I wrote this a few years back, and then a mate referred to it last week and I used it one of my brekky spots on 98five.com this morning. It tries to reflect some of the challenges of living in suburbia. I thought it was worth a re-run.

If Not For the Snake 

Yeah we like to keep to ourselves
And that was the end of that…

Until
One lazy afternoon
As the winter sun warms the couch
And the buzz of the builder’s saw penetrates the silence
There is a new noise
A car horn blasts
Long
Loud
And again
Almost enough to cause me to move
And see what’s happening in our sleepy street
But the couch is comfortable and the sun is warm
Its’ none of my business anyway

Unfamiliar and unexpected footsteps clink up the wooden steps
A woman I am guessing (or a bloke in stilettos…)
The shadow at the door becomes a knock
As I open
I am rifling through the mental filing cabinet
To place who this is
In my mind’s eye
I see a dog and it clicks
She is the ‘dalmatian lady’
Because when you don’t know your neighbour’s names
It’s easier to name them by association
The bloke in the old green Landrover
The lady from the purple house
I have seen her walking the dog
She is the dalmatian lady

I’m your neighbour…
From across the street…
I think there’s a snake on my driveway…
I have been beeping my horn…
But it won’t move…
She needs my help
The dalmatian lady
Who likes to keep to herself
So I go and poke the sleepy snake
With a length of pipe
Like an angry drunk
He rears his head and tries to look threatening
Before sliding off into the bush

Thank you.
We’re moving house
Back to Queensland
This piece of information
Hangs clumsily in the air
I feel like I should care
But I don’t
The snake is gone
The crisis is averted
I can return to my side of the street
The dalmatian lady can move house
And keep to herself again

—————

Today the house appears empty
The cars have not come and gone
The lights have not flickered
A shipping container has been to visit
A handyman’s van spent a day there
Fixing things
As you do before inspection
The grass is mowed
The yard is tidy
The carport is empty
I’m guessing the dalmatian lady (and the dalmatian man) have gone
But we won’t know
Until some new faces appear

There has been no goodbye
Because there was no hello
And it would seem odd to farewell
The ‘snake poker man’
Who has lived opposite for two years
If not for the snake
We may never have met
We would have lived close but separate
Together but distant
Dante’s hell
Proximity without intimacy

And so I pray for more snakes
Or maybe just for people
Who don’t like to keep to themselves

And the flip side of this is that the people who live there now don’t ‘keep to themselves’ and we have loved getting to know them!

If Not For the Snake 

Yeah we like to keep to ourselves
And that was the end of that…

Until
One lazy afternoon
As the winter sun warms the couch
And the buzz of the builder’s saw penetrates the silence
There is a new noise
A car horn blasts
Long
Loud
And again
Almost enough to cause me to move
And see what’s happening in our sleepy street
But the couch is comfortable and the sun is warm
Its’ none of my business anyway

Unfamiliar and unexpected footsteps clink up the wooden steps
A woman I am guessing (or a bloke in stilettos…)
The shadow at the door becomes a knock
As I open
I am rifling through the mental filing cabinet
To place who this is
In my mind’s eye
I see a dog and it clicks
She is the ‘dalmatian lady’
Because when you don’t know your neighbour’s names
It’s easier to name them by association
The bloke in the old green Landrover
The lady from the purple house
I have seen her walking the dog
She is the dalmatian lady

I’m your neighbour…
From across the street…
I think there’s a snake on my driveway…
I have been beeping my horn…
But it won’t move…
She needs my help
The dalmatian lady
Who likes to keep to herself
So I go and poke the sleepy snake
With a length of pipe
Like an angry drunk
He rears his head and tries to look threatening
Before sliding off into the bush

Thank you.
We’re moving house
Back to Queensland
This piece of information
Hangs clumsily in the air
I feel like I should care
But I don’t
The snake is gone
The crisis is averted
I can return to my side of the street
The dalmatian lady can move house
And keep to herself again

—————

Today the house appears empty
The cars have not come and gone
The lights have not flickered
A shipping container has been to visit
A handyman’s van spent a day there
Fixing things
As you do before inspection
The grass is mowed
The yard is tidy
The carport is empty
I’m guessing the dalmatian lady (and the dalmatian man) have gone
But we won’t know
Until some new faces appear

There has been no goodbye
Because there was no hello
And it would seem odd to farewell
The ‘snake poker man’
Who has lived opposite for two years
If not for the snake
We may never have met
We would have lived close but separate
Together but distant
Dante’s hell
Proximity without intimacy

And so I pray for more snakes
Or maybe just for people
Who don’t like to keep to themselves

I can’t say I have experienced this, but maybe it will give us compassion for those who seem to lose their way, ‘stop coming to church’, or just seem to ditch their faith. Its pretty damn gut wrenching and the post script is that the poet actually took her own life in 1974. Sometimes its easy to frown upon people who seem to give up faith and not feel what they feel. If it feels anything like this then its a tough place to be.

Found on Frosty’s facebook via Cruciality

God went out of me

as if the sea dried up like sandpaper,

as if the sun became a latrine.

God went out of my fingers.

They became stone.

My body became a side of mutton

and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.

Someone brought me oranges in my despair

but I could not eat a one

for God was in that orange.

I could not touch what did not belong to me.

The priest came,

he said God was even in Hitler.

I did not believe him

for if God were in Hitler

then God would be in me.

I did not hear the bird sounds.

They had left.

I did not see the speechless clouds,

I saw only the little white dish of my faith

breaking in the crater.

I kept saying:

I’ve got to have something to hold on to.

