Last week I had an interesting discussion with a guy named Roy who has been a missionary in France for the past 13 years. Ten per cent of the French population are Muslim Arabs who have immigrated or are descendents of immigrants from Northern Africa (France was a colonial power there) and that people group has been his main focus but the need for evangelism is great throughout the entire population.
Roy informed me that France is the most atheistic country in Western Europe with estimates that only one percent of the population have a personal relationship with Jesus. Although legally France has freedom of religion the vast majority of people believe it is ignorant to espouse belief in a higher power and people that do so are often ridiculed. The schools on the one hand teach the history of all the abuses of the organized church and on the other promote reasons not to believe in God.
In 1965 the percent of French claiming affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church was 87%. In 2005 the percent was down to 65%. with only 5% of those attending mass on a regular basis. Catholicism in France is now either only a cultural identification or if practiced is often intertwined with strong Marian belief and practices.
Roy said he knows many Catholics and ex Catholics who are believers. He said it can be difficult for the ex Catholics to evangelize their countrymen because they now recognize the spiritual deception found in certain aspects of Catholic faith and practice such as in Marianism and cannot get past the idea that the only solution is to completely break with the Catholic Church like they did. This of course puts the cart before the horse: First one needs to encounter Jesus personally and then they need to have the Holy Spirit be the One to lead when and where He wills. This is spiritual warfare 101. As an ex Catholic myself I can easily understand the emotions. I know other ex Catholics who at first were very bitter feeling that they had been spiritually deceived in the Catholic Church and bitterness is not a pathway too offer grace to others.
Roy told me that French history has much to do with the current state of Christianity in the country. Church and state were strongly intertwined throughout much of France's past. The Catholic Church were huge landowners, clergy were responsible for education and most civil records were kept by the Church. After the Reformation the Huguenots (French Calvinists) became a small but influential part of French politics and this eventually led to a pogrom in 1572 where tens of thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered. Guilt and slaughters obviously run both ways but in the 1700's a movement called The Enlightenment hit France. This eventually lead to the French Revolution which hated both monarchy and church. The revolution eliminated the monarchy, confiscated all property owned by the church, made the education system secular and controlled by the state and transferred all record keeping to the state. Reason was the new god, the Enlightenment authors the new apostles and woe to any who did not believe.
The Catholic Church initially survived in France but as a whole became much more focused on any of the practices and beliefs rejected by the Reformers. The Catholic Church's response to the rapid changes in science, industry, education and all the rest of the dawning new age was to embrace all that was "mystical" in Catholic practice and doctrine, especially regarding Mary. A religion emphasizing works, devotion and obedience which did not have as it's core the need to have a personal relationship with Christ, both recognizing Him as Savior and desiring Him as Lord, could not compete with a society and education system that was not just secular but anti faith as well.
Today the French value education above all else. They believe that education is the key to everything. Roy told me that the roads were getting bad and the French solution was to put more money into education so that people could learn to be better drivers. After years of that not working someone came up with the idea that maybe we should fix the roads. They did and the auto death rate dropped dramatically. Who knew?
Roy also told me that the French are the most pessimistic people in all of Europe. Yes they love and enjoy life but when it's over that's all there is. They grieve terrible when someone they know dies because they will never see them again and that's the end of that person's existence. If someone's wife were to die let's say in an auto accident and the person responsible were to get a slap on the wrist and only serve a few years in prison the family will be very bitter toward that person because he robbed them of the only time they could ever have with her. They feel cheated.
From time to time I have prayed for revival to come to France. It is the country of my name sake, Robert de la Berge who emigrated to New France (Canada) from the Normandy region in France in the 1600's. He and all the generations of LaBarges were Catholic until me. After my conversation with Roy I am struck by another concern as well. It seems that our country is where France was not that long ago. The government is moving more and more into controlling the education system and the influence of the state into all areas of life is continuing to expand every year. Gradually all references to God are being removed and people who defend traditional values are being ridiculed.
This is not an accident. Our society in America is being deliberately moved toward what atheistic and liberal Christian leaders see as the French ideal. Our countries spiritual DNA saw rights and freedoms as coming from God and treated man and government as imperfect. Many leaders prayed for guidance and gave public thanks to God for His blessings. Today we are being taught to believe that rights and freedoms come from the state and man is on the path to being more noble, albeit through education. And in the course of this all, step by step, we are surrendering our precious freedoms. This happens when anything like government or religion substitutes for the move of the Holy Spirit and has been wisely called the tyranny of Utopianism.
