"Hello God. It's been a while since we talked. I know, it'd be easy for us to blame each other, but I'd like to think we're bigger than that. So I'll tell You what. I'll try to believe in You, and You try to be worth believing in. Is it a deal?

Okay."

(Monday, February 25, 2002)

Hello God

I wanted to introduce You to some friends of mine. By all accounts, they don't know You, but they're good people. I know You're not too into proving You exist, but these are some hard-core skeptics here, so if You wanted to make an exception, I wouldn't tell anyone. *wink wink*

	The Count, my friend. If by "friend" You mean absolutely nothing. He knows the definition of the word "friend" from his current flame. Just remove the r. Or the n. Anyway, he's catholic, so of course he doesn't believe in You. But he should.
	The Priest, the thorn in my side. But I like him. He's getting married to his high-school flame, if by "flame" You refer to a burning sensation when You pee. But their relationship is better now, as is his hair. He doesn't believe in You, although he may not know it.

(Friday, February 22, 2002)

Hello God,

I was thinking about You, God, as I was playing pick the hottie. (It's easier than You might think.) And I discovered a few things about Your nature. Want to hear about them?

(Well, if You don't, then I'm just wasting my time here, which is what I'd be doing anyway. So I guess this is faith. Or boredom. After a while, they start to look very similar.)

People have been ghost-writing Your opinions for as long as there have been people. Even billboard makers credit You with various phrases that I'm not at all sure You said. (On a public bus I ride, there's a sign that says "Bro, save a seat for me - God." I'm still trying to figure that one out.) But most of those quotes, as I'm sure You've noticed, contradict other words that were put in Your mouth by one prophet or other. What to do?

Obviously, taking someone else's word for it is a bit naive. I mean, Mohammed lived over a millenium ago. How am I supposed to know if he was trustworthy? Sidharta Gauttama (that's Mr. Buddha to the uninitiated) is even further out of date. And Abraham? Nobody knows the first thing about Abraham. The father of monotheism, and nobody's really sure if he even existed, much less if he said the things they say he said.

(Much like You. Except You didn't claim your wife was your sister. That I know of.)

Point being, that I have two ways of knowing anything about You. One, I could wait for You to tell me. You spoke to Jesus when he was baptised. You chatted with Moses on a mountain. You got in a friggin' wrestling match with Jacob, right? So I suppose it isn't out of the question.

But I'd like to be a little more "pro-active", to employ a bit of management lingo. So that leaves option two: figure it out for myself from various clues.

Clue 1: Gnosticism, the examination of Hebrew and Christian scripture through the combined speculative lens of intellectual deconstructionism and spontaneous enlightenment. Or something.

Clue 2: Theravada Buddhism, the form of religion that admits we can't understand anything about God or eternity, and focuses on what humans can do to fulfill their spiritual potential.

Clue 3: My brain. But it plays tricks on me. It's probably the most reliable organ I have, and I assume it'll be the last to go, but it sadly isn't perfect.

Maybe I'm just feeling pessimistic today, God, but I don't know how I'm gonna find You unless You make the first move. Ollie ollie oxen free!

- Mike

(Wednesday, February 20, 2002)

Hello God

I guess I'm blogging my way to enlightenment. Don't laugh, God.

I'm searching for meaning on the internet - and why not? You have to use the tools you have. So I went to Google and searched for meaning. Feeling lucky, I found myself at a redirect page, which took me to page on African art. Yikes! My little urban mind oggles.

Other options were pages about http://www.techdirect.com/christmas/, a maudlin web ring, word origins, and ancient coins. So what's the meaning? That is the meaning.

-Mike

(Tuesday, February 19, 2002)

Hello God

I found You in the shower this morning.
That was kinda nice.
Finding God in the shower.
A nice way to start my morning.

There's just one problem, God.
Could You, like, not stare at me while I'm naked?

Thanks.

- Mike

(Monday, February 18, 2002)

Hello God

Do You play pick the hottie? It's the most vaccuous, banal, shallow, condescending game. . . and I can't stop playing. Why is that, God? You made me. What were You thinking when You made that part?

