In locating God, we may need something other than the traditional grammar of success.
So, we’ll not locate God in statistics of religious attendance, up or down; for it is well known Hitler could draw a good crowd. And Buddha and Jesus died almost alone.
Neither will we locate God in the public utterances of religious leaders; history simply will not allow and may laugh with impolite disdain at all who attempt it.
And we’ll not locate God in morality which is a tired cultural animal possessing a thousand expressions and an ally in Order and Judgement – but with no known links to the divine.
We’ll not even locate God in community support, in the running of foodbanks or clubs, tempting though it is; for while altruism asks questions of the godless squad, in the human heart, it is too mixed a metal to be proof.
Instead, we give up the argument, we give up the fight – and glimpse God, like smoke in the wind, like lining between joints, in all things; in the interstices of life between vulnerability’s cry and creation’s green joy.
In the mending of life; in the pilgrimage from denial, we find footprints; and rumours in the air of the numinous pulse, this irreducible presence.
Clothe it and the clothes won’t fit; the cloth will instantly rip and burn.
Here we cross a threshold, we trespass on holy land; and in our hearts, away from scrutiny and hurt, know it for the first time.
A grammar of success difficult to speak of.
