One Sacred Heart
Jesus wasn’t the first to have his palms nailed across a wooden beam
One Sacred Heart
We forget, Jesus wasn’t
the first to have his palms nailed across
a wooden beam in a wide open hug.
Jesus wasn’t the first to cross his feet in
demure defiance of gravity. Many before
him were also wrongly hung, the Romans
hungry to suppress any rising discontent.
They too have suffered for our sin of
forgetfulness. And many after them,
and many today, who die all too cruelly
by the violence of oppression, who suffer
for our comfort, for the way we miss
the mark of each other, made complicit
by convenience. Would you have tried
to save Jesus (if you could)? Will you rise
today for the one sacred heart of humanity
(because you can), and so save yourself
from the burden of ignorance?
- Moudi Sbeity
Sharing another poem today in honor of Easter. Religious or not, spiritual or not, we could learn from this parable, this mythology, this story (true or not) what it might mean to rise from oppression and stand for the one heart that pulses is into being.
When I was a little girl in a Roman Catholic Italian immigrant family I would visit my maternal grandmother. She had candles burning on her altar in front of statues and pictures of Jesus. There is a tradition in the church for the sacred heart of jesus. Jesus is shown with his heart exposed in his chest and it is on fire, bright flames of fire. Some times there would be a crown of thorns piercing his bleeding heart. We were called to worship his bleeding broken suffering heart over the sins of the world that made him weep. My grandmother left a deep impression on me. She rarely left her home and she was a woman of deep old country faith. Your poem invited these memories
to rise up on this Easter day. Who will stand for the sacred heart? I will in memory of Stephanie Carnavale from Palermo in Sicily. May you rise up and out of all that prevents you from standing in life as your beautiful true self.
I remember reading that death by crucifixion was so common at the time that Christianity didn't take up the cross as their symbol until hundreds of years after the fact. He was not the first. Thank you for this.