The Body of God is Leftover Pizza
Tag: Black Holes
Black Holes/White Flags
Once upon a time, God appeared in the living room and walked straight to the wood stove, extending his hands toward the fire. He seemed chilled and uptight. After a while, he gave me a half-eyed glance and in a choked voice said, “I sure hope I’m the kind of God you write about.” Mystified, I mustered a reassuring smile.
Another time, God blew through the top of the cottonwoods, a holy howling terror, uprooting trees. Powerlines sparked and whipped like snakes. She pounded her chest, lifted skirts, and inverted the umbrellas intended to thwart the rain. “You will not stay upright,” she shrieked across the expanse. “You will not stay dry and there’s nowhere to hide.”
I hid.
God peeked down into my hiding place. “Sorry,” she said. “You can come out now.”
And then there was the time it drizzled miserably for days, and my sad friend told me she was dying, and the only God I could find was a four-legged critter that appeared to be a dog. God did some tricks, jumped on my friend’s lap, licked her face, and for a while, there was joy. Muted and resigned, but joy.
I slipped outside. Children were splashing in a threatening puddle. One of them kicked off bright yellow boots and squished black mud between her toes, barefoot and triumphant. I watched from the sidelines, silently cheering her on.
I’m remembering these times this morning as I sip a very stale beer—a gift from a stingy God who gives me leftovers–less than I think I deserve. But waste not, want not. And besides, what does deserve have to do with it? Is love earned or bestowed? Is it passed along or is each scrap absorbed into the black hole where nothing is ever enough and time itself has no meaning?
“Good morning,” God says, appearing beside me in stylish clothes. “Can I have a sip?”
“Sure,” I say. “It’s awful.”
God winks, tips the bottle back, swallows, and it’s gone. The beer is gone. The day is gone. Light is peeling off the walls, and I’m falling in.
“Help!” I yell to God as I dangle. The full weight of my body is too much.
God brings an umbrella and yellow boots, a dog, and a fresh beer. But I can’t accept any of it because I need both hands to hold onto the gravelly rim of my small reality.
“Let go,” God says.
“I can’t,” I yell back.
“Of course, you can,” God says, and kneels to loosens my fingers, one by one.
A Tribute to Stephen Hawking
One of my least favorite visitors arrived, insistent on sharing my beer this morning. I offered green smoothie, but no, I’m sharing my beer. Which is fine. I opened the can yesterday, so it’s not very tasty, and there isn’t that much. I don’t know if Stephen Hawking drank beer, but my visitor claims to have known Stephen for a long time. Neither of these entities need to use the language of commoners but my visitor deigns to do so this morning. I can’t tell if the intent is conversation, or just showing off.
“I imagine that for you, 15 billion years is a long time,” my visitor says. “Duh,” I think as my skull elongates, making more space for my ever-diminishing brain. So many truths about life are hard to grasp. I can’t define a quark. In fact, I don’t even understand the nothingness of nothing. The zeroness of zero. Time is the name of something we’ve invented because our observations are linear. We’re the ones who once believed the earth was flat, remember? But maybe our grandmothers grasped something when they assured us “What goes around comes around.”
“Hey,” I said to my visitor. “Do you think it would be possible to compression compassion into something like Hawking’s Initial Singularity—an infinitely dense point that for some reason explodes and begins inflating itself outward, unstoppable?” I was imagining galaxies of compassion expanding into the cosmos. My visitor laughed. Apparently, there’s a problem having to do with black holes and things that shouldn’t escape black holes, but escape anyway, which has caused a rethinking of gravity. Now this, I understand. Aging causes a serious rethinking of gravity. And our political scene confirms that things have escaped black holes that absolutely should not have done so. Thus, gravity has failed us.
“Okay,” I said. “If we can’t count on gravity, then a big bang of compassion might lift the weight of our many transgressions and make us into beings determined to embody joy, or better yet, eudaimonia, right?” I thought my use of that term might impress my visitor. It’s Greek for a state of being somewhat like self-actualization….when we’ve achieved what we were meant to achieve, and done it damn well, and it feels fantastic.
I think the Dalai Lama would like this Big Bang of compassion idea, but my visitor has grown restless. In another realm, perhaps Stephen is waiting to compare notes. Along the timeline, one direction or another, there’s work to do. My head shrinks back, proportional to my shoulders. I’m glad I didn’t share the green smoothie. This day will be a long lope around our tiny sun, and by the end, we’ll all be a day closer and a day further away. Be well, essence of Stephen. We’ll carry on here as best we can.
Short visits with an honest God 