It’s easy to say what I don’t believe in anymore – an all-knowing grandfather God who sits on a cloud somewhere up there, out there, distant but keeping an eye on everything, delivering rewards and punishments,, and upsetting things here on earth with what we call “acts of God.” But then people ask me, “So what kind of God do you believe in?” And I find prose can’t do it; poetry at least comes closer. 

A shining

Faces  talk around a table

knees warm around a campfire

voices sing in a circle

hands clasp in the darkness

and in between, among, around them

hovers a shining 

Eyes cannot see it

ears cannot hear it

fingers cannot touch it

but all feel it

deep, deep within

The shining glows

and pulses

and sings high and clear 

and tastes sweeter than honey

whenever two or three

or four or more --

humans or trees

herring or chickadees --

meet and merge

in holy harmony

Though there is nothing there

everyone knows

something is there

that can’t be explained

or explained away

I call it God

What do you call it?

By Jim Taylor, September 2018