although

doubt still

controls and betrays

faith stands strong

as we sway

I've been loving on it

for several years

and living

 as I count the ways

of blessings

I believe! I Believe! Lord, help my unbelief

I believe, I believe, my constant motif

I believe but don't grow

And my faith doesn't show

Because I can't be bothered to “do”

I know faith is given, not earned

Yet here I sit unconcerned 

I'm given to resting 

When I should be testing

To see that my faith is real

“You shall know them by their fruits”

But seeds planted on stones don't have roots

My apathy grows

So nobody knows

That I don't follow what I believe

The path down below is a slope

So gradual and smooth that you hope

It stays just the same

Like a current so tame

But leads to a waterfall

I'm not living, or learning

I'm sitting and burning

Lord I want to live

But not if I give

My time or my life

My comfort for strife

Is there an easier way?

You said believe and I shall be clean

Believe, and come home again

But how can I start

If only my heart

Wasn't an armchair theologian

When reality finally hits you it hurts
When the truth comes into focus it’s brutally painful.
Hope isn't always enough
It’s not always a happy ending.
What happens when faith is not enough?

I get hot flashes
My depression splashes
My soul is cold like stone,
the fear of being alone.

So now I lay me down to sleep
I pray you lord my soul to keep
Don’t let me die before I wake
I pray you lord my soul do not take.

I barely have a past
And may have no future
       Empty pages of a book
       A story left unwritten
       A life left unlived
       A hope left in the dust.
Please don't take me yet
Your mercy you won't regret
I am down on my knees
Begging you please
Don’t take me away.

At night I dream a misty graveyard
A tombstone the name I cannot see
A flashlight in the darkness
A figure so lifeless I cannot breathe.
Then I awake not as fearless as I may seem.

If this is my future
And if it comes to pass
And this breath be my last
Then this thought to you I cast.

What if faith is not enough?
Then life would be rather tough
With nothing to believe in
And nothing to justify
Nothing to keep you sane
Nothing to grasp when you fall
You will have nothing,
nothing at all.

Sometimes that is how I am
Falling in the darkness
With nothing to take hold
This feeling leaves me cold
hearted, soulless, empty.
All I feel is the pain of being unreal
No one knows how this life feels,
when you are so lifeless.

So now I lay me down to cry
I pray you lord you can't let me die.
Now I lay me down to sleep
Close my eyes without a peep
Never to be opened again.

Your body goes warm then cold like rain
Slowly your body numbs,
to your fingers and your thumbs.
As your body stops working, you feel the cold mist of death
And peacefully while you’re sleeping you take your final breath.

*

23 POEMS OF BELIEVING

-saiom shriver-

**

ARK OF THE COVENANT

*

The eternal truth
of the Covenant's Ark
... and of the promise
of God's rainbow arc
is that all beings
are always
within God's Ark

Human eyes
.. transmit lies
.. for they fracture
the oneness
into little bits
and cannot see
the higher
frequencies
.. that as bodies
leave
amd many believe

.. others with
certainty know

*

BELLIES OF OCTOPI

*

"My ashes shall occupy
the bellies of octopi.
My aging brings
senility
and its even
more evil
twin sterility.
Declines my body's
utility.
All is futility"
did I moan to my teacher
who to my mind's
intuition replied

"It is a lie from hell
to think yourself
the body's shell"
"Do not cling
to the petals of spring
for that retards
the ripening fruit"

"Each day all spirits
uncover more of
their infinite
love, power, beauty,
peace, miraclemaking."

