Sacred Fire

…for a lot of us, the impulse is to hide from that which we don’t or understand or can’t answer.  We lose our reverence for mystery, and instead teach avoidance, and denial.     

                                                          Laura Berman Frotang, The Little Book on Meaning, pp 9-10

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I would like to order my life simple please

nice and clean

black and white

I want formulas I can use

that will cause everything to make sense

I don’t want messy

I don’t want bad things to happen to good people

I don’t want bad people to get away with murder (literally)

I don’t want racism

and oppression

I don’t want to see anyone

matter what race or creed

minimized

I want my religion logical

and concrete

I don’t want a untidy Bible full of rants

and anger

full of confusing images of God

as brutal, judgmental, loving, forgiving

full of contradictions that cannot fully be explained

I don’t want scary blood tests

and pain

and disappointment and loneliness

I just want answers

nice and clean

I have tried (as do many others)

to make it so

and have failed

it seems that life is truly muddy

and dissolute

and there I stand

knee deep in the mire

appalled

but this is life

and must be taken as it comes

the good, the bad

the clear, the unclear

faith and doubt

success and failure

health and illness

the Sacred to must be accepted

as It comes

slightly (or greatly) confusing

for there are no easy answers

there are no magic formulas

and the more we try

the more we struggle

the deeper we sink

finding only fear, and rigidity

formulas that cause us to make fools of ourselves

as we try to make the unworkable work

cognitive dissonance

that we cannot see through of desperation

to hang on to our flawed ideology

and so we face each thing

one at a time

we take each fear, each spasm of hate

into our

hands

and we let them go

and we open ourselves to

that which we cannot understand

and can barely endure

we let the Sacred

roar through our

being

cleansing

lifting

empowering

uncomfortable, disturbing, challenging

mystery

like fire

like wind

Spiritus

Ignis Dei

and we are freed

to walk on