What is the price of understanding, the cost that one pays for the gift of wisdom?

You could also say that it is only by my toil and labour that I accumulate experience to lead to that flash of insight; that sort of intuitive knowing – a sort of faith if you will – which leads me to conclude that what may be wisdom is seemingly mere foolishness. But this does not remove a doubt which probes with merciless scrutiny. “Did I gamble and make the wrong bet?” I find myself asking, wondering if in the earnest idealism of my convictions I have erred in my choices. In the face of struggles or the privations of daily life, I wonder if I have made the right decisions. And looking at these hard, I find the optimism of my youth wanting; sometimes it feels careless and reckless, irresponsible. And the judgement-gavel hammers hard highlighting a feeling that, not only was I impetuous, but that I was too lux, or naïve and flippant.

Be that as it may, flashes of understanding have often arrived of their own volition. The gift of understanding. Yet for that seeming ‘gift’, it is “born in struggle, nourished in pain, and cultivated by suffering.” Such is life and the wisdom it offers.

“What is the price of Experience?” William Blake once asked. “Do men buy it for a song, or wisdom for a dance in the street?” No, Blake answered, “it is bought with the price of all that a man hath. Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy.”

*Originally published December 2020.*

Oh, we've got so much, so much love
We've got so much, so much trust
Can't you see a halo, a halo?
I can see a halo hovering over us

          - Al Green, God Blessed Our Love.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

          - Job 1:16. My emphasis.


Part I: A Meeting of the Dead


A vulture once asked if I had seen
a darkness so real it would be everywhere I’ve been
Mixed with the sound of voices screaming
waiting for a free salvation coming to stop their hearts from dying.

And I said:

Truly, by no choice of mine,
all my life I’ve lived between 
the spaces where fate has cast upon
the shadows thrown by the darkness of lives I’ve known.

Behind my face shines a halo
a glow of a shadow
from a life once mine I used to know
but which has now since ceased to flow.

I further mused as I was taught, thinking:

Did Christ himself not descend to hell
and into the graves where martyrs fell?
Why I know there is real darkness in me
without which I may have never come to be.

Christ might have died so we were told
claiming salvation for the sins of the world.
But was it not the former right hand of god
Lucifer who became light bringer?

So what does it matter if Christ later
descended to the land of the dead?

For who knows what kindness is offered in hell?
Eternal life, love, salvation, it all means well
easy promises for the suffering of the living
but can you offer it for the grieving 
of those who stopped breathing?
Not to the pretend damned on earth who can yet find redemption
but those in hellfire to the end of time facing true damnation.
What preaching or sermons
miracles and parables
can you offer to the vagaries of endless afterlives?
That is the real measure of any niceties
claimed in the name of grace and good kindness
 

Part II: The Devil at the Crossroad


I reached a path from crossing a distant desert, thinking:

I have been where nothing lives
to know life and the pain it gives
a journey to a directionless destination
few know its path and fewer tread the road in trepidation

Treachery deceit and other malice to scorn
vices I’ve known since the day I was born
is it a wonder why the cloak I’ve worn
is worn from all the time it’s been torn

Sometimes my motives are sinful
I’m not proud nor always shameful
of words or actions which gave rise to enemies
making me witness the great battles of the ages

From mighty serpents fighting proud eagles
to the unfolding of time which lays waste to the greatest victories

I walked with death which roamed the sea
          but now walks the streets in an easy swift
shrouded in black armour for all to see
yet many remain surprised by death’s sudden visit 
They fail to learn of mushrooms which coloured the sky 
          when men became destroyer of worlds
giving light to dark clouds which made generations cry
          until fading wounds of pain grew old
But wait I have not become death 
only darkness which showed the meaning of faith
and light in a cave lighter than most will ever know
in places with the terrors many would never dream to follow


Part III: Salvation’s Prayer


And in my heart I said a prayer:

For a face without a place
a sage without an age
rage in a cage
with softness masked with toughness
Born to follow sorrows which remember
promises of destinies whose days would be brighter
If you should forget the sound of laughter
know you once longed for a life so free
To dare, to be, the bravery of the will
learnt before the ice of winter turned ill
and not from the darkness of fire undone
which burns with the strength of the fiery sun

Your end is a tragedy unto its own
self-imploding like the death of all great stars gone
who never see their own end coming
only to learn their darkness in death’s holes blackening

And so I pray a prayer of repentance
for a lily-white flower caught in death’s remembrance
free from the weight of guilt’s embrace
accepting the courage and peace of grace

O what is light which has known no darkness 
a set of eyes which see with no awareness
what darkness illuminates under its own cloak
a gift of sight forgotten in the shadow of lost folk  

If it is to fate we resign our destiny
I choose my own by taking mastery
of the dark and unseen veil of eternity 
to weave chance, providence and chaos to a tapestry