Their eyes were watching.
01/12/2009 10:08 p.m.
Some things I've written about god, in the past several months or so:

It's funny, the things we choose to define who we are.

"Full of sound and fury; signifying nothing."

In 1984, we'll all use fewer words to describe ourselves. The words will equal sounds or sights or smells or tastes that are supposed to mean something, but, in the end, they're just words. Small and inadequate. The name of a band. A book. A candle. It was a smell that meant something about me, a sound. But you had to be there to understand it, and you wouldn't have, anyway, because it belonged to me, and you wouldn't have known the equation.

Last night, I dreamed of praying on a beach, in the ocean, kneeling before god with people who wanted it more than me. Then I made a wave that washed everyone away. I made it by falling into the water. But, really, truly, I was the wave. I was the wave that separated everyone else from their god. And it was an accident on purpose, because I was jealous of the love he bestowed upon their inclined heads. I was the wave that tried to wash the hand of god away. Convinced, as always, that he was not also the wave. That we couldn't both be the same thing. The universe is mysterious. My small, black heart refuses to figure it out.

If you asked me to tell you who I am, I couldn't. I wouldn't. I might want to show you a picture, but who knows what you would see? I am bigger than pictures. I am bigger than words. I am bigger than the sound.

-------------

God is the book we write inside of ourselves. The one in which we record all of the ways we've learned how to love. The map to the location of our souls is tattooed on the inside of our eyelids. We see it every time we close our eyes to pray.

*****
I wonder at the sanity and intelligence of people who never question their religious beliefs even a little. There's a god up there with eight arms to hold you. The great blue globe of the world is just a glint in his eye. On the seventh day he rested. Millions of days later, he erased what he had done and started over again. He batted a lash and ruined the world.

We're more than a little overly creative. But a god named Larry who wrote us into a sitcom wouldn't have the same appeal. We make our gods spectacularly ridiculous because that explains why they don't come hang out with us. Why they're so much better than we are. If everyone could be spectacularly ridiculous, the world would spin off its axis, shoot like a pool ball at the sun.

We're designed to question the obscenely different in every day life. But not so when it comes to our deities. Don't question their kingdoms of gold in the sky. Their infinite body parts.

That's pretty stupid. Or crazy. Whichever.

*****

The way Gaius Baltar would have us believe it, truthfully, we only want one thing from our god. We want him to whisper something in our ear when we are sad or lonely or scared. We want him to say "I love you because you are absolutely perfect just the way you are."

Imagine that. Imagine some thirteen year old-boy, grappling with the realization that he is gay. Scared to death of what people will think. What they will say. What they will do. They will try to hurt him, maybe. Wound him with words. Wound him with hands. Imagine at that moment, god reaching out to him, touching his shoulder and whispering into his ear. "I love you because you are absolutely perfect just the way that you are."

Imagine that god. That world. It could be our world. We could live in it.

*****
But we don't. Because there are people who hate that boy so much that they want to use whatever tools they possess to make him hate himself. They want to reach inside of him and write lies inside his book and make him believe them.

Maybe it won't work. Maybe he'll close his eyes and pray and see that his soul is not bad. That he's not a bad person.

Maybe the whisper of god will drown out all of the other voices.