Utopia needs a strong leader over a strong state so that conditions will be "fair" for all. Although history has show us time and time again that it doesn't work the idea of Utopia motivates the man without faith who must also believe that man is basically good and will do what is right for society if he is only shown the perfection of reason.
But man cannot build a perfect world because he is imperfect and was designed by God to be dependent on Him and to be led by His Holy Spirit. Man cannot build a perfect world because the god of this world is in rebellion against the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Man cannot build a perfect world because the greatest minds of this age are in the end not wiser that a simpleton who has trust in God.
I pray for revival to come to France and to come to America as well. I see in this not the tyranny of religion which demands obedience to a creed or belief but rather for the power of redeemed and changed lives to infuse society with faith, hope and love - and a rebirth of true reason.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Nd
I had a dream earlier this week, admittedly fueled by my dinner of Hungry Howies pizza and chased down with a couple handfulls of cheddar Gold Fish crackers, where I remembered that my nephew Peter Johnson had invented a new word.
If you knew Peter you would understand that since he is just the type of fellow to invent new words and actually have a chance of getting them accepted into the English language that this would not seem strange to me in any way.
Leaving the house where we were and remembering that Peter had added to our language I spun around, went back inside and asked him what that word was again. Peter told me it was "nd" (pronounced nid but spelled nd for brevity sake). The meaning is akin to "I don't care" or "it doesn't matter to me" and probably has it's origins in the phrase "I do Not give a Damm".
My mind must have picked this up from a recent statement of Peter's on Facebook where he commented that since Boston and St. Louis were his two least favorite teams he would be thinking instead about next year's World Series when his KC team would finally rise to the top (or - Nd on this year's World Series). My somewhat logical dream intersected Peter's impossible dream and so there you have it, a new word is birthed.
Later on that night I had a dream where I was in the back yard of the house I grew up in on 31st street in Holland. The house had been sold two years ago to a Vietnamese woman who was now selling it and her son was ripping down branches from a willow tree in the back corner with members of his gang but were being told to stop by a group of a dozen high school band students who arrived on the property in formation dressed in their UCLA blue shorts and shirts. I could go on from here but then you might be prompted to share one or more of your dreams with me and really, nd.
If you knew Peter you would understand that since he is just the type of fellow to invent new words and actually have a chance of getting them accepted into the English language that this would not seem strange to me in any way.
Leaving the house where we were and remembering that Peter had added to our language I spun around, went back inside and asked him what that word was again. Peter told me it was "nd" (pronounced nid but spelled nd for brevity sake). The meaning is akin to "I don't care" or "it doesn't matter to me" and probably has it's origins in the phrase "I do Not give a Damm".
My mind must have picked this up from a recent statement of Peter's on Facebook where he commented that since Boston and St. Louis were his two least favorite teams he would be thinking instead about next year's World Series when his KC team would finally rise to the top (or - Nd on this year's World Series). My somewhat logical dream intersected Peter's impossible dream and so there you have it, a new word is birthed.
Later on that night I had a dream where I was in the back yard of the house I grew up in on 31st street in Holland. The house had been sold two years ago to a Vietnamese woman who was now selling it and her son was ripping down branches from a willow tree in the back corner with members of his gang but were being told to stop by a group of a dozen high school band students who arrived on the property in formation dressed in their UCLA blue shorts and shirts. I could go on from here but then you might be prompted to share one or more of your dreams with me and really, nd.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
On Walden's Pond Scum
One day years ago my youngest, Becky, came to me and said, "Hey Dad,
I heard something funny today", to which I responded, "Funny Ha Ha, or
funny interesting?" From then on we always ask each other that same
question when one of us wants to share "something funny".
I'm out on the road quite a bit, either working or commuting, and I tend to hear and see a lot of funny things. Just in the last two weeks (1) I drove past a car parked along side the freeway and saw a heavy set man wearing grey sweatpants leaning into his trunk to get something, thus exposing his whole naked back end - Yikes! Funny interesting, and (2) While riding shotgun on a road test I look over at a house and see a brown wood shelf inside at the middle of a picture window, curtains covering the window except for the shelf, and a big, very live grey cat sitting on top of the shelf watching the traffic go by - Also funny interesting.
