Creativity Thread

[Corvus]

This is for members to post their creative works; literary, visual or others.

[otseng]

A poem I wrote as part of a sermon that I preached recently:

What do you seek?

In each minute, hour,
day of the week
what is it that you seek?

Do you seek to be first in line?
And when you're second
then the first to whine?

Do you seek to beat all other players?
And if they win
then they'd better say their prayers?

Perhaps you feel alone
with wounds that won't mend
Is it that you simply seek
a bosom friend?

Or do you seek an intimate relationship perchance?
One that is full of love and romance

Perhaps you're still in high school
where studying is the rule
You just want good grades
so that you'll assured of med school

Do you seek working out
going to the gym?
To have big muscles
with no flabby limbs

Or is it riches, money and wealth that entice?
Would you consider a fat checking account
to be rather nice?

Do you seek a fancy sports car
something to make you look cool
You can drive by your friends
while they start to drool

Perhaps a six bedroom house
with a pool table in the basement
Everything spick and span
with nothing out of displacement

Would you like to be famous?
and not be remembered
as simply another ignoramus?

Or perhaps it's a desire for something
that you dare not speak
Something that holds
a certain allure and mystique

Maybe your goal is to retire
with riches in leisure
a mansion bursting forth
full of art and treasure

Why do I ask these questions?
But to get you to think
Life will pass you by
in barely a wink

And so the things that you seek
I ask you to critique
Do not simply drift down the waters
of the stream or the creek

Life's important purpose
is not what we commonly seek
But resides in a quiet place
humble and meek

The best thing to seek
might seem rather odd
But it is to love others
And to love the Lord our God

And with this I end my poem
that has been a bit tongue-in-cheek
I ask again
What is it that you seek?

[Lux]

Very nice You preach sermons?

[otseng]

Very nice

Thanks. The weird thing was that when I said the poem, nobody even chuckled. I didn't think the poem was that bad. Actually, I thought it was rather funny. I guess I have a strange sense of humor.

You preach sermons?

I used to do it quite regularly. Recently, I've been doing it about once every other month in a small church that we used to go to. They don't have a pastor now, so they invite guest speakers to preach.

[Lux]

Thanks. The weird thing was that when I said the poem, nobody even chuckled. I didn't think the poem was that bad. Actually, I thought it was rather funny. I guess I have a strange sense of humor.

I laughed when I read it. Then again, I have a weird sense of humor myself But mostly I thought it was sweet.

I used to do it quite regularly. Recently, I've been doing it about once every other month in a small church that we used to go to. They don't have a pastor now, so they invite guest speakers to preach.

I always thought you had to be ordained or somehow official to give sermons at churches.

[otseng]

I always thought you had to be ordained or somehow official to give sermons at churches.

I guess probably in some traditions/denominations. I preached in a Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), so I'm assuming anyone can preach, but only an ordained minister can officiate things like weddings.

[johnmarc]

I always thought you had to be ordained or somehow official to give sermons at churches.

I guess probably in some traditions/denominations. I preached in a Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), so I'm assuming anyone can preach, but only an ordained minister can officiate things like weddings.

You can become ordained in a matter of minutes over the Internet. My kids and many of their friends have had friends officiate their weddings. Even Grandpa (who was ninety at the time) was ordained in order to co-officiate my son's wedding. I don't remember the name of the Internet 'church' but it is all legal.

I am not saying that I approve of it, but it is out there.

PS Nice poem by the way. I am thinking that the church needs a little humor injected into it from time to time.

[McCulloch]

I always thought you had to be ordained or somehow official to give sermons at churches.

Traditions vary from denomination to denomination. I belonged to a rather biblical literalist denomination. They did not ordain anyone, since the concept of ordination cannot be found in the New Testament.

Governments, quite correctly, generally do not regulate this. However, to register a marriage, one has to be licensed by the government, where I live. In order to qualify, you must be a justice of the peace, a judge or appointed to perform weddings by a recognized religious denomination. Contrary to the principle of the division of church and state, they do keep a list of recognized religious denominations. So I cannot just start a Church of George and start doing weddings. However, they are very lax regarding the qualifications.

[Lux]

So I cannot just start a Church of George...

Harrison?


Where I live, to be considered legally married you have to sign legal documents in front of witnesses and have a public notary/judge/etc officiate it, no getting around that at all.

Now, if you want your buddy who calls himself a priest of the Church of Fries to officiate a wedding in his back yard, that's fine too. But you're not legally married.

Most people do both the legal wedding and the religious wedding, but the religious one holds no legal validity whatsoever.

[johnmarc]

This is something that I wrote for a class I was taking. It basically asks, "Where do we turn when a literal reading of the Bible becomes less and less relevant?

The Moses Tablets

Where once the granite tablets were taken from the slope
of an eternal mountain top, a message hewn of hope,
to guide the weary, sick, and lame; to grant us needed rest
from toils that yoked our minds and souls to early death at best.

What happened to that promise emblazoned in the stone?
Where are those consecrated plates which God was said to own?
The means to see through sacred eyes; they have been set away,
because mountain tops are not the place where the Holy lives today,

And from once a blazing fire, now the dying embers mourn
the loss of hallowed tablets for a culture, reason borne,
and sacred night from which lighting turned darkness into grail
no longer etches granite texts nor illuminates the trail.

So, who now will carve the stones and keep the pathways clear
of that which tangles underfoot; of all that hinders here?
And who will gather from above, an ear to hear my plea,
and who will still the rocking of the waves upon the sea?

It may well be that the stones which surely shake our earth
have been lying underfoot since long before our birth.
The depths of our belonging and the depths of our despair
Are lifted up within us; from there we mortals dare

to shake the chains of heaven and curse the sky above
and take Job’s hand in questioning a tablets’ power to love.
Cold gray-green granite cannot hear God’s anguished call
to look, not up, but deep inside, for writing on the wall.

Can we be held securely to an anchor thrown into a cloud?
Stretching up toward Heaven when our backs are bent and bowed?
We grope along this mud filled earth, mindful of just one goal,
to seek the depths of heaven and reach for strength of soul.

The foundations of our freedoms and the knot which holds us tight
have been buried in the consciousness of a human need to fight
in the cause of righteousness, and wrestle with the tools
which draw straight lines along broken paths and there define the rules

which cannot confine the great Divine: the spirit of heaven spilled
over the enduring Quest which rises from inside humankind, filled
with hope of Resurrection: lift oppressing stones, now ground to dust.
in a mill ever churned by waters flowing over eternal human trust.

johnmarc

[Telora]

What I've been doing with my time away...

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h271/ ... /jewelery/