Fractal Theologies

(Easter weekend is either the best or worst time to post this poem, we'll see)

1.
I try to explain Christianity
to my Chinese friend
who knows nothing 
of religion but has 
read the Diamond
Sutra, Laozi, Jung, a million
other thinkers. 

2.
If you go far enough
into religion, out past
platitudes and precepts
and personal absolution,
you arrive on Mystery’s
shores. If you go far
enough into science, beyond
microbiology and astrophysics
and all that is known or can be,
you arrive on Mystery’s
shores.

3.
Because she asks, 7 a.m. 
on a Saturday, Christians 
believe we’re all born 
guilty, right? And I say, mostly,
but not all—
and the story doesn’t say
precisely that, ‘the Bible’
and ‘Christian theology’ not 
being quite the same. 

4.
What’s the difference?
The words and the meaning, 
the story and its reading. A guy 
named Paul. Millennia 
of interpretations, translations,
traditions, fanfictions. Origins 
lost to sand but inscribed
in chromosomal theology. 
There was no apple.

5.
A Sufi friend in the department
asks what I believe. I don’t know
how to say the boxes all fold
outward, the spectra 
in the wrong plane.

6. 
I plot the points
of my reverse 
Pascal’s Wager. My loyalties
Compassion over Creed, Love 
over Control, Mystery over 
Fauxcertainty, 
Mercy over 
God.

7. 
I’m not a saint, just
asymmetrical  
on everyone else’s 
slipping axes. 

8. 
What they call fact
is an unsolved 
unsolvable. Requires nine
more dimensions than
Cartesian coordinates
offer. How do you encase
in equation Being that 
has no equal? This
is multivariable 
calculus taking a walk
in an undersea forest. 
Nonlinear geometry 
with poetry for numbers. God 
is a polynomial with fractals 
for cells. You make
up an answer or make 
peace with the 
questions.

9. 
I have already said
too much.

---

Friendship, another great mystery. Photo by Kendra Fiddler, March 2026

What are you thinking about on Easter weekend, friends? What is your relationship with mystery?

Spring beauties found this morning. Photo by Kendra Fiddler, April 2026