I suppose I don’t know much about religion. which I suppose is pretty ironic considering I’m a minister’s daughter, and I went to church 3 times a week for the first 20 years of my life. I think I’ve been three times total since then. and since I’ve left, religion and God, not that the two are synonomous, but that I’ve left them both, I really don’t know how to feel about either.
I don’t think religion is necessarily evil. I don’t necessarily think it is great either. I think it is whatever you make it. if it helps you to be a better person, then so be it. but like anything with influence and power, paticularly of an emotional nature, it can corrupt and destroy, under the guise of something moral and noble.
and from what I know about God, he’s a pretty good guy. I know he created us, and gave us life, and all that jazz. I think I could tell you what I was told I’m supposed to believe, and maybe what you were told you were supposed to believe. I could recite a hundred passages about his goodness, and his loving-kindess, and his magnanimity, but to be honest, the only time I think I’ve ever really felt it, known it, was in solitude, a long, long time ago.
there is a just big empty void in my heart, where there used to be something. and that something, I don’t know whether it was real or imagined, the cure or just a placebo, my savior or just a crux…but I do know that whatever it was, it’s gone. and I do know that I hardly notice it, unless I’m forced to.
I do know that there is something in words that makes me forget.
there is this moment when I crack a spine, and they roll off my tongue, and I feel… holy. like psalms on the lips of apostles. like many books could be my bible. there is this feeling, when the red wine hits my palate, and the pen touches the paper, and I feel…more. more human. more vulnerable. more desperate. more beautiful.
and maybe putting faith in words is like cheating. because they can always be exactly as you’d like them to be…and at the same time, sometimes you can’t make them exactly what you’d like them to be, and you can’t be exactly as you’d like to be. but, they don’t fail you. you fail them.
they keep you reaching for that one perfect stanza. that one that you want to shout from mountain tops. that one you want to whisper in the ear of your one true love. that one you want to impart to your first born. that one that you want for your stone when you are gone.
words can be tangible. but that doesn’t mean they aren’t spiritual. that doesn’t mean they aren’t sacred.
words can be intangible. but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real.
they are real.
poems are my prayers and all the forewords are genesis, and all the epilogues are revelations. and they are my saints, and my demons.
my accusors and my witnesses.
my salvation and my damnation.
