A Question of Image
(#21, from "The Gate's Fare ")
If the only truth is love and God is love then,
God is the only truth.
If man is born in the image of God then,
man is the image of truth, which is love.
But of which man do we speak?
If man is the mirror of a God who ultimately
glorified Himself by laying down his life for man,
is to strike clarity to that image, to die for
man, in God’s name, which is love? And
if God abhors suicide, who does God abhor:
The man who became the exploding bird, the one
who ran directly under the ensuing hell or the one
who brought crucifixion upon himself?
Was not each committing an act of suicide? Or,
is suicide conditional: Excused when
executed for the passion of truth? If so,
are these all heroes to God?
Is God the God of a circus? Man, caught in
His house of mirrors that casts distorted images to
lives already set in a maize?
Given free will and the riddle of languages,
how can a ledger of sins be kept?
Is the image perceived our own mortality?
Is love an infatuation with our own self-image?
Which mirror is the image of God?
If there is no greater love than to give away
ones life, who holds the greater love?
If truth bears degrees, whose image reflects
the greatest truth?
Man, risen above all creatures, to the
image of his creator, alone, masters the
brilliance to identify the breath of his own ignorance.
Yet man refuses the first task set before him:
To be who he is,
the image.
~ Copyright © 2008 by Susan Durant. From The Gate's Fare. Used by permission of the author.