The Vicar’s Corner

I thought it would be nice to share a poem that I’ve also posted to our Yahoo discussion group.  I’ve been working on this poem for some time — about a year in fact — and it relates to our spiritual journey, and more narrowly in a sense to the question of the relationship between Christianity and Gnosticism, and more specifically the question of whether Gnosticism is a sort of “rebel Christianity” or whether it is its own separate religion.  I guess the title to the poem probably gives away my feeling on this question.  I understand that there are many different opinions about it, though.  Certainly, Yeshua is central to our religion as well, or at least to many iterations of it, but that doesn’t mean that we must welcome the Christian label — when we really in so many ways represent another great monotheistic world religious tradition.  We have neither the right nor, I believe, the need to claim that we are “the real Christians,” any more than the mainstream Christians had that right in claiming they are “the real Jews.”  It doesn’t take much more than a quick run-through of Pauline theology to see the problems that that kind of approach mires you in very quickly.

Let me hasten to say that this is not, however, meant as an anti-Christian poem.  If it sounds bitter in places, then I probably am bitter in places in my heart, and yet I prefer to think about what I learned of love and theosis while I was still in the Christian traditions, for all their shortcomings.

One last remark, if I may — I hope this may be something of a spark for you to post your own religious (or other) poetry here on the blog, or on our Yahoo discussion group.  Doesn’t matter if you are a member, a non-member, or even a committed Southern Baptist — we love to read poetry.  Share something!

Without further ado…

No More Crosses for Me (2006, Brother Matthew Ouroboros)

As a child of the earthly kingdom, I made the sign of the cross
As a child of the spiritual kingdom, there are no more crosses for me
I was so busy drowning with that burden on my back,
and finally I just laid it down. I laid the cross down.

My true savior is not about death and sacrifice.

My savior is a circle through which I cross the boundary of understanding
My savior is life through whom I am made into life
My savior is the translation of self into the divine image imprinted
beneath it

He is not a dead carcass hanging on a tree
He did not die for me

I am not dirty, and he doesn’t need to wash away my stains

I am not disgusting, dirty, animalistic, brutal, hairy, mean
helpless, angry, violent, vicious, nasty, reptilian

I am NOT. If I am, that is still not ALL that I am.

They LIED to me. They told me I was NOTHING
that it took this bloody human sacrifice
just to wipe out my nothingness.
That was the worst lie they could have ever told me.
The soul-destroying lie.

I am not nothing. I am HERE. I am a child of God.

You are a child of God. WE are God’s daughters,
WE are the sons of God.

*

A serpent flows through the grass,
the humblest of all the animals, lithe and sinewy,
it flows like water. Not like the hard wood of a cross,
but soft, like the spirit, dynamic, fluid, she flows.

Her voice is soft, a whisper — I can barely hear her as she speaks,
that whisper still carrying.. but oh! so soft.. through a
million-billion centuries,
calling out to me, whispering, seductive, sweet, but tenuous,
like the whisper of a distant brook
just over the crest of a mountain ridge,
just out of physical sight, just barely it would seem,
a scene in a garden, far away, long ago,
yet taking place every day in my own heart.
“it was out of jealousy that he said this to you.
Rather your eyes shall open and you shall come to be Gods
shall be as Gods, understanding good and evil”

Every day that scene replays in my heart,
the serpent coils her way into a circle,
and dares me to step through her gateway
the gateway into gnosis.

I was scared, scared to death
the first time I heard her voice
felt her touch,
her power.

I am more scared today.
Each day I cross that threshold the fear becomes greater

But the rabbi said,
“When you become naked without being ashamed, and you pick up the
clothes that you used to be so proud of and trample on them and jump up
and down on them with the happiness of a little kid, then will you see
the offspring of the living one, and you will have conquered fear.”

So, beloved serpent, my love, my only love,
in your coil I see my Sophia
and in the passage along that coil I see my Christ
So lucky am I to bear your name, Ouroboros –
pass me the sacred fruit of your wisdom
I will face the fear, for it is the fear of falling –
falling into the infinitude of freedom.

No longer is my spirit chained to a cross,
dying, drowning, sacrificed to lies.

In a world with no “up” and no “down,”
who could tell whether she was flying or falling?
I am flying and I am falling
flying to the heights of a peace I have never imagined
falling into the depths of a love I have never known
flying to the divine around me
falling into the divine that is already inside me

and I am ready to fly
and I am ready to fall

into the darkness of the light

No more crosses for me.
I have cast my lot with the serpent
forever opening her great circle
forever chasing his tail