Thank you for this poem, John Roedel. Beautiful words of a fierce and gentle anarchist. I share his perspective. Guess I am a conditional atheist, too.

“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.”

(photo: Mike Murrah)

~ john roedel