Wednesday, November 16, 2016

we also live double lives ~ Walter Brueggemann

Power turns and postures and exhibits.
It controls and manages and plots.
We participate in it,
we benefit from it,
we are dazzled by it… and more than a little afraid.
Just underneath, all the while…
Just underneath dazzling power
sits violence and brutality,
greed and fear and envy,
cunning and shamelessness.
In that too we participate.
Like the ancients, we also live double lives,
public in pageant and role and office,
hidden in meanness and thinness.
We do not do well at bringing this double together.
But we confess you to be Lord of all our lives,
Give us new freedom about our public lives,
give us new candor about our hidden lives,
Correct what is brutal and greedy and fearful,
chasten what is hidden and mean.
Make us women and men of shalom,
the kind of welfare you will for our common life. Amen

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