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There is a Reason
Above all, this is such a wonderful thing. I am sad, sometimes, and sometimes I feel hate. Sometimes I want it to end, and sometimes I wish it had never begun. Sometimes I am tempted to leave it all. But in the end, this is a wonderful thing. There is a reason for this: above all, I exist to understand God. I have seen more things than any other could imagine exists. I have traveled the universe. I have known God as none other have known Him—as a raw and wondrous child. So much of it has faded and mixed and lost its clarity. It has been a very long time since this all began, and I have seen much: I have seen planets upon planets upon galaxies. In whole those places have slipped from my mind, but pieces remain—the fragments of memories. I remember a woman talking. In my mind she has brown hair and wears blue and she is human; but I know that she could not have been human, for I have no memory of Earth now. Doubtless she looked nothing like I remember, but in my memory she is like me. The moment was a normal and simple one. The day was clear and unremarkable. Her features were forgettable. There was only one important thing: She was looking up, talking to a man that sat above her. He was fixing the roof of a store front, but he had paused to look down and speak with her. I don't remember the conversation—perhaps we passed by too quickly to hear it—but I suspect the words were not important either. The look of her, peering up, smiling, in such a simple everyday moment, was what mattered. Why was it important? I do not know. It caught my eye, and that is all. It was a moment that seemed one to remember, maybe because it was so true and so ordinary. It was only human interaction, so normal, so quick, so purely sentient. They were equals and they were only talking. In a blur, that is all. Yet what truly interests me most is not those beings that we see; what interests me is God. He is a child, still, and He has always been a child. He marvels at every wonder, at ever difference, at all of those things that people do. I love His wonder much more than I love those creatures that He wonders at. "There are a thousand sounds of laughter," He has said to me. It is true. Each people express that sound differently, in happiness, in nervousness, in joy. I do not mind those sounds, but it is God that loves them. He records them in His mind and practices them, like a child mimicking bird sounds. He can laugh in a thousand different languages. There are many things that God is capable of. He can exist in space. He can travel as if without traveling. He can assume any form, and He can give me those forms that I need. He cannot be hurt and He cannot die. Those things are all very amazing, but it is His other powers that interest me more. His powers of observation. His memory. His careful reproduction of behaviors and sounds. He makes His creations into a study, and He is the professor. He tells me what He sees when I cannot see it, when we float above the world and for me there is only clouds. Sometimes I must translate what He sees into something that He can understand. "They are children," He said. "There is a group of them being cared for by two adults. Some are being read to. Some are playing." I knew it was some form of childcare, but He was not familiar with the concept. I tried to explain it to Him, and He hovered there, looking down with a creased brow. "They are abandoned by their parents?" "No, not abandoned. Their parents are only gone temporarily." "I see." He paused, then continued. "They do not seem to mind it, though. They seem happy enough. Are parents not important?" He did not know, for He had never had them. He is nothing more than a child in the care of this wide place, without a thought parents, with an entire universe of games and wonder all His own, with a thousand things to see and do and come to understand. Whoever would have thought that God was nothing more than child with a thousand powers? Whoever would have guessed? Who knows that secret, save myself? No one. There are creatures that cannot cry, and they are some of the few beings that God pities. He grieves for them because they cannot grieve for themselves—they cannot make that one raw expression of sorrow. I do not know why this is so. I do not care. All that matters to me is that God cares and is sad for them. The only sadness that he has ever known is known through empathy, yet still He understands the emotion in His own cold way. I find that very interesting indeed. There is such a thing as perfect love—that passionate, sad, painful love, so sweet after such turmoil, the kind that will last forever. I can see that love for what it is—for absolute perfection. God, however, He does not understand—or, rather, He denies it. He proclaims that only His love is true and pure—that only those things that He feels for me have meaning. He has even gone so far as to kill one half of such a couple, just to see how the other would react. He is cruel in that way. The animals are interesting as well. Those being we can both touch, for they do not have souls. Animals are a comfort, a tactile pleasure, and for me they are there when I need to feel something other than God's skin. God understands this. Once, He stopped often to sit among those lower creatures. But now, He tells me, He does not need this. He has me. God gives up little pleasures for me—God loves me and needs nothing more. I am tempted, and I am swayed, but God is always faithful. Is that alone not enough? To hold that standing, to know that power, to have that pride, to see very wonder under God—is that not enough? It is worth it. The most beautiful thing that I have ever seen is a speechless God. I do not remember what struck Him dumb. I do not care. God was the beauty—God, staring, speechless, entranced, His black eyes shining, His mouth open—and nothing else matters. Sometimes I want to leave. Sometimes I want it all to end. Sometimes I wish it had never begun. But outside of those horrors, those sad moments, those painful memories, there are the things that make it worthwhile: our daily bread, our wanderings, those wonders that God surrounds me with and, above all, the wonder that is God Himself. And I will never leave. |