You were thinking about God all night. If only you could without suffering sin, you’d swear it was true. Prayers clung to the gloss on your lips. You’d shaken your hair loose from the day’s mistakes, apologized for those that you chose to remember. But still, your body was a live wire.

Your fingers were knotted up in the chain of your grandmother’s cross when your first stranger offered you a drink. His smile boasted of layover stays in European cities, of glassy-eyed girls spread just for him, all neat and pretty on a silk duvet. You swallowed down your fears and let him order for you, just nodding his way so he wouldn’t get to hear your voice. A scotch on the rocks to ease your nerves, you reassured Him, and nothing more.

Let me slip into something a little more comfortable…you breathed easier in a strapless dress, a tight skin of black satin worth half of a month’s rent and all of your dignity. Eyes you didn’t recognize skimmed over more of your body than you let your own mother see. The little girl she raised would have been afraid. The good Lord Himself was a skeptic, a dwindling shadow of a doubt still stuck in the doorway. …She’s so exposed, can she really offer any more parts of herself to the world, or has it all gone?

You’d just gotten done with praying for the ****** when one of them shows up at your feet to thank you. You try to forget. You don’t want to remember that you asked for her in your sleep. She is a gift…not from God. You feel as you would have if you had seen her naked. Her white dress wraps high enough around her neck to make you second-guess your hands.

Touch…The thought hits you like a freight train and makes you sway. She laughs, guess I shouldn’t have gotten you this drink, huh? You’re halfway finished with the glass she gave you before you tell her you’re okay.

A hangover may keep you from church in the morning.

Just seemed like you needed to unwind.

God would have healed your heart then. Only you start to think now that the pain of someone else may be what keeps you alive.

Maybe a dance will help.

Her hand is warm as she leads you out onto the floor. Instead of letting go, her fingers squeeze the spaces in between yours. She leans in so she can hear you speak above the pounding of the bass. When she tosses her hair, she smells soft, like fresh roses. You feel her thorns press into your sides like the fingernails digging into your chest, and the pain breathes new life into you.

She dances up against you with her body like a hurricane. The shallow breaths against your neck are no longer just that. They are howling gusts, a swirling mass of a storm that comes to life in glaring black-and-white headlines, “disaster of the ages”, “the bullet you can’t outrun”. They are screaming at you to get a grip before you crash to the ground, another casualty in her wake.

Her hand swims up your dress to touch you between your thighs. You let her. It’s okay. You ease into her, let your eyes roll back for her. You kiss her unholy, her tongue tasting like redemption. The strokes of her fingers take you as close to Heaven as you’ll ever get.

Forgive me, Father, for I am sin.

THE PREACHER GOODY GOODWILL walks center stage and steps up to the Dias; eyeing his congregation with a seriously serious frown. Clears his throat, takes a tissue and blows his nose. Then resumes eyeing all the families sitting before him. Finally-

PREACHER GOODY GOODWILL
Were you unsettled? Did my silence catch you off guard? Or was it my frown, sure that was it, you're not used to seeing me frown, you're not used to me stretching out the silence. And yet I wonder: why is it you were uncomfortable? Surely, even though you weren't prepared for it, it wasn't as if I came here with accusations of you - you Charlotte Ray, or you Jimmy Matheter, or any random one of you for that matter - accusations that you had sinned 'for you surely did as the Good Lord intended you too, you sinned and you will be forgiven if you simply give in to the Good Lord's Word and his wholly Holy embrace.
(BEAT)
And so I wonder - and I ask you to ask yourself - why were you uncomfortable when I stepped up in silence? Have you sinned and are ashamed? Too ashamed, perhaps, to confess said sin? 'For if that's the case then you are truly ******, having committed not just the sin you are ashamed to confess but now in the Good Lord's own House you are committing the sin of pride, you are certainly not humble as the Good Lord asks of us all, are you?
(BEAT)
Are we not told that "the meek shall inherit the earth" as written by the Good Lord's very own, very Good Hand in our Holy Bible?
(BEAT)
So who are you to walk with pride when He asks you to be humble, that's all he asks of you my friends; be true and humble, be meek among men, and He - the Good Lord Himself - will surely welcome you through the pearly gates of Heaven and into his warm embrace.
(BEAT)
It is not for you to be your own judge nor are you tasked with judging others; surely you must see how full of pride one must be to imagine he can rightfully judge others or himself, for that matter, and not be full of pride if he dares take on such a task.
(BEAT)
And let us be clear as He the Good Lord is clear, that to be Holy is to be prideless, to accept Him into your heart is to accept that you have sinned - and you have, each and every one of you - 'for we are imperfect beings in an imperfect world and who among you would claim to be perfect of His Own Son, Jesus Christ himself, was a sinner among men... oh, I see, I literally see your raised eye browse as if you truly don't believe me or perhaps you don't understand. So if I may let me give you just one example which is the one that speaks most true to your very own Preacher Goody Goodwill who does not and has never claimed to be great, oh no have I ever claimed that my good friends? I certainly have not 'for I choose to be good, just good at what I do which is all the Good Lord asks, while his own Son Jesus Christ, he too was a preacher like me, but he was great perhaps the greatest yes! the greatest of all time thus he wasn't very meek, to be great is to have pride and in pride we live in sin; and so, as the Holy Book informs us Jesus Christ died for our sins but consider that he, too, was a sinner among men and so he died for his sins too, he had surely lived in pride and he had not a confessor so he died a filthy man.
(BEAT)
Yes that's right he died as he had lived, full of pride and not so meek, do you see now what I say? You are not too full of pride that you'd consider your own sins and believe that you may judge what is right and what is wrong? No, I know you all as I do myself and you are Good Folks with good hearts and meek as lambs, are you not?

