(tomorrow is my day to reject all media, so I thought I'd send this tonight.)
13.
God around the Edges
I DRIVE HOME
I drive home through pain, through
suffering,
through death itself.
I drive home through Cat-scans and
blood tests
and X-rays and Pet-scans (whatever they
are)
and through consultations of surgeons
and oncologists
and even more exotic flora with medical
degrees.
I drive home through hospitals and
houses
and the wondrous work of hospice nurses
and the confusion of dozens more
educated than me.
Dressed in green scrubs and
Transfiguration white coats,
they discuss the life or death of
people I love.
And they hate, more than anything, to
lose the hand
to the greatest Poker Player ever, the
one with all the chips.
And, here’s the joke, they always
lose in the end—
the River Card turns it all bad and
Death wins.
So, while they consult and add
artificial poison
to the Poison of Death—shots and
pills and IV’s
of poison—I drive home and stop in
vacant rooms
and wondrous houses full of memories
and dispense my meager, medieval
medicine
of bread and wine and oil.
Sometimes I think…sometimes I think…
I should not drive home at all
since I stop in hospitals and houses to
bring my pitiful offering
to those one step, one banana peel
beneath their foot,
from meeting the Lover of Souls.
I do not hate Death. I hate dying, but
not Death.
But it is often too much for me,
stopping on the way home
to press the wafer into their quaking
hands;
to lift the tiny, pewter cup of bad
port wine to their trembling lips;
and to smear their foreheads with
fragrant oil
while mumbling much rehearsed words and
wishing them
whole and well and eternal.
I believe in God only around the edges.
But when I drive home, visiting the
dying,
I’m the best they’ll get of all
that.
And when they hold my hand with tears
in their eyes
and thank me so profoundly, so
solemnly, with such sweet terror
in their voices, then I know.
Driving home and stopping there is what
I’m meant to do.
A little bread, a little wine and some
sweet smelling oil
may be—if not enough—just what was
missing.
I’m driving home, driving home,
stopping to touch the hand of Death.
Perhaps that is all I can do.
I tell myself that, driving home,
blinded by pain and tears,
having been with Holy Ones.
8/2007 jgb
Poetry, it has
always seemed to me (aging English Major that I am) speaks in code
and un-conceals truth with a lyrical ruthlessness. I had written the
line above that goes: “I believe in God only around the edges”
, and read that line several times before I realized being in “poem
mode” had stripped away decades of self-deceit and un-concealed an
abiding and profound Truth about me. I believe in God only around
the edges. What a stunning realization to a man of 60+ who has
been an Episcopal Priest for some 35+ years! What a dose of cold water
poured over my head. Prior to my third or fourth reading of that
line, which my subconscious wrote, I would have said, without fear of
contradiction: “I believe in God.” But now I know that is a lie.
Now I know I only believe in God around the edges.
Since the edgy God
I believe in is a master of irony, just today a dear friend asked me
if I’d read the article about how Mother Teresa (God Bless Her) was
haunted with severe doubts about the existence and reality of God
throughout her life of doing God’s work. The article, my friend
told me, promising to get it to me, was written by one of the recent
group of authors who have challenged “faith” to the point of
finding it the root of all problems in our suffering, darkling world.
“Just an example,” she told me, “of how ‘religious people’
are all frauds and fakes and worse than that.”
Irony piled on
irony—I had emailed the poem “Driving Home” to my friend the
night before she saw the article. And now, Mother Teresa, the
combination of Martin Luther King, Hildegard of Bingham and Gandhi,
had doubts! Who better, I commented, given all she saw and
worked with every day to have serious considerations about a God of
compassion, love and mercy? Who better to believe in God only around
the edges than Mother Teresa? Who better to doubt?
Here’s what I
know: I don’t believe in God ‘head-on’, rushing inexorably into
my life, running the Universe like the manager of a Target store,
slaying the unrighteous and guarding the faithful. I don’t believe
(whatever “believe” means) in the blood-thirsty and vengeful
Almighty of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I don’t believe, except
around the edges, in the God of the Nicene Creed—a collection of
random dogma if there ever was one. And—this is the killer, the one
to get me de-frocked after all these years—I don’t believe in the
petulant God who decided the Creation and human beings he/she/it
‘spoke’ into being in Genesis and destroyed in the Great Flood
were so despicable and un-holy that the only thing that would make
them somehow ‘fit’ to be in the Kingdom was if he sent his child
to be brutally murdered in their place.
