Let's Talk God

I woke up this morning dreaming about making a simulated volcano out of clay and water and steam. There was some sort of remote control trigger that would set it off. My friend Lisa made one, but it was small. So then I put time into making a bigger one, about 8 feet tall, and it was outdoors. I stocked the pit with whatever chemical we were using, which was like ice and electricity.

I pulled the trigger and there was a lot of steam, a very satisfying amount. Then the pit began to boil and throw foam over the side of the volcano. The bubbles oozed down the side toward us, and I told her that this is just what the lava must have looked like millions of yeas ago. Then I realized it was time to wake up.

I had been tossing and turning in bed for a while now.

Before I met up with Lisa to make volcanos, I was at a funeral for my great grandma. It was horrific. My brother was late for a meeting he was supposed to have in the jungle, and I was supposed to drive him there and come back, but by the time he was ready to leave it was too lave for either of us to leave the funeral. It figures with him anyway.

So we walked into the church. It was a massive building, like a concert hall, except there was no rear wall. The back just opened up to a forest, and behind the sanctuary were massive pipes for an organ and the highest pulpits I’ve ever seen.

We formed a line to walk up the the casket and pay our last respects. I think I remember asking someone if I had to go up to the casket because I didn’t want to. It’s weird, because I think I actually did this at my great grandma’s wake when i was nine.

I finally made it to the stage. The casket was fully open and in the shape of a coffin. My great grandma was in a light purple Sunday dress, but we’ll get to that. The inside of the coffin was about the size of a queen bed, lined with crushed red velvet and buttons. My great grandma was withered and small in the giant casket.

I gripped the wood and looked in. I began to think about how I knew her. Then, she started moving. Eyes closed and mouth closed. Lurching and rolling about in the enormous space. I stepped back as her shoulders rocked.

The priest hurriedly closed the casket and said that this sometimes happens when people have been dead for awhile. “They aren’t coming back to life,” he said, “it’s just a combination of gasses and muscles contracting that move the body around. Like when you pull a leg off of a daddy long-legs.” I thought of all the dead people I know rolling around in their coffins years after we buried them. “I want to be cremated,” I said.

We all hurried out of there. My brother caught a ride to the jungle. I had to clear my head by making a volcano. Let me tell you, that volcano was a wild success.

My grandmother sleeps in Dunkirk. In a house seasoned with Seneca cigarettes she cooks Turkey.

I help my uncle tear at the bones of some other animal on some other holiday. And in a bedroom beyond the attic, I smell the smoke.

I help my grandmother wrap gifts for my child cousins. I cut the paper in a smooth stroke. She asks me for the tape.

If only Santa had been kinder this year, maybe my small cousins wouldn’t be so angry. Maybe they wouldn’t cry so hard.

My grandmother wraps us up. Her fingers moved quickly over the boxes. Clothes, and a toy, for one. Shoes and a water pistol wrapped for another. She sighs at the close of another holiday; another day to care. Someday these children will know her love as I do, wrapping presents in the spare room.

Jack called Marline on her work extension. “Meet me for lunch,” he said. “You couldn’t have texted that Jack?” she sighed. They met at the buffet on the corner of Pleasant Run and Central. The restaurant that has exchanged hands and names a dozen times over the last year. Jack pushed the food around his plate, pinching pieces here and there with his chop sticks. “I can never tell what kind of meat they use,” Jack announced. Marline cut her chicken with a knife. “It’s just an ambiguous sort of meat, and this sauce? What are we eating?” Jack went on. Marline finished. “Do you need a ride back to work?” he asked. “No,” she said, “I drove because of the cold.”

If you’re following this because its a religious blog, thank you. Stick around, because that stuff will continue to come. I the meantime, I need a place to smear some writing. There are currently 11 people who follow this blog. If you feel the need to leave, I understand. There’s about to be a lot of short fiction and shit writing headed to your dashboard.

