Undressing Prayer

Undressing Prayer

by Emily Ruth Hazel

As the one who turns the wheels

inside our minds, behind the sky—the shifter

and shaker of galaxies—is upstairs getting dressed

in our own image,

God becomes a brand name

proudly worn by a loud,

forgetful people, though it clashes

with their actions. A label others can’t afford to own,

or dismiss as someone else’s style.

And what is the founder

changing into? Just another suit

stiff from the hanger, second skin of a CEO

who flies home to a mansion on a mountain of clouds,

barely glancing through gleaming glass floors

between prime time shows?

What if God came down

in everyday jeans and a t-shirt, at work invisible

to us, like a radio DJ, a speaker of the air whom everyone

and no one knows? Would God wear corduroy,

a blazer with elbow patches,

large feet propped up

on a desk containing continents

mapped with coffee stains, pushing papers

off the back edge—another accidental

avalanche? What if God is digging through

the geologic strata of waiting

pages, an editor who sees

the sun-spark in our layers of schist,

opens our hearts with a red pen

of dynamite, then helps us in laying new foundations

and moves us into the stories we are

meant to inhabit?

Thirsty for purpose, the brave ask

for interviews, pitch their manuscripts

and mixtapes over the transom, hoping

someone will read their thoughts, listen

to their midnight music.

As for me, I worry that I’ll burn

through some unspoken quota, wear out

my welcome with the magnanimous

powers that be. Rarely do I send an SOS, unless the bluff

on which I’ve built my life is eaten away by the waves’

relentless hunger—stalling

till I am poised

to plunge into the ocean. One college semester,

I drifted miles from shore, breath spent treading water,

before I finally raised my arms, ready

to be thrown a rescue ring

from any passing boat. Washed up

on the doorstep of an Econ professor, seaweed tangled

in my throat, I stood outside mustering my nerve, scripting

an appeal for an extension I knew I didn’t deserve.

Minutes later, I walked back to my dorm

bowled over by his

Yes. And so it is

during God’s infinite office hours in the four-chambered

chapel of the heart. While thumbing through the days

of Common Prayer, the book of Ordinary Time,

a conversation picks up

where it left off. The undressed approach:

simply confessing a need, a lack of answers, a yearning

to kneel on a cushion of grace instead of the bare

stone floor. As I prepare to enter in, to strip down

to the struggle, to unclasp all

my anxieties, sometimes still I

hesitate, knuckles to the wood.

But even before I knock, from somewhere

deep within, I hear a voice as solid as black walnut

benches, luminous like turning pages, calling,

as if not for the first time,

Come in—the door’s unlocked.