Composed after the sermon at Saint Andrew’s United Church of Canada, 14 February, 2021. Such a beautiful place of warmth and welcome and good.

And God Said, Actually Honey…

I was talking to God about the state of things, 
about the state of me
and the world and all things,
including the fluffed up crow
sitting on the front porch bench—
the crow who I’d swear
tilted its head and squinted its eyes,
and looked at me as if
to say Hmph…?
Why are you looking at me, looking at you?
Yeah, that’s right….I stand out and aren’t I a vision?
And God said—“Go on…the crow’s good. 
Might have but one thing to say, but the crow’s good.
What else?”

I said ‘Well, since we’re talking…’ and God said mmhmm.
I said, “You know I listen to you and listen for you…
In the pop of the can in the morning when I feed the cat
and in her whiskered grace; I can hear you sing 
with the gasp and gurgle of the coffee machine and 
the sigh of a hinge that says someone else is awake.
I see you dancing praise 
in the upright outstretched bare branched pirouettes 
of oaks and elms and beech,
all labeled with Latinate names while still housing squirrels
in their knobbly bends and boughs.

I feel you like the warm cotton quilt that conforms itself
to the curves and quirks that you and life have given me.
I taste you in the layers of lyrics composed when
a good squeeze of lemon meets red lentil soup.
I know you in the smile of my neighbour’s eyes
above the mask full of fancy chickens.
And find you in the solid weight of my friend’s hand.
Yet even so, I said… ‘Even so…?’ asked God, 
blended in, as God would be, with the colours
somewhere on the spectrum between today and almost tomorrow,
between day’s end and moonrise.

There’s part of me that wants to ask,
Am I doing right by you?  Am I making you manifest
as you would have me do?  Because sometimes, mmh mmh,
sometimes, I tell you…it’s other people what make me wonder.
I do not see what they see or think how they think…all grouped up.
Nodding and knowing themselves as in, as with, as belonging.
And God just looked at me. Just looked at me and said—
“It’s hard, I know. But actually, honey…
It’s all good.  You are good. And there’s hope for the finding
in the constant becoming of good. Look at how the light changes.
How the constellations shift by season—mm, that was a good idea,
wasn’t it?  And interesting?  Oh, the palette and all of those textures…
nuances of language and rhythms and thought…
The earth and her valleys, mountains, waterfalls, and
single drops of the sea.  It’s all good and none of it perfect.
Keep your eyes on me, feel me, sense me.
Me. Keep your eyes
on Me, your heart on me, your senses, on me,
through the journey. Seven days, honey? Hmph.
It’s still not done, I’m not done, and
I’m telling you,
It’s all good.”

Kimberly M. King