The mainline institutional sprinklers tried to purge me
of deep grief by metaphorically dunking me
in the name of the Holy Trinity
except they just wanted to get rid of me
and get on with getting on with their
capitalistic inspired religious institutionality.
They had given me —
a year, an institutional generosity,
but I was only hitting on six of eight
when they ran out of patient religiosity
and told me of my fate.
And so I saved them the trouble;
I resigned and amidst all their grumble and mumble,
said I would follow Jesus if that were no trouble.
They said, “Be our guest.”
And, by the grace of God, it has all been for the best.
I have tried to follow Jesus
and they have continued to seek institutional,
evangelical, capitalistic riches and blessings
even though
they were once taught
you cannot serve God and mammon
and they seek to avoid the inevitable, institutional attrition
while I, years and years and years later,
merrily have gone my way on and on and on
and they put millions of dollars switching
the front entrance to the back entrance
making the back the front and the front
a facade which still looks nice but
basically has lost its functionality
except for those few and far between
souls who still walk to worship.