Tell Me, Jesus

[PrinceMyshkin]

Tell me, Jesus, which hurt more?
When you saw the rich oppress the poor?
Or the saints who barred the sinners at the temple door?

Tell me, Jesus, which hurt more?
When they offered the rabble in the yard
the root or the corrupted leaf
and they cried out: “Give us the thief!”

Tell me, Jesus, was death the sharper pain,
or having to rise, to rise again?

[firefangled]

Tell me, Jesus, which hurt more?
When you saw the rich oppress the poor?
Or the saints who barred the sinners at the temple door?

Tell me, Jesus, which hurt more?
When they offered the rabble in the yard
the root or the corrupted leaf
and they cried out: “Give us the thief!”

Tell me, Jesus, was death the sharper pain,
or having to rise, to rise again?


This seems so very Yeats.

I am impressed with the way you surpressed the divine and set this drama on the human plane as it was and is. It emphasized the struggle within the struggles.

And then, it is as if "rising again" is much the way we have all faced having to go to work on those days we would just as soon sleep.

One of those poems that belies its complexity of thought.

Kudos, Prince.

[PrinceMyshkin]

This seems so very Yeats.

I am impressed with the way you surpressed the divine and set this drama on the human plane as it was and is. It emphasized the struggle within the struggles.

And then, it is as if "rising again" is much the way we have all faced having to go to work on those days we would just as soon sleep.

One of those poems that belies its complexity of thought.

Kudos, Prince.

Many, many thanks for this, ff, especially at what is a difficult time for me, and at the risk of being a glutton for even more appreciation, I post this poem which I believe I posted before on a similar theme:



When you and I were Jesus,
young, but with the press of destiny
already hard upon us,
did we look at the other boys
and girls and envy them
their early, innocent, delicious
intimations of sin?

They seemed to know
that each others’ bodies
were the very fruit of which they’d been
forbidden and foreordained
to eat and their chins
already ran slick with the imagined
juice of that fruit.

O brothers and sisters,
did our mortal bodies cry out to them,
how we wish we could join you
in your great corporeal feast,
your frolicking with the God in each other!

But we have been made
for some other story, more austere,
harsh as the deserts of heaven...
The shadow of the rood
lies over our pilgrimage.

Turn which way we might
we cannot avoid it. Come,
let us go where we must.

[firefangled]

Yes, the second one is an interesting perspective from a younger age. Robert Pinsky has written several poems dealing realistically with the struggle of Jesus and his divinity. Pinsky also writess about the struggles for parents of a divine and all-knowing child (the all-knowing part should be familiar to all parents :))

I know this struggle is mentioned in scriptures, but not from a secular point of view as these. There is no faith in anything until you understand its base nature. Perhaps this is why contemporary "faith" is so confused.

To be fully human is to be divine. What makes us live is already immortal. Immortality is not the primary ingredient for the sacred.

[JoRavenJo]

Idk about this I hate anything that relates to this horrible fake tale of lies and munipulation.. It wraps people up with the fake beliefs of heaven and hell which tortures your mind as long as your alive to believe in these lies... =p
Nice writing though..

[NikolaiI]

Idk about this I hate anything that relates to this horrible fake tale of lies and munipulation.. It wraps people up with the fake beliefs of heaven and hell which tortures your mind as long as your alive to believe in these lies... =p
Nice writing though..

You might like to travel.

[PrinceMyshkin]

To be fully human is to be divine. What makes us live is already immortal. Immortality is not the primary ingredient for the sacred.

That in particular is uplifting. Thanks.

[Countess]

I love both, but especially the first, since it compares the divinity of Christ with the common filth of this planet, humanity.

I am especially fond of people, as you can see. (-:

[cogs]

had to look up rood... why is jesus plural(we)? i often wondered how jesus was tempted with women, because i believe he was. i like the word 'intimations'. why is the sin compared to 'the god in each other'? perhaps you meant the false god of carnality? and i believe sanctity is the primary ingredient to immortality.

[symphony]

...and i believe sanctity is the primary ingredient to immortality.

And arent we all holy? I dont quite know though, how people take the word "sanctity". To me all of this is simply human, and in a sense greater to me than "godly".

I love both the poems, Uncle Jer. And the last two lines of that first one are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I love both, but especially the first, since it compares the divinity of Christ with the common filth of this planet, humanity.

I am especially fond of people, as you can see. (-:

To this latter, might one retort: "Cast out the mote that is in thine own eye"?

And if, according to AJ Heschel, "To be is a blessing; to live is holy," might one paraphrase To despair is an indulgence; to contemn humanity is to speak only of one's disappointment - with oneself!

[PrinceMyshkin]

had to look up rood... why is jesus plural(we)?

I was meaning to suggest that the essence of what we revere in Jesus is surely the common property of all of us though few have the courage to express it.


i often wondered how jesus was tempted with women, because i believe he was. i like the word 'intimations'. why is the sin compared to 'the god in each other'? perhaps you meant the false god of carnality? and i believe sanctity is the primary ingredient to immortality.

Yes, the "false god of carnality" as so designated by the Pauline church, but carnality conceived of love for the flesh without a concommitant love of the spirit. That same church does not appear to be able to imagine loving the spirit via the flesh...

[Countess]

To this latter, might one retort: "Cast out the mote that is in thine own eye"?

And if, according to AJ Heschel, "To be is a blessing; to live is holy," might one paraphrase To despair is an indulgence; to contemn humanity is to speak only of one's disappointment - with oneself!

Well my dear Prince, I certainly won't argue with you. But try as I may every day I return to Walmart to work, my general disdain for this earth-plague returns. It is hard to watch people with no self-awareness or god-awareness or any thought beyond getting drunk, high or laid. They live off the system, are lazy, don't work and spend all their hours destroying themselves.

Plus most are extroverts. (-;

Tis a sin, but I am a sin-factory; production is up this year. If I lived alone in a cave I wouldn't sin half as much - which is why the wise men always lived in the desert.

[Countess]

I was meaning to suggest that the essence of what we revere in Jesus is surely the common property of all of us though few have the courage to express it.

I got that - a metaphor. Many people think we are all Jesus - I believe theosophists hold this belief, as well as gnostics/dualists, etc.

[Sweets America]

Tell me, Jesus, which hurt more?
When you saw the rich oppress the poor?
Or the saints who barred the sinners at the temple door?

Tell me, Jesus, which hurt more?
When they offered the rabble in the yard
the root or the corrupted leaf
and they cried out: “Give us the thief!”

Tell me, Jesus, was death the sharper pain,
or having to rise, to rise again?


I especially like the ending, it reminds me of that short story by Alice Walker, "The Diary of an African Nun," which is about a nun who realizes how sterile her religion is, but she will nevertheless go on trying to convert people even if she envies them for being outside of the religion. She has to, she feels.