space to pray

on going to Christmas Eve mass

The Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City, Utah

No, it is not my god, but in a way it is

because my god is everything all at once —

            the grace of the snowfall dancing down

            a sudden beam of sunlight upon starving skin

            the shape each unique river makes

            and our nightly theater of mystery.

My god is neither here, nor there, but everywhere

always, a glance into a great expanse,

and all places my church.

And yet this space to pray — this chosen hour,

surrounded by souls, and the warmth our bodies make —

this eucharist, this body and blood,

transubstantiation — the pregnant in-between:

it is the place where mundane and sacred meet.

There is ancient beauty in the rhythm

— genuflection, and I am like a child

            yet no longer restless

           my eyes barely peering over the pew

           embedded in magic, uncertainty

           and held so delicately once again.

I ask you, what is holiness?

This is and is not my god, this god of my ancestors:

this cross and this resurrection,

           and I have my own Garden of Gethsemane

           my own encounters with Judas

            negotiations like Job

            and my own cross to bear.

These stories last because truth is a prism,

not a law — a mythopoesis, not a fact —

and I can rest, or I can wrest from the earth profanity

rather than communion

and why would I ever want to do this, and not that?