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Baptist Primer: Backsliding Versus Non-Practicing

R. Horton

A non-practicing Catholic, I guess, is someone born into the Catholic faith who no longer adheres to any of it’s prescribed behaviours or rituals, and I would suppose some people don’t feel they need to practice it once they know how to do it. Practicing Catholicism must be for newbies.

But Baptists are a different beast all together. Technically, if you follow the letter of Baptist convention, no one is born into the Baptist faith. No one, no matter the circumstances of birth, can become a Baptist without actively choosing to do so, though the age of consent for such a choice is surprisingly low. This is why you see so many Baptist preachers dunking little kids in the water—it shows those children have chosen of their own free will to live their lives for Jesus. And if you check the news of late, you’ll find some preachers seem a little confused about what other things children are or are not able to consent to, under the laws constructed by good old human beings.

Once your accepted in the fold, you are saved, and there’s not much you can do to get kicked out, and you don’t have to practice, either. If you don’t keep up your Godly work by staying clean and pure and avoiding all the temptations the earth has to offer, you’re only human and no one should throw stones at you (according to New Testament law).

If you’ve slipped a little, you’re officially a backslider. Baptists believe that a truly saved person can’t genuinely fall out of favor with God. If you actively reject God and all God’s work, you are not a backslider but a reprobate, and God will surely turn against you, because when you said you wanted to devote your life to Jesus when you were six, you must have been a lying little demon.

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Poem: Twisting the Hermeneutic Turn

R. Horton

She said, “Jesus wept”
Was her favourite Bible verse,
Because it showed Jesus
Was human and shared
Our human feelings.

I suspected it was her
Favourite because it was
The easiest to remember,
But I guess it isn’t so bad.

It’s better than the ones
That command genocide,
Stoning children, or taking
Virgin girls as spoils of war.

But it isn’t as good as the ones
That say to turn away from
Violence, care for the sick,
And give money to the poor.

The Bible’s a mixed bag that way.
Almost nothing you say about it
Will be too far out of line.

R Horton

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Poem: Icarus at the Beach

R. Horton

At 12, I rode my first dirt bike.
Don’t go too far, he said as he
Helped me coordinate the clutch
And throttle and set me down
The beach. I could have turned.
In theory, it should have been easy
On a flat and empty beach,
But what does a boy with this
Kind of power for the first time
Know about turning back?

No one had explained this part,
And I just held on and kept
Twisting the throttle till
The sand seduced me,
And I helplessly sank under
A bike I had no chance of lifting.

And my angry Daedalus came stomping
Across the sand with furious reminders
That I had been warned. I had been
Told not to go too far.

And I imagine Icarus soaring higher
With no idea how to govern either
His speed or altitude—driven
By equal parts exhilaration and terror,
Waiting only for the comforting
Embrace of Poseidon,
The father who never
Lets us out of his grasp.
The father who can’t let go
And smothers us with love.

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Poem: Seek Your Joy

R. Horton
adult affection bed closeness
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At an unprogrammed Quaker meeting
The spirit moved someone
To remind us to find our Joy.

After, a friend said she would
Find joy in a nice boy toy.
Or maybe it was a toy boy.
She said one is a boy
You’d like as a toy
And the other is something
A boy would like to play with.

We giggled at that,
And I was reminded of a joke
About a party where everyone
Was feeling Joy
Until she got mad and left.

We can no longer joke
About violating Joy,
And I am not bothered,
But then I have a passing reverie,
And I imagine I married Joy.

We became known as
Randy and Joy,
And people made jokes like,
“When Joy feels Randy,
It brings him Joy.”

I sort of regret it never happened
Just for the chuckles we’d have.

R Horton

Poem: Washed Out to See

R. Horton3 Comments
golden vase with assorted flowers
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The vase had to be washed out

To see the inscription in the bottom.

I can only imagine the painstaking

Effort it took an artisan to create

This handcrafted and exquisite

Lettering all with the intent

Of letting me know that when

I peered to the bottom of this

Cylinder, this hand-blown

Translucent masterpiece,

I would be peering into the finite,

The end. I will have seen

All that there is left to see.

 

Poem: Delayed Gratification

R. Horton
grayscale photo of man holding book
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She had never known the pleasure
Of delayed gratification. She always
Said, “Life offers no promises,
So eat dessert first.”

And who could blame her?
She had lost it all in a flash.
Her faith, her hope, her love,
Her trust, and
Her innocence.

Still, he continued to promise
The congregants a better life
As soon as this miserable one
Is over.

