songs, but without the music
Naked in the Hall of Scholars
This poem is from a book I’m working on now, a plea for lightweight Christianity. It’s mostly prose—pithy prose, I hope—but this is a sort of poetic interlude.
Naked in the Hall of Scholars
High up in the ceiling,
a single skylight admits the sun.
Swirls of dust show where the shaft of light passes.
Filtering down through the dusty air,
it shines on the restless bodies below.
The scholars turn and turn, massing like starlings,
discussing the Second Coming, so long delayed.
The sound of their voices—male voices, mostly—
rises and falls in sonorous waves,
tohu wabohu, chaos in a sea of sound.
They strive together, one with another,
a number of scholars that no man can number,
masters of ancient tongues, makers of many books.
They argue without end about the ending of the world,
their voices convening a great tribulation.
Popes in a long line speak from beneath their white canopies,
pontifical Latin flowing from their lips.
In a corner, Karl Barth reads from his own works,
in German, of course, precise and authoritative,
from the six million words of his Church Dogmatics,
and from the five hundredth page of his commentary
on the Epistle to the Romans.
“Will there never be an end,” he demands,
“of all our ceaseless talk
about the delay of the Parousia?”
Seemingly not.
I see C. S. Lewis seated, patiently expounding,
explaining it all so a child could follow,
further up and further in.
He meets my gaze, his eyes disappointed,
paternal, knowing me for a Susan.
“Let’s get this over with,” he says. “Take your seat.
The question is on the board.
You have one hour.”
Oh, God! I forgot there was a test today!
And that question on the board—Christ on a cracker!
Did we have to know Greek?
And now the professor of Greek from my seminary,
observes my struggles with sad disappointment.
I remember some Greek, surely I do,
but who can think, with all this arguing?
More eyes turn to me, and I realize:
I not only forgot there was a test today,
I forgot to put on my pants.
I am naked in the hall of scholars.
Rapture me … rapture me …
oh, why have you forsaken me?
Then it happens, my prayer oddly answered.
Gracefully I begin to rise,
floating upward through the dusty swirls of light.
Slowly I drift, up and away.
Slowly the voices and glances recede.
Slowly I rise,
weightless, naked, no longer ashamed,
washed ever upward by ripples of sound from below.
The voices fade, fade to a faintness.
Hours, maybe, pass unnoticed, until
I bump, gently and gently,
face to face with the still, dark ceiling.
Skimming the surface of the ceiling,
I swim toward the source of the bright shaft.
Someone has left the skylight open.
A scent from Outside reaches me, shocks me.
Surely there is peace there, a blessing of peace.
Surely the sound of a playful breeze,
moving over the face of the waters.