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People of the Book

Though some might think it heresy
I confess it troubles me that though
He said to those He led that a grapevine
can’t grow figs, isn’t that just what
we did, having turned His skin to white
and changed his sight—our blue-eyed boy
grafted to a Christian tree so even though
He did decree we love our neighbors as
ourselves, once we claimed Him for
our own, we turned His people into “them.”

 

Exodus: Journeys of Liberation, by Carl Dixon

Carl Dixon, a self-taught artist from Mississippi, considers his mixed-media, sculpted wood paintings to be works of “testimony art,” sharing the great narratives of the Bible, significant moments from the African American experience, and his life story and religious faith. These themes all come together in his epic-sized, single-panel triptych depicting journeys of liberation. To the left in the carved painting, Moses leads the children of Israel through the Red Sea, miraculously parted to allow their escape from Egypt.

Fleshment

God came to me as a sign—more than letters—also, the veritable oak,
nailed as a single digit into the ground. I sit in church and what means to me
are rope-swags on white curtains, all the places where the up-lights peer
like eyes into a moving sheerness. And your tone, Pastor, when technology fails,
when the young girl with the same break in her back as you,
can’t produce the right YouTube video. We hold God in our bodies, in our voices.
We walk around taking Him with us: We are Church. We are Container.

why would My Son

care
to be
a shepherd, The Shepherd

to sheep

those foul, obstinate
foolhardy & dumbest of
creations by
His Heavenly Father

for example, their wool’s
a catch all
for everything
everso contradictory to

their very well-being

for near & dear
to them in their once
fluffy fleece

can be found the likes
and dislikes of
mud, burrs, sticks,
ticks, lice
and clotted manure,