I don’t believe
in the Doctrine of the Atonement, in other words. It is offensive to
me and reveals a childish and impetuous Deity. “Hey, you ‘chose’
these people as your own! Put up with them, for your sake!”
(I’m reminded on the little poem by Ogdon Nash: “How odd of
God/to choose the Jews.”) But since you chose them, don’t change
dance partners half-way through the party. And for all that is sacred
in heaven and earth, don’t demand the blood of Yourself—Your
son—to correct the problems! Get over it and move on—there might
be a design flaw in those created “in Your own image” and “just
a little lower than the angels” but that’s Your fault not theirs.
The God of the Old Testament reminds me of automobile manufacturers
in our own day who are so loathe to admit they made a design error
and re-call cars as if it were the fault of those who bought them.
That God also reminds me of the Chinese folks who have—in a
remarkably short period of time—be found to have poisoned animal
food, children’s toys and clothing. Just today they admitted their
fault but covered the bet by saying it was a result of a change in
regulations rather than the poison that they felt was ‘legal’
when they put it in food, painted toys with it and dipped clothing in
it. At least there is this: a few of the Chinese managers have
committed suicide to prove their commitment to ‘honor’. Yahweh
just kept killing off the enemies of the Hebrews, destroying the
world with water and deciding to have the authorities crucify the
second-person of the Trinity because of manufacturing mistakes. Hey,
put poison in dog food, lead in toy paint and formaldehyde in baby
clothing and someone will get hurt. Perhaps the God of A/I/J should
have taken a little responsibility for making Free Will part of the
factory package….
So, I believe in
God around the edges. Here’s a metaphor for that (don’t blame me
that all metaphors ultimately fail after making their point). Did you
ever have a bee—or worse, a wasp—show up in the front seat of
your car when you’re driving 75 mph in the third lane of an
Interstate? There you are, straining your fine motor skills to the
limit by driving a lethal weapon faster than it should be driven, and
suddenly there is a bee buzzing around your hands on the steering
wheel. There are several options. Crash into the divider and kill
yourself rather than get stung. Slam on the brakes and cause a five
car pile up, damaging lives other than your own, instead of getting
stung. Swerve across two lanes of heavy traffic to the break-down
lane and if you don’t kill yourself or somebody else, stop the car,
open all the doors and run around your car screaming like a banshee,
avoiding being hit by a twelve wheeler bearing down on you. Open your
windows and hope the little beast goes out. Start slapping at it with
a road map, careening madly across crowded lanes of traffic in front
of people who, truth be known, shouldn’t be allowed to drive to
begin with. Or, keep your speed up, hoping for an interchange in a
dozen miles or so that you can carefully cross the other lanes and
pull off at a Shell Station to deal with the bee.
If (as I hope you
will) you choose the last option—(using the Free Will Yahweh
shouldn’t have handed out so lavishly if He/She was going to regret
it later), you will have, before then, felt—whether true or not—the
little insect, make it a wasp instead of a bee since bees are so
fuzzy and loveable and wasps are the spawn of Satan, walking up your
leg with six sticky little feet toward your thigh. I forgot to tell
you it was summer and you had on shorts as you drove like a crazy
person down an Interstate with a wasp in the car.
Ok, that’s a
metaphor for how God most often shows up to me—just when I don’t
have the time or attention to give; just when I’m distracted by
vital things; just when I’m too busy to be disturbed.
It’s like the
story of the young monk and the wise old monastic. The younger monk
asks, “Brother, you have taught me to always be ready to receive
the Lord when he arrives in strange guises. But I am sometimes too
distracted or busy with my work and prayer and study and am not
hospitable to the stranger.”
The old monk smiled
and nodded his head. “That’s alright, my brother. Often when I
see the Lord coming at an inopportune time, I say to him, in my
annoyance, ‘Jesus Christ, is it you again!?’ Our Lord is
always ready to be welcomed—even when we are not feeling like we
can….”
