The unadorned Christ

Splattered with sin

the servant-God in flesh

of human nature's gifts

you stand, bare-assed

head caressing the whipping post

where soldiers' blood-letting strokes

release health upon the human race

 You are the sorry-sight of us

the sullied grace of God

deserving life into Hells upon Hells

moaning now the saving prayers of death

facing the tree barren of its fruit

You are the apple, pealed

nailed to Our Parental curse

shiv'ring neath the Eclipsed Sun

the Spirit-seed released from your core

You are a naked-nothing

full with All we'll ever need

*Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt.  On the contrary, the deep, in expressible certitude  of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt."  This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion.  This false "faith" which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion" is subjected to inexorable questioning.  This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas.  Hence is it clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions.  It is not mere passive acquaintance in the status quo, as some would like to believe - for this would reduce the level of spiritual anesthesia. Contemplation is no pain-killer.  What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, cliches, slogans, rationalizations!  The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with all the rest.  It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the place that God has commanded to be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply "is." 

-Thomas Merton