God: Hello Laurie. You there? Texting is cool.
LK: Well….well….well, Greetings Hosannah In The Highest!
God: The notorious G-O-D. I thought I’d try this texting stuff. It’s cool.
LK: How different the everything would have been had the technology existed back in the day.
God: You guys were in your infancy back then. I had to introduce things to you in baby steps. Most of the early flock were Empiricists. These guys didn’t believe anything unless it could be felt, smelled, tasted, seen or heard. I had to be very creative back then.
LK: And these days we take it all for grants. We have banking, communication—everything In a cloud. And instantly accessible.
God: You think Apple is a big deal? There was such mishegas with Guttenberg and the printing press!! What a commotion!!! But it was good. I needed the world to be better connected…you know…closer. That Tower of Babel explanation only made things worse. It destroyed more bridges than it made.
LK: Then why didn’t you just stick with Esperanto when you you had the chance?
God: Water is great, right? But if you have access to eight different tasty kool-aid favors, well, how groovy is that?
LK: Variety, huh?
God: Anybody can learn a second, even a third language. Then there are emotions–those are universal. Love feels the same in if you speak Swedish or Urdu. Hate can be expressed in Mandarin as easily as it can be in German—Bavarian accent, thank you. And English is really kind of the new global speak. For a while I thought it should be Hebrew, but it’s a bit too glottal.
LK: That would’ve infuriated the Islamic states. Can you imagine anyone there joining “the talibansky??????”
God: Lead by Osama bin Ladenovitz???? Wasn’t in the cards.
LK: What’s in the cards, then? Share, please.
God: That’s up to you.
LK: I hate it when our exchanges turn vague.
God: They’re only vague to you and always only in the very beginning. The last word you type or uttered comes from an enlightened person.
LK: Knowledge is power.
God: And faith is sustaining.
LK: But more difficult in terms of adherence.
God: For some, not for all. Faith is there for all who need it; those who seek it. It’s good to believe in something. It’s like what we were talking about earlier.
LK: You mean the Internet? The ether? A cloud?
God: Yes, and the big, white, gassy ones in the sky are no picnic to explain either.
LK: I have faith, but it’s hard to describe.
God: You’ve just described faith.
LK: Interesting. Tell me please, do you know how it all goes? How it all ends?
God: I know when it begins and I know when it ends.
LK: And the middle part?
God: That’s up to you. Look sweetie, life is like a sandwich. I give you two slices of bread—one is for birth, the other is for death. You decide what to put in between the slices, Ham, egg salad, a little roast beef, turkey or whatever.
LK: You admit you know when it ends, but do you know how it ends?
God: Simply put, it’s like this. Do I know when? Yes. How? No.
LK: How can you not know how?
God: I’ll let you in on a little secret. The keyword here is mystery. I can’t possibly explain everything. Only a few people can handle the reality–Steven Hawking and Nancy Pelosi to name a few.
LK: Pelosi always sounded like an Italian verb.
God: Yeah and who knew Nancy would become such an adjective!
LK: I’ve known a few Nancy boys.
God: As have I. You know, I’m perfectly okay with them getting married. I created them for a reason.
LK: Which is???
God: So everyone would have the chance to find love if they so choose. Your relatives 170 times removed poo-pood the concept of homosexuality. But that was when the world needed populating. I needed humans to procreate. But I think we have the population thing under control. People should love who they love. I never meant for the issue to be as divisive as it has.
LK; How did you…YOU NOT see that coming??
God: Maybe, I looked the other way. Maybe, I decided to give you guys the option of accepting things or denying things.
LK: Free will, again?
God : Again, free will.
LK: That’s something you know I have trouble with.
God. Calvinism still keeping you up at night?
LK: Well yeah frankly. Why does someone’s free will impinge on another persons free will? For example, a child is innocently playing in the front yard and some pedophile drives by, sees his opportunity, snatches the kid and a four year old’s battered body is found in a semi dry creek bed three days later.
God: You just answered your own question, doll.
