Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Chelan Harkin: When I Come To You, God

Well, God, here I am,
a bundle of poetry
and attempts to love,
a pile of mistakes
mixed with light,
all kinds of wounds
with some forgiveness tossed in,
full of loneliness
and the burning desire it makes
to connect
that matches nothing.
Some bits of me
have been beautifully carved
and whittled
and there’s plenty more
that’s still raw material
ever unfinished.
But I’m learning love
is something to lie down in
right now
just as we are
and that it has no requirements
When I come to you, God
I will be the tension
between the sacred
and the profane
that feels sometimes like a dance
and more often a tug of war.
I will have fallen
from the facade of "good"
into the grace of the real
a thousand times.
I will have regularly gotten drunk
guzzling down anything
that feels like communion
And gotten lost
trying to find You in the many things
that bring just a moment of comfort
to my heart—
I want you to love me most
for these times.
God I am a bruised seeker,
I am a fallen witness,
I bear before you broken commitments
and unraveled prayer beads
and the willingness to try again.
I’m in a mortal frame
spun of stardust—
how could I be anything
but glorious and terrified?
When I come to you, God
I will be made of two worlds--
the world that’s collapsing
and the world that is being made anew
and I trust you’ll know
one could not exist
without the other.
 
Chelan Harkin
 
 

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