A few months before
I retired, I was at a meeting in St. John’s library at 3 p.m. Four
of us were discussing a brochure we are creating to raise money for
capital improvements. I will take the opportunity to whine a bit
since Friday is what was occasionally referred to as “my day off”
and there I was sitting around a table, annoyed and out of sorts. No
one but the four of us were in the building, it being an August
Friday afternoon, but the last person in had not locked the door to
the Parish House so I heard it open. What a pain—not only am I
spending my day off talking about raising money—now I have to go
see who just walked into the building.
It was a young
woman named Rachel who was in tears and obviously distressed. I told
her I was a priest (who knows if she believed me!) and asked her what
she needed.
“My friend is
dying,” she told me, between sobs, “and I just wanted to light a
candle and pray for him.”
I told her we
didn’t have candles to light but I would be glad to let her into
the church to pray. I did that small kindness and minor hospitality
and then went back to my meeting.
Half-an-hour later
I sensed her in the hallway and left the meeting again. Her friend
has a rare form of cancer—he’s 33 and a new dad and is dying in
spite of all the resources and miracles of Sloan Kettering Cancer
Center. We sat for a while in the hallway and she suddenly asked me,
“Can I be baptized?”
I thought she meant
at that moment and, though I would have roused the witnesses from the
library and done it then, she meant in the near future. She’d not
been baptized as a child—in fact she’d been to more funerals and
weddings that Sunday services in her lifetime. But it had haunted
her—like a wasp climbing up your leg at 75 mph—that she’d never
done it.
I told her what I
truly believe: that God loves her just as much in that moment as God
will love her after her baptism but that I believe baptism has a
profound objective reality and that I would be honored, blessed,
humbled and proud to talk more with her about it and baptize her
whenever she was ready.
She hugged me
awkwardly and, tear drenched, went on her way.
We finished the
meeting about the brochure—so vital to the future and enhancement
of the mission and ministry of St. John’s, I really mean that—and
yet, driving home, I was left wondering if the God I believe in
around the edges had brought me to that oh-so-important meeting to
meet Rachel, longing for baptism.
OK, right off the
bat, I have to admit that I had doubts if I’d ever see her again.
Maybe she’ll feel embarrassed by how open and needful she had been
with me. Maybe her friend will die and she’ll be too angry with God
to want to be baptized. Maybe her friend will live and she’ll think
coming to pray for him and talking to a graying, over-weight priest
who didn’t want to be there…wasn’t supposed to be there, was
enough. Maybe she’ll come back and we’ll talk about God and
baptism and the water and oil will proclaim the awesome and
unfathomable truth that Rachel is a beloved child of God and she’ll
teach church school or be a Lay Eucharistic Minister or Senior Warden
one day. Who knows? Maybe God knows—the God I believe in and love
around the edges. But I know this: any God that thinks Rachel needs
water and oil to be His/Her child is inside the edges I believe in
and love.
Here’s where my
wasp in the car metaphor fails. I simply left my oh-so-important
meeting and spent time with Rachel. I didn’t kill the wasp or get
it out of the car or pull over to the side of the road. I just knew
the little sticky feet—six of them—on my thigh meant I needed to
react to the moment and deal with the person God sent to be with me
when I wasn’t supposed to be there. That’s all I know. I don’t
know the rest.
If you asked me to
describe my spirituality—which I hope you’d never think of asking
me…ask me about the weather, the Yankees and Red Sox, the Bush
administration, the price of gas, my twin (not identical)
grandbabies, how I’m feeling, the brochure we’re developing to
raise mega-bucks for St. John’s, whether I saw The Closer
episode on Monday or have read the last of the Harry Potter books
(yes and yes, by the way) and I’ll be happy to engage you in
conversation—however, I pray you won’t ask me to ‘describe my
spirituality’.
But if you did, I
would pause long enough to let you be distracted and walk away before
telling you, “I’m a contemplative.”
I am a
‘contemplative’ spiritually. Though I am often and always
involved in social action issues, I am not a ‘social activist’ in
my spirituality. I wouldn’t even know how to be that. I believe in
prayer the way I believe in God—“around the edges”. I’m
perfectly happy to pray the prayers of the Eucharist of the
community. That’s what I get paid for, in large measure, after all.
And I participate in ‘intercessory’ prayer and prayers for
healing and more often than I remember pray prayers of thanksgiving
and prayers giving Glory to my edgy God. All of that I do without
apology. And, I must admit, though I think it is meet and right to do
so, I’m not certain in any significant way about what those prayers
mean or do.
