Here's something else

 

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 reflect 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.

 

Posted this before, most likely, but again is good

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

 

 

Warm today, warmer tomorrow....

 Today was a relief from the cold. It was in the 40's.

The big storm on Saturday really didn't materialize in Cheshire.

We had snow and ice and lost our computers and phones and TV for a few hours.

You can live perfectly well with no TV, landlines or computers.

We didn't lose power.

That would have been a nightmare.

60 by Thursday.

Maybe 70 by the end of the week.

Spring is coming!

Spring is coming! 

Thanks be to God.

Church in Killingworth today

I did the service at Emmanuel, Killingworth today. I served them, as a part of the Middle-Sex Cluster Ministry for almost 7 years. They are without a priest currently and I was supplying on my Sunday off from Trinity, Milton.

I loved the three Cluster churches and hated to leave, but the bishop had new ideas for the churches and I didn't fit into them. He wanted each church to have a part-time priest--at the time I was the only one of three who was paid more than Sunday supply.

It has been over a year since I left, so I don't think I broke a Rubric by going there today. In fact I'm sure.

Charlie Price, my professor of Liturgical Matters at Virginia seminary, told us, "never unknowingly break a rubric."  

Notice, he didn't tell us 'not' to break them, but never 'unknowingly'.

Charlie was a wise man.

It was like a family reunion! People I loved and who loved me were there. Lots of hugs. Great organist. Great coffee-hour.

A homecoming, in a sense.

And I loved it all.

 

Have I published this?

 

THE SKUNK AND THE KITTY

 

On my way out, up the hill to where I go,

I passed a patch of road

where a skunk and a black cat

were both dead—road kill.

 

My car window was open

on an uncharacteristically warm

January morning—foggy and strange.

 

So I carried the skunk smell with me

all the way to where I was going.

Something about the smell of skunk,

millennia in development,

whether as evolution or God’s plan:

skunks have an odor to peal paint,

leave you hyperventilating

and just a little nauseous—

more than a little if smelled before breakfast.

 

I though all day, where I was,

about those two creatures—

dead as door nails and splayed on the road.

The cat was someone’s friend and companion.

The skunk was a marvel of defense mechanism—

a mother/father of small defense mechanisms.

Both were deserving of a better fate

than to swell and burst and decay on a state highway.

I prayed for them at noon prayers—

silently, of course, lest I seem to animistic in my faith.

The skunk and the kitty—both black,

both dead,

both nameless to me

(though the cat surely had one,

and who can say about skunks?)

so I couldn’t pray for them by name.

 

Going back down the hill,

from where I’d been to where I live,

I noticed the cat was gone—

claimed, perhaps by some human who loved her,

given a proper burial, mourned, missed.

Appropriate funereal rites, as bifit her.

 

The skunk was there still—

torn to pieces by the tires

of SUV’s, Buicks, foreign cars, UPS trucks.

 

His odor was less on the way back,

but, God bless him, still potent.

And I wondered—heretic and pagan

that I truly am—

whether he died for our smells….

 

 

jgb—1/30/09