Tender Christian, you are startled in the fold
By mild controversy, either young or very old.
There you stand, a sheep in pasture, grazing on your cud.
You do not, oh you do not, you do not like the mud.

You are there, with your fleece, that warms your pastoral care
And he feeds you with the finest grains, and with you love doth share.
Tender and timid, in the barn, you shy away from another voice.
Yes, every change to the world, you look to your Shepherd's joy.

You are very timid, and very tame, and will not come well nigh...
You do not like things to change, and you are not very wise.
You need to be led, and tenderly tapped, by the shepherd's instrument
And the wolves, the wolves, they need to be whacked.

Yet, every once in a while, one of you wanders from the fold
And you get dirty and muddy, and your black fleece gets very grown.
And with your long nails, and with your clot back, you bleat for help I see;
For the shepherds keep, oh how the shepherds keep, they keep changing everything.

You like consistency, and to be fed your grains, and to be given your good food.
You like to labor at the yard, and eat the grassy good.
You do not like new routines, or new undershepherds in your yard.
You like everything to remain the same, so you do not wander very far.

I consider his arguments---
And I know complex civilization cannot work
Under his absurd claims.

If the worker took home all they produced
Their managers--who have a harder job, it's true--
Would not gain their money.
Nor would the top people, who made the company.

Surely, billionaires are a problem...
But surely... there are a lot more nuances to the market
That give us Haagen Dazs and Coca-Cola and Ahold
And it essentially feeds all of us.

So, teaching your students to do as little work as possible
Will only make them slaves to the tyranny of Marxism.
Which takes all the worker's wage, and instead of it being Corporate Giants
It is Putin or Xi who gets all the money, while we waste away.

Simply put, the resources are there...
Workers need to tap into them...
Billionaires make too much money...
But it's also a psychological need for humanity to work.
It's also true, you can't create a utopia, where people sit by pools
And sip Pina Coladas, without someone making them.

It's a balanced subject, but Wage Labor is the best system
Because it gives the people a part of what they earned.
It's just the fact that people are not transforming the capital
At the standards they ought, and are not purchasing capital
At equal exchange of their labor's value.
Which both problems, lead to the issues we face.
Where Marxism cannot be a solution.

The solution, is simple... it's limit the amount people can make.
And limit the size of corporations.
Eliminate criminal records, past the sentence served.
That way, everyone has a chance to enter into the markets.
And also find markets for niche goods, and have logistics that can bring them to people.

How I understand you, my favorite book.
Truthfully, I understand you better than 
I understand my own work, at times.
Beautiful are your pages, and leafs
Which miraculously fold into small books
With thin paper, and many pages leaf through
And the excellence of your wisdom is premier.

Yet I say you are not the whole faith.
Our faith is found in the living epistles
Of every Christian--true Christian--
And your laws are excellent, but need
To be understood through a clear context.
I have that Context, for having seen it
When I was a little lad, but many have not.

I see disputes about doctrine, and Ignatius says,
"Yes, where is it written?" And I ask myself the same.
For, the Legalist is a damned Pharisee, for we ought
To know how to walk, and that in Love and Kindness.
Thus, disputes and laws, and ordinances
We ought to let go, and be at peace with the brethren.
However, what Paul lists as sin... oh, know, it is sin.
No reviler shall enter the kingdom of heaven
And yet our entire Church has become revilers of man
Wanting to find their proof from the scriptures.

It is all there, for sure... nothing lacks in the Bible
But then people want laws and ordinances and legalism
But not the Spirit of the Law, and like Cain they murder 
Their brother, over disputes and heavy controversies.
And they dispute one with each other, and Satan gleefully
Listens to their disputes, and there is no righteousness
Or peace, but only envy and slander and deceit.

The great travesty of scripture is that it is complete
But it means something. And so many shirk the meaning
For legalistic interpretations, that don't get to the heart
Of what the Bible is saying... which is to Love God and your Neighbor.

