VX22

walking with the crowds
carried along by the pressing forward.
each one eager to get ahead
but each starting the same:
born as a baby, and from then on, struggling towards
meaning, power and influence.
be someone
be remembered
make a big impression.
leave some indelible mark in your 3 score years
and 10.

from birth, a struggle to find eternity, to burst
through life with such dazzling intensity, that
everyone will remember forever.
but walking the other way, picking out a route
against the crowds, a solitary figure passes me......
passes all of us - all straining away innocence, to
be someone,
and he passes us, a quiet chaos in the crowd.

Christ, eternal, omnicient, creator, beyond time,
source of wisdom and beyond petty claims of
influence...in very nature God, slips into reverse
and walks back past us - away from Kingship,
away from power, away from influence, away from
eternity, away from wisdom...toward infancy.
calmly stepping into the body of a tiny child.

and even as this baby grows, figuring out how to control
the body he himself designed, he still walks
the other way, realizing that life cannot be found in the
struggle for permanence, but in giving it up.

this Great Reversal subverts me. tired of pressing forward, i realise i need to turn, for what i have been searching for has just walked past me the other way.

(from 'signs of emergence' - VX22. emphasis mine)