For an assignment in my Theology I class, I wrote and performed my first spoken word poem.  The assignment was to create something that depicted your view of God and your view of yourself.  I performed the poem in class, and have recorded it and posted it here at the request of some of my friends and classmates.  I hope you enjoy, and I would love to hear your thoughts, reactions, wonderings, etc.

Sometimes

To try and piece together the story of God and Self,
I begin with the wisdom of a child,
quoting him like one of the forefathers of great thinking,
A little 4-year-old boy named Billy once said:
“When somebody loves you, the way they say your names is different.  You just know your name is safe in their mouth.”
Well, my dad, my dad had a way of saying my name like a 4-letter word.
And sometimes, just sometimes,
I can’t hear it any other way.
The person who gave me the name that means “worthy to be loved”
sssspits it out of his mouth like old, sour milk.

And if we’re all made in the image of God,
If he is made in the image of God,
is his mouth God’s mouth?
And if it is, does God spit me out of his mouth, too, like Jonah and the whale?
When I spill the milk, will God swallow me whole and spit me out cold
like Jonah and that goddamn fish?

I need to hear God say my name, my name, my name
so I know that I’m safe.

I saw God on a mountain once.
He was just sittin’ there, starin’, looking up at the sky.
And then, he looked right at me
with these eyes, these eyes, these eyes,
like he was looking right through me.
No, not through me.  Into me.
Right into that place inside of me where all of my tears arise.
And he knew… I knew.
I knew that he knew.
That he knew all of the things
that my friends didn’t know,
that my church didn’t know,
that my pastor didn’t know
…or didn’t want to know.

I knew that he had seen all of my tears,
and that he was crying, too.

Jesus. wept.

Sometimes…
well, okay, most of the time,
I have no idea who this God is.
But I do know this: I need a God who weeps.

I want God to be like the God Ra from the ancient Egyptian myth,
who cries and cries, and as his tears hit the
broken
cracked
earth, it dries,
and they’re suddenly transformed right before my eyes
into tiny, little bees,
buzzzzzing around, buzzzzying themselves with their honeycombs and hives.
The sole creatures who, from the expulsion from Eden survived,
they testify forever to the presence of God.

But sometimes, I’m afraid we’re stuck with more of a Greek myth kind of God,
Like the God of this guy Aristaeus, the first keeper of the bees,
This God
pressed all of those poor bees to
death because Aristaeus
stepped outside the bounds of “acceptable” behavior,
and demanded sacrifice to bring them back alive.

Sin, death, resurrection.
That story sounds strangely familiar, doesn’t it?

But sometimes, just sometimes,
God isn’t so bad.
Sometimes, I’m convinced that God is hiding away in some of my friends, and I have to wonder if it’s really him when she stops me and says,
“I’ve heard all this before”
and lets me cry into her lap.

And I wonder if God was hiding in my therapist, too
Helping her to somehow create this space where I felt safe
for the first time,
where I could cry and rage,
put on sackcloth and pour ashes.
And she gave me the gift of pouring ashes of her own.

But there was this one time, that one sometime not too long ago,
when she left me to do something else,
to pursue her dreams, putting me on the back shelf,
And I’m afraid that I saw God there, too.
That somehow, watching her leave,
I had Moses up my sleeve,
and I was watching God’s backside pass before me and
keep. on. going.
not knowing if he’s ever coming back,
just leaving me here, stuck and alone
in the cleft of this big. fucking. rock
wondering, where the hell do I go now?

So, determined to leave, to get out of this God-forsaken place, I start packing my bags,
ready to join the throngs of people who have left their dashed, God-directed hopes behind,
casting out into uncharted territory.
But I stop, and I wonder, maybe that wasn’t God at all.
Just maybe that wasn’t God’s backside, but mine,
leaving behind all of my God-sized visions of grandeur,
burning bushes, pillars of cloud and smoke, and all that,
Maybe it was really me, leaving to follow the whisper,
because the wind, earthquake, and fire just don’t work for me anymore.

So now what’s the score?
I can’t seem to keep track
of the back and forth attack that I wage against faith.
And friends, I’m tired, so tired my very bones cry out,
“Forget about the score!”
And then I hear those nine.noon.three chimes,
and I just give in, bow my head, and stop counting God’s crimes
but just sometimes.