CONFESSIONS

In the car, half-way home, my ten year old asks, So, what does ‘living your life for God’ even mean? Do you know? Can you explain that to me? I pounce on teachable moments. She holds the words hot in her mouth like steeped tea. My ears try to cup them as they slide over her lips onto the dashboard – she is telling. She loves to hear her voice, feel her tongue chiselling out the sounds that give form and shape to the invisible – removing everything that isn’t what should be. She’s a sculptor of words – a preacher from a zigzagged line of preachers. She knows nothing of millstones.

Talking about God is more difficult for me. I was taught the fear – I have learned to filter. My soul remembers ineffable. Syllables chant an old cradle song in my head – invisible, unknowable, unfathomable. I pick my words like raspberries, careful not to bruise. I feel brazen.

God loves me. I hear it from a stranger at my door, and I hear myself answering back Jesus like a secret code. I watch his words drop like blocks in front of me – but do I believe in God, but do I know God, but do I KNOW God as my SAVIOUR. He is building a wall. I think to say words like I’m already washed in the blood of the Lamb. My name is in The Book. I tell which on the list of approved churches I go to. I pray to shut the door – to remember don’t talk to strangers, instead of thinking about children listening and cups of cold water and about angels in disguise.

He doesn’t tell about the spill-over measures of joy like a fountain, peace like a river, love like an ocean. His words say nothing of the smoggy, enflamed, brambly, black nights of the soul.

He is asking if I am literate. But do I know my alphabet. But have I actually read a book. But do I read with comprehension.

I bite on my tongue. I want to say, Yes, brother. Yes. Yes. Yes. But you are qualifying the ineffable. You are quantifying the immeasurable. I want to say, I know what the word love means.