Conditional Atheist

 I’m a conditional atheist

God does not exist for me on 

the tip of a sharpened sword

   or on the lips of a sermonizing 

hate-evangelist who is foaming at the mouth

or in the licking flames of a torch held 

by a marching bigot 

    or in any dogma that have been soaked in the ancient poison of guilt and self-shame 

the divine doesn’t 

exist for me anywhere

where wounds are being 

caused in its name 

I don’t know about 

how any of this works 

but I’ve never found 

much of God in the towering 

hierarchy of unchecked power 

the Great Mystery isn’t a cracking whip

or a flag or an internet manifesto

or a pointed finger or a political party

or a dividing line or a box of ammo

or a corvette driven by a tv preacher 

or a specific gender or a book bonfire 

Creation is more of a florist 

than she is a fundamentalist 

the Weaver of Life is more interested

in stitching us together into a quilt 

than how to separate us into metal bins 

to come into relationship 

with Unending Love shouldn’t

require us to loathe ourselves

    ~ it should be the exact opposite

to know ourselves 

is to know God

to love ourselves

is to love God

my love, 

I believe that the divine 

is just about everywhere 

~ except in the slow-poison

sands of fear and control 

where so many have built temples

for us to worship inside 

~ in those places 

I am an atheist 

  but everywhere else

there is so much 

fertile soil 

where we can let the sunflowers 

of empathy grow wildly in 

the spaces between us

and I’ve heard 

that if we remain still

and listen so very closely 

these evangelizing sunflowers 

will whisper to each of us 

a secret we once knew while we 

were cooking in the cosmic womb:

“We are all loved equally.” 

~John Roedel

John Roedel