Dreaming of the Saints
an open letter to the righteous
In the dreams you have in your soft bed,
under your downy doona,
thinking you sleep the sleep of the righteous,
do you dream of the face of the Christ
hauled before temporal authorities
to give an account of himself
and see in that face the despised refugees
sleeping on hard beds behind prison walls,
waiting for the redemption that never comes?
Do you then groan with compassion?
In your ever-spinning dreams,
do you ever see the face of the Christ,
who told you the truth, was compassionate and just,
and who died on a harsh afternoon in the sun
to reconcile mankind and redeem them,
transformed into the faces of the prisoners
of conscience, held interminably
for telling the truth, having compassion
and fighting for justice, and dying to reconcile mankind
to their own deformed conscience?
Amongst all your dreams of pleasure
and riches, of meeting the mighty,
and eternity with god, do you see
the faces of all the saints and martyrs,
despised and rejected for bringing hope
and a warning to you and the masses,
transformed into the faces of the desperate poor
with no pleasure or wealth,
despised by the powerful and authoritative,
and rejected by the people who could be them tomorrow?
Have you ever dreamt of Jeremiah,
thrown in that lonely hole outside the city,
just for speaking the truth to a powerful king?
When you’re shifting about and moaning in your sleep,
dreaming of sex with supermodels or little boys
—things you’re ashamed to even think about—
or of rolling over for pleasure with your partner,
do you see the faces of the murdered women,
the orphaned boys and girls in church homes,
the beaten and battered gays or transexuals,
being transformed into the face of the battered Christ
hanging on a cross by the side of the road
waiting to die while people talk and laugh
and gamble for his clothes?
While you dream, reliving singing in church
with your brothers and sisters, sitting in their lounge room
drinking coffee and sharing a story and a prayer
while you study God’s Word,
do you see the faces of the homeless and hopeless
and wonder at the Christ saying that
he had no place to lay his head?
In the dreams I have, there is no Christ
but us, no saints but the powerless, the wealthy,
the god-fearing and the earth revering, the homeless
and the comfortable, the angry, the resigned
and the determined, all who groan with compassion,
work with justice, and have no heaven
except this, which is no heaven while a single
lonely one is left outside in the darkness of exclusion.
