Imploration

We pray to a God who won’t respond…or so it seems.

We pray to a father God, a mother God, a man God, a child God,
a Buddha god, a yoga god, a nature god, a million other gods.

We pray for wants, for needs, confusing these. 

We pray desperately in disaster or alternately denounce existence, disseat,
disrate, spit in the face of what appears to be a placid god,
maddeningly calm in midst of chaos,
refusing to intervene.

Inept or cruel?  Easier to efface:  God is dead.

We worship at makeshift shrines of momentary sacrifice.

Congregate in cathedrals of ecclesiastical décor with alabaster
windows with stained hands clasped and our perfume hoarded.

We are a searching people, blind to what we find.

We look for you in burning bushes, in consecrated bread and wine. 
Parched, we need to taste you. We look to the clouds for signs.
We mine the scriptures, memorizing passages to suit our purposes but not to live by.

We confess to priests, we hail Mary, we pay our tithes, we swear off church, disassociate
with those who claim your name, return in hopes. We are gold-diggers. 

We praise ourselves when all is well and blame you when it is not.

In measurement of altitude, we place your elevation low, humbling you and not ourselves.

We,
who are open and bared before you
                              beg for you to bare yourself.

Herald the works of your hand, we say,
                          so we might believe,
                          then we turn away
from words that say,  I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity. 

We hunger for milk.  We try and force your hand with pleas,
with demands, with the works of our own hands.

We drift away and feel you've left us.
We, who are so depraved with such gall, feel deprived.

We fear you and we do not fear you.

We emplaster you in icons-we want you plastic and adaptable.

We want vivid, graphic, blatant.

Our prayers lay out Irenicons- God, sign here, on dotted line. 

We are a loud people, bold in our absurd appeals,
errant in our exaction.
You are a quiet God, slow to anger.

Your gifts are bared before us, everywhere-

Embossed in vein of leaves we step upon, traced in space of sky with argent stars,
sketched in shadows after every storm.

Yet, I am deafened by your seeming silence.
Open the eyes of my heart. 
Take my mustard seed of faith
and multiply it. Perforate my conscience
that I might observe the wondrous
works of your own pierced hands. 
Create in me a clean heart.

The Sunday Whirl