#symbolicphotography — Public Fediverse posts

NEW Song – Treći Maj (The Third of May)

May 3, 2023 refers to the Vladislav Ribnikar school shooting in Belgrade, Serbia, where a 13-year-old student killed nine students and a school security guard; six others were injured. The tragedy shocked Serbia and was followed by public mourning, protests, and a government disarmament campaign.

Lyrics:

Treći Maj (The Third of May)

Verse 1
Na zidu piše: Predaj oružje
The wall cannot carry all the grief.
A city holds its breath in silence,
counting names like broken beads.

Schoolyard bells and empty hallways,
flowers trembling in the rain,
the Spirit cries in a language
that nobody can explain.

Chorus
Predaj oružje — lay it down, lay it down.
So many children buried in this town.
Razgovarajte sa decom — hear them now, hear them now
at the altars where we bow.

Verse 2
Na vratima piše: Razgovarajte sa decom
speak to your children while they’re near.
Ask what shadows walk beside them,
where their bright joy turns to fear.

Not every wound is seen by daylight,
silent tears without a sound.
Some are present in the classroom
while their hearts are underground.

Chorus
Predaj oružje — lay it down, lay it down.
Too many children buried in this town.
Razgovarajte sa decom — hear them now, hear them now
at the altars where we bow.

Bridge
If we only shout after thunder,
if we only weep after the flames,
then the stones will learn our prayers
where we’ve carved our children’s names.

So open every locked-up room,
open every frightened hand.
Let the living be our shrine,
let compassion rule the land.

Final Chorus
Predaj oružje — lay it down, lay it down.
Let no more hatred wear a crown.
Razgovarajte sa decom — hear them say, hear them say.
Let love be our king today.

Outro
Na zidu piše: Predaj oružje.
Na srcu piše: hear their quiet call.
Razgovarajte sa decom —
Talk to your children.
Talk to them all.

NEW Song – Treći Maj (The Third of May)

May 3, 2023 refers to the Vladislav Ribnikar school shooting in Belgrade, Serbia, where a 13-year-old student killed nine students and a school security guard; six others were injured. The tragedy shocked Serbia and was followed by public mourning, protests, and a government disarmament campaign.

Lyrics:

Treći Maj (The Third of May)

Verse 1
Na zidu piše: Predaj oružje
The wall cannot carry all the grief.
A city holds its breath in silence,
counting names like broken beads.

Schoolyard bells and empty hallways,
flowers trembling in the rain,
the Spirit cries in a language
that nobody can explain.

Chorus
Predaj oružje — lay it down, lay it down.
So many children buried in this town.
Razgovarajte sa decom — hear them now, hear them now
at the altars where we bow.

Verse 2
Na vratima piše: Razgovarajte sa decom
speak to your children while they’re near.
Ask what shadows walk beside them,
where their bright joy turns to fear.

Not every wound is seen by daylight,
silent tears without a sound.
Some are present in the classroom
while their hearts are underground.

Chorus
Predaj oružje — lay it down, lay it down.
Too many children buried in this town.
Razgovarajte sa decom — hear them now, hear them now
at the altars where we bow.

Bridge
If we only shout after thunder,
if we only weep after the flames,
then the stones will learn our prayers
where we’ve carved our children’s names.

So open every locked-up room,
open every frightened hand.
Let the living be our shrine,
let compassion rule the land.

Final Chorus
Predaj oružje — lay it down, lay it down.
Let no more hatred wear a crown.
Razgovarajte sa decom — hear them say, hear them say.
Let love be our king today.

Outro
Na zidu piše: Predaj oružje.
Na srcu piše: hear their quiet call.
Razgovarajte sa decom —
Talk to your children.
Talk to them all.

Excommunicate Me

Excommunicate me, then.
Ring the bell if you have one. Draw the line in ash. Nail the notice to the chapel door. Speak my name in the flat voice reserved for weather, death, and disappointment. Tell the saints to avert their eyes. Tell the children not to ask questions. Tell the old women in the kitchen to lower their voices when I pass. I have grown used to doors closing with the gentleness of those who think themselves righteous.

Excommunicate me for loving too widely, for asking where the missing ones went, for lingering too long at the edge of the map where the heretics, addicts, doubters, dissidents, and queer-eyed prophets make their fires at night. Excommunicate me for saying that Christ still wanders there, coat smelling of smoke, hands warm from other people’s wounds. Excommunicate me for suspecting that the kingdom keeps being born in places your committees have not approved.

Cast me out for refusing to confuse your fences with holiness.
Cast me out for noticing how often your purity is purchased with somebody else’s loneliness.
Cast me out for believing that a table is still a table even when the wrong people find bread there first.

