Maybe God Is A Harried Parent

posted November 11, 2010

Maybe God is a harried parent just like, say, me.
We say, “God used to do great things,
Like create the world
And set it in motion
But now He’s this lame duck,
Just sitting back watching us destroy His creation.”

(The Deists would say this. They’re the ones that created the Enlightenment, the United States, Harvard and the New York Times not necessarily in that order.)

Anyway, what if God’s running as fast as She can
Just to keep up with our shenanigans?
Like when we take fruits and insects and birds
From one continent
And scatter them willy nilly onto another
-bananas, kudzu, sugar, starlings, eucalyptus, long horned beetles—
We put things where they don’t belong, creating unhappy couplings
We get sick and we mess with the ecosystem.
Then God has to work extra hard racing around
Trying to answer all our prayers
To get our sick selves well.
Trying to get our sick earth well, too.
Maybe God doesn’t feel so well.

My kids scatter lots of things, placing one of each into their small backpacks and purses, their own personal continents:
Tiny pieces of a ripped up pine cone
Papers covered with scotch tape and rolled up into tubes
Granola
Puzzle pieces
One card from a deck
And I race around, gathering the containers, sorting through the debris,
Returning each item to its land of origin.
Trying to make order out of the divine plan.
Wait!
Who said chaos wasn’t divine?
Who said the divine plan was ordered?
The Deists, remember. And maybe me, once.
-Nerissa Nields
November 2010

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