The Mind Blowing Dessumption

God loved to tell stories. My father would sit in this large, billowy chair and call us to his side. I competed with my brother Jesus, and sister, Little Mary, to sit on the prized lap from where all of my father’s best stories arose. Whoever did not make it onto the lap first had to sit on the floor. The floor was not a bad spot either; it was just different. From his lap, the resonance in my father’s voice infected the stories and brought them to life. I became a part of the story when I sat near him. On the floor I felt more like an observer, like watching a concert on television.

God had hundreds of stories. He told us of the great battles that occurred up in the Heavens between the good Angels who followed him and the misguided ones led by Lucifer. God never called Lucifer and his followers bad or evil; they were merely misguided. He said an omnipotent vantage point allowed one not to be so judgmental. (I did not know what omnipotent meant but it sounded like something that if you caught, your Mom would have to give you medicine to get rid of it.) God recounted tales about Fairies and Brownies searching for treasure in the lands that existed before the Earth was as it is now. He told us about early man, who he called Jack, his wife, Jill, and all their offspring living in large tribes. Some lived in trees, others deep within caves. One day he told us of a matriarchal, orphan clan that inhabited a giant shoe.

“Why did they live in a shoe?” Jesus asked.

"Was it because the Mom did not have a job and didn't know quite what to do?" I offered, my voice a little too eager.

“No. No. No," God replied, waving his hand and hushing our questions. "It was because a boot would have been too hard to climb into.”

My favorite of all the stories was the one where he told about how he became man. I especially liked it because he would end the tale by saying that he would not change a single thing because in this world he had found the love of his life, his Jellybean, his Jesus and a dream in a Little Mary.

God taught me that there was nothing more that anyone needed other than love, nourishment, something greater to believe in and a dream.

I also learned from him that the telling of the story was as important as the story itself. There were pauses, gestures and grunts that went into good storytelling. It was hard work but God was a pro; it came with his job.

The storytelling usually began with a call.

While we were playing God crept into the room. He sat himself down and said, “Why don’t you come over here and I’ll tell you how I descended from the Heavens and became human. I call it the Immaculate… Wait, that name’s already been taken by the Catholics.” God shook his head and paused to study the ceiling.

I stopped playing with my dolls and raced over to his side just barely beating out Jesus and Little Mary. I climbed up on his lap while they took their places on the floor. As was our routine we followed his gaze upward, but all I saw was a ceiling in need of paint. God saw more.

God tapped at his chin with one deliberate finger as he searched for the right title. “I call it the Mind Blowing Dessumption.”

He failed.

“The Mind Blowing Dessumption,” I laughed.

“Sounds good, doesn’t it?” God feigned a look of pride. “Sounds important,” he added.

“Sounds like something you do in the bathroom.” I giggled while the corners of his mouth turned down in mock disappointment. It was a performance he had given a hundred times before.

The story begins some time around 1964 when God became tired of taking care of the planets, stars and mankind in particular. “It just wasn’t fun like it used to be,” God grunted. He then rolled his eyes longing for the good old days when the Universe was a soupy pool of elements and he was still trying to decide in which of his images he should create man and woman. God rocked back and forth in his recliner as if he was imagining how things could have been. But those days were long gone and he believed his first mistake was choosing the wrong image, too divisive.

“Ya see, kids, in the early twentieth century the stars and planets still appreciated the gifts that I had given to them but people choose a different path. People started thinking that the origins of life on Earth had become obvious and simplistic. They learned a few things about atoms and molecules and decided that they understood it all. What people could not see was that the creation was much more complicated than the mere physical. Many people stopped seeing a need for something spiritual and gradually stopped believing in me. In fact, entire nations sprung up and denied my existence as a matter of public law. One world leader even referred to religion as a drug. That all just showed you how ignorant human beings had become. Religion was meant to open a person’s mind not dull it like a drug. While sitting up in Heaven I did not desire mindless followers from my creations. Where would the fun be in that? I longed for enlightened, free spirits.”

“Rather than focus on the bliss of their mystical unity, people focused on their bodily separation. When man lived in caves, the entire tribe acted as one for the benefit of the whole. Man lost that when he learned how to build subdivisions. He started to feel isolated, and the vastness of the universe seemed oppressive. Actually, when one considered the physical hardships endured by organisms throughout time, life was considerably easy for most people. Even compared to their contemporaries, humans have it easy. They should try being amoebas in a septic tank. Now that’s tough,” my father said.

“Or playing dodge ball in a long, green dress,” I said.