Poem: Fair Wind and Following Seas

R. Horton

For Doug and Cindy

Your mother only knew the comfort
Of gentle beaches with waves that caressed
And never battered holiday bathers.
She only knew the pacific beaches of
The Great Lakes and idyllic Asian islands.

She had never experienced the brutality
Of the Texas Gulf Coast, and she would
Have assumed “riptide” to be a video game
Or pop song, not a lethal feature of
A holiday destination.

And what better way to spend Mother’s Day
Than with your children at the beach?
It’s the stuff of Norman Rockwell cards
And saccharine American traditions.

And you both swam like stars.
You loved the diving board, and
You never left the deep end. You
Were invincible. I remember your
Laughter as you always escaped
In a game of water tag.

It’s easy to nod off at the beach, or
Just break concentration for a
Moment as the breeze kisses your cheek.
In an instant, you may
Realize you no longer hear the
Joyous cacophony of childhood laughter.

In an instant, your sister is gone
Under the punishing waves and against
The unforgiving grain of packed sand.
I don’t know, but I think you tried to
Find her, giving your last
Conscious moments to her aid.

Somehow, your body stayed with us,
On machines, for three more days.
I can’t describe the unreality of those
Days, but it finally ended to the chords
Of “Born in the USA,” which your patriot
Father asked the radio station to play
Over the air as your body
Was finally permitted to lay at rest.

Through the tears, I still chuckled at the
Irony, as you were born in Japan, and
Your father had never listened to
The lyrics of that song.

R Horton

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Poem: Momentary Bliss

R. Horton
analogue classic clock clock face
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He said he wanted to make love
To her momentarily, and she didn’t
Know if he wanted to commence presently
Or only share his passion briefly.

Some people think it bad usage, of course,
To say momentarily to mean something
Will happen directly, in the immediate
Future, but true pedants disagree.

The disparaged usage has been around
Since at least the 19th century,
And use determines usage,
After all, and it isn’t worth a wasted moment.

But still some schoolmarm types
Will judge our eager young lover,
Who wishes only to let go of formalities
And begin his partner’s pleasure forthwith.

R Horton

Fiction: Seven Oaks and the Alcoholic Lifestyle

R. Horton

XIVScreenshot 2019-07-29 at 22.08.37

Someone said Jim lived in Seven Oaks. Now, to some people that might sound like a compliment or, at least, a nice comment on account of the fact that some pretty nice places are named Seven Oaks, but Seven Oaks, Texas isn’t one of them, and Jim didn’t own or rent any kind of home in Seven Oaks.

Jim lived in Livingston, Texas, which was a few miles south and happened to be the county seat of Polk County, which was a dry county, meaning you couldn’t buy a drink of alcohol in Livingston come hell or high water. If you liked to imbibe a drop or two of spirits, wine, or beer, you’d have to drive north or south on highway 59 until you got out of Polk County.

If you drove north on 59, you’d cross the county line and be greeted by a sign saying, “Welcome to Seven Oaks.” If you drove a tiny bit further, you’d see the Seven Oaks bar. I don’t think it is there anymore, but you’ll still find a liquor store there.

Anyway, that Seven Oaks bar didn’t exactly have a concealed parking lot, so your car would just be sitting there for God and all the world to see.

So if any of your nosy neighbors or family saw your car there more than once in a week, they might start gabbing around about how you lived up there or something. It was a not so nice way of saying you were a drunk.

I don’t remember anyone ever saying he was an alcoholic, though. In fact, his sister insisted that he most certainly was not an alcoholic, though she did concede that he made a habit of being drunk, so she was willing to say he was a habitual drunk, but he never got the DTs if he didn’t have a drink for a few hours or anything like that.

And he could clean up and get through a Sunday sermon all right if push came to shove, and alcoholics can’t really pull that off, so he just stayed drunk because he wanted to—not because he had to.

And I guess that’s all that matters sometimes, you know? We’re all just trying to do good enough to pacify the family and the neighbors. If you can keep that up, you might just have a pretty good life. And who knows, someday you might hit it big with one of those scratch-offs you keep buying at the Seven Oaks bar.

R Horton

Whispers of Dongpo in Bamboo Sway (#poem)

R. Horton
woman standing beside bamboo
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The knocking of the bamboo
In the wind
Restores my awareness.

Su Dongpo said he could live
Without meat but not without bamboo.
Bamboo brings life, of course,
As meat destroys it, but
Dongpo had a different
Understanding (he loved eating meat),

Yet his words weave
Through the leaves
With warning and assurance
Of life whose end has not
Arrived so long as bamboo
Sways her promise to us.