The Cross I Bear

I came to my computer tonight to write something else…a piece that gave multiple points of reflection on the environmental, political and moral crisis I feel that we face upon this planet. Maybe I will still write this piece…but before I do I am struck by the Cross I bear…

Whilst I have never attended a church service as an adult other than in the Abbey on the island of Iona (in which I took part in the ceremony of feet washing, physically washing my mother’s feet…) Whilst I never loved the Sunday school which I was encouraged to leave (after becoming engaged in a heated debate with the Vicar that centred on whether a loving God could wish hell upon his creation…) Whilst I would hesitate profoundly before answering the question am I a Christian?...

I believe in Christ

There I said it. I believe in everything the man stood for, for every word he taught for every step he took in his brief and potent life. I would die for the message he brought, that there is real love that the kingdom is here now and we could live in it together…more importantly than dying for this – I would live for that truth. I would live for him as my king; I would live for the message of real, grounded, unabashed love here and now in this world, that miraculously in its multifaceted brilliance, like the skin of a salmon in the sun, could lead me home…

So here we are. I have said where I am coming from. I say this even though millions have been tortured, burned, put to the sword or ‘converted’ into shame, disease and slavery in his name. O you witches, O you natives of continents and islands rich in natural beauty and edenic self-expression, O you Arab wanderers and warriors, O you children beaten, abused, shown the doorway to hell because you never managed to stay here long enough for the priest to mark you up. O my soul who has twisted inside me like an embarrassed child at the way truth and goodness has been co-opted for the power agenda, twisted inside like a child in agony at the death of shared meaning. O for the feminine, for the death of sex, for the earth, O mother earth I am so sorry I am choking…

I believe in Christ. He let his feet be washed by her (not unclean, never dirty), he walked on the earth and left trails of glory in her subtle bodies as he walked, he pathways of light even as he died…I will walks those pathways my master, my teacher and my brother. I will follow you even as others have painted other paths in blood and called them your own. I will follow you even as your so-called priests scream their curses at me for my guiltless steps, I will follow you even as they mock me for the guilt I feel for our shameful husbandry of this land and its bounty. I will follow and I will never stop until following is simply being with you, until being with you is simply being in you, until being in you is simply being in me, until there is no being but the all…

I will follow you inside you forever. Forgive me my delays. Forgive me my obsessions with my meaning and my meaninglessness. I will follow you forever. This is the Cross that I bear.

Mark Jones


IMAGE: Christ Carrying the Cross (c.1490) by Hieronymous Bosch