potter-God
In the darkness of the night watch I wonder about God;
if He is paying attention,
if he is doing his job.
I understand the Deist’s temptations
to think God is busy playing poker
far away
past Orion.
But in the light of the Morning Candle
and then the light of the sun which joins its hope,
there is a sense that the potter is at His Wheel
and that we are being made into something
by a present God whose priorities I reserve the right
to question.
In this second half of life I have chosen to
belong to Him.
I want those hands on me, gliding over water
spinning on this strange, blue-green planet.
God seems to welcome the questions perhaps more than
our statements of truth, like a child pointing to a ball
and saying “cup.”
We let life swirl around us, longing and belonging, both.
We walk, as we can, or stumble. We silently stand together
against the bullies, and within our collective resistance.
And then we sleep, passing the baton to the next runner.
In those first 50 years I wanted to have fun and I
had many statements.
Now I find questions to be more powerful against power.
Ask the right question and walls burst into dust,
barbed wire melts into metal pools of soft grey puddles.
Ask the right question as eyes open which were at half-mast.
Ask the right question and what is true becomes clear.
As we spin under God’s hands, the Holy Spirit
pours between us, glistening the slide
and we grow, not into the statements
as much as into the questions.
“Into what shall this clay-person be made by my hands?
A vase for a palace mantle? No.
A bowl for an altar sin-washing? No.
A baptismal font bowl? No.
Perhaps a mug for rich broth.
Yes. A warm, kind, simple mug.
With a handle shaped like a
beautiful woman’s back.”