Please Don’t

The Perfect Storm as seen from Hubble Scope

Please don’t talk to me about how much you feel God in your life unless you’re almost swooning when you say it, because “God” is the ultimate lover, not a nice idea. And God is not a guy and it ain’t that kind of love, so don’t even go with those images.

Make real that devotion that moves you, day after wild and joyful day, if that is indeed the love you claim to feel.

Don’t sing about your precious one unless you feel it like Aretha back at church in Detroit, wailing with the choir about how she got over. Don’t tell me you’re saved unless you can hardly stay inside your own skin cause you’re so blown away by the feeling of it all, so filled with passion over what’s happened in your life that you act like a lunatic compared to the living dead around you.

Don’t casually explain to those in pain that everything happens for a reason and give it all up to fate, when the “reason” a lot of bad things happen is because sometimes people can be so damned blind and stupid and make choices that turn out terrible and create those “everythings” that weren’t at all “meant to be…not by a long shot.

How dare any of us indulge in believing we’re going to get more lifetimes so no big deal if we blow this one, because when you talk that way, you’re wasting my precious time and yours. Even if other lives are true, you won’t know it happened anyway. All you know for sure is that you’ve one now, so check it out big time before you decide to take a pass here and there, because you think there’s more where this came from.

Tell someone who gives a damn if you know for sure who’s going to Heaven and who’s headed for Hell, because with all due respect, you haven’t even realized what your good books tell you over and over about the kingdom being here for you now, in this body, on this Earth, while you’re alive to feel it all.

Please keep to yourself how your kids or spouses complete you, because as much as I love my own, they didn’t come for me and I’m not here for them. With our without those people around, there’s a completion so far beyond a Valentine card or the sweet hug of a child that no one needs to worry they might have missed out on it all if they never had these relationships.

Like to talk religion? Great…as long as you know where all that is born; that the word itself means realization and that the realization of what keeps you alive is the pure and perfect religion.

Don’t proclaim that old “God is One” theory then condition that by adding “…and mine’s the real one” because sisters and brothers, that God we talk about is beyond our wildest imagination and we dilute it down to something tiny and absurd, thinking we can somehow wrap our walnut sized brains around it.

And lastly, please, don’t even begin to tell me you know who the “Lord” is unless you know who you are.

Socrates said “Know Thyself” so if you think you’ve found the truth, the way and the light, let me see it pouring out of you, not just out of your mouth.

Practice what you preach or better yet, just practice, don’t preach. Tell me about your life, not the Creator’s. That power has its own thing to feel, it’s own way to go, it’s own stuff to do and it’s really none of our business.

God bless the child who’s got his own or her own.

So, friend, when you do tell me or I tell you about we’ve found in life, that experience needs to be really, really real, because when it is, those words will cross that bridge between us. Only then will what we say to each other become more than words; only then can we not only hear, but feel, and by feeling, we will know.