The Zones of Paradise

VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE Sydney, Australia Each morning I improvise a prayer: at the untuned piano, I pound out the hymns I know in a minor key, those four songs marooned in the Baptist hymnal, uneasy in a crowd confident of Zion. Let all mortal flesh keep silence I play too earnestly for thisTuesday bleat of taxis, hiss of buses, critique of currawongs in the gentrified gumtrees, corner whir of laudromats wringing out the weekend’s wrongs. Great-Grandma writes to ask if we have found a church, and I wonder if this counts: the refuge of a cool piano in a sun-saturated city. I sing each verse twice to accentuate its truth, but for every song I sing, I’ve disowned dozens. Down the street at the Solid Rock Center, they’re still Standing on the Promises. Sometimes I pause outside and hum along with their amplified zeal. Like Great-Grandma, they know they’re heavenbound, but she hopes to get there first— she buys just two days’ groceries at a time, too frugal to leave leftovers in the fridge when she goes. I should be more frugal, less greedy at the market, less eager to believe we can eat basketfuls of plums, mandarins, pineapples, pears before rot sets in.  In this week’s wicker, a heft of mangoes, their firm flesh the color of the robe of the Buddhist monk I nodded to last night as he set out the temple’s trash. In the muted dusk, I envied him his saffron, his unencumbered head. His temple, our rented townhouse, and all the houses in a line from here to there were built on sandstone chiselled withWallaby, Emu, Echidna,Whale—old dreamings lost to foundations of cement and balconies of wrought iron. I stand on my balcony with my dripping fruit. I saw God, my son once told me. He lives in a field of snow. What could you see? Just snow. And footprints. Whose footprints? The footprints of people looking for God.  ...