Temple Doors

The doors to the temple are closed.
Heavy, teak, carved with hinges colored with wear.
There are promises inside. You imagine gold.
You imagine priests and priestesses
from another age and land, chanting perhaps
or dancing the Saint Vitus dance of the spirit.
Songs. Incense. A dark place full of mystery,
but the doors are closed to the likes of you.
Whether it is their choice or yours,
it is your sin that keeps you out, or at least the belief
that they matter, those lapses, mistakes long behind you.

But you smile. Adjust your own ragged robes,
happy to be old enough to know the past matters
only as much as we decide it does,
that God is a god of now. A god of eternity.
That your lapses are a hiccup in time, long forgotten,
long washed clean.

In the background, you hear him chuckle,
the joke on those that lock the doors
while he plays outside with the children
in the midst of the world he made,
flaws and all.

About this poem.

Our little church has a motto: Love. No Exceptions.

It is in direct response to churches that choose to live in anger and condemnation, and there are far too many of them. I think we will be surprised when we get to heaven and find just how loving and forgiving God is.

A poem too about how often we are the ones that keep us from the holy we need in our lives, not outside influences. Poetry is never about one thing.

The picture is actually from Disney World, in a mock temple in the Animal Kingdom. I have not been to India or the Indo-East, but I have always been admirers of their temples. Such beauty!

Tom