After writing my last poem, I suddenly thought:

This is not just a poem.

This is not just some effort to communicate

My sorrow and fear about my fate,

To others: perhaps some day, if there is time, finding a publisher,

So to multiply the minds that may meet my mind.

No, but I would have written it even if I had known it would be destroyed

Immediately.

It was not just a poem.

It was a true prayer,

Truly directed to God,

And almost only incidentally set down.

-------------------------

So, God, what do You say?

Do You have mercy enough, to have mercy on someone like me?

Is it possible that my dark death will be followed by a bright day?

My sins are not as many as most, but they are deep.

My sins are mostly of the mind—so-called “thought crimes”—

For I am not a big believer in faith, and certainly not the blind kind.

I believe in science, reason, logic, empiricism, and natural philosophy.

To me, believing anything without proof, or at least enough evidence, is a vice;

Whereas observation, investigation, experimental study, collecting data,

And careful, honest analysis of the data—then honest, maybe even brutally honest,

Conclusions: that method seems to me to be

The mind’s noblest virtue—speaking of virtue epistemologically.

Still I have an almost mystical appreciation of life; of the world’s resplendent miracles;

And of infinitely precious consciousness, a gift to each of us of the magic of being me.

If You gave us these things—forget evils for now—I thank You God, whole­-heartedly;

Yet, I cannot know if You are there, or if You are hearing me.

Some say, for that not knowing, I deserve to be put permanently to sleep.

Some say, for that not knowing, I even deserve to go to an everlasting hell.

If there is one.

-----------------------

If there is one!

Oh, but there is the big drawback for me:

I really don’t know if there is a hell.

I really don’t know anything about eternity.

I cannot know; and blind faith is not possible to me.

My mind that loves life, also loves honesty:

And honestly,

None of these things can be known by me—

Nor by anyone else, as far as I can see.

-----------------------

I cannot, and would not, force myself to have blind faith.

On the ultimate questions of destiny,

And what is or is not, or what may or may not be;

Or what final fate there waits for me;

Or what awaits any of my fellow people, all of whom I love, each being me—

Because everyone, in the secret person of the heart, is identical—the inner I.

For all our many differences, we are essentially the same identity.

Like everyone else, I know only that I am.  I know, for sure, only that I am I.

I know only that I am alive, and love life, and fear death; and that I have to die.

But I do not know what it will be like to vanish into eternity.

I cannot have knowledge of such ultimate things—I cannot have certainty.

I cannot determine even a totally convincing probability.

-----------------------

I really don’t know if there is a heaven, or if there is a hell.

I really don’t know if there shall be punishment, or Paradise.

I doubt that I will be able to see, when once I have lost my living eyes.

But I hope I will be able to see; I hope that I will somehow still be me.

Should not hope be counted?  It is the barest form of faith, to hope impossibly.

If faith indeed that be, it is the only kind of faith that is at all possible for me.

But I know I have no knowledge of eternity;

And I am certain that I have no certainty.

That is the bitter truth, though paradoxically.

I have no certain knowledge.  I have no certain answer.

All I have is my fleet life, that briefly blesses.

All I have are my dreadful fears, futile-feeling hopes, and ignorant guesses.

And I have my cancer.

-----------------------

I had heard a lot about cancer before, and always I had greatly feared it;

But I can tell anyone:

Cancer has a totally different meaning for you, if you get it.

-----------------------

I hope that God will surprise even the fundamentalist Christians,

And that God blesses

Even those of us who really and truly cannot fully believe—

Even those of us who can barely believe—

Even those of us who cannot believe at all.

-----------------------

To God I say:

I still hope, God; and I feel this bit of hope, although, as I tally the score,

I have found so little evidence,

In this mad wild world of sad impermanence.

I have always been honest with myself; but even if I had never been so before,

My cancer makes me look at the world and my dear life, with fearful honesty.

I know I shall soon be dead.  I hunger for life; I would love to believe.

