In the Begining

If you were God who would you choose to be your parents? Millionaires? Rockstars? Teachers? To be his parents God picked two working-class newly immigrated Italians with thick accents from Newark, New Jersey. God's mom was a seamstress and his father worked in a factory.

I asked him once, “God, if you could pick anyone on Earth to be your mom and dad and anywhere on Earth to live, why did you pick a poor couple from Newark. I mean didn't you want parents who could give you something?"

God smiled and shook his head. He thought for a moment and said, “They seemed like kind people, Mary. I guess they gave me what I needed.”

God grew up a poor child in a rough, factory town because my Grandparents seemed like kind people. Now that was crazy.

God described how inept he was at being human at first. He was overweight. “You can eat as much as you want in heaven, Mary, without gaining a pound. Also, they don’t have Twinkies in Heaven, although, when I get back there you can be sure that’s going to change.”

God didn't do much better as a pre-teen or teenager either. God just didn't really fit in. It was like he wasn't made for this world. He wore the out of style clothing characteristic of people in the poorest class: thick collars, gold chains, puffy hair. God still talked with a resonating and solemnly deep voice, like the one he used when he spoke from the burning bush to Moses or from the thunderous clouds down onto Noah. I'm sure it was really impressive when his voice came from a flaming bush, but from a fat, acne infested kid it just didn't work. People would say, “Who do you think you are talking that way? God?” And he would answer “yes”. And then they would beat him up. At a time when God was desperate to just fit in he stood out like a crown of thorns on a savior’s head.

God made it through adolescence with most of his psyche intact. Later, after finishing high school, God went to college where he fell in love with the woman who would later become my mother.

God rarely talked about those years with my mother. Perhaps he held them safely close to his chest out of the fear of losing them.

To fill in the gaps Jesus, Little Mary and I made up our own story. GOD: THE EARLY YEARS. From our imaginations we fashioned God’s initial dates with our mother. We saw the anxiety etched on his face when they first started taking walks together and he nervously reached out to hold my mother’s hand, wondering if she would accept it. God learned what it was like not to know everything before it happened. Did she feel comfort in sliding her palm against his? Our story concluded with God falling in love with our mother and together them having three perfect children with super powers.

God always said that three was the most perfect number in the universe and that’s why he kept putting it in the heads of the Biblical writers.

I asked God why he acted one way in the Old Testament and another way in the New Testament. He told me that we all learn from experience. “If you act the same way at thirty, Mary, that you did at twenty, than you are probably doing something wrong. I was just starting to learn how to be a deity in the O.T..” That’s how he refers to them: O.T. and N.T.. In order to keep the Universe together in the early days God thought that he had to be a little harsh. He considered this early malevolent nature mistake number four. “But whose perfect,” he was fond of saying “certainly not God.”

Between you and me, I am not so certain that God really understands his own motivations. See, God would have to go through some serious psychoanalyst to come to terms with his true inner emotions. I believe he suffers from something they call blocking. He really has built up a lot of walls. The real reason that God governed differently in the N.T. than he did in the O.T. was quite simple. Jesus. Not my baby brother Jesus, but the original N.T. Jesus, who was technically also my brother. I know, it can get confusing, life is often like that.

God had a son. Not Jack, a being whom he had created from spit and dirt, but an actual son, a child that he conceived with a woman and watched grow within her womb and then from an infant to an adult. And well, after God’s son came into the World, it mellowed him. It gave him a different perspective. God came to be more loving. Having a child helped God to understand true human emotion. He had to endure pain as he watched his son suffer and it changed him.

Sitting in his lap, I asked God what it was like going from being God up in Heaven to being a human on Earth and having to do all the regular things that people do.

“Why don’t you tell me?” he replied.

I looked at him blankly, confused by this answer. I mean, come on, how was I supposed to respond to that?

“Well I can see by the look on your face that you are not ready for that one, Jellybean.” God continued, “Charmin makes being human a whole lot easier. Man, when I think of all those Israelites in the desert. Forty years.” Then he laughed and laughed before adding, “In all seriousness people never understood what it is that makes the Universe so divine: that the real beauty in the world came with the everyday exchange between each person and the people in his or her own individual world.”

So let me tell you what God led me to believe. God enjoyed changing babies’ diapers, taking long walks at dusk, talking with his Grandparents about the tomato garden and working on the car because it was part of life. The car, by the way always ran worse when he finished, leaving mom to take it to the shop. Despite what you may have been told, God cannot fix everything. He thinks a carburetor is a type of vegetable.

God enjoyed all the things that made living a part of life. At least until Jesus became sick. After Jesus got sick everything seemed to change. The world just stopped revolving. God didn’t enjoy anything very much. I think it might have been because he forgot the lesson of one of his favorite stories: the need for a belief in something greater. But then who could blame him at the time, he was not the only one who changed. Mom went into the deep sleep. And Little Mary and me, well...we just became lost and confused. That was until we realized that our brother Jesus would always be with us, within us. And if you will pardon me for the round-about way that I arrived here, that is what I want to really talk about. But before I get to the end, I have to tell you how it all started. As God would tell me as I sat nestled in his lap, “Mary, it started with spilk.”

And spilk stands for spilt milk.