The Schizoid Christian (The Princess and the Pea)

It’s all very subjective

That truth saved me from rejection

From polite

And not so polite Society

I found Him

Or more Biblically

He found me.

 

I had a rare type of encounter

With the absolute

I think I must have

Because all changed

Utterly

A terrible beauty is born etc.

 

The paradigm shift

The realisation of the `Other`

Not only being a reality

My reality

No longer alone in my head

Thus

My heart.

 

Thirty years

No time off for bad behavior

Thirty years

And the dawning reality of a love walk.

 

But from the very beginning

Well

Pretty soon anyway

This pea

Somewhere in the mattress

And I don’t identify as a Princess

Believe me.

 

And it seemed to me

To be just me

Who had a problem with

You know

The unmentionable place

That doesn’t end with eternity.

 

And the flavour I belonged to

Which for me

Was true Christianity

The strictly biblically correct

Type of Christianity

Believed in the neverendingtormentingalwaysconsciousflametorturing

Type of Hell

Which has been for twenty eight of those thirty years

A pretty insistent

Tooth ache.

 

As someone put it

Better than me

It’s like having a nearly

Perfect puzzle

With one piece

That doesn’t quite fit

 

The more I recognised who I believed in

The more I actively experienced agape love

The more subjective revelation

Clubbed me heart wise

The more I knew Him by His name

Love.

 

The more I saw lives

Transformed

From dark to light

From refuse to Glory

People literally healed

Sometimes

In front of me

The more I understood

His loving nature

And the idea of this eschatological geographic

Began to disturb

And appall

I suppose that could be the point

Of it all

But not for me.

 

And then love

Himself

Led me to the Church

In its history

And those Early Church

Fathers

Some who’d stayed true to the text

But believed differently

Interpreted it differently

And yet some had even composed

Our Creed

Gregory of Nyssa. Basil,

Origen

Et al.

 

I was led to texts

By believers

Who like me

Had Struggled with Hell’s

Eternal anomaly.

 

And I discovered the thread

Down the ages

By those

Who see the Cross

And the Saviour of the World

As One who saves all

Utterly.

 

And what I had previously

Believed

As an outright heresy

Was actually

A valid Christian

Doctrinal reality

Hallelujah

And other appropriate

Praise type

Phraseology.

 

And now?

I stick out like a sore pollex