The question of whether or not God exists is, in essence, blasphemous. For it implies that human beings, with their limited intellect and imagination, can comprehend a form of being that, by its very nature, eludes them.
Prayer to Nobody
Even if You existed, Lord –
I would not believe in You.
For how could I worship You,
if I served You only for fear of a punishing hell
or for the reward of eternal life?
Would You not conclude from that very attitude
the unworthiness of Your servant
and cast me into eternal purgatory?
If I were to envision You,
I might perhaps picture You as a gardener.
Crystals of Your breath
You would sow in the soulless, hoping
that one day they might blossom into souls.
Everywhere You would scatter Your divine shards,
trusting that some of them
would sprout blossom wings
along life’s capricious paths.
Of course, You would watch over Your creation –
yet, as if in awe
of Your own realm’s serene tranquillity,
You would never force its growth,
knowing that free seeds alone
can shed their husks and bloom.
Or maybe I would imagine You as a gambler –
a daredevil who would send storms,
deluges and years of drought
to the seedlings in the dark void
so that afterwards
they would stretch all the more unshakably
towards the sun of Your non-existence.
But if I truly wanted to draw near to You, Lord,
I would search for You
in the raft of clouds that drifts
like a hidden hymn
across the glowing bridge of the dusk.
Or I would sense You
in the heavenly maze of veins in an agate,
in the cosmic swirls of a snail’s shell
and in the lavish splendour of parrots‘ robes.
Perhaps I would hear Your unfathomable voice
in the crickets‘ moonlit melodies
or feel Your paradisiacal scent
in the breath of the earth
beneath the blooming canopy of moss.
In the starlike twinkling of the beetles
I would sense Your presence,
in the playful perfection
of the dances between bee and blossom
and in the self-forgetful weaving
of lichens on the weathered rock.
And yet I would know:
It would be nothing but an illusion.
For all my searching would never reflect the fact
that You are Nothing and Everything
at the same time.
So how should I comprehend Your being?
Thinking of You,
I would think of a heaven
or of an abyss.
The absolute absence of images and words
that make You up
transcends my mind:
As soon as I think and speak,
words and images flicker past my inner eye.
Therefore, Lord,
so that I may not, through my faith,
lock You up in the cage of my mind:
Even if You did exist –
I would not believe in Your existence.
But I would act
as if You existed.
Image: H. Drass et al., European Southern Observatory (ESO): Infrared View of the Orian Nebula (Eso.org / Wikimedia commons)
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