Often, I wake up surprised I’m still a Christian.
I get up and put on those clothes,
go to the kitchen and make coffee,
and then I open those ragged Psalms and read:
well, two lines in and it’s bedlam and petition,
curse and contrition, a general shit show
with holy interludes and fine King James phrasing.
Then I turn to some patches of gospel:
Jesus wandering, Judas betraying, Peter denying, Mary weeping,
it all looks to end badly, and it does, then it doesn’t,
then there’s light streaming through a torn curtain:
and you know that feeling when something in you connects
with some incandescent truth as close as your kettle
and radiating into the cosmos?
And the appetite you had for personal enlightenment,
spiritual awakening, elevated mindfulness, setting you apart,
above, all the petty politicos, marketing stupidities,
and freaking weird conspiracies;
and the hunger for the bliss that would surely lift you out
of daily annoyances — packed parking lots, shopping line-ups,
rain on your barbeque, some dog crapping on your lawn —
all turns to laughter in the simplicity of a single instruction:
to love the Source of life with all your heart,
and your neighbour at least as much.
You turn the page, but there’s nothing else.
No but.
No amendment.
No grand love without love for the particular;
no mystical bliss that leaves a hurting body in the street; no
enlightenment that bars women, or excludes the queer, the foreign,
the fluid; no awakening not intimately involved in sitting with the sick,
or listening to the plea of someone jumping from a cliff; no
spiritual attainment without making a sandwich for a hungry soul;
no nirvana that’s deaf to the cry of a strung-out teen, and no clarity
about what might help without learning the story;
and no salvation, personal or universal, without labouring,
with love, for the liberation of our neighbours.
Until we are all free,
we are none of us free. (Emma Lazarus – 1883)If one of us is chained, none of us are free. (Solomon Burke)
Thank you Steve for the the enlightenment
this morning as I am too drinking my coffee, reading and listening to Solomon Burke.
Thanks, Letty, and thanks for joining me.
“…all turns to laughter in the simplicity of a single instruction:
to love the Source of life with all your heart…”
Simple yet Soaring
Thank you, Ananda.
So good. I am reminded of The Collar by George Herbert: I struck the board and cried ‘no more!’ (then there is a bunch of raving) and then the line: “Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied My Lord.”
I wake up surprised sometimes I am not a Christian.
Thank you kind Tiffany. I looked up the poem, just wonderful. Thank you!
Thanks Steve.
Thank you for reading, Alton.
There is so much to take in here, so much that was left out of what I was taught long ago about loving that Source of life and all who were loved into being. And in these later years of knowing, I wonder how to bear the pain of all the neighbors whose paths I will never cross, but know of their sorrow. It feels like that simple instruction will consume my whole life if I let it. I suppose that was the point.
Thanks, Stephen.
“It feels like that simple instruction will consume my whole life if I let it. I suppose that was the point.” I love that. Thank you, Ann!
Thanks, Stephen. This piece has pushed me into doing something I’m a bit terrified to do. Thanks for helping God keep the nudge going!
Thank you Marcia!
Thanks, Steve – pure gospel!
Thanks Sam!