Poetry By Charles C. Finn
Firm Grounding
My life has richly ranged,
including ten years in a controversial religious order
of a controversial world religion.
Born and bred Catholic,
after high school to the seminary for a decade,
then at 31 to the world beyond both.
Never will I not honor my Catholic and Jesuit roots--
foundation to stand on and soar from,
truths vital if not final.
Another time for reasons for parting,
now's for thanksgiving to the embedded, undergirding,
all-spanning Great Mystery
for my richly ranging lifetime's firm grounding.
A Taoist View
There is only Tao.
My wave in the flow is perfect,
my unique wave fed by ten thousand unique waves
in this luminous moment of universal convergence
is perfect.
A Taoist view to widen the road,
to open the way and lighten the load.
Even Our Own!
Imaging God descending to Earth to take on lowly flesh
demeans Earth and flesh terribly.
How not then see Earth (and the universe by extension)
as necessarily subordinate and incomplete,
at best moonlight to a lording sun?
Native peoples around the planet--
untrammeled by peculiar theology, demeaning dualistic
paternalistic theology--
can help us here (if we let them) see Divinity everywhere
present,
Earthbodies everywhere radiant,
even our own!
Participating In The Great I AM
To deify Jesus above every other
sadly misses the meaning of his amazed awakening into
an identity with the great I AM,
nullifies his astonishing call to us each
to awaken with amazement to our own participation
in the glory of the great I AM.
What A Balance Struck Jesus
Toughminded needs to balance tenderhearted.
Sometimes hard decisions must be made,
a malignancy must be cut out,
an axe must fall.
To avoid it in the name of loving kindness
is to misconceive loving kindness.
If we only warm but never burn we are not fire.
Remember moneychangers and whitened sepulchers
no less than good Samaritan and prodigal son--
what a balance struck Jesus!
Tribal Literalism Challenged
Tribal literalism, taking metaphor for fact, externalizes what
can only be universal and inner.
Joseph Campbell can't help but be resisted
by literal adherents of the monotheisms of the West whom
he challenged so vigorously,
but what encouragement and inspiration he gives
to those who in transcending singular tribe have found
inclusive planet!
After Long Gypsying
Quakers' solitary dogma: Light within each illuminating life
if allowed to,
Voice within each guiding life if listened to.
From such experience of attentive communion,
as naturally as roaring stream down mountain flows action
for justice and peace.
It takes more than an attractive theory however enticing
to lure a spiritual gypsy from his eclectic contentment.
It takes fellow pilgrims of spirit with whom both kinship of
vision and elemental kindness are experienced.
If I'm right in reading the sgns,
after long gypsying I'm coming home.
Now Here
Travel light years through space and never find God--
conceived, that is, as somewhere out there.
Moving beyond spatial notion to grounded experience
marks religion's maturing.
No where equals now here.
Meet the moment that greets you
and find God.
