Carved Altar
Is humanity enough to replace lost faith?
Humanity
I stand before
your tattered banners
and burned Great Book
the cold waters lapping on the eroding shore
unstoppable and relentless
The sky is a grey
uniform bleakness
and everything moves slowly
as if in a terrible dream
You are at my feet
instinctively fetal
back turned to an altar to which you once
so passionately prayed
Loss hangs heavy in the air
and I look to the image of the bloody, splayed Man,
His sad eyes stare back, unchanged
carved in stone
You whimper
shiver slightly
I kneel and place my hand
on your shoulder
remove my coat
cover you
and exit
these once so hallowed walls.
If you had presented this as an expression of emotion, it would have been fine. The reader would have been given the opportunity to interpret the poem in accordance with his or her frames of reference. It would have been a rich and rewarding exercise. But the question , to me at least, is at best meaningless, and at worst bogus. Humanity can be interpreted to mean every aspect of being human or those laudable aspects such as kindness, justice, compassion, etc. Faith, by definition, is the belief in something not provable. If human beings, often or occasionally, fail to exhibit these qualities, well then so what? We know that already. "To err is human." It's not a surprise, and anyone who bases a faith on the assumption that this is not true is a fool. Your question trivializes faith. It makes it a spiritual equivalent of "Let's Make a Deal."
Vintage Chinese 4 Side Carved ClawLeg Altar Table s2337m
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