[FM] December Prompt -- Do You Have Faith?
Dec. 7th, 2007 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
changehistoryI thank Thee that many of my prayers have been refused. I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness. Go on with Thy patient work, answering 'no' to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it.*
There was no catechism left, no pageantry, no mystery. Not that I knew them, for Cromwell came to power before I could differentiate or feel the loss. There were hard pews and hard stares, and cold rooms in winter and hot rooms in summer, with nothing to bring any bodily relief from the press of humanity as we sought to elevate our souls. There were quirts falling sharp when words stumbled for in pain was purification and in debasement was deliverance. The flesh was weak. The men who visited our mothers were proof of that. The flesh was wickedness. We were the fruit of temptresses like the serpent in the garden, twisting men from the path. The world fell in the mire and there would be no rejoicing until He came once more.
I lost all faith in my god, in his religion too
I told the angels they could sing their songs to someone new
I lost all trust in my friends
I watched my heart turn to stone
I thought that I was left to walk this wicked world alone**
The theatres reopened, and women trod the stage. The brands that burned her skin were cast fully into the fires to shod the returned monarch's horses. Then another fire sparked from a baker's banked oven and hellfire raged across a sinful city, wiping out the old to make way for the new. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust and there was nothing left of any of them to place in a pauper's grave. The ship wound itself away from a city, and I didn't look back.
I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my willful sin; all my powers of body and soul are defiled: a fountain of pollution is deep within my nature. There are chambers of foul images within my being; I have gone from one odious room to another, walked in a no-man's-land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature. I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself; I have no green shoot in me nor fruit, but thorns and thistles; I am a fading leaf that the wind drives away; I live bare and barren as a winter tree, unprofitable, fit to be hewn down and burnt.*
Another fire, another loss, hell closing tight around and running over me, and yet I walked from the flames, strong and whole, cleansed and new, with nothing before me and the man I was lost in the dust. War came in the night, and death and blood at my hands. A pale horse with eyes of flame and ice stretching across the world, destruction trailing in my shadow, a world wilting in my wake. Aimless. Rootless. A man out of time, with no name, no country, no purpose, watching time slide itself by into an endless abyss darker than the reaches of the human soul.
And I had lost touch with reason
I watched life criticize the truth
Been waiting for a miracle
I know you have too**
They came, one by one, fashioned from dirt and breath, breathed into life by the force of the strands imprinting themselves on cells below the surface of what could be seen. Different. Special. Chosen. Godsend. A new man, a new being, emerging out of the dying pains of the old, shaping himself into something the world had not seen before. From the old will come the new in a flash of fire. The old self is put off, in its corruption and deceitful desire, renewed by the spirit, replaced by a new self made in the image of God.
Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision.*
From death comes life, and from sacrifice renewal. From chaos comes creation. When the Chosen one comes, and opens the six seals, it will usher in the millennium of peace, a world reborn, arising to paradise. Pure. Cleansed. Sanctified. Forever and ever, amen.
If I don’t believe in Jesus, how can I believe the pope?
If I don’t believe in heroin, how can I believe in dope?
If there’s nothing but survival, how can I believe in sin?
In a world that gives you nothing
We need something to believe in**
* From various Puritan prayers
**"Something to Believe In" - Jon Bon Jovi
There was no catechism left, no pageantry, no mystery. Not that I knew them, for Cromwell came to power before I could differentiate or feel the loss. There were hard pews and hard stares, and cold rooms in winter and hot rooms in summer, with nothing to bring any bodily relief from the press of humanity as we sought to elevate our souls. There were quirts falling sharp when words stumbled for in pain was purification and in debasement was deliverance. The flesh was weak. The men who visited our mothers were proof of that. The flesh was wickedness. We were the fruit of temptresses like the serpent in the garden, twisting men from the path. The world fell in the mire and there would be no rejoicing until He came once more.
I lost all faith in my god, in his religion too
I told the angels they could sing their songs to someone new
I lost all trust in my friends
I watched my heart turn to stone
I thought that I was left to walk this wicked world alone**
The theatres reopened, and women trod the stage. The brands that burned her skin were cast fully into the fires to shod the returned monarch's horses. Then another fire sparked from a baker's banked oven and hellfire raged across a sinful city, wiping out the old to make way for the new. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust and there was nothing left of any of them to place in a pauper's grave. The ship wound itself away from a city, and I didn't look back.
I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my willful sin; all my powers of body and soul are defiled: a fountain of pollution is deep within my nature. There are chambers of foul images within my being; I have gone from one odious room to another, walked in a no-man's-land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature. I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself; I have no green shoot in me nor fruit, but thorns and thistles; I am a fading leaf that the wind drives away; I live bare and barren as a winter tree, unprofitable, fit to be hewn down and burnt.*
Another fire, another loss, hell closing tight around and running over me, and yet I walked from the flames, strong and whole, cleansed and new, with nothing before me and the man I was lost in the dust. War came in the night, and death and blood at my hands. A pale horse with eyes of flame and ice stretching across the world, destruction trailing in my shadow, a world wilting in my wake. Aimless. Rootless. A man out of time, with no name, no country, no purpose, watching time slide itself by into an endless abyss darker than the reaches of the human soul.
And I had lost touch with reason
I watched life criticize the truth
Been waiting for a miracle
I know you have too**
They came, one by one, fashioned from dirt and breath, breathed into life by the force of the strands imprinting themselves on cells below the surface of what could be seen. Different. Special. Chosen. Godsend. A new man, a new being, emerging out of the dying pains of the old, shaping himself into something the world had not seen before. From the old will come the new in a flash of fire. The old self is put off, in its corruption and deceitful desire, renewed by the spirit, replaced by a new self made in the image of God.
Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision.*
From death comes life, and from sacrifice renewal. From chaos comes creation. When the Chosen one comes, and opens the six seals, it will usher in the millennium of peace, a world reborn, arising to paradise. Pure. Cleansed. Sanctified. Forever and ever, amen.
If I don’t believe in Jesus, how can I believe the pope?
If I don’t believe in heroin, how can I believe in dope?
If there’s nothing but survival, how can I believe in sin?
In a world that gives you nothing
We need something to believe in**
* From various Puritan prayers
**"Something to Believe In" - Jon Bon Jovi
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Date: 2007-12-08 09:16 am (UTC)OOC
Date: 2007-12-08 04:16 pm (UTC)Awesome. Very intense.
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