I’ve read the old Hebrew poets for years, and oh, the stuff they say: beautiful, odious, comforting, confounding, sometimes you just have to pick a clause, up the ante, and see where it goes. Another point here, about the Psalms, is their insistence (with notable exceptions) of God made available through a kind of toiling righteousness. My own experience, however, aligns more closely with Christian Wiman’s:
…faith, like art, is most available when I cease to seek it, cease even to believe in it, perhaps, if by belief one means that busy attentiveness, that purposeful modern consciousness that ‘knows’ its object.
I’m a Skinned Christian
But I am a worm, and no man. – Psalm 22:6
I am a worm.
I’m any number of creepy little dirt burrowers,
moreover: I’m the slick glistening trail of a Leopard slug,
a pink puckered crease on a buzzard’s neck,
I’m a cottage curd fallen out of the fridge,
the russet deposit of wind-borne fungus,
I’m sticky steam sucked through a kitchen duct,
and grease-glazed dust on a Venetian blind,
I’m a drip driven off by a wiper blade,
like the passing thought of a venial mind.
And being the village idiot,
I have posted my single thesis to the trapdoor
of the crypt under a virtual church in Witlessberg,
stating:
God beguiles me!
So I’m trashing your tracts,
dumping your perky worship tunes
and running off with my bewilderment (thank you very much).
For when I strive to believe my soul recedes,
when I rend my robe, bruise my knees,
righteous to recite your creedal decrees —
the heavens yawn, God shrugs.
But when I find myself at the end of myself
— as happens these many times —
and flop down on the brown bank of a dying river,
I see wind, with fingers of grace, lift dead grass;
I see the sun bring its twilight, without stain or shadow,
to halo the passing crests of water
and soften this clay-hearted shore —
and blood moves deeper,
breath comes roomier, and life
stirs faith and I stand and look about.
I believe you have the soul of the Celtic Christians, Stephen 🙂
Thank you Ann. I’ll take that.
The appropriate words are not coming, but this moves me deeply.
Thank you Diane!
It’s tough to follow this piece with words at all. Thank you for a stunningly beautiful description of your thoughts on how life stirs faith. It stopped me in my tracks!
Thank you Ellen! That means a lot to me.
Yes my Celtic soul, beguiled by God more than righteously worthy of him meets yours by the riverbank.
Lovely! Thanks Ana Lisa.
Beautiful and true (if that’s not redundant). Thank you
Thank you Dan!
Chuckled at the virtual church line – visualized a slinking Martin Luther saying, here I slink, so help me God!
Loved the last line – faith: “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” – that which helps me stand and look about! Thanks for this.
Thanks for that Sam.
Such a strangely evocative and circular wryness
The surrender of wanting to understand
All the things that keep us nailed to that
Which we seek to understand
Itself
Is what keeps our breath from feeling roomier
To stand and look about never sounded more regal and complete
Thanks so much for these thoughts Anand. Truly appreciate your insightful reading.
“For when I strive to believe my soul recedes”…..yes, yes, and yes….and then
“heavens yawn”….and I go out to walk under the blue moon…and “breathe comes roomier”….thank you thank you thank you….
Lou
And thank you Lou!