And then there are things I hear on NPR (National Public Radio) on my commute. I guess you be the funny judge.
I am very conservative and NPR tends to be very liberal. Now just to generalize things, liberal thought is pro big government, pro choice, pro environment and pro tolerance. Tolerance applies to any thought or action that is not mainstream but not to any Christian view that has absolutes. This really all harkens back to the transcendentalist movement of the 19th century and it's literary masterpiece WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau, who, after sucking out all the marrow of life taught us that all ideas, especially those furthest away from conservative thought, are equally valid. Thus if someone liberal associates you with the S word you should take it as a compliment, but if it comes from a conservative and now knowing what you know, you should respond - "That's funny".
I'm listening to NPR on the way home and there is a discussion on the ethics of doctors refusing to treat children whose parents have not seen that they have received their immunization shots. I thought this would be interesting because I just talked with a very successful man who did not believe that immunization shots were safe for his kids. He told me that he did a lot of independent research on the subject and that he believed that the doses given to very young children were way to much for their small bodies and that things such as autism could result. His family stays away from processed foods and this guy says that his three children are never sick.
I'm not saying what is right and wrong here. The guest professional in ethics, standing with current scientific opinion that there is no correlation between immunizations and autism presented clearly what the ethical problems were for doctors. What I thought was "funny" here was her statement that "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of children have died from childhood sicknesses such as measles". I began to wonder how much "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions" was. Hundreds of millions would be at least 200 million, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions would be, what, billions or trillions?
And then, after agreeing with a call in doctor that a paternalistic approach works best with her patients in the South who believe all this non scientific mumbo jumbo, the guest professional went into a coughing jag. A very bad coughing jag that went on for minutes. It may have been minutes and minutes and minutes. I thought back to the guy with the healthy kids and verbalized in my car, funny Ha Ha.
Usually at the time I drive home NPR has on The Environment Report, which is produced by Michigan Public Radio and so includes mostly stories involving environmental efforts in Michigan. A while back there was an segment where, because of the players, there were no clear liberal good and bad guys. It seems that there was a Hindu retreat center located along the banks of a popular trout stream somewhere in Northern Michigan. They built themselves a meditation pond which of course is liberal good but were being sued by a Ducks Unlimited, a Michigan hunting and fishing organization, which should be liberal bad because they promote gun use except that here their cause was liberal good because the mediation pond needed to be flushed from time to time and the resulting silt destroyed hatching areas for the trout downstream. Mind you, the Hindu's right to their pond was equal to the fishes right to reproduce but some bad karma led to the unfortunate but necessary lawsuit. Conflict can be funny.
I thought of this story last weekend when Jackie and I drove down to Tennessee to see our grand kids play a little soccer. Jackie has just gotten over a cold and now I have it. We are in a Courtyard by Marriott near Nashville, it is the middle of the night, the room is pitch black and I need to get up and go to the bathroom. I swing my legs over to the floor but in my sickened condition I forget that my side of the bed is only about a foot away from the wall, which my forehead crashes into when I begin to stand up. This results in a quarter size round bright red wound in the middle of my forehead.
The next morning after taking a shower I notice that Marriott hangs a pretty tag on the towel rack It says that being a "green" company is very important to them so we must be sure to hang up any wet towels. They provided no other explanation. Perhaps our landfills are being clogged with mildewed towels from Marriott. I did as requested but am pretty sure they would not care for the round blood mark left on the wash towel.
That morning we go see Dafney play and then drive over to Knoxville for Brendan's first game. To get to the field we drive a few miles of curving back country roads and just before we get to the soccer field, on the same side of the road, is a Hindu cultural center. I looked in my rear view mirror to check out the red circle on my forehead, scanned the property to locate a meditation pond and thought that this was all too funny. There was a pond about a mile prior with several cows nearby but none here.
I set up my lawn chair, breathed in the fresh country mountain air, watch my grandson score a beautiful goal and forget for awhile that I am sick and wounded. Ah, wonderful meditation!