Opportunity.
LK: But we’re talking about an innocent child with just four years of life under his belt? He doesn’t know morality or what’s good or what’s evil.
God: Maybe this ignorance can be a gift. That was his life. That’s all he got for this go round.
LK: What do you mean?
God: Here ‘s that Pesky Calvinism again. Pre-determination, but even that’s over simplifying it. Let’s say everyone has an alpha and an omega. A beginning and end. .Don’t forget the sandwich metaphor.
LK: How does that play into the reality that a toddler was abducted and found murdered?
God: Again, it’s not that easy. But look at it this way! The child was going to die that die. It just so happened that he played outside on that day. The pedophile chose to turn down the street where the kid lived. Sometimes lives intersect. Sometimes only one comes out alive.
LK: But to die in such a horrific way?
God: Death is the destination, dying is the process. It gives me no pleasure watching a baby die en utero, There’s no joy in watching a platoon taken out by an IED. Its painful watching a jihadist wearing a suicide vest killing himself and everyone else in an open air market in Tel Aviv. It pains me to see a bomb landing in a playground,
LK: Then why do we need to die at all? Why kill a baby before its born?
God: Envy life has a purpose. For the time the baby had, her impending arrival gave great joy to a mother and a father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.
LK And great pain when it was miscarried.
God: Yes, but perhaps it wasn’t meant to live.
LK: Then why couldn’t you intercede?
God; Who’s to say I didn’t? The one thing you mortals that makes me crazy is attribute perfection to me. Heck, I invented mistakes. Some rapper once warbled, “ain’t nuthin’ perfect”. Preach on, my son because that’s the truth. Humans are created with a divine recipe. I’m talking about a billion spontaneous combustions of cells amid myosis and myotis and other fancy Greek based words with ‘osis’ as a suffix. That means the odds are pretty good something might go wrong. And sometimes it does. I start the car; Nature is the engine. As for your fetus question, some aren’t sustainable outside the womb.
LK: I understand attrition and culling of the herd and all…
God: Don’t put it like that!!!
LK. Then explain why some disabled kids make it through the gauntlet.
God: Because they have a purpose, too. Primarily, they bring joy to the lives around them. They make people in their spheres, willing to be compassionate and tolerant, more compassionate and tolerant. In essence, better rounded as people.
(Texting ceases briefly)
God: Uh…you there? I sense you’re making that confused face, right?
LK I’m here.
God: What everyone must understand is that you spend your life as both teacher and student. Life is a gift and each life regardless of where or how it’s lived is a process in which a lesson must be learned and must be taught as well.
LK: Like famine?
God: It gives cause to celebrate times of plenty and stock up, when there are periods of when food is scarce.
LK: Like war?
God: Peace can’t exist without war. We wouldn’t know sweet without bitterness. If love exists, hate has to exist…or worse, apathy.
LK: Explain apathy then.
God: Switzerland.
LK: I love that you’re funny.
God: I communicate with you in ways relatable to you. If I’m funny, then you’re funny since the ancient texts say you’re made in my image.
LK: But I don’t have a big white beard and wear long flowing robes.
God: Neither do I. That was Chuck Heston and someone’s idea of me in the make up and costume department on the set of a Cecile B. DeMille movie.
LK: bDo you like food, too?
God: My child, happiness is a twelve inch high pastrami on rye. Heaven to me looks a lot like the old Stages deli.
LK: What’s hell like then?
God: No decent deli to be found within a hundred mile radius.
LK: Good one, G-dog.
God: Hate to end this delightful texting session, but I must. Your Me-given opposable thumbs must be hurting by now and I have a massive prayer list to deal with, some dating back to the Nixon administration.
LK: What are those prayers about?
God: You had Gerald Ford in office, right? Prime example of that old saying, “be careful what you pray for.”
LK: Good point. Then get busy, God. One last question?
God: Shoot.
LK: Does that mean you answer all the prayers you get?
God. Of course. I texted you, didn’t I???