I have lost my easy God--the one whose name

I knew since childhood.

I knew his temper, his sullen outrage, his

ritual forgiveness.

I knew the strength of his arm, the sound

of his insistant voice.

His beard bristling, his lips full and red

with moisture at the moustache,

His eyes clear and piercing, too blue

to understand all,

His face too unwrinkled to feel my

child's pain.

He was a good God--so he told me--

a long suffering and manageable one.

I knelt at his feet and kissed them,

I felt the smooth countenance of his forgiveness.

I never told him how he frightened me,

How he followed me as a child

When I played with friends or begged

for candy on Halloween.

He was a predictable God, I was the

unpredictable one.

He was unchanging, omnipotent, all-seeing,

I was volatile and helpless.

He taught me to thank him for the concern

which gave me no chance to breathe,

For the love which demanded only love in

return--and obedience.

He made pain sensible and patience possible

and the future forseeable.

He, the mysterious, took all mystery away,

corroded my imagination,

Controlled the stars and would not let

them speak for themselves.

Now he haunts me seldom: some fierce

umbilical is broken,

I live with my own fragile hopes and

sudden rising despair.

Now I do not weep for my sins; I have

learned to love them

And to know that they are the wounds that

make love real.

His face illudes me; his voice, with all

its pity, does not ring in my ear.

His maxims memorized in boyhood do not

make fruitless and pointless my experience.

I walk alone, but not so terrified as when

he held my hand.

I do not splash in the blood of his son

nor hear the crunch of nails or thorns
piercing protesting flesh.

I am a boy again--I whose boyhood was

turned to manhood in a brutal myth.

Now wine is only wine with drops that do

not taste of blood.

The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,

I, too--and together the bread and I embrace,

Each grateful to be what we are, each loving

from our own reality.

Now the bread is warm in my mouth and

I am warm in its mouth as well.

Now my easy God is gone--he knew too

much to be real,

He talked too much to listen, he knew

my words before I spoke.

But I knew his answers as well--computerized

and turned to dogma

His stamp was on my soul, his law locked

cross-like on my heart,

His imperatives tatooed on my breast, his

aloofness canonized in ritual.

Now he is gone--my easy, stuffy God--God,

the father-master, the mother-whiner, the

Dull, whoring God who offered love bought

by an infant's fear.

Now the world is mine with all its pain and

warmth, with its every color and sound;

The setting sun is my priest with the ocean

for its altar.

The rising sun redeems me with the rolling

waves warmed in its arms.

A dog barks and I weep to be alive, a

cat studies me and my joy is boundless.

I lie on the grass and boy-like, search the sky.

The clouds do not turn to angels, the winds
do not whisper of heaven or hell.

Perhaps I have no God--what does it matter?

I have beauty and joy and transcending loneliness,

I have the beginning of love--as beautiful as it

is feeble--as free as it is human.

I have the mountains that whisper secrets

held before men could speak,

I have the ocean that belches life on

the beach and caresses it in the sand,

I have a friend who smiles when he sees

me, who weeps when he hears my pain,

I have a future full of surprises, a

present full of wonder.

I have no past--the steps have disappeared

the wind has blown them away.

I stand in the Heaven and on earth, I

feel the breeze in my hair.

I can drink to the North Star and shout

on a bar stool,

I can feel the teeth of a hangover, the

joy of laziness,

The flush of my own rudeness, the surge of

my own ineptitude.

And I can know my own gentleness as well,

my wonder, my nobility.

I sense the call of creation, I feel its

swelling in my hands.

I can lust and love, eat and drink, sleep

and rise,

But my easy God is gone--and in his stead

The mystery of loneliness and love!

by James Kavanaugh -- from There Are Men Too Gentle To Live Among Wolves