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

With 38 years of experience in overseeing the process of canonization and beatification of saints, Monsignor Robert Sarno offers a deep dive into the world of Catholic relics, including their history, hierarchy and controversy.
JesuiticalMarch 28, 2025
Pope Francis continues to be in stable condition and has registered improvements in both breathing and speech, the Vatican said on March 28.
Gerard O’ConnellMarch 28, 2025
A large crowd gathers as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum speaks during a rally at Zocalo Square in Mexico City March 9, 2025. (OSV News photo/Quetzalli Nicte-Ha, Reuters)
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s deft handling of the mercurial U.S. president has sent her approval rating soaring, reaching 85 percent in the latest survey from the newspaper El Financiero.
David AgrenMarch 28, 2025
“Daredevil: Born Again” has now launched on Disney+, and the show features a lead character whose faith is a central element to his identity.
Robert BucklandMarch 28, 2025