The God-Who-Belongs

He told me there were typos in his prayer book*.

Sure enough—incline Your car to our lamentations.

I did not see that coming. After that my so easily

distractible mind could do little else other than

add colors to a psalmy paint-by-numbers scene of

God in His car, leaning slightly out the window

to hear us, hear us, hear us as we pray.

I remember reading once that Walker Percy

drove around St. Tammany Parish in one of those

small pickup trucks, Mazda or Toyota, the kind of

truck people drove who belonged there, people

who worked with calloused hands and red necks.

Walker drove that kind of pickup because it

made him feel like he fit in, like he too belonged.

So as you might imagine my finished Day 17 Psalter-

piece incarnates the God-Who-Belongs as the

spitting image of Walker Percy, luminous forehead

looming above that affable smile, leaning slightly out

the window as the humid grace of earth’s piney woods

mixes with linguistic analysis and the lamentations

of we who pray with calloused hands and stiff necks.

*Robert Benson, Venite: A Book of Daily Prayer