A Force to be Reckoned With
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Today’s poem was written in much the same spirit as
the one before for which I make no apologies.
As we grow older, our thoughts inevitable turn to mortality and what it means to us in an intensely personal way; sorrow for having to leave family and friends – at least in a physical sense – is only half the battle some of us wage within ourselves as we recall images arisen from threats and promises made during long-ago formative years that are rarely as easy to shrug off as we might wish.
Over the years, I have met gay men from all walks of
life and religion; the latter imposing far more guilt and despair on them than they
deserve for their rejecting certain aspects of dogma by which a defensive
worldly agenda would exclude them from both faith and any sense of
spirituality altogether.
While I mean what I say about respecting a person’s
religious beliefs, I also mean what I say when I blame religion for so many of
humanity’s divisions and flaws, including my own.
Recently, I got chatting with a gay Catholic man, in his
mid-70’s like myself, besieged with doubts and fears regarding a Heaven he
never ceased to believe in, but spent the best part of a lifetime in a weepy
closet, made to feel by family and peers that he had no right to believe in anything
much, including himself.
At the risk of being reprimanded for repeating myself yet again, no religion
has a monopoly on spirituality.
The human spirit will be guided as much by the body’s
innate feeling for all things positive as the mind’s inclination to trust its
own judgement. Together, all three are a force to be reckoned with as world
religions are beginning to realise; the more LGBT+ folks who learn to have
faith in themselves and each other, the less likely they can be
made to feel denied or undeserving of either those aspects of religion with
which they most identify or the sense of growing reassurance it brings that no
one’s spiritual well-being is threatened by their sexuality alone.
Regular readers will know that, as a pantheist, I
reject the kind of dogma perpetuated by most world religions. Many who, likewise, cannot relate to a personified God any more than I do, or the
teachings found in Holy Books, may well think of themselves (openly or not) as
atheist or agnostic. Whatever, the human spirit clearly does have a will
of its own, is capable of generating a sense of spirituality among even
the most irreligious of human beings, not least in our capacity for love, in
all its shapes and forms; lose that and, yes, we may well be on the road
to a living Hell of our own making...
A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH
A
young man stood weeping
at
the Gates of Hell where he’d been told
told
to wait by certain “betters”
among
humankind until let in to join others
whom
the Devil has taken
for
his own, down to words said, deeds done,
no
malice intended, but seen as sinning,
deserving the worst all God-fearing folks can imagine
within the parameters of their religion
An
angel came out of nowhere,
asked
the young man why he shed such tears,
and
the young man replied
how
it was the sum of all earthly fears to be there
at
Death’s door, waiting to see
the
flames of hellfire, be made to dive therein,
due
punishment for such worldly sin
as being on love with another man, much the same as he
for
engaging with homosexuality
“Love
is love, whatever its nature,”
said
the angel, hand to head in sorrow and pain,
“Nor
was eternity intended
for
such troubles as mortal minds are inclined
to
inflict rather than agree to differ,
allow
for such reality es as they cannot be a part,
its
seeds sown and nurtured in the heart
by
assorted mind-body-spirits, rejected by such religiosity
as imposes its own spirituality...”
“Are
you saying I might even qualify
for
Heaven? the young man asked, barely daring
to
entertain the thought,
yet
inspired by the angel’s understanding smile
to
hope for more from eternity
than
either burning or being as alone as made to feel
for
much of his time on Earth
as
neither of Earth Mother or Father born,
but
an outsider, a freak of humanity, if only in failing to see
religion's monopoly on eternity
“We
who are not of Earth are well aware
of
all that goes on there, can see into a human heart,
the
sum of all its many parts
as
lending the individual any benefit of doubt,
sitting
less in judgement
than
in compassion, allowing for a sense of spirituality
as
comprises a whole that some call ‘soul’
where
others see a human spirit engaging purely and simply
with
a feeling for what comes naturally
The
young man took the angel’s hand in his,
and
flew realms of time and personal space he’d seen
only
in dreams of a kinder world,
no
one made to suffer for ways of life and thought
that
some may well see differently,
but
the human spirit deserves a place and say in a world
that,
try as it might, cannot dictate
how
a person should feel or believe in order to (ever) qualify
to
go wherever angels have no fear to fly
Copyright R.N. Taber 2021
Labels: bigotry, common humanity, fear, global consciousness, hope, human nature, Human Rights, human spirit, life forms, love, nature, personal space, poetry, positive thinking, religion, society, spirituality
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