2/16

God and Socks

For Julie.

I bought the wrong wrapping paper recently...it was for Christmas, but the paper said 'Happy Birthday', so I just wrote 'Jesus' under that...I hope they don't notice.
- Demitri Martin

I've been thinking a lot about God lately.
God's one of those things where every time you think you have it understood the rug comes out from under you and you try to figure out how you ended up on the other side without even realizing it.

Mostly I've been thinking the same thought I've had for a while now, which is God, and socks.

God is hard to understand.
Socks are hard to knit if you've never knitted a sock before.

My teacher Ms. Ragland is a nice lady, very concise, intelligent. She genuinely cares about her students and about our grades and how we're doing, and the methods we go about learning. I stare at her a lot in class because I always finish my assignments early, and when I'm not busy drawing oodles of Young Justice fan-art I like to muse on what it would be like to live as her. She's unmarried, she's pretty (great skin), and she dresses well. She's soft spoken, but affirmative.

She would make a really good Christian (of course, I don't know if she is, but if I had to guess, she probably is), a person who is thorough about reading, about actually knowing what she's reading, about a lot of things. She'd be a killer Sunday School teacher.

I like Rob Bell too, but only as much as I like my economics teacher. It's sad to admit, but I probably would only like the majority of Christian influences I've met as much as my economics teacher - they are great people with great ideas, but their religion somehow doesn't really make a big enough difference to me. I think that's why it's so easy for me to accept the wisdom and teachings of other religions too - the whole religion thing doesn't always factor in.

I think this started when I began to try and pin God down.
Everyone wants to pin God down.

(Here come the socks, if you were wondering.)

Everyone wants to give God a zip code or an address, or a suite number at a hotel. They want to give God names and faces. They want to get invited to God's birthday parties, and invite God to theirs. They want to bring awesome hostess and host presents. They want God to be human that they can buy presents for at  Christmas. They want to figure God out. Really, really, really bad.

Because it's easy to buy Christmas gifts? Or make them.

People get crazy about it - they want to get God exactly what he wants , they want to figure him out so badly, they want to buy him the perfect present, and they brag to their friends about how they're going that extra mile to make the present by hand, and God's just going to love them and not just wear them when they go to visit, and God's so hard to shop for so they figured something from the heart means more anyway, right?

God take their theology, their ideas and say: "I know this so well, you won't even believe it. Look at my ideas, look at my philosophy on heaven and hell, how it's so much more than those other peoples, so much deeper and cerebral. I stayed up all night making this, it took me months, I pined and slaved, and I think I've gotten it!"

We all put our gifts under the tree, and one by one God opens them, folding the wrapping paper because I imagine my God as kind of anal like that.

In the words of Jim Gaffigan, God holds up the socks and finds that it's barely a sock, that the socks are all mangled, and most of them don't even have a matching pair, and says "Not even close." in that beautiful deadpan manner.

I've never knit a sock before. As far as I can tell, I've never lived another life except this one, so how do some people claim that they're so sure about everything?

How do you compare God Socks when it's the first time anybody has made one?
I don't think there's a pattern for God Socks.

I don't know.

I think the most important thing is that as I bumble through my life and think about God and socks at least I recognize that I'm trying. I know for a fact that whatever I say here is virtually meaningless, because honestly I have no. idea. what. the. hell. it'll really be like. So, I won't even attempt. I'd rather just try to get through this life with God's help instead of trying to figure out God's. God's always saying about his plans for us, and then, by osmosis or something like that, the God becomes more apparent.

I don't think it has to be the other way around - I mean, people think they have to learn to knit first, and then God will take the wheel.

I think God wants us to stop trying to make those mangled socks, so that by the time we get to heaven and we open the box up ourselves, we realize that he's the only one who really knows how to make a pair of socks, and honestly, he made them for you for now so that you wouldn't do something so stupid as get distracted with emulating them.

This is merely a wandering of my mind, nothing more or less, wrong or right or in between. Just a thought that became a bigger thought, and maybe it will make you think too!
Peace, God, and Socks
xoxo,
Hannah