Be Opened
The Biblical miracles are challenging for me. I have some trouble with the “magic” parts of my own religion, in part because I feel shame about them. Aren’t they jus the kind of thing that make people scoff at religious stories, and dismiss the whole project out of hand? Instead of ignoring them, I tried a new strategy: moving closer to them.I reimagined some of the stories from different points of view. I am still struggling with these stories. But what I learned in the process of writing into them helped make my theology. Christianity is nothing, I feel, without dignifying the body: all its messiness and suffering and, sometimes, miraculous healing. If I’m going to believe in an incarnational faith, that has to be true. The human body — all if it, each one — is sacred space. This is the second poem I wrote in the series.
