Monday 25 November 2019

Empty-Flavoured Holiness


The Church sells empty-flavoured holiness,
from lollipops with Papal faces on them
to dictator-sized cathedrals.
Monuments to our vulgarity,
with more kitsch in them
than a really bad Duran Duran album,
to house and protect such ideas as:
‘blessed are the poor’.
The Church is so human, it’s actually hilarious.
How can we not all laugh out loud
at the juxtaposition of the spectacle and the congregation;
the pantomime and the foolishness?
Scripted audience participation,
as spontaneous as the reciting of a train timetable.
You can’t dogma your way into heaven.
Love can’t be compelled.
They turned God into a desperate and deranged stalker:
‘Love me or you will suffer!’
I had an epiphany once, sitting in church.
It wasn’t religious.
Forever and ever and ever and ever. Amen.
How did we get it so wrong?

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