The Word of God

[kuangning]

From desert cliff and mountaintop we trace the wide design,
Strike-slip fault and overthrust and syn and anticline...
We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found;
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate beneath the ground.
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.
Men wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.

There are those who name the stars, who watch the sky by night,
Seeking out the darkest place, to better see the light.
Long ago, when torture broke the remnant of his will,
Galileo recanted, but the Earth is moving still.                 
High above the mountaintops, where only distance bars,
The truth has left its footprints in the dust between the stars.
We may watch and study or may shudder and deny,
Men wrote the Bible; God wrote the sky.

By stem and root and branch we trace, by feather, fang and fur,
How the living things that are descend from things that were.
The moss, the kelp, the zebrafish, the very mice and flies,
These tiny, humble, wordless things -- how shall they tell us lies?
We are kin to beasts; no other answer can we bring.
The truth has left its fingerprints on every living thing.
Remember, should you have to choose between them in the strife,
Men wrote the Bible; God wrote life.

And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade       
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand:
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Men wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.

Comments

[rbos.livejournal.com]

excellent. Do you have other Kathy Mar songs? She's got some really good ones - "Goodbye to Sol and Terra", "Acts of Creation", and lots of others.

[kuangning]

I have a couple, but nowhere near as many as I'd like.

[rbos.livejournal.com]

email me - rbos@sfu.ca - and I'll give you a URL with lots.

[aki-dreaming.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. That is wonderful! Thank you!

[kuangning]

You're welcome. If you don't have a copy, there's one here. I've tweaked the last line a little to fall in with the Leslie Fish version I heard first.

[rbos.livejournal.com]

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/803.html

[kuangning]

Thanks. :)

[saizai.livejournal.com]

Lemme guess - FOAF from deyo?

[kuangning]

Not quite. :) I lurk on the empaths community, and liked what I've seen of you. The double connection through deyo and being_angyl (sneaky there, the connection's through zorbathut) just cemented the decision. :)

[saizai.livejournal.com]

Ah. Well, howdy.

(Have you seen empathsnark? :-P)

[saizai.livejournal.com]

Er. dot_empathsnark.