Scot Murphy 

 

God Of

 

I asked God if he would marry me.
“Tell me who I am first.”
I thought. “You are the Supreme Being.”
“Why should I marry you?”
Why did I want to marry God? “Because I want to be part of you.”
“What makes you think you are anything like me?”
Let me think. I had hands, fingers, feet, toes; all things I thought God had.

But I paused.
“I am a man. God is all things. So God could marry anyone he wanted.”

“What makes you think I am not a married man?”
That really hadn't occurred to me, and I said so.
“What makes you think I am not a married woman?”
I asked him if we were merely jousting verbally, because I was serious.

I wanted to be married to God, forever and ever.

At any moment, he could break my heart, and that seemed likely.
“I have done terrible things,” God told me. “I could do many more.”
“But,” I said, “if I married you and became part of you, it would be less likely.”
“Are you kinder than I?” he asked. His tone was unplumbable.

“I have done terrible things,” I admitted. I hoped to purge myself of them.
I told him so.

“Do you think the terrible things you have done equal mine?”

My thoughts plunged. “No. I don't think that is possible.”

“Do you expect you are marrying a man, a woman, or a thing between?”
I didn't know, I told him. “I only think of you as God.”

His terrific honesty shone. “We are already wedded.”
“You and I?”

“And many others,” God said, “an infinite number.”
“But,” I said again, “I have done nothing yet to deserve it. I imagined a life of duty.”

God laughed. “Don't we all!”

 

 

Scot Murphy is either in search of God or hoping to avoid him. He lives in Indiana, the cornfield of the universe, waiting for the inevitable. Neither young nor old, he manages daily. He has friends who are devoted, casual, hopeful, lonely, desperate, gregarious, compassionate, loyal, generous, dismayed, disappointed, energetic, faithful, lost, eager, brilliant, funny, complacent, and outraged.