Miss Incomplete

Are you there, God? It’s me, Miss Incomplete, sitting alone in the shade of a weeping willow in your lush garden of crimson and marigolds, violets, hot pinks and bottlebrush. Even though we’ve never met I want you to know how much I’ve missed you. As I sit here I can only conjure a vague image of you wearing a long robe and sporting a shaggy beard while preaching the gospels of Timothy, John, Isaiah, Thomas and a few of your other friends from the New Testament. Man, what a story! I seriously could not put that one down! Amazon bestseller!

It is indeed a testament to my undying faith in you that we find ourselves conversing right now; truth betold I’ve often felt we disagree about a couple of fundamental things and therefore hold different beliefs about this thing we call life. I must say though, I really like all the great design work you did on the gardens, the trees, the vast animal kingdom—way to mix it up, dude! No one can ever say you’re boring on that front. However it wasn’t until my senior year biology that I fully came to appreciate your handiwork through the incredible architecture of thought you put into designing the human body. I mean, wow! My Anatomy and Physiology class opened my eyes to the intricate nature of the human body and its functional structure; how fascinating to see the rib cage literally act like a cage protecting the organs, and how the arteries have valves that act like like little old saloon doors that swing one way to guide and push the blood, circulating it to all the organs right on time. Pumpin’ gas, man! Your sense of timing is impeccable to say the least with the whole musical heartbeat thing too, and I needn’t go into all the gory detail about childbirth bun-in-the-oven stuff, because on that score we all know this was truly your best work. Piece de Resistance!

And now I have to tell you that in recent days I have come to the conclusion that you, God, truly do love us, because why would anyone slave to create such masterpieces of magnificent proportions, surround us in hedonistic beauty if they didn’t care? You certainly wouldn’t have sacrificed your only son, either! Jesus! Most people I know would never give up as much as you have! Yet in spite of all our sin and rebellion you’ve continued to forgive and forgive—and I just want to say: who does that? Tracy stole my boyfriend, and I’ll never, ever forgive her! But for all your loyalty, I gotta level with you: I just don’t see it being given in return these days. I mean, your Instagram account numbers are dwindling and no one even speaks or prays to you anymore, leave alone acknowledges you even exist—and on your Facebook page they all just say you put up fake posts, fake pictures and the whole damn account is fake! You say there’s gonna be a big party and a second coming, but I gotta tell you, ain’t nobody showing up to that because you’ve been promising it for so long nobody believes it anymore. Yet our disbelieving doesn’t seem to phase you in the slightest; you just continue on because your faith is just so strong it’s like crypto currency, you just keep getting stronger!

I gotta tell you something else now too; things here are not so good at the moment as we humans seem to be growing weaker and weaker without you around. In fact, things have turned into a grand ol’ mess. Of course people are still fighting over you (like they always have) with their different beliefs on what you say or what you look like, but it’s getting worse. The churches are turning their backs on people and there’s even talk of banning Christmas altogether—can you imagine that! It seems there is no more a path to salvation or guiding light — only the groovy, late-night dance club where Satan works appears to be open these days (and, if you haven’t seen it, his Insta account is bulging and he’s taken over half of Facebook already). 

To be completely honest, for a long time I started following Satan too. I mean, he was naughty, he was fun, and he just kept telling me to do whatever I wanted and the rest be damned. He was fire and ice, he was cool and edgy, and he let me have my way on pretty much everything I wanted and never judged me for doing wrong, not one damn time. I crashed the car and lied about it and then I stole a handbag, and the whole time he just kept laughing and egging me on to do more bad stuff, so I did. I got drunk, slept with boys, lied all the time and spent other people’s money. I thought I was having fun, but now I see it was all because deep down I was angry. And do you know what I was angry about? You. Yes, you. Why did you let my dog die like that? And why did you let Dad get hit by that drunk truck driver and make me repeat a year of school and lose all my friends? And then the bad things, the very bad things…why, they had the signature of Satan all over it. Why oh why did you let my mum die of terminal cancer? That was what clinched it, you know. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, what finally sealed the deal on our breakup. I thought: if you could allow that to happen then you had to be a total liar, a fraudster, a shiester, a sick and perverted beast that tricked people into following you and befriending you, until you turned on them in the cruelest of ways. And I searched my heart (and yours) for the longest time afterwards to try and find the reason for it all; why you would allow that in your heavenly garden of peace, amidst all the beauty you created? Why make it ugly with death and pain and suffering and more heartache? What’s the point of it all? It just didn’t make any sense. So I picked up your tome and read your ecclesiastical words, tried to make it fit with the seasons and come to understand that there was a time for everything and everything had a right time. But all I could see was that it was wrong. Wrong. So that’s why I said that—while I think you can be cool and everything—we fundamentally disagree on a few things here, because by my estimation there is no room for ugly in a truly Godlike world. And so I distanced myself from you. Pulled away. Deleted your account. Bye.

