“Act as if,”
they call it.
It means
if you don’t think
there is a god
you can “play like”
until…and unless
something starts to feel real.
What you call this essence
doesn’t matter.
You can begin and end
by saying this is bull,
crap, folly, stupid…
You won’t offend
Your play-like god.
The Reverend Shoemaker
in 1954 said a man
“acted as if he had faith”
until faith came by accident,
or “until there was an opening
for God to come through.”