The Legend of Rusty the Wagon: A true story in quarantine
Outspoken Limericks about Civil Unrest
Some say there’s no greater force for evil in the world than religion. Consider the Hundred Years War, the extermination of indigenous peoples, the patriarchy. At the same time, religion has also inspired some of the greatest achievements of humankind, no less than the acts Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, jr.
With a series of limericks about world religion, you have to be able to see the clouds from both sides. I remain skeptical, but also open minded. I try to hold the sacred in one hand and the profane in the other. Poetry generally confers a sort of solemn sensibility, and yet limericks deliver a sharp edge of irreverence.
At its best, religion inspires people to strive to improve themselves and the world around them. That itself is something worth celebrating. And the more we understand the diversity of religious traditions that human history has produced, the greater chance we have of taking the best of each and seeing the best in one another.
Tao Te Ching
There’s a luminous legend Lao Tzu
With disciples like Winnie the Pooh
Let go of desire
Your soul will lift higher
The Tao’s not a thing to pursue
Bhagavad Gita
On the field of battle Arjuna grows nervous
Encountering Krishna who offers his service
As Vishnu’s top warrior
And ego destroyer
Revealing one’s duty and ultimate purpose
Ahura Mazda
Zarathustra thus spoke in the land of the Persian
Worshipping One of an earlier version
The good and the wise
Who could vanquish the lies
And conquer the darkness through cosmic conversion
Lord Buddha
Bodhisattva sought meaning and peace
While dreaming that suffering could cease
But at last he awoke
And the cycle was broke
From Samsara he found his release
Out of Egypt
Osiris he suffered for three grueling days
His body dismembered in forty-two ways
In death ever porous
He sired young Horus
Who rose like the sun in a rally of rays
Judaism
Out of bondage in Egypt from where they’d been kept
God’s chosen people evasively crept
For years they would wander
And pensively ponder
The laws on the tablets their leader had schlepped
In Jesus’ Name
Two thousand years of a scriptural heist
His message was scrambled, His words have been diced
As churches and pastors
Submit to new masters
And not even close to the teachings of Christ
Mohammed
There’s a prophet who came from Medina
Where the tea tastes like lemon verbena
You can’t see his picture
But they follow his scripture
From Iran all the way to Burkina
Big Turtle
The Iroquois people who speak of the tortoise
Have told of a place in the sky so enormous
The Great One descended
With all things invented
But only the turtle below can support us
Further Reading
If you liked these limericks about world religion, you’ll be sure to enjoy:
