God in a cup


POETRY                                                                                                                            

Nov 2018. Christian Journal for Global Health 5(3):54. 

God in a cup 

Martha Christine Carlougha 

a MD, MPH, Professor, UNC/Chapel Hill and Theology, Medicine and Culture Initiative of Duke Divinity School, USA 

 

I wait  

slightly less than patiently, 

taking up slightly more  

than my share of floor space  

on the ladies’ side of church. 

 

Distracted, 

an inefficient ceiling fan 

circulates monsoon-laden air;  

someone’s two-year-old 

crawls over, sits on my foot. 

 

In the interlude, 

I contemplate the walk home 

through mud puddles, diesel fumes, 

and poverty; I wonder  

is there time for a cold shower  

before lunch? 

 

I receive communion from the common cup 

then walk back to my space with the woman 

who always shares my Bible, 

smiling with pride and affection 

though we both know she cannot read. 

 

 

On the way home, 

I buy a diet Coke. 

It is cold and sweet 

but leaves an aftertaste, 

costing as it did, 

more than two days’ worth of rice or 

ten measles vaccinations. 

 

In a few days, 

I will once again board a plane, 

spending a day, closer to a lifetime, 

crossing the globe to reach a country called home. 

 

As the fabric of my connection  

to this land I love 

grows thin at the edges 

on this mid-monsoon morning, 

I stretch to remind myself 

there are other places 

I also belong 

where God is served in a cup.

 

Submitted 15 July 2018, Accepted 17 July 2018 
 
Competing Interests: None declared.     
 
Correspondence: Martha Christine Carlough, UNC/Chapel Hill and TMC Initiative of Duke Divinity 
School, United States of America. martha_carlough@med.unc.edu          

 
Cite this article as:  Carlough MC. God in a cup. Christian Journal for Global Health. Nov 2018; 
5(3):54. https://doi.org/10.15566/cjgh.v5i3.234  
 
© Author. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 
Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, 
provided the original author and source are properly cited. To view a copy of the license, visit 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

 

www.cjgh.org 

mailto:martha_carlough@med.unc.edu
https://doi.org/10.15566/cjgh.v5i3.234
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/