'You do not have the faith, you are not saved.
We know the truth and you are in the dark.' Insistently dogmatic, they believed they had exclusive entry to the park.
The park was paradise, not in this world.
The locked-out doubters fled that attitude which says: 'You're wrong, we're right, we've got it nailed.' No wonder faith's become a dodgy word.
Hijacked by dogma, must faith then be lost?
So are you faithless if you be yourself, believe in life on Earth and humankind?
Aren't faith and hope and love a constant quest to fumble through and struggle to fulfil, embody an idea you have in mind? 2 Two Women 'Myself is someone I have never known,' one woman says, 'I don't know who I am.
I fear there's no one there when I'm alone.
I play the roles but never can become.' 'There is no self: it's an illusion,' postmodernist philosophers declare, 'you're up-to-date in your confusion.' But she laments: 'It drives me to despair.' 'I've always known I'm me since I was five,' her friend replies, 'is that just selfishness, a stubborn arrogance I should abhor?' 'No, it's your good luck, keeps you alive.
Self-seeking is the curse of selflessness but you speak for yourself. At least, that's more.' I've lost belief in supernatural beings, I can no longer find them credible but urgent still that gospel's old foreseeings of this world changed so life and love prevail, with Word embodied in humanity and born on Earth, come down to home with us; the glory and the fullness are to be when all enjoy themselves and live in peace.
I knew that I was me when I was five, I'm grown up now and not a little girl but still myself, though I don't look the same.
Can't faith in the divine vision also thrive now grown into a mature poetic tale, becoming what was in it all the time?
The poem 'Keeping Faith' is published in Dinah Livingstone's collection Embodiment (Katabasis, London 2019). It was going to be read at the SOF Annual Conference in July.