Little Jeremy imagines himself as God's overly sentimental child, indulging in his tantrums, playing alone with rose petals in the corner of the garden. The Father pats him on the shoulder and says, come in now son, there's food on the table, your brothers and sisters are looking for you, and it's starting to get cold out here. But five minutes pass, and he keeps fiddling with his dying petals.

***

Instead of closing his eyes or averting his gaze, like the monks of old would do, the lonely busrider said let's look at beauty straight in the face: to wit, let the deceiver be deceived enough to not let me be deceived, I simply behold the faces and traces of Eve. But oh how beauty, even without diabolic intervention, so easily turns to lust—but what does that mean? It means curling in selfward, saying this is what I want the most: the fair, white skin of romance, the onion-thin forever, but let me refuse the facts. Rather let me again see the flattering mirror of my virile self.

***

Wade with me into these gentle waves, where even far from shore the waters will only reach up to your waist. Pass your hands over the face of the green, murky surface. But watch that—there, look, the shade of turquoise that just gleamed and disappeared. The playfulness and mixtures of the light, of the dove-aquatic sky, the heavy grey hues of clouds in the north, and the sun a pulsating red orb, dropping (drooping) like a heavy eyelid into the sea. The same sea that now reluctantly cradles me.

***

Oh how I want to leave you, all of you bland personalities called "real people", and instead submerge into these fictionals, where words will keep us good company... like when Dr. Manhattan finally left for Mars, still bereft of any underwear.

***

“These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.”

Oh excuse me Jude, I'm sorry, for a moment there I thought you were talking about me? Didn't James also mention something about a double-minded man?

***

Agape. Agape. Agape.

Thank God that even in your faithlessness He remains forever faithful.

Didn't you know Jesus could cook a fine fish breakfast (John 21)? Not bangus though, but more likely tilapia.

And well, many philosophers seek only general principles, great abstractions, of the good, true and beautiful. There must be a system, with a more prestigious vocabulary. It must be the wholly, wholly, wholly, summarized in one book! And how disappointing it is, to turn the pages of Holy Writ, and find only a river of particulars! Of names and names, and the most tiresome lineages! Because Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah... And what they did, and what they said, and a story that never bends..

But the history of the world is not a generality, rather, there is no such thing as generality. Generality is a product of the weakness of language--it is an admission of finitude, that every word I utter is my incapacity to comprehend the ultimate details, the overwhelming complexity of every swarming atom, of every succeeding frame and slice of time, of the souls of a billion individuals dead, living and unborn. Rather, I say the word "atom", the word "second", the word "man", and find comfort in the semantic bubble, that purports to grasp the entire, when actually, the bubble is only a very thin-film thick.

See, but God exclusively views a centillion particulars. Not merely the "stars", no, not that, but each star has a name, oh, a singular, unique, irreplaceable name, and he calls each by its name--and not an arbitrary name, not simply the nominal, but the essential, the essence, where the color and the hue, the density and the dust, the pulsating of the core, the whirl and the gravity, the laughter and the light, all this is in the name--the name is what it is, the name is its being. And so here too, in the Bible, when God condescended to be read, he gives the names. And the pattern of the Bible is the pattern of history, as the DNA replicates, it is a story that spans the centuries, repeating, repeating, such that this life I'm living, I am Abraham, leaving my homeland, and I am David, committing my gravest sin, and I am Nehemiah, in the act of rebuilding, and I am Jesus... oh, breathless, I am Jesus, oh, I in him and him in me, one and only, sublimating, yet there is only one Jesus, and there is only one me, what is my name? God keeps it, as he knew me before I was born. And in the same fashion He knows you. There is only one history, His story, yes..

And, how can that be grasped? That there is only one history? That there is no such thing as repetitive plurality strictly conceived? And all this talk of alternate universes, and alternate realities, where you or I could have a different destiny, a different set of choices, well that's just blasphemy. That's just the fear of responsibility. Rather there is one history, and it is a history bursting, spilling over, with particularities, like the texture of the mouse in your hand, the momentary humid scent of the air, the pixels of light on the screen, the mental image that just flickered in your mind and disappeared, just now, now past, now irrevocable, pasted elements of this one history that we share, and are experiencing unfold. And take it to heart! That the Bible IS history, that it cellulates it, that it is the underlying genetics of the world we live in. That's why the apostles also called it a "mirror", but this mirror is as deep as it is reflective, and you will be recreated by what you find.

Reality is other people.

Reality is completely messy.

Reality is relationship.

Only God can make complete sense of all of this:

Love.