“Him”

 

HIM

 

Her assigned deity has been conveyed

She only felt selfish when she prayed

Shunning God’s house and feeling unwelcome fed her dismay

Declining to trumpet what the church parlayed

 

Closer to God under a cathedral of trees

Understanding His purpose in the flowers and bees

Afraid to declare this sort of worship meets His needs

Left doubting herself, her faith and the dogma the church heeds

 

Fed lies and opinions from well meaning clergy

Given pat answers from sheep quoting liturgy

All this only compounds her misery

And leaves her to cognitive dissonance and fearing purgatory

 

Feeling her plight to be personal

Desperately vying for the infernal

Onslaught of demons inevitable

As they try to undermine the weakened vestibule

 

Stories of personal enlightenment are shared

She feels anger and jealousy when her lacking is bared

The invective she spews cannot be compared

But she wouldn’t deny Him if she dared

 

So is she to be spared?

Do heaven and angels care?

Is her Trudie still there?

Or is she trapped in a devil’s snare?

 

She hears the calm voice, still a Southern drawl

The voice declares even the devil believes in God

She wraps angel’s wings about her like a shawl

But you must reckon with him, the voice will still prod

 

So she salvaged her courage and reached out once more

Found herself curled on the floor

After reading a sermon like never before

Written by a mere mortal who could show evidence of his own sores

 

A new way of going

The roads are better banked

She feels sated and suddenly growing

As she sets off on a journey, her direction now flanked

 

For it was only in her own mind, this closing off from God

He was there all along, hanging on through the throng

Watching her struggle to belong

Letting his angels sing their beautiful songs

 

~Charlotte Greer Slater                  9.5.11