I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series. Today’s poem is by Wisdom Council member Jamie Marich who will lead a mini-retreat on September 13th on Writing Your Spiritual Memoir. Read on for her poem The Great Lie. Jamie is fresh off of writing her memoir, You Lied to Me About God: A Memoir, and has a great deal to share with the world about her spiritual formation process. This poem is one small reflection that flowed from her own expressive arts processes in preparing the book for publication.
The Great Lie
There are many lies about God going around
—yet one strikes me as the great lie.
The great lie is that God fits inside any one religion
or any one church building.
God is bigger than any one religion,
any one institution
any one spiritual practice
any one nationality or
any one person.
God lives in my heart, and in the hearts of
the beautiful and sometimes
challenging humans that we meet.
God dwells in the tabernacles of human flesh,
in the temples of humanity
as LOVE most pure.
god may not even want you to capitalize
their name!
they exist beyond the name…
God dances in the laughter,
the strife
the tears
the messiness, even the
boring and mundane.
God hears us when we curse them and
deny their existence and ask
how they could let such horrid things happen
especially in their name.
God, perhaps,
doesn’t understand it
any more than we do.
God is imperfect like the humanity
they so treasure
for God created us in their image.
God is not an abusive boyfriend
demanding love and loyalty
in exchange for breadcrumbs.
God does not punish and threaten
and say things like,
“Look at all I’ve done for you.”
God scratches their mystical head
when they see what
others have written about them.
God is just as mystified as
I am that so many
gaslight in god’s name.
God doesn’t play favorites—
there are no true churches
and no children most golden.
Praying for a miracle—
that is what we do
as people of faith.
Perhaps the god of our understanding
is waiting on us
to be the miracle.
Jamie Marich, Ph.D., LPCC-S, REAT, RYT-500, RMT travels internationally speaking on topics related to EMDR therapy, trauma, addiction, expressive arts, LGBTQ issues, spirituality and mindfulness while maintaining a private practice in her home base of Northeast Ohio. Jamie is also the developer of the Dancing Mindfulness expressive arts practice. Jamie is the author of several books including Dancing Mindfulness: A Creative Path to Healing and Transformation (2015, with foreword by Christine Valters Paintner) and Process Not Perfection: Expressive Arts Solutions for Trauma Recovery released in 2019, heavily influenced by the growth she has experienced through her study with Abbey of the Arts! Now primarily a North Atlantic Book author, she has recently released Trauma and the 12 Steps: An Inclusive Guide to Recovery(2020), Transforming Trauma with Jiu-Jitsu (2022), and Dissociation Made Simple: A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Life (2023). Visit Jamie’s website here.
