"The Call to Worship," by Bob Hicok

The possibility that the zero gave birth to the universe,
that all our somethings come from nothing, the fear
of being alone like that, children of chance, orphans
down to our atoms, is mother to the idea of god. God

is a dress we slip over solitude, a mask
for oblivion to wear, a rule-giver in a world
where no flower or bear cares that we are here
or what we do.

I prefer a theology of silence, the eschatology
of the shrug, a religion of holding my wife’s hand
for now.

But, if the industry of the church is what it took
to give me bells ringing Sunday mornings,
to which crows sometimes rise and deer turn,
I’m grateful for a sound that pulls me out of myself,
lifts my head toward sun and clouds, into the up
and all, the blue, the on and on of it, when I bend
the only knee I have to bend, feel
happily small, contingent, and held, by what
I can’t say, short of everything.

+ Bob Hicok

Here is a poem that takes seriously the ways the words and ideas of religion can be used as opiates, or as thin veneers papering over life’s vulnerabilities, or as occasions for arrogance, for claiming to know more than we know.

And yet, here is a poem that nevertheless finds in religion — even in “the industry of religion” — a door left ajar, a hint, a foothold, a crack that lets the light in. Here is a poem that takes seriously the ways the elements of religion, at their best, can help us to turn (following the crows and deer), to look up from the trenches of struggle and routine, to be pulled out of ourselves, if only for a moment, “into the up / and all” — and thereby to sense that we are “happily small, contingent, and held.”

And with that recognition — that even a cracked bell can call us to liberty, to humility, and so to more graceful ways of life — a new religious possibility opens up. A way of being faithful, and indeed of practicing even the most familiar, conventional elements of religion, that isn’t an escape from reality, but a return to it.

In the story of Moses and the burning bush, there’s a key refrain: Moses, adrift beyond the wilderness, comes across that strange fire and “turns aside and sees.” He looks up from the trenches. He hears the bell. The promise of religion, at its best, is to help us turn, and turn, and turn again in this way, rising and turning and seeing all creation illuminated by this unnameable fire, so that all our words tend toward the silence of wonder, the shrug of humility, and above all, the simple, joyful love of holding someone’s hand for now.