Last Exit Before Oblivion

Four years ago this experiment with God began. How I could have so many wrong ideas and still end up in the right place is very funny. Or maybe I had the right ideas but got to the wrong place and then God made it right.

Four years. Time enough to have changed the world? All I really have to show for it is that I'm still here.

Water beads up from dry ground and runs off. A little remains. Keep watering it and eventually it becomes less hydrophobic. It still takes time for the new water to seep slowly in among the dusty soil where nothing has grown for years. Who has patience to water dirt? People stand by their gardens thinking "Grow! You've had three days."

I decided at the outset that I wasn't going to repeat the Christian rituals that didn't seem to work; there was little point in throwing off one set of chains and then wrapping myself in another. I decided to be honest, and took Jacob's overnight wrestling match as my model. What did I have to lose? If God got angry and ended my life it wouldn't have mattered. I looked at it as a lottery ticket kind of thing: probably nothing will happen but if you don't try there's zero chance.

It's odd how the words "In God We Trust" are on the money we handle every day but those who expect God to do something are looked upon as being weird. I was more open-minded than that but still didn't see much evidence that God had anything to do with the running of the world, but this is a lot like trying to collect air samples with a fishnet. You look in the net, see nothing, and therefore air doesn't exist.

Change your mind, change your eyes, change your heart. The evidence is scattered all through my life, and I started to see this after banging on God's door and yelling for help.

Only God really believes that the sere desert can be watered into life. I've seen it happen and still have a hard time believing. What happens if he abandons me now? Trust is hard.

Autumn is approaching in its languid southern California way. The hills are desiccated, dusty, brown. Not a flower decorates the seared hillsides. We had little rain last season and none since early April. The deer come down and graze in the polo field because there's nothing else for them to eat; I watched them sample eucalyptus bark one day. I can't live on eucalyptus bark but it's what I'm used to. God is working on getting me to eat better things.

How long does it take to grow trust? How much water must be cast onto the lifeless ground before real growth begins? Is the growth that God envisions the growth that I want? How would I know? Four years on, and I still have only a hazy notion of what I'm hanging on for.