“Yes, Jellybean, or playing dodge ball in a dress. Life’s adversity was no reason to give up on God. People had dominated the other species on Earth and really became their own natural enemy. Humans were the only species who could claim that their primary threat emanated from themselves. Perhaps that was part of their problem?”

“I think people just had way too much free time to ponder their existence. I hadn’t planned for that when I created them. And since I really had not given them a purpose. I thought living would be purpose enough. Humans encountered problems coming to grips with this reality. People wanted more, but I had already given them everything.” God let out a sigh. “The whole opposable thumb thing really was a big mistake. Why couldn’t humans be more like slugs? Now, that is an organism that really has itself together.”

“As long as it avoids salt,” Jesus said.

Jesus and Little Mary had started to play with some blocks on the floor. Jesus built a small pyramid and then knocked it over. I thought that he had stopped listening, but he still was. Jesus was tricky like that.

God continued with his story. “I suppose that it was sometime around 1923 when people just stopped liking the idea of Heaven. I don’t think it seemed exciting enough for them. They had already done away with Hell and my main adversary, the Devil, was reduced to a cute little man dressed in a red suit who tempted people to eat cans of processed meat. So what was I, the supreme creator of the Universe, really doing anyway? I mean what role in people’s lives was I playing?”

God paused for dramatic purposes and then hung his head, “I had become obsolete.”

And nothing hurts a deity more than the feeling of being unwanted.

“Free will: mistake number three. If you are going to give an organism free will, you must give it the ability to reason,” God said.

“But we can reason,” I countered.

“Most people can think, very few can reason. A person might think that they do not need God but reason would lead them to understand the importance of a belief in a higher power. People are unable to understand themselves in relation to the universe on a spiritual basis. Man is so caught up in the physical that he ignores an entire dimension of his being, and believe me he has only scratched the surface on the physical stuff.” God rolled his head and shook his eyes. I really didn’t know what he was talking about but I laughed at his dramatics.

He pretended to be hurt by my laughter. “I thought about destroying everything and starting over, you know. In my youth that’s exactly what I would have done. Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea,” he threatened as if the thought was still being mulled over. As if in the wink of a lash he could abolish the entire world.

I wondered if God could destroy the planet. I sat on his lap feeling protected, draped within his big arms. He rubbed my back and smiled. I smiled back. Not as long as I was in the world, he couldn’t.

“The dinosaurs laughed at me and look where they are now,” God raised his eyebrows. “Of course I expected arrogance from them. I didn’t make their brains very big. Big body, small brain: major design flaw. Small brains and arrogance walk together hand in hand like lovers on a sandy beach at dawn.”

“I destroyed the world a third time with Noah. Between the dinosaurs and Noah’s flood there was the Protozoa Incident, as I like to call it. I tell you, Jellybean, there is nothing more irritating than a know-it-all, single-celled organism. When a protozoa thinks it no longer needs to believe, that it can exist without the help of God, now that’s a good time to start over. The thing does not even have a cell wall for Christ’s sake.”

“What?” my brother looked up from the blocks that he was busy arranging into a small hydro-electric plant.

“Oh nothing,” God said, “just a figure of speech.”

“With Noah, I brought forth one ton of water, had to borrow some from Mars and that planet hasn’t been the same since. Think of all those people scrambling up onto the tops of trees and hills as the water slowly climbed up their ankles, knees, stomachs and necks. Most of them believed in God on that day. But man seldom learns. On a smaller scale, I destroyed Sodom, turned a woman into salt just for being curious and taking a peak.”

“Something had to change, Jellybean. I needed to put the days of destruction behind me. I didn’t like having all that anger in me. Anger makes the soul heavy. So after about two thousand years of deliberation I decided to give it all up and become human. See for myself what all the complaining was about. I put Great Grandmother Mary in charge and came down for a jig. Truth was she ruled the roost anyway.”

“Ruled the roost?” I asked.

“Forget about it, you’ll understand when you’re married.” God looked over at Mom and let out a huff. “And I’m glad I did come down to earth. I have to tell you, Jellybean, with you here with me I think at times this place rivals heaven.” God smiled and patted my leg.

I let my body fall back against his chest and stared up at the ceiling. I traced the shapes of cats, people’s faces and airplanes in the little stones pasted to its surface. My legs dangled well above the floor. My head lay against God’s chest and I could feel the gentle shifting of his body as he took slow, deep breaths. I tried to match them with my own. I imagined that we were breathing together with one giant lung as he went on with the tale.