The Common Confession*

The Common Confession

 

In That My Proclivities

Are Similar to Those

Of Other Men

 

Who I am, Lord, is a good man and a bad man �"

More rank than I can know, or care to know

 

But better too than I believe �"

 

So equal in the elements

Concerning flesh and Thee

That I am both or I am neither.

 

And rarely do I think outside myself; I must be made that way

I do not have the wherewithal to champion myself and others, too

I have my limitations, my maladies, my peculiar interests to defend

It is my disposition, a nature too ingrained in me to do otherwise

Yet, sometimes I have seen the Christ Head in a stranger,

Observed the similarity of want and wonder

Then, the sins of vanity are mitigated

In the wide expanse of love …

Quite outside of me,

Quite despite me.

 

But my low estimation of others

Makes me cynical about

God’s judgment

 

And suspicious

Of His intentions -

 

He becomes the devil

 

Because what but a demiurge

Would fashion an unlovable creature

 

Like Man?

Like you?

Like me?

 

What I might think, what I might do

Is heaven’s gain or loss, and so,

I walk, and walk, and walk

The Stations of the Cross

 

That I'm condemned to die seems fair:

I come; therefore, I go �" I just don’t get

The part about a monkey’s need to know

 

I carry burdens so extreme that I am sure to fail:

I falter, fall, and then resume my role as God’s bent nail

And I go mute when He assumes the lead in everything,

As I would wag a lying tongue when his dear angels sing

But worst of all, it is a show the other monkeys see �"

Those Stations of the Blessed Cross,[1] 

The faith of monkey-me.