Dear Morgan,
It is said that you are accepting campaign contributions from Monroe County Mayor Mario Di Gennaro’s wealthy friends around Marathon, and from wealthy folks up in Miami. I believe you already know how I feel about that. I feel the same way about my friend Todd German accepting campaign contributions from the direction of Truman Annex, aka TAMPOA. It just doesn’t look good. At least not for me. But who am I to decide? I’m just a man. The call is not mine, therefore, to make. The call is made from beyond me. From beyond all of us.
Just as in the summer of 2005, I heard in my sleep, “No more weeklies.” On waking, I sort of figured Jimmy Weekley was not going to continue as mayor of Key West.” A few days later, I heard in my sleep, “A pastor was elected.” I went online the next day and read in Key West Citizen that you, Morgan, were in the mayor’s race. I knew you were a pastor. So I knew you were going to be Key West’s next mayor. After you were in office I came by City Hall and told you about my dreams and that you were God’s candidate in that race. I do not know who will win the mayor’s seat in this election, but if I take what I heard in 2005 literally, “No more weeeklies,“ it will not be Jimmy Weekley.
Note, please, I said if. I do not presume to make a prediction. I learned long ago that trying to be a fortune teller is an invitation for me to experience God’s humor in spades, and that, as Jonah learned, God’s humor is seldom as funny to me as it is to God. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, and am simply saying it to remind me of something I wrote long ago it now seems, something that just fell out of me, actually; something I will never forget.
Rosa Mystica
Sweet Mystery
Bride of Christ
Living water
Without which
There are no rainbows
And God is dead
Some years after that poem came, someone suggested that Bride of Christ should be Blood of Christ. Perhaps they are the same. I have felt all along, though, that the poem is about Mary Magdalene. Or, if you will, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Life. I still feel that way. As do I feel that way about a companion poem that came during that season in my life. A poem a little tougher, perhaps, to live, as Iran’s President begins his visit to the United States.
The Tree of Life grows not
On the battleground of good and evil,
But in a quiet meadow
Beneath a beautiful rainbow
That knows not right or wrong.
Vaya con Dios, Morgan. As pastors, we both well know there is no other way.
Sloan Bashinsky
posted to Today’s Cock-a-doodle-doo at goodmorningkeywest.com