The Real World

A poem about God's invitation to live in the real world

John August Swanson Loaves and Fishes, 2003

“Hear, everyone who thirsts; come to the water; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!… Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live… Now you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of YHWH your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.”

Isaiah 55:1, 3, and 5,

The Real World
after Isaiah 55:1-5

The pantry is empty.
The water bill towers.
How tired I am
of this real world.

Yet, this is not
the real world.
The real world
is the one God
introduces and 
invites us to live in.

"Come, everyone
whose stomachs 
are hollow and
whose lips are cracked.
I am loyal. I delight in you.
Delight yourself in my friendship.
Delight yourself in my food and drink."

"I'm hosting
a party. I'm
blessing, breaking,
and providing for all. 
Here, all
you need is a broken
heart. Here, all
you need is aching emptiness
from broken promises.
I am known to nourish
and sustain."

"All I ask is
you build bigger
tables for more hungry and
thirsty people.
All I ask is
you see people
as I do."

"I will give food
unending.
There will be uncountable
leftovers."

God,
help me live
in the real world.

---

—

Thanks for reading this week’s poem. It means a great deal that you would take the time to stop here. I hope the poem spoke to you.

A major point of inspiration for this poem came from Eugene Peterson’s The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (1993), where he describes a fictitious interaction with a parishioner following a worship service:

“‘This was wonderful, Pastor, but now we have to get back to the real world, don’t we?’ I had thought we were in the most-real world, the world revealed as God’s, a world believed to be invaded by God’s grace and turning on the pivot of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection…I believe this new kingdom is already among us. That is why I’m a pastor, to introduce people to the real world and train them to live in it.”¹

That part of the book caused me to think seriously about how I view the world. If I think the visions of hope and promises in the Bible are some far-off reality that sounds nice but is ultimately wishful thinking, then I will only add to the present madness. But if I believe that Isaiah 55 is about a God who encompasses everything here and now and not only in a spiritual sense, I must take a second look at the world. Think also about Jesus feeding more than 5,000 people; was that a blip or a doorway through which to see reality? We need to think carefully about what the world is. What is at creation’s core, its foundation? What “bottoms” existence (as Thurman would say, following Meister Eckhart)? If the answer is God, Love, or Life, then all the practices and assumptions about death and moral compromise are truly a sham—and we are living counterfeit lives.

I have said before that the Kingdom of God is here and not yet. I’m going to rearrange the sentence so that it doesn’t end with negation: The kingdom is not yet and here.

Isaiah 55 reminds me of a certain Irish rockstar, whom I think of highly, who made popular the saying, “Poverty is man-made.”

Ouch.

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to live in the real world. I’d like to contribute, as broken as I might be (though I am on the mend, as are you), to the real world.

How about you?

1. From III: The Subversive Pastor