Dear Mr. Or Ms. God

Because I grew up in a culture where it is very popular to search for God but you are considered a freak if you proclaim that you have found God, I hesitate to confess my inclination to pray. But here it is: I pray. It soothes me. When I am grateful and happy I need to direct my gratefulness somewhere and then I pray. When I am unhappy and despair, I need to direct my anger and fears somewhere and then I pray.

Being acutely aware of all the horror, injustice and abhorrence committed by men in the name of God (thinking randomly of the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades and the Thornbirds…) I think that God must be pretty disappointed in us humans. But in lots of religions, God is called a parent. Being a parent myself, I understand how one can be bitterly frustrated with one’s child, annoyed to the point of pulling your hair out or even momentarily hate them a little bit (like when they won’t allow you to sleep for 2 years) – while loving them unconditionally and wholeheartedly at the same time. To me, the notion that God should love me like a parent is the most comforting and reassuring thing I’ve ever heard. If we really are God’s children – well, that makes me feel better.

Me praying to God goes something like this:

Dear God,

Thank you for all the many blessings you bestow upon my life. I am wholeheartedly grateful.

Please bless my family and all families.

Please keep us safe at all times and help us through the impending cold season with a minimum of coughing, snotting and general pain and discomfort.

Please protect my children and let them grow up to be good, wise men. And on the path towards manhood please steer them clear of the sort of adventures that include extreme sports, any kind of bodily ornamentation (tattoos, piercings and tribal scarring and/or burn marks… Also steer them clear of whatever they might come up with next that my imagination can’t even fathom!) Let them be unimpressionable when it comes to peer pressure concerning any kind of drugs, erratic behaviour (train surfing! WTF?) and just in general. 

Please let them be confident yet humble and genuinely self-loving with a healthy dose of self-irony. Bless them with good friends, healthy minds and strong bodies.

Make them better than me for I am a sore looser and an ungraceful winner.

Make them gentlemen with good hearts (that they follow), good manners and good taste – it would be really okay with me if they always wore their pants way up high so that none of their underwear is showing, will Thy please see to it?

Bless them with partners that bring out the best in them and make them laugh. Bless them with children so that I may experience the joys of grand-motherhood. 

I shall be an eccentric and most loving grandmother who, when they are small, shall sit them whenever their parents need it (and it doesn’t interfere with my travels which I hope you will grant me a lot of when I am retired (and before!). To warm places, thanks!) And when they are older and it is appropriate, I shall teach them to mix a perfect Manhattan.

Thank you for Hubby who is as overbearing and forgiving a husband as I could ever wish for. He laughs in the right places, empties the dishwasher by himself and is a Master Clothes Folder. He keeps up with the world and is thus always able to explain to me what is going on and whose side to root for. I appreciate him a lot. So thanks.

Please could you perform one of your healing miracles and cure that disc in my back that keeps popping out? It hurts quite a bit, as you must know.

Please let your spirit sweep across the earth so that all people may be blessed and feel loved. We need it! 

Please feed the hungry, comfort the sad, give company to the lonely and please, please, please forgive us that we are such huge jerks in general. I read somewhere (hu)man mas made in your image which – to be honest –  is a both comforting and frightening thought. If that means that you are anything like me (or I am anything like you) that would mean that besides a lot of good things, you are also vain, greedy, bitchy and quite farty when eating broccoli and/or garlic. To have a God who is those things is scary indeed but perhaps explains why I some days have to turn off the news because I think Evil has won. Is that really just you passing gas? 

 Granted, other times I hear stories of people, who do miraculously loving things and then I think there is hope for us.

I pray that you would consider rethinking the whole ”free will”- thing. I really don’t think we can handle it. But you know best of course.

In conclusion, please give me more of all the blessings I already have. I am painfully aware that you need to only remove one of the pillars of my life in order for the whole house to fall apart. 

Keep up the good work. I love you.

Thank you in advance.

Best regards,

Youknowwho

PS

Please forgive me for laughing really hard at and reposting this image on Facebook: