I am an unbeliever
some would say an atheist
but not toward this thing we call God
no, it’s more complicated than that
I look upon creation
and like Franklin see a Creator
but when my gaze falls from the stars
I see the steeples and domes of worship
It’s in that transition
from the Empyrean to Terra Firma
where my eyes shift from wide wonder
and furrows into suspicion
I can gaze into heaven
and believe. For despite the scapegoat of
‘mysterious ways’ and how the devil
‘walks about like a lion’ neither seems true
All I have ever witnessed with my eyes
or read in tomes of our history for good or for ill
has been wholly and inexcusably human
event after event in the affairs of man on earth
Yet I am not unconscious
of the hypocrisy of my myopic view
for I have never trod the path of angels
am the weakened flesh personified over and over
However, I do believe that sin
is rooted far more inside of intention
of evil than stumbling into it upon accident
when good intentions have paved our paths to Hell
It would take a God
to see what I see and yet still
love a church, synagogue, and mosque
and not become an atheist in his regard of man