An Email from God

From:  God [god@heaven.net]

Date:  July 29, 2014 at 8:33:22 AM PDT

To:   Distribution list [all humanity]

Subj: Just stop it!

Reply-To:  [www.prayerstoGod.net]

People, I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand you. And if I don’t understand you, that’s saying a lot. LOL

I created anatomically modern versions of you about 200,000 years ago. I know, I know: some of you take everything literally and believe I did it in October of 4004 BC.  But that’s just part of biblical mythology ... an early kind of PR campaign on My part, don’tcha know. (Sorry. I digress.)

After you muddled on for a few thousand years I let you develop modern human behavior: language, abstract thought, symbolism, etc. That was about 50,000 years ago, and at that point I thought you would develop real intelligence and common sense on your own. I was wrong.

From the moment I let your species loose on this planet—whether on the sixth day of Creation, as it says in that book you wrote about Me, or some date scores of millennia earlier—there has been but one overriding story line: war.  Constant, unrelenting, unforgiving war. It’s fueled by your fears, anger, jealousies, and hatreds. It never solves anything, but you keep doing it. Apparently you hope that the next one will be the last one. It never is.

I think one of you said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “It’s a mark of insanity to keep trying the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results.” Well if that’s true, I’m here to tell you that you’re all insane. You never get different results; everyone loses, but you keep trying. Pardon the italics, but I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more.

I have watched you fight it out for aeons (I’m old, I use the old spelling), and the list of conflicts is endless. To name just a few, there’s the Peloponnesian War, the Hundred Years War, various civil wars (that’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one!), World War I (“the war to end all wars”), WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and hundreds of others.

Now the Middle East is ablaze again in Syria and Gaza and Iraq. And you’ve even democratized war so much that it no longer requires an army: a few zealots with a cause can fly like kamikazes into large buildings or shoot down civilian aircraft with shoulder-held rocket launchers.

Wake up, people! It doesn’t make any sense! You fight endlessly. You fight over territory. You fight over power. You fight over tribal jealousies (take the Hutus vs. the Tutsis, for example). All your great religions purport to worship Me and act in My Name, and they all speak of the desire for love and peace, but you even fight about religion! (See, e.g, Christians vs. Muslims; Catholics vs. Protestants; Sunnis vs. Shiites).

William Shakespeare, the best author I ever created, might as well have been referring to war when he wrote: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

So here’s my message to you humans: JUST STOP IT! Ask your most respected religious and spiritual leaders (no politicians, please, for My sake!) to get together and send this message to the world on my behalf—

High School Daze

A college-era friend called yesterday. He and his family are in So. Cal. on vacation, and he had told me a week or so ago that we might be able to get together. Now that they’ve arrived at their beach rental—in Carpinteria, near Santa Barbara—he realizes that he’s more than 200 miles from San Diego and getting here would require a long slog through LA traffic or 5½ hours on the train. 

After apologies for the change of plans and our agreement to try again some other time, we got to talking about family, mutual friends, what we do for fun, and even high school reunions because this year is the 50th anniversary of our respective graduations. He’s “devilishly curious” to see whether high school friendships will have survived five decades.

Loyal readers of this blog (assuming there are any) may recall that three years ago I briefly mentioned a related phenomenon. In that post of June 8, 2011, I wrote:

It was prom season recently. "Glee" had an entire episode on it, and the NYT had a story about proms for adults, of all things. The headline read, "Second Shot to Have the Best Night of Their Lives." Their best night! Really? … Gag me! I thought proms were stupid when I went to them (credit peer pressure for my going), and I feel even more so now. And proms for adults? Puh-leeze!  

I guess you can sense where I’m headed with this: my friend Bill is going to his reunion, but I couldn’t care less about mine. The adolescent years generally—and high school years in particular—aren’t especially joyous ones for a lot of people. I don’t think you’re even supposed to be happy at that age, so why conjure up those memories? For me the pleasant ones are few and the lasting friendships fewer still. I’ve kept in touch with the handful of my peers I really care about.

Garfield HS, Terre Haute, IN

I’ve never been back to my high school, and it doesn’t even exist any longer. Its reunion will be combined with the reunions of two other schools in town that also have been relegated to the dust bins of history. Thus, were I to attend the joint festivities I wouldn’t recognize most of the people there and would have little in common with any of them. Why would I want to go back to see a bunch of old people I don’t know?

They can “drink a cup of kindness” to the days gone by, but as for me … I’d rather live happily in the present.

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