Tue, 2006 Mar 28
The tales of a God ignored
9 Chickweed Lane, the strip which answers the question “Can a comic have as many simultaneous story lines as For Better or Worse, but be entertaining?” (Answer: Yep.), has had a sequence of strips the last couple of weeks (say, 3/14-2/25, MOL), where Father Durly, by all appearances a Catholic priest (read: I know next to nothing about catholicism) consults Thorax, apparently a trans-dimensional blob with glasses, who is by all accounts not catholic. Ignoring the plot for the sake of room, Thorax (beginning 3/21) explains to Durly that God wants him to listen.
Thorax shares some tidbits about the personality of God, at least as Thorax sees it, setting up for a beautiful line that ought to be included in a sermon sometime. “I’m saying Monty [God] talks to me. He talks to us all. Actually, he spends a lot of time pouring out his heart to all of creation.” Thorax contrasts this with our tendency to ask things of, or complain to God. Instead of listening to him, being curious about him, we see “prayer” as a one sided stream of ourselves. At least, I generally do.
“Just between you and me,” Thorax states, “I think Monty tends to get lonely.” This is the rub, instead of being a friend to God, I act as though relationship means that I get someone to pour my heart out to. Instead, I ought to be someone God can both pour his heart out to, and with whom God can simply enjoy time spent. When Thorax discuss God’s preferences (3/21), when he says “You should hear [God’s] story about the time he met Katherine Hepburn (3/23)”, he is presenting a God who has a personality, who is a knowable person. That is how I want my relationship with God to be: a friendship, where I can have these sort of conversations, know the personal, theologically unimportant, details about God.
