We celebrated last year’s Feast of the Ascension with a single, potently philosophical haiku based on a Meditation of Philippe de Saint Maurice (Ascension). Focusing on a pebble at the bottom of a pond, it got a lot of comments about the nature of consciousness, the will to rise up from the mundane mud, and suchlike.

It was a rather uplifting item all round.

For this year’s Feast, we have another of Philippe’s mighty meditations, but this one comes at the idea of Ascension from an altogether more provocative angle, wondering whether Yeshua’s ascension wasn’t perhaps the result of his wishing to escape the judgmental coldness of us killjoy humans – a sobering thought, entirely apt on this day of feasting and celebration.

Becoming sweaty,

They feared their bodies’ passions

Would take them over

*

Sometimes forever

They fought their desires to death –

Thought to transcend them

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Morals to judge them,

Judgment to condemn and kill,

Death to embrace them:

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They feared their own love

And so blamed others, made up

Sins deserving death –

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Is that why Yeshua

Rose up to heaven – to escape

Our killjoy death-wish?

*

Tired of being judged,

He left us to our cold, mad,

Delusional lives.

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Omm

Feast of the Ascension, 13 May 2021