Saturday, October 1, 2011

Authority

By what authority,
This Higher Thing,
That knows the names and number on all the stars?
Places them like thumb tacks
in the night of bulletin boards.
In a longitude and latitude,
not heard nor understood.
Line, tacked upon a border,
Bulletin of earth and sky.

Our selfish permission
Granted
And little understood.

(He doesn’t need our authority
or permission
to badge his works,
medal his words)

Earthy foundry that He alone created.

We forget our dusty beginnings
In prides of lying.
Puffed up adders of law and sin.
Arrogant in our questioning of authority,
A peacock of ignorance.
His command running swiftly to the earthy
Border of named for stars.

II.
“You can’t debate unbelief.”

III.

The door behind the curtain,
Wedged open with a foot,
Sandaled dirt of a man,
God incarnate.
The hardness of granite
rooted to the earth,
binding up the heart in a litter
of diamonds of agnost,
slamming shut the heavens.
Unbelief, as hard as heart.

John’s baptism
Their crucifixion fence.
Pharisees.
Religious leaders.
Man.
Me.

IV.

I am convicted of my sin,
Nailed on my cross,
When I sit in church.
I see it.
Feel it,
Breathe it.
The stench of offal, viscera,
Carrion.
I sit in urine,
Leachate of my transgressions.
A goat wandering pits and valleys
Of my creation.

My death is no sign.
My life no boundary.
I hear the whispery crepe,
Leaves,
Rustle,
Through the authority of vines,
Left to wither in mid day sun.
(Plastic grapes cradled in a ceiling border.)

And in the waft of rot,
Surrounded and surrendered
The stubbornness of my sewage,
I hear His call.
Acknowledge His authority,
Turn myself inside out.

“ I cannot by my own reason or strength”
come to my Savior.

He must break the wall
Between city and dump
With Water, with Word,
That guards our unbelief.
Only then can I in all unnaturalism,
Repent.

V.
He knows my name,
My sins,
And pins me in his home above.
Death closes my eyes.
In seconds,
They are opened in heaven.
In death my eyes well shut,
Sleep like in what looks like unbelief.
Unsealed by Water and His Word.
I’ll blink to Heaven’s lights. a city with no walls,
Between my God and me.
Face to face for eternity.

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