Good Friday Meditation Alchemy Of Pain Poem by James Tipp

How do we make sense of it all?
What is it about the cross that makes us shudder?
We have many finer more painful ways to inflict cruelty,
We have made mass destruction an art form of technology.
We have witnessed the self destructive power of elitism,
Unleashed into millions of wisps of smoke that hang in history.
We have found a way to inform our conscience daily,
Then found a way to ignore the cries of those who we see suffer.
So what makes the cross the pivotal point of our experience?
Why should it hold such a power over our imaginations?
Why from this lonely wooden stump crudely made by man
Should suffering cease to hold its power over us?
In our seeking after the ultimate one we call God
In our longing not to be alone in this vast creational order
We took the ultimate in love and compassion seen among us
Condemned him to the loneliness that we now feel and experience
We lost ourselves in finding the answer we did not want
So made nonsense of him and nailed him to a cross
The word made flesh that made us walk a path
More lonely than we have ever been.
Yet in the darkness we call death, a light will shine
Overcoming the wisps of smoke made by man.
Overcoming the technology of the masses piled so high
Is hope, a hope that takes us beyond the horizons of humanity
Into the light that turns the wood of destruction
To the bright light of gold in three days.