Highways and Byways: Lutheran Service

By Maik Strosahl

With some in the Roman Catholic faith believing that a new schism is building, I have done some research into another break in that church, that with Martin Luther in the 16th Century.
    I have friends who are Catholic and relatives who are Lutheran, but I never really knew what the difference was between the two until reading about Luther’s disputes with the church and his resulting excommunication, in 1521.
    These days, many have drifted from both Catholic and Lutheran churches, and from organized religion altogether. And some have found their own places of worship, requiring no brick or mortar.
    This poem looks into a married couple divided and how each person finds inner peace.

Lutheran Service

He reaches across the boat
for a styrofoam bowl,
trying to keep it steady on the lake
while digging his fingers
into the peat moss,
grasping a wiggler,
hell-bound for escape,
stabbing it through
repeatedly with a barb.

It is Sunday
and she is off at church,
singing the same old songs,
praying the same old pleas
for forgiveness,
for blessing,
for the keys to heaven
and eternal bliss.

He has already found it,
peace in the clouds above,
a stillness in the waters,
time for reflection before
casting his worries far astern
with a weight and a bobber,
a lure to capture monsters,
dragging them off
to the fry-pan of hades.

He is sure
she is kneeling in the pew,
pleading for his soul,
crying out to the cross
that could not save
the one it bore,
nails through fleshy hands,
blood running down
the grain of hard wood.
But he was not raised
a Catechism boy,
and when freed from the mortar
of altars and cathedrals,
he founded his own religion.

Now,
as revisionists push
Martin in among the Popes,
he questions the Reformation itself.
Besides, thought quietly
so as to not disturb the fish,
what real difference
could there be,
Catholic and Lutheran?

A Diet of Worms.
A snap of the wrist,
steady hand,
the patience of saints and
a diet of worms.

Copyright © 2021 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.