Dear God,
I have been thinking about you lately, thinking about myself. I have faith, I do have faith, the same way I have a sense of humour, but I will be honest, I do not believe you exist. Not in the way my human mind can comprehend. I know there is more. I know a bat lives in the same universe but experiences it differently. I know I don’t know.
I am not scared for me, if you do not exist. It sometimes brings me peace. It relaxes me and weirdly enough the meditation gets deeper, the procrastination gets weaker and what is going to happen happens without too much hesitation.
My ego made you up to get and do what he wants, but what I want doesn’t come, and you're still there. Something. And all the times I was certain of a curated universe where bad people get bad treatment and good things happen to good people, I didn’t write to you.
You see, I just see so much belief, the same belief I had and I don’t believe in it. So how can I believe in what I believe if I don’t believe in others? How can the feeling of god be wrong for someone else but right for me?
God, are you nothing but me?
God, are you nothing but the absence of doubt, no matter how valid?
I do not understand the world I live in. I do not understand how rational people can so calmy endorse the murder of children because of war, because of history, because of their bloodline or religion, because of their beliefs. I do not understand how someone who has a child can be open to killing someone else’s.
I have a theory. You don’t have to reply, I know that’s not your strongest point, and I will continue to interpret the symbols like someone addicted to gambling. Like a pigeon who got fed after he lifted his left leg so he continues to lift his left leg to receive food but the old man on the bench has gone home.
But my theory is that whatever happens here does not matter. That’s it is just matter. Is this atheism?
Did I just ask god if I am an atheist?
I have faith, but that is all it is.
Did you see that six hundred cities across the globe protested against the invasion of Iraq?
Twenty years later they retrieved all their troops and everyone agreed it should not have happened. Now they still protest. The guilt is overflowing that no celebration can come without acknowledgement of murder and injustice of the past or the present. But why? When, even if you try, there is nothing you can do. Why feel guilt when there is nothing you can do? There is nothing you can do.
There is nothing I can do but hope you exist to punish your children who are taking advantage of the corruption of the playground. Guess who knows you exist, the ones holding the guns. Guess who prays to you, the ones getting shot.
So why do I even know about the small child who awakens beneath rubble beside his dead family when there is nothing I can do about it?
Why even put these ideas or morals and duality within me if there is nothing I can do about it?
Why give me free will to appreciate a sunset when others use it to kill?
I do appreciate the rose, but at what cost?
I am starting to understand you, I think. And maybe I agree. You have decided to just leave it. You have decided that there is no ending. You have decided that we love it. You have decided that no matter what, it is all going to happen anyway. Its all just play. Its all just a game. It all just is.
I hope to open a door too quickly, and surprise you, and before the particles have a chance to change, I will see everything. I will see the squiggles and the chaos. I will see the flies in a glass box. I will see the irrelevance. I will take the cloak of guilt and frustration off and stop caring. I will join the hermits in the mountains with a smile knowing there are plenty of mountains for all of us. And I wont care for those who cant reach them, who are stuck behind a government barricade, or an abusive mother, or a debt, a debt to the manifest, fear to keep you in place, with your eyes plied open to watch and indoctrinate yourself by thinking you can make a change to something that’s already happened. I will do the world a favour and leave it and be one less block of movement that disrupts the serenity of energy with the attempt to correct it.
My frustration is that I have no where to put it and maybe that’s funny, I just cant see it yet.
But maybe you are there god. Like me with a laptop. And you make people suffer and you make people triumphant for nothing but the story. And everyone’s individual story is so nuanced. And a man sleeps in his silk sheets after returning home from service and being responsible for ending a family name. And its horrible and your readers cant believe your mind has the ability to write these things. And then the small child who lost his family writes a poem, and that’s your poem too, and the little boy grows to be a big boy, and he finds peace with everything you did to him, and you give him a beautiful wife and small children. And his oldest daughter reminds him of his mother because they have the same eyes and the same smirk. And when he watches his children play in a land without death falling from the sky he will accept your writing. And the man who killed his family grows old and his reflection begins to darken. And his surroundings begin to change. And the grandchildren he killed for don’t like him because of the lies in his heart. And none of us have a soul or anywhere to go after death but life keeps us here, for you to watch and watch. And you, God, he will turn to you, and he will ask why you wrote that, why you made him do that, and you wont answer, because you never do, and he will be left thinking it was just him, rotting with his memories with no delusion left, no joy left, just the truth.
Or maybe, he will grow old and wealthy knowing he did what he had to do, because he is a chosen person with a soul and those he killed were nothing but termites in the land of the messiah and only exist to challenge your faith and you passed the test, you keep your soul, and those beneath the rubble are a few less things to worry about.
Or maybe, it’s just what is, and what you do is what happens, and what you don’t is what doesn’t. And the real universe doesn’t care that evolution gave you a little voice in your head to interpret the body. And you, God, are nothing but the name of our arrogance, our fear of irrelevance. When we close our eyes it stays black and that is all over. Or you reopen them to see yourself in the open field of energy and know your manifested life was nothing but a small thought for your cosmic self. And you spent the time in the world with kookaburras and dogs, grass and flowers, soil and children, mothers and horizons, angry, miserable and deluded.
I am sorry, I just don’t understand, and watching all these people who apparently do, I never want to. But I do have faith, because I can. And if this is it, then this is it, and if billions die for me to appreciate the sky, It would be an incredible shame if I didn’t.
Love always,
Riley.
