Pastor Brian Morgan, of Peninsula Bible Church - Cupertino, was my Old Testament 1 professor for one semester, his last Old Testament class at Western Seminary. He had a way of making the Old Testament poetry come to life, and he had a real knack for bringing us students into the Old Testament narrative, specifically the story of Jacob.
In fact, one of our assignments was to write a "Jacob Poem". I decided to compose a poem called "My Two Dads" based on Jacob's own father and father-in-law, transposed with my own relationship with my father and father-in-law (copied at the bottom).
One of the required textbooks that Brian Morgan assigned to us was "Down-to-Earth Spirituality" by R. Paul Stevens.
I have to say that "Down-to-Earth Spirituality" surprised me. I've read books on the Spiritual Disciplines before and usually they are pretty formulaic and point-by-point practical. Stevens offered a thematic approach to the disciplines that married the narrative of Jacob's story with such topics as "Birth - the Story of Rebekah", "Courting - the Story of Rachel", "Work - the Story of Laban", "Conversion - the Story of the God-Man" and "Death - the Story of Ephraim".
In "Sex - the Story of Dinah", Stevens writes:
"Males or females by themselves, whether married or single, are not the image of God but only males in relation to females and females in relation to males. We are like God in our need to be people-in-communion without losing our identities. The sexual desire expresses something godlike within us...Intercourse is a powerful symbol of this [communion] - the mutual penetration of persons. I emphasize persons because we do not have sex with bodies but with whole persons." (119).
Chew on that for a while!
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and here's my Jacob Poem
My Two Dads: Faith of Our Fathers
If Kiyosaki’s best-seller had its way
I would be a businessman
Not a preacher
I would have real estate of my own
And not dwell under the tents of my in-laws
I would call the shots
And not be slaving for the Man and the Establishment
My inheritance would shine as gold
My eyes would shun poverty
And I would know the tricks of the trade
The tricks…the trade
Nevertheless, I still have two dads
Neither one a rich nor a poor man
Neither one a sage nor a fool
One fathered three sons
This one gave me a home to grow up in
Free from need
Well fed and well bred
The other fathered two daughters
This one gave me his first-born
His precious pearl to call my bride
Both immigrants
Self-made men, strong, sometimes silent
Sacrificial, almost to a fault
In the land of Buddhas and Confucius
They learned to honor ancestors and avoid shame
They learned the importance of family and saving face
They learned to leave home
In the land of Hippies and Capitalism
They learned to speak
They learned to save
They learned to earn
…and they learned to love
Such love is ours, my bride’s and mine
But they were not our chosen tour guides
On this narrow road we’ve sojourned
To the Cross
Yet sovereign grace and divine mercy
Have taken hold of the steering wheel
Now we are the arrows for them
And a little child shall lead them
And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children
And the hearts of the children to their fathers…or else…
Was this dream of theirs for me - for us -
A curse? The deceiver’s kiss?
False skin and hair? A meal we did not prepare? Leading no where?
Or is this lot that I’ve been given - that we’ve been given - a blessing in disguise?
The angel’s touch? A broken hip?
An altered name?
An altar for God’s fame?
So often it’s been sung
About the faith of our fathers
Where is that faith found?
In our accomplishments and glory?
Achieved by merit and prosperity?
Or is the faith of our fathers
Still unraveling in the story
Penned by the Father and Author
The Perfector of faith
Who erases our former names
Even our own fathers’ names
From history’s log
And scrawls our new names into the Lamb’s book of life
(c) 2008 Pira Tritasavit
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