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, New Year's Greetings • ARROW ENAMELWARE CO. VICTOR ROSE TYler 7.3050 5435 TWELFTH - — Best Wishes for Rosh Hashonah MONROE WASTE PAPER COMPANY 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. 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