THE SPLENDID REBELLION

I am sensing that deepest solidarity with you requires
the courage of reckless rebellion.
An ultimate "Yes," demands the bloodiest risk of a
snarling "No!"
Acknowledging you requires fighting you.
Loving you makes us sometimes hate you.
In fact,
How can we love you without periodically disagreeing
with you?
With the pain you permit the suffering you allow,
from the first hiccup to the last gasp?
Giving into you isn't always giving and
Complaints about you is at least nearer than indifference
about you.
Surely never to have doubted is never to have believed?

I am warned you require "One hundred percent
unquestioning obedience."
If so, that makes you something between hideous dictator and turnip-brained
school bully - figures of knee-jerk contempt
commanding mindless obedience.
As for me,
I never want to be so obediently absorbed into you that
I lose impetuous, unpredictable capacities
for loving you.
I want a dare-devil faith that prompts me to scream,
curse, rebel and shake a fist at
Apparent inconsistencies you so infuriatingly
permit to exist.
It's the renegade Jacob in me - the mutinous younger
brother.
And like them or rather unlike them,
I won't leave deep impressive footprints for the faithful
to follow but smoking skid-marks for the curious to smile at
As I back Godwards casting sidelong glances at a
brightly lit escape exit.

©Phil Streeter
May 2000