The congregation nods whole heartedly.

PREACHER GOODY GOODWILL
Good good, I know you are, you're good and meek at heart as the Good Lord intended, and so when it's your turn to confess I expect you'll remember this talk we just had, and confess as the Good Lord intended, let me hear all the sins you sinned for you surely sinned, and let me then offer you his Holy reassurance that the penance I deem is the key to your salvation and once you clean yourself of sin then salvation will be yours.

Now the Preacher Goody Goodwill scans the congregation, eyeing them all, one by one; then he smiles and they smile back - all is as it should be once again - and his warmth radiates within the Holy House as he concludes this Sunday's sermon by making the sign of the Cross across his chest.

PREACHER GOODY GOODWILL
You may rise.

Chapter 1: Goody Goodwill Was Exceptionally Great at Being Good

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you; I shall show you the way.
-Psalm 32:8


      The Preacher Goody Goodwill was a very fine man, and a good preacher too. Destined for the cloth, Goody felt that his was the way into the Good Lord's Grace and Goody knew as sure as God chose hues of blue and a brush He purchased* in March of 1973 at a PennySavers Discount Store in Moscow, Russia, to paint the sky from the break of dawn until the sun disappeared in all its God-given glory beneath the Western Horizon.

The Preacher Goody also knew that the Good Lord was a rather curious being, and even though He was an all-knowing, all-seeing omnipresent Divine being He was He and man was man and perched upon a Golden throne He often felt all on his own and gazed beyond the Pearly Gates and down the path of Salvation itself, and looked upon his Earthly domain and felt the urge to walk among men; thus, on far too often occasions in far too random locations the Lord took on the form of man, woman or animal and walked among his children. Once he even took on the form of a pebble on a seashore (though that turned out to be a rather boring experience not to be repeated).

Goody, too, decided that it was his duty to walk among men so that he may see sin for himself although he did so rarely and never randomly: a mere four times a year - on the first Monday of each season - Goody prepared a ritualistic bath meant to wash his holy vows away if only for a single day, and when he emerged from the scalding water, his skin was scathed which felt to Goody as it should be even though what he was doing surely had the chance to jeopardize his Holy soul and yet he did it not for hI'm but for mankind as Goody thought that God had planned despite no single word within the Lord’s own book described to be an act that preachers should be taking so they may be better preachers; but Goody knew what Goody knew which was what God expected preachers do, thus with common clothes and common thought, and feeling good he walked on out of this house and out of the town and among the men and women who sinned.

The preacher Goody Goodwill came from the very small town of Dimply, West Carolina, which was not much of a sinning sorta’ town but beyond its borders down a beaten path which then turned into pavement and led to a Highway, if one followed that path one would reach the Big City where sinners sinned away and where God and Goody both discovered how it was to be a man among the common man. Though the Lord Almighty frequented the city often and in many forms the preacher Goodwill had a strict routine to which he strictly stuck to, year after year.

          Throughout the day, four days a year, Goody put his faith to test as he roamed the big streets in the very Big City and watched and held his tongue lest he preach and his plan fall apart and the sinners would then see that a preach was in their reach and they surely would reach out and then Satan would have one ‘fore if Goody fell the way of the men who sinned all day then for sure he would be lost because Goody was the priest and he couldn't well forgive if he couldn't self-confess thus the risk which Goody took when he chose to risk his soul was a risk he surely knew was a risk that God would see and would write with His own hand in the Book which He would use to judge every single man.

As the sun began to set and the daylight fade away, he would start his way back home and thank God the day was done. Goody felt at peace when he finally reached his home where he'd take another bath and would emerge a Holy man and would don his Holy robes and he knew that he had proved what he knew he needn't prove, that he was a real good man and that good was what God wanted.

When he keeps reciting in the head
Dripping drops to the same spot
All the while yearning to move instead
But there stuck in a struggle without respite
He yearns for a glory unfading.

Doing and not doing never were the sufficiency of law
Dusk drew a dull drapery over the light
Beauty turned dreary and his heart sunk low
Twas a high price at which he was bought
A man hang on a hill that day

Love slew the sly intentions of fear
Smiting to tender pulp
Jesus is Lord ye hear
In whom he found hope
I'm saved because He loved me.

What a beauty of a flower showing!
What a fragrance of a flower mentioning!
What silence of a bud can offer?
What a dawn whispering!
What a dewdrop capturing!
Can You say?
It is not about You.
O’ my Lord!
It's all about you Lord
--------

I can see it beforehand
three months three wounds
and the Death is dragging me
hail the eternal chain
hail the Danse Macabre
the allegory is dead,
the hegemony is trapped
in the continuous fashion,
insurmountable passion
Oh Lord, you must've
loved me.

I am facing gigantic obstacles during travel towards You
Which make me more vigorous and resolute!
O’ my Lord!
And I assume them as mile stones

A travel between two milestones
How long it is!
O’ my Lord!

Cold feet
And she likes the cold she used to know.

The gone heat
Seems like summer came a century ago

The night is dark
She walks along the train tracks like a dying soul.

Her love she'll guard
Until blood shines on her iron sword.

Knight to knight
And storm to storm
She'll stand by her unfaithful Lord

Night to night
And dawn to dawn
He's long gone but his body is warm.

Out it blooms
Like daisies flourish in the springtime.

Her life she'll doom
But there's still hope through those haunting crimes.

And if she stays
Maybe her life will solve with a big climb.

Knight to knight
And storm to storm
She'll stand by her dying Lord

Night to night
And dawn to dawn
She'll cloak herself in a reckless ward.