vanishing point

Here is another for your enjoyment.
====================================
What are we doing with our heritage?
unmoored from transcendent purpose
we flounder in a world of increasingly meaningless
and more importantly unrelated information.
Our scholarship is only something to keep us occupied
we seek not truth but tenure
not wisdom but vocation
not understanding but a field of study.
We move about in unrelated tiny boxes
because we have eliminated transcendent space
between our worlds
that is, faith in a transcendent God
in whom all things find purpose and inception and end.
We scoff at teleology
and become rootless meat machines
afraid to do more than build a better refrigerator.
Like a vanishing point in a renaissance painting,
we need a focal point beyond and outside of our tiny dimensions
to give focus to the art of being and living
to bring perspective to the relationship we have
to others
and to the world around us.
Without it, our science will be nothing more than utility,
and the understanding that brought us the utility we now have
did not come from seeking utility,
but from seeking knowledge,
and the utility was subsequent.
It is perhaps easier to catch a butterfly,
not by chasing it or shooting it,
but by being near it and letting it alight on you.
We have no perspective of the relation between art and science,
because we allow no transcendent reality
to give focus
to bring relation between the two.
There can be no comprehensivity
without transcendence,
and transcendence is a messy world,
too scary for an existentialist subjective empirical society.
If we cannot all agree on it
it must not be real,
so let us go on seeking a better job
piercing ourselves to be more shocking more legitmate
more real
perhaps another deluge of information
will ease the pain of this fear and drown out the awful mystery of existence.

Whatever we choose to believe or ignore,
I have news for you,
there is a transcendent reality,
a personal God
beyond our tiny fears of what “personal” may reduce Him to,
and if you want to scoff at me
for focusing my life
outside the flat dimensions
of my existential reality
that is your business,
but I will say something for your sake
of the Medieval fresco your life has become.
Let us jump out the frame together
into the dangerous joy of a common faith
and put our lives together
into focus and relationship.

Posted in Poetry and tagged .

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *