Is this a lament worthy of your attention?

Question

Agnostic's Lament

by C.S. Scotkin

Imploring hands reach,

soul pleads innocence,

charges of emptiness

roll in nothingness.

Imploring hands raw

too much washing.

where is knowlege?

what is truth?

“ Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani”

Answer 1

My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me. I love those lines, they are beautiful, and fraught with despair. Yes, this lament is worthy of my attention, and anyone's attention who believes in the God of love and knows that he exists. Where is knowledge, what is truth? Truth is only found through faith, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.

The subject of this poem is never forsaken. God does not turn his back on us, we turn our backs on him, and then blame him for it. Go figure, humanity. Beautiful words, so poignant, and passionate.

Answer 2

One of our group asked a similar question very recently. Part of my response was, "There is no Truth." Our Captain says, "Booty is truth, truth booty."  My religious tradition teaches that we are "partners" with the Creator. Some questions are insoluble.

And oh yes, the poem--it has an excellent core idea; you could do something fascinating with it.

Answer 3

My God, My God...

Part of one of the statements on Golgotha. I like S2s reference to Pilate. This might be something you could expand.

Answer 4

You have my attention CS.

I might have entitled this Seeker's Lament.

I am of the opinion that this voice is not an Agnostic but a Seeker of Truth, who somehow suspects there may be a God. There is more test of faith in this poem than questioning of disbelief.

But since this is not R&S, it is a marvellous poem because it evokes our own q & a's. There is more to explore here on many levels.

Evadne - bless your heart!

Answer 5

Getting deep here, I had to do a quick research on Eloi....  Wash your hands of the truth but of what truth?  Is faith a term that Agnostics do not accept because of its definition or because to them it has yet to be proved?  While our knowledge today is far different than say 200 years ago, we still in the end question and wrestle with basic tenants of faith.  Interesting poem for what it starts the mind thinking about.  Very nice.

Answer 6

Terrific agnostic anthem, a piece of considerable philosophical depth...what we lament is the shifting center of our philosophical universe; life for us is bhairavananda, the bliss (ananda) of what is awesome or terrible (bhairava), the full acceptance of which makes us reach out, like children, and proffer a question many times repeated, for which there is no answer.  This is the question of the Enlightenment, which marked a turning away from the blind theism of the Reformation -- there is no turning back.

Is there a lesson in the Lisbon quake?

A hermeneutics for the Holocaust?

Reflective catechizing's tempest-tossed

And impotent to ever such unmake.

The answers -- if you knew -- could not be borne

In comfort, is not Job your nuncio?

A bleak survivorship's your quid pro quo,

The Hobson's choice that each must make unsworn.

And in the ruinous aulnage of the years

Is there a salve, or savagery alone

To soothe a heart grown hard and desolate.

Amid Time's auguring are all your fears

Worn more, or less, rough 'neath the grindlestone?

And is your crown of thorns an amulet?

Thank you for a terrific poem.