Nightmare on Sunday Street

A poem that describes a place where many have worshipped, by Geoff Ryan

“A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world – and might even be more difficult to save.”
C.S.Lewis

“At every one of these concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it.”
George Bernard Shaw (“Man and Superman”)

“The great enemy of religion is not godlessness so much as matter-of-factness, not the spirit of some defiant antichrist but spiritlessness. After all, rebellion against God at least has some spark to it. But what is one to do with apathy, dullness, passivity, bordeom?”
Conrad Hyers

“Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee! Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained?”
Tagore

D ull unfocused eyes
Of the terminally preoccupied
Flaring nostrils
Mute testimony to stifled yawns
Stubborns acts of defiance
From reluctant early risers

Overplayed smiles
Crease soft, contented faces
Ponderously searching the unchallenging monologues
For the welcome alleviation
Of a humorous aside
Polished
Mistakeless
Effortless
Layer upon layer
Of ritual and habit
Irrelevently meander on
In the antiseptic hall

Each meeting utterly devoid of the unexpected
The air forlorn of tension
Of spiritual struggle
Of souls locked in cosmic combat
For eternal prizes
The only thing eternal here
Is the buzzing of a window-trapped bluebottle

There are no odd little people
With their idiosyncracies
Nor the disturbing presence
Of embarrassing fanaticism
That often lurks in the corners
Of such buildings
Nor the upsetting peculiarities
Of God’s Spirit

One counts the milliseconds
Till flight is made possible
Scurrying out to once more breathe the fresh air
Free from this turgid oppression
Able again to talk to God

Geoff Ryan, along with his wife, Sandra, leads Salvation Army Corps 614 Regent Park, a church in downtown Toronto where worship is not as described in this poem. Co-founder and co-editor of theRubicon and co-ordinator of the 614 network, Geoff is an accomplished essayist on church and faith whose writings have been published in books and magazines.

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