Losing Religion and Finding God in The Day Zimmer Lost Religion :: Day Zimmer Lost Religion Essays

Losing Religion and Finding God in The Day Zimmer Lost Religion           capital of Minnesota Zimmers poem The Day Zimmer Lost Religion tells of the bank clerks respect and fear of Christ as a boy. He is immediately a man and dares to scrap Christ. The expected punishment does not occur, and Zimmer loses his faith in religion as he now perceives it.     The first stanza is about childhood fear of God. The narrator says, The first Sun twenty-four hours I missed Mass on purpose / I waited all day for Christ to climb down (1-2). Zimmer matte he deserved to be punished, to have Christ Club me on my irreverent teeth, to wade into / My blasphemous gut and drop me like a / rosy hot thurible (4-6). Zimmer clearly expects something terrible to happen, emphasized by the presence of a watching, anticipating Devil.     Stanza two is about rebellion. It was a long cold carriage from the old days (8). Zimmer would never have d ared to miss Mass in his younger years. Zimmer feels he has come a long room from his boyhood days, A long way from the dirty wind that blew / The smut fungus like venial sins across the schoolyard (11-12). Is the dirty wind the forces in life that we cannot control? Is the soot the flaws we begin to see in our elders as we grow older? Has Zimmer observed how weak man can be and questioned why God allows our transgressions? In the schoolyard, God reigned as a threatening, / One-eyed triangle high in the fleecy dispose (13-14). Does Zimmer feel God had reigned high in the sky and observed each sin we do? He equates the schoolyard with the world. Zimmer knows the minor sins of the schoolyard. God knows the sins of all.     The last stanza is about mature faith. Zimmer repeats that he waited all day for Christ to climb down . . . and pound me / Till me irreligious tongue hung out (16-19). Zimmer seems to feel that Christ is obligated to punish and that in detail He even enjoys it. Zimmer never mentions a God of love is this why he feels there must be more to religion than what he knows now? In the last two lines, Zimmer tells us, But of course He never came, knowing that / I was grown up and ready for Him now (20-21).