The recent disaster in The Philippines - which may be the result of man made global climate change on some deeper level - is also a nail in the coffin of an interventionist God. My Catholic theology has wavered, and it now is blown over by yet another assault on my sensibilities. No God I know would massacre thousands in a windstorm. But then, I do not know God. I can only know what he is not, so feeble is my human ken. At any rate, the universe moves in remote, strange and often cruel ways. All we can do as mortals is try to pick up the pieces when nature, in its broad brutal swathes of dumb action negates us. We must gesture towards what a kind presence overbearing all would do. We must try to be God in the curious absence of one. Those poor people!
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
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