I know how this works. First comes the sorrowful meeting. Then the careful language. Then the phrases dressed in prayer like soldiers dressed in hymnals. We say discernment when we mean fear. We say order when we mean control. We say peace when we mean silence from those already bruised. We say love while measuring who may enter it. We say truth with our arms folded.

Excommunicate me because I cannot keep pretending that the wound in the Body is healed by cutting off another limb.

I have seen too much of the outside to fear it now. I have seen the banished making soup for one another. I have seen the condemned share coats in winter. I have seen those denied the sacraments become sacraments for each other: bread in famine, oil in sickness, a hand on the shoulder in the long vestibule of grief. I have heard better theology whispered on back steps than shouted from polished pulpits. I have watched the Spirit climb out the stained-glass window and go where she is not expected.

Excommunicate me, and I will go down among the unclaimed.
I will kneel beside the ones your footnotes could not save.
I will keep company with the mothers whose prayers embarrassed you, the children whose questions outgrew your answers, the men who wept when they were told to be strong, the women who spoke and were called dangerous, the wanderers who could not make your narrow gate into a home.

And if you shut me out from your sanctuary, I will make a sanctuary of the road.
If you deny me your blessing, I will learn the blessing of crows at morning, of rain on rusted tin, of strangers who still know how to share fire.
If you call me lost, I will answer that some of us were never meant to be found by empires.

Do not threaten me with the outer dark.
I have met God there.

Not the tidy god of minutes and motions, not the well-behaved deity who always sides with the CEO, but the God who haunts the threshold, who leaves the ninety-nine to go where the crying is, who touches the unclean and is not diminished, who slips through locked doors and still carries wounds, who keeps raising what the pious have buried.

Excommunicate me for this: I no longer believe belonging is yours to ration.
I no longer believe grace requires your seal.
I no longer believe heaven trembles when your vote is taken.
The veil was torn without your permission, and it has never been properly mended.

So do it.
Write me out.
Strike my name from the roll.
Erase me from the minutes.
Tell yourselves the garden is safer now that one more wild thing has been removed.

But listen: roots work in secret. Seeds pass through the beaks of birds and are planted in their shit. Wind ignores decrees. What you cast out does not always die. Sometimes it takes hold beyond the wall and flowers in the rubble, and those passing by say, I did not know beauty could grow here.

Excommunicate me, then.
I will go with Christ among the cast out.
I will go where the lepers still ring their bells, where the scapegoats stagger into the wilderness, where the rejected stone waits in the dust.
And when at last you come looking for God, breathless with your censures, your keys jangling at your side, do not be surprised to find us already inside the feast, the doors flung wide, the music loud, the wounded laughing, and every empty place at the table set for one more.

The Worst Kind of Freedom

Dediticii of the State, Paroikoi of the Kingdom:

On Christian Nationalism, False Freedom, and the Pilgrim Church

There is a freedom that sings loudly and yet is already in chains.

There is a freedom that waves a flag, quotes a verse, demands a prayer in the public square, and calls itself holy. There is a freedom that speaks the name of Jesus with one breath and the language of domination with the next. There is a freedom that insists it is under threat whenever the neighbor is also allowed to breathe, speak, worship, live, vote, belong, or flourish. And that freedom is no freedom at all. It is fear dressed in patriotic robes. It is anxiety holding a Bible. It is the oldest lie of empire baptized in civil religion.

Christian nationalism is built upon that lie.

It says, “We must take the nation back.”
It says, “We must restore Christian order.”
It says, “We must defend our way of life.”
But underneath all of its grand language is a smaller and sadder confession: we do not trust the way of Jesus to be enough unless Caesar kneels beside him. And once the church begins to think that way, it has already bent the knee to another throne.

That is why the old Roman word dediticii has such prophetic force here. In Roman usage, deditio was surrender, and dediticii were those marked by that surrender, those living under the terms of a conquering power; in later Roman legal usage the term could also refer to people whose liberty was degraded, curtailed, a kind of freedom beneath full belonging.  What a terrible phrase that is for the church to deserve: not merely conquered, but living in the illusion of liberty while shaped by the chains of empire.

And that is the tragedy of Christian nationalism. It imagines itself strong, but it is surrendered. It imagines itself sovereign, but it is already owned. It imagines itself defending the faith, but it has accepted the terms of a lesser kingdom. It seeks power in the way Rome seeks power, order in the way empires seek order, peace in the way fearful nations seek peace: through threat, hierarchy, exclusion, privilege, and force. It calls this righteousness. It calls this prudence. It calls this realism. But the gospel calls it what it is: temptation.

For every freedom built on another person’s diminishment is already a form of bondage.

If I can only feel secure when someone else is excluded, then I am not secure.
If I can only feel righteous when someone else is silenced, then I am not righteous.
If I can only feel free when someone else is less free, then I am not free.

I am merely protected by a cage large enough to mistake for a kingdom.

