Station 6 – The earth can’t bear this load

At the ninth station Jesus falls for the Third Time. The earth, which God created in love and beauty is now being crushed under humanity’s mishandling of the earth’s resources and the dispersing of pollutants that have created climate changes, famines, and disease. (note: I wrote this in 2017 three years before this coronavirus pandemic. I cannot recall why I used China as where it all started except that they were a global polluter of insane magnitude. So along with the quote from Leviticus this is almost like a prophecy about what was to happen in 2020)
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Lev 26:5 I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands.
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The Butterfly Effect
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It flapped its wings in China
As the smoke billowed from the stack.
Now a gentle breeze across the ocean
Turned into a storm on its way back.
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The rain fell in California
El Nino lifted up and blew
To capture all the sulfur
From Chicago’s car plant stew.
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The winds with all contaminants
Met southern breezes light
Knocked head on with Canadian
Cold air in dead of the night.
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All things are connected
On this planet Mother Earth.
The forces meeting over the shoreline
Gave the superstorm its birth.
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The moon was in ascension
The tide was rising high
What started out around the globe
Ended in a destructive sigh.

Station 6 – Social Distancing

In the 6^th station, a woman Veronica, uses her veil to wipe the blood from Jesus’ face. My poem for this station asks, where are the Mother Teresa to help the poorest of the poor? Have we become afraid to touch the “untouchables”? Ironically, today with the virus pandemic raging, it’s not just the “filthy” homeless who are physically avoided. It’s ALL of us as we could be a potential carrier of the virus!
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MK 1:41 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.
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Please Touch Me!
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When I was young
And beautiful
You touched me all the time.
This curse of sickness
Ravaged me
Deprived me of my prime.
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It made me ugly,
Made me smell
Repulsed you to the bone.
You turned your face
Denied your touch
Tossed me from your home.
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Deep down inside
The me you loved
Still needs a tender hand.
But all of that can’t ever be
When physical love’s
Been banned.

Station 5 – Who Will carry the Earth’s Cross?

In the 5^th station a bystander called Simon helps Jesus carry His cross. In my poem, We Must Stop the Destruction, I compared what we’ve been doing to our planet as the cross that she must carry. The green movement is helping this planet and its poor people but it is not enough to remove the weight of all the destruction humankind has done.
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ISA 41:17 “The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them
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We Must Stop the Destruction
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What have we done
To this place of our birth?
Contaminated water
Contaminated earth.
Wrung dry the rivers
Squeezed out the lakes.
From others less fortunate
The rich nation takes.
Can we reverse it
Can we atone?
Give food to the starving
All skin and bone.
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The green movement’s trying
But is it too late
To shore up our planet
Make the destruction abate?
Is anyone out there
Who will carry the cross
Turn sadness and hunger
Stop all this loss?
The ozone’s depleted
The soil’s dust and dry.
Can anyone stop it …
Will anyone try?

Stations of the Cross – Jesus Falls For the First Time

The Stations of the Cross at Station 3 depicts Jesus falling under the weight of carrying the cross. This is the first out of three times He falls. I likened the cross He carried to the weight of the damage we have done to our planet. Our disregard for this planet, creating global warming, is a small but insidious sin. Here the Earth cries out in her pain.
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1CO 10:26 26 for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”
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The Earth Is the Lord’s
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Lord, Lord, why have you forsaken me?
The sun is burning, spinning, torching me!
I hurt, I’m parched, water is scarce.
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What have they done
To turn my blue green lusciousness
Into desert sands?
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Will there ever be a time
When coolness returns
To sooth my wounds?
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I can’t take it anymore
I’m buried under toxins
Buried, buried by their greed.
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Payment is due,
Crops will wilt,
Rivers will run dry,
Storms will rage
Destroying what you’ve built.
Repent, return me back
to the blue green orb that God created.

Stations of the Cross for a new Millenium

Prologue – 21st Century Golgotha

And the world turns in sorrow
And the world turns in pain
People are tortured
And killed in God’s name.
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A planet is ravished,
A planet is defiled.
Sin upon sin
By mankind piles high.
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The devil is walking
His power takes hold.
Christ’s 21st Century
Golgotha unfolds.
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Bleeding and battered
Head crowned with thorns
The Via Dolarosa
From our selfishness reborn.
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21st Century humanity has found hundreds of ways to cause Jesus pain on a daily basis and not just through the millennium old sins such as greed, lust, murder and lies. We crucify Jesus in ways the people of Jesus’ time could not even have dreamt of. Taking our talents and man made creations we use them in the service of the evil one. For example, good stewardship of this planet, until only recently, was a forgotten concept. Loving our neighbor has been overshadowed by our need to surpass and squash anyone who is a threat to our egos. We have technologies that could feed the world, wipe out diseases, create shelter for all, and we selectively apply it, denying whole populations of the benefits. These are the sins of the 21st century. Welcome to the 3rd millennium. These stations are the “Vi Dolarosa” we’ve created. See Christ bleed.

The Way of the Cross

For Christians, these weeks in Spring are called Lent and lead up to Easter, the day of Christ’s
resurrection (April 12^th this year). There is a traditional practice done during Lent to retrace the footsteps of Christ on the way to His Crucifixion. Called “the Stations of the Cross”, there is a “station” (picture or piece of 3d artwork) for specific occurrences along that way in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.
A number of years ago I didn’t have the time to attend the Friday practice of doing the stations in a church where they are usually held. So I thought as a writer I would write my own and use that as my Lenten practice. My “Stations For a New Millenium” are unique and attempt to show, through poetry, how the evils in our modern lives create another “walk to Golgotha”. Through current events, inactions, and sins, humanity has crucified Jesus again and again in this 21^st century since his death.
I also included quotes from the Old and New testaments that back up each station’s theme. Though thousands of years old, shockingly, they seem to have predicted the path that mankind would continue to take.
Stations of the cross consist of 14 stations starting with condemning Christ to death to his being laid in the tomb. From those 14 I will be posting a selection that ironically reflect what is happening in the news today.