Now I realise I’ve missed you. Not just the prayer stuff, but having real faith. You always forgave me, even when I didn’t forgive you. And when I left you, you never left me—because you’re still here right now after all this time, right where I left you. You’re like the sun, always there, never changing; it’s just that clouds move in front of you, sometimes. It’s kinda hard to describe you, really; it’s difficult to paint you in any condensed way because you’re just there and you always have been. You’re everywhere. Now that I think of it, I can’t even put you into a sentence except to say that you’re infinite, you’re everywhere; and it’s because of this that I don’t think many fully wrap their heads around your greatness—well, not on this side of eternity, anyway. All the Bible verses tell us that you hate sin and that you’re compassionate and eternal—the list goes on. But complex biblical descriptions do nothing to bring us closer to really knowing you—know what I mean? Think about Paul’s words in Romans 11:33-34 in the Bible: “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” Even Paul struggled to find the words, though he did subsequently offer up a proposed sentence on your being the real deal. But that’s just it—your enigmatic style literally does our heads in, and for all their lofty thinking even the theologians can’t capture the full meaning of you!

So I’ve been thinking you should start a blog, or something. You need to be more transparent than you’ve been, and you’ve got to start marketing yourself better! Maybe a new outfit, or come up with some eye-catching slogan or something that will capture the people’s attention. You know, something more modern like a hip new mission, a way to connect—because nobody thinks you’re cool anymore, which is why so many walk around like zombies with their heads stuck in their devices worshipping junk as though that’s any kind of answer to the universe or life on Earth. Jesus Christ, Man! I hate to say it, but I kinda think you’ve been asleep at the wheel! How on earth did you let us get to this? We’re flying solo without you and let me tell you, it’s getting ugly. You want us to be part of your family, well then you gotta be part of this family, too. Put yourself out into the world again, make it possible for us to become part of your family forever. We have to know the heart of God anew—that is, we need your presence to be felt again as again you instill the values and sentiments you want us human beings to exhibit. Among them: compassion for the poor. Forgiveness. Mercy. All the things with feel-good vibes that you wish you could bottle. Did you know that your mercy towards us is directly linked to our mercy towards others? Just think: if we could just make a return to decency, if we could see the presence of positive values again, enacting things in real time such as peace, forgiveness and treating people well—just imagine where we could be a year from now! 

I know, I know, everybody just wants ‘World Peace.’ Well then why, if we’ve all wanted it for so long— why don’t we have it by now? Huh? OK I get it, it’s not that easy and I realise it’s pretty dependent upon the oft-times complex theologies that underpin divergent worldviews. Simply put: it’s complicated. But if we could all just get reconnected with our feelings again —like I have just done with you—then I think the rest of it would start to unravel, and we would be able to live less in the world of elusive language about you and really just come to know you, right? I’ll tell you something; I recently had a fellow student, an atheist, challenge me on just this point. She said, “How can you believe in something so elusive and that does not exist—except in the spiritual world—which as we all know, isn’t real?” And I said, “Well, that’s true; spiritual experiences, as well as language to describe the world in which we live, are difficult to find words for. But my belief in God and my ability to describe God are not necessarily correlated—sometimes I have a difficult time describing what makes something spiritual, even in the midst of an intensely spiritual moment. But doesn’t the fact that I can even have a spiritual moment like this make it real?” I then asked her if she’d ever heard of the “argumentum antselmi” that had once been delivered by the great saint and theologian of the 11thC, Antselm. In it, he described the concept of God as being ‘that which nothing higher can be thought’—and I argued this as well, believing that anything that could be imagined —anything that could be percieved as being greater than anthing else—must also have to exist, simply by virtue of that, by virtue of its greatness making it so.

