Can we talk about your world, God?
Can we talk about its duplicitous love of
fellowship and division,
peace and violence,
adoration and rejection?
Can we talk about how vainly and violently
humanity continues to strive
against
this dust
of which we are made,
how severely we scrub and sanitize
bleach and sanctify
invalidate and terrorize
ourselves and the world around us
in an life-consuming effort
to
discover/create
a sterile image of beauty
that we do not know how to see
in the dust —
an image of porcelain, perhaps,
or of diamonds;
of perfection or of holiness;
of knowledge or of righteousness?
Can we talk about
how pathologically we hate
this dust,
and how much
we take our hate-filled disappointment
out on one another?
If you had made us from gold,
I wonder if we would be satisfied.
From emerald, if we would then see
one another’s beauty.
From oceans,
if we would sigh in awe
upon meeting.
O God, redeem us
to dust.