When he was a little boy
Jesus was good all the time.
No wonder that he grew up to be such a big shot
who could forgive people so much.
When he died everyone was mean.
Later on he rose when no one else was looking.
Either he was hiding
or else he went up.
Maybe he was only hiding?
Maybe he could fly?
Yesterday I found a purple crocus
blowing its way out of the snow.
It was all alone.
It was getting its work done.
Maybe Jesus was only getting his work done
and letting God blow him off the Cross
and maybe he was afraid for a minute
so he hid under the big stones.
He was smart to go to sleep up there
even though his mother got so sad
and let them put him in a cave.
I sat in a tunnel when I was five.
That tunnel, my mother said,went straight into the big river
and so I never went again.
Maybe Jesus knew my tunnel
and crawled right through to the river
so he could wash all the blood off.
Maybe he only meant to get clean
and then come back again?
Don't tell me that he went up in smoke
like Daddy's cigar!
He didn't blow out like a match!
It is specialbeing here at Easter
with the Cross they built like a capital T.
The ceiling is an upside-down rowboat.
I usually count its ribs.
Maybe he was drowning?
Or maybe we are all upside down?
I can see the face of a mouse inside
of all that stained-glass window.
Well, it could be a mouse!
Once I thought the Bunny Rabbit was special
and I hunted for eggs.
That's when I was seven.
I'm grownup now. Now it's really Jesus.
I just have to get Him straight.
And right now.
Who are we anyhow?
What do we belong to?
Are we a we?
I think that he rose
but I'm not quite sure
and they don't really say
singing their Alleluia
in the churchy way.
Jesus was on that Cross.
After that they pounded nails into his hands.
After that, well, after that,
everyone wore hats
and then there was a big stone rolled away
and then almost everyone --
the ones who sit up straight --
looked at the ceiling.
Alleluia they sing.
They don't know.
They don't care if he was hiding or flying.
Well, it doesn't matter how he got there.
It matters where he was going.
The important thing for me
is that I'm wearing white gloves.
I always sit straight.
I keep on looking at the ceiling.
And about Jesus,
they couldn't be sure of it,
not so sure of it anyhow,
so they decided to become Protestants.
Those are the people that sing
when they aren't quite
sure.
- Anne Sexton, from Live or Die, 1966 Houghton Mifflin Co.
27 March 2008
Protestant Easter: Eight Years Old
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2 comments:
"And about Jesus,
they couldn't be sure of it,
not so sure of it anyhow,
so they decided to become Protestants."
Mmmmmmmmmmmm......
That's the sound of me shifting around in my seat with angry suspicion.
I've always thought this was a poem less about theology or, even, the Resurrection per se and more about being a child in church. The faith of adults is this mysterious thing that, despite Sunday School platitudes, remains quite nebulous. I do not mean this as a specific indictment of any of the lovely people I grew up with; indeed, I could say the same thing of many of the people I've encountered in church throughout the years. Personal faith, the things the people we know actually believe, rather than the things they simply say they believe is something hard to understand. In childhood, that ambiguity is harder to live with, harder to comprehend. Perhaps it's because we're much less credulous to bs at that age or perhaps it's because we've not yet learned the tricks of forgiveness.
In childhood, wearing white gloves (figuratively of course: I've always wanted a pair but never have owned any) and being extra nice is an essential aspect of the protestant religious experience. The combination seems alien sometimes.
All of this was said more correctly and more artfully by Annie Dillard somewhere in the middle of her perfectly wonderful memoir An American Childhood. And all of this is being said still more laboriously in the essay I'm still working on.
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