A prayer to broken stones
We are like the stones of some vast city. Well, stones last longer than we but if even the life of suns and planets is as nothing inside the projector room of eternity, a few thousand years more or less is less than a quibble’s worth – and I like the simile – and I rule this little world – so there.
We are, as I said, before I was so rudely interrupted by myself, like the stones of some vast and ancient city. Some of us are stuck in broad avenues, other in short and boring dead-end streets. Some are part of schools or funeral parlours; others are tiny bits of huge cathedrals, shopping malls or bordellos.
Do stones know what cities are for – or even that they exist at all? Would they care what creatures lived there, thought of, dreamt of?
Like stones, we don’t know anything of real importance. Unlike stones, we’re not satisfied with simply being, and serving some (or no) higher purpose. We are stones with an attitude. We ask questions and demand answers – right here, right now.
Still, when mountains are but uppity pebbles in the eyes of the Gods, what does that make us? If Gods don’t strike down the mountains or paint silly faces on their silent Babel peaks, who are we to think that any God would ever pay even the slightest, blind bit of attention to our self-obsessed, self-serving and self-aggrandisizing little selves?
Who is this idiot Dawkins, who attacks Heaven as if God had killed his puppy when this small-time denier was a kid? To claim no Gods, no grand scheme, can even exist is, as it were, arrogance beyond belief. Almost as inane as people, like Bush (whether he’s burning or dancing) or wannabe last prophet Ahmadinejad, who claim to know God’s face, God’s plan, God’s wildest wet dream, if you like.
If there are Gods, they probably are so far removed from us that they could as well be dead or mere mythical creatures, so little good Their presence would do us.
If there ever was a Driving Principle, a Hand that Shapes, it would most probably not look like anything that some painter with a very long brush once painted on some ceiling. In the eyes of any God we would be, as Sheri S. Tepper once wrote in her novel ‘Grass’, very small beings.
Of course, anything is possible in a quantum universe but it’s still highly unlikely that when when each of us kicks the bucket we will immediately (or at some final judgement) be called to sit on some divine couch, where some well-meaning Oprah Godhead will invite us to take a look at our past life (or some horned Dr Phil will hoot: “And how does this work for you…??!!) to the applause of angels and other dead relatives (or the booing and moaning of minor demons and probably even more dead relatives.)
(Either scenario doesn’t bare thinking about, actually, so I’ll leave it you to envision this gruesome ‘Judgement by Talkshow’ on your own. I’ll pass, thank you very much. Feel free to leave your vomit in that bucket some hapless soul just very helpfully kicked upon the stage.)
Anyway, if there is a God (in singular or plural form) it is easiest to envision Him, Her, It (quite wrongly, most likely, but while we’re God-trotting, why not go the whole divine hog?) as some eternal artist. Surely some Creature That makes planets, suns, dark matter, kangaroos, gnus, crabgrass and us, must be revered as some quantum Rembrandt, a quarking Picasso, a true E=MC Bard?
So, if we allow for this vision, this model to contain our awe, why not admit the obvious? No artist, divine or otherwise, would create a universe and then sit down and just look at it, for ever and ever amen.
Could there be an artist God That would stick around for a few million years to watch every sparrow fall, every small boy burn insects and make notes of every (foul) thing that all of those small creatures do individually?
Surely not. Why would any God inflict that kind of punishment on Him-, Her- or Itself? Truly, this would be immeasurably worse than watching paint dry.
No, an Artist God would never stop with one painting, one sculpture, one play or one sonnet. He, She, It, They would create universe after universe, each one better, wilder and stranger & more beautiful than the last one.
If there are Gods, They must work like Warhol. They do not sit in anal, envious judgement. They are Artists, not critics. They are Creators and creators do not sit back and retire or judge. They create.
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