An ancestor couples faith with technology

Copyright 2007, Jerry W. Engler

Last night as I lay dreaming
back deep through the gray folds of time,
the clear, soft voice of a woman
called to me from 1873.
Familiar yet forgotten
through the relation connections
of the primal, spiritual mind,
it was my own great, great grandmother
calling out to me
from the year the typhoid took her,
from 1873.

I know she said very gently,
carressingly to keep me asleep,
you think that you don't know me,
I wasn't alive in your time,
and your mind can't accept
that you're hearing from me
from 1873.

Just open your heart to listen,
let me have this small piece of your time.
You can't imagine the searching
for faith in the agonies of my world.
You can't imagine how hard it all was
when the proofs of your day were not there.
For the gifts of your science
have laid the keys to know
of heaven and of hell.
How easy for you to have faith.
Why oh Lord wasn't it there for me
in 1873.

You know I cannot believe
that you listen to a box
that carries tunes through the air.
Electromagnetism you call it
that gives that thing called TV.
You talk to people all over the world
on wires or the cellular phone.
Imagine the things that surrounded us
that we had no receivers to see
here alone in the dust
in 1873.

You have machines that fly through the air,
machines that fly up to the moon.
We had trains and horses
here on the ground,
and ships upon the sea.
You even have machines
to expand your thinking.
We never had such things as you
in 1873.

You have scientists and experts
with proof for you
that all breaks down to particles
that finally converge with light
until you don't know what's solid,
and what's energy,
what's science,
and what's theology,
alternate universes and dimensions,
the relativity of time,
the proofs are all before you.
Wish to God we'd had them too
in 1873.

What's this, our connection's weakening?
But it's so easy for you to believe.
Yet you're letting me go
because you can't accept
I'm talking to you
from 1873.

Jerry W. Engler