| When I met him on a sidewalk,
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| he was preaching to a mailbox
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| down on Sixteenth Avenue.
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| And he told me he was Jesus
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| sent from Jupiter to free us with a bottle of tequila and one shoe.
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| He raged about repentance
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| and finished every sentence
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| with a promise that the end was close at hand.
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| I didn’t even try to understand.
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| He left me wide eyed,
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| in disbelief and disallusion.
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| I was tongue-tied, drawn by my conclusions.
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| And so I turned and walked away
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| and laughed at what he had to say.
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| And casually dismissed him as a fraud.
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| I forgot he was created in the image of my God.
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| When I met her in a bookstore
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| she was browsing on the first floor
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| through a yoga magazine.
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| And she told me in her past life
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| she was some plantation’s slave’s wife-
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| she had to figure out what that might mean.
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| She believes the healing powers of her crystals
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| can bring balance and new purpose to her life.
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| Sounds nice.
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| She left me wide eyed,
|
| in disbelief and disallusion.
|
| I was tongue-tied, drawn by my conclusions.
|
| And so I turned and walked away
|
| and laughed at what she had to say.
|
| And casually dismissed her as a fraud.
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| I forgot she was created in the image of my God.
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| Not so long ago, a man from Galilee
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| fed thousands with his bread and his theology.
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| And the truth he spoke
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| quickly became the joke
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| of educated, self-inflated, pharisees like me.
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| They were wide eyed
|
| in disbelief and disallusion.
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| They were tongue-tied, drawn by their conclusions.
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| Would have turned and walked away
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| and laughed at what He had to say?
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| And casually dismissed Him as a fraud.
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| Unaware that I was staring at the image of my God. |