Saturday, April 23, 2011

A PATMOS ISLE OF THE MIND (1999)



 
God has it in for me.
I believe.
No. I don’t believe that.
That would be stupid.
When I think about it, I know it’s stupid to believe that God has it in for me.
But when I don’t think about it, I believe it.
It’s one of those things I don’t think about but the thought is always there, unthought.
God has it in for me.
Because I don’t deserve to be happy.
I have displeased God.
And I continue to displease God.
And so He is going to show me His displeasure somehow.
He will get me, somehow.
 
How can I please God?
Can I buy Him off?
Sacrifice a lamb? A bull? A chicken? A goat? My first born? Will that satisfy Him?
Should I go to Church? Temple? Mosque?
Get baptized? Get re-circumcised? Go to confession? Speak in tongues? Handle snakes? Wash feet? Pray  the Rosary? Get slain in the Spirit? Flagellate myself? Flagellate someone else? Put rocks in my shoes? Wear a hair shirt? Fast? Abstain from sex, drugs, and television? Go to Mecca? Go to Jerusalem? Tibet? Branson, Missouri? Find the Holy Grail? Pass through the eye of a needle? Rationally prove God’s existence through logical deductions? Take a non-rational leap of faith? Have visions? Sit under a Bodhi tree? Smoke herb? Eat peyote? Go into the wilderness? Sit in a sweat lodge? Get into the lotus position? Be pure of heart? Wait for the Mother Ship?
Kill the perverts?
Kill the infidels?
Bomb a clinic? Drink cyanide Kool-Aid? Have a near-death experience? Go out of my body? Go out of my mind?
Die and be born again?
 
ON THE LAST DAY I was hanging out on the beach on the isle of Patmos and with my own eyes I saw the sky open and ETERNITY exposed Itself and I saw the WORD. Standing before me in the flesh in skin and hair and bones and teeth the WORD stood before me and I opened my mouth and said Are you going to kill us? Have you come to burn the unbelievers? Will you get even now?
 
Do you have it in for us?
 
And when I finally shut up, the WORD  spoke itself
 
In Absolute Silence
it spoke itself
 

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