Late Sunday Morning

Late Sunday morning
limbs aching from exercise stretched out
in front of my computer screen a mug
of steaming tea warming hands
I hear faint sounds and stop my reading
looking out the tiny window at the scratch
of leafless branch on glass  
that leads to murmur of distant bells,
music of the church down the road
that calls the faithful to the worship
my own faith will never let me share.

I wonder what they feel
those faithful souls sitting in
cold and unforgiving halls asses numbing
on bare wood following someone else's sermons
clutching ragged scripture
while preachers with
eyes made hard with fervor shout of
sin and death and retribution
and love only given as reward for slavish
cringe to jealous frowning god
are they righteous
do they feel its as right
as I feel its wrong way along
the opposite end of that spectrum
of belief; do they think of burning
everlasting damnation
souls armoured from fear of sin
as smooth as tempting silk
or are they thinking of the Sunday game
of newspapers and mashed potatoes
baked chicken
stuffing and green beans
thick with gravy on best china
families all hunched together
round their cooling dinners like
hungry feeding cats
oblivious to all.

I think they feel as safe as houses
safe as new-born babes in loving arms
all responsibility for self stacked neatly
under the limitations of somone
else's ideology
no need to think or choose or
even question any trials of
life or love or living
all is fated a predetermined
span of lifetime
until the One and Only
decrees it otherwise.

I'm envious for a minute;
I have to admit that it
would be an easy way to live a life
without hard thinking or tough choice,
everything gift-wrapped neat in
someone else's cupping hands
preordained predestined and protected
just keep the faith and give the money
and everything will be Okay.

A flicker of computer screen
shows SETI At Home beginning again
the screen saver opens and starts to
sift through reams of captured data
from the radio telescope array
a thousand miles away
graphing patterns sifting frequencies
looking for that spike of modulation from
light years out that says "we're here we're here".

Its funny how every time I start to think
of safe beliefs and how comforting
giving in to them would be
the grinning joy of god I really know laughs no
and pulls my wandering doubt back into certainty
I think it must be the same
for those that live within
the comfort of their own
punishing paternal god
But I'll never really know...

I click the mouse and take a sip of tea
no more screensaver the browser's back
but the search goes on
ticking in the background
and I return to reading,
the far-off church bells
punctuating
the sermon on the mount.