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Michael Done Oct 21
Ah, silent wordless love,
Sweet smiling melancholy,
Solitary, symphonic,
Saying nothing, answering nothing.

All the while your tireless arms
Nurse my trembling life,
Caress the gleaming cosmos,
Bringing closer the happy heart of God.
Even at age 72, I sometimes wake in the night frightened. It happened earlier tonight, around 2am. It’s happened thousands of times, going way back to when I was a little kid. Yet it often still shocks and shakes me, as if it were the first time. For a while I just lie here scared and bewildered, with no idea what to do or how to look after myself. But sooner or later, I remember. I put on some gentle music, reach for my beloved bedside notebook, sit very still and listen. Then … I write.
Michael Done Oct 12
Come, dearest love, let us speak tenderly to one another.
Sit here, up close, where you can hear the trembling of my breath.
See for yourself, I’m defenceless too.

Come, let us create a new and lasting peace between us,
end this tug-of-war, this battle of wits and wills that has beaten us both,
and agree never to trample or harm each other again in any way.

Come, let us forgive every trespass, mistake, betrayal and abandonment,
every unfair expectation, ignorant presumption and misunderstanding,
every accusation, true and false.

Come, let us rediscover the deep love we’ve always had for one another,
the love we lost sight of without realising,
the friendship we drifted out of without ever meaning to.

And from now on let’s tell a brighter story about ourselves,
a story that holds a light to our gold, celebrates our goodness
and dismisses our failings with nonchalant, cheerful compassion.

Come, my dearest love, let us speak tenderly to one another.
Sit here, up close, where you can feel the soft warmth of my skin.
Rest in this closeness, and let’s be the best of friends once again.

Amen.
Michael Done Oct 12
God and I have a pretty simple relationship.
I ask nothing of her and she asks nothing of me.
Nothing!

There are no strings.  No conditions at all.
God doesn’t even require me to believe in her.
And I don’t, really.

Yet she is truly the God I love,
and, true to the old commandment,
I shall have no other gods before her.

She is the air I breathe.
In her I live and move and have my being.
To her and her alone I happily entrust my living and my dying.

She has held me tenderly and faithfully from the very start,
and sometimes, in moments of deep joy, deep distress or deep stillness,
I catch her fragrance and feel afresh her blissful, ineffable touch.

Selah.
Some of my formative years, especially my late teens and early twenties, were packed with Christian creeds and doctrines. At the centre was a micro-managing masculine God who expected everything of me. I don't believe in that God anymore. I don't really believe in the feminine God of this poem either, though I come a lot closer to it with her. She is poetic and, like a lot of poetry, she's my doorway to the real thing..

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