What I Used to Know

 

Take me back to the days when I thought I knew everything,

When I was certain that if I just followed the commandments and did the right things,

Everything would work out eventually and God would bless me,

When I knew that if I was going through hard times,

It was only because I was doing what Yahweh willed of me

And the enemy came strong against me because I was fighting him so,

And eventually right would triumph over wrong,

Good triumph over evil,

And I would get everything I wanted no matter how long it took

 

These were the days I judged others,

For they were not choosing God or they did not have enough faith,

And if they just knew God as I knew Him,

Their lives wouldn’t be such a mess,

They would have made better choices,

And their sorrows would not have increased

 

We are all Job’s friends until we are Job,

For we do not understand what it means to face suffering,

And nobody warned us

That everyone must walk through the valley of the shadow alone,

With few other human beings to give us comfort

 

We judge blindly and in ignorance,

Slotting all events into a simplistic linear cause and effect formula

Because it makes us feel safer to know that we haven’t done those things and so

we will not face the terrible suffering of those around us,

which we know we could not bear

Because it makes us feel superior to stand with others who have equal ignorance

and decide what is right and what is wrong for another man’s life

though we have no right to do so,

for we were not there when that man hung the stars and fashioned his universe to its anchor points,

But we were taught from early on

That we knew better than anyone around us,

For we had partaken of the sacramental wine,

Spoken the holy incantation “I am a sinner saved by grace,”

And were emboldened with the support of the infrastructure of thousands of years of tradition,

The weight of almighty God standing behind us

As we spoke the uncaring words of judgment and wrath

Over the life of another human being

 

But I did not know what I did not know,

And so perhaps it wasn’t only the desire to feel safe and superior,

But true ignorance that caused me to judge unrighteous judgment,

To tell others that their suffering was in any way their fault,

That their sins were with them from birth,

That their sorrow was woven into their DNA,

And no one did I judge more harshly than I judged myself,

Sure that I deserved nothing less than the agony that beset me,

So it is no surprise that I could not offer anyone else compassion

When I did not even have enough to bestow upon myself

 

But I learned and I grew

And the thousand-year infrastructure behind me creaked and crumbled

Beneath the weight of lived reality,

And I realized that I did not deserve the pain I endured,

Nor does any other man,

And the seeds of compassion and empathy within me blossomed into flowers

Of support and active care,

And the love in which each soul is created shown through in the end,

Untouched and undamaged by the years of religion and ignorance

That merely sat on the surface and was washed away by the rains of sorrow, struggle, suffering

That must eventually come to all men

 

If those in religion fell away as the infrastructure crumbled,

If those with whom I used to judge others now turned to judging me,

Should it be any surprise?

And if I then turned to those who had been judged by religion and saw the same reaction,

The blatant, if unrealized, hypocrisy,

Should it be any wonder?

For not everyone has endured the blinding thunderstorms

That eventually clear our eyes to see,

And some people pick and choose whom they love,

Which people are judged worthy of sorrow and which are not,

As though pain is meted out based on merit

Instead of being a natural and universal part

Of the human experience,

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

 

Should I truly wish to return to my ignorance?

Oh to be as certain as I was that the sun will rise tomorrow!

To rest in the security of a whitewashed sepulchre that has stood two thousand years!

And yet I slept with dead men’s bones,

And all I could offer other men was darkness and damnation,

No more and no less than I offered myself

 

The question is moot,

For an awakened man cannot so easily be put back to sleep,

And I would not choose it if I could,

Though I long for a sense of stability and a love that is permanent,

Yet I realize that all of the stability I had was merely illusion to begin with,

And there is so much more to life

Than I had ever really known,

And now I can only press forward in the hope

That the love that underlies all things is truly there for me now,

Untouched and undamaged by religion and hypocrisy

And the ignorant judgment of those who declare

That we who suffer are choosing to suffer,

And that those who bear agony are getting only what they deserve

 

Blessed are they who believe and yet have not seen,

For the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,

And, not or

But if sorrow is universal, even so is joy,

And I will know it and all of it,

For I am not content to sleep

In the shadow of dead men’s bones,

And I will keep searching until I find the love underlying,

Which cannot be touched or desecrated

By either the decay of death or the hypocrisy of sepulchres

Painted in the judgment of ignorance.