On this and that

[Here is a self-portrait by my 6-year-old nephew.]

Dear notebook,

You could write a poem to mourn a good friend’s death. You could write a poem to express an attitude towards reality. You cannot think of any more reasons to write a poem.

Sometimes you ponder God and say “What a fool,” because you imagine him stumbling around and getting angry at things that are out of his control. And sometimes you say “What an imp,” because you imagine him lying, cheating . . . And often you say, “What an awesome God,” because you look at the varieties of animals that live on Earth, and you note how their bodily organs fit together so perfectly, and you imagine that God manufactured them. You notice the stars and the planets, how they seem spheric and shiny, and how they spin around in the blackness of outer space – this can seem impressive or idiotic, depending on your mood.

The writers of the Bible sometimes thought of God one way and sometimes another; and, when they wrote their scriptures, they presented God however they felt about him at that moment. The representations of God in the Bible are varying, unsettled; and that’s what I like about them. The reason for this is that God is something that the human mind imagined. Does that mean that reality is devoid of God? No. There may be a God, and there may be no God – God perhaps does not exist yet (maybe we’ll make him); God might never exist; and God maybe existed a while ago but collapsed into a chaos of fragments – but one thing is sure: the God of the Bible is a character composed by humans; the God of the Bible is the subject of human poetry.

The True God who actually exists and who created my being as well as everything else in this world loves when I make assertions like that last sentence above.

I wonder if chickens know that we humans steal all their eggs.

Is a seed a poem? I mean, a watermelon seed. Does that count as a poem? It has four stanzas, and it praises its Maker. There are four winds and four angels.

The Devil, on the other hand, does not exist – there is no question about that. And don’t tell me “The Devil’s greatest accomplishment was convincing the world that he does not exist.” That’s just what the holders of his copyright want us to believe. Everything attributed to the Devil is truly God’s doing. The Devil is just God acting in ways that you don’t like. Good and evil are in the eye of the beholder. “God” is the label that we stick on the whatchamacallit that permits everything to happen. It is not true to say that good things and evil things happen; it is true to say that some things please me and others displease me. When I’m displeased by reality, I ask “Why did God allow this unpleasant event?” But if I want to keep my word “God” clean, I swap it for a different term, “Devil,” and say instead, “The Devil caused all this unpleasantness.” That allows me to shift the blame for everything that displeases my finite being onto a character of my imagination other than God. I’m just explaining this because it seems that a lot of people are lost in their own minds, nowadays. But it’s better simply to blame everything on God.

And what is luck? It’s just God all over again, with less anthropomorphism. Unless you make it Lady Luck; then things start to heat up.

This makes me think of the Statue of Liberty, I wonder why. I’m told that the French gifted that to the USA. If that is true, then I wonder: How come countries seem to have stopped giving each other enormous goddesses as tokens of their friendship? I think that Nation X should give Nation Y a big angel: this would help improve relations between them. But don’t make it a hollow angel with army troops hiding inside – that would ruin the whole gesture. Fill it with caramel.

Alright, so you got God from Genesis Chapter One creating balls in space; plus grass, and cows to eat the grass. The seas, the third day. Fruit, fowl . . . “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” That’s verse 31.

Then, at the start of Chapter Two, God takes a rest. Up to this point, the text has maintained a certain attitude toward God; now, for the next couple chapters, that attitude shall change. God the world-builder who speaks planets into existence leaves the stage and removes his divine costume, while another actor dons that costume and steps onstage. Now, instead of just plain “God,” we have Yahweh “the LORD” God, who sculpts a self-portrait out of mud and blows into its nostrils to make it come alive. He names his living sculpture “Man.” Then he parades all the animals before Man, wondering which beast Man shall select to be his wife. When Man declines to choose from Yahweh’s array of potential mates, Yahweh puts Man to sleep and performs an operation on Man: Yahweh takes a part of Man and refashions it into a second Man. This revised copy of Man is a naked lady. None of Yahweh’s creations are wearing clothing. If a camera had been present, we might assume that God was intending to make a pornographic movie.

