Pastor Jacob Birch and a Poem for Wednesday

On a day that SCOTUS strikes down DOMA and it feels that "the center cannot hold" I am moved to quote from John Milton's Paradise Lost:

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe, 

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed 

In the beginning how the heavens and the earth

Rose out of Chaos; ...