I'm going to lead a book study on the Wednesdays during Lent on a book called
How Little Can I Believe and still be a Christian? It's by a Methodist and isn't bad, in fact quite good, but it doesn't go far enough into the mystery of 'believing'. So, tomorrow night I'm giving the group a chapter from my memoir of 'being a priest' to consider as well.
Thought I'd give it to you too.
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 65 who has been an Episcopal Priest for some 37 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
year or so 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 I 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 than
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 never saw her again. Maybe she felt
embarrassed by how open and needful she had been with me. Maybe her friend died
and she’ll was too angry with God to want to be baptized. Maybe her friend
lived 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 talk to the next priest and they'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 outside 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 Obama
administration, the price of gas, my twin (not identical) granddaughters and
their 4 year old sister who is a force of nature, how I’m feeling, the work I
do in the Cluster, whether I saw American Hustle last year or have read
the all of The Game of Thrones novels
(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 discernable result. What I believe in
about prayer is this: Prayer is waiting.
I
have sat by the beds of people dying from horrific diseases and my prayer by
those bedsides is not that they get better or be healed or die. My prayer is
simply that I’m waiting by the bedside. Waiting only. Just Waiting. That—waiting—and
nothing more.
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 my friend's back yard talking and his 4 year old daughter,
Leah, came and asked politely to go get ice cream. Malcomb told her they world after he finishe talking to me. A
few minutes later, she came back and asked again. He gave her the same answer.
Less than a minute passed and she was back asking again. “Didn't you hear my
answer, Leah?” he asked. “Yes,” she told him, “but it wasn't the answer I
wanted!”
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 awe among
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.
Secondly, I am in
an apartment in Brooklyn or in my home in Connecticut six years ago, and Morgan
and Emma—my twin (though not identical) grand-daughters
are with me. 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’.
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,
two 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.
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—though they will learn a name for me, some name to call me by, some name to
ask for intercession, some name to demand attention and presence and
relationship. Now it is 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 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.
