I don't want to be saved

An alternative message for Easter Sunday

Apr 20, 2025

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‘As soon as we had died, we decided to walk home.
… Forgive us for coming back. We didn’t travel all this way
to break your hearts. We came to ask if you might heal the world.’
—John Glenday, ‘The Walkers’

‘Why would I ask to be lifted up / when the ground smells so good?’ Photo by Gianluca Grisenti.

I don’t want to be saved

I don't want to be saved.
I don't want to be better than anyone else.
I don't want to shrink God
to the size of a doorway
through which some can enter
and some cannot.

No one should be made to feel unworthy
when they didn't ask to be here.

I don't want to hate the sinner or the sin;
if you want to distance yourself from Christ
you start by hating something.

I don't want to be saved.
Why would I ask to be lifted up
when the ground smells so good?
Why choose to bathe in heavenly light
when I could swim
through the dappled shade of a wood?

I don't want to become a refugee
from this world.
When someone convinces you
that a place isn't your home
you won't mind so much
if they destroy it.

I don't want to be saved.
I don't want to give thanks
to anything so full of wrath.
I don't want to worship a spiteful,
petty god, or give in to fear and shame.

Why would anyone's soul need to be purified
when it was made by love's bright flame?

I want to be
saved—
saved into wonder,
into the gorgeous flesh of this world;
saved so I can forever turn my soul
towards the beauty of which it is a part.

I want to be saved from a narrow mind
and a hardened heart,
saved so I can grow
into kindness
and generosity
and selflessness
and creativity.

I want to be
saved—
saved into the here and now,
into mindfulness,
heartfulness,
soulfulness;
saved from the shallows of distraction;
saved from any reality that is virtual,
augmented, artificial, or seen only
through the limp glare of a screen.

I want to be
saved—
saved from hatred, bitterness,
violence of thought and deed;
saved from a world that revolves around
myself, or an idea as pathetic as greed;

I want to be saved into slowness, gentleness,
into an open heart and mind,
saved into a belief that this world is good

and, well, worth saving.