The Reckoning

Do people change?

Past a certain age,

do they change their long held beliefs,

almost like altering a genome,

and erasing part of a family tree

from an heirloom Bible? 

What causes a person

to hang on for dear life

to a religious belief,

or a philosophical one? 

Does it hurt to let go?

In the places we are most vulnerable,

we hang on for dear life.

Don't chop off my gangrenous limb.

God, please don't take my sick and suffering child

from this Earth.

God, I know you're there. 

She died, but I know she's with You. 

Is He? Is She?

Do you know in your heart, 

in your head,

or both? 

You can't know this in your logical mind.

Apologetics are a millennial waste

of everyone's time.  

A little girl, alone,

misses her father,

sees her mother cry,

and plays by herself. 

God must be there,

and Jesus is a reason to be happy,

after all. 

Nighttime prayers are above all

comforting,

and creative. 

When everyone else is gone,

even Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny,

at least I'll still have you,

God. 

That's a deep, deep imprint

in the mind.

Someone says,

humans only invent Gods and religion

to handle the universal fear of death,

to underpin societal structure

and authority.

God was never real. 

The fear of death is so great,

it motivates most everything we do,

whether we know it or not,

until we face it.

Divine revelation,

to fill a primal need,

is easily invented

and portrayed. 

The little girl listens with great attentiveness. 

She knows this is the truth. 

The imprint is still so deep. 

So much of life is beautiful, mystical, glorious.

Amidst the pain and agony,

there is so much joy and sweetness,

it can't be missed. 

Why not try to capture and define it all,

fit it into a box, a replicable system?

Once the structure is there,

many upstanding, educated and powerful people,

along with the oppressed,

give their lives to support it. 

Many talented, delicate and sensitive souls,

find a home within the edifice erected

with so much care, so much precision,

and dedication,

over so many years. 

Where would they otherwise go?

And yet, for others,

no matter how deep the imprint,

or the scars,

or the glorious, mystical beauty and sweetness,

there is 

a Reckoning. 

It takes incalculable energy 

to delay the moment,

when a new kind of light springs forth,

revealing to the naked eye

a true lack of any real edifice.

Nothing is there, after all. 

Yet, everything is still there,

just not the background imprint

of the edifice

we thought held us up. 

What of all those spine chilling synchronicities,

serendipity, grace, gifts we received,

and the many, many times we didn't die,

our loved ones didn't die, or if they did,

somehow we made it through,

and we ate, 

and there was still the joy, the beauty,

the glory and the mystical sweetness?

Who can we praise and thank?

And what do we do, now?

What of those imprints,

those habits,

still so useful,

so precious?

If this one life, in this one body,

is all there is, 

how much more will we want to 

give a drink to anyone who thirsts,

to save even the smallest insect

from suffering or early death?

How much more alive will we be,

knowing how very much this day matters,

because once it's gone,

it's really gone.

No former lifetime or lifetime to come,

no reunion in Heaven, no eternal suffering in Hell,

no future hope for the spider, rat or beetle

to achieve a better incarnation,

no ascension,

no life

after life.

This life.

So

no more vitriol,

no more bloody wars,

or open carrying of guns as a show,

no more useless sarcasm

and wasted speech

and blind eyes turned to the suffering

because,

their lot

is our lot

and it won't make sense to justify it all

within the imprinted structure.

Who will feel the pain 

of the crumbling walls,

the burning beams,

glass and marble scattered,

blown apart,

melting symbols and statues

in the realm of ideas,

in the minds of grown children?