Pentecost +5 Sunday – C2

Pentecost +5 Sunday – C2

Years C
Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 or Psalm 16

Those of old plowed through waters of chaos. They laid down straight rows of guidance, boundaries pleasing to our desires. When we think of power we see it in days of yore and yearn for its doubling and tripling in our time and place.

If it is power we see in the past, what do we envision for the future?

If looking for a future qualitatively and quantitatively better than what has been, why would we think that repeating the events and tools of the past will get us to arrive at a different place? While thankful that we have come thus far, even by some rather nefarious methods, we might yet begin to risk moving into a preferred future through radical revisioning of the tools and direction of our daily work.

= = = = = = =

desperately seeking G*D
we search old haunts
apply old creeds
looking in all the old places

blundering with old swords
charging new cannon
with old canon
charging backward

honorable folly
is folly still
honor the past
by not repeating it

- - -

as Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote:

Half a league half a league
Half a league onward
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade
Charge for the guns' he said
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldiers knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turned in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot & shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!