Tenth of January

Dear God, I love how every time you act or speak, you always hide behind something. When you were questioning me at the tavern, you made a point to stand on the opposite side of that vertical column with the embossed vine pattern. 

You're not all things, at once; but you CAN be anything. At any moment, you're some beings and not others. You're very particular; yet you're also totally random. Sometimes you are the others AND not the others — it defies human logic. You keep changing, zigzagging. Bobbing and swaying, popping up and ducking down. Are you afraid someone will catch you? Or do you WANT to be caught? 

Perhaps I'm wrong about everything, and you either are simply all or nothing. Maybe we caught you long ago, and both you and we are trying to forget that this ever happened, so as to rekindle the passion in our marriage.

Why are you so nervous? — You have all the time in the world. 

But now that I say that, I realize that it's not exactly calming to be reminded that you are drowning in a spatiotemporal ocean. So I take that back: Be nervous, if you like.

Why did you fall in love with Columbia? I thought you loved Israel. You found Israel in the wilderness, and you spread your skirt over her. Then a few eons later we find you spreading your skirt over Columbia. What the actual fuck? 

. . . Thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born. And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, "Live!" Yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, "Live!"

I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare.

Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.

(Ezekiel 16:5-8)

I do sincerely love the way that you help the downtrodden. Of course, I wish that you would prevent the possibility of their becoming downtrodden in the first place; but I'm willing to grant that maybe this trauma is the price of savoring true chaos: If one really wants to dabble in chance and otherness, so as to amend or escape one's control-freak tendencies, maybe misfortune is the payoff, the downside; and the goal then becomes to minimize the duration of the suffering. So I guess I'll give you a passing grade.

Now someone in the audience just tossed me a fortune cookie that had this note inside: "Who art thou to judge God?" — OK, heckler, have a laugh; but I can answer that. I actually get this question a lot. 

The famous Tertius Radnitsky, who wrote Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans (16:22), took me to task in Chapter Nine, saying "Has not the potter power over the clay? O Man, consider how God sculpted you from wet earth: You are but a statue of mud; Columbia's breasts were fashioned as pottery. Now, ask yourself: Shall the thing that was formed complain to the Artist who formed it, 'Why have you made me this way'?" — To this, I shout: YES! Consider what the poet Ovid revealed to us: A fellow named Pygmalion sculpted an ivory statue of the perfect woman; then the Goddess of Love granted this fellow's secret wish, thus causing that motionless masterwork to come alive at the kiss of its Creator: her cold hard lips became soft warm and red, and the two even ended up producing a child by way of their loins. — God is most desirous of feedback. (Aren't we all?)

Imagine a man whose steadfast desire is to gaze at his own reflection: The walls of his mansion are lined with mirrors; there's a mirror covering the ceiling of his bedroom; and he carries a pocket mirror in his purse which he frequently consults wherever he goes. Would we not call this man vain? But now think of a man who eschews all reflective surfaces because he loathes his physical appearance. What should we call this second man? ("Modest" is an antonym of "vain", but it doesn't seem right to call this latter fellow modest.) Is it better to be vain or self-hating? And am I being unfair to focus solely on visible aspects while offering only two contraries to choose from? Might there not be a healthy place between such extremes? And, if you, dear God, do not occupy the sweet spot of that slippery slope, then would you say that you lean more towards the side of vanity or self-loathing? My guess is that you are vain: I imagine that you like the way that you look. (Why would you not?—you are the prettiest being in the world!) So it is strange that you insist on obscuring your appearance. We all want to see you: Please, come out, wherever you are.