Prayer to me is not
asking or inviting or thanking or hoping or wishing or intoning. I
don’t object to any of that—but if you asked me how I pray—when
I do…I would tell you I am a contemplative. Here’s what the
prayer I truly believe in consists of: sitting in a chair and
shutting the hell up. And that doesn’t mean I believe if you just
‘sit there’ and ‘listen’ God will come over your FM receiver
with lots and lots of news. In fact, I believe mostly in prayer that
makes no sense and has no immediately discernible result. What I
believe in about prayer is this: Prayer is waiting.
I sit by the beds
of people dying from horrific diseases and my prayer by those
bedsides is waiting.
That might be an
insight into what a ‘contemplative’ is and what the nature of
believing in God ‘around the edges’ is all about. I could never
believe in a God who was guided by what I call “Gallup Poll
Prayers”. I could never believe in a God who was tallying up the
number and sincerity of prayers before deciding, as the Creator of
the Universe, what to do about Aunt Elsie’s cancer. I participate
in “prayer chains” and am honored, humbled to do so. But if you
put a gun to my head I’d say that the God I believe in and love
isn’t keeping count of how many prayers come in before deciding to
let Aunt Elsie live or die. To start down that road turns prayer into
some form of competitive sport and if you only pray hard enough and
well enough and avoid getting penalized for insincerity or too little
love then the One who spread the heavens and created the stars will
say: “well, lots of prayers on that one—let them live….”
Please don’t hear
this as a discouragement for prayers of intercession. They ‘work’;
I know they do. It’s just that they don’t necessarily ‘work’
(from my point of view) in the way you and I want them to ‘work’.
(I was once sitting
in Malcolm's back yard on Capitol Hill in DC with Malcolm and his
daughter Rachel, aged 5. Rachel came over to where we were sitting
and said to her father, “Daddy, can we go get some ice cream?”
“Not just now,
Rachel,” he told her kindly. Let me talk with Jim and then we'll
go.”
She wandered off to
play but was back in about two minutes. “Daddy, she said, “can we
go get ice cream now?”
“No, Rachel,”
he said, a little less kindly, but kindly none-the-less, “I told
you we would go after I talk with Jim.”
Again, she wandered
off and was back in about 60 seconds this time.
“Daddy,” she
said, “can we go get ice cream now?”
Malcolm pulled her
onto his lap and said, very seriously, “Rachel, I've answered this
question twice already. Why do you keep asking me?”
She touched his
face and said, “Daddy, it hasn't been the answer I was looking
for....”
He melted and the
three of us went to get ice cream.
Lots of people see
prayer like that. If you only ask enough or 'in the right way', God
will give you the answer you're looking for. The parable of the
'inopportune neighbor' in the Gospels seems to support that notion.
Annoy God long enough and often enough and God will grant your wish.
I'd call that
'wishful thinking' or 'persistence' but not prayer.)
I often tell people
in deep distress about something in their life or the life of one
they love to read the Psalms aloud. And I tell them to skip the mushy
ones like everyone’s favorite—the 23rd in the King
James Version—and concentrate on the ones that are totally pissed
off at and mystified by God’s deafness. It seems to me that prayers
raging at God are good for the soul and most likely, unless I’m
totally crazy, good for God. Do I think ‘God answers prayers’? Of
course I do. I just don’t think the ‘answer’ is necessarily the
one we prayed for and expected. If you only believe in God around the
edges, it seems to me, you develop a highly sophisticated trust in
what God does since the God you believe in is the God of mercy, love,
inclusion, forgiveness, compassion, joy and life. Those are the
‘edges’ of God. What exists inside the edges is a God of
judgment, vengeance, favoritism, psychological imbalance, destruction
and almost endless pain.
You take your
choice and get the God you get….
So, I’d
describe myself as a ‘contemplative’ spiritually. That definition
would be like shock and aweamong both my friends and those who don't like me very much
—and
both, interestingly enough, for the same reasons. I am considered, by
most people who know me as “a crazy, off-the-wall, out of control
Left-Wing nut”. Which is, by the way, one of the ways I would
define myself, if you asked me: I’ve been known to say that I’m
so ‘liberal’ I sometimes scare myself.
