July 1, 2025
Me: So, God-who-seems-separate-from-me, what the heck is going on?
God: What you read, hear, and pull into your sphere of awareness is necessary information. But it’s not necessarily to be absorbed as God’s truth, so to speak, within your own awareness.
Me: What about my thoughts? What about this pervasive feeling of ennui?
God: What you call boredom, I call settling in.
Me: Settling in to what?
God: To both the you that is and the you that will be.
Me: That’s not terribly helpful when I’m jonesing for something that feels even a little bit fun or exciting. Gosh, I can’t even binge on cookies anymore!
God: (smiling) Cookies are awesome, aren’t they? In your lifetime, nothing has quite hit the sweet spot (wink) the way pastries have. Why do you think you can’t eat cookies or cake the way you used to?
Me: So I can experience boredom?
God: Not exactly. Dig a little deeper.
Me: I understand that sugar binging isn’t physically or even emotionally beneficial. But it’s so fun in the moment! Why don’t I have anything fun to do or even to look forward to? And please don’t trot out Dr. Peebles’s line, ”That’s your inner child speaking.” Frankly, I don’t care if it’s inner child or mind or ego. The me that is uppermost, most of the time, is so bored I could chew nails.
God: (smiles)
Me: What? What’s that smile?
God: Has it occurred to you that boredom is just a phase, the same way your lifelong happy-sugar-binging was a phase?
Me: I sure as heck hope it’s not going to last as long as that did. By the way, it feels like the desire to eat massive amounts of sugar has subsided after six-plus months of “abstinence.” At first I refrained out of fear – because of that skin reaction thing. I recently ate a chocolate croissant just to see if I could. It was yummy! And, no skin reaction. I was a bit amazed that I didn’t want to dive into a bag of cookies, but the croissant didn’t trigger a binge.
God: Is this perhaps sounding like equilibrium?
Me: If so, equilibrium is freaking boring.
God: All right, what exactly does bored mean for you?
Me: It doesn’t feel like a real emotion. It feels like an absence of big ups or downs. Kind of a pseudo-contentment even though the nagging feeling of something missing persists.
God: Does it feel spiritual? Does it feel like a process of change?
Me: Hadn’t thought of that. Now that you mention it, it begins to feel like a navigating experience. Boredom is like…becalmed. What is that place, the Sargasso Sea? Where you get stuck with no wind?
God: And what do you see around you in this becalmed sea?
Me: Things bobbing. A steampunk suitcase, some dull metal boxes with hinges rusted shut…
God: Don’t you want to see what’s in the suitcase and boxes?
Me: Not especially. What I’d really like to do is shoot some holes in those suckers and watch them sink out of sight.
God: What’s preventing you from doing that?
Me: Well, since this is the first time I noticed the boxes, that’s an unfair question. But now that I consider it…I guess I’d need a good sturdy shotgun.
God: (hands me a double-barreled musket) Here you go.
Me: That’s it? It’s that simple?
God: What, you expected an Uzi? This will do the job nicely, and with a great deal of fun. You will enjoy the noise and the puff of smoke and the satisfaction of shooting down your lingering ghosts, one by one.
Me: (slightly awed) OK…thanks. Will I need to reload this musket?
God: I’ll take care of that. You do the shooting and I will make sure you have exactly as much ammunition as you need.
Me: (smiling) Thank you. Good chat!
God: (smiles)
*****
A couple hours later, I check on progress. There are fewer suitcases and boxes bobbing than I noticed earlier, but even this diminished number is far more than ever could have belonged to me.
I realize there are multiple, synchronized muskets firing, a veritable army of ghost-sinkers. With every thundering blast, the suitcases and rusty boxes freighted with untold miseries and anguish upend like sinking vessels and vanish, sucked into a place that knows just how to absorb and dissolve them.
There’s not another thing that I, or any whose baggage is being obliterated, need do. This is God’s gift, and I gladly and humbly welcome it.
