Wherever I go you are there....

“So, what have you been doing lately?”

She asked - the woman with whom

I once taught theology.

“Catching Pokémon,” I admitted,

“Hours at a time.”

“Really,” she laughed.

“What got you into that?”

“My daughter and her beau.

They offered me

an invitation I couldn’t refuse:

One to enter their world.”

“That virtual world?” she exclaimed.

“And what, pray tell, keeps

you there so long?”

“God.

You know the psalmist’s plaint:

‘Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?’”

“But, Denise,” she doth protest,

“That’s in the actual world -

Not some artificial, profit-seeking,

tech-driven ploy that isn’t real!”

The conversation shifted.

She departed.

I stepped into bright sunshine

and asked:

What is real?

Is not my delight

in seeing the myriad manifestations

of human imagination in my hands

real?

Or what about the camaraderie

we Pokémasters experience when

we gather to defeat a great foe?

Just imagined?

And - I guess too - the sense

of gratitude in receiving

gifts from those I would

otherwise not interact

is meaningless.

According to her, I assume,

it is - as it was once to me,

that is, until that moment

as I was bemoaning our youth’s

obsession with virtual reality,

God spoke unto me:

“You know I’m in their world, too.

You need only enter.

I dare you.”

That was why, upon being invited, I did.

And discovered - once again -

the boundaries I so confidently assert -

exist only in the virtual reality

within my own head.

And so I will go, once again,

into our youth’s world,

to discover anew what I’ve always

known.

Wherever I go, wherever I flee -

God is already there.