The Worst Thing We Ever Did

 



The worst thing we ever did

was put God in the sky
out of reach

pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.

The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.

The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath.

by Chelan Harkin

This poem was read during a weekly poetry group which has been meeting on Zoom since March 2020. We have been touched and healed, comforted and inspired, by now thousands of poems. But none more powerful than this, I think.

I have been haunted, especially recently, by the institutionalization of God and my complicity. I don’t want to be complicit!

And so I think I will take this poem and let it slowly call me away from worry and anxiety of complicity to rest in the mystery, the simplicity, and the unrestrictability of God. I will try to let God be God! In so doing perhaps I can be a more genuine me.

This poem represents for me a reminder of the "Burning Bush" moment which repeats and repeats in our lives, if we remember that God is "bursting dazzlement".


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