Anselm's Short Ballade (An Addition to "The Apology Box")

              Anselm’s Short Ballade

I’m unsurprised that mind persists although

The body drops extinguished.  Nothing may

Be perfect but the Lord.  That being so,

Death must be flawed and therefore cannot stay

The intellect forever lest we say

Death is invincible and perfect, too.

I can’t consistently speak such a way,

Lord.  Reason will not let me turn from you.

Nor could I doubt your being, Lord, although

You did not show your face.  God is, we say,

The greatest thing conceivable.  That so,

God must exist since absent things, we say,
Are less.  Should God not be, that opens way

To something greater:  God plus being, too.

But nothing’s greater.  Logic shows the way,

Lord.  Reason will not let me turn from you.

And thus I kneel in hopeful prayer you’ll say,

“Come follow me as well in heaven, too.”

I cannot rise until you’ve shown the way,

Lord. Reason will not let me turn from you. 

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

 

            

Three Religious Warriors: Richard I, Saladin, & Charles Martel (Additions to "The Apology Box")

              Richard I’s Sonnet

Christ is my only standard. As he drove

The money changers from the temple who

Profaned it, I in imitation strove

To save God's temples from blasphemers, too.

If smaller groups of money changers must

Be driven out, much more so should we drive

Out hordes of unbelievers.  I was just

Therefore in how I chose to reign and live.

Although great men have critics and I'm not

Immune, I'm confident the worst they’ve said

Of me is I craved men and therefore led

Men East.  If true, such charge condemns me not.

In judging right and wrong, Christ is the test.

I've read his words.  The topic's not addressed.

               Saladin's Round

            (By a Kurdish hero)

There is no God but God and he is Lord

Of every atom of creation.  He

Is thus by his own essence rightfully

The Lord of old Jerusalem and all

Her Asian territories rather than

Someone whose agent sits in far-off Rome.

Someone whose agent sits in far-off Rome

Abstractly drinking blood and eating flesh

With wine and broken bread in temples there

Has brokered more than mere abstractions here.

This broker's swords have broken men and spilled

Real blood and gore throughout God’s Holy Land.

Real blood and gore throughout God’s Holy Land

Required response and we have given aid.

We’ve had to use swords doing that though we

Preferred the use of reason.  Though we’ve won

Upon the field, our greater victory comes

Through favoring mercy over death instead.

Through favoring mercy over death instead

Of other attitudes, we’ve followed God

And done his work.  Though evil trembles at

Such simple logic, we find rest in it--

God favors mercy and believers know

There is no God but God and he is Lord.

                Charles Martel’s Sonnet

Though God is three in one, it’s blasphemy

To tolerate an earthly trinity

Of Christian, Jew, and Muslim. There can be

Just one true faith since Christianity

Alone is scriptural.  Of course God knew

Martel means “hammer” and called me to do

The labor.  Although just a bastard to

That beast Plectude, great battle plans I drew

For plated men and beasts.  At Poitiers,

Design met field.  There my troops held at bay

The foreign hordes our armor drove away

From Christendom forever.  Lord, I pray

For Heavenly inclusion having fought

For God and Christendom as scriptures taught.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Confucius and Lao Tzu (Additions to "The Apology Box")

            Confucius’s Sonnet

Mere force brings no true order since forced change

Warps from without and thus can never fit

An inner nature that’s rejecting it.

Without such fit, there’s but apparent change.

As mere force is deficient, sages thus

Discount it.  Righting wrong, they find a way

To change a man by his own choices. Thus,

They speak and do precisely. Sages sway

With virtue and right language of the kind

They’ve learned in studies of the old archives

Of ritual and common mythic mind.

Their teaching teaches them. Example drives

Without a whip. On earth, in heaven, too,

Truth bans all thrashings hells purport to do.

            Lao Tzu’s Sonnet

Would breath that loathed to make a sound in life

Somehow reverse itself in airless death?

Would it somehow convert itself at last

Into fools’ terms?  No--death is muter still.

I’ve neither arrogance nor wish to harm.

I’d not presume an ant cares how my mouth

Might label it.  I all the more of course

Would not presume that heaven gives a damn.

Man’s categories cause him needless ill—

A man can’t covet or despise a thing

Some category’s not disjoined from him.

Man's words spread categories' ills about.

Without air heaven must be wordless.  Hence,

I'm mute where no decrees expel me hence.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Boethius, St. Ambrose, and Marcion the Docetist (Additions to "The Apology Box")

               Boethius's Sonnet

Was Theodoric’s prison in the end

That proved the real academy.  Was there

They taught first hand true good cannot depend

Upon mere fortune.  There caged in despair

This humbled bureaucrat learned power flees

In but a moment and, too, learned, how fast

“Good” title both in name and properties

Is marred.  Yet, I found hope!  Though no things last

Below at length, that maid Philosophy

Took pity, visited dark dungeons and

Consoled me with her higher poetry

Of permanence.  Caressing that sweet hand,

I thought no more of nooses or of cells

But of divinity and where it dwells.

