{"id":107,"date":"2004-09-26T18:34:53","date_gmt":"2004-09-27T00:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/?p=107"},"modified":"2005-03-11T09:55:34","modified_gmt":"2005-03-11T14:55:34","slug":"my-god-your-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2004\/09\/my-god-your-god\/","title":{"rendered":"My God, Your God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a poem I first started in January &#8211; I&#8217;ve revised it a bit, but it still doesn&#8217;t quite capture the feeling or the argument I&#8217;ve intended. Comments are welcome.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My God, Your God<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The god I could believe in<br \/>is not the god I hear described<br \/>by you and other heartless folk,<br \/>who in lust with judging<br \/>cast your judgments<br \/>up up up to the sky<br \/>to form the ultimate authority.<\/p>\n<p>My god models<br \/>the ultimate spirit &#8211; <br \/>compassionate and loving,<br \/>nestling me in warmth<br \/>like a baby in the womb.<br \/>My god guides me<br \/>into ecstasy &#8211; <br \/>that being outside myself<br \/>beyond language,<br \/>and still holds dear<br \/>what makes me unique to him &#8211;<br \/>or her &#8211; or that beyond gender<br \/>that so confounds our imaginations.<\/p>\n<p>My god is beyond<br \/>our human understanding,<br \/>so that everything we know<br \/>about friendship and love<br \/>is just a pale reflection<br \/>in comparision,<br \/>and yet these things<br \/>best teach us and train us<br \/>revealing to us the beginning steps<br \/>toward loving wisdom.<br \/>If there is an afterlife<br \/>I would ask then<br \/>to be enlightened<br \/>(and endarkened?)<br \/>having already absorbed<br \/>what I needed to learn<br \/>from the joys and sufferings<br \/>of embodiment and materiality,<br \/>thereafter to dwell in spirit<br \/>as the spark in me<br \/>reenters the warp and woof<br \/>of the cosmos.<\/p>\n<p>My god is beyond<br \/>the highest thought that we can think,<br \/>but my god is also very simple &#8211;<br \/>the ultimate source and <br \/>definition of love.<br \/>You cannot explain even rhyme<br \/>to an ant, and likewise<br \/>we are limited by the terms<br \/>of our own perceptions<br \/>and our own becomings.<\/p>\n<p>Yet I believe that worship<br \/>breathes through us all at times<br \/>through kindness, through smiles,<br \/>through forgiveness, through actions,<br \/>through refraining from actions,<br \/>and through the myriads of thoughts<br \/>and feelings and behaviors<br \/>that all of us, down deep inside<br \/>already know.<br \/>We already know.<br \/>There is that still voice deep inside<br \/>of the kingdom yet within us.<\/p>\n<p>And if there really is a god,<br \/>and not our wish-filled dream<br \/>then I invite this god to manifest<br \/>in and through me, and to raise me up<br \/>&#8211; the metaphor of upness incomplete &#8211;<br \/>to the supreme processes of love.<br \/>Yes, I welcome all benevolent deities.<\/p>\n<p>But if there is no such god as this,<br \/>and even if your god is the &quot;true God,&quot;<br \/>capital G and all,<br \/>I judge your god as wanting<br \/>and I defy your so-called god.<br \/>Have you stopped to ask yourself<br \/>to whom do you belong?<br \/>&quot;Which god do you obey&quot; &#8211; <br \/>a lyric so seldom received<br \/>as an actual question.<br \/>The daemonic voice of <em>The The<\/em><br \/>asks it too, though slant:<br \/><em>Whose voice is it<\/em> &#8211; after all &#8211;<br \/><em>that whispers unto you?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You fundamentalists have lost<br \/>the thing most fundamental.<br \/>Pharasees again, in code<br \/>have lost or burned the message.<br \/>You fanatics worship manmade creeds<br \/>that will undo us all<br \/>And YOU, you terrorists of all religions<br \/>your gods will make us fall.<\/p>\n<p>Yes I confess this deep deep flaw,<br \/>this remnant of rigidity,<br \/>scar-tissue of self-righteousness,<br \/>torn open yet again.<br \/>Yet one must speak from where one stands<br \/>and this is what I know.<br \/>I have no room left in my heart<br \/>for love toward you to grow.<br \/>The evil that your god incites<br \/>in you and o&#8217;er the world,<br \/>stains for all time our histories,<br \/>we all pay for your sins.<br \/>I guard compassion jealously<br \/>held selfish in reserve<br \/>for the ones you hurt so deeply<br \/>and whose stories aren&#8217;t heard.<\/p>\n<p>I name you and yours false prophets<br \/>because you do define the phrase,<br \/>you lead the would-be faithful<br \/>always far and further astray.<br \/>Placing demon masks<br \/>on the faces of our kin,<br \/>undoing all the fragile good<br \/>that lets us breathe again.<br \/>Shepard, you&#8217;re a predator<br \/>who leads your singing flock<br \/>straight into the meat grinder<br \/>after having drunk the blood<br \/>of our precious human dignity.<br \/>Yet they still see not the fang,<br \/>of sadists grinning, grinning<br \/>puffed up in polyester gray.<br \/>You use your sacred freedom<br \/>to deceive the the trusting ones.<br \/>Do you still know what you do<br \/>or is it buried in the money trail?<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Make no mistake&quot; is what you say &#8211;<br \/>(I say &quot;be not misled&quot;)<br \/>I do mean what it is I say<br \/>Or your god may strike me dead<br \/>It&#8217;s just as simple as can be<br \/>I&#8217;ll say it &quot;blunt and plain&quot;<br \/>See, I would sooner trust a flea<br \/>than allow you to preach to me<br \/>about god.<\/p>\n<p>And I am tired, suddenly &#8211; just<br \/>take your god and &#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>get behind me.<\/p>\n<p>Take your god and go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A poem on my God obsession<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative","category-personal","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}