She didn’t quite like my putting the question back on her, and, as often happens these days at the mere mention of Your name, she made a funny face with that screwed up look that could only say Bollocks! Rubbish! to which I thought turned her a good shade of unbecoming in the New Resistance. Christophobia reigns! 

“Oh God, you sound like you’re preaching! Who do you think you are, some God or something? Eww, get away from me you psycho!” she screamed, giving me the finger and storming off. So you see, you’ve got some real PR work to do if you want to lift your image around here, ’coz even the mention of your name sets people off. Hey, maybe start a chatroom, get them involved in seeking their own "ultimate oneness" —that’s a concept I read represented the many gods and godesses back in the day, feeding into their desires of the self. Everyone thinks they’re gods and goddesses in the world today, surely this will be an easy sell to the street narcs. It’s Selfie Kingdom! I suggest feeding people’s self importance, make it all about them—and for God’s sake, help us end theological debate over a few beers, will ya? Let’s hear You tell us how to truly unite and get along — because I’m sure I speak for many when I say we’re utterly sick and tired of what we’ve turned into…because whatever we did clearly isn’t working. Our fury has raged for eons, and to this I say: Enough. It is time for everyone to stand in solidarity once and for all —not because they are believers, not because they follow a book or believe the same things or look alike or sound alike or have a certain skin colour. It’s time we worship our oneness, our unity and continuity through our shared experience of humanity and accept the irreconcilable nature of our differences with only love-full hearts. It’s time to find peace as peaceful beings or whatever peace looks like in a world gone wrong. A half peace sign, perhaps?

I forgot to tell you earlier, but right now I’m suspended from school. That’s why I’ve been sitting out here under this weeping willow feeling all glum, talking to you. What did I do? Well, I weighed in on the current narrow and somewhat indoctrinated views of the College with my own explanation to get to some of the more definitional issues—and I got cancelled, shut down for it, because my thoughts didn’t align with their polytheistic, materialist views. I told them that what we really need is not to be cancelling each other out but listening for new revelations to humanity, to the nature of God, finding the path to salvation, rediscovering prayer. Listening. But we’ve stopped listening. But if we don’t listen, how do we learn? How else does one come to feeling more…complete? Why continue to suffer in our own ignorance? I am slowly beginning to understand the answer to this one: first of all, we have to discover things on our own. That, plus, pain and suffering is there to remind us that the joy we once felt was real; because why should life be a bed of roses? How can we know pain without joy, joy without pain? It is impossible. We need humility to rediscover the depths of our souls, the core of our faith and make a return to the deontological theory of things—doing things not because of what is gained, but because if we don’t we’ll be condemned to a meaningless existence as shapeless and empty as the stratosphere that hangs over us like a neverending dust storm…never triumphing over evil, never scaling the heights of good, everything just…blah. Yet it’s being perpetually suspended between the two that is our ultimate human nightmare. Blake once said, “Earth is heaven and hell at once.” And this is where we arrive: stuck inside tales of a fourth grade nothing, turning to blubber in the land of superfudge and witnessing Pain and The Great One birth while splitting at the seams in the great divide. It’s a mess of biblical proportions. God it sucks.

I get it now; You are everywhere. I know You at altitude and I see what was holding me back, dying in the heart of longing. You coaxed me out in a clean whisper and I didn’t freefall from a mountaintop, I just dared to be myself, the self you and I always wanted me to be beyond the hatred in my legs. Nothing comes of nothing, and to sit in a pretty dress, flowerless, and scream at the self—this is wasted time, it’s the unfiltered sin of Man that results in a certain paralysis of the untidy mind polluted by all the things we need not know and that blocks us from what we really need. Dear God, there is nothing neat to know, only seduction in betrayal to the question, “Will I ever be Enough?” What I really want to say is, “Listen nobody, we get birth and go somewhere from there to here—to find You, follow the rain and the rose past bewilderment to where the sea swells in your heart, and be prepared for the nude canvas that awaits, just waiting to be re-written.” I am ready. Look at me now, surfing again in sustained epiphanies! You look better with me now; arms outstretched I pray to fly like a child with You into the quilt of fog past my extinction point, piercing the sweet smell of fresh. This way I am the child of Consciousness, and I walk upwards like I own it with you. You are there, God. I know it’s true. It’s me, Miss Complete.