CREATIVE NONFICTION 19The word God springs from the gut in
such cases. It’s the last sound we make
as we move toward speechlessness, the
drop-off point to the vast ocean where
language has no jurisdiction.
V.What we feel most, the poet Jack Gilbert
wrote, has no name.
In the meantime, the word God
falls millions of times a day from our
collective mouths, though there’s no
real sense of what we’re talking about.
To some, God is an omnipotent
guardian with a heap of white curls
riding shotgun on clouds. To others,
she’s the green breath of trees.
VI.“Do you believe in God?” The editor
was trying to decide whether to
take on my work. I’d started writing
Catholic essays, which meant visits
to shrines and churches, discussions
with priests and pilgrims, and this
editor was the only one who came
right out and asked. I couldn’t decide
if the question was brave or rude. The
piece we were discussing was steeped
in religion, so I suppose I’d opened
the door.
“Do you believe in God?”
She may as well have asked if I
believe in the scent of gardenias
wafting around my neighborhood on
humid evenings, the slow groan of
their oily petals, the throb of cicadas,
or the word belief itself.
VII.Allah is nearer to man than his jugular vein.
—the qur’an (50:16)
So near we approach the place where
words have no business. Or have
important business if we learn to use
them in new ways. Some words get
closer than others. Verbs do better
than nouns. Metaphors come closer
still. But even then, in the face of such
immensity, we are children throwing
pebbles at the sky.VIII.But writers broker the world in words,
so what else can we do but try?
Every semester I share the quote
often attributed to Chekhov: Don’t tell
me the moon is shining; show me the glint
of light on broken glass. We talk about
showing and telling and move on to
concrete language. I give students a
prompt, asking them to translate a
series of abstract words (beauty, greed,
poverty) into concrete images (black
feather on snow, two-timing ex-boyfriend,
the bottle and can collector on East Main
Street). I sometimes add God to the
list, because God seems to me the
ultimate abstraction. And yet our
work as artists—whether we identify
as believers or not—is not only to
show the light on broken glass, but
also to try to touch the thing that
gives the moon its light, the source of
luminosity itself. What an impossible
and lovely proposition—to attempt
to build bridges of words to reach
the mysterious and necessary expanse
where language cannot join us.IX.That name—my conception of Him—extended
to me a hand that led to a place where even His
divine name could not exist.
—teresa of ávilaX.In the end, I told the editor about
adding the o to God.
“I believe in goodness,” I said. And
though I meant it, I heard only theclumsiness of words and how little
we’d managed to say.
I should have told her about the
sheep sprawling on green hillsides
on the Isle of Iona in Scotland,
surrounded by mossy old stones and
the blue of the sea. The way they
sink into the grasses—the lambs, the
overgrown ewes, and a few cows—
any doubt they’re cradled by the
earth itself never once crossing their
woolly heads.
I should have told her about
the old men in Seville. The way
they sat beside each other in a café
where anyone foolish enough to be
caught in the midday heat had taken
refuge. One sat in his wheelchair,
the other in a café chair. They sat
so close, their birdlike heads nearly
touched. Outside, the sun scorched
and blinded. Inside, the men ordered
ice cream. One lifted the spoon and
brought it to the other’s mouth. They
glowed, those men, and laughed with
pure delight—one for the taste of ice
cream, the other for the pleasure of
lifting the spoon, again and again, to
his friend’s mouth.
I might have told her about the
fireflies my husband led me to this
summer at a small clearing in the
park. We had to hike along a dark
trail to get there. I imagined spiders,
worried about twisting my ankle,
and grumbled about having to do
without my phone and flashlight, but
we kept on until we reached the spot.
The pitch black was broken sud-
denly by tiny bursts of light. Little
flashes in the grass, the low-hanging
branches, the crowns of trees. Like
Christmas and New Year’s rolled into
one. But quieter. Truer somehow.
When my prospective editor used
the word God, I should have told her
about that dark hollow filled with
light. The way we stood and stared
and did not speak.