For others, it may be easy to self-deceive.

But my heart, that loves life so dearly, and fears death so terribly,

Simply cannot dishonor the true inner light—

Bright intelligence—inside the most magical miracle of all: the human mind.

The human mind—my mind—is a miracle;

And if You, God, made it, how can You condemn its full and glorious use?

-----------------------

If God gave us sight, and the other senses, and the power of thought,

Would not deliberate blind faith spurn the great mental gifts that God wrought,

And be an actual abuse?

There are enough mysteries in the star-sprinkled sky,

And enough possibility, in biological diversity, of intelligent design,

To justify a little hope that I might still have life somehow, after I die.

There are hints, but no solid evidence or proof, of a Power divine.

If God does punish honest thought, for not finding certainty diligently sought,

Then that will remain forever the largest one of every great unanswered why.

-----------------------

So, God, back to You: Am I right?

If I proclaimed a full and certain belief in You,

By ignoring evidence, by turning off intelligence,

And hiding in a mustered-up mental manacle of faith, deliberately blind—

Forcing belief—would not that be, if You exist, insulting to You?

But is it not the paramount praise of You,

That I will stay true to the great gift of our human mind,

And will not shut the eyes of intelligence and integrity and intellectual honesty,

Though so many truth-claiming spokespersons promise me Paradise if I do.

Some with scary annihilation, some with a terrible hell, threaten me, too.

But I know life is a miracle, and the mind is true magic—what ever else is true.

-----------------------

I feel grateful and glad for the time I have had in the world.

And if You do exist, God—as seems likeliest to me to be the case—

Then this gratitude I feel is sent to You;

And I will feel grateful, even if it turns out I am a lost and hateful thing to You.

I hope You do not hate me, and will not punish me eternally.

I hope divine grace, mercy, and love will not exclude me.  But, if so—then so.

I still will be grateful for the love and the life I have had,

Though leaving life makes me immeasurably sad.

And though my coming death frightens me beyond bad,

Beyond all proportion of any previously known or unknown fear.

I am grateful for the bittersweet brief joy of life I have lived, as I go.

If You truly do exist, God, I am grateful to You,

In spite of all the terrible things that, along with the blessings, are also true.

Even despite my fatal spider-bite: my fateful cancer, now eating away, in me.

-----------------------

Am I right?  Is not hoping, even barely hoping, still a form of faith?

Yet I must admit this: I think that, probably, when I die,

I shall vanish like a burned-off mist, a summer snow, or an imaginary wraith.

I fear death, God; I fear nothingness,

Even more than I fear the fabled forms of hell.

I’m sorry that I cannot know if You care.

I’m sorry I cannot know for sure even if You exist.

Yet I cry out to You, from this deep despair,

Just barely hoping that You are listening somewhere,

And that You care.

Hoping that my lungs, so hungry to keep breathing air,

Will find mercy and forgiveness from You.

-----------------------

Yes, this has to be—my hope—what else could it be?—some kind of heresy.

But the world owes more to its thoughtful skeptics and heretics,

Than the plague of blind-faith followers of snake-oil liars and religious lunatics.

I will bypass them--and also the honest good believers--and carry my case, and speak my prayer, directly to God.

I hope that all of us whose hearts break as a prayer to live,

But who cannot believe, or believe fully,

Will find that God has a heart of love large enough for us, too:

And that God will give

Good life and happiness to us all.

I hope that, for this my poem-prayer, God will grant a happy answer.

I still have a tiny hope, despite all the evils in the world I know about;

Despite my present suffering—and the painful dying that I soon must face—

That God will turn out to have, much more than most religious people suppose,

A far greater love, much more mercy, and a far grander grace,

Than anyone here and now knows.

This poem really is a true, heart-felt, sincere, soul-spoken prayer.

=======================


Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Saturday, February 28, 2009  2:47 am
Copyright © 2010 by Michael L.P.  All rights reserved