Something Sacred This Way Comes

 

The tyranny of religion

Has called up wars, which we can do, anyway

On our own, thank you very much

 

Has forestalled advances in astronomy and

Hygiene (Christians took cold baths because

Muslim took hot ones)

Has decided what we read

And how to think,

Making translation and the Reformation

Dangerous

 

The problem is not Catholic

Any denomination

Or a group formed last night

Becomes an orthodoxy

And so finds a way to rust thought over

Given time, it always happens

 

The bigger problem should be keeping

God in a box

God might be in there

But I think we measure better when we witness

God everywhere

In the pit or in the sky

Or on our middle Earth between

 

God has created old

And re-creates in everything that’s new

We give God shelf life

We feared

The smells inside the tomb

From death and execution

So we, as they, thought

But God was fresh that day, because there’s

Nothing newer, once first made,

Than resurrection

 

This is for Christians, though the problem

Lay on each one’s lintel

God is ancient; God is new

We should know this when we breathe

To give ourselves green opportunities

Not to reinvent the world each day

Until the day it’s called for

But revel in the many cells that rise up in

Creation overnight

 

Morning has broken

Midnight, too

Ancient of days

Makes new,

Dropped on the horizon

Folded into hills

Pressed over the plains

And pushed into water

 

Orthodoxy isn’t bad

But don’t forget

That in a favorite story

The Tin Man needs anointing,

Which is ongoing

 

Join me for church today

(it’s happening somewhere)

Maybe we’ll remember that we’re old

And also facing something delightfully unknown

 

C L Couch

 

 

Rennett Stowe from USA – Saint Francis of Assisi, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26302833