A Reading From The Letter Of Jen

Dear God,

I read a column in the paper today that said you destroyed those cities on The Gulf Coast because you were tired of all the sinning, and the gambling and the aborting of wee baby fetuses in the many “murder-by-abortion” clinics going on there. Some people seem to think you wrecked havoc down there because you were tired of the parading homosexuals, the beads-for-boobs program and the general lawlessness that seems to go on.

Is that true God? Did you do this as a good faith showing to the Conservative Christians? That is what they are saying. And I am just hoping to clear that up before the holidays. I am pretty sure that if you DID turn out to be that sort of vengeful God you might get fewer phone calls and more bloody, goat carcasses on your doorstep.

If it’s true, the whole thing seems a little unfair. I mean, there is a lot more Sodom and Gomorrah in this country that you haven’t even touched. In fact, you might possibly have exacerbated the situation by making them flee their homes and settle in other states.
What are you going to do if they move “Southern Decadence” up here to…oh, say Cicero Township? Flood those folks out as well? I guess, this being the Mid-West and all, probably more a plague of locusts huh?

God, please don’t take this as sass. I’m not trying to sass you. I am just asking because these are the type of things people are saying about you right now. And I hate to see you get bad mouthed in such a fashion. Especially when you are responsible for so many good things…like rainbows, cookie dough ice cream, and all of those fun gothic cathedrals in Europe.

Perhaps there is a higher reason you have seen fit to put this man on my couch, this couple in my extra bedroom and create this general southern diaspora. I’d like to think of it as a test of the charitable nature of humanity.

We live in a country of excesses. We eat too much, drink too much, buy too many things and consume our natural resources like they come off the shelves at WalMart. And yet it takes a catastrophe the size of a hurricane, or the magnitude of an 8 point earthquake, or the devastation of buildings collapsing before it seems that we are ready to lend aid to our fellow human beings.

Every day on this planet someone is starving, someone is homeless and someone is in need. Every day I pass the same woman sitting outside the 7-11 asking for change. Every day I pass the same old man at the bus stop waiting for a bus that never comes because he has no where else to go.

Now there are about a half a million people with no where else to go and nothing to eat…how do we ignore those numbers?

In closing, God, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going all vengency-hateful on us. I’d like to ask for another shot at this whole do-gooding thing we read about all the time in That Book. You know That Book…Bible, Koran, Bahgavad Gita, Book of Mormon, Avesta, Torah…whatever you want to call it…they all say the same thing. Be good. Do good things. Play nice and share your toys. I know we’re working on it. Really we are. We’ve just never been very good at the reading comprehension part of tests. So it might take us a little while. In the meantime, if you are going to smite someone I’ve got a short list of corrupt officials and annoying people at work you could start with.

Me.