AT LEAST CONSIDER THIS

[David Sparenberg]

Where is God
Is God leading the chosen
across another desert
into a new Promise Land
Is God hanging on the cross
Is God blowing in the winds of change, weeping
in a slender voice at
the mouth of a cave, kneeling
in the dark night of the soul

Where is God
Is God in the shaking of the Earth
Is God in the rushing rise of raging sea
Is God wearing
the mask of the angel of death; is
God threatening and storming against us
And what then is God’s message
That arrogance is criminal delusion
That we are NOT in control
That our vaunted power is vulnerable weakness
That even
our violence can be overwhelmed That
some things should be left to be and
some things clearly done before
the clock of our world strikes
midnight and scatters us into silence

Where o where is God
And how are we to make sense of
catastrophe when
the soul is being crucified for
our sins of consumption
And we have set fire to child faced messengers
And this sky of ozone wounds tumbles down rendering us
nothing but the frightened animals we
are accustomed to terrorizing into extinction

A mature person wise and
honest once said “If
man spits on the Earth
he spits on himself”* And
if we are spitting on God through our
desecration of creation—what then

While I who am stripped down before the gathering tempest add only this a tearful whimper: After Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the BP debacle in the Gulf of Mexico and the meltdown at Fukushima, repentance is no longer a ritual act that ripples inward. Repentance now is a way of living to reconnect. And mystical weeping, a rending act of beauty, an open grieving before planetary healing, is crying for forgiveness, even for that which, individually, we have not done.

At least consider this. For if it is impossible, it may yet be possible, and might be true.

*Chief Seattle

David Sparenberg
25 April 2011