Saturday, May 19, 2012

I Talk to God (and God Talks to Me)


Day 458 of my spiritual and physical ascent of the mountain.

Today was a wonderful day! Today was a fruitful day! I awoke before the sun in the small alcove I have discovered on the sheer north face of the mountain.

I say I “awoke”  but strictly speaking, this is not entirely accurate. I find that in these last days of my ascent, I rarely enter into anything that could be called “sleep”. As I have sublimated my will to the divine will, my state of contemplative prayer has deepened accordingly.

So I don’t really sleep now so much as I enter a deeper level of contemplation.

I eat only whatever grass or other foliage I can find, supplemented by small insects or even an occasional rodent or two. But this far up the mountain, flora and fauna grow scarce.

I drink rainwater; I eat snow. I chant for two hours every day. You should hear my voice: it fills the whole valley, coming back at me multiplied a thousand fold!

I no longer drum for an hour a day. This is because my djembe drum is no more. It was 17 days ago and I lost my footing when I momentarily fell asleep during a climb. Or I should say, rather, that a moment of especially deep contemplative prayer made me less than attentive to the precise location of my appendages. My drum fell down the mountainside. I watched it falling, splintering into its constitutive parts – parts, which, ironically, had all been found on this very mountain.

I have also stopped the twice-daily self-flagellations. I did not want to, but, alas, oxygen deprivation, extreme dehydration, and blood loss are not a good mix.

Words fail me.

Even analogy fails me.

I cannot describe the change in myself.

I feel that my soul, my very esse, is like… a mirror? A light? Bit by bit, I have cleansed it of each spot and of every imperfection. This process feeds upon itself: As I purify myself, the gratuitous grace granted to me by the divine increases exponentially, enabling me to further be cleansed of the darkness and the sins that my time on earth has left upon my soul.

The mountain peak is hidden behind clouds twenty-four hours a day now. But still, the mountain peak beckons to me. I feel drawn to it as though I am nearing home at last.

When I reach that cloud bank – tomorrow or the next day or on the day after that – and when I climb through the clouds to the peak that lies beyond, I know the veil will be lifted. I will gaze upon pure Being, upon the “I Am Who Am,” upon He who is in, with, and under everything that ever was.

Day 463 of my spiritual and physical ascent of the mountain.

The break in my leg yesterday was worse than I first thought.

The bone is coming all of the way through the skin. I wrapped it with my shirt. This means I do not have a shirt to wear anymore. The temperatures at night get below freezing for many hours. In addition, I have no wood for a splint.

My progress has slowed. I keep going up.

After all, it seems unlikely I will ever be able to get back down the mountain.

Day 466 of my spiritual and physical ascent of the mountain.

Today, after more than a year on this mountain, I reached the cloud bank that hid the peak. My lifetime of rigorous spiritual preparation and my months of mountain living had all been leading to this.

I entered unto a darkness that was a lightness that was THE lightness.

But I am not a poet. I cannot communicate the ineffable.

I could not feel my body, but I could sense a great wind, a wind which picked up speed until it sounded as though the world itself were being torn asunder.

And from the darkness that was a lightness that was THE lightness, at last I made out what sounded like words.

And I heard what sounded like this: “I-i-i-i HA-a-a-a-aTES FAGGO-o-o-oTS!”

Now, there is something you should understand before I proceed. Asceticism, it does things to a mind. You start to see things, to hear things that are not really there. After months of this, you almost even get used to it. The world is a giant Rorschach ink blot. Your mind can create words out of things that are not words, but just noise. It tries to make sense of things that defy sense.

Things like, you know, a voice that says, “I hates faggots.”

So I rose to my knees and stared into the cloud. I said, “Lord, I thank thee, for by your grace I have been granted the strength to come so far, to gaze into your divine visage and-”

“I HaTES FAGGoTS!”

The words were remarkably clear this time, leaving little room for misunderstanding or ambiguity.

I paused. I said, “Lord, I do not comprehend. My human ears are simply not equipped to make sense of the divine voice, for-”

“DID I STUTTER? I hate fags!”

“I MADE ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE!”

I winced, for I had always really hated that joke.

I took a deep breath. I refocused. This was the moment I had been waiting for; I could not bear to mess it up simply because of my weakened physical state.

I said, “My God, creator of Heaven and Earth, you who sent your only Son to die for my sins so that I might be redeemed, I have traveled far so that I might ask you this: Is my soul – my subjectiveness – a distinct something, separate and distinct from the eternal, divine essence, or is like… like… like a candle flame, a flame that will be reconnected with the divine fire at the end of my earthly life?”