*

WINDSTAR

*

Whenever winds howled
and whirled
and around homes
curled
he knew that beyond
them shone
the unchanging
evening star

*

FAITH SPRING

*

Faith did upward
from the heartrocks
spring..
and run through ryefields
into rivers of knowing
which
did merge in
the sea's community..
before upward assumed
by God Sun into unity

*

GODORIENTED

*

The God oriented scientist
prays and is given
a revelation..
by the GOD who made all bodies and knows
how they work..

one need not bulldoze the forest
to research the life of a tree
nor torture animals to
find the secrets of GOD
*
(Albert Einstein: I was given the theory of a relativity in a dream... paraphrased from
his autobiography)

*

PIGEON RELIGION

*

The atheist pigeon
faced with rivers Stygian
abruptly saw the light
..suddenly found religion..

and when he came back
from the abyss
began to tell others
of his supernal vision.

(thank you to Tom Lehrer for rhyming pigeon and
religion.. in his satire on govt. cruelty to
animals)

*

EASTER BASKET

*

If it harms none
and in prayer you ask it
God has it for you
in your Easter basket.

And as time and tide
flow on
one sees that
his own heart
is the Easter basket.

*

TABLE TURNING IN THE TEMPLES

*

He overturned
with divine temper
the tables
of the
dovekillers
in the temple
and sheepbutchers

and even now
the killers of
the Dove of Peace
the butchers of God's
animals
need to be removed
from modern temples

*

BLUEPRINTS AND FIGS

*

When the Spirit
conceives blueprints
.. these seeddreams
become trees of quince
And imagination's figments
by sun are woven
into figs

*

FROM MORNRISE TO MOONRISE

*

From mornrise
to moonrise
.. all is contained
.. in God's eyes

*

UNWAVERING WAVES FOR PETER

*

The first time Peter walked upon the water
he sank
because his faith wavered in the waves.
But later his faith become
unwavering
and as Peter became a rock for Christ
.. the sea became for Peter a rock.

One is nonChristian firewalker
another a Christian waterwalker..
both believe

*

KNITTING CLOUDS BRAIDING GOALS

*

He is not nonexistent, nor sleeping
nor cruel, powerless nor on vacation,
things of which he is accused,
the Sun, with His warming SoulFire.

It is we who knit clouds
of false ambition,
We braid clouds of mean
revenge..
We weave sunblocking
clouds of immature desire.

*

PINNIPED

*

More angels dance on
the head of a pinniped
than on the shiny
surface of a pinhead

*

FLY RIGHTS

*

We're more likely to
to fly right
when honoring
animal bird and fly rights

*

THEY BELIEVE IN YOU

*

The photographer
snapped
of the picture straight ahead
so that
one could not see
the sky
but the clouds
reflected in lake water

Those who were not able
to believe in a God
they could not see
were drawn to God
by your love.

*

DOES THE SUN DIP INTO THE SEA?

*

The sun does not bathe in the sea
nor rise in the air..
nor is God confined by our
limited perceptions.

*

THE LIGHT PRESUMES A SOURCE
OF LIGHT

*

James Michael Pratt wrote
of those who see the light
but do not know the lighthouse
keeper. Just so, the lives of
many are saved by anonymous
angels they know not.

*

BELIEVING

*

Yesterday's sudden frost
.. yet please do believe
spring is coming
and with it new leaves

*

THE SEED CONCEIVES

*

In doubt's earth,
rain and the seed
do life conceive
Slowly does faith
unfurl her leaves
and then come branches:
she does now fully believe
and then without a doubt
she knows
that all to God go
who do in release
their bodies leave

*

ADVOCATE

*

If I could represent to my
mind another's opposite
point of view as if I
were an attorney without
emotional involvement,
I would pass a test.

*

FAITH MOVES MOUNTAINS

*

Faith moves mountains
Truth soars over them
at the speed of light.

*

THE GIFT OF BELIEF

*

Lasting as long
as the dewdrop in
the dawn sun or
the snowflake in
the spring stream
was his belief...
so brief..
until he witnessed
how God uncurls
the limehued leaf

*

DOES ICE HATE GOD

*

To ice it may seem
that God does scheme
to destroy his form
in the stream
melting him into water
and then to dawnmist steam.

