Poetry that makes you say, "Hmmm", part 3

This is the third and last in my series of wonderful and mind-bending poems that were selected by Andrew Imbrie for his Cantata, Adam. This music was performed by the Cantata Singers on November 10 of this year.

This is the fifth and final piece in Part I, and is the most direct about being intentionally confusing.

A God and Yet a Man?
A god and yet a man?
A maid and yet a mother?
Wit wonders what wit can
Conceive this or the other.
A god and can he die?
A dead man, can he live?
What wit can well reply?
That reason reason give?
God, truth itself, doth teach it.
Man's wit sinks too far under
By reason's power to reach it.
Believe and leave to wonder.

I love this stuff! For some reason, I find the fact that my mind is not capable of grasping the full nature and work of God to be delightful. I gave a talk at church about this early this year. It was basically a riff on how God's infinity trumps our ability to get to the bottom/top/end of things he as created. I had a ball giving it – it felt more like worship than much of anything else I have ever done.

Every once in a while, I wonder why I have such a visceral reaction to this sort of thing. I seriously get ga-ga over it! Something about my wanting a frontier that cannot be conquered. Similarly, I get really rebellious when faced with a systematic theology – any claim that the Church fully understands how we are to think about God and about ourselves in relation to God. I guess I was born to be a postmodernist, even though I was a little early. Or maybe a mystic, just a little late.

"Believe and leave to wonder"