“I Started Using Their Name in Vain…”

I started using Their name in vain because nowadays I know the meaning of “Goddammit” better than “God.” When I recall the Santa-like portrait of God from my youth, I recognize a feeling that’s old and deep, divine and familiar, and yet Their name remains poised on the tip of my tongue – I cannot say it aloud. 

“You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” 

When I am admiring the autumn light peeking through a collage of burgundy leaves, I am more inclined to call God by the name, “I Am.” Yahweh – it reads like a heartbeat and sounds like breath. It is easy to recognize the presence of Divine Love when you are both a participant and a recipient. I imagine the ease of Eve calling out God’s name in the Garden – just like greeting an old friend. 

“I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.”

It’s harder to believe in resurrection once you are face to face with a gravestone. Impossible, even. How am I supposed to hope in eternal life when all the tombs I’ve witnessed are occupied? In grief I call God by only one name: “The One Who Damns.” Why else would They breathe life into dust, mold clay into bones, pick us up from the muck only to fuck with us, to let our sacred breath end in eventual death? How else am I supposed to make sense of Their willful silence amidst such profound suffering?

“Why do you hide your face and forget our affliction and our oppression?”

Yet, as much as I want to renounce God’s name, to commit to atheism and total existentialism, I cannot remove these Christ-cursed lenses from my vision. I recall the story of Hagar, who, lost in the desert, clutching her child, was the first to dare to name God: “You are the one who sees me.” El Roi. With parched lips and a dry tongue, when all she could see were mirages and a horizon of emptiness, she testified to a solitary truth: that God is The One Who Bears Witness. 

In this name I pray, 

Amen.

Marlee Baker — Prose Editor