Poem: I want to tear down the churches

I wrote this poem on the morning of 17th of August, when I was still in bed. After I woke up, I took the book “If women rose rooted”, written by Sharon Blackie, which was resting on the bedside. I immersed myself in the images and stories of the book, letting myself be carried in a deep sense of reverence. My body was getting filled with longing for an Earth-based way of living, while my heart was getting cracked by grief, for all the beautiful soulful things that we lost as humanity. Just as I read a line from the book which spoke about “place-based cultures”, the bells of a nearby church began ringing. I felt a dissonance between the book and the bells ringing, and this brought a disturbance in my inner system. Words and sentences, of something that I could call poetry, kept flowing in my imagination. I could not read anymore and I had to write them down somewhere. And I did, while trying to think as little as possible, and allow my Muse to guide me in this process. When I finished the last line of the poem, the bells stopped ringing. It felt like a synchronicity. Bellow you can see what came through me in that unexpected moment.

I want to tear down the churches

I am in my bed,

Reading from “If women rose rooted”. 

I just read about place-based cultures

And deep love relationships with the land. 

Suddenly, the church bells start ringing,

Reaching me through the slightly open windows of my room. 

“I want to tear down the churches” I hear an inner voice speaking.

I am carried back in my memory

And new ways of seeing emerge in my psyche. 

We are so disconnected from the place that we inhabit,

Yet, in churches we learn about the lands,

Of a revolutionary wise Jewish dude,

Coming from the Middle East. 

Don’t get me wrong,

I have nothing against Jesus. 

I was a good boy when I was young. 

Going to church on Sundays,

Listening to the sermons of the priest,

But leaving the church numb and dissociated. 

Now, I am slowly returning to the ways of the land,

Which no one around me seems to know. 

I want to follow a religion of the place,

A religion of sacred relationships.

Where the saints are not John, nor Mary,

But Wind and Spider and Cloud and Rain,

All priests of the one God that made everything. 

I want the Place to be my temple, my shrine, my ceremonial ground,

Not Bibles, nor stories of Jewish Prophets or Greek monks. 

I want to rebel against the erasing of Earth-based consciousness,

And its replacement with patriarchal religions. 

I want to worship a Goddess, as much as I worship a God. 

I want the Spirits of nature to be the Saints who guide me. 

I want to tear down the churches,

So I can build a new religion inside of myself.

One not governed by popes, patriarchs and bishops,

But governed by the love for the Earth.