A Poem of Immersion

It seems fitting, after a series of reflection on the Ritual of Uncitizenship, to share this poem I wrote for a friend on the occasion of their baptism.

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—BEFORE…

Today is a good day for death and resurrection

Today is a good day to Mutiny

Today is a good day to give everything away

To belong to everything

And all things to thee

Here we are gathered to learn a joke called "perfection"

To call it down upon ourselves like a falling mountain

Here we are now to learn a mystery called "wholeness"

To wade up to our waists and give ourselves away to all-in-allness

Things look different to how we'd thought

You know the old ghosts: befriend them, every one

Share your tears with them

Pull out a chair

The endlessly beloved in the most unpromising shadows

To hell with all thralldom

We're here to appease nothing

And to resonate with everything

Soon you will hear the sound of rushing water close about your ears

The sea breaks up all law to ghostly wreckage

Today is a good day to declare thyself

Unobliged to all law and power

Today is a good day to rise like dawn

Embodied, forthright and wholly undefended

—AFTER…

See the mutineers with open palms

Lawless and merry, give away all the treasure

The future is not taken by force

Be joyous in the unforced fertility of the soil

Walk barefoot on unpaved land

     So ye forget not your citizenship and belonging

May you be fierce and gentle

     Not half and half, but all of both, somewhere in yourself

Be soft

     Let everything pass through you

For you, now, there shall be no laws, border, nor masters

Now shall there be love and savvy

Forget not love for this is the only law you shall have henceforth

And forget not savvy when you break all the other laws

"Afterall" says the messiah with a wink, "we don’t want to offend these fellows"

Today is a good day for death and resurrection

To lose thyself in the messianic open

Today is a good day to open thy two palms

To belong ye to everything

And all things to thee