Lipsmacking Righteous Indignation. Scott Cairns on Prayer

This "response" of God to my prayers made me laugh, made me think, made me sober.  

"Possible Answers to Prayer"

By Scott Cairns

Your petitions—though they continue to bear   
just the one signature—have been duly recorded.   
Your anxieties—despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent   
entertainment value—nonetheless serve   
to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance—all but obscured beneath   
a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more   
conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,   
the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes   
recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly   
righteous indignation toward the many   
whose habits and sympathies offend you— 
        
these must burn away before you’ll apprehend   
how near I am, with what fervor I adore
precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.

Scott Cairns is a Orthodox poet that I "discovered" a few years ago.  His words are typically close-to-the-bone and oblique, which I have to say, I love.  While I am Presbyterian in my approach to worship and heurmenuetic, I love how Mr. Cairns, from his Orthodox understanding unearths a strata of the love of God's creation that I can sometimes miss. 

He is my favorite poet.  If you happen to like this poem.  Google his name and you might enjoy the ride, as I have.  You might even start buying his books, as I did.

Citation: Cairns, Scott. Compass of Affection. Paraclete Press. 2006. Page 91.

A glimpse of the goodness of God

I am so grateful for every glimpse of the Gospel that I receive.  Here is one glimmering thought that sheds light for us. 

"...the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God.  We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God.  What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day?  Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return; how when we came before his alter, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitence's, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills?  But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does.  Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity..."

-From Love Came Down - Anglican Readings for Advent and Christmas

That thought reminds me of one of my favorite poems.  Scott Cairns, whose poem I found here, wrote this

Possible Answers to Prayer

"Your petitions—though they continue to bear   

just the one signature—have been duly recorded.   

Your anxieties—despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent   

entertainment value—nonetheless serve   

to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance—all but obscured beneath   

a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more   

conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,   

the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes   

recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly   

righteous indignation toward the many   

whose habits and sympathies offend you—         

these must burn away before you’ll apprehend   

how near I am, with what fervor I adore

precisely these, the several who rouse your passions."