I'm out on the road quite a bit, either working or commuting, and I tend to hear and see a lot of funny things. Just in the last two weeks (1) I drove past a car parked along side the freeway and saw a heavy set man wearing grey sweatpants leaning into his trunk to get something, thus exposing his whole naked back end - Yikes! Funny interesting, and (2) While riding shotgun on a road test I look over at a house and see a brown wood shelf inside at the middle of a picture window, curtains covering the window except for the shelf, and a big, very live grey cat sitting on top of the shelf watching the traffic go by - Also funny interesting.
And then there are things I hear on NPR (National Public Radio) on my commute. I guess you be the funny judge.
I am very conservative and NPR tends to be very liberal. Now just to generalize things, liberal thought is pro big government, pro choice, pro environment and pro tolerance. Tolerance applies to any thought or action that is not mainstream but not to any Christian view that has absolutes. This really all harkens back to the transcendentalist movement of the 19th century and it's literary masterpiece WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau, who, after sucking out all the marrow of life taught us that all ideas, especially those furthest away from conservative thought, are equally valid. Thus if someone liberal associates you with the S word you should take it as a compliment, but if it comes from a conservative and now knowing what you know, you should respond - "That's funny".
I'm listening to NPR on the way home and there is a discussion on the ethics of doctors refusing to treat children whose parents have not seen that they have received their immunization shots. I thought this would be interesting because I just talked with a very successful man who did not believe that immunization shots were safe for his kids. He told me that he did a lot of independent research on the subject and that he believed that the doses given to very young children were way to much for their small bodies and that things such as autism could result. His family stays away from processed foods and this guy says that his three children are never sick.
I'm not saying what is right and wrong here. The guest professional in ethics, standing with current scientific opinion that there is no correlation between immunizations and autism presented clearly what the ethical problems were for doctors. What I thought was "funny" here was her statement that "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of children have died from childhood sicknesses such as measles". I began to wonder how much "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions" was. Hundreds of millions would be at least 200 million, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions would be, what, billions or trillions?
And then, after agreeing with a call in doctor that a paternalistic approach works best with her patients in the South who believe all this non scientific mumbo jumbo, the guest professional went into a coughing jag. A very bad coughing jag that went on for minutes. It may have been minutes and minutes and minutes. I thought back to the guy with the healthy kids and verbalized in my car, funny Ha Ha.
Usually at the time I drive home NPR has on The Environment Report, which is produced by Michigan Public Radio and so includes mostly stories involving environmental efforts in Michigan. A while back there was an segment where, because of the players, there were no clear liberal good and bad guys. It seems that there was a Hindu retreat center located along the banks of a popular trout stream somewhere in Northern Michigan. They built themselves a meditation pond which of course is liberal good but were being sued by a Ducks Unlimited, a Michigan hunting and fishing organization, which should be liberal bad because they promote gun use except that here their cause was liberal good because the mediation pond needed to be flushed from time to time and the resulting silt destroyed hatching areas for the trout downstream. Mind you, the Hindu's right to their pond was equal to the fishes right to reproduce but some bad karma led to the unfortunate but necessary lawsuit. Conflict can be funny.
I thought of this story last weekend when Jackie and I drove down to Tennessee to see our grand kids play a little soccer. Jackie has just gotten over a cold and now I have it. We are in a Courtyard by Marriott near Nashville, it is the middle of the night, the room is pitch black and I need to get up and go to the bathroom. I swing my legs over to the floor but in my sickened condition I forget that my side of the bed is only about a foot away from the wall, which my forehead crashes into when I begin to stand up. This results in a quarter size round bright red wound in the middle of my forehead.
The next morning after taking a shower I notice that Marriott hangs a pretty tag on the towel rack It says that being a "green" company is very important to them so we must be sure to hang up any wet towels. They provided no other explanation. Perhaps our landfills are being clogged with mildewed towels from Marriott. I did as requested but am pretty sure they would not care for the round blood mark left on the wash towel.
That morning we go see Dafney play and then drive over to Knoxville for Brendan's first game. To get to the field we drive a few miles of curving back country roads and just before we get to the soccer field, on the same side of the road, is a Hindu cultural center. I looked in my rear view mirror to check out the red circle on my forehead, scanned the property to locate a meditation pond and thought that this was all too funny. There was a pond about a mile prior with several cows nearby but none here.
I set up my lawn chair, breathed in the fresh country mountain air, watch my grandson score a beautiful goal and forget for awhile that I am sick and wounded. Ah, wonderful meditation!
