Between the Lines

Today's ancestors commonly spoke to God as a person, as if his presence was obvious and unquestioned. Throughout the millennia, from Hebrew prophets to Christian saints, the concept of "God" has seemed normal enough, even comfortable for most believers. Aside from churchgoers, many people feel the breath of God in the wind and rain and see his face in mountains and oceans, in storms and sunrise, and yes, in the often-spellbinding beauty of the Earth. Increasing numbers of people, however, have struggled not so much with the term "God" itself as with the apparent disappearance of a divine presence in their ordinary lives, especially with a God who cannot or will not interfere with the trajectories of terminal illnesses, still births, airline disasters, holocausts, endemic despair, and assorted tragedies. The poems in Between the Lines: Looking for God in the Ordinary Life represent an uncensored voice, unafraid of the saints among all people, many of whom evidence little sense of slapstick and the absurd, bringing to mind the proverb attributed to St. Teresa of Avila, "God draws straight with crooked lines."