Believing It Again Poem by gershon hepner

The difference between still
believing something and believing it again
can’t be explained until
joy is regenerated by relieving pain.

Edward Mendelson reviews “Auden and Christianity” by Arthur Kirsch in NYR (“Auden and God”, Decevember 6,2007) :

He raised the question of what answer a “man who professes himself a Christian” could give is asked, “Why Jesus and not Socrates or Buddha or Confucius or Mohammed? ” The only plausible answer he could imagine was: “None of the others arouse all sides of my being to cry, ‘Crucify Him.’” This was the furthest possible distance from the magical excitement that he had found in religion as a child; and in later years he made a point of quoting Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: “There is a great difference between still believing something and believing it again.” All his beliefs were beliefs again.

11/25/07