The strokes of these rough stanzas
A mysterious face will paint
Some star of bygone fandom?
Some lunatic, yet saint?

Some hero of the Nobel Prize?
A man you’d hope to meet?
A myth whose magic never dies?
A legend ever sweet?

Or One whose mocked, so-seemed defeat
Unlocked the skies?

The “Man”…

A “judge not” kind of man who preached
That heaven’s way is mercy?
Or…
The Way to heaven’s mercy, and
Of every man, the Judge?

A holy “prophet” with the goal
Of bringing princedoms peace?
Or…
The “Prince of Peace” and holiness
The goal of all prophets?

A “nice guy” scorning Roman rule
Who failed to get his point across?
Yet….
Cruel Cross and pointed nails
Weren’t Roman scorn for “nice guys”

The “Myth”…

A “myth” fulfilling Marxist fears
As “opium of the masses”?
Or…
The Master of all hopes; all fears
Fulfilling ancient myths? (3)

Is “Christ” a cry for pains and wounds?
For messes, a mere curse word?
Or…
The Word-made-curse Who solved our mess
By wounds and cries to heaven? (1)

The “Legend”…

A “teacher” about life and death
Who saved surprising truths?
Or…
The Truth, Whose death-to-life surprise
Still saves, gives life, and teaches?

A lie the early Jews would preach
To gain a name and glory?
Or…
The glorious Name for gain of Whom
They’d choose to preach and die? (2)

A would-be “king” reflecting love
And light, like many others?
Or…
An otherworldly “Kindly Light” (4)
And King of love, Whose subjects now
Unveil…
And reflect…
God’s here-yet-also-up-and-coming Kingdom?
*****
(1) St. Paul: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13)

(2) St. Leo the Great: “‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ Is it possible to offer, or even to imagine, a purer kind of prayer than that which shows mercy to one’s torturers by making intercession for them? It was thanks to this kind of prayer that the frenzied persecutors who shed the blood of our Redeemer drank it afterward in faith and proclaimed him to be the Son of God.” (From the Moral Reflections on Job)

(3) Tolkien, Mythopoeia;

CS Lewis: “Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a ‘description’ of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are the translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Does this amount to a belief in Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly certain that it really happened….” (letter to Arthur Greeves: from The Kilns [on his conversion to Christianity], 18 October 1931)

(4) St. John Henry Newman, Lead Kindly Light

Painting: Our Lady of the Southern Cross by Paul Newton