Incompleat Iconoclast » God

Exercise #12: Fear of Water

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 05:39:39 +0000

Tomorrow the god will show his face in the shadow of the big temple. Then the priests will feed us a meal of corn and beans and give us a drink from a gold cup, wash us, paint our faces with the signs of Kukulkan in red and blue, and dress us in gold and feathers. And then they will lead us to the cenote.

I want to believe I will have the courage walk on my own legs and that they will not have to drag me, as I have seen them drag others. At the edge of the great well, they will say prayers to ask the god to accept us and bring an end to the drought. And then we will jump into the cenote, or we will lose our nerve, and the priests will pick us up and throw us in. If we survive the fall, they will pull us out of the well, and the god will give us the gift of prophecy.

I want to be brave. I want to make this sacrifice for the sake of our people, but especially for my parents and for my little sister. But I am not sure that giving up my life will bring the rain. I am young, but I am not too young to remember last year and the year before that. The priests gave victims to the gods, but the rain still hasn’t come. Why do they think that this year will be different?

Once my father was gone for eight days, scouting with a party of warriors. When he came back, he told me about a man that they met in the jungle to the west. The man was tall, with long limbs, and he told them of a place many days’ march to the north where rain falls nearly every day, and of places far away where the gods make rain flow across the ground in a kind of roadway of water.

I don’t want to die. I want to escape to a place where the gods don’t ask so much of their people.

Note: The prompt was to write about “a time you were afraid of water.” I didn’t feel like writing a hurricane story, so I tried something else.

Exercise #11: Favorite Thing to Do in Your Favorite City

Edward F. Gumnick — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:55:53 +0000

I’ve decided to return to the online workshop on which I was working when Hurricane Ike arrived last September. Had some trouble with the first prompt, though. My first attempt turned into unpublishable erotica. Here’s my second attempt:

Fragment #2

I want all of my life to be like these moments:

The day that Continental canceled our flight out of Rome, so we spent the day exploring Ostia. We surprised ourselves with how much fun we could cram into one unexpected extra day of vacation.
The day you led me through rush-hour traffic to Griffith Park, then showed me where the trail began. I was energized by your kindness.
The day the cold front blew through the city, and then you took me to your soccer practice. It was too cold for me to spend two hours waiting on a bench, so I wandered the unfamiliar neighborhood until I found a coffee shop open. Then I came back and climbed up and down the pedestrian staircase to to the road high on the hill above the soccer field to keep warm. While I walked the stairs, I had a heart-to-heart talk directed at a silent God. I told him that I thought he was irrelevant, and that I’d listened to his people and their bad ideas for long enough.

Great News!

Edward F. Gumnick — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:36:33 +0000

Although God had clearly outlined His plans to kill 500,000 people in southwestern California yesterday, He must have changed His mind at the last minute.

I hope the FBI is keeping an eye on the fellow who writes the web site to which I’ve linked above, because he makes the Unabomber sound quite sensible. I also hope the FBI is keeping an eye on God, just in case the other guy is right about all the terrorist threats in the Bible.

50/50 Exercise #37: Wrong and Right

Edward F. Gumnick — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:10:52 +0000

Dear sir:

Next creation? If you’ll pardon my French, you have got to be out of your blessed MIND! Have you completely forgotten how we reached the impasse at which we now find ourselves?

Let Me refresh your memory. The last time you decided to try your hand at creation, I attempted to outline for you a number of suggestions in the form of a PowerPoint presentation that you chose to completely disregard. I believe that My ideas were very reasonable, and as you will probably recall My saying (since you are omniscient and whatnot), I don’t believe that you gave them a fair hearing.

If you had listened to Me, your creation experiment could have proceeded smoothly. My plan would have imposed a sensible order on things—yourself, naturally, in the critically important chief-executive role, with a capable staff of archangels, angels, principalities, and so on and so forth. (If you wish to reacquaint yourself with My design, I can make a copy of My notes from our meeting available.) I would have been both pleased and proud to avail you of My not inconsiderable administrative talents. I had in mind the title of Vice President of Creative Operations, but I was certainly prepared to be responsive to your feedback.

And so I was most distressed at your dismissive reaction to My input, especially in consideration of the expense and effort I put into having My concept thoroughly market-researched and vetted through our Legal Department.

