Credo A Poem and Introduction by Charles Bryant

I'd like to explain my position on religion since the subject arises spontaneously in my poetry. I was born into the Anglican Church and remained sympathetic to it in my early years. But as I grew older I realised that no separate religion could answer to my view of this world and the world beyond our mundane lives. I love many things about Anglcanism, just as I love many things about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and the whole Judeo-Christian spectrum. There is no religion that does not throw light on the universal questions. But I make a difference between religion and spirituality. The religions are many, but spirituality is one even though it bear the tinge of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam. I think it is very much apparent that the truly spiritual of whatever religion (or, in fact of none, because you don't have to belong to a specific religion to be spiritual) all speak in a similar manner and all understand one another. Spirituality is the basis of all religion, but the truly spiritual have a universal approach and cannot be dogmatic because this is not their nature. Next I want to say a few words about the God concept in relation to my poetry. I do not think of God as being separate from ourselves, and I am sure no true religious would see Him thus. I say 'Him' but of course God has no gender. But speaking of God in the abstract is not really a good idea, because God is so very personal: personal because He is Us and We are Him. I believe that everything and everyone is God. I believe that there is in effect nothing BUT God. The idea of a lonely man cut off from the universe by his sense of selfhood is a desperate one indeed. Some people of course do see themselves like this. But 'God' is only a word, meaningless in and for itself. Words are just words and not things, representations and not the thing itself. And if God is everything, and everything is God, the use of the word becomes superfluous. And yet we are thinking beings and seem to need to communicate with each other, so we have to use words, however approximate they may be. So I must explain my concept of God - and that is very very difficult! I would explain it by not using religious terms or references at all, much as I love them. The German philosopher Schopenhauer spent his whole life trying to explain what he meant by 'The Will' which corresponds to what most other people think of as God. He recognised, as have many others, that perhaps the nearest philosphical approach to this idea was made by the Indian schools of philosophy in conceptual terms, although of course these 'philosophical' conundrums are the basis of all religious movements. Schopenhauer too recognised, as did the various religions, that the world (by which we mean absolutely everything) is a Unity. Of course, we, as created separate organisms (I mean created by our parents) see mostly the apparent diversity that surrounds us on every side. But Schopenhauer contends, as do the Indian religions with their concept of Maya, that this is an illusion. Our own William Blake knew and sang all about this too, although the Indian influence probably reached him through the teachings of Swedenborg. So, since this is a long set of ideas, and I have as yet hardly begun to stir the surface, I must close by reading a poem I wrote just a short time ago which sets out my feelings and thoughts on the subject with the hope that this preface has supplied just a little illumination. Credo There's one true Church alone: the human heart. It is an organ, singing night and day the praises of our living God, our Lord. The Lord is in the Temple, at the head of the single body. We send our life-blood flowing to that source, that soul, that thread on which the universe is strung, that fountain-head of everything, that Us. There is no separation, no division, no breaking down to individual cells, no parted souls. Either we are Unity or Nothing. And even Nothing is eternal God. We have a single body, a single soul. Division is apparent and not real, the weakness of discriminated mind, the sickness of the desiccated spirit. In health, there's only Universal Man: He is Us; we're Him, the living Lord. And even sickness is a sign of God.

YouTube | March 11, 2008