The church is haunted, naturally.
Eight hundred years a site of Christian worship
(and gods know what before that)-
Of course it's haunted!
Today was the third time it's happened. Remember the light fitting that fell upon my head?
That was strike one.
Then, more recently, a rather large and heavy wooden cross upon a stick
leapt out from its secure cradle,
and the ostensibly blameless Sunday school mistress
was nearly rendered insensible!
That was the second time I witnessed the inanimates' animator's restlessness.
And so to number three, which was today:
Me and a young lady at the back of the church.
I let her wrap my cross and sturdy chain around her little hand...
It's not a crucifix,
and I'm abashed to say I can't identify its canonic lineup.
I used to wear it suggestively,
a dreamy bid for youth,
nay, more a windup,
or maybe a nod to Madonna -
*that* Madonna,
of the music scene -
than to indicate assuredness of a holy truth...
At any rate, that vigorous little tot
tugged and twisted
till it tumbled off!
I picked it up,
then I fumbled,
and once more it dropped-
And then, almost as though I'd seen it happen before,
it skittered swiftly down the heating duct shaft in the floor,
into that ersatz cryptic catacomb,
sucked by some subterranean vacuum.
It had landed well over two feet from the cast iron grille,
and yet it sped across that little distance so directly, so surely,
It almost seemed to go there with a *will*.
I sat and sighed in cool epiphanous dread.
There seemed an obvious meaning to my loss:
In the raging battle for my heart and head,
The devil breaks new ground and takes the cross!!!
I was instantly ashamed of my kaleidoscopic inattention-
Since triumphantly sweeping in in time for the first hymn,
I hadn't really registered a thing that anyone had mentioned.
The PowerPoint slide said "70 AD",
Indicating a scintillating sermon
Calling upon actual history
of that strangely alienating unity
Of Jews, and early Christians,
and we sorry people of this cursed century,
Who worship vanity and ease
in *our* holy cities, all under siege
by a wasting disease...
Anyway, long story short,
An entirely beige man called Brian disappeared head first into the floor,
and I'm happy to report
I am now in possession of the pewter cross once more.
*
I think it can't be *God* doing this mischief,
but perhaps a pixie, laughing at our ritualised compromise and unbelief.
Get a divorce! Have a wank! Kill your baby! Fuck misogynistic Rome and Tory scum!
(with proper precautions, my good lady -
So there's no vile progeny to bear after you're done.)
I suppose it's all eminently *reasonable*...
Oh yes, reasonable religion is perfectly feasible.
And if you gaze for long enough into the empirical
It really does seem to be *something* of a miracle...
And a miracle that naughty Marty's ruthless little dare
Opened Artie's little Schop o' horror horror nightymares!
(Sated desires being the wages of Anglicanum laissez faire...)
Give me my guilt! My Romahome! My gilty guilded guilt!
Give me imagination to the hilt!
Give me never never maybe maybe!
Give me another summer going crazy!
Wishing, fearing, hoping, tears in flood!
The thought of passion! Love and nails and blood!
The lady doth obsess too much, methinks,
O'er spooky, smoky air and magic drinks...
So, on second thoughts,
We're *ecumenically* doomed,
We hounds of hope a-howling at the moon.
And when spent imaginations conjure dust,
what's left but the sheer strain of trust
In a world of hollow infant men?
How can we find His voice, His face again?
Did our forbears render Christ as one they knew?
Laugh if you want
But, Oyster, you'll do.