Professor Gunther Grobschlächtiger , a small bookish man with delicate features and a fashion-waif’s slender proportions, invited me to join him at his home one afternoon for tea.  At first, I tried to beg off, informing the good professor that, although I had made an attempt at developing a taste for his preferred beverage, I found tea to be a bit too frail – I required a drink with more girth.  Whereupon, he happily informed me that he also possessed a large assortment of Peruvian Black Fungus Mountain Coffees and so the appointment was set.

…up on a shelf he had a small jar labeled ‘God’, written in a fine, almost calligraphic script.  I went over to take a closer look and I saw, floating in that murky greenish-yellowish fluid that pickled things float in, a small man.  The little chap couldn’t have been much more that eight inches tall.  I wondered at the fact that he, or ‘He’ as He was presumably God, was fully dressed as He floated about inside the jar, not naked to examination as were all the various other critters in their own similar conveyances on the surrounding overloaded shelves.  My learned friend later explained the little robe and sandals by saying, “Well, its God.  Have some respect,” which seemed reasonable enough to me.  One wouldn’t want an eight-inch-tall naked God floating around in a pickle jar all day, I suppose.

-“…and how do you know it really is God?”

+”He told me so.”

-“But how do you really know?”

+”Do you think God would lie?”

-“No.”

+”Well, there you go.”

…and how did I acquire Him, you ask?  Well, one afternoon I was sitting on my sofa while watching some local news on the TV (not this sofa you see here, but one I have since moved down to the basement) and I remember the weatherman saying something about how nice and pleasant the day outside was going to be and then suddenly God appeared on the seat cushion beside me, looking very much as He does now, except that He was still ‘Existing’ as He called it, you know, still alive.

He didn’t really have a whole heck of a lot to say, so we both sat there, Him and I, and we watched some television together.  He kept asking me to put on some ‘Painting with Bob Ross’ and I kept having to inform Him that I didn’t have access to that channel, unless, by some miracle…  but He was having none of that.

The one truly interesting thing He did tell me was, as it turns out, the Cathars were correct and there hasn’t been a new Soul to enter Heaven since the Cathar Heresy was put down in 1229.  The last ones to get in were a bunch of Serbians and they brought a shitload of goats and chickens with them, but that’s been it, no more since.

…do you remember what happened on the third Tuesday in May of last year?  No?  Well, that’s because for most of the people on the planet not much occurred on that day which is worth remembering.  I mean, there were probably hundreds of thousands of events which did occur on that fateful Tuesday which were wonderful, or tragic or otherwise impactful for the hundreds of thousands of persons around which those events took place, but in the overall scheme of things not much happened to the vast majority of humanity which was worth remembering.  However, and this is the interesting point here, that is the day God died.  On the third Tuesday in May of last year God died and almost nobody noticed.  I did, because He was sitting on the sofa next to me.  Well, sitting at first and then kind of lying stretched out prone once He was dead.

Oh, I’m sure there were some people in the world, maybe quite a few of them as a pure number, but again not so many in overall terms, who, on that very day in May, considered the fact that God had abandoned them to their lonely fates.  But that would have been mostly due to the individual tragic circumstances they found themselves facing, not because they were truly aware in their hearts and minds that God was dead.  Sure, they weeped and wailed and some hit themselves in the head and wondered aloud why their home had burned down or their daughter had been murdered or their Bingo card had failed to produce even a single winning game all afternoon, or whatever.  And they railed against God and His absence in their time of need, but they didn’t really believe He was gone, not really.

In fact, during those very same moments of despair, for those folks so inclined, there were others, elsewhere, having very different experiences which only served to reaffirm their belief and faith in the continuing existence of the Almighty.  They smiled and laughed and felt God’s warm embrace as they inwardly and/or outwardly thanked God and His good graces that their child had survived the disease, the earthquake had spared their neighborhood, their horses had showed, placed and won.  Bowed head, bended knee, index finger jabbed upward toward the heavens – visible affirmations all that God’s divine intervention had not gone unnoticed by the good folks down here on terra firma.

The point is, their lives went on, or didn’t, as the case may be, and they didn’t notice that God was dead.  But He was.  Dead as a doornail right there on my couch, while I watched TV.

As he said this last bit, and apparently in an effort to emphasize his point, the professor picked up the small jar containing the lifeless corpse of the Supreme Being and gave it a vigorous shake.  The liquid sloshed violently around inside the sealed container and God, suspended as He was in the preservative juice, sloshed about as well.  His little white beard swung from side to side as His head lolled and His robe shifted a bit and exposed more of His skinny legs and knobby knees.  I half expected one of His sandals to fall off, but neither one actually came loose.  God’s footwear, is seemed, was up to the challenge.

“You know,” said the professor suddenly…

…not too long before God appeared on my sofa I was spending a lazy afternoon out at the local citizen’s park.  I had been sitting on a shaded bench, minding my own business, for quite some time when I happened to glance to my left and I saw a man walking up the path towards me and this fellow was wearing a white T-Shirt on which, in rather bold black letters, was printed the phrase, ‘God is a Cunt.’

I must say, I was rather startled – in fact, I think I might have physically jumped just a bit, a little bit of a twitch, you understand?  It was so jarring, to be honest, that I had to look quickly away and so I turned my head to the right to look down the path in that direction and do you know what I saw?  A most amazing thing; there was another fellow approaching from that direction and he too was wearing a white T-Shirt, except upon his shirt was the phrase, ‘Man is a Cunt.’

Again, I was quite taken aback, but before I could even begin to process this odd situation a third man, whom I hadn’t even seen approaching from any direction whatsoever, leaned in close to me as he walked past and he winked at me and said, ‘Can’t it be both?’ and off he went.

And I can’t help wondering if God didn’t show up that day on my sofa just to let me judge for myself, in some small way, at least the part about Him.  But then He died and not much changed.

Another coffee?