Then came unto my ears a noise that sort of sounded like, well, to be honest, it sort of sounded like a belch.

“My butt is ineffable, so you can’t see it, but if you could, you’d see this big ‘exit only’ tattoo I got a while back.”

“‘exit only’! get it? hahaha!”

A long pause, and then,“HEY, Yer not a faggot, are you?”

I looked around. I tried to make some sense of the situation. What was happening? Why could my brain not process it?

I said, “Well, Lord, as you in your omniscience are undoubtedly aware, the term ‘faggot’ is typically an epithet directed at effeminate and/or homosexual MEN, and so, as a woman, I-”

“shoot fire in a bucket! You’re a woman? Didn’t I give you any tits?”

I looked around in the haze. There had to be something here to help me get my bearings.

“so you’re a bull dyke, huh? You Got something against dick?”

Ignoring the pain in my leg, I stood.

I turned around. I started walking back through the cloudbank.

“HEY, DEGENERES! WHERE YA GOING? AIN’T I BEING P.C. ENOUGH for you QUEERS?”

Day 1 of my spiritual and physical descent of the mountain.

I’ve heard some good things about the next mountain over from this one.

The Wheel of Dharma is said to be rotating behind the clouds at its peak.

I must prepare myself physically and spiritually for the journey ahead…


60 comments:

  1. jervaise brooke hamsterMay 19, 2012 at 2:58 PM

    You eat the occasional rodent ! ?, not hamsters surely ?.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't act like you don't.

      We've got these large rodents called "nutria" down here. They're like beavers but with rat tails.

      You take one look at them, anybody's mouth starts watering.

      Delete
    2. My uncle and I used to trap nutria and make moccasins out of them.

      Delete
    3. How were the moccasins?

      I heard they taste like chicken (see below)...

      Delete
  2. Katy, you`re a very silly and pretentious young girl, thats all i have to say.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I generally try to keep the pretension in my blog posts to a bare minimum.

      In this one, due to the low brow second half, I had to hoist the brow UP in the first half.

      Delete
  3. otis rampaging heterosexualityMay 19, 2012 at 3:02 PM

    Katy, God hates pansy queers (and rightly so) but he loves gorgeous young dykes, i think he`d approve of you little darlin` ! ! !.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. According to my research - described above! - God is not very fond of lesbians, either. I didn't ask him about the details, and I'm not trekking back up that mountain for a follow-up clarification.

      Delete
  4. wow God sounds a lot like my uncle bill...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Does your Uncle Bill hang out on mountain tops a lot?

      If he does, I might have made a terrible mistake recently!

      I might owe God yet another apology...

      Delete
  5. Replies
    1. Haha... Well then, I can see right now that I'm going to have to write a blog challenging atheists.

      Preaching to the choir is no fun.

      Delete
  6. Are the letters "P" and "C" used together by anyone who isn't racist or homophobic? Who knew that God would be as enlightened as anyone who wears a shirt sans-sleeves. How disappointing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your comment made me think of some police officers on a "COPS"-type show trying to bring God in for questioning for various and assorted historical smitings over the years, only to have God - wearing a wife-beater shirt - start running down the street and hide under a kiddie pool in someone's back yard.

      Delete
  7. I prefer my own Big G versus this God. This God sounds a bit too redneck for my tastes.

    Thankfully there's so many Gods to choose from, it's like...if there was a huge Wallsmart of God, you could just find the one that just fits, y'know, YOU. That'd be awesome.

    That'd be hella awesome.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've been, you know, struggling lately with my notion of... God.

      And very time I think I might be making some headway, I seem to be slapped down by alleged believers who are all too ready to tell me that no, God is NOT as big as I imagine, and that I am... unacceptable. That I am damned.

      AFTER I wrote this, I realized that it really sort of described my current mindset.

      Delete
  8. Actually, this is why I left the Catholic church. I was told God hated the homosexual community. That wasn't the message I was receiving in my meditations, so I left, but kept my need for pain.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha... There are places to get guilt?

      It feels to me like we're reaching a point of no return on this issue, and the churches are really doubling down on working against same sex marriage.

      Change is happening!

      Delete
  9. God hates fags? He hates all who dont worship Jesus, he hates all idol worshipers, he hates all women who are/were raped but not necessarily the rapists, and god hates all dads who arent pimps who would deny the raped daughter a home but would hate those who wont give asylum to cheaters and sinners. God wants blacks to go to black church, white to white, yellow to yellow. Yep, god is divine. And there is religion I born to and that determines and bounds me based on to whom I am born to ie caste and which bases everything on untouchability and stuff. And the other religion which treats shit better than woman.

