How Unlike Anything

How Unlike Anything

(“When you talk with God, say, ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come.’” Luke 11:2)

Parent of all,
spending all, the stream of love that nurtures
the hidden fears. Sudden thunders of angel wings,
yet not extreme enough to solo your Eye and Hand;
the See,
the Touch,
the cosmic panorama of untamable passion for
the objects of Your birth and art. We, your children say,
“how unlike anything You are.”

Names, oh the dutch and the spanish of it,
the sound and the echo of them,
the tongue-tied way we pronounce a name
that uses vowels we’ve never uttered before.
A Name, inscrutable and suitable,
before all, in all, over all, under and, after all,
the name without any vowels at all.

We speak it without speaking, and still find ourselves reaching
for a tangible place to put our tongue to say,
“how unlike anything You are.”

Parent of all (not mine, ours, others or assigned to merely heaven’s
mortgaged lots)
how should this bald family clinging to a floating marble
speak to You at all?

We are only specks in Your plan, a kingdom that slays with love.
We have heard Your name, (unknowable), and bestow creatures
and caricatures, in anger as palpable as cheetahs pouncing on their prey,
with the unpronounceable name, hoping they will do our will:

We would pray Your will, but we have listened to the echoes and crevices,
the chiseled remains of our own devices and brains, and barely discern
“how unlike anything You are.”

For now, (and then, in the beginning, without end), restructure our madness,
stop us in the darkness, the sadness that sways our moments away from
simple joy; children and chalk-drawings, artists and broken prison keys,
death and resurrection; the new direction of Heaven’s will

After all.