Watershed -- FWE About Face

Watershed

In my Catholic school,

I didn’t learn the Golden Rule,

But I knew it well all the same.

I committed instead to memory

My catechism and said my rosary

And did them in God’s good name.

I was no little kid fool.

I played my role as God’s tool

And hedged my bets against Satan’s flames,

Though troubled by apparent disparity

Between what I was taught and reality,

A cataclysm’s what changed the game.

For many the Bible’s a jewel,

And Noah’s ark, for example, is cool,

Though the story’s really quite lame.

Noah saved all that stock for posterity,

But the flood was no act of charity.

It was terror rained down in God’s name.

I’ve mentioned the great Golden Rule

That seems part of our genetic pool,

But God seems immune to its fame.

Given the Bible’s popularity,

Films were made to show it with clarity,

Leaving a young boy never the same.

The big screen revealed just how cruel

Was the boiling indiscriminate gruel

That drowned the innocent, the weak, and the lame.

With the carnage unfolding so horribly,

There’s no way it was done justifiably.

By comparison Stalin seems tame.

Wide-eyed at this flickering spool,

I questioned God’s credentials to rule

Or even exist without bearing the blame.

I carried this scene in my memory

And rejected catechism and rosary

As well as God in God’s name.

Chris Brockman