    I am not a hardcore atheist and I dont blame the religion but the dickheads who monopolized and made the waters dirty in the name of "holy","sacriledge". And give me one religion which doesnt have any one of above crazy dickhead dogma.

    http://meandmythinkingcap.blogspot.com/2011/09/religion-older-not-wiser-but-nuttier.html
    http://meandmythinkingcap.blogspot.com/2011/09/human-race-spiritual-or-religious.html

    Maybe I should follow Tom Cruise and John Travolta clan and take scientology and lie down naked for massage and let nature take its course ..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You make a great point!

      A religious institution can't be substantially better than the people who make it up. In the 1800s, half or more of the Christians in the United States supported slavery.

      Thank goodness slavery was not enshrined in the Old Testament in a way that modern Christians could not toss that immoral way of life away.

      Delete
  10. "God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gracias, padre.

      The problem, for the purposes of my family, is that personal redemption and reconciliation from a Christian perspective really requires me to be sorry for my sins and want to change.

      So if I accept that my deviant lifestyle has been sinful up until this point, I'd have to, you know, intend not to keep doing it.

      I intend to keep living this way.

      Delete
  11. Ego te absolvo; darlin'....

    (Really. I'm going to echo Ted, above, and say "I'm glad I'm an atheist." I'll even go farther, and say, "Thank God I'm an atheist!"

    Just sayin'....)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey! What do you think of this one, Will?

      Too "South Park"?

      I got it in my head and couldn't get it out, so I had to write it down.

      Delete
  12. :) that was awesome.

    i love your brain.

    it thinks like mine, only expresses itself without profanity

    :)

    a xo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Andrea. I have started to learn to filter out the profanity, both for family reasons and because, as Kurt Vonnegut once said, "Profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you."

      I'm chock full of unpleasant information, so I have to present it in the nicest way possible.

      Delete
  13. Katy. You are a seriously funny lady. But I think Rick Santorum is throwing his voice into your oxygen-deprived deliriums. He's been visiting my mushroom-induced purple haze for a few month's now, and it was unsettling at first.

    But now that he has been harping anti-gay for so long I'm starting to think he wants me. I am somewhat handsome and slightly manly.

    But if it isn't little Ricky speaking to you, god is an asshole.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I haven't reached any conclusions about that. I don't know if I even WANT to reach conclusions.

      People who have reached conclusions about the Big Questions seem to turn into jerks almost immediately.

      But now that you mention it, I sort of AM going through Rick Santorum withdrawal. We had some good times!

      Delete
  14. The closest I ever felt to God was in an ancient Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand. All I ever feel in a church here is... stuffy. And annoyed.

    Also, always remember that God's love is unconditional. Except when it's not.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have completely different takes on what is behind EVERYTHING depending on when you ask me.

      They are all equally compelling and ridiculous.

      The clock is ticking: I have about 45 years to figure it out.

      I won't, of course. But I'm going to proceed as though it's possible that I will.

      Delete
  15. Katy, i`ve told you before not to publish posts about God, simply because he doesn`t exist in the first place, which does rather make a nonsense of the posts, DOESN`T IT MY DEAR ! ! !.

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    Replies
    1. You and the British contingent might have a rough go of things in the next few weeks, as y'all seem opposed to God and gays, and we're going to be dwelling on the... overlapping area of that particular Venn diagram.

      Good luck! (or should I say, "God bless!")

      Delete
  16. Nutria taste just like chicken they say.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My guess is that if someone has resorted to eating nutria, they might be an unreliable witness as to the taste of decent food.

      Delete
  17. Don't worry Katy. That was just me hiding behind a rock on the mountain top yanking your chain.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't you dare do that, Cal! Don't you throw yourself in front of the bus and take responsibility for the wrongdoing of... well, whoever that is at the top of the mountain.

      That guy has had it too easy for too long.

      First he sends someone down who says I can't commit adultery, and now this?

      Quit covering for him...

      Delete
  18. The Archbishop of "CUNT"erburyMay 22, 2012 at 12:12 PM

    Katy, God hates pansy queers because they are scum, you must accept that my dear girl.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't now what to think about that. There are more than a few folks who seem to hold that view, but they are all huge assholes, so I don't know how reliable they are...

      Delete
  19. Katy (dream-girl),if somebody says "God Bless" to me it is a quite murderous and unforgivable insult (although i will forgive you Katy simply because you`re such a gorgeous little sex-pot). God and woofters play absolutely no part in my life what-so-ever (thankfully). Venn Diagrams making overlapping comparisons between God and fairys would be of no interest to me at all simply because i am totally contemptuous of them both.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Like I said, it might be a rough couple months for you around here, then.

