Arlene Corwin writes

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God

The atheist soldier or sailor who, drowning,

Calling for mama, God or plain help,

Have mind-sets identical:

Secular, temporal, wholly the same

As the pious and scriptural.  

Chemistry is the mysterious base,

Influenced as it is, neither by race

Or intelligence, 

Talent or grace.

Character, temperament, circumstance, background,

The mind/brain the same when conditions are right.

The fact is that Truths are the same, day or night.

Only the names are dissimilar.

Faith is a standpoint dependent on hope.

Not piety, dogma, nor doctrinal dope.

Everyone has it in some form or other -

Some more illusion than this, that, the other:

Money or status, or -isms or power.

Faith is invisible, chemical, personal.

In some strange way, though irrational, functional.

No one knows why, how it works, but it does.

It pays to have something in which you have trust.

Something to go to when all’s a big bust.

Or just because you can see through life’s illusion,

Which may be the reason you seek something true:

A something or one thing to go to because

Life has hinted at laws.

A something or someone that just doesn’t fade.

Sometimes one needs to believe in one God.

After the Shipwreck -- Gustave Doré

[Qui nescit orare, discat navigare (“He that cannot pray, let him go to sea”)  — John Trapp]