The Worth of Worth

Dialectics in discussion
over retreatant's evening meal.
Stipend versus tentmaker's salary,
Temple versus Synagogue theology,
the hangover of Christendom versus Early Church freedoms,
clergy mistreated, congregations empowered,
structures legitimated, pain embraced.
We are spooked and suspicious,
power games
weave in and out
of the stories we tell.

Shadows lengthen
across the vast expanse
of Pollen's church.
Natural light dies,
darkness falls
and in the dark
there is
Lectio Divina.

Subterranean catacomb,
monolithic construction of brick and concrete,
Modernism evoking the endurance of faith.
Circular, centred on the stone table
of the once-for-all sacrifice.
Above, a concrete chimney
filtering, not the acrid fumes
of the industrial pollution revolution,
but chants, rising like incense
from black-robed and white-hearted
angels and men.

What is resolved? Nothing!
We go in faith
to minister differently
in different places
as different people
with different people
in the One Love
that has embraced pain
and legitimated (temporary) structures
throughout millenia,
beginning now and ending then,
incarnated in action and contemplation;
twin beams of light
illuminating the stone table
of the once-for-all sacrifice
continually re-membered,
continually consumed.

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Jide Chord - Jide was a member of St Margaret's Barking and performed there in 2005.