What is Illusion and Reality?

A Poem, By Joy Aletheia Stevens

~

I fight between reality

And the worlds in my mind.

Which is more real?

What is the design?

~

Reality seems

But an illusion to me.

So strictly touchable,

This world that I see.

~

I long for the deepness,

Hidden in the soul.

That deep searching quest

Makes me feel whole.

~

For to look through only eyes

Is to not really see.

But it is true, that in only the idealized,

One simply cannot be.

~

But life frightens me,

With its stark realities.

Can’t fact give way to fiction?

But does thought hold immortality?

~

My war seems between

World and Emotion,

Reason and Evidence,

And Beautiful Imagination.

~

For I can Reason Love away,

With facts and mathmatition.

Let it take my heart away,

Wrong in my passionate admissions.

~

Or isn’t there really something more?

Than my mind can see or world can hold?

Something hidden in the deepest heart,

Where Faith and Love unfold?

~

So I fight to find a balance,

Between illusion and reality.

I stand astride a border,

Between the mortal and immortality.

~

But maybe there is another way,

More simple, pure, and with less heartache,

To give in to a Greater One,

Who understands my fate.

~

And He will reason higher,

Where my mind cannot go.

And His dreams will be wider,

Than I could ever know!

~

And I’ll just let go,

And trust with simple faith,

And like a child I’ll know,

That His is the only way.

~

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:20,25

I wrote this poem back in 2006, and recently rediscovered the notebook it was in. The cry of my heart here is so much still the same. I long to see past the sheerness of this world into the depth of His. I’m a mind that likes to think and reason, but constantly finds reason a poor substitute for poetry and music.  And I find, constantly, that in the end, it is all beyond me, and that is good.

Joy Aletheia Stevens