The Dying Image of God
Can it be that in this body lies the image of God?
In this body, which churns and stirs and rages and pours
Out like spilled water onto the pages of the life I write.
Can it be that my hands, which also pour sweat onto the nervously string-bound books
Full of dreams I've created in the quiet,
Could ever do the work I've seen to do, and fearfully welcomed, like Christ?
Can it possibly be that this heart,
tripping over itself as it runs toward its last beat,
Could be called something resembling the magnificent heart of God?
I don't know what it means to incarnate the image of God
With blurry eyes and tight hamstrings,
The faulty valves in my brain, and the panic that sets in at night.
Surely the splitting of my head, the metallic taste of my mouth,
the pulsing static visionary-auditory-hallucinatory aura of a migraine
Is not what is meant by it.
The virus-catching, numb-feeling, tingling, pain
Pounding heart, panic attack, escalating dread of what's coming
The next time my body will break and, this time, scatter to the wind --
Surely,
This is not what is meant by
"You are made in the image of God."
I make the sign of the cross over my broken body,
The one that can hardly be contained by skin as it leaps from impending disaster
And I wonder in what way I am like Christ.
Mortal, and dying, breaking down before my time,
My body knows it is made for the grave.
From dust it came, and to dust it is returning.
What is meant by incarnation if not that God, by becoming it, redeemed the dust?
And the pain, broken synapses, faulty nervous systems, murmuring hearts?
Can it be that even that final throw of death is no longer anything
but a fall at last through the curtain into life?
If I know anything it's this:
Mystery of mysteries, I am the image of God
(Whatever that might mean)
and my body, like His, will be broken to the grave.
In this body, which churns and stirs and rages and pours
Out like spilled water onto the pages of the life I write.
Can it be that my hands, which also pour sweat onto the nervously string-bound books
Full of dreams I've created in the quiet,
Could ever do the work I've seen to do, and fearfully welcomed, like Christ?
Can it possibly be that this heart,
tripping over itself as it runs toward its last beat,
Could be called something resembling the magnificent heart of God?
I don't know what it means to incarnate the image of God
With blurry eyes and tight hamstrings,
The faulty valves in my brain, and the panic that sets in at night.
Surely the splitting of my head, the metallic taste of my mouth,
the pulsing static visionary-auditory-hallucinatory aura of a migraine
Is not what is meant by it.
The virus-catching, numb-feeling, tingling, pain
Pounding heart, panic attack, escalating dread of what's coming
The next time my body will break and, this time, scatter to the wind --
Surely,
This is not what is meant by
"You are made in the image of God."
I make the sign of the cross over my broken body,
The one that can hardly be contained by skin as it leaps from impending disaster
And I wonder in what way I am like Christ.
Mortal, and dying, breaking down before my time,
My body knows it is made for the grave.
From dust it came, and to dust it is returning.
What is meant by incarnation if not that God, by becoming it, redeemed the dust?
And the pain, broken synapses, faulty nervous systems, murmuring hearts?
Can it be that even that final throw of death is no longer anything
but a fall at last through the curtain into life?
If I know anything it's this:
Mystery of mysteries, I am the image of God
(Whatever that might mean)
and my body, like His, will be broken to the grave.
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