The Concept and Portrayal of an All-Knowing God

I have always been a seeker of beautiful ideas. In grade one, inspired by the thrill of something otherworldly, I approached my teacher at recess to express my concern that there needed to be “more mystery in the classroom”. I remember those words exactly. She was baffled but did not discourage me from creating a mystery of my own for the other kids to experience. I hid under the table of the playhouse kitchen set-up and cut out paper “footprints”. Then, before the students got back to the room, I arranged them in a line that wandered the room. Naturally the kids were very excited and intrigued by this mystery. What did it mean? My teacher almost desperately asked me to produce an answer, some kind of plot or point to it all, but I felt my job was done. I wouldn’t admit to the other children that I had done it, and enjoyed the chatter of speculation buzzing over the next few days.

Over years I explored many faiths and philosophies, but when I sensed my belief was not genuine, that there was some deal-breaker within the ideology that I could not accept, I would move on. Often my greatest point of contention was with the portrayal of a God who possessed infinite knowledge and power, yet sounded like a slightly cranky old man.

Or worse, a dictator.

Or a cult-leader who professed unconditional compassion for all his followers while beating them in the back room for daring to look him in the eye.

It is said in Abrahamic religions that God created humans in his own image. That being so, would he not find it an abomination that a single one should be cast aside or eternally damned, as they are symbols of God himself? Even if these strange small beings all inhabit an uncanny valley when compared to him.

And to convince human minds with threats and force might make people appease him with claims of their belief — but no one can be bullied into genuine love. Only submission.

That said, the mysteries of what powers may lie behind the scenes of the observable universe will always intrigue me. Personally, I think they are best left as mysteries — paper footprints across a grade one classroom.

POEM: A Nomad Mind

Her existential crisis,
a late-onset failure to thrive,
found no crumb of meaning
in this hand-to-mouth life. It felt
too similar to the assembly line itself.
To even think 
on it, especially when traveling 
on the streetcar,
or in bed at night,
or at the grocery store --
that was abomination, admitting
to herself that she was but waiting
to die. 

With a practiced breath
she steadied her thoughts. 
In her mind’s eye, she pressed
dawn’s dew from a clump of moss 
and let it drip
onto her tongue, parched
from singing the stars to sleep. 

In the outward world, she exhaled
slowly, swaying
with the streetcar’s pull
toward the factory. She smiled,
her thoughts stretching 
like a cat from sleep, refreshed. 

Wildness had long fled
her flesh, her physical life captured
in a consumerist orbit
around this modern sun-god 
of eternal hungering.
Hers seemed a joyless people,
staid and satisfaction-fearing.
Such people who would desire
to wall up the wind, lest it beguile
a curious mind to feel
a true and natural power. 

Such a world inspired
only emptiness. She survived
because she’d decided 
her mind was a lawless place. 
Within, she found a raw landscape,
hers alone, where a life could be made
idea-foraging,
making camp in a moral debate,
and seeking the fertile fields of soul.

Here her nomadic mind worked 
out her own domestication,
unbound 
and traveling light, cultivating
her existence like an artisan’s craft.

Rivers ran for a living, too.
Stagnation so quickly turned
water to poison. 
All flow and cycles and seasons felt
entropy’s breath at their necks,
and never since stopped
to see if they were still being chased.  

The streetcar squealed to her stop. 
Now she’d cross the street and spend 
a twelve-hour shift working
the line, all the while traversing
a rocky steppe of her mindlands,
choosing stones that struck
her heart as treasure.