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
This Year's Family Fast
Once again we get the chance to spend the next 40 days praying and fasting for what the Holy Spirit has placed on our hearts. Earlier this week Jackie and I talked about what we felt we should be praying for and this morning, day one, I opened up my daily scripture reading to Psalm 112. In God's wonderful timing it spoke to me deeply about this year's prayer goals but also about what has been heavy on my heart for quite some time.
The Psalm speaks about both blessing and judgment. The perspective though is not about praying to get something, Instead it is about an awareness of who and where we are in God's plan while in the midst of this mixed up world. It assures me that what I do today will have meaning long after the struggle is no longer mine. So much in this world is but an allusion. While we are driven to lust for what will become dust, obedience and trust in Him will never disappoint.
Praise the Lord!
How blessed is the man who fears the Lord,
who greatly delights in His commandments,
His descendants will be mighty on earth;
The generation of the upright will be blessed,
Wealth and riches are in his house,
And his righteousness endures forever,
Light arises in the darkness for the upright;
He is gracious and compassionate and righteous,
It is well with the man who is gracious and lends;
He will maintain his course in judgment,
For he will never be shaken;
The righteous will be remembered forever.
He will not fear evil tidings;
His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord,
His heart is upheld, he will not fear,
Until he looks with satisfaction on his adversaries.
He has given freely to the poor,
His righteousness endures forever;
His horn will be exalted in honor.
The wicked will see it and be vexed,
He will gnash his teeth and melt away;
The desire of the wicked will perish.
The Psalm speaks about both blessing and judgment. The perspective though is not about praying to get something, Instead it is about an awareness of who and where we are in God's plan while in the midst of this mixed up world. It assures me that what I do today will have meaning long after the struggle is no longer mine. So much in this world is but an allusion. While we are driven to lust for what will become dust, obedience and trust in Him will never disappoint.
Praise the Lord!
How blessed is the man who fears the Lord,
who greatly delights in His commandments,
His descendants will be mighty on earth;
The generation of the upright will be blessed,
Wealth and riches are in his house,
And his righteousness endures forever,
Light arises in the darkness for the upright;
He is gracious and compassionate and righteous,
It is well with the man who is gracious and lends;
He will maintain his course in judgment,
For he will never be shaken;
The righteous will be remembered forever.
He will not fear evil tidings;
His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord,
His heart is upheld, he will not fear,
Until he looks with satisfaction on his adversaries.
He has given freely to the poor,
His righteousness endures forever;
His horn will be exalted in honor.
The wicked will see it and be vexed,
He will gnash his teeth and melt away;
The desire of the wicked will perish.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
"Love Means . . . "
In the 70's movie LOVE STORY (#9 on the lost of all time romantic movies) pretty Ali MacGraw tells even prettier Ryan O'Neil that love means never having to say your sorry. Half way through the movie O'Neil's character finds out from a doctor that MacGraw's character has an incurable disease but he doesn't tell her because graduating 3rd from Harvard Law School he learned never to give a direct answer. She suspects something is a foot when O'Neil cries every time MacGraw calls him "Preppy" and never recovers from her bad luck, bad writing and bad acting. Later on Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman parody the movie with one of my favorite lines ever, which goes something like - "Love means never having to say your sorry (cough, cough)."
Saturday morning I get up and ask Jackie if she had a good night sleep. She tells me that she has a terrible sore throat.and that I better load up on vitamin C. We ride to work together and soon my first customer arrives. "How are you doing today Julian?" I ask. "Not so good. I have a teweble cold." he mumbles. After a half an hour drive with my window down and purposely not engaging in any unnecessary conversation with Julian my next person arrives. Dylan has thick glasses, a really bad greased down hair cut, is barely audible and his mouth is constantly open. I think perhaps this guy is mentally challenged and don't converse with him either but realize half way through our drive that this is just another sick dude breathing through his mouth who happens to have a bad hair cut.
Well, right now I'm felling good. I've taken another 1000 whatever of vitamin C this morning and have been praying for protection from nasty germs. This should be a good week (cough, cough).
