I guess the singing sounds strange
if you don’t believe in it-

Light
shining in.

Like marrying and child-rearing
but still believing in Santa Claus.

If the first rung on the ladder of life
is hope, with resignation the last-

if everyone who hopes has none,
for hope is a verb and never a noun-

then what are we going to be happy about
but little ribbons we pass around
for making it to the top and settling
in, being thus
initiated into the secret?

How proud we’d be of all our scars
we got like little gingerbread men
being bitten to tiny bits
by someone bigger, always bigger,
and the scars that even we would give
the bakers’ hearts when we ran away.

We’d be grateful to them, almost,
for making sure we know

there’s no hope.

And doesn’t it feel nice to be in on a secret?

Imagine one hidden for ages
in a vast, other, unsearchable god,
and a mystery
revealed, so that

after searching in the dark for years for clues your eyes
were opened.

Imagine reaching the highest rung
and watching as the flood waters come
and suddenly,
climbing on

by the power that moved in a famished shepherd’s
veins when he was offered the irresistible but kept
abiding,
when he looked at the cross at the top of a hill,
at becoming a curse, and yet kept
striding,
at death itself, having lowered himself, and yet kept
rising,

believing that something,
no, some one,
was worth all of this,
was worthy of worship-

Imagine our hope is a living person,
a means of salvation,
a way for the vast, unsearchable God
to be known, to be
Emmanuel, with us.

Imagine it like you imagine an
upcoming holiday feast,

then taste and see.