TE DEUM’S Last Hurrah by jo_dis
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Description
TE DEUM’S Last Hurrah
If death is death most eulogies are lies.
What solace can we take from nothingness …
Faith’s promise of sublime eternity?
The evidence of life suggests we can’t
Where is divine compassion in grand gods
Who tolerate disease and famines, plagues,
Deformities insisting we create
More heirs for misery and even bless
Crusades to slaughter millions in their names.
I have been blessed with health and time; known love
In all its wondrous forms and weep for those
Who bear the outcast ugliness of pain.
I cannot sing the propaganda song
Of loving gods when evidence suggests
That Eden’s sin was being born or some
Divinity created us to praise its name
Because creation has its needs. In all
This dying universe it seems to me
That having noted sunrise and indulged
Myself in great symphonic joy, I can
Accept the ecstasy of silence with the thought
I lived. I helped and that is quite enough.
jo_dis
2011
Comments (6)
Chipka
What a marvel of writing, and it captures the idiosyncratic nature of what modern westerners would call religious truth. I've always found a god in need of praise to be suspect: I mean, if you know everything then you know that you're god, divine, and all of that, so you don't really need a bunch of mortal reminding you of that. Needless to say, I found this to be a wonderfully moving work and filled with exactly the kind of truth that religion promises to deliver (and seldom does.) The odd thing is I'm not against religion, but I despise dogma, and pity anyone who worships a god whose divine personality seems to embody a good 99% of the illnesses listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (at whatever the most current edition.) Or, for that matter, belongs to a religion that creates quite a number of mental illnesses or induces social maladjustments in its followers. I love the ending as well...your statement that you've loved and that you've cared is light years ahead of most people professing "faith." It proves something I've seen since the early days of my life (steeped in the incredible, willy-nilly, half-baked, lopsided, infantile, dim-witted, crude, superstitious, only-vaguely-literate, barbaric idiocy of "religious upbringing.") I've always believed, happy people don't join unhappy, dogmatic religions, and that smart people don't worship a god who doesn't know how to act in public, or condemns you to eternal punishment for petty crimes such as loving "the wrong" person, eating pork, or forgetting to put the toilet seat back down after you've satisfied a moment of urinary necessity, all while looking the other way while things like bombings, shootings, and modern-day crucifictions (once called lynchings) proliferate like HIV virus particles in a compromised primate system, all because those destructive, murderous things satisfy religious conviction. In short, I'd rather burn in hell for kissing a man than go to heaven for killing one. It's a matter of principle, I suppose.
auntietk
I love the ecstacy of silence ... that idea holds no fear for me. Wonderfully written!
KarenJ
Powerful stuff. The rhythm you've chosen is once again put to great use.
wysiwig
The blind believers say that god will condemn you to hell for being a non-believer. I will not condemn you. So how is it possible that I can be more merciful than the creator? I had a friend of fifty years who sent me a letter nine months ago telling me he would no longer have anything to do with me. Seems I wasn't sufficiently holy enough for him. The illogical conclusion to a life lived where faith trumps facts. But then you already knew that.
flaviok
Brilhante texto. Sua essência é soberba. A maldade humana através da história vem se escondendo atras de deuses, de simbolismos. Que deus daria tanto poder de destruição de vida e até do planeta. Cabe em primeiro acreditar-mos que somos capazes de amar, de ser amigos sem divindades e seguir o brilho da vida. Parabéns, brilhante texto, aplausos (5)
UteBigSmile
Amazing Text - It's just what a mean too!