Paul Weller shares the third of his poems, this time inspired by the Tao Te Ching.
Paul Weller writes:
Like my previous two poems that have appeared in the “Park Bench”, this one was also written quite a number of years ago now, in 1986, in different circumstances. It was originally inspired by reading the words of the ancient Chinese text of philosophical or religious Taoism, the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be defined in not the unchanging name.” In Chinese, the word 道 or Tao literally means, the “way.”
According to the Christian scriptural Book of the Acts of the Apostles, “the followers of the Way” was the name by which the earliest followers of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and teaching were known. For those who today try to live in that way, the humanity (rather than maleness) of Jesus is the most complete embodiment of the human face of that mystery at the heart of life which cannot be defined, while other religious traditions reflect and embody other aspects of that mystery.
Perhaps, as with the previous two poems, this poem can have some relevance for COVID-19 times, and maybe especially for the emergent easing of lockdown. In times such as the ones we have recently experienced, there is often a temptation to look for one kind or another of a “god in the box” to do magical things to get us out of trouble. But these have perhaps also been times during which that irreducible mystery, that in Western religious traditions has usually been labelled as “God”, has been set free from traditional imprisonments and has been coming out of lockdown ahead of us, indeed even in the midst of our own lockdowns.
God in a Box
The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name”
The Tao Te Ching, 道德经
What is this god in a box
Put away in our cupboards
And pulled out for tricks?
To excuse our excuses
And our failures to decide,
Our Daddy in the sky
And answerer of why.
What is this god in box
Bound by covers of leather
And pages of ink?
The god of our yesterdays
And deliverer from reason,
The freezing of living
Suspended in time.
What is this god in a box
Behind doors that are bolted
And steeples and spires?
That’s possessed by its owners
Who sell tickets for access
And then fight for his cause
To keep him alive?
What is this god in a box
But a puppet on a spring
That’s locked within a cell?
But with god in a box
It is we who are prisoners
And we won’t find the key
Till we set God free.
Paul Weller (1986)
