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.