Inner View

God is sitting across from me.  He has, predictably, a square jaw and a quiet smile.  His eyes, blue of course, also translate beneficence and calm.  This is sometimes at odds with the force and focus of his voice.  His diction is impeccable which mixed with the slow (not hesitant or droning) rhythm of his delivery bathes him in a noble authority that is both unnerving and comforting.  

Sitting in His presence is not like being eight at the confessional.  It is nothing like being twelve and squirming nervously in the Principal's office nor can it be compared to being twenty-one and haggling over a traffic ticket in the judges chamber.  

An interview with God is a exercise in the complexity of honesty.  And the first thing I learn is that the thing called "being honest" is impossible and that the truth I tell my self, the truth I tell my spouse, the truth I tell my mother, or my brother, or my son is different, none better or worse, just different.  God of course knows this and He is comfortable with it.  

The human foible of dissecting each word's meaning, dicing it up and building a case against or for,  would be lost on him.  For this reason, he smiles and even laughs sometimes when I correct myself or when I attempt to bring a more nuanced clarity to my response.  

He interrupts me, "So there's  this and then that, and these all wear hats, while those are most certainly bald."  I smirk a little.  The train of my thoughts has left the station.  The careful selections of language,    the internal Thesaurus, the precision of the period and other punctuation:  All this effort is disappearing in the puffs of the engine's steam.  "It really only requires the easiest yes or no.  Well, except on those occasions when there is room enough for sometimes."  

Sitting there I reflect on my relationships in the world.  To have my efforts diminished in this way by a teacher or by my lover would infuriate me.  I would, I am sure, feel slighted by what I would regard as a refusal to listen.  But here, now, in the vague environs of a space that is both luminous and subdued, I sense an almost playful teasing in God's response.  Between the words lie the nodding commiseration of an entity outside of time and space with one that is still (perhaps always?) caught within.