Loving Who Knows What (by Peter Elliott)

Poem 8 of 27 in "Be Meditated"

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The man from New York
With the clean-shaven head
And the garland hanging round his neck
Is extolling the advantages
Of faith in Krishna.

One of these is that
In order to love God
One needs to know what God looks like.

Look, he almost says,
At the pictures on the temple walls!
Look at the deities up the front!
This is what God looks like
We know what God looks like
God is Krishna
So we can see God
And we can love God.

Christians, he continues,
Have artists' impressions
Of what Jesus looks like
But not God
Ask them what God looks like
And see how vague and confused they become
They say they love God
But they have no idea
What that god is like!

Rubbing it in, he compares them
To a man in love with a girl
And who's unable to say if she is beautiful or ugly

He thinks he's proved his point
But perhaps he's never heard
Of a blind person's romance
Or a pen-pal friendship
Blossoming into a loving relationship

Frankly his conviction bordering on arrogance
I find rather obnoxious.

When it comes to matters of God
Of the Spirit
I like St. Paul's line
"At present we see as through a glass darkly"

I like a sense of mystery
I like lines that speak
Of the immortal, invisible
God in light inaccessible.

I like the idea of God
As a cloud of unknowing
Of having to drop and leave
Our concepts of God
In order to be open
To some actual experience
An experience quite possibly beyond that
Which words can convey

And I like the idea expressed in the Vedas
Where the Supreme
Is described as "Not this, Not this"
And is referred to simply as "That"

The man from New York
Would probably describe me
As an impersonalist
And with some justification

For many are the gods and goddesses
That have passed by my awareness
So many that I find it hard to choose one
As being what the Krishnas call
The Supreme Personality of Godhead

Maybe none of them
Fully expresses
God as a person
For me.

---(Peter Elliott)---

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