For your files, please find attached a brief history and my current position statement:
I had my reasons for leaving:
(Although ‘reasons’ imply a logical process, so misses precision.)
it was the 70s and the doors of perception were swinging open;
then came the 80s and all the techniques, formulas, methods
for self-actualization took up the entire self-deflating decade;
then the 90s, and crisis’ of faith were all the rage,
which didn’t mean they weren’t real;
meanwhile, skating into the new millennium, my faith,
overwhelmed by life, lost an edge, and fell, as it were, on its ass.
As such, I kept leaving.
Just as now, beyond any nugget of nostalgia,
I have my reasons (bearing in mind the thing about “reasons”)
for returning:
because starlight is seeping through some crack in my greying skull;
because once, walking in a coastal forest,
I heard singing (perhaps Love’s own largesse),
and was driven to praise,
like a pod bursting;
because I’ve been invited to a gathering of fierce merciful women
to witness the wild and tender wisdom of the feminine soul;
because I’ve worked in the garden, eaten their mint, grown alert
to my tacit collusion with privilege, prepared, now,
to return to town with pockets full of seeds;
because faith no longer tastes like a Happy Meal
or sounds like a perky litany or comes in the form
of a weekly appointment, or is resolved by so-called
clear-headed treatments of beautifully beguiling scriptures;
because faith is not a state, but is energy, oriented,
has no object, is God-less—so to be in God,
is comprehended through incomprehension,
gained through lack, restored through loss;
is a way of walking — willowing in a prairie wind
with a wreath of truths, open to fields of doubt,
furrows of disbelief (once called heresy) —
it’s swimming in a river of strange relations,
(entangled mystery of kinetic connections),
this immense novel, where, wondrous, surprising,
I’ve found I have a hand at writing the chapter writing me;
because now, where I am, it’s cooling and cast over with clouds
and the sun is going down and night is coming on and
the fortunes of loss, pain and grief are having their way
and I’ve fallen in love with everything fallible and fragile,
and momentary: this blundering human tide
that binds and blinds yet bears the image – Beloved.
Transports me to the cusp of another realm, with my feet firmly ensconced in my bathroom slippers
Ah, I like that Ananda. Thank you.
As someone also somewhat inclined to wander
from original… understanding,
you have made here Stephen, a compelling case
for the re-emergence of
belief.
Wonderful, Thank you.
Thank you Tamara. I’m glad, dear wanderer, for the company.
I appreciate how often your poetry enables me to exhale.
Thank you so much Susan, that makes me happy!
So spot on !
Thank you Kathleen! Thanks so much for reading.
Insightful and courageous! Deep appreciation to my poet friend Ana Lisa de Jong from New Zealand for the introduction of your site.
Thank you Yolanda! Truly grateful you took the time to read and respond. And thank you! to Ana Lisa.
Loved “beautifully beguiling scriptures”. Hermeneutics is the science of seeking precision in meaning in the scriptures. I’ve become more enamored with how they refuse to be nailed down.
Moved by “yet bears the image – Beloved.”
Thanks, Steve.
Thanks Sam! Perhaps, then, without rigorous hermeneutics, we wouldn’t have known how beguiling scriptures could be.
So many resonances here but I fear words will just clutter up the mystery. So, I’ll just say I love this, Stephen 🙂
Thank you so much Ann!
Just this … I’m a goner … ambushed once again by the Beloved. What a beautiful afternoon interlude. Heartfelt thanks to you and to Ana Lisa de Jong for the post.
Very happy this resonated, such a lovely response, thank you!
Random reactions:
The history of the doors of perception “project” (for lack of a better term for Mr. Huxley’s experimentation) is quite interesting. Jim Morrison’s choice of name for his band was perhaps a foreshadowing of his own fate. I haven’t yet read Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us,” but it is a more recent take on some of the same themes with some more formal science now on the records.
Your line “because faith no longer tastes like a Happy Meal” took me down a path of sadness as I think about the hypocrisy and now radicalization of the tiny church I was raised in. This became all too clear during the pandemic, racial unrest and political divides of the past few years.
I am intrigued by whatever is behind our species’ eternal search for something: a temporary high or escape, a transcendance, riches and fame, life eternal… but sadly (I think) this search is too often delusional. That chase keeps so many from being present here and now, appreciating the people and beauty around them and simply enjoying the fleeting moment we are in. I guess I have been pondering my aging and the purpose – if there has been one – of all the time and energy I have thrown into my work over the years with the question of “Why”? Not really regret, but an inquiry as to whether I was able to make a difference in any small way.
Thank you so much Diane, for this thoughtful and perceptive addition.