Currently, I’m at a bar in Detroit, MI. It’s 1:25am. Five minutes before last call. The guitarist, (who’s a piece of the artwork of what is this revival of an old speakeasy), is playing a hymn “The Heart of Worship.” What’s strange for me is that I know all the words. I know the harmonies. Is this sacrilege or sanctity? Preaching to sinners? Or using the Lord’s name in vain? The heart of worship, washed down in the night with a last-call drinking song. I finish my whiskey in a leather booth confessional. Heavenly Father, I am thirsty.

I was piss drunk in Buffalo a few nights ago. It was in this state I was confronted by God, or the Devil, or another drunk man looking for a cigarette. It all depends on your perspective and interpretation, maybe a little bit of experience too. After all, what religious experience doesn’t.

I don’t remember seeing him of course. With spirits and drunkenness, people kind of just appear. And when you mix the two—well, maybe that’s a story for another time.

The man was Latino with dark, knowing eyes, and in the incandescence of street lamps he looked real. His shirt was maroon and topped with a cross that looked like it was carved out of a bone.

I remember seeing the cross and seeing it was outside of his shirt. I told him I liked his cross. He smiled and told me his son made it for him. I congratulated him on being a father and he asked me if I was a Christian.

“Yeah, I consider myself a Christian.”

“Oh yeah? What does that mean? Have you been saved, my friend?”

“Yes, I have.”

“What was it like for you ‘I consider myself a Christian’?”

And so I told him, because I did have a conversion experience. I told him about how it felt like my body was on fire, how I couldn’t breathe. I told him that the Holy Spirit overtook me in a moment.

“Do you hear this!?” he said to my friends having their own conversation by now. “He says the Holy Spirit— overtook— him.”

I regretted using such lofty words.

“No, no, this is good.” He continued. “Tell me what it is you believe that you ‘consider’ yourself a Christian.”

At this point I had affirmed in my heart of hearts that I am not articulate while drunk. Nevertheless, I spoke on, following my words out of my mouth. “I guess I consider myself a Christian Agnostic.”

“Whoa! Now this is something new! Please, enlighten me! I thought Jesus had given his life for our sins, but this is something that need to hear!” he was mocking at this point— or I suppose had been mocking.

“No, no, no. See— This,” I grabbed his cross.

“Don’t grab his cross, man,” my friend suggested.

“This right here,” I went on, cross-less, “this happened for us, for all of us.”

“What happened?” he challenged my words.

“Jesus Christ died and bled on the cross for the sins of humanity.”

“Okay.” He nodded and stroked his chin.

“But I know that I can’t know for sure, and I’m okay with not knowing.”

It was here when I started to catch up with my mouth. The words I helped color on a banner for my old church’s teen room came back to me, KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE, PREACH WHAT YOU KNOW, LIVE WHAT YOU PREACH. I thought about how I didn’t know what I believed and how I was okay with not knowing. I thought about the darkness of 4:30am and how there was so much doubt all of a sudden.

He asked me what God would think of that on judgement day. If I weren’t depressed by the conversation I might have told him that I think God would be just fine with it. But I was seriously thinking about this apocalyptic judgement and this angry God he was bringing me on the empty street.

“Do you know what it feels like to want to kill yourself, but not be able to?” the anguish was in his face just thinking of it. He gestured stabbing himself and said, “the Bible says, people will look for death— they will not find it.”

“Right, but I feel like in the end, mercy will win. If God’s love is infinite it will reach us beyond the grave even.”

“Oh no my friend… When judgement comes. Mercy. Will be long… Long gone.”

“Why?” I think I really asked him this.

“My friend, you are confused. I will pray for you and your friends.”

With that, he vanished into the dark, Buffalo night. I walked behind my friends thinking about a time without mercy. The thought unsettled me. I dug my hands in my pockets and found my way up the steps to a strange doorway. I imagined God was inside, sitting on a throne waiting to have it out with me. I’d be the first to admit I got it wrong.