Fiction Speculative

“Are you there, God? It’s me.

You probably don’t remember. It’s…it’s been a long time.

And, while I have said your name a lot over the last two and a half decades, it hasn’t been in the way you probably would have liked to hear it.

In fact, this whole, ‘praying to you thing’ might just do nobody any good.

Not you.

Not me.

Not the situation I’m in.

A situation I’m not sure if I’m in because of you or due to your absence in my life if you know what I mean.

You should know what I mean.

You’re supposed to know everything.

That sounds, and might slightly be sarcastic, coming from me especially, but let’s be real. This is where it all started to end between us. But, given where I’m at in life, it’s a good place to pick things back up, wouldn’t you say?

You apparently ‘talk’ to plenty of people. Some of them in Washington DC have access to camera’s 24/7 and some of them are, let’s call them ‘wanderer’s, downtown.

They both have the same unhealthy brain, which is why they claim to hear your voice and shout that fact to anyone around them who will listen.

Why not talk to me?

Or anyone with any real head on their shoulders. Ones that could actually inspire the change you desire.

If you know everything, and I’ve always been told the whole, ‘Your plan is bigger than mine’ bit, then what’s with all the mystery?

Why not just tell us what’s going on? If you’re supposed to be all about love and comfort, why not provide either of them?

Faith plays a HUGE part in all of this, I get that. But that should go both ways. Like respect, it has to be earned to be given.

Anyway, I’m here to ask for your help, not get mad about problems I’ve long ago thought I’d let go. But instead of getting rid of these, ironically named, demons, I’ve, as the saying goes, ‘kept them on a leash.’

So, I’ll rein things back in.

I’m in a situation now, where I could use your guidance. I need your grace and wisdom to navigate my…hang on.

One more thing.

I know I’m here for something else, and I’ll get to that soon, I promise. But to be honest, I’m not sure the next time we’ll speak. So, let’s flip all the cards and really talk now, yea?

Let’s put something to rest. I didn’t walk away from this, from you, because of your ‘chosen’ people. Churches of any religion are there more to assuage insecurities and fears of the congregants than they are a vessel to be closer to you.

If you’re everywhere then I don’t need to sit in a building with other people who don’t want to be there and give my hard-earned money to buy a new drum set for the band while they enjoy tax write-offs I’ll never see.

That’s not on you. That’s just how people work sometimes.

I mean, it’s sort of on you, but not directly.

The point is, I witnessed a lot in those buildings with those people. They showed me that if you’re real, you’re definitely not in those places with those people.

You’re certainly not with most of the planet at any given time, on a grand scale, for that matter.

But you are out there, watching us.

Not the you I grew up learning about, the kind that punishes anyone for the mere crime of asking if you’re as powerful as you say you are.

No, instead I’ve come to understand now that people see you the way they see the world.

Those that see you as a vengeful god see the world through venge-filled lenses, mired in anger and disappointment in themselves.

If someone thinks of you as a god of love, then you have yourself a pair of rose-colored glasses, and your empathetic heart leads.

And so on and so forth.

But you’re not any of those things, are you?

You couldn’t possibly be.

In fact, being placed in a box of human understanding, if you’re everything we say you are, must be laughable to you.

When atheists say things like, ‘God didn’t make man, man made god,’ they’re leaving out an important part: you might have made it all, but you can’t control it all.

That sounds mean and controversial. No offense is being levied, let’s just talk on a level playing field and be honest about things.

Humans throughout time have bestowed upon you benevolent powers of might and wisdom. Creations of their own machinations of what they perceive as power, which usually involves lording strength over the weak.

If I’m completely honest, my guess is that you made us with the best of intentions.

But creations, in even the most controlled environments, can cause unintended havoc.

When you saw things were getting out of hand the first time, you tried to warn humans using weather thinking that would be a strong enough sign.

But instead of getting our attention literally the entire world drowned with the exception of a small group who had to start the world over.

Once that was up and running, Earth 2.0, you tried again to communicate on a more eloquent scale with the written word.

I would imagine your thoughts were something along the lines of, ‘Hey, the wave that wiped out the globe was a bad idea, I can see that now. But words…now those can’t possibly be misinterpreted.’

We both know how that went.

Then, after you sent down your son to pay an ultimate and unfair price, things only got worse.

Again, I’m not mad. You did what you thought was right at the time, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, amiright?

The wave didn’t work, it made things worse, people died.

The book didn’t work, it made things worse, people died.

Your own flesh and blood didn’t work, he tried to make things better, but he died.

You’re trying to tell us something, I can understand that, but this whole ‘communication through imperfect vessels’ thing has got to stop. Using destruction to try and get our attention isn’t helping anyone’s cause, especially your own.

You’ve got to step it up a bit and find a better person, or way, to communicate. If there’s a bigger message we’re missing from your previous iterations, tighten it up and help us out.

You’re not all knowing and all seeing in our individual lives, and that’s okay. But you are all seeing in terms of perspective.

Like watching ants on a hill. You can see, and probably sometimes prevent, major catastrophes from occurring. But stopping what we do to ourselves as humans?

That’s not on you.

You can’t possibly change it. You didn’t intend for things to get this out of hand when you initially made us. Like a rogue scientist, you tried something, and it didn’t just bite you, it bit itself and still does.

I guess, in the end, if this is the way the cookie really crumbles, and you can hear us but not really intervene, then this whole, ‘asking you for stuff’ thing seems kind of…unnecessary.

But it was cathartic, I feel lighter.

Maybe you too? I doubt it, but you never know.

Man, I really lost my whole train of thought there.

Oh!

I was going to see if it was possible to get me into this one restaurant that would really impress someone, but after our ‘talk’ here, it feels kind of not that big of a deal.

I’ll just figure it out.

After all, that’s what we humans do down here, we figure things out.

I hope you can do the same up there.

Oh, and Amen.”

Posted Aug 01, 2025
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