I think so.

People who live without God don't understand, but this is why I have Him.
I need Him. Or Her, or They, as the case may be.
Sometimes I doubt Him. But I need Him.
Real or imagined, it does not matter.

It must be great not to need a God in your life.
It must feel strong.
I wouldn't know. I've always needed Mine.

God is the father who never dies; the mother who never wounds.
God is the coach who does not care if I was first or last, as long as I had fun.
God is the teacher who does not mind if I don't know the answer, as long as I heard the question.
God is the president I vote in my heart, knowing that He'll always have my best interests in His.
God is the policeman who watches and warns, but has no need of a weapon.
God is the judge who may send me to jail, but goes there with me.

God is every authority figure I know, as I'd wish them to be:
giving, supporting, guiding, loving, eternal.
Something bigger than myself.
Something to hold onto when I stumble or am struck down.

Love, regardless.
Hope, when I have nothing else.
Faith that in this world, where we are all really alone, we really aren't.

God is the strength I don't have, when I need it most.

Serendipity, Sao Paulo

It was love at first sight for me. From the moment I discovered
the Internet, I was hooked. To seal the obsession, I was part
of the team that developed the launch campaign for the Internet
in Bahrain, inet for Batelco. I was one of those copywriters
who liked to believe in the products she sold, and with inet it was easy.

I could go on and on about the joys of the Internet, but for now
I'll rave about just one of them -  the way it connects us all,
around the world. Every day that I check my blog, I'm amazed -
and awed - that there are visitors from continents I may never see,
from cities and towns I have never heard of, or places whose names
bring back memories of books I have read or songs I've listened to.
Every now and then I like to google and look for the deeper connection
between myself and these places or the people who come to this blog from them.

This morning I blog-hopped over to Angela's blog in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
It was all in Spanish, but there was one little box in the top right corner,
whose contents I recognised immediately.

Se Deus e por nos,
quem sera contra nos?

It's a line from the Bible's New Testament, one that I'd heard
so often as a schoolgirl, but nothing that I've kept top of mind.
This morning, however, I was disturbed and confused about
something I'd read last night, and there were a zillion questions
bouncing around my mind. My little blog-hop to Sao Paulo
gave me the answer to them all.

Thank you, Angela, for being my connection to this.

Once upon 2.77 acres

Once upon 2.77 acres of land, people discovered God. Some 
of the people called Him Rama. Some called Him Allah. God 
smiled at them all, because only He knew that He was in every 
name, and that He was beyond names.

Sometimes God tried to explain this to the people, but they 
could not understand. He tried to tell them through the leaves 
of trees, and through the songs of birds. He planted His truth 
in the eyes of every child, and He waited for the people to 
see it. But they would not look, and so they did not see.

The people, however, did love God. They were fascinated 
by Him. They adored and feared Him, and they chose beautiful 
ways to worship Him. They did not all choose the same way, 
of course, because God had long ago breathed into each of these 
people the gifts of self-expression and choice. So some of the people 
heard a hymn to God in the striking of a bell, and some 
heard it in the voice of a man calling them to prayer.

God heard them both. But in time, another sound started to drown 
out the hymns He loved. It was the sound of the people, quarrelling 
amongst themselves as to whose god God was.

God bowed His head and wept. And the people looked up 
and said, “Ah, rain.”

For a time, they were distracted, and they began to speak of weather 
and soil and geography. But inevitably, they returned to their arguing. 
And this time they quarrelled about whose land God’s land was.

“Mine,” said God, whispering the word through the rustle of leaves. 
But the people could not hear the word over the noise of their angers 
and their fears.

“Yours,” said God, scattering the word through the songs of birds. 
But the people were too busy gathering evidence to spare any time 
to find the word.

“Ours,” said God, shining the word through the eyes of children. 
But the people kept their eyes fixed, burning with hate, upon 
each other, and did not notice the word.

Besides, the people had found a new word, a word that felt 
powerful and reassuring. It was not a word that was as powerful 
and reassuring as God Himself, but it felt real and solid. It could 
be touched and prodded and probed, taken apart and put back together.

“Proof!” all the people cried, in a brief moment of unity. 
“Proof is what we need!”

And God wondered when proof had replaced Him. Faith was 
all He had hoped for, and all His gifts had been gifts of love. 
Proof had never been one of them.

Nobody knows the exact day when He walked quietly away 
from those 2.77 acres of land, and nobody said goodbye, 
because nobody noticed He had left.

You complain that love is fickle

I suppose I wrote this when I finally ventured into another chance at romance. The only trouble is that I don't think it's entirely true that we can heal our hearts and move on. We always carry the scars and perhaps that is how it should be.


You complain that love is fickle.

I am thankful for this mercy.

I do not think I could have carried
a broken heart with me all my lifetime.

#

(wrote this in 93? or 94)

Edited 11 April 2014