Alan Nordstrom

Whether or not there’s God, we know what’s good;Some things we shouldn’t do and some we should:We know it’s always better to be kindThan cruel; another rule to keep in mindIs what we do to others will come backTo recompense our love or haunt its lack.We know our Earthly purpose is to flourish,Become our truest selves, and then to nourishThat same self-realization in all others,Regarding fellow creatures as our brothers.We know these truths implicitly withinOur souls, encrusted though they be with sin;Yet mindful mining of that buried goldIs how we let our godliness unfold.

If we could pick the lock of every brainAnd know the hidden motives of our sins,We’d see that all offensiveness beginsAs recompense for some infernal pain.All evils are the deeds of the insaneFor malady and wickedness are twins;Salvation is the salve that heals our sins,Relieves our wound, and then removes its stain.That heal and health and holiness are oneAt root reveals there’s curing to be done.

How Reason and Emotion might colludeAnd then collaborate for our own goodIs just that philosophic attitudeThe ancients advocated, as we should.Emotion is an energetic horseThat, wild and rampant, brings us all to griefAnd Reason must constrain to keep on course,Establishing command and being its chief.Yet Reason by itself is hard and cold,Lacking Emotion’s fires to inflameThat passion and affection which draw goldFrom cruder ore, which is our human aim.If we would be perfected in our lives,We must then reconcile contrary drives.

What else is there for us but to advance,Defining progress as our end and aim,Unless we view our history as a danceMoving through complex patterns like a game.The case for progress claims we shall evolveAnd though we’ll wreak great havoc on the Earth,We know that growing wisdom can resolveOur wicked waywardness and prove our worth.The other way of seeing us revealsThat souls recycle through their worldly rounds,Life after life, and play the hands Fate dealsWithin a pattern of fixed rules and bounds.The end of all our revolutions showsThe place where we began is where we’ll close.

However we’ve arrived here—here we are,Composed of matter from a distant star,Assembled by some universal lawsTo wonder, of ourselves and all, our cause.How did we come about, and for what reason,And why are we so full of flaws and treason,Unfaithful to ourselves and cruel to others,Though knowing in our souls we are all brothers?Is Being but a hapless accidentOr made with some mysterious intentWe’re charged to comprehend and realizeIn theories that our heads and hearts devise?I say we’re here, invested as we areWith love, to be the Kosmos’ Superstar.

Behave yourself!” our mothers used to say,Though how could we do other than behave,Behavior being whatever we might do,As anthropologists define mores?“And act your age!” we’d be admonished, too,As if our way of living were a roleAnd life a play in which we’d act a partWith predetermined lines fixed in a script.But things are different now, and we’re equippedTo live more freely than was once allowed,Since existentialists have cracked the doorThat leads us to explore new ways to be.Though this has bred behaviors some deplore,We’re free now to grow better and be more.

Here is a difficult philosophy:“You are at every moment doing your best;Could you do better then, you’d meet that test;As is, you are as good as you can be.”Yet that precept leaves out morality,Which understands our goodness as a questWhere only ardent struggle proves us blestAnd beating down our demons sets us free.Is fighting sin, then, our imperativeAnd being a warrior how we ought to live,As Christian soldiers marching off to war,Because we know we’re rotten at our core?Or can we see we have no moral goalBut merely need to realize we’re whole?

To love ourselves no more than we love othersTreating all souls as sisters and as brothersIs an ideal we nearly always failTo realize: it is our Holy Grail.How can we then transcend self-interest,Devoted to the Highest and the Best,Without regard for our own primacy,But universal in our charity?To act like that our egos must dissolve,Those suns around which all our thoughts revolve,Or be exploded like a burst balloon,For otherwise our world will come to ruin.The time is nigh to take “the greatest strideOf soul” our race must make—and banish pride.

“True affluence is not needing anything.”What right have we to own more than we needSo long as someone else is going without?This has to be the fundamental creedOf our humanity, I cannot doubt.True affluence, as Gary Snyder said,Is needing nothing—lacking only need:Shelter, clothing, rest, and daily bread,Good health, companionship, we’re all agreed,Are absolute human necessities,Yet we need more than that to be humane,For only justice with compassion freesOur souls from avarice and leaves us sane.We are a greedy breed who’ve still to learnTo make the needs of others our concern.