Warming the Pew.

Last night G-d was fluttering on shadowed wings - shuttered windows - quiet babies - twinkling sky.

Last night - G-d was wandering in and out of darkened closet doors and secret rooms and smoke
drifting up stained-glass-windows.

Last night, G-d talked through images and music and picture books and laughing children
Candles.  Caskets.  Dogs the vet was putting down.

Last night G-d was in the parking lot where the street lights stopped working and I felt a strange tingling as I walked among the white lines painted at stagnant diagonals and saw the rusty metal cross at the bottom of the church-hill.

Last night G-d paced and prodded and whispered in the ears of little boys and toddler girls and in the ocean and the moon and forest and swamp and in the bugs that are yet living in the rotting pile of compost in the fenced-in suburban waste-land back yard.

Last night G-d manifested Himself in feminine and masculine and motherhood and fatherhood and artistic fingerings all over windowsills and seatbelts and car doors and drunk drivers and police lights and ambulance sirens and old women holding old men's hands at hospital bedsides and sparkling cider and closed Wal-marts.

Last night G-d breathed small and silent breaths over door posts and moved through this town like crossing the Red Sea and vacuuming up lint from carpet and under-the-bed sock stuff and I

Sat still and stiff.  Like molding in a plastic pan on the floor in an office. 

I watched the candles flicker like flags waving in war and could almost hear the horses hooves as they prepared for some kind of battle and the loud, low, judgement of the woman in the Christmas sweater rang out in the place of church bells and I felt the blood in my cheeks and felt like exposure in wet wilderness with my rainbow scarf and my Nike sneakers (six years old) and my jeans that are currently ill-fitting and I held white paper and felt its crinkle under my sweating fingers and I stilled my breath and strained ponderous ears and in that big room with people and slide shows and unsettling-ly blessed communion bread and...  I felt nothing.

Cold.

I wrapped my sweater tighter on my shoulders.