Tell Me All Your Thoughts on God

Sorry, now I’ve got that song in your head. That is, if you listened to the radio in the 90s.

I had a good talk with our church’s minister a couple of weeks ago. She’s reached out to me a few times since Clio got sick last year, and I never managed to make it work for us to meet. But she got in touch again shortly after we got home from our last hospital stay, knowing it was a difficult stretch, especially with the added emotional factor of the Boston Marathon bombings. And this time we finally met, and talked.

I was actually in a pretty good frame of mind by that point. We’d been home from the hospital for a couple of weeks, and Clio was feeling great. But I told her about some of the things that were difficult about the whole thing, and about the pressures of the constant juggling act — which I’d liken to juggling about six tennis balls, plus one 12 lb. medicine ball — that my life feels like so much of the time.

Then I told her, she being a minister and all, how I felt jealous, sometimes, of people who had strong faith in God to comfort and support them when things were tough. (She, being a Unitarian Universalist minister, is probably used to  this sort of admission from her congregants.)

I told her about the mother of one of the other cancer patients we’ve met, who is a devout Catholic. Her daughter has had a really, really rough go of things. But the mom always writes on her Facebook page about how they are in the Lord’s hands, and that the Heavenly Father has a plan. When things go well, she praises God and Jesus. Prayers — her own and those of her friends and family — are obviously a great source of strength and comfort for her. She reads the bible a lot.

I guess I’m what you’d call agnostic. Or a God-as-master-cosmologist-ist. Sometimes I believe in fate, and feel like things happen for a reason. Other times I don’t. Part of me believes in supernatural-ish things like ghosts and astrology and clairvoyance (I’ve been known to have some vaguely prophetic dreams) and past lives. Another part of me thinks it’s all bullshit. Mostly the astrology part. Anyway, I’m a mess of contradictions.

A couple of months ago, when we found out that Clio had a blood clot, even thought it wasn’t something gravely dangerous, I felt like I was at the end of my rope. Or a rope anyway. I wanted a longer rope. Actually, I wanted a net — something I could fall into and be caught by. I wanted to be able to pray to God for courage, or strength, or for some kind of answer. I wanted to know that everything was going to be OK. I wanted to be able to say, “Heavenly Father in your eternal wisdom, give me strength and take care of my little girl, I ask this in Christ’s name, amen,” light some candles, and feel better.

But I can’t. For starters, the “Christ” part doesn’t work when you think Jesus was a gifted teacher with a wonderful message, not the Son of God. And it’s hard when you don’t believe there’s any sort of “Heavenly Father,” (or mother) just, maybe.. maybe…some God-like cosmic force that unleashed the laws of physics. Because what kind of comfort could a cold, far-off “God” like that possible offer? It certainly can’t intervene, except to the extent that, thanks to those laws of physics it set up waaaay back when, the properties of various chemicals, found in the blood thinner Clio now gets, act as an anti-coagulant to human blood.

“Dear God-like cosmic force of yore, thank you for the laws of matter and energy, on the basis of which Clio’s clot can be treated. But no thanks for the way those laws of matter and energy gave her leukemia, thus requiring her to get the chemo that caused the clot in the first place. Hey, wait a sec: Are you in cahoots with the drug companies, God? WTF?? This prayer is over.”

My minister and I also talked a little bit about the way Alastair and I are so publicly sharing our family’s experiences, and the pros and cons of that. Almost all pros, though. I told her that it was incredibly therapeutic to write about all this (whether here or on Facebook or in places like HuffPo or elsewhere), and the support of friends, family and readers that follows is a big source of comfort and strength.

Then I had sort of a Eureka moment. Because here’s the thing: there is another version of God that I believe in, and that’s the collective consciousness version — the idea that “God” is another way of talking or thinking about the collective thoughts, feelings and spirit of all people.

It’s the connective tissue of human existence. It’s love, a lot of the time. Mostly, it’s just awareness — acknowledgment of our interconnectedness as sentient beings. And perhaps the cosmic-force God has some hand in this; maybe the rules that God set up that are ultimately responsible for the fact that human beings are endowed with consciousness, emotion, etc.

Anyway, here’s the Eureka part: I realized that that feeling of awareness and interconnectedness is amplified for me when I write about this experience. Knowing that people will read this, that they care, and might perhaps occasionally think of our family, I feel comforted. I feel heard. And I feel a little healed. The same way some people feel, I think, when they pray to God.

In other words, yes. You guys are God.

(And no, I’m not stoned! Honest! I mean, that might be nice, actually…But no.)

I mean, you’re not God god. But you serve a god-ish purpose. You, along with my far-flung friends and family members, are a fundamental part of my comfort and strength as my family makes its way through these perilous waters. Your presence — your awareness, your caring — is powerful, and a little bit mysterious. And I’m grateful for it.

Huge praise be to you.

Amen.