Michael Ramel Poet Sestina

Notes About The Poem

Religion is defined as a belief system. Everyone has faith in something. But the question is: which worldview can make sense out logic, reason and knowledge?

“Are we not to call Christ ours because we have not made him but only received him? Again, if we are the makers of things that are called ours, then we must have made our eyes, we must have made our hands, we must have made our feet, unless eyes, hands and feet are not to be called ours.”

Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will

Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues 'no air exists' but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe - they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions [which assumes an orderly universe], to make moral judgments [which assumes absolute values] - but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such 'breathing' impossible. They are breathing God's air all the time they are arguing against him.

Greg L. Bahnsen

 

The Cloistered Life of the Supercilious

Within cloistered halls the stillness shapes a life
Set apart from the world, either secular or chosen
Yet pressed by the longing tides of sanctification
Bearing the mantle of a peculiar priesthood
Framed by questions forged within a restless worldview
Ever circling the silent certainty of God

The secular voice rises indicting the idea of God
Seeking reason in the foofaraws that populate life
But their protest falters within the confines of a worldview
As natural laws neither selects nor deems one chosen
Still beyond the veil stands the enduring priesthood
Quickened by mystery and the hope of sanctification

The flesh and the unseen beckoned toward purification
Wrestling with the tempter’s logic over the Name of God
This path is not shown nor is it commonly known
But for these pilgrims to whom it is shown are sown
Outsiders are either condemned or chosen (in Christ's purview)
Navigating the labyrinth from one belief into another

The world ever twisting constructs a wavering worldview
Attempting to punch their way out of a brown-wet paper bag
Yet even the skeptic finds the longing to be chosen
A hunger fasted, yet to be revealed for the certainty of God
While the peculiar walk their solitary life
Garbed in humility are inheritors of a priesthood

For what is this priesthood but an answer to life
Set apart not by our merit but by the merit of Jesus
The cloistered and the curious all seeking sanctification
Yearning for a mystery that is resolved in God
And in the impossibility of the contrary to this view
Yet all may step into the silence of repentance (as God grants)

As the storm of critique castigates the ships of priesthood
All are drawn unwilling through the pilgrimage of life
The echo of the suppression of truth leads onto the path
To wrestle through the paradox of a worldview
And in surrender to embrace, endure sanctification
Finding at journey’s end the sufficiency of God

So does life return again (both views are religious)
Sanctification is shaping our worldview, we, drawing nearer to God
Whispering “not superior, not frozen, but being ever reformed”

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