Nothing to Prove

Don’t need miracles
Loaves and fishes;
Lazarus wishes

Don’t need purity,
a Virgin birth
for his time on earth

Don’t need witnesses
Kings from far away
God’s voice on baptism day

Don’t need him calm
He threw over tables
Taught radical fables

Didn’t need a temple
Homeless by choice
Folks understood his voice

All I need is his words of love
His hand stretched out to the poor
To street kids, to ‘untouchables’

He was real and human
Dragged his cross to Calvary
Questioned God as he hung from a tree

I don’t need resurrection
No “Mary, don’t you know me?”
No Doubting Thomas: “See?”

All these things could have happened.
If they didn’t, I would
still follow him best I could

The Way is peace, love
The Way is easy it you let it be
If you turn off the world, you’ll start to see

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

NOTE: I believe there are “many ways up the mountain.” As much as I follow Jesus, I don’t exclude people of different beliefs from my life.  I often have amazing conversations with Jews, Muslims, atheists… anyone willing to engage in love. I am not a biblical literalist and do have a problem engaging some (SOME) fundamentalists because theirs is an absolute path, which is far from my own, and they tend to get mad when asked about “cherry-picking” Scripture. My path is very, very wide, and I truly believe Jesus’ best gift to the world was his message, “Love one another.”

This was written for Poetic Bloomings; their prompt was Easter. This is also posted at Poetry Pantry at Poets United, where I have been a proud member since 2009.

Had a wonderful, mutually respectful conversation with a fellow Christian – he’s a bit more from the right; I’m one of the (not really named) Christian Left. It was a hot topic, and we agreed that there are “many roads up the mountain,” that our aim is not to proselytize, but to put it out there for people to make up their own minds.

Thanks to Marie Elena and Walt for their work on the blog, as well as my Poets United buddies.

Whatever your path, deist, theist, atheist… I wish you peace and acceptance. Amy


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