A poem for All Saints’ Day about the Beatitudes, the spirit of God, and what it means to be alive in this moment.
for all the living saints
All Saints | Matthew 5:1-12
HAVE YOU EVER LAID IN THE DIRT?
Have you ever laid in the dirt?
Teeth gritted with gravel, dust
ballooning to envelop your face,
the earth scattered about the concrete
like a Firebird pealed out, spraying
rock and grime at you. Like you’re
the target of some cosmic opera —
that no witnesses can break into song
aligns with your disappointment.
Have you ever felt so low?
If you have, then you’d know
true poverty isn’t lack, but presence.
[It isn’t about money]
The presence of pain, lowness,
desperation reveal the poverty
we sow, like farmers raising fields
of doubt to harvest; sell at $3.10
a bushel. Next to no margin,
of course. Growing doubt isn’t
as lucrative as it once was.
When we speak of the poor, it is
always someone else. We aren’t
naming their poverty, but defining
them by it. They become “The Poor”.
And we remain us, normal. Like
the shrinking middle class we all
seem to belong to. So poor is
someone else. They are poor.
They are without. While I get
to be whoever I want to be.
I get to have. Still this doesn’t
satisfy the ego because now
they have something we don’t:
identity. So we must prove
our belonging, like the piety
checklist will make us
virtuous. What more must I do
to inherit eternal life? We are
the true poor. Not those people.
We lack, they must not deserve it.
Why should they be blessed?
Blessed is a funny word. A strange
companion to poverty, like Oscar
sitting on the couch with Felix.
It doesn’t go. Not in the version
of the show we’re supposed to watch;
the one our parents left us with.
The one in which hard work leads
to success. The one where the guy
who does all the right things gets
all the toys in the end and the poor
schlub is left out in the cold.
Blessing = Wealth.
That’s what I learned in school —
Monday and Sunday.
But this ill-fitting sweater, like its
arms are long enough, but not its
length, pairs blessing with poverty.
The guy face-down in the dirt. Knocked
down for being queer, or an officer
jumps on his neck for fitting a description:
this is Jesus’s picture of blessing.
Poverty isn’t lack. We get that wrong.
Poverty is the presence of inequality.
What then is blessing but the will of gods?
This is its origin; makarios — of the gods.
Blessing is the unimpeachable will of
the almighty! So we must be excused
for getting it wrong! God must bless us
with the power we possess, the wealth
we hoard, the laws to impoverish
our neighbors. How could all of this not be
makarios? We ask, shredding scripture
and grinding it beneath our feet.
Yet we are to take this odd couple of
blessing and poverty as the true will of
gods, despite our howls of protestation;
indignant outrage. This! This is the way!
Blessed are the poor in spirit for they
possess the Kingdom. It is theirs. It is
not for the wealthy, the already- and
always-haves. It is promised like a prize
to the winner, the one in the dirt,
struggling, the one who can see
the underbelly with its broken-down
morals and practiced exploitation.
Blessed are those who mourn and
those meek souls who can’t “get ahead”,
another false flag planted like fool’s gold
to entrap the greedy. Life is no game.
Nobody wins by stepping over a
blessed body. We are not competing
for God’s affection like a loveless
mother’s. What a dismal view! How
broken are our hearts that we would
cut the rope of one and blame gravity
for our neighbor’s death!
This, my friends, is the point of
being in the dirt! Not to win
the kingdom like selfish Gollums,
but to inhabit it already! To be alive now!
Blessed in hunger and thirst for righteousness,
in mercy, purity in heart, in making peace.
God molded the first human from
the earth and named it so; like a pun.
[Even God thinks they’re funny.]
And we all return to the earth
when we die. So we remind each
other with ashes when this coming
cold begins to recede: Remember
that you are dust, and to dust you
shall return. As if somehow the
specter of death will ever leave us.
But it isn’t in dying that we live. Nor in
contemplating our mortality. These
things are but phenomena that exist.
It is in living that we live. In loving
our friends and neighbors. In seeing
the dirty with compassion, for it is
only a stray chromosome, that
separates us from disability,
a cancerous cell that steals our
invulnerable souls. A cough that
renders us unable to breathe.
Poverty isn’t lack, remember.
And blessing isn’t wealth.
Makarios isn’t the reward, it is the gift.
Laugh, my friend, for this heals us!
And joy in this moment, in this one
precious life as if it were the
blessing. As if it were the thing God
has given you to share, like a father
baking cupcakes to bring to school
for your birthday. Decorated with
stars or rainbows, signs of your
passion, your conviction; things
that remind us of you. Play and
sing like a prayer of thanksgiving
even if you are alone, make it like
a phone call even if nobody is on
the other end, but keep calling
out to God the one who is there,
who blesses us like trick-or-treaters,
unworthy and unwarranted, but
because we are there, because
we ask, because God is good and
generous and loves to see us
imagine, create, spread our wings
like bats or birds, ghosts in the
night, heroes of literature or comic
books, or even pretending to be
the one handing out the candy,
like it’s about them. Like it isn’t
the thing you hope for, the
memories you linger on, of
dress-up days and total freedom.