“But who can be bothered these days, with the kinds of gods, who would sucker punch you when you weren't looking or stumble in drunk halfway through Thanksgiving Dinner and demand sacrifices? We want dependable deities, a god whose love you can sing pop songs about. We want benevolence, mercy, white light, guaranteed two-day shipping”. *
Anjali Sachdeva is right. That’s what we want, and when the idea of God gets overly mischievous and unpredictable, we turn to other things that might allow us to keep our spiritual Disney alive. We follow those who offer sweet poems that rhyme with ‘everything's going to be alright’ and show us angelic photos of their children doing artwork in children's church or just the look-at-me selfies in the mirror.
I don’t have many memories of my childhood. The smell of a warm meat pie in a white paper tuck shop bag at school. The delicious aroma of the yellow and white frangipani blossoms lining the laneway on my walk (usually run) to the morning school bus.
My earliest memory is of the sound of grief. John F Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963; I was barely four years old. It was just a sound. The noise of my mother sobbing.
I also recall an April afternoon when I snagged an unexpected invitation to our eight-year-old neighbours’ birthday party in place of my elder sister. Tanya was stung by a bee as she skipped up the driveway to the party. I was moping around, disappointed that I had not been on the guest list. The stung sibling returned home in tears, hobbling on her damaged foot. Without any concern for my sister, I saw a golden opportunity.
“ Can I go now? Instead of Tanya.”
“No’. Said Mum, “ Just run over and tell Mrs Davis that Tanya will come later.”
My lucky break. I enjoyed the party.
Ever the hustler - church ministry would suit me well.
Mine is a story of going to parties and losing myself and finding and grieving and stopping and running, and innocence lost and then found.
I was groomed by privilege into the life of a hustler - selling right and wrong, hanging up achievement certificates, measuring ambition and success - which became only more natural and more accessible as one learns the tricks.
But in that marketplace somewhere, I got muddled up like a toddler separated from Mum in the dairy section up the back of Aisle Five. Lost.
The child stands mute for over a minute or two and then begins the growing wail, starting with a quivering chin and ending in a red-faced yell. Fear and sweat mix into one as the first available shopper rescues the child. The staff make an announcement. ‘Attention shoppers, we have a small child at the Service Desk who hopes to find her Mum. Please come to the nearest cash register so we can reunite you with your child.’ I must add that I am always the one who first sees these abandoned toddlers. It’s a curse and a gift, I suppose.
But as adults, we don’t know who to ask - where the flipping information desk is, and if I find it, how do I formulate my question? I lost myself. Can you see me? I don’t even know what I seek.
My quest is to find the information desk, announce that I am lost, and hope that someone will collect me and take me home.
It might sound like fun as you or I search for lost things like peace, beauty, rest, practising the presence of now all the usual suspects of our time - but it is excruciatingly painful.
I endeavour to strip back layers of paint with a small, sharp tool. I have to do it well. I`m trained to do things well. So the scraper becomes like a scalpel in the hands of an oaf hacking away at the heart. I don’t know what I’m doing really.
I expect that the discomfort will ease. The hardest part of painting or heart surgery for that matter is the preparation. This is just the preparation. And I’ve always been this way.
*Sachdeva, A., & Campbell, C. (2018). All the names they used for god: Stories. Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group.