Lyric prose meditations that play with elements from evangelical Christianity, Buddhism, yoga, reiki, Tarot and “weird voodoo shit.

~by Cindy Clem

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Opening exercise: Be like the squirrel, girl, be like the squirrel. Give it a whirl.[1]

Today’s passages:

1.  “And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” Genesis 5:24
2. “The Three Dharma Seals (Dharma mudra) are impermanence (anitya), nonself (anatman), and nirvana.” Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching
3. “For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.” God

And Enoch[2] walked with God

If this were the New Testament, we might take this figuratively: Enoch, having asked Jesus into his heart, carried God consciously with him—to work, to bed, on walks. But this is the Old Testament, where God can’t be inside you, where he has not yet multiplied to Trinity and nestled himself into our beings[3]. So could God walk? Did he don trousers and accompany Enoch on long, meandering, meditative rambles? In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Yet the sound of God walking is not feet crumpling grass but voice (“So [Adam] said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid…”). I’m getting too literal. “Walked with” in Genesis 5:24 probably means “talked to, as if to himself” or “really liked,” even though there is no given precedent at this point for God relating to people in other than an authoritarian, micromanaging way. Or maybe it means that Enoch was the human that, finally, after many rough drafts, was exactly what God had meant to create all along: good company. Continue reading →