Dialogues For The Deaf

When sarcasm passes for truth
more easily than sincerely meant enquiry
that is how we know that our mass media
has taken one too many shortcuts to be truthful,
and they are leaving behind who they report to
in the Gadarine rush to get the best headline
because that what raises their advertising revenue.

It does not matter that anger at racism
is quite rightly righteous, it is plain wrong.
Nobody needs add their false self to prove that.

But when we close the space where our doubts
about the best solutions might be shared
we lose the place where we can hear others and be listened to.

Modern Phariseeism,

is like the phariseeism of old; live well materially,
have clean and tidy houses, keep your accounts
in good order and last, and far from least, have full larder.
But the car has taken over the role that legalistic theology
once had, as the transport of delight by which to bypass
the point of life, without being seen to, and proving you are
in The Elect. Anyone who drives bypasses the mess
and goes too fast to see the rubbish snagged in hedges.
But if we walked we would see the litter, and be moved
by how much it, like the vehicles it was thrown from,
is unnatural to the landscape. To see like this requires
having  more time than money. A friendliness with having less
is a neccesity for us to be well acquainted with the land that bears us.