Garden of Affliction

wonderful poem!

nice parallel comparisons

It took a few times of re-read but I finally understood:

Into flame of judgement bound
Baking redemption's bread

This just feels a little indelicate. Likely my own poor taste?

I thought about that part too and was a bit unsure about how appropriate it is.

I'm not trying to imply that Jesus went to hell to suffer or anything like that (he said "It is finished" when he died). But he suffered the penalty that for us would have taken the form of hell (which is obviously described with fiery imagery in the Bible). And it seems plausible to me that there may have been dimensions of his suffering on the cross that went beyond the physically visible ones. Also, all kinds of adverse events can be described with fire, flame, etc in poetic contexts, so perhaps that part is not too problematic although one could misunderstand it. I did try to "soften" it a bit as I first put the word "fire" there but changed it to "flame".

But perhaps the main difficulty is rather with the phrase "baking redemption's bread"? Things that could be said in its defense would be Biblical descriptions of Jesus as the bread of life, the clear connection that he himself made between his atoning death, his body, and the bread at the last supper. His death was needed for our forgiveness, so at one level, the metaphor seems appropriate. But yet there is some sense in which it may seem inappropriate. I can't exactly figure out what it is. Perhaps some kind of sense of objectification or something.

One way to think about this would be that a poem about the suffering of Jesus and his death for our sake should be offensive in some sense as we may be prone to thinking of it in a too neat and "clinical" manner. But I'm very open to receiving criticism about this. Perhaps I misunderstood the sense of indelicateness that you found with this, or perhaps you take issue with some of my explanations given in this post. Please don't hesitate to give further input if that's the case.

The human face of God
Sweating drops of blood
Into flame of judgement bound
Baking redemption's bread

The vicarious divine rescue
Carrying the curse to bless you
Invading contested ground
Where no one could tread

Garden of affliction
For him to endure
For the sake of salvation
Of ones who lost the first

Bearing our ailment
To become its cure
Water of new creation
For ones dying of thirst

Quelling the flame of judgement
Becoming the bread of life

Teach me something please. What do you call the rhyming pattern?

The structure of it is supposed to be first AABC AABC and then switch to ABCD ABCD, although I break my own rule by not making the 9th line and the 13th line rhyme. I don't know if there's any official name for such a pattern (if you mean a name like "Ballad stanza" for ABCB pattern or others listed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyme_scheme ). Often I basically make up the pattern that seems to work best with my ideas during the early stage of poem construction, then just try to follow it or switch to another pattern in the middle of the poem, either to accommodate the words that I come up with or just to purposefully provide more variety.

I find that ABAB is perhaps the easiest pattern for me to follow, but it can be a bit boring, so sometimes I try to switch it up.

Quelling the flame of judgement
Becoming the bread of life

I spent only a few minutes on this as I need to take care of other things in just a moment, but with these lines it could be:

The human face of God
Sweating drops of blood
Quelling the flame of judgement
Becoming the bread of life

The vicarious divine rescue
Carrying the curse to bless you
Facing the legions of ravagement
Breaking through death's strife

Garden of affliction
For him to endure
For the sake of salvation
Of ones who lost the first

Bearing our ailment
To become its cure
Water of new creation
For ones dying of thirst