Can't find Easter's promise today

In post-easter conversations the last two weeks, it's come up a few times. People have told me that they have not been able to forgive themselves. 

It's not why we were talking. These were comments dropped by the way - asides to the subject we were on. Yet the Holy Spirit has turned those quiet comments into a full fledged cry in my soul. 

Why have faithful Christians not been able to find what the Church offers up in the magnificent song and ritual and stories of Easter? 

Forgiven

how we carry our guilt

instead of cross-ing over to the promised land

we stay on this shore holding onto burnt failures

instead of reaching today’s bright flame of living light

how we just can’t seem to

find the way to forgive ourselves

even when no one else is judging

and the whole world has let it go

the grass, the trees and the wind don’t care

but just keep growing, tumbling towards tomorrow’s today …

in the fearful face of this moving towards who knows what

we clench a snapshot in time

and engage in masochistic torture of our souls

yesterday’s tale pinned...

I am the devil cat to my own mousey soul

How I love to play 

with the exquisite pain of guilt

the sting of regret

the white hot self-hatred

wakes me to the living hell

of god’s will gone wrong

the taste of death's blood in my teeth

somehow it seems more real than

the promise of green and growing that can’t be held or gripped 

because there is no stopping its eternal ever one-step-away from now

like babies that won’t stay as cute as they were before I blinked

and there’s not enough snapshots to capture their unfolding 

living can’t be grasped

only shared

and even death is not an end

as decay feeds what’s coming

and love is fluid

and hate is molten

so guilt is the only thing I can put in my pocket

like a worry stone

a pebble in my shoe

underfoot

understood

I’m so sure - of nothing more than "I’ll never live down"

what the wind has long forgotten

She whispers

She howls

She calls me to drop that stone to the riverbottom

and join the flow

unafraid, free and laughing

forgiven

for to love life's free unburdened flow-ering is god’s will

and the imagined devil’s defeat

Easter season musings

April 18, 2012