I’m a conditional atheist
God does not exist for me on
the tip of a sharpened sword
or on the lips of a sermonizing
hate-evangelist who is foaming at the mouth
or in the licking flames of a torch held
by a marching bigot
or in any dogma that have been soaked in the ancient poison of guilt and self-shame the divine doesn’t
exist for me anywhere
where wounds are being
caused in its name
I don’t know about
how any of this works
but I’ve never found
much of God in the towering
hierarchy of unchecked power
the Great Mystery isn’t a cracking whip
or a flag or an internet manifesto
or a pointed finger or a political party
or a dividing line or a box of ammo
or a corvette driven by a tv preacher
or a specific gender or a book bonfire
Creation is more of a florist
than she is a fundamentalist
the Weaver of Life is more interested
in stitching us together into a quilt
than how to separate us into metal bins
to come into relationship
with Unending Love shouldn’t
require us to loathe ourselves
~ it should be the exact oppositeto know ourselves
is to know God
to love ourselves
is to love God
my love,
I believe that the divine
is just about everywhere
~ except in the slow-poison
sands of fear and control
where so many have built temples
for us to worship inside
~ in those places
I am an atheist
but everywhere else
there is so much
fertile soil
where we can let the sunflowers
of empathy grow wildly in
the spaces between us
and I’ve heard
that if we remain still
and listen so very closely
these evangelizing sunflowers
will whisper to each of us
a secret we once knew while we
were cooking in the cosmic womb:
“We are all loved equally.”
~ john roedel