An Unknown God


Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.  Acts17:22-23

I raise this stone to an unknown God
         A longed for God
         An unseen God
         The missing in our action God


The word that whispers in the night
The half-glimpsed presence, out of sight:

I raise this stone to the unknown factor
The leading actor, waiting
In the wings; the noises off,
The machinery that makes the drama sing,
The absent deus from the machina
The protagonist that this sceptic desires.

I raise it higher
Searching for the X to balance this equation
To make sense of this perception that there’s something - someone - Out There:
The X factor, X-marks-the-spot
The X plus why of everything –
I am unequal to this fathoming.  

I raise this stone
But not I alone:
We toil and heave it into place
This waymark for our endless searching
A step towards that yearned-for grace.
Looking beyond, about, I see so many stones:
Each boulder speaks of human urging, fear or hope
Or desperation; a naming of the names we call upon
In grief or desolation.

So what name shall I call upon for you?
My just-in-case god, insuring me
Against the famine and the drought.
O Nameless One, do you have existence
Beyond the circle of my doubt? Do you have hope? Does your desire
Encompass me, with all I am and all to be –
Do you aspire to be made known, as known as I to thee?  

I raise this stone to an unknown God
         A longed for God
         An unseen God
         The missing in our action God.

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