Tag: Beyond the human mind

The Soup du Jour

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

“You know what I like best about Homo sapiens?” God asked as she continued packing an ancient-looking doll suitcase.

“No,” I said. My tone suggested I wasn’t all that interested in what God might like about humans. We’re a disappointing lot so far, trending toward extinction thanks to profound sexism, denial, greed, over-population, and homemade security blankets we call faith systems.

God ignored my rudeness. “Could you check your weather app? I’m not sure what to pack.”

“For where?” I asked.

“There’s a galaxy just to your left. Not sure what you’ve named it…” God’s voice trailed off. She folded the bulging little suitcase shut and stood on it, which was clearly the wrong approach.

“Hey, tune in here,” God said. “I could use a little help.”

I stared out the window. I didn’t want to help. I didn’t want God to leave. I didn’t want God to stay. I didn’t want to consider the awfulness humans have done in the name of our deities, and I didn’t want to face the ways I’ve participated.

Grudgingly, I joined her and tried to position the contents so the suitcase would latch. “Where’d you find this?” I asked. It was overfilled and warped.

“Well, where does any baggage come from?” God asked with a grin, and added, “Your basement.”

Ah ha! It was a set-up; a parable to make me consider the cumbersome baggage humans unwittingly collect and drag around. God wasn’t coming or going anywhere.

I laughed and gave God a shove. She grabbed me and we tumbled backwards into the deep recesses of consciousness where humankind’s fears of oblivion are always the soup du jour. I flailed but then God reminded me that it’s best to relax and float when the liquid is this salty.

God did the backstroke and philosophized.

“Did you know that I’m the attraction between electrons and protons?” she asked. “It’s a big responsibility.” She paused, then said in a wistful voice. “I tell this to the dogs. They just wag their tails and beg for treats. I show this to the stars, and they align. But when I reveal this to humans, I’m never sure what will happen next.” She paused again. “And strangely, that’s what I enjoy the most.”

I climbed out on a rock, leaped as high as I could, wrapped my arms around my legs, and did a cannonball back into the thick soup, splashing God in the face.

 “Like that?” I asked.

“Yep,” God said, wiping existential angst off her forehead. “Just like that.”

Apophatic

Rita Sommers-Flanagan3 Comments

This morning, it is my intention to ask for Nothing. Admittedly, I’m not entirely sincere. Someday, maybe. Deep in my soul, I suspect the greatest gift of all is Nothing, but Something is far easier.

Consciously or not, every living being begs, demands, or fights for something: Continued life. Sustenance. Shelter. Justice. Revenge. The right lover. Riches, recognition, health, a big win. And when the lost coin is found, the cancer recedes, there is rejoicing, and God is declared good.

But when the earth quakes or the bomb drops, the rivers flood or starvation takes another child, I see it is better to ask for Nothing. What do we say to the team that didn’t win? To the one not found? To the destitute scrambling for crumbs falling from the tables of the enormously wealthy? To the planet shrugging us off with great loss and pain?

“Are you asking me?” God’s steamy voice rises majestic from the compost pile where microbes are hard at work. Like a startled deer, I run for the hills. God runs alongside, tossing shiny bits of wisdom behind us so I can find my way back when the panic subsides.

At the summit, I collapse on lichen covered sandstone. There is nowhere left to run. The view is spectacular. God has spread itself across the face of the dying earth. Eternal, resilient, generous. I point out the gully where I hope to be buried. God laughs.

“All creation is a churning tomb,” the formless God says. “From whence you will reappear.”

“Are you Nothing or Everything?” I lay back and stare straight up, deflecting from the image of my resurrection as nutrients and organic matter.

“Yes,” answers the Sky. “And so are you.”

I shake my head but God is adamant. “You’re the performance and the applause, achievement and failure, pride and shame. You’re the darkness sacrificed to define light, and you’re the light that leaps into darkness, knowing it will not survive.”

“Sucked in by a black hole?” I ask. “Gone forever?”

God smiles. “Something like that. But not quite. You understand that I’m the place where light goes to rest, right?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t really understand that.”

I pull what’s left of myself together, move toward the day, and instead of Nothing, I ask for very little as I settle into the Unsettled Place of the Holy Dialectic. It isn’t all that comfortable, but I prefer it to the self-righteous mirage of certainty cloaking the willfully deluded, the terrified, and the cruel.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” God says. “Suits us just fine for now.”