Devotion Commotion

Praise me, Lord; I’ve lost my way. Upon my tombstone my epitaph will say: In her industry, she served her Creator. For, in anticipation of the approbation of her Father, who art in heaven, half-baked be his brain, Rebecca—that happily humble scullion, she—made meals that would pacify armies set for battle and washed dishes with a fervor usually reserved for prayer. In her diligent distaff crafting of anchovy and smoked mozzarella sandwiches, dutiful darning of holes in her bedspread and commitment to convalescing her latently injured foot, she made the Lord who ill regards idleness (and masculine action) proud. A model Christian I am indeed, inasmuch as I take pains to spend my days in any other way than supine upon my hardwood floor, listening to the Last of the Mohicans theme listlessly, beatifically and with all the acclamatory huzzahs accorded me from he or she who should elect to act as beneficiary in my recession-struck slump of unemployment.

For Lord, I’m feeling encumbered by menial tasks and loss of income in addition to honoring Your Lordship, pursuant to your majesty, merciful be thy judgment, doddering be thy gait. I have but one sandwich to make this evening, but I’m distracted. And anyway, meat-based sandwiches will never sate this thirst of mine, O Humble Jehovah who has conquered desire by force of will but seriously, I—your subject—am forever insatiable on account of your not feeding me, so Yahweh, God of the Hebrews, help me to understand my failings whereof punitive, nutritive restrictions are my merited due, OK? Or am I overreaching?

Allaahu Akbar! I offer you encomiums, but still you bid me burn my worldly possessions and ask not your motivations for you are the King of the World and not to be beseeched. You are Great and I’m a girl with mending to do, a kitten to tame, injuries to lessen and a long and luxurious mane. Which I’ll NOT cover modestly with a dark, bulky balk of a wig! In one instance in the Old Testament I hear mention of a woman’s modesty and for centuries onward I’m compelled to hide the gift ye has bestowed upon me? Oughtn’t ye to returneth unto me mine liberty? Or do you just want to watch me cry? Needn’t one make manifest the full range of one’s sexuality if one is to later declare the experience perverse in its ungodliness and turn a repentant cheek toward the heavens?!

Your barrage of admonishments, 613 laws and rhetorical requests for expiation for Eve’s sins do weary me. What kind of Lord are you anyway? To jilt me if I make a fraction of an error in genuflecting to a bevy of regulations I had no hand in administering? Wherefore the constant castigating of my humble human attempts at making sandwiches or tending to my feline companion and furthermore, why ought such accomplishments only be as good as that which they confer unto you? What if I’m hungry and ravenously, selfishly make myself a sandwich just because I’m hungry? What about that, huh?

How about you leave me alone while I’m making dinner! What’s it to you that I displace my rapturous devotion unto the theme from The Last of the Mohicans? What devotion-inspiring dingbat is so jealous? I don’t want to go about, as if in mourning, in somber colors, tilted head and wig, repentant. I must take action, forward motion, aggression—on my part! I’ve had it up to here with all your pomp and menace if your rules are not abided and if the pious are not pious enough to shut up when you pontificate. Haven’t you ever heard of ‘Authority without the temper, Virtue without the self-congratulation, confidence sans swagger, or condescension’? No! Because you don’t research yourself, you hick.

And WORSE when you’re not honestly expressing your endless, primitive, narcissistic omnipotence by smiting and threatening, you’re dishonestly cooing and preening o’er your mercifulness and how your love endures forever. If I have to hear one more thing about love and everlasting life, I’ll drown the world. Stop blaming me! I can’t help being female/sentient. I can’t help that I love freedom, God! Let me live on a lark, in Jerusalem, or whatever, as long as I’ve my lungs to move me, I’ll never go hungry again.

Now, Lord, as I stand here washing my dishes (in the name of cleanliness, and not your glory, amen) and convalescing my foot by balancing strategically and uncomfortably on the uninvolved appendage, I’d like to enjoy myself in my mobility (vestigial limp notwithstanding), so scat. Harp not on virtue; hop up not on God-love, for the economy of self-deception shall not do in this Child of Christ. No, sir. I’ve my garlic cloves, my female devilry and a microscope into your sorry psyche, but facts of the matter aside, I apologize. Though the plight of your progeny endures forever, I don’t intend to offend contumeliously. My Father, who art the god of my idolatry, though impossible it be, should you erase what is fake, hateful and repressive in your self-deluded creed and swear by thy admittedly fallible, fucked-up self, then I’ll believe thee.