Quiting 'God'

"O God, quit me of 'God'!" (Meister Eckhart)

Cast these idols into the fire:

* the God who takes sides in war, any war;

* the God who chooses one tribe over another, the God who chooses one nation over another, the God who chooses one religion over another;

* the God who destroyed the World Trade Center and the God who invaded Iraq;

* the God who orders Arab youths to martyr themselves and the God of Apache helicopters who turns war into a video game;

* the God who tells Mohammad's army to murder the unbelievers and the God who tells Joshua's army to conquer the tribes of Canaan, slaughtering "everything that breathes";

* the God who fires North Korean missiles at Israel and the God who slaughters the children of Gaza with American-made white-phosphorus bombs;

* the God who murders the innocent and calls it holy war and the God who murders the innocent and calls it collateral damage;

* God of the Vatican, God of Jerusalem, God of the Pentagon, God of Powers and Princedoms not one of whom shall survive the withering crossfire of their own jealousy, for they are worse than idols of silver and gold: they are idols of belief;

* God of the cult of Al Qaeda, God of the cult of Zion, God of the Ku Klux Klan and the Patriot militia;

* God who circumcises little girls in central Africa and God who abuses little boys in the archdiocese of Boston;

*God who tells widows in India to throw themselves on their husbands' pyres and God who teaches white children in Mississippi that brown children in Benares must go to hell;

* Mammon of the mega-church who claims that His invisible hand is the free market, Mammon of Wall Street who suckles the pension plans of laborers until they are dry, Mammon of Massey Energy whose stockholders drink the blood of dead coal miners;

* Mammon who divides the rich from the poor, who poisons the milk of the Great Mother, who dwells above the planet but not in it;

* Mammon who elevates man over woman, scientist over shaman, white over color, invader over native, people of the Book over people of the Forest;

* Impostor-God who has never been anything but the shadow of our fear! Be gone! Be gone now!

Let all your churches and temples dissolve like morning mist at the portal of 2012,

that the meek may walk through the gates of peace into the dawn of the earthly paradise,

where the poor in spirit find manna, a dew of compassion on the green earth,

and every garden and forest glade is holy,

and the heart's shrine opens its inmost veil to the radiance of divine Humanity,

and the splendor of Truth shines not from above, like a distant sun,

but wells up like a tear from within the Within,

which is the radiant Am in every I,

the Friend who dwells as one Self

in all our glorious, gentle, bold, most innocent bodies.