A Blessing: May the God of Love First Get to You
Brandon Cook
May the God of love first get to you
Before the God of shame or wrath
May you know only the name of goodness and be cajoled by no dark spirits, masquerading as divinity
Prioritizing certainty, as they do, to justify all they sacrifice
And yet,
Since these, our human frames, remain so easily unmoved save by fear’s cold fingers
When you have been made afraid—that you will not be known and held, and that all the earth spins endlessly out of control, sending you to death
When, in short, you believe the world could never be benevolent—
May you, in the very core of you, feel the vine that entwines the heart of things, rising up to meet you, like a wind to sail a ship,
May you feel the Spirit’s breath, hell-bent on firing the work of God in you, and consuming every lie like chaff
May you feel a power in you, and know it, through and through, as God
Until you become immersed in this truth: you have always been held, from birth to now
And need no longer look up or about for God, out there
Since God rises like the spring, within
May you rehearse every memory—
Every bent leaf of spring
Every first scent of smoke in September
Every December cold that stoked in you the fires of aliveness
Which taught you the path long before you knew you were being tutored
And then, as God does, may you hold other trembling hands, to guide their way
Knowing what’s laid down in love always rises
And that death is a only short mystery with fraying wings