Saturday morning I get up and ask Jackie if she had a good night sleep. She tells me that she has a terrible sore throat.and that I better load up on vitamin C. We ride to work together and soon my first customer arrives. "How are you doing today Julian?" I ask. "Not so good. I have a teweble cold." he mumbles. After a half an hour drive with my window down and purposely not engaging in any unnecessary conversation with Julian my next person arrives. Dylan has thick glasses, a really bad greased down hair cut, is barely audible and his mouth is constantly open. I think perhaps this guy is mentally challenged and don't converse with him either but realize half way through our drive that this is just another sick dude breathing through his mouth who happens to have a bad hair cut.
Well, right now I'm felling good. I've taken another 1000 whatever of vitamin C this morning and have been praying for protection from nasty germs. This should be a good week (cough, cough).
Sunday, September 15, 2013
This Will Be Written For The Generation To Come
From Psalm 102 we read:
You, O Lord, abide forever,
and Your name to all generations. (v 12)
This will be written for the generation to come,
that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord.
For He looked down from His holy height;
from heaven the Lord gazed upon the earth,
To hear the groaning of the prisoner,
To set free those who were doomed to death,
That men may tell of the name of the Lord (vs 18-21)
This psalm reminds me that I am more than a cog in the wheel of time, spinning out my days with no purpose. One day I met the Master and His Spirit formed in me a desire to honor, serve and praise Him. He is good! He is trustworthy. He has not disappointed.
It also reminds me that my life is not my own. I find myself as the psalmist did with shortening days in a world filled with prisoners, sick and in self centered misery, who are condemned to spend eternity apart from the loving Lord. Although I can only do what I can do I am charged with proclaiming to this generation the mercies of the Lord with the hope that many more will be able to join in the chorus of praise to their Savior.
And I am charged as well to remind this world the old saying that God has no grandchildren. I proclaim to my children and others what the Lord has done and is doing in my life. They must have their own God stories to proclaim, to family, to friends and to the next generation. We change, but the Lord does not. One day all generations of the redeemed with join together to worship and praise Him.
Of old you founded the earth,
And the heavens are the work of your hands.
Even they will perish,
but You endure;
And all of them will wear out like a garment;
Like clothing You will change them and they will be changed.
But You are the same,
And Your years will not come to an end.
The children of Your servants will continue,
And their descendants will be established before You. (vs 25-28)
You, O Lord, abide forever,
and Your name to all generations. (v 12)
This will be written for the generation to come,
that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord.
For He looked down from His holy height;
from heaven the Lord gazed upon the earth,
To hear the groaning of the prisoner,
To set free those who were doomed to death,
That men may tell of the name of the Lord (vs 18-21)
This psalm reminds me that I am more than a cog in the wheel of time, spinning out my days with no purpose. One day I met the Master and His Spirit formed in me a desire to honor, serve and praise Him. He is good! He is trustworthy. He has not disappointed.
It also reminds me that my life is not my own. I find myself as the psalmist did with shortening days in a world filled with prisoners, sick and in self centered misery, who are condemned to spend eternity apart from the loving Lord. Although I can only do what I can do I am charged with proclaiming to this generation the mercies of the Lord with the hope that many more will be able to join in the chorus of praise to their Savior.
And I am charged as well to remind this world the old saying that God has no grandchildren. I proclaim to my children and others what the Lord has done and is doing in my life. They must have their own God stories to proclaim, to family, to friends and to the next generation. We change, but the Lord does not. One day all generations of the redeemed with join together to worship and praise Him.
Of old you founded the earth,
And the heavens are the work of your hands.
Even they will perish,
but You endure;
And all of them will wear out like a garment;
Like clothing You will change them and they will be changed.
But You are the same,
And Your years will not come to an end.
The children of Your servants will continue,
And their descendants will be established before You. (vs 25-28)
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
On Gretel's Path
When the Beasty was young
parents took Gret aside
showed her the beauty
mixed knowledge and pride
said if you are careful
our Beasty to ride
she'll love you and serve you
but Gret's parents lied
Seems Beasty was hungry
but always well fed
so thousands adored her
from doorway to shed
they'd pet from stone benches
she'd follow where led
Gret thought it was tame
it was hungry instead
One day parents left
to never return
and Beasty stayed still
missing love that was earned
then let out a roar
for appetite spurned
the Beasty was wild
and not our concern
Years later I heard
Gret looked for that beast
gathered plump juicy tasties
and set out a feast
found doorway and shed
on a path made her peace
such a beautiful creature -
WATCH YOUR BACK AT LEAST
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)