When I was little, my stuffed animals were my God. They spoke to me and loved me and gave me comfort. I spoke to them and loved them and returned that comfort. I kissed each one at night, saying their names and patting them on the head.
My parents didn’t go to church but by fortune of grace sent me to a nursery school run by the Episcopal Church. There I learned the Lord’s Prayer. I loved that prayer, though I didn’t understand all the words. I loved the poetry of it, the music of it. The words “Our Father” filled me with peace and hope. Our Father, everyone’s father, your father, my father. It gave me the sense that I wasn’t alone in the world. Same as my stuffed animals. They too, gave me the sense that I wasn’t alone and isolated in my body and mind, wasn’t a little “I” floating around all by herself out there.
The church song, “Jesus loves me, yes I know” I didn’t get. Who was this Jesus? I didn’t know Jesus, had never met him. It was as if all these kids who went to church belonged to a club I didn’t and I felt left out. But I figured Jesus must have been a nice guy, at least he was supposed to be, but I didn’t take that for granted. I didn’t like the Bible “telling me so.” That was my first tip off that something wasn’t right. The Bible? I hadn’t read it. Plus, Jesus wasn’t in heaven. Some book tells me this guy Jesus loves me? That was alright for all the other children, but I’d stick with doggie and foxy and Brandy the basset hound, and Our Father.
God comes to us however She may. If stuffed animals work, so be it. Whatever way She has to awaken our hearts to Her voice within works. I heard that sacred voice in my heart through my menagerie covering my bed side to side. “There’s barely room for you, bunchy bone,” my mother would say. And I would pat their heads and smile and say, “I like it that way.”
I still like it that way. There is barely room for me. God fills me fully and completely.
Oh Lord, fill me wholly with thyself. Let there be no room for ‘I and mine,’ only Thy and Thine.
The river of love overflows its banks and the lotus blooms in the devotee’s heart.
Kabir