My experience of living in faith includes plenty of dissent and conflict, though mostly internal. Not just tolerating conflict, but pressing into them and not insisting on making sense and also not accepting them. And what a gift that conflict was if I cannot resolve it and end up at the cross. But I never really end up anywhere on my own, so thank God for skilled, faithful dissenters.
. . .
Do you believe that in the first nano-second of creation
before energy, before matter, before any law
that unimaginable, inhospitable power
was love?
And love remains steadfast and faithful, sustaining every moment?
Mother holding her infant, and brother murdering his brother?
Fragrant wind caressing the pine needles and deadly space waiting to obliterate it all?
Stretched taut between yes and no, belief and doubt, right and wrong, God and man,
through the warring fragments of my heart and dead-ending thoughts spinning off felonies
You are always holding fast.
Your body is vibrating.
I can feel it in the hairs on my neck, hear it humming, see the light suffusing opaque flesh.
Faith comes from hearing, yet hearing comes from faith. Still give me faith to see, to feel, to hear.
And dwell in the space between, stretched taut as a violin string.
My experience of living in faith includes plenty of dissent and conflict, though mostly internal. Not just tolerating conflict, but pressing into them and not insisting on making sense and also not accepting them. And what a gift that conflict was if I cannot resolve it and end up at the cross. But I never really end up anywhere on my own, so thank God for skilled, faithful dissenters.
. . .
Do you believe that in the first nano-second of creation
before energy, before matter, before any law
that unimaginable, inhospitable power
was love?
And love remains steadfast and faithful, sustaining every moment?
Mother holding her infant, and brother murdering his brother?
Fragrant wind caressing the pine needles and deadly space waiting to obliterate it all?
Stretched taut between yes and no, belief and doubt, right and wrong, God and man,
through the warring fragments of my heart and dead-ending thoughts spinning off felonies
You are always holding fast.
Your body is vibrating.
I can feel it in the hairs on my neck, hear it humming, see the light suffusing opaque flesh.
Faith comes from hearing, yet hearing comes from faith. Still give me faith to see, to feel, to hear.
And dwell in the space between, stretched taut as a violin string.