...thank god...
“People see God every day, they just don't recognize him.”
-Pearl Bailey-
“Oh God!”
- someone exclaiming surprise in some unsurprising film -
God is a giraffe.
God has the longest neck full of spots and ears that look like antennae and licks their tongue and teeth like a monkey on an ice cream cone. God looks down on you. God has trouble walking, spits babies out their holes, and is a tall brown zebra thing. God makes no sense.
God is a dolphin.
God will fight sharks for you. God is held captive in a florida aquarium doing jumps through a hoop for some alcoholic ex-pirate at an amusement park called Sea Space that has no sea or space. God speaks in enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh. God fights tuna. God surfs.
God is a dog.
God is man’s best friend. God lays on your lap and licks your hand. God eats dry kibble in a puzzle dish that slows their insatiable appetite. God sits and gives you their paw for a treat. God chases the gophers shrieking squeaks in the rocks hoping to bite and rip their tiny faces. God shits squatting against the tallest bush making awkward eye contact with you and then runs ahead as you place a bag around your hand and scoop their poop.
God is a man.
God gambles and smokes and did construction gigs to save up for college. God is hairy and balding. God laughs at his own jokes and falls asleep on the couch watching football. God forgets to brush their teeth before bed. God has balls.
God is a woman.
God gives birth and serves drinks from her breasts. God gossips with Wendy during walks on Wednesday. God wears a bracelet her grandmother gave her that her grandmother’s grandmother wore. God has menstrual cycles and sleeps in the nude.
God is a book.
God is for sale on Amazon. God is 642 pages long. God has an about this author section inside the front panel of their paperback and a blurb review on their back written by someone who was paid to read them. God is “Garfield At Large”. God is novel
God is toilet paper.
God is recycled to wipe asses and flush through a pipe, then a sewer, until settling at a treatment plant and chemically processing to become water filtered enough to make it into a general public tap, mix with fluoride, and get filtered by charcoal in a Brita next to your sink.
God is a microphone.
God sits on a stand and amplifies voices. God shares your sound. God helped you make a podcast about gardening.
God is cheese.
God encourages you to smile. God is the life juice of mammals set to fester and harden into brined salty blocks. God is aged 18 months. God is cheddar and swiss and nacho. God is shredded.
God is Prince.
God plays a guitar and sings Purple Rain. God wrote music for The Time. God rode a motorcycle and played on stage at First Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. God was a Jehovah’s Witness who walked door to door seeking followers. God changed their name to an unpronounceable symbol.
God is a rope.
God holds a flag in the center of two teams tugging. God is tied to a tree at the side of a lake, ready for you to swing and jump off of them. God is a ladder to a clubhouse you have to climb to get into. God can be tied into over 4000 different nameable knots. God is a sheepshank, an eskimo bowline and a tugboat hitch.
God is traffic.
God is people honking flustered and unmoved on a freeway next to a Denny’s. God is a din of burnt tires and rusty metal blasting 93.9FM, windows half closed on crack filled asphalt. God is the reason you are fifteen minutes late.
God is a star.
God walks the red carpet in $100,000 dollar gowns, glittered in gold eyeliner, waxed to seem hairless, interviewed by a journalist who is trying their best making $72,395 a year with health insurance and a 5% 401K match shrinking to 3% next pay cycle.
God is practice.
The repetition. The repetition. The repetition. The repetition. The repetition. The repetition. The repetition. The repetition. The repetition.
God is a play.
You can leave at intermission, or stay until the encore, standing on your feet, clapping until your hands hurt, whistling through your fingers because you want more. God makes for a good date night. God has uncomfortable seating and bad popcorn.
God is me.
God is blasphemous, confused and uncertain. God is afraid of saying what God is. God is sorry.
God is you.
God is reading some furry dude’s interpretation of God. God will hopefully leave a comment and a like. God has good taste. God creates.
God is us.
God is we.
God is a giraffe.
God eats leaves from acacia tree tops, has crusted dust covered hooves and sits patiently in the corner of a pen on the hills of the Oakland zoo, their eyes closed while I watch them. God is aware of my presence. My presence is aware of god.
My metaphorically-militant atheist side is both loving and hating this. This 'god is everything' is precisely the kind of thing that my metaphorically-militant atheist types hate, because it's goddamned impossible to argue whether or not god exists since the definition of god keeps shifting. Yet, as someone who keeps mellowing out into a sorta agnostic hippy as I age, I can't help but love this...
First of all, I love giraffes. Second of all, my absolute favorite concept in Chabad Chassidus is that everything is God. For example, if you take a bite out of an apple, the bite AND the apple are the same God- the bite is no less and the apple is no more. I think the only way I can believe in God is by imagining this. We are all God and God is all of us. Yes, even toilet paper and hairy balls.
Thanks for writing this!! I really love giraffes. One day I’ll make best friends with a giraffe.