The Tree
New associations
I come to the Gilgal Tree to view old discussions in new light. Apples, I pluck and roll them in my palm.
The ideas are exhausted before I can exercise them. In prison I learned I’m not locked up as much as locked away. I wanted the tree.
Now I’ve found it.
There’s a great deal of debate around the existence of God, and I’m not interested in any of it. It has nothing to do with belief and everything to do with utility. If there is a God, he’s doing nothing for us. If there isn’t a God, he’s doing nothing for us.
I think of God the way I think of Tuesdays, or old friends who were never friends.
I stop looking for explanations. Instead, I suggest: it is what it is. I think that’s what God meant when he said I AM THAT I AM. I am what I am, and you are what you are.
Whether he created the first man has little impact on my here and now. Human nature is a weld arc contacting space time. God doesn’t walk for me or carry me. He doesn’t make an effort. I look up. Clouds roll in, the sky grows dark, and the ocean washes my footprints.
I know when I say yes, I’m giving myself permission to break. Walls. Limitations. Judgment. Cheaply made houses of shame that kept me prisoner. When I grimace I think of God. Grace never occurs.
A lot of people say they know God, but they don’t. They barely know men. Like those who say they know writing. But they don’t. They barely know words. They know punctuation and grammar. They know rules. They don’t know writing.
I find no God.
I find purpose. Purpose brings fulfillment. Maybe purpose is God.
Maybe God is turning 30.
Maybe cliffs are God.
Maybe waves are God.
Maybe the marina is God.
Maybe rejection is God.
Maybe starting over is God.
Maybe hating everyone and everything is God.
Maybe loving one thing is God.
Maybe shipwreck is God.
Maybe God is finding self.
Maybe God is reconfiguring yourself so many times you lose yourself.
Maybe God is finding yourself in your daughter.
Maybe God is turning forty.
Maybe God is terminal cancer.
Maybe God is all the things I have no answers for.
Maybe God just is.
This is not about God unless he is these things. Surviving war then dying in a car crash. A woman raped. A boy shot. A girl molested.
In the City, things do not happen for sensible reasons. Not every repetition is a glitch. Some of the repetitions—even the painful ones—were made that way.
I know God best when I’m locked in a cell, or when there’s a church nowhere in sight. I feel God most when I stop calling his name.
I came to Gilgal looking for old discussions and new light. I don’t have the answers yet, but I have questions. And apples. I roll them in my palm.
Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.
I never read Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. I didn’t have to. It was all right there in the title.