The god I could believe in
is not the god I hear described
by you and other heartless folk,
who in lust with judging
cast your judgments
up up up to the sky
to form the ultimate authority.

My god models
the ultimate spirit -
compassionate and loving,
nestling me in warmth
like a baby in the womb.
My god guides me
into ecstasy -
that being outside myself
beyond language,
and still holds dear
what makes me unique to him -
or her - or that beyond gender
that so confounds our imaginations.

My god is beyond
our human understanding,
so that everything we know
about friendship and love
is just a pale reflection
in comparision,
and yet these things
best teach us and train us
revealing to us the beginning steps
toward loving wisdom.

If there is an afterlife
I would ask then
to be enlightened
(and endarkened?)
having already absorbed
what I needed to learn
from the joys and sufferings
of embodiment and materiality,
thereafter to dwell in spirit
as the spark in me
reenters the warp and woof
of the cosmos.

My god is beyond
the highest thought that we can think,
but my god is also very simple -
the ultimate source and
definition of love.
You cannot explain even rhyme
to an ant, and likewise
we are limited by the terms
of our own perceptions
and our own becomings.

Yet I believe that worship
breathes through us all at times
through kindness, through smiles,
through forgiveness, through actions,
through refraining from actions,
and through the myriads of thoughts
and feelings and behaviors
that all of us, down deep inside
already know.
We already know.
There is that still voice deep inside
of the kingdom yet within us.

And if there really is a god,
and not our wish-filled dream
then I invite this god to manifest
in and through me, and to raise me up
- the metaphor of upness incomplete -
to the supreme processes of love.
Yes, I welcome all benevolent deities.

But if there is no such god as this,
and even if your god is the "true God,"
capital G and all,
I judge your god as wanting
and I defy your so-called god.
Have you stopped to ask yourself
to whom do you belong?
"Which god do you obey"?
Daemonic voices ask it too,
Whose voice is it - after all -
that whispers unto you?

You fundamentalists have lost
the thing most fundamental.
Pharasees again, in code
have lost or burned the message.
You fanatics worship manmade creeds
that will undo us all
And YOU, you terrorists of all religions
your gods will make us fall.

Yes I confess this deep deep flaw,
this remnant of rigidity,
scar-tissue of self-righteousness,
torn open again, yet again.
Yet one must speak from where one stands
and this is what I know,
I have no room left in my heart
for love toward you to grow.
The evil that your god incites
in you and o'er the world,
stains for all time our histories,
we all pay for your sins.
I guard compassion jealously
held selfish in reserve
for the ones you hurt so deeply
and whose stories aren't heard.

I name you and yours false prophets
because you do define the phrase,
you lead the would-be faithful
always far and further astray.
Placing demon masks
on the faces of our kin,
undoing all the fragile good
that lets us breathe again.

Shepard, you're a predator
who leads your singing flock
straight into the meat grinder
after having drunk the blood
of our precious human dignity.
Yet they still see not the fang,
of sadists grinning, grinning
puffed up in polyester gray.

You use your sacred freedom
to deceive the the trusting ones.
Do you still know what you do?
"Make no mistake" is what you say -
(Why not "be not misled"?)
I do mean what it is I say
Or your god may strike me dead!
It's just as simple as can be
I'll say it "blunt and plain"
See, I would sooner trust a flea
than allow you to preach to me
about god.
And I am tired, suddenly - just
take your god and ....

get behind me.

Take your god and go.


(original draft Jan 2004, revised version Sept 25 2004)