What the Hay

My God

People -- what have you done --
locked Him in His golden cage.
Made Him bend to your religion --
Him resurrected from the grave.
He is the god of nothing --
if that's all that you can see.
You are the god of everything --
He's inside you and me.
So lean upon Him gently
and don't call on Him to save you
from your social graces
and the sins you used to waive.
The bloody Church of England --
in chains of history --
requests your earthly presence at
the vicarage for tea.
And the graven image you-know-who --
with His plastic crucifix --
he's got him fixed --
confuses me as to who and where and why --
as to how he gets his kicks.
Confessing to the endless sin --
the endless whining sounds.
You'll be praying till next Thursday to
all the gods that you can count.

_________________________________

Again, the album Aqualung made me think, not just follow blindly. I had just been through the bitterness of believing so deeply, only to have those I followed display hypocrisy of the highest level to justify their personal racist beliefs. Not only is this song not an attack on God, it is a defence of God. And it appeared in my life just in time to stop my spiral into non-belief. I owe a lot to Ian Anderson. I never misunderstood the meaning, but you can guess that those who were as thoughtless as the leaders of my church would have surely misunderstood. I used to sing this song bitterly, especially the line "Don't call on him to save.........you from your social graces..." It reminds me of Bob Dylan's famous pronunciation of "Suc.......cess" in it's cleverness at exposing hypocrisy. Yet, Anderson's pause is made just a bit more musically satisfying with the beginnings of the hard guitar movement, which serves to give reason for the pause, and yet to also highlight the descent into the bitterness that follows.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the reason I'm still here is only because it took this long for me to put together the belief that now lives so strongly and deeply within me. Only the entirety of my life could have brought me to this understanding. My recent struggle with sickness...perhaps there has been more guidance than I have ever realized.

I don't doubt at all that it began when I lay down on my parents bed and picked up that book off of the vacuum cleaner box that served as a nightstand and read "In the beginning..."