Dissenters

This year is the 250th birthday of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House, and Skip Bea suggested I write a poem. I struggled with one and wasn't quite satisfied with it; it sounded too...studied, too pretentious. I read it to JC and, while he'd not SAY so, he agreed, and said HE would start with "It would have been easier to be an Anglican." So I took that and ran with it and it made him laugh. Not only that, but it appealed to me more than the other. So I sent them both to Skip and we'll see if he approves of either. Or neither. (The other one is on here too, under the title "Two Fifty.")

Dissenters

It would have been easier to be an Anglican

in those days

instead of a bunch of Scotch-Irish dissenters

with their lofty, intellectual, democratic ways.

It would have been easier to worship at Christ Church

and bow courteously at the Washingtons’ pew

than to sit ramrod-straight

at the Meeting House, eyes forward

and attentive

to some profound sermon, 

or to meet with the elders 

on some obscure point of practice.  

Easier, yes—

but not Presbyterian;

not fiery discussion, not lengthy debate,

not the committee, not the vote.

We still embrace the hard way,

the compromise, the biblical answer,

the hard-won agreement.

That’s who we are,

then and now.

Two hundred and fifty years and

we are still here,

dissenting.