Dethroning Mammon

Dethroning mammon

Letters, seals, trumpets, bowls and visions of victory

Seven fold in sequence

A throne and lamb, beasts and a harlot

Juxtaposed between these sequences

Attention drawn to beast and harlot

Incarnated again and again through history

Known to wise hearers

Known to us today

 

Dragon, ancient serpent, pulling strings of foes we contend with

Fought, for our sake, by great Michael in the skies.

A male child sowing the seed of his destruction

Outcome guaranteed.

 

Ours the beasts to face and drunken harlot

Orgy-ing on slain saints who have not succumbed.

Beasts of war, conquest and sword

Harlot of wealth, luxury and merchants

Warring against heaven’s ‘Kingdom come’

 

The one brutal and fighting

Enslaving and powerful – miracle yielding

 

The other impregnable, proud as a queen,

settled in her throne after beastly conquest

 

Two eras of an ancient tale.

Rome reflecting power seen before in Nebuchadnezzar’s time

And any era fore or since where power is concentrated and

Absolute

Where a leader needs seven bestial years to

Find any chance of personal salvation

So great their idolatrous heights

So hard to bow the knee, when great idols have been raised

In their name

 

In Nazi days beasts and harlots again arise, although harlot days cut short

By intervention to slay the beasts from ‘the few’ of other shores

A just war, the just war, enchaining the dragon for another day

Or at least deflecting him to break out elsewhere

As dark powers grow in red dots and sickled flags, and

most tragic perhaps,

in ‘emancipated’ peoples overthrowing red jacketed powers.

 

Beast unrecognised in years gone by

Uncomfort arising as few went Dietrich’s way

Was wisdom lacking, or was it endurance that failed

 

Harlot reigning now in Western comfort

The few get rich and richer still

Has church succumbed in syncretistic ease?

Palace housed clergy in lofty closes

White suited evangelists, in planes bought on donor’s mites

Instituted in power, confidants of presidents and Queens

Challenged by Argentina’s papal export’s simple claims…

 

O Western woe…

Do we cuddle the beast and pay the harlot to come to our bed

If repeating history

Is what we are doomed to do

Exascerbated by a global age, how can we dethrone that great harlot mammon

And her beastly allies now?

(written in a Pete Wilcox Revelation lecture 11/1/17 – outside Auchwitz)

This series of post are poetry written at Auschwitz-Berkenau during a retreat 75 years after gas was first used in the ‘final solution’ to exterminate the Jews.

The group was led by some remarkable people, including a German RC priest, Fr Manfred who had remained there for 25+ years since writing his phD on the holocaust.

Bible reflections were given by Sam Wells and Pete Wilcox, and when poetry owes its origins to their lectures they are credited as such.