Boxed Life

Box it

we like to box it

wrap it in aluminum foil

and cover the core of us

that life be not seen

as pain

or truth

or freedom

for we might know our self

as mammoth mystery

as postered proclamation

hearing

I love you

I love you

I love you

against our will

our filtered judgments

for we might change

be self-forgiving

be the child

we rarely knew.

What must I do

to be unwrapped

be reflective light

be comforting heat?

Thoughts of Alan Jones:

-Christianity is a shocking religion, although many of its adherents have managed to protect themselves from its terrible impact.  Tears, an awareness of one's psychic fragility, and a deep sense of peace and joy are not the most obvious marks of believers  today.  Yet the shock of Christianity remains: the shock of its materialism and its particularity; the shock of its calling us to a messy and untidy intimacy.  It claims that the flesh matters.  It insists that history (the particularity of time and place) matters.  Above all, it claims that, in the end, nothing else but love matters.

-Much of the discipline of the desert  is concerned with keeping the shock and promise of love alive.

-...we tend to make religion of our better moments.