Yahweh fashions the garden of paradise for his first couple to live in. He plants trees all over the place and tells his humans, “You can eat the fruit of these”; then he positions one tree in the center of the place and says, “Don’t eat this one or you will die.” Then the snake walks onstage (we’re in Chapter Three now) and asks the humans why they’re not enjoying the fruit that was forbidden, and they give their answer, but then the snake assures them that Yahweh was lying: for the truth is that they won’t die when they eat the fruit; instead, their eyes will open and they’ll become like Yahweh himself. So the humans eventually eat the forbidden fruit, and their eyes open and they become like Yahweh himself. Yahweh himself soon notices that something is awry, because the nudes that he sculpted are now modestly attired; so Yahweh curses the snake and the humans for thwarting his plan; then he kicks the humans out of the garden of paradise, because they are now like Yahweh, and this is apparently not what Yahweh desires: he is not willing to live with equals in paradise but only with those who are inferior.

Then Yahweh impregnates an unwed woman, and she bears a son to him. This son, named Jesus, is so much like Yahweh that he basically IS Yahweh: the father and son share a personhood.

So Yahweh causes his son Jesus to be tortured to death. But Jesus does not remain deceased: he resurrects and then ascends to heaven, where he sits on the right hand of his father Yahweh.

Now everybody is waiting for Jesus to return to the earth. What happens when Jesus touches down a second time on the surface of Minnesota? Well, then the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll, and the globe will be renewed. All sins will be forgiven. The people of the world will be separated into two groups: the ones who have pleased Yahweh God will be invited to live with him in the new paradise (as equals or inferiors? – you decide); and whoever displeases God will be cast into the Lake of Fire: this is the “second death.”

Now, since there are two deaths, I’m moved to question: Might there be three or four deaths, also, waiting for us in the future? And the answer is yes: there are many, many deaths that our dead bodies will get to experience: the amount and the type shall depend upon how the various Intergalactic Judges decide to punish our remains.

. . . and they all fell into the water together, and were drowned. Then the little cock was left alone with the dead hen, and dug a grave for her and laid her in it, and made a mound above it, on which he sat down and fretted until he died too, and then every one was dead.

That’s the ending of the Brothers Grimm tale called “The Death of the Little Hen.”

So Moses the servant of Yahweh died there in the land of Moab . . . and Yahweh buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. (Deuteronomy 34:5-6)

QUESTION: And what about Islam and Judaism? ANSWER: They shall be just fine. Don’t worry about them.

Now, for an alternate ending to this entry, here is some dialogue between the circus owner, Albert Johansson, and his underling, Frost, from the English subtitles of the 1953 film Gycklarnas afton (“The Evening of the Jesters”) by Ingmar Bergman:

ALBERT: It’s a pity people must live on this earth. . . . They’re all so frightened . . .

FROST: Yes, it’s a shame.

ALBERT: . . . But now I’m going to rise up and do something worthy of a human being.

FROST: You mean kill yourself?

ALBERT: I didn’t say that! [pulls out a firearm] I got this from Timba, the tiger trainer.

FROST: You ought to shoot the bear. It’s in a bad way.

ALBERT: Yes, I ought to shoot the bear.

FROST: And don’t forget to shoot my wife too. It would be an act of kindness.

ALBERT: We should shoot everyone we feel sorry for. . . . I should shoot you too, my dear Frost! [aims gun at Frost]

FROST: But I have my poor old dad to care for!

ALBERT: Are you afraid?

FROST: No . . . Yes I am.

ALBERT: Afraid to die?

FROST: Yes.

ALBERT: Well . . . [points gun at self] I’m not afraid of death.

FROST: Then kill yourself!

ALBERT: No! [drops gun] It’s hot in here!

FROST: Yes, let’s get out! Open the door!