Godlessness Be Damned

As we get closer to a God-filled holiday, I am surprised, although I certainly should not be, at how many God-less situations are being pointed out to me by God-filled experts. The most recent being a justification for tragedies in schools and universities because they are God-less bastions of compromising lifestyles and philosophies, and the next at the funerals of some of the school victims where church-goers were protesting their Godlessness.

As my readers know I am not a religious person. I am not an agnostic or an atheist either. I am someone on a journey always looking for God-fullness and answers in religious and non-religious events alike.  I do not see God in my likeness but as a magnificent power or energy inside all living things, yet I do not see myself as a pantheist. I would never have the hubris to point out places where God does not exist.   But I am bold enough to say that I think God is goodness and God is everywhere.  God is the quiet and tiny.   God is sometimes the bold and loud. God is ALWAYS EVERYWHERE and we abandon God, God does not abandon us.  I do not think God is an evangelist demanding loyalty and creating punishment for those who stray.  We create our own punishment.  God is the softest act you will ever know seducing you into loyalty.  He is like the poet's (Autry) son who in his autistic struggle in this world caught not one but dozens of butterflies and hummingbirds in his child-hands in slow wonderment, named them and then set them free in love.

I see IT/God in the face of a child whose life was shortened by violence. I see IT in the eye of the whale. I see IT in the dance of youth at a party. I see IT in the hands of a nurse removing blood streaked gloves. I see IT in the bent and gnarled body of an old woman crossing the street. I see IT in all the music that man has created and invented. I see this power for goodness in the poetry I read. I see it in all the colored lights we string and all the candles we light when man celebrates any God-filled holiday anywhere in the world.  For that brief moment we concentrate outside ourselves.   I also see God in the anger and discouragement of mankind.  IT is hidden inside behind the fire waiting to be seen. 

I see IT when we sigh and forgive ourselves for our mistakes each year and promise ourselves a better year.  There sits God deep inside our soul waiting for us to recognize IT and not give up hope.