God, Part 1

Tony Jones has a challenge and an invitation for “all progressive theo-bloggers.”

Write something substantive about God. Not about Jesus, not about the Bible, but about God.

I expect to fail this challenge. And I intend to fail it in several parts.

For the first part, here, I’m bringing in a ringer: Wislawa Szymborska (as beautifully translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh). This does not at all do what Tony asks, but it exemplifies at least two of the several ways I am unable to do what Tony asks.

The final line, I think, explicitly violates one of Tony’s rules, but I expect to violate that same rule repeatedly myself as I return to this subject in order to fail this challenge in a few other ways.

MAYBE ALL THIS

Maybe all this
is happening in some lab?
Under one lamp by day
and billions by night?

Maybe we’re experimental generations?
Poured from one vial to the next,
shaken in test tubes,
not scrutinized by eyes alone,
each of us separately
plucked up by tweezers in the end?

Or maybe it’s more like this:
No interference?
The changes occur on their own
according to plan?
The graph’s needle slowly etches
its predictable zigzags?

Maybe thus far we aren’t of much interest?
The control monitors aren’t usually plugged in?
Only for wars, preferably large ones,
for the odd ascent above our clump of Earth,
for major migrations from point A to B?

Maybe just the opposite:
They’ve got a taste for trivia up there?
Look! on the big screen a little girl
is sewing a button on her sleeve.
The radar shrieks,
the staff comes at a run.
What a darling little being
with its tiny heart beating inside it!
How sweet, its solemn
threading of the needle!
Someone cries enraptured:
Get the Boss,
tell him he’s got to see this for himself!