New Light Tabernacle

I’d be willing to drive an extra ten minutes to shop

At a grocery store unplugged from the grid,

Its lights and heating provided by solar panels,

Though I admit that an extra thirty minutes

Might prove a problem. I have my own life to live,

After all, which requires keeping the friendships

That matter to me in good repair

While saving an hour or two, now and then,

For writing to the editor of my local paper

A temperate letter on the injury done the earth

By an extra degree of global warming,

Making the obvious point that bears repeating

Without the indignation that offends more readers

Than it persuades. Still, I don’t want to deny

That the few willing to drive the whole half hour

May also have a list of priorities

That it costs them dearly to put on hold.

What for me is an optional extra

Is for them a commandment they must obey.

The world would be far smaller and shabbier

Without its saints, without the zealots

Who can’t be content with halfway measures.

I hope I never dismiss as melodramatic the few

Who chain themselves to the fence of a power plant

Where the turbines are turned by burning coal.

I hope I never mock as inconsistent the few

Who, having sold their cars to promote clean air,

Hitch a ride with a friend to attend a protest.

The moderate many in biblical times

Who didn’t give all they had to the poor

And follow their footloose prophet when invited to

Didn’t look down their noses at those who did.

They admired them for thirsting after perfection

As I admire those who are thirsting now.

Of course, I don’t agree with the zealots who argue

No fellowship can exist between friends of the earth

And those who believe a better world awaits us

Beyond the earth. We can make them our allies,

I argue, if we dwell on their faith that one day

In seven should be set aside to commemorate

The earth’s creation, that the commandment to rest

Applies to beasts of burden as well as to humans.

And maybe I’ll tell the zealots an anecdote

That shows how I owe my arriving on time

At a meeting in Pittsburgh on the dangers of fracking

To the ministry of the New Light Tabernacle,

How when I stopped in the rain on a lonely byroad

To fix a flat with a jack I discovered missing,

The only car that pulled in behind mine

Displayed on its bumper, in radiant letters,

The two-word announcement “Born Again.”

Did I tell the driver, when he offered to help,

That I thought one birth was enough for anyone?

No, I accepted his offer gladly, and gladly listened,

While he changed my tire, to the story of his conversion:

How one Sunday morning, already drunk,

Worried he’d glimpsed a squad car in his rearview mirror,

He swerved into the crowded lot of a church

And scooted inside, only to find himself

Listening to a sermon that asked the question,

Are you living the life you want to live?

No, he wasn’t, and the rest is history.

So he explained while bolting my spare on,

Cheerful, though soaked to the skin, impervious.

And who was I, as I watched him, to doubt

That he’d not only tried to change but had succeeded,

That the new man was not the old?