In it:

all promise lies in life and wait.

In it, existence holds

in a dark and silent song —

the end already contained

in its tight clutch, as in a child’s fist.

Teleology is a love map: telling into being

as God spoke world from alphabet.

There is a destiny, I’m told

that shapes our ends, rough hew them as it may.

The gnostics tore from the stuff of bleeding and being

this “secret” nut

of what could be:

no cross, no pain, no skin, you see.

But no, it is with God this once

this ever

this saving seam

of what is and what will be:

the clash of the existent and the possible:

To be is NOT the question but to love

and how —

when God gives at once in what we have

all that we might

and all that we will —

and still we pick the wrong tree.

“God has his heart set on the world that he made,”

goes the lecture like a telling road

through the centuries of Gnostic undergrowth:

Matter must matter

when meaning grows clear.

Yes, to love

with that self-same, humbled Gethsemane scream:

Lord, not what I…

Lord, not what I…

Lord…

Not I

But what you will.

Sculptor, chiseler, changer God

lover of loose threads and rough edge

in whose hands is every plan

to set

again and again

and again

in the deep seed of the heart

the spark

the start

the seed of life…

O Lord God, who gave in a single seed

all the ingredients of a response;

God who graced into being

in skin

and shell;

and crust of sin;

God who put in

what will burst forth in ripe foliage

of assurance and love;

God regenerate

God regive

an Eden in which to live.