To the Priests of the Orthodox Church
To all guys I with whom I read,
(At least the ones who are not dead).
Who studied theology, from their perch,
Of th’Eastern Orthodox Church.
And not to those who in this land,
Did let the Church get out of hand,
And made of it an odd rule book,
With all the answers there (Just look).
Nor the right wing (Room to spare),
Who found conservatism there.
I mean the ones who kept on thinking
For thirty years, not even blinking,
To tell the world what can’t be said
‘Bout Orthodoxy. Then you’re dead.
Aphophasis, very rare,
Non-optional, it lives right there.
To all who will not speak to me,
I wish you well as well can be.
Pan-en-theism
It’s a word that we all learnt,
In seminary, where it was burnt,
Into our minds. One had to shout it.
Better we were than those without it.
That word meant, though it was surely odd,
That “he,” was found quite everywhere, this God,
And, at the same time, “he” was “other” too.
Thus we could not have dialogue with you.
But when it comes to the ultimate kind of things,
Pantheism’s a better word. It zings!
But even so it is now just a word.
Like all the other ones that we’ve so often heard
And subject to idolatry,
Like pan-en-theism, as we tend to see.
If it means that “all of us are one.”
We miss out on all of the bleedin’ fun.
Instead of being oh so very true.
An idol it becomes for me and you.
Idolatry is all around. What gives?
Language is the place it haply lives.
Albert Low (1928-2016)
He said that the trick to spiritual practice,
Was not in taking enlightenment as a goal,
But in not preferring it to confusion.
Both arise.
Both pass away.
Very few get that in Montreal, where he taught,
Or in all the rest of the world.
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