Doctrine can never be belief. Doctrine
is one means only to register belief,
like a job interview conducted briefly
or census taker who never sees the tin
of steaming tamales, much less tastes them.
He makes his tallies, door to door without relief.
Sometimes doctrine is most felt as a grief,
hard in the bones or sorrow's marrow when
prodigious clumps of cells become prolific.
The other part is like a funny gift,
there in your bones as well, but lonelier, late,
sent from a shipping station far in the distance.
Opened but barely known, it still irradiates
your every admiration for existence.
May 17, 2014
—Brett Foster
Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine. Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.
