Forest (poem and explanation)

Background

At one point last year I went through an intense time of psychological suffering, based on a deep sense of shame about some past events.

Immediately after the worst of that time was over, I wrote this poem, which expresses self-loathing and helplessness about how terrible I am, and tries to begin a conversation with God.

The poem

Forest

This week I opened a drawer I've never opened before

Inside it there is a whole country covered in forest, burned by fire

Every living thing is rendered in black

The details are perfect and silent

A sick caricature sculpted by a demon

Who knows everything about life except what it is

Furious hell was here, but now even that is gone

You ask me to prophesy over this country

Anywhere else I could find some truth for

Some pale white shoot from a tortured limb

I look up to see the victorious warrior god king of this country

Riding home drenched in his own blood

Only asking me to speak the truth

Explanations

• I talked about opening a drawer because it felt like this particular great shame was always there, but I had hidden it from myself and never looked at it.

• The burned landscape tries to express how dead I felt inside, and how a saw evil at the core of my being, with no hope of something better. I felt at the deepest level I was a fake of a real person, just pretending to be like everyone else.

• A forest fire is something terrifying and intense happening ("furious hell"), but then what is left is silent, and nothing: no longer anything to fear, just dead.

• When I do public prayer in my local church I feel like my job is to make connections to people who are suffering, to express empathy and beg God to help, and to transform us into people who help. Some people have described me when I am doing this as like an old-testament prophet, speaking truth and allowing its power to change us. So can I speak truth to myself? Is God asking me to prophesy over my own life?

• If God were asking me to prophesy, would it be to speak words that bring new life, like when Ezekiel dreamt his words revived the desolate bones of the skeletons of his people? Can I imagine a new plant growing in the burned forest? That is what actually happens after a forest fire, but I never meant that part of the metaphor when I saw myself as burned and hopeless.

• The last part of the poem describes an image of God that struck home for me very sharply: the Jesus described in the last book of the bible, who is like a parody of the terrifying god of the older texts: in those older books God has slaughtered his enemies and we are supposed to celebrate (because they are actually our enemies), and he is covered with their blood. In this new picture of Jesus, the blood covering him is his own, and he has defeated evil by submitting to it, and allowing it to do its worst.

• Can this god who defeats by submitting, and who loves us by becoming us somehow rescue me from this total hatred of myself? If I'm supposed to prophesy, to me that just means speaking the truth, so what is the truth about myself? Certainly it's not true that I am beyond redeption, and worthless. Can I listen to that truth?

Forest