BALANCED

There is no balance
between rich and poor,
slave and free.
No necessary condition
of have and have not.
Victims don’t need to forgive
their abusers before justice
reins in the terror.

Our lives are out of balance.

If our ecosystem was balanced,
it was before we burned fossil fuels.
Before we salted our soil, melted
our ice caps, drained our aquifers.

Not now. Not when we’re burning
beyond our means and draining
without replacing.

If there is balance in creation
it was before we messed it up.

And if we believe that GOD will set this right
(relieving us of our responsibility)
why would we be so foolish as to think
we get to stay as we are? That we would
keep our cars, smartphones, golf courses,
football fields, McMansions, and exurbs?

Even if GOD will hit the reset button
someday (when? we don’t know!)
why the hell are we making it worse?
Why make the evil GOD corrects?

Are we so irresponsible that we can’t
choose to do the right thing?
We need to be forced into it?
Need a GOD to balance the score
because we’re too weak to try?

As if people aren’t fighting to keep their ill-gotten gains now.
Precious comfort and stability built
on the backs of centuries of oppression.

There is nothing balanced about this culture.
It’s completely out of whack.

If we honestly believed in balance, we would see
the measures of rebalance as par for
this course, not a double-bogey, a water hazard.
Drop, add a swing. So not fair!

If we believed in balance we wouldn’t try
to weigh opinion on the logic scale
or ask liars for theirs.

There is no balance.

But if there were

It would look like Isaiah’s vision
of a wolf laying with a lamb
and a lion eating straw like the oxen;
a transformation of the world,
a changing of the rules.
Course-corrections be damned! We’re talking
wholesale change. We’re talking
carnivores skipping steaks, meat so bloody
red and juicy you’re a little worried about
salmonella, saying instead

“why, the salad does sound good!”

Balance isn’t a pendulum and the easy
sway of the breeze or the gentle shift
in seasons with our colder nights, easily
remedied with a sweater and a fleece blanket.

Balance is recalibration. It’s anywhere from an
alignment and new tires to a whole new
transmission; costly. It comes with sticker shock
and worries about how we can pay for it.

We can’t just say we’re balanced. We can’t
just wish it were, claim it is, or pretend that we all
actually want it. Some of us don’t.
We have power.
Wealth.
Respect.
Comfort.
And we get a sick kick out of knowing
others suffer. Pleasure in pain – joy in judgment.
We’re alive because others die.

We let those who abhor balance define the terms,
when their derision bedevils our false-equity, like
letting my sweet-toothed son set the prices
at the candy shop (he’ll make his sister
pay double) while taking handfuls for pennies.
A balance so false, it demeans the God we
call Abba, Dad. The one who tucks us in
with the whisper “I love you.”
Who runs to our beds when we cry out.
And our sisters when they do too.

That same one who told us
to balance our communities so
our mothers wouldn’t lose their babies to war,
widows would be made safe along with our orphans,
prisoners would be visited and refugees welcomed;
the one who showed us how to rebalance our world
in a jubilee and get rid of indebtedness.
The one who has shown us how to free
one another from slavery and the economics
which enslave all of us to tyranny.

The one who taught us how to protect our children
and we choose to hand them a scorpion.