One of this Irish storyteller’s favourite things to do is to pick up his white guitar and sing songs.  I have sung at various venues in England and Ireland with many kinds of singer and musician.

Sometimes you come across a song that simply speaks to the heart. It is a song that works on many levels. A very talented young lady sang such a song at a club I recently played at. It was the song “What if God were One of Us” by Joan Osborne.

The chorus goes:

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

For this writer it is almost a mystical text. It asks a question that invites you into the mystery.  Some might think that these lines are sacrilegious and that they are in some way dishonouring of religious sentiment.  This is only if you take the words literally.  Even then, this storyteller thinks that in a literal sense these are an invitation that manages to be both funny and profound.

Some people have issues around the word God.  This is hardly surprising given the way we are as a species, having used the word for purposes of greed, power and self-interest.  However, every time you see or read the word God it can be changed to the word Love (yes, with a capital L).  You can also change the word from His to Her.

For this writer, the song is a great invitation to the quest into Love.  Like many great questions it invites the creative imagination.  It does this through the opening words “What if…” The great poet and writer Rudyard Kipling composed a world famous poem of invitation using these same words.

When I sing this song or any song (or any song I sing for that matter) I sing from different levels of intention.  I sing for entertainment. I sing to invite the heart into the awareness of God. In other cultures this is called Kirton. This is what most authentic singer/songwriters intend to invite.  This is not just sentimental love songs but invitations to know that you are not a stranger to Love nor is Love a stranger to you.

Of course, we are estranged from Love most of the time.  Music and song invite us to remember this estrangement and try to make our way home. We are the prodigal sons and daughters of Creation travelling on the bus of time and form, not quite sure where this mode of transport is heading.

For this storyteller God is one of us and all of us together. God is apart and whole and wholly us.  You are not the Godhead but neither are you separate from the Godhead.  You are a reflection of the divine in form, ready to radiate the return to Love.  All mystics and soul friends invite you to live this life of Love flow from the eternal.

God is a stranger on the bus trying to find his way home in the sense that you are estranged from your essence and you will feel incomplete until you find each other.  There was a mystic, I think it was Meister Eckhart, who said:

It isn’t so much that you are looking for God (or love) but that God is looking for you.

This is the ultimate homecoming.  When this homecoming is felt within the heart then no one is truly a stranger.  Everyone on the bus, train, car or any other form of transport you can think of is seen to be God playing at finding His or Her way back home.

0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

2 Comments »