Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “GOD” by Campbell McGrath, posted below.

Our prompt was: “The body prefers...”

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GOD by Campbell McGrath

GOD
It makes sense notionally, a painless hypothesis
for our predicament, crayoned face to bridge
the gulf between grace and lightning storm.
But why should God be imagined as human—heavens,
dogs are nobler creatures, to say nothing of whales
or oak trees—and why as a man? Why should God
be gendered any more than potassium and gravity?
If a coconut falls on your head, you don't question its
sexuality. You curse, flail, you might even die,
poor donkey of the body tapping out, farewell.
Death doesn't scare the body because all the body wants
is to lie on the couch with a golf tournament on TV
but the mind is drip, drip, drip, drip, relentless.
It wants God to be more than a notion, it wants God
to be real so it can escape the hairy carcass
and rise—eternity seems always to be an ascension—
the mind wants to climb that ladder while the body 
prefers to bask in a confetti of chatter,
the mind wants to study the stars from the roof
and imagine an afterlife it understands 
deep down, in its python coils, to be nothing 
but a metaphor, a hunger for reassurance, a telescope
resolving the night into a zodiac of consolation.

Credit: Campbell McGrath
The New Yorker. June 30, 2025