Having rescued God from the underworld, the poet finds that the traditional God cannot long survive in his old form…
But as I nestle Him into the moss and ferns beneath some budding cherry tree, “My Friend?” I hear, and whip around, whereat I see the dying LORD, awake, and soft, and smiling in his death while looking at me… His beard is darker than I can recall; his arms are weak; and all his bearing, less and skeletal, suggests a younger man than ever Yahweh was, so gaunt he is. And if I’d pained by bearing him before, now I am pained the greater: God, my God and Father, fails before me, withered up and ending… all my Father fading out into a sunken rind—and I am crushed so near to heartache, I must keep my tongue above, and silent, lest it sink and choke in its own tears. Yet still he smiles, as I inch closer to this dwindling Thing, to hear the breathy blessing that he speaks and play the Jacob, lesser-loved—less loved—to this: my dying Isaac. “Yes… my Friend?” I say— or try to say, before the words are stopped by what arisen sadness stops my throat. Jehovah smiles. “Come near” his manner gestures… and so I kneel with him beneath the tree, who now, so wasted, but appears my height who once was sizeless as Eternity… Again he beckons… then pours out what dregs still slosh in thought through funnel whispers, down into my ears—to head’s miscarried womb of hope, which hollows with his hollowing: “I am not for this time,” he says—his eyes, though empty, sweeter now than ever else. “Jehovah passes into dust, and all My work, My time are finished. Look! For now a new thing must arise…” I drip a tear of listening upon his rumpled cloak, which now he blesses with a smile, as I, with stifled weeping, play the Baptist’s part: last rites and final unction for a God I’d long been poet of. “Believe in me,” he says, more soft, “and I will be with you. Into new hands I now commend my Spirit…” ...then folds his wasted Godhead to the moss and sleeps again... —But I’m incredulous. “…No… no…” I say, and shake my head—in anguished terror clutch at him and hold his hand—and hold his head up—weep at him, “Come on, come on—goddammit! Rise!” But he stays silent. “Rise!” I scream again, “Come take your title as Almighty God!” But he is dead, and lifeless in my hands— wilted to childhood, and a broken thing… He looks, I think, as I once looked a boy— but it is hard to tell through so much tears, and, finally, I clutch him to my chest and weep, for He is gone, and I am lost, and everything is Meaningless again… I sob a moment with Divinity’s remains, and hold him, twin-like; or, as friend upon the battlefield, the last day taken; or, if men have a soul, as it would leave the ruined body, clutching what it was— except that I am body, and my Soul unmoving, Spirit Everlasting: ended… At last, though—as the artists stand and look, uncertainly, and all the sky begins to turn a deep cerulean for flecking on of stars—I rise, for both us, and heap the body of the God into my arms to serve as bearer of him one last time. My eyes, though streaming, stoke a sputtering flame, and as I break through crowds to climb the slope I cry, “There shall be thunder!” —but through tears, and choke my last defiance through despair.
Over the hilly rise I trudge in grief and silence, artists following—who gaze with awkward disappointment and hurt looks of odd condolence. In my arms, in robe-folds crimson and giant, swims the Child—half-hid, and dangling down a listless palm: the Hand of God, dispirited, inert, expired, exhausted… dead. But there remain some steps to climb, and I will bear my Father—bear my Father to the end. It stands just off: a wondrous figure of the human form, within whose sculpted eyes inhere a kind of fire—like forges, or my own… Perhaps in deference to my deep, deep loss, or else my passion in determined rage (which shows through brimstone that I mean my course, and shall —though all the world!), the artists make no move to stop me climb the scaffolding, and hoist the dead Lord up to her. And so I mount the cross, half-Mother and half-murderer— half-Nicodemus and centurion— heart-Rome and soul-Jerusalem, I bear my Pietà, and bury Him within her earthen womb to serve as grave and Holy Sepulcher…
Then, when I’ve done, with painted hands of clay and midnight loam beneath my fingernails, I close the tomb upon my boyhood God, and, with a sigh, say second eulogy: “There shall you rest… …there shall you rest…” (but lose “amen” in tears). My head sags in a bow, and down below the artists bow theirs too, as everything I strove to do seems nullified by death…
Video version:
From The GOD Emerging, a metamodern epic by Brendan Graham Dempsey
It could be argued that there is nothing remotely good about this particular Friday. Which is to say that the murder of the God-Man Jesus was one of the most unfortunate events in world history.
Is there any kind of (new) God emerging or are the old cultic tribalistic "God's" returning with a dark vengeance.
Some back-to-the-past "traditionalists" are lauding the Return of the (old tribalistic) Strong "God's" the First Things editor.
It could also be said that the phenomenon communicated on this site also signals the return of the old cultic/tribalistic Strong "God's" http://godblesstheusbible.com