Naked before God, like St Francis.
Stripped of burdens, but also of shields.
A life without iphone - how can that be!
No piano, guitar, or desk or pen,
but still with my mind, my voice, my me.
Does that give me the right to be here at all?
So let's go further: increase the pain –
no job, no degrees, no role in life.
Who's left? A puzzled man, and scared,
but still loved by family, friends and wife.
Does that give me the right to be here at all?
And I think I can see where this road will end,
the road of Job, an earthly hell.
A man without contacts, health or home –
am I still me? Do I have a soul?
What gives me the right to be here at all?
And now, standing naked, alone, bereft,
my identity gone, my being unfurled –
only now do I see how utterly much
my faith was wrapped up in the things of this world.
What makes me think I am here at all?
And now, can I muster the courage to be?
Is ‘God’s child’ an empty phrase in my mind?
Yet one flash of hope breaks as now I see
that God too stands naked, and undefined –
freed from my cleverness, culture and creeds,
is the future the greatest adventure of all?
I love the premise behind this poem and it's a real challenge to the reader. Reminds me of some reading I did on meditative prayer and how that gradually, through practice, strips the worshipper mentally, down through the bare bones into non-being, where God becomes everything.
ReplyDeleteThe idea in the last stanza, that stripping ourselves of all our shields actually means that God becomes naked too, stripped of our comfortable preconceptions, only came to me after I had written the first two lines of the stanza — it was a small epiphany for me. We have dressed God up in so much cultural tat that he has become invisible to us.
ReplyDeleteBut also phil 2 v 7?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. God emptying himself; us emptying ourselves in response; the refiner's fire purging away the dross...
ReplyDelete