When you move your feet, pray
(I'm participating in a writing contest. This is my first entry)
Here is what I think about God.
I think He is darn convenient when I am driving in the rain, my fingers gripping the wheel as if they can make my tires grip the road at 2AM, I should have stopped in Syracuse, two more hours of wet slick darkness until bed.
I think He is absent-minded when I round the corner of Ramstore, walking past industry and dirt and buses and then down shaded promenades lined with tourist-coffee and tourist-salad and the outpost of TGI Fridays at the corner of Mito Hadzivasilev and Boulevard Kocho Racin, but first walking past the Rom girl, all of six or maybe a small eight, tugging up her pants after squatting and shitting, running to me with her hand held out.
I think He is ineffable when I peer through the secret door arching Lake Constanz, the water black, the sky black, stars not yet out, darkness cradling me like a womb, so close, so terrifying, so enormous to step down the iron stair.
I meet Him in the secret church off the Kalverstraat. In Thorncrown Chapel. At La Iglesia. In Notre Dame, of course; but also in the mosquito-clouded prairie between Lloydminster and Saskatoon, the dirt of Skopje, the long sand ripples outside Al Ain.
He says, keep moving.
I point out, there are a number of people quietly sitting, quietly tithing, quietly going home, sleeping each night on the same pillow, rolling over into the same wide hips of their same lover, waking to the sun in each other’s faces in a place that is home.
He says, keep moving.
I move. I move. Sometimes I run, sometimes I chase, sometimes my grasp comes near my reach, sometimes I stagger in the dark, afraid to take the first metal grated step over water. And still I move.
Step. Drive. Run. Pray.
Whipchick has known clauderains since freshman year of high school. They were equally dorky. They still are.
Here is what I think about God.
I think He is darn convenient when I am driving in the rain, my fingers gripping the wheel as if they can make my tires grip the road at 2AM, I should have stopped in Syracuse, two more hours of wet slick darkness until bed.
I think He is absent-minded when I round the corner of Ramstore, walking past industry and dirt and buses and then down shaded promenades lined with tourist-coffee and tourist-salad and the outpost of TGI Fridays at the corner of Mito Hadzivasilev and Boulevard Kocho Racin, but first walking past the Rom girl, all of six or maybe a small eight, tugging up her pants after squatting and shitting, running to me with her hand held out.
I think He is ineffable when I peer through the secret door arching Lake Constanz, the water black, the sky black, stars not yet out, darkness cradling me like a womb, so close, so terrifying, so enormous to step down the iron stair.
I meet Him in the secret church off the Kalverstraat. In Thorncrown Chapel. At La Iglesia. In Notre Dame, of course; but also in the mosquito-clouded prairie between Lloydminster and Saskatoon, the dirt of Skopje, the long sand ripples outside Al Ain.
He says, keep moving.
I point out, there are a number of people quietly sitting, quietly tithing, quietly going home, sleeping each night on the same pillow, rolling over into the same wide hips of their same lover, waking to the sun in each other’s faces in a place that is home.
He says, keep moving.
I move. I move. Sometimes I run, sometimes I chase, sometimes my grasp comes near my reach, sometimes I stagger in the dark, afraid to take the first metal grated step over water. And still I move.
Step. Drive. Run. Pray.
Whipchick has known clauderains since freshman year of high school. They were equally dorky. They still are.