Please Don’t Judge Me

Unlike most children, it took me quite a while to weed through the corrugated cardboard boxes that had been shipped to me after my mother’s death. They contained items that I imagine my other siblings had either not taken or simply not wanted. At its bottom, a pair of eyes were staring up at me. They belonged to Jesus. It did not look like the picture of Jesus had been drawn or painted; it possessed a photographic quality. But how in this world, if I may ask, could this ever be a photograph? On the back and in my mother’s distinctive and flowing cursive handwriting was written. “God is always watching you.”

I find it difficult to remember any room in my mother’s old house where at least several pairs of Jesus’s eyes weren’t always staring down upon me from the walls of her home. In fact, if I recall correctly, she even owned one of those 3-D pictures that created the illusion of his eyes following you to whatever part of the room you’d moved. I do believe that one was one of the four she had hanging in the bathroom, and ironically, the only one in the entire house where Christ was nailed to the cross.

Now, please don’t judge me. I love my mother. It’s just that…

I’m often confused by people who are so sure of themselves they can see no other point of view than their own and usually are blinded by the misconstrued illusion of positive self-approval, self-righteousness, and entitlement. Narcissism is a look that wears thin in a relatively short period of time on all but a few, and on those who it doesn’t, they often become too hideous to gaze upon for too long. And that is, in itself, the conundrum. 

Now please don’t judge me. I love a good conundrum as well as the next guy. It’s just that…

People are always going around saying things and rattling off platitudes like, “When Life Gives You Lemons—Make Lemonade”. I get it; the idea that if something negative occurs, you should dig down deeper inside yourself and you’ll eventually dig down far enough to find something positive. I get it. It’s just there are some days when a soul feels like they’ve been laying in their grave so long and where they’ve hit rock bottom, thus there’s no deeper a soul can realistically dig. 

Now, please don’t judge me. I love a deep dig as good as the next person. It’s just that…

Why has no one ever coined the phrase, “When Life Gives You Rain—Make Rainbows”? I love my mother, a good conundrum, I try to dig as deep as I can, and most times I even look for the rainbows after it rains. This makes me think back to one of the four pictures of Jesus, the only one where he’s hanging from a cross that my mom had hanging in the bathroom of her old house, you know, the one I already told you about where you felt like his eyes were always following you wherever you went? Well, maybe his eyes weren’t really looking at you—maybe he was just searching for the rainbow—same as us. Perhaps Christ regretted, if only for a moment and if only in a tiny way, a life squandered changing water into wine while instead he simply should’ve been dedicating more of the precious, little time he had in this world toward turning rain into rainbows.

Now please don’t judge me. I know that everyone dies sooner or later, right? It’s just that…

Before God died, She laid Her head upon the pillow where it had lain so many times and where She first had Her dream of creating others and all else to keep Her company throughout the eons yet to come. With a sole, sad sigh She released Her grip on consciousness and slipped deeper into the depths of oblivion, the place where all unfulfilled thoughts and dreams gradually returned to be thought and dreamt anew. Where the light and the darkness return to mingle when it’s no longer night or day and where the rainbows fear to tread. In a final, single breath God was gone, and She was no more.

When God died, She died unhappy, unrealized, and empty. She’d given Her all but Her all was never enough. Her creations could neither console nor content Her any longer. So, with Her last breath, She released and set them free to go about life without Her. With Her death, free will had been decreed, for better or worse, and all of creation was now, truly on its own; because God was dead.

When God died no one bathed, cleaned, or prepared Her body for interment. No pallbearers in procession struggled beneath the weight of Her casket, neither did mourners beat their chests nor weep. No wake was held. There wasn’t even a funeral. Many of whom She created would not acknowledge Her demise while the others carried on without a care. Few conceded She had passed along at all. Merely a handful tried to tell the others, “God has died!” It was always lonely at the top.

When God died, there was little that really changed. The sun still rose in the east and set in the west. Sin was, as always since the beginning of time, a puzzle left partially solved by saint and sinner alike. The waves upon the sea still rose and fell as they neared the shore. Seasons continued to change and life went on. The winds still moved, borderless and unbound, as if by magic. Then, somewhere, a small sparrow had become vaguely aware of all the ways God had suffered before crumbling cold and dead on the hardened, fertile ground of which she was the genesis. Yet the sparrow did not cry, it simply flew up toward the heavens and disappeared. Other than that, pretty much, everything just stayed the same. The only difference was; God was dead—and then She was gone…

Amen!