Unkept Doctrine
(and unkempt)
I’ve been meaning to
Write about grace
The kind that is
Free
That no one can hold onto
That has no rules except
To help ‘til heroes return
Like crumpling a butterfly
In a human hand,
It doesn’t
Mean so much if you try
To clutch it
Or claim at all it’s yours
It isn’t yours
And can’t be claimed by anyone
Don’t try
Enjoy the benefit
In a sunshine of surprise
Don’t polish it
Or ever, every try
To keep it on a shelf
It has no rules that we’re aware of
Someone, yes,
Not us
To those who want to market it,
You’ll learn, if you have to
Then be forgotten
It’s as if grace has a contract
Somewhere,
Chaotically enforced
When someone tries
To own it
The rest of us
Will bask, when we never thought
We’d have the chance
To breathe at all
Again
C L Couch
Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash
Steam venting in Manhattan.
clcouch123 
August 11, 2020 at 3:17 am
I like what you have done with this one. There are a lot of grace peddlers out there trying to make it new and improved! Don’t think it will work. You showed that very well in you poem!
Dwight
August 11, 2020 at 5:16 pm
Wonderful, wonderful, Christopher. I especially like your image of grace as a butterfly that we try to clench in our hands, but end up crumpling it, because it cannot be grasped. It is freely bestowed by God, as God desires, and not as we desire. I echo Dwight’s comment on the ” Grace peddlers”. Your words are always full of grace.
August 12, 2020 at 8:59 am
The notion of ownership, property and rights is at the root of a lot of what is unpleasant in our society. We ‘own’ very little. I think of ‘borrowing’ the house we live in, because we didn’t build it and it will stand and house others long after we are dead. You can’t ‘own’ land. What rights do the earthworms, the bees, the hares have to it? They claim nothing, take what they need (and no more) and let others do the same. I wonder about all the objects we ‘own’—when we buy a pair of trainers in a shop, does that give us more right to them than the kid or young woman who made them?