Thinking about "Dear God"

"Dear God," I've said a million times and then some.

"Dear God,"
"watch over my children,"
"keep my wife,"
"help me,"
"be with my friend,"
"bless our world."

"Dear God" ... sweet words, words of hope, humility, and longing.

Words that have meant the world to me over the years, without question, simple and direct, personal and poignant, "Dear God."

My sadness about the word "God" is how this precious word has been sullied and stained by certain religious elements that have lost all imagination, replacing it with dogma ... religious elements that have ceased thinking, elements without humility before the great mysteries of life, death, love and eternity.

Sadly, my own inner spirit has been hurt by these elements - their brutality, their insistence, their misplaced confidence in what they know, their disdain for the poor, for immigrants, and for people of other faith-traditions.

I have been taking a daily bath in their filthy water for some years now, trying to figure it out, trying to find words to counter their evil influence, wanting to shine some light into the darkness and madness of their violent thoughts and behavior. Compounded by the filthy water of wayward politics, linked to these religious elements, with a horrible and heinous progeny populating our churches, our schools, our sense of being and identity. Bathe in filthy water, and there is no cleansing, but only more filth, more despair, more disappointment and discouragement, until the soul itself is compromised by the principalities and powers of death.

Great music, poetry, exalted preaching, novels and film ... birds and bees and children laughing and crying ... all of this, and more, cleansing ... clean ... clear ... hope anew, courage to believe, to imagine, to see the mountain, to hear the world, to engage the powers of life, and be a human being fully alive, which is, after all, the glory of God.

"Dear God" ... two words that have meant the world to me ... dear, close and kind ... God, high above and surrounding all that is, making life, and holding us dear, as only Dear God can do.