Faith Found, Never Lost: A Heretic's Reverie

This isn't a story about losing faith,
because I didn't lose my faith
but I don't mean that in the way
you would think.

There were many times where I thought it was gone.
It mattered little whether I had left it
Or it had left me.
I just wanted it to be over
because the yoke was far from light.

But faith, on it's glorious own, has never left me, nor I it.

<here she stands a heretic, but she can do no other> 

In the thick hedge of confusion, of
...no real Christian...
...obsequious submission...
...obtuse trust...
...filthy rags...
...deserved torment...
...God the Father only...

my soul rankling and asking
but what if otherwise? 

The poet wrote that we are hedged on all sides
But the vines reached up and grabbed my throat.

I clawed until my palms were bloody
and I ran into the open meadow
And here
I can breathe
and stretch
and simply be
and found the peace
that I was promised.

(Because what they said 

would come to pass

Never did

And what I did receive
 had so many strings attached). 

The poet was right about this thing:
all things, all sides, within, without.
She's there, She's me, I am Her, we are One.

I didn't need the hedge to tell me where I began and ended
Because if we're One
I don't.

<"This is the most dangerous hubris."

"It would be if there were any other Mother.">

This isn't a story about losing my faith.
This is the story of Faith stripped of every nonessential

as I shed off each vine and threw it behind me
flicked a match and

tossed it into the ground

watched the seeds come to life in rich, dark, scorched soil

and ate every good thing for food.

Because if it's good then it's good

and no tales from men long dead

will tell my soul otherwise.