Alive and Kicking

I have been insanely busy since I last blogged - I have absorbed copious literature and secreted a 19 page essay on healing over the last few weeks ... exhausting and mind-frazzling. What this means is that I am intellectually bankrupt and incapable of creating any novel material this evening. I imagine it will be a while until I blog again (I'm going to Istanbul for 2 weeks as part of my course - what a hard life). However, I have just - whilst thoroughly tidying my room for the first time this semester - unearthed a poem that I wrote a little while ago and I thought I could share it with you. It very much reflects the spirit of the motivation behind the essay I have just been writing and my thoughts on healing and the Christian life in general as I perceive it.

I don’t want to live a normal life,

Don’t want to give up sex, drugs, inebriation

And not replace the thrill with a new sensation.

I don’t want to suck the joy out of my being

And replace laughter for stillness

Dancing for kneeling,

But I want to live my life to the full.

Her solemnity is not a reflection of my saviour

His rigidity is not an imitation

Their ritual does not proclaim him

Empty religion does not honour him.

On most days I’m radical

On Sundays they’re cynical, sceptical

I’m over the top – I don’t think so,

It’s just that he fills me until I have to go

The passion it just overflows

What he’s done for me no other man ever could;

No other man ever would.

They pretend to herald the good book

I wonder if they’ve had a good look

As they fallaciously traditionalise

Birthing unbiblical rigour

Fairytale, fable, fiction minus action

Their twisted version, a boring perversion

Of a living freedom, a free invitation

To a much faster experience

A more intense kick

Laced with superior spirituality,

Supernatural expectancy:

The dead raised, lepers leaping

Blind men seeing

He said it would never stop

He said it would never stop

FULL STOP

But greater things he announced

We would pronounce

With holy articulation, righteous authority

Graceful affirmation, miraculous authentication.

They want to introduce you to doctrine

But I want you to meet my man

Breathing oxygen into these formerly withering bones

I exhale captivity, inhale freedom

Shackles broken.

So give me an adventure of faith

Abandon me to the unworldly, otherworldy way

Which I was created to walk in.

Oh and one other thing, a preemptive HAPPY EASTER! Jesus is alive and kicking.