I read the bible for the poetry and for <br />the love, or at least I did before <br />I became afraid of churches. <br />My fear of them stems <br />from the power they posses <br />to exclude, to condemn, yes, <br />but mostly what sends me running is <br />the fervor of compassion and its power <br />to consume - that radical inexplicable swelling <br />of something other than my mind. <br />in every sanctuary I find <br />kind faces and then remind myself <br />of the preoccupation with sin, the <br />petty biases entrenched within <br />when a parishioner takes my hand and says <br />gently, and all too intently, “Peace.” <br />“Peace, ” I mutter back. 'Peace. Now let me go.' <br />(abruptly I flash to a sunny afternoon spent <br />on a couch and another overly easy touch. Stop. <br />I stiffened then too. *Stop it*.) <br />Communion - intimate in its casual giving <br />of oneself, I cannot accept. Not now - not <br />again. Already I know I will not win <br />this inner debate, even as the cynic in me resists - <br />insists I can’t allow myself to be overcome <br />by this lightning storm labeled <br />Spirituality - magnetic and just as harrowing <br />as when that electric bolt struck <br />the pine in my backyard, white-hot <br />and charged, appealing and appalling. <br />Sometimes, though, when I contemplate <br />in a chapel, basking on a bench, I can sense <br />vibrations akin to the clench in my <br />thoracic cavity at the sight of cobalt mountains <br />spread across a colossal sky, an open <br />welcome without necessity of invitation - <br />natural harmony not hazardous at all. <br />Yet a church is more than a valley, fertile <br />and lovely; it is a chasm, opaque and <br />profound - eager to gulp me down - ushering <br />in an earth-deep voice 'Come to me. Be in me. ' <br />The pragmatist inside me is resisting - insisting <br />There is no way to survive that step. <br />Quaking on the ledge, grasping onto <br />pieces of myself about to overturn, I <br />envision the charred pine, smell the static <br />air, and experience the accompanying <br />soul-shock. Still I am afraid.<br /><br />Indigo Hawkins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-am-afraid-of-churches/
