If God Was One of Us

[Downtown Vancouver's East Side

image from Google]

I saw this Carry On Tuesday prompt: If God were one of us, taken from Joan Osborne's song "One of Us", on a friend's site, and the words began to play in my mind.

If God was

one of us,

He would be walking

among the homeless

in Downtown's East Side,

handing out sandwiches

and blankets.

If He were

one of us,

he would be

ladling soup

into bowls

from gigantic pots

at the soup kitchen,

and when His shift

was finished,

he would take

leftovers to

men wasting away

from AIDS,

alone,

on single cots

in dingy, depressing

cheap hotel rooms

along East Hastings.

If God

were among us,

He would

visit the women's

transition house,

and tell

the young mothers

they deserve

a life of

not being beaten.

And He would tell

their children

that mommy

was going to be

all right and everything, now,

was going to be okay.

He would stop by

the children's ward

in the hospital

and rock the babies

born on crack

and make the pain

go away.

And He'd share

smiles and stories

with the children

battling cancer,

and He'd tell them

they were beautiful

even without their hair.

If God

were among us,

He would sing sweetly

into the ears of

the passed out addicts,

and remind them

life can have beauty,

song and worth,

if they want it

more than

the drugs,

and that He'll

help them

find the strength.

And He would

visit the schools

in the poorest

part of town

and tell the children

that any dream

they dream,

they can achieve,

if they work hard

and believe.

And he'd tell them

a little  boy

called Obama

did it

and they can

do it, too.

At the end

of His busy day,

He would sit

on a bench

in the sun, smiling

at all the people

passing by,

listening to

street musicians

share their gifts.

He'd throw a toonie

in their guitar case,

and then

amble on.

With His robes,

His sandals,

His long hair,

he'd draw glances:

complicity from

the "freaks" with their long hair,

"My brutha from anutha mutha"

they'd say

and they'd all put up

two fingers:

"Peace, brutha."

When He passed

the schizophrenic man

with filthy matted tangled hair,

horrible raggedy clothes

full of holes,

with his angry ranting-

the man people

cross the street

to avoid -

He would stop,

wait for him to

stop yelling,

then ask him what

he needs.

He might double back

to McDonald's

and bring him back

a Coke and fries.

A man can always use

a Coke and fries,

even if he's too angry

to know it.

It occurs to me

in all of these

imaginings,

that God actually IS

one of us -

any one of us -

who smiles

at someone who needs it,

or hands out sandwiches

and hope to the hopeless,

or shares a laugh

with a lonely dying man.

He is one of us

and in each of us,

any time we do

something kind

just for kindness' sake.