I went to Cloudland Canyon again a week after our field trip there for a church retreat. It was for a class I was taking for my Confirmation (which I didn’t end up going through with, but that’s another story). I spent much of the day admiring nature (which I find to be the most appropriate way to worship God, much more than being in a church), and at one point during the day I found myself lying on a blanket and staring up at the trees and the sky. It was then that I got the inspiration for this poem, and thank the good Lord (no pun intended) that I had a pen and paper handy.
This poem is about my beliefs in God. I don’t see Him as a mother or a father, as a great almighty being, as a king, or as a warlord, or a faceless magical force. The only possible way I can really see God is as an artist. The Bible says that humankind was “made in God’s image,” and that this means we either are like God or look like him or both. This has led Christianity down what I believe to be a bad road called pretension. It has led many to believe that humans were put above the animals (or worse, that man was put above the woman), however, I believe that it means something different. I believe that it means God has left his mark upon us. When an artist of any sort creates something, he leaves his mark upon it. Each has his or her own style. One couldn’t easily confuse a Frazetta painting for an O’ Keefe or a Bruce Springstein song for a Pink Floyd one, or a Neil Gaiman novel for a Fitzgerald. Each of these artists has a distinct style in the stories they tell, regardless of the medium with which they tell them. I would say the same must be said of God, but his art is the world we live in. Not a painting or a song or a poem, but an existence. If art imitates life, I am sure it is because life is an art itself.