Unspoilt Mind

A monk’s certainty comes from his experience. For us, this is harder to grasp, but the same experience is there if we avail ourselves of it.

The modern world has reduced faith to an ascent to a trivial intellectual proposition. When we doubt (for it is not if, but when) we seem estranged from the divine. But for those of deeper traditions, faith is a life lived which makes the confession of that life a much more certain thing.

I am no monk, but I know some.

– David Dickens, Nothing Hypothetical

And now, his poem...

Unspoilt Mind

by David Dickens

A boy rides his bike down the alley
But sees a horse and canyon deep.
A stick in hand and pot on his head
In his young mind flourishes a knight.
Each long lonely walk in the woods
Conjures friends from far away places.

A young man sits at his school desk
But journeys oft to distant stars,
Spots a young woman cross the room
As Venus rises out the foam of the sea.
Later upon the sport field of grass
A mirage of the wars of men long ago.

An old monk stands silent in prayer
His thoughts clear as spring rain,
Kisses images of his fathers and mothers
Hung round the walls of the Nave.
What he knows of them in person
Is no distraction of a spoilt mind.


And now, my response...

I cannot believe the beauty and fragrance of this poem,
evocative of realities to the seventh power,
of visions that launch the mind beyond its power to see.

And incense I smell, more like the resin of weeping trees,
or the aroma of the freshly cut grass of graves,
heavy with the dew of the morning of the age to come.

I should not say I cannot believe,
but that belief is merged into knowing,
and knowing into being, and being into —
can it be Him I see there standing,
supporting all that is and is not,
seen and unseen, through pierced flesh,
whether mine or yours, still His?
Brother and co-sufferer, I salute you!

Axios!