How to God.

WITH THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK

I’ve written poems about God.

I’m sorry, that’s not very clear. For example, if I said that I know how to operate a vehicle, you might say, “Great. Please fly this 757 to Cairo International Airport.”

Vehicle was not a precise enough word. Maybe I should have said that I know how to drive a car.

“Great! I need someone to drive this Formula 1 car to victory!”

God is like that.

While not God, a great blue heron is also God.

We don’t have unique, precise, descriptive words for all the different Gods — and I don’t necessarily mean a pantheon of different gods, I mean all the tiny elements of God we have found in our spiritual quest to know God, the inherently unknowable.

There is also no way to sum all of our infinitesimal ways of knowing and integrate the infinite mystery under the curve.

So, we say, “God,” and mean what we mean. The more precise the language, the more ill-suited it is for God-talk. That’s why poetry and song are so profligate with it.

People who don’t write songs or poems often want to know what they are about. What they mean. Too often for my tastes, poets and songwriters will tell you what their work means.

What they are saying is, “This is what it means to me.”

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The magic of art is that each one of us brings meaning to it. We cannot borrow or inherit anyone else’s meaning. Because of the inherent limitations of words, we cannot truly know what something means to another person, even when we think we do. Even when they tell us.

But all is not lost. Maybe you’ve heard that talking about music is like dancing about architecture. It’s a quote that has been attributed to so many people, we can just attribute it to Homer.

Anyway, I’d be very surprised to learn that no one has ever danced about architecture. Good architecture makes you feel things. Of course you would dance about it. It has probably been someone’s senior project, maybe even an NEA grant.

We are compelled to share what the world means to us in uncountable expressive ways, not because we can capture — much less transfer — that meaning. We do it because we need each other. We need to be in awe of each other and ourselves. We need to try to understand, to show we care, to bring in the firewood and share the stories that help each of us to make meaning out of, quite frankly, a very confusing existence.

What we are sharing is not a meaning, but Meaning itself. If I’m on stage singing a song to 5,000 people, it is 5,000 different songs with the same name.

Like God.

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God Smoke

I dreamed I lived in Austin
with legs like a sparrow
and a hungry heart.
I was looking for God
but kept finding people—
strange little people
with pieces of their bodies missing:
an arm, a leg, a nose, a belly button.

They kept offering me ham sandwiches
and telling me I was going to die.
I’d already died, I told them,
chewing mightily and wishing I
had some water.

That was just a preview, they said.
Next time, you’ll really die.
And they marched ahead of me,
flip-flop, as I combed the streets
searching for God.

Suddenly it was night
and I was standing on the edge of town
alone.

A cold moon shone over me
and the lights of a little café
gleamed down the road.

An old man wobbled up to me and said,
“Well, here I am.”
“God?” I asked.
“Who else? Got a quarter?”
“Yes.” I gave it to him.
“Let’s make it to that diner,” he said.
“Refills are free.
I’ll tell you anything you want.”
“For just a quarter?” I asked.
God chuckled. “Got a cigarette?”
I gave him one.

We made it to the café and ordered coffee,
hunched in a booth in the warm room,
the lights soft and comforting.
“Anything special you want?” God asked,
taking another cigarette from the pack
and lighting it with my Bic.
“Love,” I said. I started to cry.
“O.K.,” he said, patting my arm
with a bony hand.

The room vanished and once more
I was in Austin. I was fifty-four
with legs like a sparrow
and a hungry heart.
She stood before me, eyes
misty and tender.

“God sent me,” she said.
“I know.”
She offered me a ham sandwich
and told me I was going to die.
“But not for a while,” she said
and took my arm.
“Good enough,” I said.
“I’m not going to die for a while,
I have you,
And God owes me a quarter
And two cigarettes and”—
I felt in my pockets—
“a Bic lighter.
Would you like to hear
what I dreamed last night?"
“Yes.”
“Well, I dreamed I lived in Austin.
I was fifty-four
I was looking for God
but kept finding people.”
“And love,” she added.
“Yes, love,” I agreed.
“I think it’s a set,” she said.

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I hope she was right. Your fan,

Jonathan Byrd.