Humanifesto

Humanifesto

I want to be grace guerilla,
no longer a chameleon of karma:
the time has come to stand out
from the crowd.
I want to give forgiveness a fighting chance
of freeing me,
to live in love
and live it out loud.

I want to drink deep of the foolishness of wisdom
instead of swallowing
the wisdom of fools,
to find a source
in the deeper mines of meaning.
I want to search out
the unsearchable,
to invoke in invisible
to choose the truths
the TV hypnotists aren't screening.

No camouflage,
no entourage,
no smoothly fitting in.
I want a faith that goes further than face value
and a beauty that goes deeper than my skin

I want to be untouched by my possessions
instead of being possessed by what I touch,
to test the taste
of having nothing to call mine,
to hold consumptions cravings back,
to be content with luck or lack,
to live as well on water as on wine.

I want to spend myself on those I think might need me,
not spend
all I think I need on myself.
I want my heart to be willing to make house calls.
Let those whose rope is at an end
Find in me a faithful friend.
Let me be known as one who rebuilds broken walls.

No camouflage,
no entourage
no smoothly fitting in.
I want a faith that goes further than face value
and a beauty that goes deeper than my skin

I want to be centred outside the circle,
to be chiselled from a different seam.
I want to be seduced by another story
and drawn into a deeper dream,
to be anchored in an undiscovered ocean,
to revolve around an unfamiliar sun,
to be boom box tuned to an alternate station,
a bullet fired from a different gun.

No camouflage,
no entourage,
no smoothly fitting in.
I want a faith that goes further than face value
and a beauty that goes deeper than my skin


I wanted to post this Poem for you.

It was written by Gerard Kelly in a book called 'Spoken Worship'.
It is meant to be read out loud...spoken in a way that brings both the speaker and all who listen into a fresh new experience of worship...
He encourages the public reading of these poems in every setting: Church services, home groups, personal times with God.

I hope you liked this one...and might seek to buy his book. I recommend it.


Kelly, G. Spoken Worship. Zondervan:Grand Rapids. (2007)

For your pleasure...this is the forward from Walter Brueggerman

'We have only the word, but the word will do. It will do because it is true that the poem shakes the empire, that the poem heals and transforms and rescues, the poem enters like a thief in the night and gives new life, fresh from the word and from nowhere else. There are many pressures to quiet the text, to slience this deposit of dangerous speech, to halt this outrageous practice of speaking alternative possibility. The poems, however, refuse such silence. They will sound. They sound through preachers who risk beyond prose. In the act of such risk, power is released, newness is evoked, God is Praised.

Walter Brueggerman, Finally Comes the Poet