An Invocation

Unto you, Lord. Unto you, Lord God of the Worlds, I turn. And even when I do not know that I am turning, I turn to you.

Your print is everywhere, and everywhere divine.

Where can I look and I do not see you?

Into myself? But I encompass you, who compass me from every corner, for I am sin and you forgiveness and I cannot live except it be by you. My life itself is yours. No, when I look at me I see the thing that you have done.

Then where can I look and I do not see you?

The city? Hot with human enmity, cold with old mortality, the city? Busy and fatigued; kissing below back alley stairs, lips as limp as rotten violets; and children cursing like their parents, parents careless; parties for wasted wealth on Saturday night, exhausted Sunday morning; cars and lights and sirens; ointments, rouges, polishes, colognes and coin—the city? Turning to the city, do I turn from you?

No, my Lord, for you are in the city. In all the affairs of humankind, you are there. You were not ashamed to be born of a woman, flesh like hers and mine, troubled as she and I by all the bruises of that flesh. You emptied yourself to enter the city, and though your coming may not make it good, it makes you cry, and there you are. In the oily streets, damp with rain and human sin, lit by a single light, I see your face reflected. O God, your incarnation's in the streets. I see the city, and I cannot help but see you.

And I love you.

They ask me, "Whom do you love?" And I tell them I love you.

They ask, "But whom do you love?" I point to the city.

They insist, "But whom do you love?"

And since they cannot see you for themselves, I do the next best thing: I tell them stories. I tell them a thousand stories, Lord. For the city is active, and you are acting in it, always; and activity's a story. I tell them about you by telling them the story.

Some of the stories I fashion myself, pleading your patience with my poor imagination and praying it be righteous to shape your truth into a fiction. But others happened to me truly, through your grace; and I hope the people realize that what is mine is theirs by virtue of your universal presence. Convince them of your love, O Lord. And I use the forms they understand: drama, poetry and essay, fable, letters, memoirs, any form whereby the words may cry the Word. And I make it a book, that the city might take it deep into itself, home, home to its heart.

Because I love you, and I love them too. But yours is the mightier love, and I wish they knew it. Oh! I wish they could laugh out loud for the knowledge of your love for them.

So I turn to you, here at the beginning:

Give them eyes, bright God, to see you everywhere. They are the city: to see you in themselves! Give them ears, thou roll of thunder, and feeling for your presence - in this book because I love you, in the streets because you choose to love them.

And since I am assured that faithful praying finds a faithful answer. 

Gratias tibi Domine