Descending Theology : Christ Human
BY MARY KARR
Such a short voyage for a god,
and you arrived in animal form so as not
to scorch us with your glory.
Your mask was an infant’s head on a limp stalk,
sticky eyes smeared blind,
limbs rendered useless in swaddle.
You came among beasts
as one, came into our care or its lack, came crying
as we all do, because the human frame
is a crucifix, each skeletos borne a lifetime.
Any wanting soul lain
prostrate on a floor to receive the poured sunlight
might—if still enough,
feel your cross buried in the flesh.
One has only to surrender,
you preached, open both arms to the inner,
the ever-present embrace,
which props one up, out reaches every grasp.
It’s in the form embedded,
love adamant as bone. The miracle is not just
you became us but also
those breathed-in moments allotted to us each
(even poor Brother Judas),
when one relinquishes self and will and want.
Then you're laid bare in us,
and for some briefly gentle eyeblink
we bloom and are you.
~~~
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