as a child

As a child I searched for you. There was the soft prayer necklace of the Catholic boy from my day care -- it hung around my neck, it hung against my bare chest, but it was silent. You were not in the necklace and I did not know how to call out for you.

And I remember shutting myself away in a small room for quiet, so that I could learn the words in the back of that book. It was at the end of the Bible---it had its own special page with a color illustration---so I thought it must be one of the important parts. I did learn it, reciting it at night by my bedside as I had seen on TV. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed is your name..." But I didn't know your name. And I didn't know that you were my Father.

And when the Stevens' couldn't give me a ride, I would put on my too-small dress shoes and walk to the church. It was a very big building and it had a very big cross and you were supposed to be there. I went in, I listened somewhat, I even ate the bread and drank the wine, but I never saw you there: not in the crowded lobby or the lofty sanctuary, not on the cross, not on the silver plate and not in the tiny glass. Maybe you were there, but I didn't know you enough to recognize you.

And later, studying the charts, I learned about my seven astral bodies, my chakras, my inner selves. But knowing this was like knowing a recipe or knowing a table of contents. It was not like knowing a person. If I had ben asked what I was looking for, I would not have said "Somebody." I certainly would never have said that I was looking for you. In fact, if I had been asked what I was looking for, I would have said "Nothing." Which was exactly what I had been finding.

Little could I have guessed that you were there, that you knew my name, that you were calling out after me, that you were searching too.

But when I found that out, 

then I found you.