Lake of Fire in the Sky
Satire is meant to upend things—in order to see them afresh. My editor wondered if one of my satirical essays was irreverent. Sometimes I’m a Fool mocking self, society, delusions of grandeur, sex. —Sex, our reason for being—?? But sex can use a little mockery because it has taken over with grandiosity. So full of itself! It used to be—how should I put it? Demur. Yes, can you believe? Beautifully, popularly demur. Gift of God, sex “knew its place.” A secluded bedroom, a faithful monogamy. But now it has taken over all places— in popular culture and society. In criminality. Let’s face it: sex is “in your face.”)
What is irreverence? Is it—flippancy? Glibness? Cheek? Probably all that and more. But I shouldn’t dignify it with superlatives. Say, all that ... and so much less.
One thought about irreverence ...is .... God has a sense of humor. That is where humor comes from. Think what it would be like on earth without (in hushed tones) The Three Stooges. You may see Stooge Curly ogling a woman or making hubba-hubba noises, but that came in days before the 1960’s sexual revolt against societal checks—when it was thought sex could use a bit of Stooge encouragement there in its segregated cloister. ...Some may say, Please let us have no Three Stooges. —Can’t God’s sense of humor be any better than that?
Where does laughter come from anyway? Like principles, virtue, stars, atoms, subatomic particles—and sex—sense-of-humor comes from God. And, like a lot of that stuff, it is light. Lightness. Light to help us bear God’s apparent absence. How can absence be apparent? Doesn’t “apparent” relate to appearance? But our God is "disappeared." We don’t see God... except occasionally in his creation, image. A continual Presence, but hidden in simplicity.
The thing is...puzzling. Not only has God a sense of humor and is humor, God has a sense of humor about himself. (If God has a self ... which I doubt.) This was my answer to my editor. Not many people can be like God in this respect. My own self-sense of humor is abysmal. Sometimes I try to pull myself out of the abyss with it—doesn’t always happen. Or, I may forget that I’ve got a little piece of God’s humor in my pocket ... somewhere about me.
God is humble.
That’s where humility comes from.
I’ve pretended humility, but. You see right through that. You see right through real humility, too. But in a totally different way. It is transparent, not like foolishness, but like light.
Another bit of evidence for God’s humility (besides being able to take a joke) is mentioned above: While His GLORY is definitively declared, God’s presence in the cosmos, in earth, even in human beings is largely undetected ... in the sense of ....
How to describe?
Can’t really, but I’ll try.
...If God were completely present to me .... I’d be prone in a puddle of light. (But “prone” indicates gravity which God’s presence would also suck up, destroy. (Remember, this is a trial, I can’t really describe it.) If God were present, I’d be vaporized, absorbed, radiant. I’d be with God, in God—the same that melts the elements. I’d no longer believe in God.
Truth to tell: sometimes I look forward to that: Not having to believe any longer. You don’t really think this hesitant form I live in now is meant to last? That—when it’s done with frailty and brokenness, becomes but bits of the earth it came from (out of the garden of evolution)— Do we really think that we can’t be? If ever I am, it’s because God says, Be.
Everything on earth, in the cosmos and including the struggle of good-and-evil is because of his saying, Be. It’s why many Christians eagerly embrace the puzzle. And God, for whatever reason—I’m guessing selfless joy (which we can’t yet much understand, or continuously experience). —For whatever reason, God is interested in expressing Belief. Humor, light, love, life, and belief.
Were God apparent to everyone? —Who’s going to believe?
By Faith the worlds were made. By Faith we live & move & have our being. But it’s not our faith. It’s God’s faith. God, our Reason for Being.
God is humility. That’s why we don’t “see” God. Where would be the trust? Where the fun in forcing people you made to acknowledge you—by showing up? By melting those mountains? Creating, again, THE LIGHT?
© S. Dorman March 2024