Summoned by the Sabboth sun
I entered my church of habit,  
suspecting that Jesus came
to wake the world up.

But through the prism of life
religion was a hotchpot of refracted strains,
myth and motive, innocence and guilt,
forgiveness and condemnation,
not yet refined by real love.

The history of religion stormed through
my mind, and I was its foreigner
in my own church, a back-pew Presbyterian,
a circumstantial version of a final draft.

Yet a spirit within me was joyful.
Like a point in time
that wanted to last forever,
or like a universe contained in a shell.
And more than that, it seemed to remember God,
but only way before I attended church.

Waiting quietly in my back pew,
remembering something ancient and new,
the source of every question and answer.
I wasn’t sure what to expect,
but there was a hint,
                        a power there that could start
a revolution.
But it had little to do with the sermon.