Missing God
by Dennis O'Driscoll
His grace is no longer called for before meals: farmed fish multiply without His intercession. Bread production rises through disease-resistant grains devised scientifically to mitigate His faults.
Yet, though we rebelled against Him like adolescents, uplifted to see an oppressive father banished - a bearded hermit - to the desert, we confess to missing Him at times.
Miss Him during the civil wedding when, at the blossomy altar of the registrar's desk, we wait in vain to be fed a line containing words like "everlasting" and "divine".
Miss Him when the TV scientist explains the cosmos through equations, leaving our planet to revolve on its axis aimlessly, a wheel skidding in snow.
Miss Him when the radio catches a snatch of plainchant from some echoey priory; when the gospel choir raises its collective voice to ask Shall We Gather at the River? or the forces of the oratorio converge on I Know That My Redeemer Liveth and our contracted hearts lose a beat.
Miss Him when a choked voice at the crematorium recites the poem about fearing no more the heat of the sun.
Miss Him when we stand in judgment on a lank Crucifixion in an art museum, its stripe-like ribs testifying to rank.
Miss Him when the gamma-rays recorded on the satellite graph seem arranged into a celestial score, the music of the spheres, the Ave Verum Corpus of the observatory lab.
Miss Him when we stumble on the breast lump for the first time and an involuntary prayer escapes our lips; when a shadow crosses our bodies on an x-ray screen; when we receive a transfusion of foaming blood sacrificed anonymously to save life.
Miss Him when we call out His name spontaneously in awe or anger as a woman in the birth ward bawls her long-dead mother's name.
Miss Him when the linen-covered dining table holds warm bread rolls, shiny glasses of red wine.
Miss Him when a dove swoops from the orange grove in a tourist village just as the monastery bell begins to take its toll.
Miss Him when our journey leads us under leaves of Gothic tracery, an arch of overlapping branches that meet like hands in Michelangelo's creation.
Miss Him when, trudging past a church, we catch a residual blast of incense, a perfume on par with the fresh-baked loaf which Milosz compared to happiness.
Miss Him when our newly-decorated kitchen comes in Shaker-style and we order a matching set of Mother Ann Lee chairs.
Miss Him when we listen to the prophecy of astronomers that the visible galaxies will recede as the universe expands.
Miss Him the way an uncoupled glider riding the evening thermals misses its tug.
Miss Him, as the lovers shrugging shoulders outside the cheap hotel ponder what their next move should be.
Even feel nostalgic, odd days, for His Second Coming, like standing in the brick dome of a dovecote after the birds have flown.