AN INTERVIEW WITH GOD

Spike Lee once requested that only a black person should interview him regarding one of his films. This created a little uproar among those of other ethnic groups, but it didn't bother me. Those with shared cultural affinities tend to be close to each other's, if not on the same, wavelength. After all, if one wrote a book on Jewish cooking, one might request to be interviewed by a bubby rather than by an ammama.

I suspected that this Spike Lee anecdote entered my consciousness, after a period of several years, for a reason. Then, while staring at an elm, I was struck by a flash of inner lightning--Perhaps I could use this same principle to land an interview with God. Although there are a great many differences between us, we have one thing very much in common: we are both invisible old men, powerless, too. So I prayed for an interview. To my surprise, God agreed. He would meet me in my very next dream.

On the evening of my dream, my wife prepared a lovely meal of rice, dahl and bindhi; I ate too much, of course. Later on I expected, as usual, to meet the god of indigestion; I was delighted, upon falling asleep, to find the Ancient of Days sitting at my kitchen table.

Poor God, I thought, he looks like me.

--Where's the beard, I asked Him.

--This is already the beginning of the third millennium C.E., not B.C.E., He responded. --Even old men's styles are not eternal.

--May I ask you anything at all?

--Ask away. My response, though, may be the usual one--Absolute, I-don't-care-what-you-want, Silence.

--You are obviously an old man like me. A friend of mine who attends a liberal synagogue, informed me that all references to You as a guy have been removed from the synagogue's prayer books. How does that make You feel?

His Face lit up like a thousand suns. Well, maybe not a thousand, but bright enough to make me uncomfortable. Like that dreadful mall at Kenilworth, only much, much worse.

--If you don't want Your image to evaporate in the middle of this interview, please calm down.

--All right, shayn-- He looked hurt. --They don't call Earth h e, do they? It's not fair.

--Why not?

--Earth, that is, Nature, is always metaphorically female. Why do I have to become an It? It's not fair.

(Good God, I thought; just like me, He's only a male metaphorically.)

--In Yiddish--by the way, I often do monologues in Yiddish at the center of intergalactic voids; nobody laughs--Nature is feminine, as she is in all languages where half the nouns are attracted to the other half. (Your English nouns are far too proper for that.) She's all powerful and I'm non-existent. She controls you and I never intervene. But I'm still Nobodaddy, not Nobomommy! I insist on that!

---Why?

Because, non-existent to the intellect, I'm hidden, I'm absent. Those hunter gatherer guys left. Who knows if they'd ever come back? Soldiers went off to war. Who knows if they'd ever come back? I left before I even arrived. A real guy, no? Your Mother--trees, stars, dogs, people--is everywhere. She's almost everything; I'm almost nothing, You don't follow any of my commandments, only hers; at least you can get my metaphorical gender straight, no?

--Well if You are, from our perspective, just about nothing and nowhere, why should we bother with You?

--You're the illusion, Man, not me.

--Huh? Is that a joke?

--I'm Sirius.

--Huh?

--Sirius is one of the largest stars in the cosmos. Its gravity is tremendous, far greater than h e r s, Earth's. Let's pretend for a minute that it's infinitely greater than Earth's, and I'm Sirius. Cosmically speaking, I am very powerful. But you are so far away from Me that you don't feel my pull. Viewed from your little blue pebble of ignorance, I am indeed almost nothing.

--Kindly stop referring to Mother like that; after all She raised me without any help from You! It's inevitable that we defy Your gravity, since You're so far away. Earth's is all we feel. Do You expect us to jump off a cliff, if we had to, for the sake of a hidden Old Man who is hardly there?

--Yes. If you did, I'd save you, though no one would be able to tell.

--In other words, kerplop.

God smiled. --You're a great betrayer; both of us agree on that. But Whom have you betrayed, Me or Her? Are We not One and the Same? Are you, as an individual, real? Who is empty, you or I? Let me tell you the truth...

I was about to scream, when my bladder, which is in many languages a feminine noun, woke me up. After a long pause, I heard her voice--Had to save you from that Hindu stuff... Now you're really empty, she said dryly. Thank God! I exclaimed, and went back to bed.