The Pilgrim’s Quandary

 

I knelt, as ever, in the candle-glow,
Beads slipping slow through fingered prayer,
The incense curled, the chants did flow,
Yet—whence the Truth? Was it truly there?

Christ’s voice I heard, or thought I heard,
That kingly claim in Pilate’s hall—
“To bear the truth, to speak the Word,
I came, I come, I call, I call.”

And yet, the pews around me brimmed
With faces fixed, but seldom stirred;
Their eyes on banners, relics trimmed,
But not the flame within the Word.

The rites were fair, the vestments fine,
The creed recited, stern, complete—
Yet somewhere missed the living sign,
The wounded man cast on the street.

I marked the Samaritan—nameless, plain,
Who bent to lift, who bound, who fed;
No robe, no Latin, no ancient chain,
Yet truth seemed shining where he led.

“By fruits,” He said, “the tree is known”—
Yet here my root seemed set in stone;
Dogma sealed, but life half-grown,
A ritual husk, truth overthrown.

So what is Church? The walls, the creed?
The blood-warm hands that bind a need?
Or Christ’s own voice, that whispers still:
“Who heeds the truth shall heed My will.”

And there I stand, devout, yet torn—
Between the font where I was born,
And that wide road, untraced, untrod,
Where truth may lead—but truth is God.