Letters to God #7: The Lord's Prayer

Pieces of Letters to God

Our Father, which art in heaven

Good day Big Guy in the sky :).

Hallowed by thy Name.

Thy kingdom come.

Well then, here we are and it's good to be here - to be so near You. I like looking up at the blue sky and know that Thou art there. Get it? You're up there making beautiful art. I read that we've managed to create multiverses in a lab the other day. This is probably old news to You, what with having created multiverses from the get go - Big Bang and all that. I imagine that You're proud though, Your creatures take after You. We live to create, or as Professor Tolkien more aptly put it, sub-create. If You've kept up with the news You know it's all doom and gloom down here - all rape and murder. That's what we do when we're not sub-creating. People are saying it's the end of days. I say it's the gentle and kind invasion of Your kingdom. It's like the bit in Final Crisis where non-existence invades existence - only it's gentle and kind. We're not being gentle and kind about it though. We're quite brutal in reaction to gentle and kind things. Do me a huge favour, would Ya? Carry Anene, Reeva and every single human being (everyone who was a potential generator of goodness beyond measure) who tragically passed away lately gently into your bosom. Send the Lady on the Grey to bear them away on her steed:

'He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you' - Neil Gaiman.

Also, please forgive the folk who took their lives, even... Or rather, especially when we can't.

Thy will be done in earth,

As it is in heaven

This is the bit about Your will and our free will that I don't understand so well. I get the end bit where evil will find that it has been serving You all along. What I don't get is what's happening in between - it gets murky there. Our will is pretty much reigning in the earth sphere right now. I'm not too sure what how the governance is top-side but down here it's Jacob Zuma.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgives us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

Padre Nostro

Padre nostro che sei nei cieli,
sia santificato il tuo Nome,
venga il tuo Regno,
sia fatta la tua Volontà
come in cielo così in terra.
Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,
e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti
come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,
e non ci indurre in tentazione,
ma liberaci dal Male.

At this point the whole world needs a hug. I'm not sure about the rest of the multiverse but give them a hug too. There's a lot of pain and suffering doing the rounds. People are in great need of daily bread, daily hugs and just good ol' fashioned daily love. Hook us up, ol' G. We need a whole new level of strongs for the forgiving some trespasses bit. Folks is nasty out there lately and John Legend's approach seems to be the most attractive: "Now I’m not afraid to do the Lord's work, You say vengeance is his but I'm'ma do it first." It's a bit of a steep learning curve as You can see. I can't speak for the rest of humanity on this one but I need my trespasses forgiven. At the rate I'm going I'm a burglar! Temptation is pretty much everywhere and hard to avoid. You've seen the second The Lord of the Rings movie, right? There's the scene where Gollum's leading Frodo and Sam through the Dead Marshes and tells them not to look at the dead faces in the water. That's pretty much the first thing Frodo does! They aren't even cute hobbit girls in revealing dresses, just creepy, dead faces and Frodo's tempted to look. Temptation is rough. Deliverance from evil is straight up necessary though, hey. We need every form of escape we can get from evil's gaping maw.

That's it for now, Big Guy. Later times.

For thine is the kingdom,

The power, and the glory,

For ever and ever

Amen.

Letters to God #1

Pieces of Letters God

Dear God,

Hello there, it's me, Charlie, You know, that guy who never really calls. Well, I'm in the mood to talk with You today - it's raining outside and that might have something to do with my sombre mood. I'm awfully worried about my life of late, my days have been broken and I need some help in fixing them, I really do. I'm sorry that I'm that guy who only talks to You when I'm down and need Your help. I try harder each day to do better and be better.

Your mission, should You choose to accept it, is to send me some inspiration in a bottle. You, know so I can put it on a shelf and use a drop on days like these, when my brain and body don't feel the urge to actively participate in the happenings of daily living.

There is so much that I need to be doing and I seem to lack the energy and enthusiasm of youth. I need to make Jo'burg libraries realise that they need me on-board with their Big Five literacy programmes, no one else can do it better than me. I need to convince NAG that I should be writing for them and that my whimsical style will fit in perfectly with their style. Big G, I need loads of inspiration to actually get things done - all the big plans I have and whatnot. I'm such a lazy guy and it's not good for my health. So please just drop me a vial of that inspiration elixir tonight. That would be nice.

"...they need me on-board with their Big Five literacy programmes" 

Anyhoo, enough about me and my somewhat tedious life (loads of its aspects are really nice though), how are You? What with having to deal with the running of the multiverse and listening to all the sentient beings you created complain about one thing or another. I was watching some Supernatural (great show that) and watching Castiel run around trying to be You was fun, he's got badassery down (yes, Thato, it's still a real made-up word) for a usually mild-mannered guy in a trench coat. I know this is not the sort of thing You usually do but could You please send me that bottled inspiration in the pocket of a Castiel  trench coat. I'm kidding... Or not if you're really going to do it.

"...please send me that bottled inspiration in the pocket of a Castiel trench coat"

Tell me, what's the deal with cockroaches? You made so many of them! I just don't get it, they annoy everyone. You made lots of ants and I get that, those little guys are super useful and they work very hard to do whatever it is that they do. I just don't get cockroaches though; they make no sense to me.

Okay, I should get going now. I'll write You more, I promise. It's always cool chatting with You and picking Your brain. Have a good day. Goodbye.

I love You.

Cupboard Person of the er... Year

“The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in 
life.” - Sir Hugh Walpole

I didn’t think of her as an actual human person with hopes, wishes, dreams, feelings, boobs, cute lazy eyes and chutzpah.

It’s too early to make this person my Cupboard Person of the Year, I know, since the year has just kicked off but she will be a highlight no matter what else happens to me this year. So here we go: the beautiful and charming Nthabiseng Monyane.

Life is wonderfully wobbly and all sorts of wibbly and I love it for that very reason. You can never be too sure of what to expect from it. It gives you Joy and sunshine at times and grief and thunderstorms at others. That’s just the way it goes.

Once in a while, though, someone amazing happens and her beautiful soul enters into your life and throws your whole rhythm out of balance by exploding her galaxy into your soulstuff. It’s a beautiful moment that I wish I could capture and bottle. That’s not the way God’s multiverse works though and all I can do is hold my breath and enjoy the beauty of the moment. I can also write about it a little.

Life in its wonderfully wobbly proportions is sneaky like a ninja kitten and introduced me to Nthabi-chan as Asia – someone who left a comment on a post on this here blog a few years back. Of course I didn’t think anything of it back then, since I didn’t expect that we would be meeting at any point. I lack all sorts of foresight I guess. She was, to my mind, just another wonderful mind trawling the interwebscape. I didn’t think of her as an actual human person with hopes, wishes, dreams, feelings, boobs, cute lazy eyes and chutzpah.

And then she moved to Jozi and got in touch and we started chatting on BBM, plotting clandestine meetings in dark corners where groping might occur. We just hit it off like two red headed stepchildren (to quote my friend, Grant). Plans were plot and schemes were scam for the meeting day and they almost unravelled because of fresh fog fuckery on my side of things but we circumvented all of that and met for a drink last Friday. Needless to say that the meeting went well... Okay, I lie, the meeting was freakin’ amazing! This woman just made it into my headspace without any effort and it was one of the highlights of my life.

Plans were plot and schemes were scam for the meeting day...

I am grateful to the hooded and cloaked powers that be that I met Nthabi-chan and I look forward to at least a lifetime of shared experiences.

Welcome to the Beanbag my Lady Love, I hope you enjoy it here :)