Creator

a poem by Bonnee Klein Gilligan

No matter what religion

   Creator dwells within

   and God has never left us

   he can’t… you see, he is us

   and all Creation too.

You say that God made pain

   I reply he didn’t, he made

   emotions, mind and spirit.

It’s we who choose the outcome

   of how we feel and what we think

   our happy, sad or worried

   comes from us alone.

How I respond to others

  or even to myself

   is my responsibility

   not God’s, not yours nor others

   it is mine alone my friend

   and yours alone as well.

God called us ‘human beings’

   he says ‘Just be… my children… play’.

But we take that play and twist it

   and call each other names

   we poke and hit and banter

   until we feel the shame.

We hurt ourselves my friend

   not God nor other either.

God called us ‘human beings’.

   we call us ‘human doings’

   for the being part escapes us

   in our daily life of doing.

God’s gone missing in existence

  from our minds, and words and lives

   and we blame God for our suffering

   and we blame God for our pain

  and we blame God for every other thing

    in life that brings us shame.

It is we who have created that

   not God nor other either

   we put everything outside of self

   when it’s us that’s the creator.

God loves us beyond reason

  and allows our will and folly.

For this is how we grow and change

  and choose again a different play

  a different game, a new response.

It can’t remain the same for long

   for this is how we grow our soul.

It’s through our pain we change

   or stay the same and suffer.

So it’s a choice to stay the same

   as well a choice to change.

God loves us and supports our choice

   with majesty and might

   he doesn’t even mind it much

  if we only choose to fight.

For he knows one day we’ll get it

   and we’ll change our haughty ways

  and move back again to love and peace

   for our eternal days.