Good Friday, Driving Westwards

While driving along the M6
it struck me that Judas is a position
into which we all slip from time to time,
not a whole, immutable, person.

Occasionally, like him, we become
so stuck in this position, we don’t realise
where we are. Then we end up
not existing, in one way or another.

But if we can understand that
this could be just a phase,
like feeling virtuous, or sexual,
or wanting to buy things from IKEA,

then we have a chance to avoid being
someone set in agonising, archetypal stone,
whose identity rises to the sky from
the depths of the earth, like the gods of old.

Is this what Christ struggled with
in the Garden of Gethsamane?
Not my will, but thine,
He prayed, sweating blood

– understandably, perhaps,
because it’s so bloody hard
to accept the bitter cup
that incarnation offers,

instead of regressing
to the omnipotence
we once had
in the depths of our mothers.

Perhaps, Christ saw that
to have done His own will
would have meant
being eternally enwombed.

Only by accepting the death
incarnation implies,
could He heave the stone
from the door of the tomb.

~ by bod1952 on April 18, 2009.