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THE TEST

The Church which
pushes me
like an engine
chugging along -
I wonder sometimes
am I become
an automaton?
It is so easy
here where
everything is done for me,
all that beauty,
to seem to be
in Paradise, but
imagine Adam,
returned again
to Paradise, imagine
the overwhelming joy of it
and yet
also the pain, the
reminder everywhere
of the loss, of the occasion
of the loss, and so
the test is not just
joy, the test
is joyful sorrow.

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