 

               Saint Ambrose's Sonnet

Before the awful bench where all will stand

We come in turn to plead and do admit

Our errors though in doing so submit

In mitigation it was not our hand

That sought the staff.  Instead, Milan asked.  We

Were acquiescent, humbly turned our backs

On Roman boons (yet kept her bones as racks

For Christian ornament--past lies would be

Upholders of the truth.)  Thus we transformed

Words, music, marbles, even living flesh--

Behold Augustine we baptized afresh.

Mere spirit now, our temporal see performed,

Pray let us see Rome’s church ascending now

Above Rome’s ruins we’ve refurbished now.

             

            Marcion The Docetist’s Sonnet

I’ve kneeled before the true God now revealed

Through that majestic phantasm called Christ

That clarified true faith and thus repealed

The older books.  Sweet ghost!  If sacrificed,

I knew it was not God.  Perfection by

Its very terms can never suffer.  For

To suffer is to lose, to be less than

Complete and thus prove imperfection.  Nor

Could it have been a man.  Though man could be

Sinless despite the lie of Eden, You

Could not allow a sinless man to be

Condemned and killed for sins he did not do.

Great ghostly messenger!  It had to be

Of course fantastic coming, Lord, from Thee!

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Cyrus and Esther (Additions to the Apology Box)

     Cyrus The Great’s Proof

It’s wrong to disown any family.

We must be fair in hospitality

To every member. We may not despise

Another made in Heaven’s image.  Wise

Ones know the converse would be blasphemy.

We had to unify.  No boundary

Is moral.  Even Hebrews now are free

To come back in the fold, to realize

It’s wrong to disown any family.

Death can’t destroy your Image. Unity

Has to survive the grave and cannot be

Extinguished.  Live and dead must still comprise

A common brood.  We specters therefore rise

To meet you knowing that you will agree

It’s wrong to disown any family.

 

                      Esther's Sonnet

There’s bravery that’s physical in bed,

That’s cousin to the field of battle’s.  I

Burned with such valor from the day I wed

Another by whose whim I’d live or die.

I passed, had spies, laid trenches in the sheet.

I suffered the assaults but never gave

A true surrender.  I held till defeat

Had closed the enemy within his grave

With my assistance.  There’s no felony

In war’s attack, in what I had to do.

There are no lies or whores in battle.  We

Have heroes or we’ve cowards--just the two.

This star of Esther stayed though others fell:

By name, the heavens are where Esthers dwell.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Rhetoric to Lettie (A Book of Original Verse)

                                        Lettie 6/12/2001 to 6/2/2013

                                        © Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

            

Preface for Lettie

A household lacking animals

            Is like a Cyclops who

Half-brained has lost an ear, a hand,

            A leg, a nostril, too.

Snow In August (A Book of Original Verse)

 

       Snow In August

She had enjoyed sweet certain knowledge that,
however hot the summer, August brought

its welcome snows upon a boundary fence
that she had kept to please her neighbors, too.

Either Oar (A Book of Original Verse & Translations)

I Mined and Shared from Matchless Mines of Me: Two Sonnets of Job (Apology Box Additions)

In these days when some claim to follow so-called prosperity theology, it's of course good to remember the story of Job.  It is, in fact, impossible to claim that one follows the Bible literally and yet also claim that God will lavish health and material reward on those who follow him. Similarly, suffering does not in and of itself indicate malfeasance. Both experience and Job tell us just the opposite.  We see good people suffer, and we see people who do bad things prosper nonetheless.  Of course, this is not to say that we are not often rewarded for good and that we are not often punished for doing wrong.  Nor is this to say that at least some form of reputational "karma" does not exist.  We of course build and lose reputations based upon our voluntary choices and we reap and suffer consequences of those choices.  However, all this occurs in the context of a world coming at us in countless ways that are also beyond our control and that deliver both bounties and setbacks that we don't deserve.  The best of us can live in poverty and ill-health despite our best efforts and those of us doing the worst can live in great prosperity.  To claim otherwise (1) rejects both experience and the Book of Job, (2) rejects true humanity itself, (3) rejects the compassion and understanding true virtue requires, and (4) demeans grace which, frankly, we all need to appreciate and cultivate more.    

The Kingdom Is Within

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 4/16/2014 in The Huffinton Post

Apology Box Additions: Sampson & Delilah

    

                 

                        Sampson’s Sonnet 

The day misleads.  We’re blessed by losing eyes

Too easily distracted by the rose

That colors over thorns, insects, and blight,

And feigns geometries in petals though

True lines and circles never can be drawn

On warped and pitted canvases of earth.

The very structure of the eye proclaims

That sight has little worth.  Jehovah would

Not make such fragile orbs for vision if

It were a thing for us to treasure much.

Delilah is more proof.  Unseen she could

Not use her outer bloom for treachery.

By losing eyes, I took on better sight

And found more focus in the dark than light. 

                  Delilah’s Sonnet

How could betrayal happen to a man

Who’d made a wager, murdered when he’d lost,

Who knowingly pushed massive pillars down

To crush a child that led him to the place,

Who’d used his trust, dominion over beasts,

To bind their tails and send them off in flames?

(I still can hear the awful yelping of

The twice-red foxes till the fires consumed

Their tiny throats and tongues.)  I had no choice.

He was a monster.  Villainy requires

Containment which we did—yet let him live,
A courtesy he failed to show himself

In taking his own life that we had spared.

Delilah in return should, too, be spared. 

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.