My Jesus,
This Good Friday I sit before your image of suffering
And yet I do not weep.
Instead my stomach heaves and brings up only bile
On this solemn fast-day.
I remember… I remember my own suffering.
What was it worth? Why should I fast now as a nun
Since my whole life is wasted?
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Was it all worthless?
I was young, a virgin,
Trained all my life to live only in my head.
My uncle had brought me up like a boy,
Entranced by my intellect, my sharp joy
In the truths of faith.
I should not be wasted, he said, like a fat pullet
Domesticated by pregnancy and laundry,
My mind blunted by hormones,
Like a goose for forcing, crammed in a hutch,
A cage, a pretty morsel for a man to swallow.
And then he came,
Peter the superstar, the famous teacher,
To strike more intellectual fire from my flint,
To make me as good a debater as the masters of the schools.
Well, he taught me more than my uncle meant.
I remember the abject letters that I wrote him
Protesting undying love, though I was now a nun
And the son I bore him had been taken away.
No more theology for me, just the same old
Tame old hemming of altar linen
As if I had been given to the sisters at four years old.
This narrow women’s world stifles me;
There is no time for books, I have to run the house
And settle the squabbles of these little minds.
And so I had to cling to Peter and our love
As the one thing that gave my life meaning,
Its letting-go a noble sacrifice. Or so I thought.
My Jesus, now I’ve changed my mind.
You are the one who should have had my love
And what I loved in Peter was your bright glory
Confusing the message with the messenger.
He should have known. He was a man
And I malleable as a child,
Kept dependent as women are,
Taught to revere authority in the place of God.
What blasphemy.
Who ever taught me to revere your image in myself,
The snow-white flower of my love for God?
I can’t blame Peter too much.
He was trapped in the mask he had assumed,
The pure mind seeking for a pure mind,
Reality knocked him sideways.
But he was a priest and teacher, he should have walked away.
So where now, my Jesus?
My heart is numb, I can love neither him nor you now,
Or so I fear.
I belong to you with lifelong promises
And truly I will keep them, but what worth am I?
A used, discarded rag;
The mainstay of my life is burned to ashes.
I could have been a great lover of God,
Another Hildegard with visions, a Perpetua
Proudly embracing martyrdom.
But I will not be a Mary of Egypt
Fasting to starvation to atone for prostitution.
It was not my fault: this I will cling to,
And I know you say the same.
I have been betrayed, like you, my Jesus
And here I hang for however many years shall come.
Yet you are the Holy One, enthroned upon the praises of Israel;
O bring life from this barrenness at the last.
tRuth 2015
poem prayer silence 