Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Poems

I absolutely LOVE this poem. It is SO wonderful. It was in the most recent issue of the Bifocal Newsletter (one dealing with elder law). Enjoy!

Poems

By Sofia Memon

Poems are where you are not;
where I examine the light
in the leaves or
the Yogi teabag wisdom
to my heart’s content without
ever turning my attention
outward.

Poems are where alchemy is
unquestioned and love unrationed,
where the soldiers in wars started
by misers find themselves suddenly
in prayer shawls
ill-fitting or not,
over still muddy combat boots
feeling a sudden and surprising
calm spread over their faces,
involuntary and embarrassing
like incontinence.

Poems promise everything
you’ve grown out of will be
returned to you
washed out, dried on the line
scented in lavender
if only you’d give up and give in
give away even the
lint from your pockets and
start again and again
and again every morning.

Poems are fearless when they
can afford to be,
say everything we could not
make the elegant argument
that, lacking citation
and polemic
is nonetheless persuasive;
maybe because poems, like
mirrors demand that
we approach with hands folded
awareness that
we are asking for everything
we are not yet.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

In Fruitless Pursuit

I know the law is supposed to be about following the rules "to the letter". Presumably, any deviation is malpractice. But thinking beyond the books, the horribly boring lectures, the bleeding papers, I am reminded of another group of people who were supposed to follow the law, and reminded still of how far they fell short.

The nation of Israel was "under the law", and repeatedly was unable to follow God's commandments. "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify."..."for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..." (Romans 3:21-23).

Ok, now, I am not trying to call my professors apostates or hypocrites, or those that should be called "least" in LegalLand. My point here is that it is pointless (fruitless if you will, per the blog title) to try to get everything right. NoONE is perfect, noTHING is perfect.

So what, then, is the purpose of grading assignments using a rubric that takes off for a misplaced space after a comma? Why do professor's insist on being so anal? Perhaps it is that they are scared of what they will find if they "chill" a bit. What I posit they will find is this: the "law" isn't everything, law school is not life, and their law journal articles, speeches, and whatnot are not as important as they think they might be.

So, law isn't life. It is a part of life, smoothing over life's rough patches. And yet, to see the forest despite the trees, dogmatic adherence to rigid ideals should be left out in the cold, in favor of a greater understanding of what our legal system is all about. That would be people, which includes law students (who knew!). Going back to beginning, that is what it is all about. From Adam and Eve, to Moses, to Christ, from Aristotle, to Martin Luther, to Locke, laws and government are only here to help people to accomplish what they were created to do: worship an almighty God.