Saturday, December 27, 2014

A Story of Faith

She was always a believer.

A believer in God, I mean. And not just in God as Mystery, or in God as a shared dream or a cosmic game of hide-and-seek with every one of us as its players. Not God as some non-spatial, non-linear connectivity wherein time is curved light or light is frozen time.

No, Dana was always a believer in THE God. THE very left-brained, very male God of Western history. The God who put everything-but-everything that anyone ever needed to know or ever could know about himself down inside the snug confines of a single book. The God who worried a great deal over specific things like where humans stuck their bits and pieces and how many cubits wide a temple ought to be.

Clear-cut. Simple. Well-defined.

She believed in him and so she followed his rules and so his rules led her (eventually, inevitably) away from me. And when she was as far away from me as she could get and in strict compliance with every one of those well-defined rules he had set down in writing, then THE God began making changes in her life, just as he had promised her that he would.

First he smashed the left side of her brain up so hard she became a virtual prisoner inside her own head. Then he had her husband go away. Then he had her brothers and her sisters and her mom and her dad, her aunts and her uncles – all believers to a one – shrug in unison and say, “Sorry. We can’t help you. We’re pretty busy people.”

Maybe it was just her cross to bear. Maybe a test. Maybe she was being punished for something. Maybe God and Satan were using her to settle a bet.

Whatever it was, she still believed in him and so she still followed his rules and so his rules led down a path where (eventually, inevitably) no one was left to help her but me. I mean, she couldn’t very well take care of herself by this point. Her four children could not take care of themselves. Her four cats, one dog, two turtles, fifteen tarantulas, ten scorpions, one grass snake and an amblypygid could not take care of themselves.

And that left me.

Now, I am not much, so far as saviors go. I am sort of a walking, self-contained occasion of sin. I was foretold explicitly at no fewer than three places in the Old Testament and at least one in the New.

And so Dana the Believer, well, now she is trapped way down inside her own living Hell upon the Earth. She believed in the God. She knew his rules. She did everything within her power to follow those rules and to get away from me once and for all. Yet here I am – back inside her home, taking care of her and taking care of her family – and all she can do is to lie there and to watch as it happens.

The end. 

28 comments:

  1. Blind faith is so cruel

    Genetic evidence confirms a human population bottleneck (2,000 people) matching Noah's flood

    Genesis 6
    he Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created —and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

    enough said

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    1. In God's defense, I felt like doing the same thing after sitting through an episode of "Two and a Half Men" the other day.

      More seriously, there are some fantastic stories in the Bible, once you stop worrying about whether every single word is historically true. Iron Age etiologies that have held up for thousands of years.

      I'll figure it all out eventually. Come back in 20 years and I'll have all of the answers. Then you can put it in a leather-bound book and say my writing's inerrant.

      Delete
  2. How do *you* feel about taking care of her?

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    1. When i was my daughter's age, my folks passed and no one I knew was interested in helping me out. My brother apparently got that gene and high-tailed it as soon as things got tough with Dana.

      This feels pretty natural to me, even if she does hate me.

      This is all going to turn out fine.

      Delete
  3. Much like the Bible and the entirety of Jesus's adolescence, this post left out a large part of the story, mainly, what happened to your brother with whom I thought Dana was currently shacked-up? So many mysteries...just like God...Wait, are YOU God!?! If so, magical mystery wish granter, please smite that pig-hearted torture monster Dick Cheney and gimme a house-trained puppy, thank you.
    Whatever you do, don't disobey God or you both may be forced to follow Jeremiah 19:9, "And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters..." Nothing like forcible, familial cannibalism to make your point.

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    1. I am a minor deity at best.

      I am not familiar with that passage in Jeremiah. Judges 19:24-29 gets a little rough, though.

      Our stories today are pretty mild compared to traditional stories from pretty much anywhere. And kids' stories, at that. A lot of kids get eaten. A lot of people get cut up into pieces.

      I have big books of Latin American and Russian folk tales, and I wouldn't read any of that stuff to a child.They can just watch "Hostel" or "Saw" or something instead.

      Delete
  4. You've saddled up to (pardon the High Noon reference) "do what a man's gotta do", regardless of the fallout, and for that I admire you. It's not easy... trust me, I know.

    But the whole God thing isn't what brought any of us to this point in our lives, other than the collateral damage blind faith can dump on the innocent bystanders among us. You could probably sum up all of the Bible into one, succinct adage simply by following this rule: "Don't be an asshole"

    I'm pretty sure that's already in the Bible, somewhere near the back. Probably in Crustaceans. That's where I find all of the relevant shit.

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    1. I know you have your surprise New Life Phase in high gear right now, too. But the surprises keep us young, right? The surprises in my life always turn out to be better than the stuff I plan, anyway.

      I think you've got about the religion thing, though, and that's probably where a lot of people go wrong. The writers were pretty much saying "Don't be an asshole" as well as they could say it.

      I mean, telling slaves and wives to listen to their masters and husbands - and telling those masters and husbands to be kind - doesn't sound very progressive to us today, but it was light years ahead of what you might have found elsewhere back then.

      Same goes for Islam. Quran's not exactly a bastion of tolerance, but, compared to what else people were doping out there on the peninsula...

