Fr. Kilian McDonnell is a Benedictine monk/theologian at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN. At age 75, he began writing poetry. This intriguing poem of his was featured in the Pentecost 2008 edition of Journal for Preachers:
The Call of Abraham
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country.” Genesis 12:1
- Talk about imperious.
- Without a “may I presume?”
- no previous contact,
- no letter of introduction,
- this unknown God
- issues edicts.
- This is not a conversation.
- Am I a nobody
- to receive decrees
- from one whose name
- I do not know?
- At seventy-five I hear
- “Go!” Am I supposed
- to scuttle my life,
- take that ancient wasteland, Sarai,
- place my arthritic bones
- upon the road
- to some mumbled nowhere?
- Let me get this straight.
- I summarize.
- In ten generations since the Flood
- you have spoken to no one.
- Now, like thunder on a clear day,
- you give commands:
- pull up my tent,
- desert the graves of my ancestors,
- for a country you do not name.
- God of the wilderness,
- from two desiccated lumps
- you promise all peoples of the earth
- will be blessed.
- You come very late, Lord, very late,
- but my camels leave in the morning.