But nobody deserves
just one ‘description’. Since I get at least two, I describe myself as a “contemplative” as well as a “left-wing nut”. One
way I would not describe myself—though many who know me would use
that description—is as ‘an activist’. I used to be an activist.
I used to frequent demonstrations and protests for all the right
causes. I used to show up in court to support my comrades who had
been arrested. And I’ll ‘talk the activist talk’ as much as you
can stand to hear it. I minister to activists all the time. But my
commitment to being a parish priest took me off the ‘front lines’
and into a supportive role. I’m not proud of that retreat, but it
is a retreat I’ve made.
I
got an email recently about two books that are “Monastic Values for
Everyday Life”. The first book is called “Simplicity” and the
second “Hospitality”. I can get them both, according to the
email, for “$40 USD plus shipping.”
There
were two quotes, one from each book, included in the email. I want to
share them with you, though they are lengthy. The underlined portions
are what I want to write some more about, contemplative that I am.
“The
expression ‘separating the wheat from the chaff’ means
to find things of value and separate them from things of no value.
The contemplative life calls us to discern between that
which is true and good and that which is meaningless and distracting.
It is a life of ever deepening relationship with God, a life of value
and purpose and in vertical alignment with what is real,
eternal and sustaining.” Simplicity
praxis book.
“Hospitality
is an important aspect of contemplative spirituality, as it gives a
concrete shape to the meeting of God in silence and prayer. To love
the invisible God one must love the visible neighbor.
And, as a logical extension, there is a call to respect all
that God has created, showing a stewardship toward what
has been freely given by God for the earthy journey toward heaven.”
Hospitality praxis book.
I
learned my contemplative spirituality from Fr. Basil Pennington who
believed we must have a holy respect for “ALL that God has
created”. Fr. Basil refused to “discern between that which is
true and good and that which is meaningless and distracting”. He
considered the ‘distractions’ to prayer as a gift from God. He
never suggested obliterating or separating them out from anything
else. “The distractions”, Fr. Basil would say, “are part
of your prayer.”
The
two quotes in the email are contradictory. Never mind that I agree
with Walt Whitman—“Do I contradict myself?/Very well, I
contradict myself./I am large./I contain multitudes.”—I still
find a profound problem in ‘separating the wheat from the chaff’
in the spiritual life. I agree, however, that in the spiritual life
‘there is a call to respect all that God has created’. So, either
everything—every f---ing thing—is meaningful; or, none of it is.
Once we start to pick and choose about the ‘meaningful’ and the
‘meaningless’ we have let loose upon the earth an unholy code
that will divide God’s creation against itself. I—as a
contemplative—just can’t accept the uncontrolled
self-righteousness that would grant me. There are enough people on
the planet who are dividing the “wheat from the chaff”. I choose,
with the God I believe in around the edges help, not to be one of
them.
A
dear friend of mine, once my lay assistant, considers himself a
Buddhist Christian—or a Christian Buddhist—I can’t remember
which. I remember overhearing a conversation between him and a member
of our parish over a decade ago. Stephen (not his real name) had just
returned from his vacation, which had been a 30 day Buddhist retreat.
He was telling Carl (not his real name either) about the experience.
When Stephen had worn Carl out with the details of the meditation and
vegetarianism and physical work of the retreat, Carl asked, not
unexpectedly, “Tell my Stephen, are you a Christian?”
And
Stephen, God and Buddha bless him, gave the finest and most complete
answer I’ve ever heard to that presumptive question.
“At
least,” Stephen said.
When
you “believe in God around the edges” you can be ‘at least’ a
Christian. ‘At least a Christian’ is a proper definition for
believing in God around the edges—at least for me.
Another
metaphor for how God shows up for me is this: I am pouring the water
of baptism over some so-cute-you-could-eat-them baby, who is smiling
and cooing and enjoying the whole thing. And then, as I say “Holy
Spirit”, the baby either farts or has a massive, almost
instantaneous bowel movement, filling up her/his diaper within
his/her little satin baptismal get-up with what can be defined as
lots of things, but let’s say ‘poo’.
I’m
convinced whoever wrote the thing about ‘separating the wheat from
the chaff’ and the ‘meaningful from the distracting’ would
categorize baby ‘poo’ in the latter of both those distinctions.
