Commons image
By Jim Aitken
‘And Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own tomb, which he had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed.’ – Matthew 27:59-60
- THE BURIAL
It begins by slowly blocking out the light
by making the stone secure
so that darkness can reign supreme.
It can be done ever so imperceptibly
that no-one seems to realise it is happening
yet the process continues and continues
Down through all ages into our own one
the darkness blocking out the light,
the light in constant retreat against the dark.
Darkness by design as constant diversion
from seeking after the light that awakens
and seeks to remove all stones that impede.
Plato put it more pertinently. For him it was easy
to forgive a child who is frightened of the dark,
the tragedy was when we are all afraid of the light.
Fear of the light as fear of breaking rank,
fear of the false comfort of conformity despite
how that conformity is constantly manipulated,
Endlessly manufactured for our consent
as the hidden manufacturers carry on creating
further darkness, further fear, further profits.
- THE STONE REMOVED
And they were saying to one another, ’Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?’ And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back; for it was very large. – Mark16:3-4
For they have always sought to bury our leaders,
bury any alternative modes of thinking, anything
that challenges the interruption to how things are.
Yet like water, light can seek out the cracks, openings
that inevitably appear. For it enables seeds that blow
to regain the concrete for grasses and for flowers.
All the systems have had cracks and for Cohen, ’That’s
how the light gets in.’ No large stone can keep out
the light, no rock is as powerful as our humanity.
The rock exists to keep out the light and, in its place
we are offered false needs and goals, a kind of
individualism for the masses that lays failure at ourselves.
The heroes we are given, James Bond, Ethan Hunt and all
the Eastwood characters, simply keep the stone intact
working to create within us gallstones of the mind.
And the invisible gallstones of the mind, nurtured through
every aspect of our lives, lead to pain and suffering, lead
to the confusion and chaos that is ripe for cracks to appear.
And that crack is here today, here for us to remove the stone
that traps us all, traps all those scapegoated, marginalised
and demeaned to help resurrect our common humanity.
