Thursday, December 2, 2010

God Of My Understanding


In the trenches, everyone had to figure out how they were going to pray. This being New York, there were many versions to pick from just in case you couldn't do the old white guy with the white beard up on a white cloud.

For a while mine was a hand on a doorknob. Somehow that seemed to opened me up to hope that the war, both within and without, would end.

This guy said his was always the Chrysler Building. He could always look up and see a beauty of lights.

Decades later, the hand on the doorknob often got dimmed by worry and fear. But with so many glass building crowding the sidewalk, I found myself catching glimpses of a beauty of lights, remembering that however I understand it, there was a greater expanse awaiting me. I just had to look up.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my imagination there was once nothing but a towering, swirling, glittering, growling column of pure energy. This energy column exploded out into the vast reaches of nothing and created all universes. In doing so the energy dispersed into tiny fragments and now exists as a seed within each and every one of us, animate and inanimate. When I pray, like many others, I pray silently with my eyes closed. I am trying to reach the seed within.
I love your concept of the door knob. Or your friends concept of the beauty of light. Whether you look upwards, outwards or inwards; keep on looking.

c.o. moed said...

Love the image of trying to reach the seed within. Simply beautiful.

Anonymous said...

beautiful! it's almost like you need to take your nose out of your soup for a second to see the expanse outside the rim of the plate...

Alana said...

lovely, looking up is how I always know that no matter how dark the sky may get, the light always comes back and my prayers will or may be heard. My feet moving looking up at lighted windows, the moon and everything else is always a comfort.

City Of Strangers said...

Hi CO - yes, lovely. I've always found New York an intensely spiritual place - all those buildings, all that energy. Spiritual in the sense too the light and dark are intertwined . . .

T.