But I’m not sure. I know you’ve seen the bumper sticker that says
“SHIT HAPPENS”. Well, it does, of that I am convinced.
Either
the shit that happens is part of the whole thing—a piece of the
party, a wondrous gift once you get by or begin to enjoy the smell
and the mess and the dry cleaning bill for the satin baptismal
outfit—or, it’s not. I’m a fundamentalist about this—‘either
IT ALL means something or NOTHING DOES’. I really
trust that either every moment/distraction/shit/wonder of life can
either reveal or un-conceal God or, as a friend of mine says: “Life
is just one damned thing after another.”
Would
that we could siphon out the bad and reflect only on the good. Would
that we could distinguish between the clean and unclean. Would that
we could gather all the wheat into one place and consign the chaff to
outer darkness. Wouldn’t that just be the cat’s pajamas?
Well—aside
from having no idea what ‘cat’s pajamas’ means—being able to
divide God’s beloved creation into the “good” and the “bad”,
the “saved” and “damned”, the “light” and the “darkness”
would make me worship the God within the edges. I have no patience
for that God—boisterous and demanding and ultimately
Self-Serving…the God that I fear many worship and cling to and even
‘vote for’ when they vote in elections. I have no patience with
the God that demands warfare and drinks blood and condemns those who
do not give obeisance to eternal fires and boils and running pus and
suffering beyond all imagining.
I
offer two more metaphors (for now) about God and how God shows up for
me. First: I am in a room with someone I care for, even love, who has
been a part of my life, and they are dying. They are surrounded by
family and maybe even friends. I am expected to say something
‘profound’ and ‘meaningful’, but I have no words. I take a
chair near the bed—they almost always find me a chair near the
bed—and simply sit. Breathing is labored, strange fluids flow
through plastic tubes into their arms and ports and other places.
Machines register numbers in green figures on screens. People in
scrubs and white jackets move in and out. The only sounds are those
of medical devices and the soft wings of angels. I pray words I have
prayed before, mumbling them through my pain and my tears—which are
nothing, nothing at all compared to the pain and tears of the others
by the bed. I use the only tools I have—prayer, oil, bread and
wine—and then I sit down and wait. Something in the sacraments
brings an initial healing, some temporary peace to the others by the
bed. And the God I only believe in around the edges is inexplicably
present. Something soft, something tearful, something wondrous.
And
we wait. All we can do is wait and weep. Something Holy is near.
Imagine
the God that would include such intimacy, such anguish, such sweet
patience, such waiting. That is the God I worship and love around the
edges.
I
remember going to see Morgan and Emma—my twin (but not identical)
granddaughter at age 10 months or so. I remember the moment they saw
me come in. Morgan laughs as soon as she sees me (she would probably
laugh if Satan walked in…she’s just ready to laugh). Emma is
suspicious, withdrawn, not ready to embrace the stranger. They are
almost a year old and they are the product of DNA from the British
Isles, from Italy and Hungary, from China. They are, in a real sense,
‘the world’. (Their roles: laughing and shy, have changed over
the years several times and now I have a third grand-daughters,
Tegan. We see them more than before I retired and their first sight
of me is always the same—surprise, shock and then delight.)
And
I love them—unconditionally, without strings attached, absolutely,
finally and eternally. I almost weep to simply see them—blood of my
blood, bone of my bone, children who would not exist if I had never
existed…so beautiful, so full of life, so wondrous and magic. I
bite my lips to hold back sobs of joy as I move toward them—knowing
they may accept or reject my embrace, my wonderment, my
unquestionable adoration and devotion to them. I would gladly forfeit
my life for them—in a heart-beat, without hesitation, gladly.
(An
aside about the power of DNA: our house in Charleston had a back
porch with a wrought iron railing. The garage was underneath that
porch, so it was at least 10 feet above the driveway. I came home one
evening in the autumn when Josh was just past one year old. I parked,
as I did in good weather just inside the drive way gate. Josh and
Bern were on the back porch and when he saw me he got so excited it
stepped between the rails into open space....In that moment, I
finally understood Jesus' teaching about 'there is no greater love
than this, to lay down your life for another....” I would have
gladly, without hesitation had taken that fall for him....Bern, God
love her, grabbed his shirt, so he was dangling, held only by his
shirt, 9 feet above the concrete. I ran beneath him and caught him
when she let go. He thought it was great fun and wanted to do it
again. We stretched chicken wire over the railings the next day and
treated him as an even more special, my precious being than he was
for a week or so at least.)