Every Martyr, I see a creative faith,
Like my own. Spoken, driven to the Bible
But still... creative and unique.
They speak of Heaven, and the good place...
A man and wife write letters,
And the woman is gleeful to be tormented
But the man in sorrows.
For she is willing to die for her doctrine.
I don't particularly see anything sinful
In the Catholic faith... or in her faith...
And I come to this conclusion often
That neither party has it all correct.
One blind obedience to Dogma and Church Ordinance
And the other a free and easy doctrine from the Bible.
I see two people who truly believe in what they're saying...
But the one is willing to die for it,
And the other is willing to kill for it.
I see creativity contrast with rigidity.
Freedom contrast with man made stricture.
Grace contrast with law.
And I don't think Catholics go to hell,
Or Protestants, or Orthodox,
As much as I think power goes to hell
Which bends the world to wicked rules
And does not have any mercy...
And certainly today, it allows sin.
For martyrs will be made by all three Churches
Ephraim, Judah and Israel
Very soon, I'm afraid... as the world cannot tolerate righteousness.

I watch a man speak for five minutes
Building up to the reveal that Ignatius
Is a man who heard and studied directly
Under Peter and John.

And then he says, "Aha! Therefore the Pope!"
I take it only a step back, that he heard
From Peter and John.

For Theilman is as much scripture
As Ignatius to me...
And I am as much scripture as him...
But it is the true Apostolic faith.
Therefore, I am an Apostolic Christian.

For Esdras, and Ignatius, and Thielman
And Brandon, and Clive Staples Lewis
And G. K. Chesterton, and Augustine 
And Aquinas, and Hymn Makers
And Oil Painters and Musicians
And Creed Makers and the Teutons 
All have apostolic Christianity
To inspire us... for we are one bread and body
And must learn from each other
And not be blinded by Scripture's Authority
To say, "Only it matters." For God wants
All of us to share in the Apocrathy
Of faith, ministering to all the Saints.

Build, Noah, thy Ark with the Tree of Heaven
And its sulphurous branches smell like sweat;
Sweat of captivity, for judgment fills the whole earth.

She won... handly... by saying nothing.
She spoke... she spoke often...
But nothing she said had any context.
She had no purpose... just spoke.
And to understand this is a new bit of wisdom--
I understand at last... not everyone has purpose
Or a point to what they say... they just speak.

Yet, I thought she had said that there were no danger in drugs
And she seemed to imply that she was a drug user---
It was in the unwieldy way in which she said it---
And I told her I loved her every moment,
And every sentence was wrought with care
For her to improve, and to shelter a person who would make 
A mistake like so. I said I cared about her, and that I wished her well,
Yet she drudged up my past and said,
"You only exist to show people how not to live your life."
Here is what I was going to say back:

"Maybe I was a stupid teenager, who did some stupid things, and expected the world to forgive me, and when it didn't, I wanted to shield it from making the same mistakes?

"Maybe I am an example of how not to live your life. But, you are a bad person. If you have no mercy on me... I've had plenty of mercy on you, telling you I loved you every two comments. And only trying to say, that you shouldn't be arguing with someone who made perfectly valid points."

But our conversation was deleted.
For my love, she hated me...
And I was probably right.
She is one who takes the exact opposite moral position...
And her friend came and said,
"A sex offender making moral arguments, how pathetic."

So, the ballad of the stupid teenager continues.
And my life is not one to be emulated
Because I had a conscience, and went to the police.
And I ended up in jail.
And had love on a woman, thinking she was a drug user---
Of which she said she wasn't, but her unwieldy thoughts could only mean that she were---
That I just didn't want to see her make a mistake.

For the one mistake that could have ruined me---
So I had no hope whatsoever---
Was that of drugs and alcohol.
So... she won the debate, because she hated me every step of the way
And got her entourage to support her.
And I simply loved her enough to say she was wrong.
Because that is the one mistake I hadn't made
And it is the one mistake that could have broken me.
And yet here I am... unbroken,
And with compassion on a two year old in a forty year old's body.

I know more, and I 
Always instruct, and I don't
Listen to what my student 
Says. I curse when I'm challenged,
And make idle prophecies.