At any rate, My system was, I believe, a strong one from the standpoint of efficiency and maximizing resources, both in materiel and personnel. We could have managed a broad and comprehensive spectrum of worlds, possibilities, beings, and potentialities from which you might have been able to expect any number of positive outcomes—not least of which would have been huge profit margins. So I was dumbfounded (to say the least) when you moved forward unilaterally and unadvisedly on the present project.

As many impartial observers on My staff can attest, I noted some disturbing trends that began as soon as you separated the heavens from the Earth, thereby immediately eliminating many of the cost-saving characteristics inherent in My plan. But then to introduce a wild card in the form of these mortal creatures of yours! Even now, 6,000-some-odd years later, I am astounded that you could have made such an amateurish error. Little less than the angels? Good Lord! (If you’ll pardon the expression.) If you’d given this decision a moment’s careful thought, you would have foreseen the disastrous effect that your organizational scheme would have on the vertical nature of the hierarchy. I’m sure you understand why I chose to absent Myself from the organization rather than face the inevitable deluge of negative publicity, declining stock values, et cetera, et cetera.

But why continue to dwell on your past mistakes? Let us look to the future.

And on that note, let Me get right to the issue that prompted Me to contact you after all these years. I have been hearing whispers from fairly reliable sources about a Mark II Creation Project. If there is any truth to these rumors, I am somewhat dismayed that I have not yet been asked for My input. Still, I would be glad to forget this glaring oversight in the spirit of opening a rapprochement in our longstanding disagreement. And in light of everything that has failed to meet expectations on your first attempt, may I say that I would think you’d welcome the opportunity for a qualified, independent consultant to review your work plan?

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your prompt response.

Note: The assignment was to write about a time when you were sorry to be right or happy to find out that you were wrong. Wrong and right…good and evil…it got me thinking, and once again, I went off in my own direction.

This is a companion piece—a rebuttal, of sorts—to Exercise #2.

50/50 Exercise #2: Lead Line: “It’s going to be different this time…”

Edward F. Gumnick — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:20:24 +0000

It’s going to be different this time. I’m going to be more patient with my next creation. I’m going to play the “merciful and just” role instead of the “angry and vengeful” thing. I’m not going to give them tests they can’t help but fail. I’m not going to throw temptation in their way every time they turn around, then blame them when they fall. I’m not going to demand sacrifices—no first-born sons, no bloody, smoldering animal parts, no prophets or messiahs to be swallowed by whales or nailed to crosses. I’m not going to require them to glorify me. I’m not going to ask anything of them at all. I’m going to recognize their limitations and try to be okay with it. I’m not going to shroud myself in mystery. I’m not going to leave any doubt about how many of me there are. There’s just the one. I’m not going to confuse them with thousands of different names. I’m not going to ask them to call me by a name they’re not allowed to say out loud. I’m not going to appear to them in many different forms. I’m not going to confuse them with contradictory revelations. I’m not going to dictate any holy writ to unreliable scribes. I’m not going to punish them for doing things that come naturally. I’m not going to move in mysterious ways. I’m not going to help those who help themselves. I’m not going to get into any pissing contests with Satan. I’m not going to cast out any angels. I’m not going to expel anyone from any gardens. I’m not going to tell anyone what they can and can’t eat. I’m not going to decide who shouldn’t sleep with whom. I’m not going to tell them what to wear or say or sing or what day of the week to rest. I’m not going to call anything an abomination. I’m not going to write any rules on any stone tablets. I’m not going to ban the fruit of any tree. I’m not going to ask for tithes, or confessions, or burnt offerings, or foreskins, or crusades. I’m not going to rule out graven images. I’m not going to expect them to honor their parents. I’m not going to forbid them to steal or covet or kill. I’m not going to proscribe how, or when, or where they should worship me. I’m not going to ask for any worship at all. I’m not sending anyone to heaven or hell. I’m not going to create a heaven or a hell. I’m not going to worry about whether they love me. I’m not going to be their personal savior. I’m not going to require them to be born again. Once is enough. I’m not going to create the world in six days. I’m not going to create man in my own image and likeness. If I look at my handiwork and see that it’s good, I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.

Author’s note: Write a text that begins with the lead line, “It’s going to be different this time….”