“Topsy-Turvy” . A Poem

Topsy-Turvy

by Dwight J. Friesen

Something has gone topsy-turvy.

We have put our shoes on our hands,
our hats on our feet,
and somehow are surprised
that walking has become difficult.

We have begun loving things that cannot love us back—
flags, borders, institutions,
the carefully guarded stories
we tell about ourselves.

We kiss the flag and curse the stranger.
We pledge allegiance to an abstraction
and demand identification from the neighbor.

We have taken what belongs between faces
and offered it to empires,
taken what belongs before thrones and powers
and aimed it at faces.

Everything is backwards.

Justice has been sent wandering through the neighborhood
with a warrant, looking for someone to blame.

And Love—poor Love—
has been dressed in uniform,
given an anthem, a border, a sword,
and told whom to fear.

Perhaps this is how chaos begins:
putting good things
in the wrong places.
  A throne upon an altar.
  A nation in the heart.
  A neighbor beneath our knee.

But somewhere this morning
an olive tree is entirely unconcerned
with our arrangements.
Roots downward.
Branches upward.
Fruit offered
without checking passports.

A sparrow lands
on both sides of a border
without knowing
it has committed a crime.

The rain falls
with scandalous impartiality.

Perhaps creation remembers
which way is up.

Jesus once told a story
about a man beside a road—
  a body,
  someone's child,
  a neighbor
  before he was anything else.

Religion passed him.
Respectability passed him.
Certainty passed him.

Then came the wrong person,
the foreigner,
the suspect,
the one already reduced
to a category.

He stopped.

Maybe salvation
sometimes looks that ordinary:
  someone stops,
  someone sees,
  someone kneels,
and the category
becomes a face again.

Love kneels.
Justice stands.
Love touches the wound.

Justice asks
why the wounds
keep happening.
Who built this road?
Who profits from its danger?
Who has no choice but to walk it?

Perhaps shalom begins
when neither will leave
without the other.

So turn us again, G-d.

Put nations back among
the things we make,
and neighbors back among
the things we cherish.

Let institutions answer
for what institutions do,
and let persons be more
than what frightened crowds
call them.

Teach us again
the strange geometry
of Your Kin-dom,
where the last come first,
enemies become neighbors,
the powerful come down,
and the One we called King 
kneels 
with a towel around waist.

Perhaps we have called
Your world upside-down
only because
we have been standing
on our heads
for so long.

Turn us, G-d.
Until love
finds the neighbor again,
justice
finds the powers,
and we remember
which way
is up.

Peace, dwight