This is the bitterest irony of all: those who would limit the freedom of others in the name of preserving their own eventually discover that they, too, have become servants of limitation. They must constantly patrol the borders. They must always be on the lookout for enemies. They must keep watch over books, bodies, ballots, classrooms, pulpits, prayers, and pronouns. They must nourish grievance. They must cultivate suspicion. They must remain forever agitated because domination cannot rest. The soul that clings to supremacy must live in permanent alarm. And so the one who promised freedom becomes the custodian of fear.

That is why this is not merely a political error. It is a spiritual deformation.

Christian nationalism is not simply bad analysis. It is bad discipleship. It is the church forgetting what kind of people it is. It is the church forgetting that Jesus did not seize Rome; Rome seized Jesus. It is the church forgetting that salvation did not come through occupying the governor’s palace, but through faithfulness unto death. It is the church forgetting that Pentecost did not create a purified nation but a multilingual people. It is the church forgetting that the Lord’s Table is not bordered by tribe, race, party, passport, or patriotic myth. It is the church forgetting that Christ rules from a cross before he is confessed in glory.

And when the church forgets these things, it becomes available for conscription.

It can still sing.
It can still preach.
It can still quote scripture.
It can still say “Lord, Lord.”

But it begins to sound less like the Beatitudes and more like a millstone. Less like the prophets and more like the court. Less like the crucified and more like Pilate washing his hands while the machinery of death carries on.

Against all this, the New Testament gives the church another word, a better word: paroikoi. The term carries the sense of strangers, sojourners, resident aliens, people dwelling near but not fully at home in the order around them. In 1 Peter 2:11, believers are addressed in precisely that way, as “foreigners and exiles,” those whose lives in the world are real but not reducible to the world’s claims.  And Paul, in Philippians 3:20, gives the church its political center of gravity: “our citizenship is in heaven.”

There is the contrast.

Dediticii are defined by surrender to imperial terms.
Paroikoi are defined by faithful dwelling without ultimate belonging.

Dediticii live under the dictates of the conqueror.
Paroikoi live under the promise of God.

Dediticii accept diminished freedom as though it were normal.
Paroikoi know that their life comes from another commonwealth.

Dediticii are shaped by subjection.
Paroikoi are shaped by pilgrimage.

The church is called to be paroikoi, not dediticii.

The church is called to dwell in the world, bless the world, serve the world, weep with the world, labor for justice in the world, and seek the welfare of the city; but it is never called to worship the city, confuse the city with the kingdom, or surrender its conscience to the rulers of the age. It is called to be near without being possessed. Present without being absorbed. Public without becoming idolatrous. Loving without becoming captive. The church does not need to dominate in order to be faithful. The church needs to remember who it is.

And who is it?

It is a baptized people, not a blood-and-soil people.
It is a Eucharistic people, not a nationalist people.
It is a Pentecost people, not a monocultural people.
It is a cruciform people, not a triumphalist people.
It is a resurrection people, not a fear-governed people.

That is why Christian nationalism is so dangerous. It does not merely propose a flawed strategy. It offers the church a false identity. It tells Christians they are landowners of a sacred nation rather than pilgrims of a holy kingdom. It tells them they are guardians of civilization rather than witnesses to Christ. It tells them their task is to possess the machinery of rule rather than embody the mercy of God. It tells them the neighbor’s difference is a threat rather than an occasion for love. It tells them anxiety is wisdom. It tells them domination is stewardship. It tells them privilege is providence.

And many believe it because it flatters the flesh.

It flatters the longing to be secure without sacrifice.
It flatters the longing to be righteous without repentance.
It flatters the longing to be powerful without being crucified.
It flatters the longing to call coercion conviction and call fear discernment.

But Christ does not flatter the flesh. Christ calls the church to die.

To die to supremacy.
To die to tribal vanity.
To die to the dream of holy violence.
To die to the seduction of being chaplain to empire.
To die to every flag that asks for what belongs only to God.

The church must hear this plainly: when it reaches for power by limiting the lives of others, it does not become more itself. It becomes less. When it seeks freedom through exclusion, it does not enlarge liberty. It redistributes bondage. When it blesses structures that narrow the humanity of the neighbor, it nails its own soul to those same structures. That is the judgment hidden inside the word dediticii: those who think they have secured their place have, in truth, surrendered themselves to a power that can only give them the worst kind of freedom.

But the gospel still offers another way.

Be paroikoi.
Be pilgrims.
Be resident aliens of grace.
Be people whose identity papers are issued in heaven.
Be people who do not need Caesar to certify the lordship of Christ.
Be people free enough to bless without ruling, to serve without controlling, to witness without seizing, to love without fearing.

