In lieu of a sermon last night, I shared a handful of Rosh Hashanah poems. One of them is brand-new, and here it is. It is inspired by (or perhaps is a remix / adaptation of) Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig's sermon God is a Woman and She Is Growing Older.

Waiting for us to come home

   

God sits in her kitchen
with her gnarled hands folded.
She doesn't needlepoint much anymore.
She's waiting for us to knock.
We always forget the door is already open.

God remembers when each of us was born.
God remembers when creation was born.
Closing Her eyes and touching that place
deep inside, the swirling void
within which all life was grown.

God remembers every child She has lost.
God remembers every time
one of us has been unkind. Each night
she lights memorial candles across the heavens,
our souls remembered across the sky.

God wants to say: it's okay that you didn't write.
It's okay that you didn't call.
You stayed away because you didn't want
to disappoint Me. You could never disappoint Me.
Do you know that I still love you?

God sings lullabies to us, rocking us
even though we don't think we fit in her lap any more.
We blink and old mama God is transformed.
Her creaky kitchen chair is a throne,
her house dress an ermine robe.

How often do we sit here in shul
reciting prayers we didn't write, signing postcards
and dropping them in the mailbox
instead of coming home? God is waiting
for us to come home.