      So you try to find the value behind it in context. The value isn't slavery or whatever, it's "Don't be an asshole." "The way you treat people has repercussions."

      Or in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, "Hey! Don't try to rape angels."

      Delete
  5. I'm a much stronger believer in hard work and common sense, than putting all of my eggs into the basket of some spiritual deity. If you have decent people in your life, chances are, that's going to rub off on you. It's been my experience that the most religious of people aren't always those people.

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    1. Hey, Ken.

      Yeah, I don't know any one right way to live.

      I can think of a lot of obviously wrong ways, though!

      I just do my best.

      Delete
  6. If you believe in a deity that stands outside of time and space, the notion everything is contained in a single volume is silly. I am from the school of thought where God told Moses "No, I cannot dumb it down any more, 10 is the minimum number." There are things we are not supposed to know or understand. Like why Dana would be affected with such an awful condition. Keep looking after the kids and the critters. It is the right thing to do.

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    1. You might notice that the timing of my posts has become a bit more sporadic. I used to hit 4 a month like clockwork.

      It turns out that taking care of an Ark's worth of people and critters is time-consuming. And also expensive.

      Delete
  7. I'm sure you must have wanted her back, especially earlier on, but not like this. This shit one cannot foresee, yet it seems so inevitable once it has happened. There are no folk tales or wise memes or religious dictates to hang onto. As you say, you just do the best you can. When you say, "Come back in 20 years and I'll have all of the answers", I'm here to tell you that as someone who is 20 years older than you, that hasn't happened. I just have 20 years more of debt, a stomach that refuses to stop growing, and sensitive molars from all the tooth-grinding over the years. I discovered extreme metal when I was already grey and half bald, and it's the only thing that comforts my blasted soul.

    Having said that, please tell Dana that as someone who has read about her and you for years, please tell her that I thank her for all the happiness and comfort that she gave you when you were together.

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    1. Hi, Rupert!

      Yes I feel like some fool in a movie that found a genie in a lamp, made a wish to live with Dana again, and forgot to write up the specifics in a contract.

      When I was 16, I was reading Buddhism and completely sure that I'd be enlightened by this age. Of course, I didn't account for lag caused by brain entropy. And kids. And alcohol.

      Delete
  8. I hear that God's a big fan of cosmic irony, which is why he brought you guys back together. Dana might not see it that way, though...

    There's a Christian radio station here that occasionally I'll flip to when nothing else is on, if only so I can enjoy a good laugh over the ridiculous things they say. The last time I listened, I heard a preacher who had "beat the gayness" taking calls from other gay men/women who had overcome it. One woman blamed it on being roommates with a lesbian. Because she was "subjected" to the "lesbian lifestyle", she was practically forced to get into a 12 year relationship with this woman. My brother-in-law has a gay live-in personal assistant, and how he's managed to avoid getting sucked into a relationship with him is just beyond me. Maybe he just prays a lot.

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    1. They train us all in homo-school to put people into a trance to hypnotize them.

      Look into the rainbow. Look into the rainbow. You are becoming very fabulous...

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    2. I don't know if it's supposed to work over the Internet but I just got a strange urge to redecorate my house using warm earth tones while listening to Lady Gaga, and I feel like I must consult my pastor about this immediately.

      Delete
    3. Obviously it works over the internet. Have you seen the internet? The 1's and 0's making up ALL electronic information are basically just lesbians and cats.

      Delete
  9. Amazing issues here. I am very glad to peer your article. Thanks a lot
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    ReplyDelete
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    1. Your use of the English language was so amazing that I could not bring myself to mark this comment as spam.

      I'm not entirely sure yet that I'm going to let you "peer my article" or touch me. Is peering my article even legal in Texas, and if so does it involve the aforementioned touching?

      Delete
  10. I read the stories- every one but it is the little things that mean the most Katy- use of the term, Vagilante Justice for example or a GIF of a Ninja inch worm body slamming a fly that completes me.

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    1. Thank you! If people ever found out how much time I spend on these things, everybody would feel uncomfortable.

      Delete
  11. God's an asshole. It's okay for me to say that because he already hates me.

    Jay

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    1. Say what you want about him, then. What's he gonna do about it? What's the worst that could happen?

      Is that thunder?

      Delete
  12. God is a bit of a jerk, even to those who don't believe in him. But especially to those who do, because he does this thing where you die and expect to see him and all the angels and all of your family and loved ones, but nobody's actually there and you find out it's all a big joke.

    And that's AFTER all the stuff he does to you while you're alive.

    (BTW, you're a really good person to be there for her and the kids. I bet you don't think so because you feel like it's something you have to do and so you don't get a choice on whether to be a good person or not, but you could choose not to and definitely be an evil person.)

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    1. If I were running the show, I think I would have everyone go through the formality of a last judgment after they die. Except everyone would get damned to Hell, only to be told moments later, "Just kidding! There is no afterlife. Goodbye..."

      I mean, it would be sort of a relief, after being damned.

      It's probably good that I'm not the one in charge.

      Delete
    2. Really, nobody's qualified to be running the show. Not even God.

      Delete
    3. When I was a kid, I was sure that I could rebel against God by not breathing and eating and somehow, I wouldn't die.

      I've lowered my sights a little. Now I just don't believe what the government tells me and rarely eat my vegetables.

      Delete

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