      Delete
  20. You captured something here. I do not know what but you captured something.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's that kind of keen insight that makes me so willing to risk an eternity of Hell for you...

      Delete
  21. Bravo! I do so love your style Katy. If I were younger and not trapped in this male body, I'd be headed south to try and woo you.

    But seriously, you really should get to work on a novel or some short-stories or something. You could give Christopher Moore a run for his money.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hell yes, I'll accept Christopher Moore as a touchstone. Thanks!

      Delete
  22. I never cared much for mountain climbing.
    Your figure is perfect. I happen to be a fan of small breasts.
    Hope your leg heals.
    Avoid cranks who sit in remote places (such as small towns in North Texas) dispensing questionable doctrine.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There seem to be a lot of folks perfectly willing to dispense wisdom, whether I want that wisdom or not.

      Online, I have people claiming to know the intricacies of law, science, theology, economics, history, psychology, blah blah blah.

      Out here in the flesh and blood world, I can't find someone who even knows how to un-jam a copy machine.

      Next time I have a problem, I'm going to go to a political website and ask one of the resident know-it-alls to come down and give me a hand.

      Delete
  23. I talked to God and He told me to give you an award.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Woohoo! Thank you...

      I am really bad about following the rules of those award things.

      I will. It might take a while.

      Delete
  24. I headed over here from NellieVaughn's blog because I was intrigued by the title of your blog. Not that I was looking for... Nevermind.

    Anyway, now that I failed at yet another first impression, I can move on to commend you on how awesome your blog is. I always pictured God as a southern-esque hillbilly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha... Hey, I get to see whats search terms bring people to my blog every time I check out my stats page. I'm under no delusions about what brings people here.

      If I had to do it over again, I'd probably... well, still include the word "lesbians" in my name.

      Thanks for having a look, and I shall be checking out "Chiz Chat" as soon as possible!

      Delete
  25. Replies
    1. ...says the guy from Arizona to the girl from Texas...

      Delete
    2. Touche!!! HA! Yeah, I HAVE to pretend that somewhere there's a state more retarded than mine. Kansas is always a good bet. I don't think they even have the internet yet!

      Delete
    3. I've been to Kansas.... when it's not corn season. It looked a bit like the surface of the moon.

      We got lost and had to stop to ask directions at a place called The Rust Wheel Rut" (I'm not kidding about the name).

      There are plenty of fantastic people from Kansas, I'm sure. I'm just a big city girl, and dropping me into the middle of Kansas is... well, like dropping me down on the surface of the moon.

      Delete
  26. I wish the "believers" and the "unbelievers" could actually have a productive dialogue. I think a lot of the believers find the unbelievers to be angry, unhappy and judgmental, while a lot of the unbelievers find the believers to be angry, unhappy and judgmental.

    I can't figure out why we care so much about what either people believe. The bottom line is, somebody's wrong.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, Anon! I think people ought to care about the Big Questions - whether there is an intelligent principle behind the Universe, whether that intelligent principle has a personal aspect, whether there is a moral code woven into Reality.

      We ought to care, and we ought to argue about that.

      What I don't understand is why people get so upset that others have reached different conclusions.

      I don't have ANY answers. I'm working under the assumption that EVERYONE is more wrong than they are right. That makes me anathema to both sides.

      Ha!

      Delete
  27. "Hey! What do you think of this one, Will?

    Too "South Park"? "


    Nope. Not at all. As with most of your writing, it can be taken as it is, or for deeper meaning.

    I choose to do both - which is why you make me both smile and think; a good thing....

    -W

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This time out, I wrote this one on a Sunday, and the VERY next day, the story about the pastor who advocated the concentration camp for gays broke.

      That sort of pissed me off. Not for political or personal reasons, but rather because it showed me once again that no matter how exaggerated I think my satire is, somebody's going to follow right behind me and outdo me with a straight face.

      Delete
    2. This this exactly.

      I am waiting for your post this week.


      " not for political or personal reasons, but rather because it showed me once again that no matter how exaggerated I think my satire is, somebody's going to follow right behind me and and outdo me with a straight face" , you even realize what an epic quote you had given here? You should patent this Katy.

      I may love your blog for many reasons and one of the reason is, your 100 pages wisdom given in two short sentences.

      Delete
    3. Wow, thank you!

      Sometimes, I stumble onto lines or ideas that work. If it happens once or twice a month, it keeps me happy and trying...

      This week's blog is going to be a little late. Hopefully, I will manage to piece something together tomorrow (Monday).

      Delete

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