Chanting and Ranting

Stop this chanting and singing
with counting your prayer beads!
Whom do you worship in this lonely
dark corner of a temple with doors all shut?

Open your eyes and see
your God is not before you!
God is there where the worker is working
the new hard ground making new paths.
 
God is in pain with men, women
and children whining, weeping, crying
sweating, panting and pleading
in hard, cold and old human constructs.
 
Cast away your religiosity, perpetuating greed
adding profit and more comfort.
Like naked God walk around opening your heart
to the silent bleeding of human hearts.

Your deliverance is buried in your bonds
to the bleeding creatures as the Master himself
has embraced his bondage to his creation
and is bound with us all for ever.

Come out from your meditations to meet him
in toil, leaving aside your flowers and incense!
No harm comes to you if your clothes become
a little tattered, or stained, by sweat of your brow.

Adopted from Tagore’s Gitanjali, poem 11

Henry Victor          22.09.2012