Approaching Repentance
I.
I used to yearn for
them,
but
now, my tears bring no relief.
They revive; they
reproach; they mock
that
old repentant self that is never fully sorry.
I dare not present my
tears to You,
O Lord.
For does this tear
here, and that one there,
Or this one that
trickles down the same path
ever
approach a different end?
Do they not all fall
into the same sewer
of
aborted renewals?
These tears bear
witness to many prior ones
-
fallen
in their attempt to generate
a
spring of faith,
a
stream of love
and
other such poetic effusions.
They are now merely
dry tracks
that
point to a once-intended direction.
II.
But still
the
tears will fall.
Well then, flow down,
my tears.
Yes,
for
sins committed,
for
deeds left undone, and
for
the lost resolution of earlier outpourings.
Flow down, flow down,
But do not think your
work completed.
Tears ought to tear
the old, forsworn life asunder:
a
river of Jordan that carves out the old land from the new.
Here, my tears
delude,
drops
that blur my vision:
tears
that tell me my repentance is done
and
that life can move on,
as
it always has, as it always has -
before.
III.
But once,
there
were tears unlike mine.
Tears of toil,
tears
wrought with the determination of God,
with
the determination of love,
with
the determination of the word,
of
the word which was with God
Of the word which was
God.
They were tears of
the word, of the word, of the word.
Shed in a night,
in
a garden of rocks,
in
a garden of dead life.
They were tears to
weld a will
to
do the will of God.
Tears were shed -
then
-
there
-
that
should have changed the path
of all tears
thereafter.
They were tears of
death,
and
of life
and
were filled with the hope
that
all the rocks which cut his knees
– that all the flinty
hearts which pierced his own –
would
one day melt,
and
water and nourish the garden of God.
Yes, once there were
tears,
not
of water and salt, but of blood.
IV.
But those are not
mine.
My tears are weak,
and
they are infirm.
I dare not, O Lord,
present them to you
as
an offering of repentance,
of
change,
for
what have they ever changed?
I present them to You,
as
an offering of myself,
A broken and contrite
spirit, O Lord,
That knows it is not
broken or contrite enough.
Tears that are
nothing but what they are,
from
a person who is nothing but what she is:
simply,
the
merest expression of sorrow,
from
a wavering faith,
that
requires the blood of Your tears
to
be what they,
to
be what You
meant
us to be.