Back
to my grand-daughters: they know me only “around the edges”. They
do not realize or have the capacity to know the secrets of my heart,
the betrayals of my life—the distractions and the crap—or the
love that nearly makes me explode into white light. They cannot yet
‘name’ me fully—though they have a name for me, a name
to call me by, a name to ask for intercession, a name to demand
attention and presence and relationship. But back three years ago,
before Tegan was born, it was only Me—just as I am—and Morgan
crawls toward me, laughing and Emma walks (she who walks first)
toward me, suspicious but trusting. And I feel their tiny bodies
against mine. I lift them in the air. I speak to them in non-sense
syllables and escape from the bonds of time as I hold them near.
Imagine
the God that could grant me such wonder and love and peace. Imagine
the God that could create, out of nothing but DNA and sperm and eggs
Cathy carried from birth, ready to bloom, such creatures. Imagine
such a God and I will tell you this: THAT IS THE GOD I BELIEVE IN
AROUND THE EDGES.
The
God I believe in, around the edges, is the God of Life and Death and
everything in between and everything after and all that there is—the
God of the Shit and the Glory, the God of the Wonder and the Pain,
the God of the Anguish and the Joy, the God of the Hopefulness and
the Loss, the God of the sterile hospital rooms and the rooms of
homes and promise,
That God.
Around the Edges I
give That God my life, my heart, my soul….
CREEDO
I
believe in the Edges of God.
Truly,
that is my limit on the whole question of Creed.
I
don't believe in God storming out of the clouds
and
smiting me to smithereens if I am bad.
I
don't believe in a God who would wake me up,
pin
me to my bed and give me bleeding sores
on
my palms and the top of my feet,
much
less my side.
(Explain
that to your general practitioner!)
I
don't believe in a God who would instruct me
to
slay infidels or displace peaceful people
so
I can have a Motherland.
I
don't believe in a God that has nothing better to do
besides
visit bedrooms around the globe
uncovering
(literally) illicit love.
I
don't believe in a God who frets
about
who wins the next election.
I
don't believe in a God who believes in 'abomination'.
I
believe in the edges of God--
the
soft parts, the tender pieces--
the
feathers and the fur of God.
I
do believe in the ears of God,
which
stick out—cartoon like—on the edges of God's Being.
I,
myself, listen and listen
and
then listen some more
for
the Still, Small Voice.
I
believe in God's nose—pronounced and distinctively
Jewish
in my belief--
I
smell trouble from time to time
and
imagine God sniffs it out too.
The
toenails and finger nails of God--
there
is some protein I can hold onto,
if
only tentatively.
Hair,
there's something to believe in as well.
God's
hair—full, luxurious, without need of jell or conditioner,
filling
up the Temple, heaven, the whole universe!
I
can believe in God's hair.
God's
edges shine and blink and relect color.
God's
edges are like the little brook,
flowing
out of the woods beyond the tire swing,
in
what used to be my grandmother's land.
God's
edges are like the voices of old friends,
old
lovers, people long gone but not forgotten.
God's
edges are not sharp or angled.
The
edges of God are well worn by practice
and
prayer and forgotten possibilities
about
to be remembered.
God's
edges are the wrists of someone
you
don't quite recall but can't ever remove from your heart.
God's
edges are rimmed and circled
with
bracelets of paradox and happenstance
and
accidents with meaning.
God
is edged with sunshine,
rainbows,
over-ripe,
fallen apples, crushed beneath your feet
and
the bees hovering around them.
God's
edges hold storm clouds too--
the
Storm of the Century coming fast,
tsunamis
and tornadoes, spinning out of control.
Blood
from God's hands—now there's an edge of God
to
ponder, reach for, then snatch your hand away.
God
bleeding is an astonishing thought.
God
bleeding can help my unbelief.
And
most, most of all,
the
edges of God are God's tears.
Tears
of frustration, longing, loss, deep pain,
profound
joy, wonder and astonishment--
tears
that heal and relieve and comfort...
and
disturb the Cosmos.
That's
what I believe in:
God's
tears.