For our citizenship is in heaven.
And because our citizenship is in heaven, we are finally free on earth: free to tell the truth, free to defend the vulnerable, free to refuse idols, free to reject every gospel of blood and soil, free to stand with those whose liberty is threatened, free to be neither conquerors nor cowards.

The church does not need a Christian nation.
The church needs Christian faithfulness.

The church does not need the illusion of greatness.
The church needs the courage of holiness.

The church does not need to become the soul of the state.
The church must become again the body of Christ.

So let the nations rage. Let the parties boast. Let the demagogues preach their frightened liturgies of invasion, purity, and control. The church must not join their choir. The church must remember its name.

Not dediticii of the state.
But paroikoi of the kingdom.

Not surrendered to empire.
But dwelling in hope.

Not the keepers of a lesser freedom.
But the witnesses of the all-encompassing liberation of Christ.

Maundy Night, in Fragments

It was night already—
and the room was close,
low-beamed, breath-warmed,
troubled by the nearness of departure.
The lamp did not so much shine
as shudder.

There are nights
that seem to know.

The basin waited.
The towel waited.
The water, in its shallow little vessel,
held a silence deeper than the sea.

And He—
O strange reversal!—
He whose hands had lifted dust to life,
whose fingers had written mercy
upon the infirm flesh of the world,
stooped.

Stooped.

I cannot loose myself
from that word.

For there are stoopings more terrible than thunder.
There are bendings low
that break the spine of pride
more surely than the sword breaks bone.

And one by one—
sandaled, ashamed, confused—
they drew near Him.
The feet of fishermen,
the feet of zealots,
the feet that had wandered,
the feet still crusted with the stale earth
of empire and fatigue.

And He washed them.

Not as a servant washes, perhaps—
hurriedly, dutifully, with half-averted eye—
but with that unbearable tenderness
which makes the beloved wish to flee.

For who can bear
to be known at the heel,
at the dustiest place,
at the place where the road clings?

Peter recoiled, of course—
dear violent Peter—
as men recoil from love
when it approaches too nearly
the wound.

“No—”

Ah, but all our souls are fashioned of that syllable.
No, not there.
No, not this filth.
No, not the part of me
that has walked where I ought not.

Yet still the water spoke
in its soft and ruinous language.

If I wash thee not—

And then the air itself seemed to splinter,
for one may resist majesty,
but to be excluded from such sorrowful intimacy—
that is a horror no disciple can endure.

So the feet were given.
So the heart, for a moment, trembled open.

And somewhere in the room
sat the other one.

He too had feet.
He too received bread.
He too was near enough
to hear the pulse in the Master’s throat,
to see the shadows gather
beneath His eyes
like birds before a storm.

How dreadful,
that one may sit so near the Holy
and yet prefer the kiss of silver.

Thirty pieces—
thin moons of metal,
cold as the underside of a grave-stone,
small little hosts of another kingdom.

I think they rang already
in the secret chambers of his mind.

The bread was broken.
No—more than broken.
Offered.
Which is the crueler word.

Take, eat—

And all the centuries leaned inward.

The cup passed.
Darkness trembled in it
like an omen,
like a red remembering,
like the heart’s own interior
made visible.

Drink ye all—

All.

Even now the word accuses me.

For the table was long,
and the shadows longer,
and love, longest of all,
stretching even toward betrayal,
even toward denial,
even toward scattering.

Outside, the city breathed
with the heavy lungs of feast and politics.
Inside, eternity had knelt upon the floor
and wrapped itself in linen.

What church can bear this memory?
What soul can keep it
without cracking?

The clink of cup.
The rustle of garment.
A hand withdrawing too quickly.
A glance no one could quite endure.
And beneath all things,
like a distant drumbeat under the earth:

going,
going,
going.

To the garden.
To the dark.
To the lanterns and the cudgels.
To the mouths of false witnesses.
To the rooster’s cry.
To the nails.
To the forsakenness immense and measureless.

Yet here—
here first—
before the torches,
before the thorns,
before the torn veil and the opened side—
here was the kingdom:

A basin.
A towel.
Bread in broken hands.
A cup not refused.
Love stooping lower
than any disciple could imagine,
lower perhaps than hell itself,
that it might fill even the lowest place
with the rumor of God.

And I, remembering it,
can scarcely speak except in shards.

A splash of water.
A morsel of bread.
A traitor’s mouth.
A beloved breast leaning near.
The night at the window, listening.
The floorboards aching under the tread of doom.
And Christ—
dear Christ—
moving among them still
with the calm of One
who has already entered death
and found it, too,
washable.

Then out they went.

Into olives.
Into moon-pallor.
Into that hour which still has not ended.

And the towel lay folded.
And the basin held
the last disturbed water.
And somewhere, perhaps,
one drop remained upon the floor—
bright, unnoticed,
like a tear
or like the first small glimmer
of the strange and terrible mercy
by which the world
shall yet be undone.