[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.
