! ! Godliness

Riffling through the dictionary of the mind - or, as the Anglo-Saxons named it, ‘word-hoard’ - for a word that exactly matches what needs to be said, a word may call out from the page like that kitten or that puppy in the pet-shop, which devastatingly looks you straight in the eye and mutely says ‘Master, treasure me…’ so, the other day, ‘godly’ called to me: as abbreviated in former times from ‘godlike’; not a word to suit, say, those fine-minded Hindu pundits who would want to classify its degrees of nearness or of distance from the state of god or gods.. rather, a gentle, misty, English-weather, modest-shining word which – borrowing a trick from those same Hindu grammarians – is neither limited, nor unlimited; or alternatively: is both limited, and unlimited; allows for small-g god, or big-G God; allows for frequent changes in the weather; and thus, will halt at all the stations on the line… so, stopped in the street by some presumptuous well-intentioned stranger with that piercing eye that stoppeth one of three, enquiring ‘Have you been saved by Jesus yet? ’ we may reply as if we were Dr Johnson of quirky diction and of his own Dictionary fame, replying, ‘Sir, my mind has godly inclinations…’ Yes, I’m comfortable with ‘godly’: like that kitten or that puppy, asking no more of you than what shared nature with a smile feeds and loves..