But he changes his mind
as he sparkles in sunbeams
and begins to merge
with the Supreme.

*

Note: apologies to atheists
and agnostics for
the assertion

-saiom shriver-

ADVOCATE
ARK OF THE COVENANT
BELLIES OF OCTOPI
BELIEVING
BLUEPRINTS AND FIGS
DOES ICE HATE GOD
DOES THE SUN DIP INTO THE SEA
EASTER BASKET
FAITH MOVES MOUNTAINS
FAITH SPRING
FLY RIGHTS
FROM MOONRISE TO MOONRISE
GIFT OF BELIEF
GODORIENTED SCIENTIST
KNITTING CLOUDS BRAIDING GOALS
LIGHT PRESUMES A SOURCE OF LIGHT
PIGEON RELIGION
PINNIPED
THE SEED CONCEIVES
TABLE TURNING IN THE TEMPLES
THEY BELIEVE IN YOU
UNWAVERING WAVES FOR PETER
WINDSTAR

23

Sunday morning Gospel

At a southern Baptist church

Praising with the choir

Listening to the Word of God

Where grudges are forgiven

And friendships re-united

We sinners find forgiveness,

Family, and a home

But here I sit

Alone at home

I couldn't be roused

To my own Father's house

I can hear the church bells in the distance

Calling white-washed tombs to repentance

Calling broken souls to be renewed

Calling crushed hopes to stand firm

Yet, here I sit

Looking out the window alone

Listening to their tolling

Refusing to be more

Than an armchair theologian

If my “deeds” are just words

Then they are not worth talking of

If I didn't speak to my Father today

Then why do I expect answers

If we are “the Body”

Why are we so apathetic

So CONSUMED by our own lives

That our faith wastes away

And as these thoughts come to me

I make myself more comfortable

Still refusing to be any more

Then an armchair theologian.

I.

Winter breathes coldly

A rose on new-fallen snow

Beauty in nature

White carpet without

Inside, the dog sleeps soundly

Dreaming of Spring days

Rain upon the window

Soothing, sweetly singing soft

As I write about it

II.

Family stay near

Life's storms draw close together

What calm drives apart

Special together

As I concentrate on work

She watches TV

Fearing the future

She wraps her arms around me

And holds me tightly

III.

Alluring water-front

Holding magnificent crafts

Warships now at peace

Men of foul language

Cargo brought ashore today

The smell of the sea

Moonlight on the waves

Horns of vessels passing by

A lonely gull cries

....

Heated tongues had no temperance to spare 

Betrayal is a fickle master cloaked in innocence 

Eyes held truths with no regards to context 

Illusions were never more real than when piercing

The heart left to bleed pounding desperately on the floor

Under the foot of merciless pain 

How do you explain the inexplicable? 

Some things just end while others start

The resoning was perfectly logical 

But damned if anyone could see it

Because faith seemed a too bigger thing 

To hold through this broken prism

Off they went onto seperate trajectories

Only to find the truth revealed in years of wastedness

It was only when they travelled around it in oposite motions

They could see they belonged together

Far too late,  as other sattlites they collected were now in the way

And faith seemed once again bigger to hope for

And not a thing was learnt. 

....

Heated tongues had no temperance to spare 

Betrayal is a fickle master cloaked in innocence 

Eyes held truths with no regards to context 

Illusions were never more real that when piercing

The heart left to bleed poundind desperately on tge floor

Under the foot of merciless pain 

How do you explain the inexplicable? 

Some things just end while others start

The resoning was perfectly logical 

But damned if anyone could see it

Off they went onto seperate trjectories

Only to find tge truth revealed in 20 years of wastedness

Because faith seemed a too bigger thing 

To hold through this broken prism

It was only when they travelled around it in oposite motions

They could see they belong together

Far too late as other sattlites were in the way

And faith seemed once again bigger to hope for

And not a thing was learnt.

Tomorrow People