spring bathes all wrath in
Which I expect to dread and
tyranny and tears.
don't in truth.
III
But Autumn—here's a season for
Bird Song
us all,
Birds can sing when singing is Rich, colored, like an overwritten
poem,
for rest,
Not when the day declares their Yet worthwhile in a way, like a
king's wife.
song is best,
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nate the nest of brown maraud-
ers of humanity. Say that, and
you will hear yourself called anti-
Catholic, anti - religious, anti -
Christian, intolerant, a bigot, a
hate-monger, a fake Protestant
and a public enemy . . . You will
be hated!
And if you keep on saying
these things, you will not only
be hated, you will be shunned,
ostracized, excommunicated by
the society of the respectable
and you run the risk of being
silenced, and of being jailed, and
worse!
Oh, yes, there is still a deep
and bitter hatred for the cause
of Christ, for the Kingdom of
God in our clay. I do not say
that the Red Army is the King-
dom of God, no more than the
Roman Catholic Church, which
nevertheless makes that very
claim, is the Kingdom of God.
But they may indeed be agencies
of the Kingdom of God, as the
New Deal, the C.I.O., Jehovah's
Witnesses, Gandhi, the Pan-
Europe movement, the interna-
tionale of labor, the Zionist
movement, the League of Na-
tions may be and sometimes have
been agencies, symbols pointing
in the direction of the Kingdom
of God. Every man imbued with
respect for life and persuaded
of the essential dignity of the
human personality who seeks,
with pure intention, to lift con-
ditions, economic and social con-
ditions, in the direction of jus-
tice and freedom, is a builder
of that Kingdom, even if he
never mentions the name of God
or of Christ or knows not a
word of the creed and no mat-
ter what he calls himself or is
called by others: Christian or
Jew, Catholic or Protestant, red
or green, freethinker or agnos-
tic. Words and labels have no
significance in this struggle. Acts
alone count. Not "Lord, Lord,"
but "do"! For every man has two
fatherlands, his own country and
the Kingdom of God. Of the first
he is the inhabitant, of the sec-
ond he should be the builder.
It is well that the cause of the
Kingdom should be hated. It had
to be that way. Not only because
Jesus said it would, but because
it is essential that the forces hos-
tile to the Kingdom should come
to stand in the full light of day,
under their own true colors, be
they the forces of church and
theology and of Christianity it-
self as an organized religion.
There must be a distinguishable
line of demarcation between the
kingdoms of this world and the
Kingdom of God, between Christ
and a purely formal and nominal
Christianity which has so often
denied and betrayed him and his
cause. There must be a dividing
line. The hatred of which Jesus
spoke is indicating that dividing
line very accurately today. It is
time that the conflict for and
against the Kingdom be taken
seriously. Not only in words.
We have had enough words and
theories and canned doctrines
and learned speculations. But in
deeds! The Greek word for wit-
ness is martyr. All other wit-
nessing is very often a mere spir-
itual game of blind man's buff.
Even so, the cause of the King-
dom of God is not a lost cause,
even if it is deeply hated and
detested. It is not spurious or
dead. Dead things excite no
hatred. It has untapped and un-
dreamt-of energies. In its offi-
cial interpretation, protected and
pampered by society, it has in-
deed alienated the supoprt, the
love and devotion of millions.
Adolph Keller admits that Euro-
pean labor is in its entirety lost
to the official Christian churches
whatever their renomination.
Where men are not driven to the
churches at the point of the bay-
onet, the temples of Christianity
stand empty. The cathedrals
that are being destroyed today
will never be rebuilt. Those that
remain are tombstones to the
memory of the past. Many in-
deed have turned away. When
they become free many more will
turn away from an official Chris-
tianity which made common cause
with the oppressors of the poor
and the heavy-laden.
But a new church will arise,
although not under the name of
church. The cause of the King-
(1001 of God will be the cause
of heretics and reformers and
revolutionaries, as it always was,
men who do not perhaps even
know the name of Christ, but
men who will want to do the
will of God in not permitting
one to build and another to in-
habit, one to plow and another
to reap, one to garner riches
and the other to die on battle-
fields to protect those riches.
Jesus said: The Kingdom of God
does not come with outward ap-
pearance, with recognizable face,
i.e., it does not always come in
his name or under his sign and
token. But it comes! It is com-
ing. It is right• in the midst of
you. It lies within living men's
power to translate it into reality
by their deeds in war and peace.
Fools of little understanding
have themselves for their great-
est enemies, for they do evil
deeds which cannot but bear bit-
ter fruit.—Dhammapada.
He who, having been angered,
gives way to anger no more, has
achieved a mighty victory.
—Udanavarga.
s
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