I regret to inform you that I am terminating
Your employment with my computer.
Several months ago you began failing
In your duties; your performance was poor
And sometimes you left work without notice.
Last week you didn’t show up at all.
You refused to be repaired and you refused
To be re-installed, and so I am letting you go.

This week you have taken to sending me notes
That you are the default program and wish
To resume your duties.  I must tell you
That I have hired a Mr. Freeware, who
Shows up every day and does the work well.
Not only does he work, he works for free.
I would not have met him had you not failed,
And so, you see, it’s really your own fault.

You need not ask for a reference.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Hall, HSG

a HOME credible THE BISHOP accusation ADMINISTRATION is PARISHES one MINISTRIES that, SCHOOLS after RESOURCES review SAFE ENVIRONMENT of EMPLOYEES reasonably CAREERS available, CONTACT US relevant MAKE A GIFT information BISHOP’S FAITH APPEAL in LOVE AND JUSTICE consultation AFRICAN AMERICAN MINISTRY with CATHOLIC CHARITIES the PLANNED GIVING Diocesan CHANCELLOR Review OFFICE OF CONSTRUCTION Board HISPANIC MINISTRY or CAMPUS MINISTRY other CRIMINAL JUSTICE MINISTRY professionals, STEWARDSHIP AND COMMUNICATIONS there YOUTH MINISTRY is FINANCIAL SERVICES reason MODERATOR OF THE CURIA to MAKE A GIFT TO THE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN believe SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY is FAMILY LIFE MINISTRY true VOCATIONS

The soup today is not what it could be;
We’d better search out the old recipe


Explanatory Note:

I fear the poem as written fails, which is my fault (perhaps I have lapsed into fuzziness from reading  Leonard Cohen), so here is a bit of exposition:

The words in small print are a quote from the Bishops of Texas (long may they wave), generated by some in-house scrivener, about what constitutes a "credible accusation."  "Credible accusation" is not a title in civil, criminal, or canon law, and it appears to be some sort of Article 58 (cf. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago), a means whereby anyone is guilty because he has been accused.  It stinks.

Also stinky is the behavior of some few priests and religious.

Anyway, I pulled the quote from a diocesan web site, and scattered among it in LARGE TYPE categories from that site.  I stirred 'em all up in a soup because the matter of paedophilia and the bishops' responses seem to be a soup, making it difficult for a "good simpleton" (cf A Canticle for Leibowitz) like me to understand.

May God have mercy on us all.

O sink not down in that corrosive couch,
Docile before the Orwellian screen
That regulates the lives of the servile,
Dictating dress and drink, demeanor, dreams;

Declare your independence from the sludge
Of vague obedientiaries who drowse
Away their empty lives in submission
To harsh, diagonal inches of rule

Poor weaklings chanting tainted tribal songs
In chorus hamsterable, huddled, heaped,
While costumed in their masters’ liveries,
And feeling little while thinking even less

The very model of the State’s non-men,
Predictable and dull, submissive ghosts
Crowded, herded in cosmic cattle chutes,
Reflected in dim, noisy nothingness

But you, O you, be not of them, but be
A wanderer in the moonlight, one known
To God, there in His holy solitude

No one ever figured out how Schlomo
Got off the ship with a life jacket
 
But there he was on the pier among the crowd
Sitting sadly on his little brown suitcase
 
And wearing a life jacket from the ship
With "Orinoco" stenciled across it
 
A sailor in a white uniform wanted it
But Schlomo would not take it off
 
A policeman in a blue uniform wanted it
But Schlomo would not take it off
 
Schlomo's father told him he wanted it
But Schlomo would not take it off
 
And on the bus ride through the city
Schlomo would not let go of it
 
And for weeks Schlomo wore his life jacket
 
In the park
In the dark
 
In his schule
In his school
 
Until one day in the park on the river's bank
He took it off
He threw it in
It promptly sank
 
Then he said to himself, our little Schlomo,
"I knew somehow - it was time to let go."

I hope I have been an inspiration
To the masses, to the humble people
Who go each day from their humble condos
To their humble jobs on the ski slopes of America

The humble artisans who humbly toil
On the balance beams and the practice fields
The humble laborers in the swimming pools
Who sacrifice so much for the rest of us

The humble commons who want my autograph
And little girls who want to be like me, me, me

“YEAH!...YEAH!...I’M AT TH’ BARNES AND NOBLE…YEAH?...
I SAID I’M AT TH’ BARNES AND NOBLE!!!!...YEAH!…
THE SHADES!…YEAH, THE SHADES!…I MEASURED THE SHADES!…
YEAH!...OH, YEAH, HE’S A DARLING!...I SAID HE’S A DARLING!!!...

YEAH!...A DARLING!...SO LEVERAGE THE PRICE!...YEAH!...
LEVERAGE THE PRICE THEY AIN’T GOT NOTHIN’ YOU DON’T
SO YEAH LEVERAGE THE PRICE!...SO THEN SHE SAID
THAT HE SAID THAT SHE SAID!...I SAID THAT SHE SAID

THAT SHE SAID THAT...I’M AT BARNES AND NOBLE!..
YEAH!...BARNES AND NOBLE…SO LIKE I SAID THAT...!!!

Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux.

-Genesis 1:3

We call this hour pre-dawn; but it is not;
Just as we do not call this hour post-night
It is not pre-anything; it is itself
With not-yet-light that is given in peace

The creatures of the night have gone to bed
The creatures of the day are not yet up
And so there is mist and silence and you
As prayers of beingness offered at dawn

As prayers on the morning of Creation -
Before the alarms alarm and the buzzers buzz