Inviting God to the Party

A new poem, inspired by my yearning and urgency to bring a larger, more capacious frame to the difficult surfaces of life in this moment....





Inviting God to the Party
 
What lifts up our words, our prayers,
and spreads them beyond the walls 
of sanctuaries, buildings, 
all structures and containers 
in which we house 
our finite lives?
 
The Mystery, Beyond-Me, 
More-Than-Human, 
The Luminescent, 
Bubbling Spring, 
The Well, The Place, The Source, 
Ohr (Light), Ahavah (Love), 
Ground of Being, Beingness, 
Creative Force, Presence, 
Unconditioned, Eternal, 
Ein Sof, You,
Intimate,
Infinite…
 
many names to touch
what is beyond touching,
beyond containing,
beyond naming–
to summon Zot, This,
which we cannot see
with ordinary eyes.
 
Light filters through 
sapphire (sapir),
colored, focused by its 
crystalline structure,
enters the eye,
touches the retina,
flows back through the
axonal aleph of the
optic chiasma,
synapses into the visual cortex,
radiates through consciousness. 
 
Words (sippur) can only 
point us toward It
or tell the tale
of the encounter,
recording its traces
on light-loving surfaces. 
 
We have to choose
to remember
to make space
for those flashes,
to attune 
to the shining.
We have to choose
to be reminded 
over and over of
That. This. Here.
 
We pray together
in order to connect, 
to raise the power
of intention, 
to stretch the limits
of imagination, 
to sigh with 
the sheer relief
of being freed
momentarily
from the cozy,
cramped dwelling
of our singular
body house,
to reach for Mystery,
to breathe Wholeness,
to awaken to Unity,
to illumine a warm
cone of space,
a friendly lamp 
beaming into the darkness,
and so to each become
a tiny winking 
beacon,
among the trackless stars.
 
                 –Diane Elliot 
                      4-29-24

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