Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Robin HappelDecember 01, 2017
Photo by Will Cornfield on UnsplashPhoto by Will Cornfield on Unsplash

I see god in everything,
the way sunlight shivers across the grass,
the way the sky trembles beneath the weight of the wind.
My god is patient. She curls like ivy around a crumbling world,
And howls in the stillness of the night, the silent spaces no ritual can fill.

She is not the god of hate or hollow love, of those who wouldn’t spare the rod,
but simply agape, Augustine's absence of evil, 
the ouroboros at the end of history. 
She is the idea of herself, slumbering in the metakosmia,
the moss between the burning steel skeletons of war-torn worlds.

And when at last life shudders into stillness, she will spill outwards into Eden, 
sending stalks through dull ash, singing the start of Hesiod's golden age
in a field of lavender
beneath a gaping gray sky (full of prophet birds, as the playwright says)

She will spin the silent bones of lost saints back to life,
and bless every unclean thing,
until the whisper of her breath lives on in the land itself
(as the Quran says, the fluttering of birds' wings is their prayers)

She is the instant outside yourself,
as though you could fly forever in an instant of perfect forgetfulness.
God is the Gatsby glimmer that, somehow, the world can be made new -
that there is something beyond an endless present, something Elysian
beyond being trapped in an endless state of becoming.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

Pope Francis accepts the offertory gifts during Pentecost Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on May 19, 2023. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
The pope devoted his entire Pentecost homily to describing how the Holy Spirit works in the lives of Christians with both “power and gentleness.”
Gerard O’ConnellMay 19, 2024
Today’s text from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith makes clear that henceforth, as a rule, the Holy See will not declare any alleged spiritual phenomenon, such as an apparition, as authentic‚ that is, “of divine origin.”
Gerard O’ConnellMay 17, 2024
Cardinal Robert McElroy, Bishop Robert Barron and Bishop Daniel Flores joined moderator Gloria Purvis for a roundtable discussion on the rise of polarization in the church.
Michael O’BrienMay 17, 2024
Whether carefully reflected upon or chosen at random, picking a confirmation name is a personal and spiritual journey for Catholics, reflecting a connection to the saints or a loved one and a commitment to embodying their virtues.
America StaffMay 17, 2024