God - part II

[theatokos]

I'm sure you're familiar with stories like the Princess Diaries - stories where the girl one day discovers that *really* she's a princess, or she's turned 13 and inherits magickal witchy abilities or some kind of superpower (flying would be my choice). I wish that magick like that was real. I want to be that woman who when buying her first home stumbles across the big black book tucked away in the dark attic eaves and discovers arcane knowledge and spells (and superpowers). It's downright shocking that I didn't ever have a goth phase or become an occultist. What does this have to do with God? I guess it's that I wish I knew more about the way the world works, understood better the ways of God, had more control over the way my life seems to meander.

Mostly, I wish God was a Goddess, that there really has been a secret and devoted sect worshipping her for thousands of years. The God I want to believe in doesn't have a Chosen People or even a chosen Person. The God I want to believe in certainly isn't the God of the Old Testament, cruel, arbitrary, jealous, and male.

I wish God wasn't such a soft whisper (which I guess means I wish I knew how to listen more closely); I wish God were more intelligible; I wish God's ways were clearer (which I guess means I wish I had better eyes with which to see the way). I wish God wasn't so damn obscure and confusing. I wish God didn't cause such heartbreak.

Sometimes I wish God would perform a miracle and light up some neon sign in the sky that says "Niki, do _____!" I wish God were not so misconstrued, used for such violent means, or shoved down our throats by people who don't actually care about us but care only for their triumphant apocalyptic fantasies. Sometimes I wish we were not the hands of God, but that God's other appendages - the trees, the ocean, the earth - could reach out in our stead. Maybe kind of like the Ents.

I really wish God was love. Sometimes I afraid that God is really no more than some souless energy in the cosmos and that nothing we do or say matters. Sometimes I fear that love is just some opiate we have manufactured over the millenia to console ourselves for its actual absence, that we are nothing more than the chemical reactions of organic matter.

Honestly, though, it's hard to conceive of a God beyond the one that I have come to know. God and I, we've been together for a long time; we've got a good working relationship. Ultimately, one can only trust experience and I've had plenty of experiences that suggest there is a God and it cares. It, she, frustrates the fuck out of me, but I don't think I'd have it any other way.


On a different note, my room mate is moving out on Wed. For real this time.