“Gout is something you get if you’re a character in a Dickens novel!” said God. I met God in a small coffee shop in the early morning while I sipped on my coffee and ate a piece of lemon poppy seed bread my mother made two days ago, and it was just as delicious cold. God was a short man who was 56 years old, who came into a coffee shop in the small town of Bangor for a small cup of coffee and someone to talk to. God was a man who wore an olive green carhartt jacket with the hood up, a carhartt beanie that hid his white hair, and an oversized pair of cargo shorts, God was a man who carried a sleeping bag on his left shoulder and plopped it on the floor, then turned to me and asked me if I like my headphones, and where I had got them. God was a man with piercing blue eyes, with white stubble that pricked across his tightly pulled skin peppered with dirt, with a broad nose, with dirt beneath his fingernails, a white piece of fabric wrapped tightly around his middle finger. God smelled good, God made me intrigued yet uncomfortable, God made me feel a slight warmth in my chest. God was an “alcoholic”, God was “a meth head”, God was a “druggie”, God had been to “jail”, God was a “murderer”, and God could quote the bible and quite a long excerpt from Shakespears, who could speak expansive words I couldn’t even understand. And I was a young girl who needed to be told a lesson of kindness, love, and compassion, I was a young girl sitting the back corner of a coffee shop eating a lemon poppy seed piece of bread, suckling on my daily dose of coffee, and reading my boring chapter of Anthropology. It would be something like him to speak on gout and Charels Dickens, if he knew an author and classic playwright like Shakespeare of course he would know the novels of “Little Dorrit”, “A Christmas Carol”, and “The Battle of Life”, because this god was kissed with the cruelty of life, and had been embraced with everlasting loneliness. God wanted to kill himself, and still actively tried, and so I asked why. “I am He” God said, and then he told me “I can be whatever I want to be”, and then he asked me who I thought he was. And I, an utterly confused highschool student sitting in the corner of a coffee shop thought momentarily.
“You’re a lonely man who came into a coffee shop looking for someone to talk to.”
“Is that the reality of it, though?”
I, now beginning to question my own sanity, cocked my head. I didn’t understand, and I tried tuning in enough to where I thought I could listen better if I took my headphones off from around my neck, my headphones that were not even playing the classical music playlist I found on youtube and took particular comfort to. And then God told me with the most transparency to where it was off putting of his life, and how he knew the darkest of evils, that he knew of hell and how it is nothing like we imagine, yet he still chose to be kind. God told me that people thought he was a “stupid idiot”, a “druggie”, a “murderer”, and how people couldn’t even bare to glance in his direction on the street, or within this small coffee shop where we sat in the corner of the room, held by the cold brick wall, and where he jabbed his finger at me while he spoke, and spoke, and spoke. God asked me what kindness meant, and God asked me what I thought evil meant and God asked me if I believed in the supernatural beyond demons, ghosts, mists, and the paranormal but asked me if I believed in the super natural to where I could live to my greatest potential, and manifest whatever I pleased with the very on flick of my tongue to form the greatest of words that shall bend and mallue my reality with the mere thought, with the mere locution, with the mere breath of it, with the mere lip curl of it, and then God made me practice it.
In the moment, I, a young and utterly confused highschool student and the alcoholic murderer that was he, that was God– sat unbothered in this small coffee shop in the early morn, and with the swell of children, and the swell of people that filled each seat beneath each table, no one dared to look in our direction, or even breathe in it. God asked me what I truly wanted in life, and I ought to say happiness but I was too embarrassed to say, so I sat and thought of a different answer, and God used himself as an example, of wanting love, kindness, compassion, and gentleness. God told me to stand true to myself, to be who I am, to show and spread kindness and love, and that he understood it was hard. He told me that beyond the wrongdoings of others, there is still a loving side, still a good side in them beyond their evil and hurt.
God told me to open my eyes, God told me he wanted to tell me a code where I could understand everything, understand reality, yet he didn’t have the words to tell me. God told me he wanted nothing from me, just to teach me a lesson I’ll walk out with, smiling with. God told me to believe in God. God told me to awaken, God told me to stand in the truth, God asked me how could I know if he was the devil sitting in front of me, telling me to spread kindness, to open my eyes, or how I knew if he were God sitting in front of me, telling me to spread kindness, and to open my eyes. God spoke of a boy and containing him for seven years to show what a man truly is, of conditioning, of blindly following.
And so I asked, “What is your name?”
And God said “I can’t tell you that.” and he glanced off aside, tilted his head, then smiled back at me “Micheal”.