This Love In-forms Me

I will praise God in whatever form I choose,
in whichever tongue as I am moved,
I will praise God.

There is nothing exotic in it or strange,
this love informs me what to speak,
with what gesture or movement,
praising God.

At the core of all worship
is this love which informs me.
Embracing all Humankind
in this empathy, I submit
to the source of this love
which informs me.

Were Christianity's own Fountainhead
a raider who'd massacred and raped,
who'd deceived and beheaded,
whose vengeful, wrathful example in this manner
were glorified by multiple early biographers
setting the tone of what should be followed,
were he promoted as a despot unquestioned;

were his teachings and instructions in times
of weak numbers in direct contradiction
to those in times of greater force,
the end effect being conquest by the sword:
I'm afraid I'd quite have to distance myself
from both him and his example.

However, as he was and remains for all time,
rather the very embodiment of this love
which informs me, coursing through my every fiber,
uniting my blood with his, steeling my nerves,
filling my sinews with his might, my heart with awe:
how can I but love him?

The One in Whom we live and move and have our Being,
shows His countenance to me through just this,
this love which informs me.

And this one whose own form had lived at a distant time
in a distant place and has never left but is everywhere -
his love it is which so informs me, that I, with all my faults
and all my shortcomings, may inform others, bearing witness
merely by breathing with him, and being as I am.

His birth is my birth, his blood my blood, shed for me;
his death is mine, as is his resurrection, I own my faith,
and I call myself neither Jew nor Christian -
but one thing I do know:

After all my past training, however complete or not,
I am here with both feet walking, and cannot stop singing;
neither hopes nor fears rule me, nor the prescriptions of others
can tell me in what form or manner or tongue I should bend my knee,
only this love informing me, day and night, every breath and every step.

No zeitgeist may intimidate me, for this love is conscious,
steady and awake, present now, present regardless
of what darkness befalls, what ignorance, what evil moves
about us and over us.

It is all that I have, unborn and undying, a flame in my belly,
his soul is the light of the universe, and that suffices.
His mark is this love - I'll say it once more:
this love which informs me.