A Hymn on the Texts We Preach

I wrote this for a 2024 issue of Call to Worship, a PCUSA journal where it can also be found, here

(Today, we sing a song of holy insistence in the key of confession)

Verse one

Do we know we are texts

read in the carefullest of ways? 

– lest we forget our constitution,

the declarations

that got us here,

stay us here,

in history’s substantial

yet somber junctures?

(A chorus gathers to our tongues)

(We) welcome the interrogation

          of our insides, 

gut-wrenching as they are.

(We) covet catechisms of right confession,

for we are all sobering, serious questions.

What else can we proclaim as truth?

Verse two

Do we know we are read—

by communities, close

and afar,

adjacent to us and us-plagued?

– communities scanning body-marks

on their own,

on ours,

summarizing scars

and incarnations

the Gospel has done to them?

(The chorus meets us)

If news transparents truth,

what makes it good? – 

certainly not callow handlers 

or brutish handling.

Why import assumptions

of where the good lies?

Verse three

Do we notice 

our biting textualities,

our past-wearings,

the fracturing

laced in our stories? —

how we tell ourselves,

our parables of progresses,

how close we sound to something else

if we are not carefull

in our beings?

(the chorus crescendos) 

Self-translation

is not ours to wear.

Translation-tasks live

deeply,

so deeply,

beyond

us.

Vamp (repeat) 

On the tongues

of another

is our interpretation.

How do they preach us?