Looking out across the lake in early morning,
I thought I saw shimmer of God
Quietly glimmering within reflection of God
Each small gust of wind creating waves
Dissolving God back into God.
I could not take it within myself,
Too dangerous it seemed, too vivid, too vague.
So I drove to church and sat in a pew,
The one place where I felt safe from God.
My hope– that these thick Christian walls,
Made of dense stone, might protect me,
Save me from an ephemeral, alluring God.
As Larkin once said in a poem:
“Once I am sure there’s nothing going on,
I step inside, letting the door thud shut….
Up at the holy end, the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long.”
Hopefully, here I could be at peace,
Watching the light cross the floor,
This sacred place where birth and death
Are married in an eerie silence.
Here, where so much seems obsolete,
I am surprised by a deep
Hunger to be grave and solemn
In this solitary, soft moment of quiet.
Whispering within my mind, I heard
“Here endth the reading of these holy words….”
Scripture seemed written upon my heart—
A pilgrim’s progress, if you will, smoldering,
Burning deeper, alive and distinct from my own will.
Why, I wondered, did Nietzsche say:
“It is indecent to be a Christian….”
I sat, as Buddha sat, in lotus fashion
Upon cold stone, close to weeping,
Close to praying, slowly breathing,
Raised from death into enlightened spaciousness,
Sitting in this House I did not build,
Yet here, at last, finding myself at Home.
Meister Eckhart said it this way:
“Man’s last and highest parting gift
Is when for God’s sake,
He takes leave of God.”
This is what Jesus would say:
“Verily, verily I say unto you
Except that a seed of wheat
Fall into the ground and die,
It abides alone,… but if it die,
It brings forth much fruit.”
Only in this moment of dying,
As I let go, do I begin to cross over
Into the vast return to God,
Spiritually naked, yet blessed—
Slowly walking all the way down
Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Trail,
High cliffs casting morning shadows
Until I reach what might be
Called the Colorado—
At the bottom of the world it flows.
And here, I kneel and drink.<img
"Headwinds" ---Fred Turpin's Poetry Blog 