Poem: Starholes
One of a triptych of poems written for my Gethsemane station at Opawa Baptist Easter Journey 2007. The theme for the labyrinth as a whole was 'today's news'. Since climate change had burst into the headlines I wanted to do a contemplative station from the viewpoint of Earth as 'a garden under siege'; a whole-systems, God's-eye overview that invited reflection and confrontation, seeking for hope amid the shadow of approaching disaster.
Accompanying photograph: Apollo 8 classic 'Earthrise' shot of Earth from moon, 1968.
I've always felt the Apollo expeditions to have a sort of surreal camping-trip weekend feel to them: transient, temporary, and above all childlike. And we've never been back. There is such wonder and terror captured in that one fragile glimpse of Earth, vulnerable, a glass marble. But I reject utterly the fatalism and despair of materialist science that proclaims 'that's all, there's nothing else, we're completely alone and now even the Earth is doomed'.
And yet. How much more suffering can the Earth endure? How much of that cup dare we ask to be averted? Gethsemane deeply troubles me, both as a symbol and as a question. If the bodies of all creatures die, and yet resurrection is certain, what does extinction of a planetary biosphere mean in the eyes of God who inhabits a glorious multiverse? Does He even see it? In what realm can the flame of life continue if it burns out here?
Yes, I am praying for the very life of Earth itself, and though it seems such a huge and yet simple thing, I am not yet confident that I am heard, or that I even grasp the question.
I weep, I rage against eternal night. I beat my fists on dead lunar stone. Why does God keep smiling?
starholes
this is us in '69:
blue marble
snapshotted
halfway to nowhere
(-- what we did on our
lunar holiday:
scuffed shoes, tossed rocks --)
that's all there is:
one pale blue dot
(-- except, ah, the fire
which burns through
starholes
from the other side --)
it's not like I'm asking
for much, God
just the earth
