Thus speaks God the Lover:
Blessèd are they which do hunger and thirst
after not righteousness, but me.
Blessèd are they who know that my springtime heart desires
not holiness and contrition, but goosebumps on the skin
and butterflies in the belly.
The mystics all knew, those beautiful mossy flowers,
that God the Father is a woman in a tight black dress:
a coquettish deity, who flirts shamelessly with the young:
making lovers of the impetuous who lack prudence
and are not frugal with regards to joy.
To these it is given to enter the Holy of Holies,
to bathe in the sweet candlelit waters of eternal life,
to touch the warm face of God in the secret of Her presence,
to be swallowed up and enveloped by a sacred Yes and Amen.
But alas, like Fortuna, God the Lover is a capricious deity
who forsakes all of her lovers sooner or later:
slipping out suddenly, inexplicably, quietly,
like a thief in the night.
She dashes her lover’s soul upon the rocks
like the delicate head of an unwanted baby,
exposed on a hillside, in some terrible bygone era.
Oh, Paul, how bitter you became!
Oh, Jesus, how heartbroken you must have been,
when you uttered those chilling words from The Cross:
“Lover, lover, why have you abandoned me?”
What is The Bible, if not the annals
of the scorned lovers of God?
—John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2016)
Committing Sociology 