WHEN GOD COMES TO YOU

WHEN GOD COMES TO YOU

     susan ambrosino

The sense of it is always with you.

How you feel yourself extending out

From the surface of your skin

Beyond the confines of the body

Into the realm of space and time

Into the realm of what you think is god.

But it's a miracle that you need

To feel fully present in your life

A pop ! that will show you what's under the tent

Making all your thoughts irrelevant.

A shaft of light to break through the roof

As you sit complacently knitting

In your favorite chair.

Hit you square between the eyes

Or smack in the solar plexus

Changing you

Until no one recognizes you and you look

Into the mirror and see someone else who you know is you

But isn't.

Perhaps an out of body

While spreading hummus on rye crisp toast.

Suddenly your hovering near the ceiling

Watching yourself in the kitchen.

God won't go away but it doesn't come close either.

You long for it to take over your life

In a dramatic way

Like it does for saints, the selfless, the innocent,

The suffering, the dying, those who

Take upon themselves the stigmata.

Or maybe a large white bird flying into

Your house when you open the front door

Making itself at home as if it always belonged there

With your things

In your life.

Perhaps if you become fierce

Let out a low growl, or a loud bellow

Or engage that scream therapy so popular in the 70's

You'll release the latent god so long sleeping

Beneath your soft manners.

Something you can call a small miracle

With special meaning

So you will know a force beyond your skin

Has sent you a wonderful clear omen.

But god comes when it's time

Through suffering and pain

Loneliness and sorrow

Loss and more loss.

That's how it works.

First the pain, the agony, the blood

The inability to walk

Someone sticks a catheter in you

You soil yourself

People visit and look at you

Hold your hand

Doctors come and go

Come and go

Then go

Slowly away

To whisper to your family.

That's when god comes

To pick up the piece of

Your scrap of body

Minus the needs, the desires, the money.

It's just you in your hospital robe

When the shaft of light drops down

And your lifted out of body

And the sound is so loud

A fierce bellow that only you hear.

It is the body tearing apart from you

You not wanting to let go

Until you do

And there it is

God

And god

And more god.