People gave me Bibles, crucifixes,

a yellow daisy,

but I could not touch them,

I who was a house full of bowel movement,

I who was a defaced altar,

I who wanted to crawl toward God

could not move nor eat bread.

So I ate myself,

bite by bite,

and the tears washed me,

wave after cowardly wave,

swallowing canker after canker

and Jesus stood over me looking down

and He laughed to find me gone,

and put His mouth to mine

and gave me His air.

My kindred, my brother, I said

and gave the yellow daisy

to the crazy woman in the next bed.

– Anne Sexton, ‘The Sickness Unto Death’, in The Complete Poems (New York: Mariner Books, 1981), 441–42.

There are people after Jesus.

They have seen the signs.

Quick, let’s hide Him.

Let’s think; carpenter,

fishermen’s friend,

disturber of religious comfort.

Let’s award Him a degree in theology,

a purple cassock

and a position of respect.

They’ll never think of looking here.

Let’s think;

His dialect may betray Him,

His tongue is of the masses.

Let’s teach Him Latin

and seventeenth century English,

they’ll never think of listening in.

Let’s think;

humble,

Man of Sorrows,

nowhere to lay His head.

We’ll build a house for Him,

somewhere away from the poor.

We’ll fill it with brass and silence.

It’s sure to throw them off.

There are people after Jesus.

Quick, let’s hide Him.

—————-

Ouch…

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Fernando posted this one. I have always liked Robert Frost and his understated way of saying things.

A Time to Talk

by: Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don’t stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven’t hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

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Tonight at our Upstream meeting we each have to share something of significance to us , in regard to the Christmas story. Today I was spending some time reading and reflecting on Mary – just an ordinary girl who God chose as the mother of his son. What was it like for Mary?…

Just a Girl”

I wonder”

Of all the women in Nazareth, why choose Mary to be the mother of Jesus?

14 year old Mary” just a girl” so young” so little life experience” so much to learn” was she ready for this?

And why not Josie, or Katie, or Sally or anyone for that matter?

Why Mary?

Was she an especially good girl?

Was she an especially bad girl?

Was she especially anything at all?

Or was she just a girl” a girl who had found favour with God

I wonder”

What was Mary doing on the day the angel came?

Having breakfast? Shaving her legs? Doing the ironing?

Did she have any idea that today she would meet an angel and get chosen to be the mother of the saviour of the world?

Was she ready for her world to change for ever?

It was just an ordinary day in her ordinary life

And she was just a girl”

I wonder”

What went thru her mind when the angel had gone?

Did she ask ‘why me?’ Did she wonder what her baby might look like?

Did she wonder what Joseph would say?

Or how she would explain this to her father?…

Did she begin to dream of her baby’s future? Of his wife, of grandkids of family holidays of…

Did she know?

What did it feel like to have the saviour of the world growing inside you?

And to be” just a girl?…

I wonder”

Did Mary see Joseph that night?

“An angel?!… You’re kidding” No way!… Me too” Us” Why us?…”

Did she tell her mum?

Her dad?

Did they believe her? Did they interrogate her?

Or did they dismiss her

As just a girl?…

I wonder”

As the lump started to grow, as Mary started to show”

What did people say?

What was the ‘word on the street’ about Mary and Joseph?

Did her friends share her joy or did they slowly stop coming to see her?

An unmarried mum” bad company” a liar”

“Says it wasn’t Joseph” but the Holy Spirit”

“As if?”

“Not a bad story really. No one’s used that one before!”

“But why would God pick her?”

“Its pretty tall tale””

“She’s just a girl””

I wonder”

When the time came and they were in forced into a dirty stable

Did Mary get mad at Joseph for not booking a hotel? Nine months is fair warning after all.

What did she expect at the birth of her first child?

What kind of baby would ‘the son of God’ be?

Would anyone come to congratulate her and celebrate his birth?

Would anyone bring gifts for the baby?

Who would share this moment with her and Joseph?

When the shepherds came, when the wise men came, when the word spread and his life was threatened how did it feel then to be mother to this baby, the son of God, the saviour of the world?

A tiny baby

Vulnerable

Dangerous

And her” just a girl”

I wonder”

As Mary fed the son of God at her breast, as she toilet trained the Messiah, as she played with God enfleshed and watched him grow”

Did she know that one day he would die for the sins of the world?

Did she realise that he would be branded a criminal, an agitator a rebel?

Did she have any idea that her baby would be arrested and beaten, then whipped and left on a cross to die?

Did she know about the resurrection, the coming of the spirit, the birth of the church, the spread of the Way?

Or was she just a girl?…

A girl favoured by God.

A girl trusting God.

Just a girl”

by Steven Turner

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
So long as you don’t hurt anyone
To the best of your definition of hurt
And to the best of your knowledge

We believe in sex before during
And after marriage
We believe in the therapy of sin
We believe adultery is fun
We believe that sodomy’s OK
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything’s getting better
Despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
You can prove anything with evidence

We believe there’s something in horoscopes
UFO’s and bent spoons
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha
Mohammed and ourselves
He was a good moral teacher although we think
His good morals were bad

We believe that all religions are basically the same
At least the one we read was
They all believe in love and goodness
They only differ on matters of
Creation, sin heaven, hell God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes the nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied
Then its compulsory heaven for all
Excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan

We believe in Masters and Johnson
What’s selected is average
What’s average is normal
What’s normal is good

We believe in total disarmament
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
The Russians would be sure to follow

We believe that man is essentially good
Its only his behaviour that lets him down
This is the fault of society
Society is the fault of conditions
Conditions are the fault of society

We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him
Reality will adapt accordingly
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
Excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth

We believe in the rejection of creeds.

One of my favourite poems!

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