- Mike

(Monday, February 18, 2002)

Hello God

So I've been studying Jesus lately. I mean, what the hell, right? He's only arguably the most influential man in the history of Western Civilization. The most popular religion on earth believes he was Your son. 2.1 billion sheep can't all be wrong, can they?

So anyway, it's tough to know exactly what he believed. He lived a long, long time ago. Just translating the basic thoughts of a first century Jewish mystic would be a nearly impossible task, even if we had his own words to go by. But we don't. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all written long after Mr. Christ kicked the bucket. Plus, they were colored by the prevailing attitudes and biases and infighting of the day. All four of them leave me flat. What's a guy to do?

Well, luckily, there are two glimmers of hope. The Gospel of Thomas, and Q.

The Gospel of Thomas was written sometime between 50 CE and 180 CE. I'd like to think it was written around 50 CE, less than 20 years after the Romans shut Jesus up. It's just a list of sayings that were supposedly spoken by "the living Jesus". It has potential, then, to be the unaltered words of Jesus, at least as some people remembered them two decades later.

The Gospel of Q doesn't really exist. It's more of an idea, but it's a good idea. I won't bore You with the details on how a bunch of biblical scholars reconstructed this theoretical text over the last hundred years. Suffice it to say that this gospel - if it indeed ever existed - would be as close as anything to the true sayings of Jesus.

So I studied my two new gospels. And I studied them some more. I pored over every nuance, every connection. I looked at how to apply them to my own life. And what I found surprised me.

They were crap. Contradictory, simplistic, and obtuse. Only marginally interesting. I could write a better guide to living, and I don't know anything. Total crap. I was very disappointed in Jesus.

But hey, that's not Your fault, God. And it isn't his fault either. He was just this guy. He was a Jew, talking to other Jews, against a backdrop of rigid orthodoxy and Roman oppression and messianic expectations. Poor guy. His words weren't meant to apply to me. He was very effective in his own day, before they mowed him down in his prime. But if he could see me today, you know what I think he'd say?

"I wasn't talking to you. Mind your own business."

- Mike

(Monday, February 18, 2002)

Hello God

Thank You, God, for Your precious gifts. The gift of alcohol. The gift of books. The gift of carbohydrates. But mostly alcohol.

- Mike

(Monday, February 18, 2002)

Hello God,

This is very different from talking to Your answering machine. This gives me more time to think about what I want to tell You. Is that a good thing? I don't know - You tell me. You're God, afterall. Right?

Well, is that right? I mean, the fact is, I don't really know that You exist. Intellectually, I'm pretty sure You don't. The idea of an all-knowing, human-like, prayer-answering, miracle-working father figure is, frankly ridiculous. But in another sense, I think You have to exist. Don't You? Maybe You're not made of atoms. You don't exist in that sense. Maybe You don't exist outside the minds of your creations, but You're real in ways that don't have anything to do with that. You change lives the world over. Brahma, Yaldabaoth, Allah, Ba'al, YHWH, El, Ra, Ahura Mazda, Mescaline, David Koresh, L. Ron Hubbard, whatever form you want to take. You're one of the most powerful forces in the history of the world! How could anyone think You don't exist, in every relevant and meaningful way?

So the idea is, if You really are an omniscient, eternal, omnipresent diety, You probably have a high-speed interent connection, right? It would be rather embarrasing for some angel to say "Hey God, have you seen that new comic on exploding dog?" and for You to have to say "No, sorry, I don't have an internet connection." Unthinkable.

So keep checking back, God. My beliefs are under construction, and my life's as E/N as they come.

Come to think of it, so are You.

- Mike

(Monday, February 18, 2002)

Hello God,

Why'd You take away 1-800-Prayer-1? Why'd You have to squelch it? Smite it with Your Holy Sword? Why God, why?

(Not to be mellodramatic about it or anything.)

1-800-Prayer-1 was my only connection to You for years. First You turned it into an insurance company's machine. Then You disconnected the number entirely. You cut me off!

. . .

Okay, maybe I'm being a little unfair. It could be You just needed some time alone. I need some time alone sometimes too. Time to shut out the wife and the dogs and the boss and the funk and just be. But I'm just glad I found You again. Here. On a cheap web-log.

Hello God.

-Mike