From Me to You

Posted onAuthorAidan Cuningham

Rev. Megan
Berkowitz

Pastor Rick
October 2, 2026

I welcome your responses at [email protected] to the following meditation.

An Open Letter

Dear Mr. Bible, I thank you for being there
In hotel bedside tables, in the prison libraries
In beautiful translations and paraphrases
and especially in our hymn lyrics.
I thank you, because
I know you mean well.
But why do you have to sound so much like—well, the Bible?
And did you have to let publishers use such small print?
And the narrow margins leave little room for my marginalia.
I don’t understand you much of the time,
But that could be the fault of my education,
Or the church. Seems like your idea still got across
To people when no one could even read.
Like in Solentiname Nicaragua where a Catholic bishop
Listened to field workers share thoughts about the gospels.
Then again, a person can take a single verse
And beat me over the head, or a whole society,
Till everybody’s dead.
I wonder if it’s good to have a book around
that stirs in the imagination fear of life by some
and in others be the cause of our emancipation
from the grip of gradgrinds and Gatsbys—
a source of joy that life and death must nestle and kiss
within the same compass of God’s creation.
Dear Mr. Bible, I suggest you print a warning in front:
This book may be hazardous to your assumptions.
 
–Rev. Rick
  • From Me to You
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