Sestina Day 59: Faith/Doubt

I’d love to be an agnostic. It would be much simpler than switching abruptly between the extremes of deeply held atheist and pagan/pantheist convictions. Ah well.

God’s never been an old man in the clouds
In fact, to me he isn’t always ‘he’
A she, a they, a pantheon of gods
Perhaps an it, an everything, an all
Which permeates the earth, the sky, the moon
But sometimes it’s an absence. No-one home.

I sometimes thank the spirits of the home
Honour the household godlings with my clouds
Of incense. And I’ll see, within the moon
The goddess, and the sun becomes a ‘he’
But then I think ‘there’s nothing there at all
These balls of rock and plasma can’t be gods’

But other times, they walk with me, the gods,
That inner voice will call my spirit home.
I’ll feel at one with everything, and all
My doubts and fears evaporate like clouds
I hear the Green Man in the woods and he
Asks me to dance. I look up at the moon

And feel Diana’s blessing in the moon-
Light. Then, quite suddenly, the gods
Are fictions, dreamt by cowards. Saying ‘he
(Or she, or they) will guide us safely home’
Is thinking with my head stuck in the clouds
Nobody watches over us at all.

I’d be content with atheism. All
The love I see reflected in the moon
Comes from within. No superstition clouds
My judgement now. I have no need of gods.
With scientists and sceptics I’m at home.
How could I call my own subconscious ‘he’?

Till, once again, I dance with Pan, and he
Is real again. And I believe it all.
A loving goddess smiles and calls me home:
The maiden-mother-crone within the moon.
I’m once again surrounded by my gods
I feel euphoric, floating on a cloud.

I’m not at home with Dawkins. How can he
Look at the clouds and have no doubt at all
That though there’s moonlight, there can be no gods?